Slim’s on a branch of the old twisted maple. Wearing that smelly denim jacket with the sleeves too short. Trying to look like a rebel and maybe he does a bit. Right away she sees him dangling his new fashion statement from the branch. Cowboy boots.
‘Where’d you get those shitkickers?’
‘Found em. Around.’
She sits on the ground, back against the trunk. ‘Liar.’
He laughs because they both know it’s true. Slim always lying about everything because he thinks it’s funny. Because it’s easier that way. He pulls a sucker out of his pocket, peels the plastic and tosses it in the breeze.
‘That’s littering, y’know.’
He shrugs, sticks the sucker in his mouth. ‘When’re your parents back?’
‘Funeral’s today, so probably tomorrow.’ Feeling with her hand the place he cut their initials in the bark. ‘You’re late.’
‘It’s early.’
‘You’re still late.’
He drops out of the tree and heads for the driveway. ‘Let’s book then.’
‘I’m in my fuckin pyjamas, Slim.’
‘They look great.’
Francie grabs her bag and follows him out to the red Dart, all polished up and not a spot of rust on her. On the passenger side, Slim runs his hand from headlight to handle, touching it like he touches Francie sometimes when nobody would notice. He swings the big door open for her. She tries to duck past him, but he grabs her bag.
‘Trunk’s full.’ He tosses it in the back seat. ‘That all you got?’
‘Don’t need much.’ She looks up at the house. Grey with burgundy trim – like Cape Cod, her dad said, like this was cultured, like this was the excuse for never repainting and letting it peel like some old onion. The house of yesterday and the days and days before, the house of this morning, and that was it.
Slim clicks the heels of the cowboy boots together three times and holds the door wide for her. ‘No place like home.’
As they pull away, she watches her upstairs window, catching a bit of her mobile. Spinning one way and then back.
Francie rolls down the window to let in the fall air and when Slim gives her The Look she says, ‘It stinks,’ because it does. Slim cleans the dash with a toothbrush and vacuums the upholstery, but the car still reeks three years after Heck puked in the back. Four milkshakes and an hour swinging around in a rubber tire and no amount of shampoo can get the smell out. Today worse than usual.
Slim crosses Regent and trucks on down Ontario, hardly a car out yet. ‘Where’re we going?’
‘Got a couple stops to make.’ He rubs his eyes, red rimmed and grey bagged. Scratches some of his poor excuse for stubble.
‘You look tired.’
‘What?’ He puts a hand on her leg like he’s trying to reassure her. But the hand is a dead thing weighed down by that big dumb gold watch and he’s looking at the road with some thousand-mile stare like he’s seeing anything but her, this car, this road.
‘You okay, Slim?’
He takes his hand away and pops in the New Order eight-track, Francie’s favourite. The same album they played racing through the slag heaps in summer, sweating and tangled in Slim’s secret cabin, talking their way into the next day, the next month, all the nexts you could come up with. Music sounds different on different days. Today as that echoing guitar kicks in, all she can hear is the grey blue of all the loneliness in the world. Both of them singing along, I’ve lost you, I’ve lost you, oh, I’ve lost you. Slim slapping the steering wheel out of time as the drum rolls on.
He pulls right up to the base of it and pops the parking brake on. Francie staring up at the big coin. ‘You’re kidding, right?’
Slim reaches across her to the glove compartment and pulls out his Polaroid. Swings his door open.
‘C’mon.’
‘You’re not kidding.’
‘People get their picture taken with the Eiffel Tower, don’t they?’
‘It’s so tacky.’
‘We’ll do a whole series of you in front of giant coins. Big dimes, big pennies. It’ll be my first show.’
He laughs, Slim all over again, and his laugh is so stupid, honking like a goose, that she’s laughing too. Out of the car, him chasing, her dodging. She jumps up on the concrete base and strikes a pose, something she saw in a magazine, one leg bent and a hand on her cheek. Slim goes down on one knee, holding the camera like a rifle, a real professional.
‘Hey, isn’t that Normando?’ Slim points his camera off to the side and buzzes a Polaroid through.
She follows his aim and sees they’re not alone – off at the end of the lot, a black truck, some ugly old man sitting on the fender staring at her with ugly eyes, drinking an ugly beer. ‘Who?’
‘The popcorn guy. Y’know, with the popcorn cart?’
‘The one who eats children?’
‘He doesn’t eat – Jesus, he’s like a local legend, Francie. They practically built the city around him.’
He looks like he could be that old. All the ugly oldness of this city. She’d been to Toronto last summer. Those high-rise apartments up in the clouds. All the restaurants and shops. Everything so new and fun and everything even uglier when she got back here.
The buzz of the Polaroid brings her back to Slim, grinning up at her.
‘Catch me!’ And she’s jumping off the pedestal, Slim trying to grab her with one arm, protecting the camera, both of them tumbling over in a dusty laughing heap. She looks up at the big dumb coin.
Laughing at this great tourist act. Laughing that in all the days of Francie’s days on this planet, this is her first time up here. The whole city down there and the rim of slag like a ring tight around the two of them. She laughs so hard she might puke. ‘Oh god I hate this place.’
She dozes off in the car for what feels like five minutes and then they’re stopping already. Slim pulling up at Gloria’s and she says, ‘It’ll be midnight before we get there.’
‘I’m hungry.’
She sighs, making it as noisy as possible and says, ‘I’ll meet you inside’ in a wait-for-me way. But he’s already out and slamming the door. She pulls the rear-view down and checks her hair, ties it up to one side. She thinks about changing out of her pyjamas but doesn’t.
Every girl in her graduating class wore a pound of makeup. Her friend Caitlin says she’s a natural beauty, but that’s just another way of saying princess and she isn’t that. She just doesn’t like makeup and anyway she does wear a bit of eyeliner now and then. If she feels like it. But not now, now she looks like she just crawled out of bed, but Slim says she looks good any time of the day. The way he takes her picture, he has a way of making her feel easy – not in that way – but in that moment, in the camera flash, she feels like she can be whatever it is she’s gonna be.
Whatever. She gets out of the car. Slim’s waited just long enough to start to wonder.
It’s a blue haze inside the diner, graveyard shifters and nine-to-fivers rubbing elbows over greasy plates and bad coffee. Francie finds Slim in the corner booth, leg up, showing off one of the new boots, back to the wall, reading the menu like it’s the work of one of his Russian poets. Two steaming mugs on the table.
Here comes Lucy, her shoulders all hunched up in her ears, gum going. ‘What can I get you?’
‘I’m fine with coffee.’ Francie slides the menu across the table and