Guide to Animal Behaviour by Douglas Glover Read Free Book Online Page B

into my eyes, as if to read me. I am a book he usually doesn’t care to take off the shelf. Unaccountably and somewhat infuriatingly, I begin to cry.
    â€œNo, I’m not all right. No, I don’t feel okay. Okay?”
    I turn away, and the dogs follow me.
    â€œWhere are you going?”
    â€œHome. I’m tired of this.”
    And I am tired. In the past few hours, I have broken several laws, had a fight with Hugo and failed to kill myself, not to mention thinking many desperate and ingenious thoughts to pass the time. Now, for all I know, we will never be able to drive the Pinto again. How will I get to work? How will Hugo drive to Toronto for rehearsals? What is the resale value of a cyanide-filled Pinto with an exploding gas tank? They probably won’t even take it for junk. My life is a sorry and pathetic mess, and all I want to do is go home, crawl into bed and pull a pillow over my face.
    Hugo runs after me and takes me in his arms. Either he thinks a hug will improve my outlook or near-death has made him horny. His cheek is cold and stubbly, rubbing against mine. Bismarck whines thinly. My nose begins to drip. I begin to lose my balance. I wish Hugo would let go because we are making a scene for people coming out of the restaurant. Suddenly I am aware that he is crying; Hugo wants me to comfort him. Who just tried to kill herself? I think, a little nonplussed. Jake chases Bismarck in a tight circle around the parking lot.
    I pull away and walk back to the Pinto. With my gloves I begin to dust the snow and cyanide off the seats and out the door. I keep my scarf over my mouth and nose. Listen, I definitely don’t want to die in a Wendy’s parking lot. After watching for a while, Hugo walks into the restaurant, returning with paper towels which we damp in the melting snow and use to wash down the inside of the car.
    It is cold, dirty work, and my hands and lips turn blue (as do Hugo’s — not an effect of cyanide; this is because the body directs the blood to the major organs, the heart and brain, for example, to keep the warm). We are all cold and wet and miserable.
    At length, we get back into the car and drive with the windows open to the lab (basement rec room) where I wait with the dogs while Hugo (Willa) returns the jar of cyanide (shotgun) to its glass-doored shelf (deer-antler rack). He seems to take an exceptionally long time, and I imagine him (we are creatures of each other’s imagination) lost in thought, surprised and troubled, amongst the whispering plants, arrested, as it were, by the thunderous echoing whispers of things which, daily, he compels with his thoughts. Momentarily, he understands, as my father and I did, what it means to finish the sentence.
    Home again, we shake our clothes outside and wash the dogs in the tub (the evening has turned into a complete horror show for Bismarck), and then take turns holding the shower attachment over each other. I keep my eyes and mouth shut while Hugo gently and carefully hoses my face, my neck and ears and hair. I do the same for him and have to bite my lip, seeing him with his eyes closed, naked, blind and trusting.
    It is after 2 a.m. when we finally go to bed. We’re both exhausted. Hugo curls up with his back to me and begins to snore. Bismarck’s nails click nervously up and down the hallway outside our door, then he goes and curls up beside his friend under the kitchen table.
    I lie awake thinking, thinking about what happened to Hugo back there by the car, what made him run after me, embrace me and weep — some inkling, I think, some intuition of the truth, that I am leaving, a truth that only now begins to spread like imperfectly oxygenated blood through my arteries and capillaries, turning my limbs leaden and my skin blue.

THE CANADIAN TRAVEL NOTES OF
ABBÉ HUGUES POMMIER, PAINTER, 1663-1680
    Bertrand de Latour describes Pommier as an artist whose paintings were all bad, although he considered himself