Martin Sloane by Michael Redhill Read Free Book Online Page A

remember all the strange cocktails we’d once invented. Four O’Clock Aftershave was one of them: blue curaçao and crème de menthe. Disgusting. Or the one with all the transparent, almost tasteless liquors in them: gin, vodka, and Everclear (more a cleaning fluid than an alcohol). We’d named it Silent Creeping Death. A touch of cassis made it palatable; an eggcup’s worth was enough to render a person insensible. We’d employed it in the seduction of various members of the debating team (the score there was Molly 4, Jolene 0 — I had a problem with dosages, which is to say, I kept falling down drunk). The three of us settled for beers and sat in the slow, wavy heat blinking at each other. The willows shaded us a little from the late sun, their huge branches a summery balm. Molly, used to the humidity of New York, found the high blank heat of the Midwest almost unbearable. She sat fanning herself with a hand, her skin glistening.
    My god, what do you midwesterners do for relief?
    Stay still, I said. Take showers.
    I can’t imagine getting used to this.
    It must have been a steamy twelve hours on the bus, I said.
    Thirteen, Molly said. It was a little sticky.
    They have lovely air conditioning on airplanes.
    She shuddered. It’s thirty below up there, and that’s just one way it can kill you.
    I’m with her, Martin said, and they shook hands. Anyway, you get used to this, he said. It’s almost what I grew up with. Well, except that it was cold and it rained all the time.
    You never told me he was funny.
    Oh, he’s funny, I said. Wait till he has a second beer. He juggles too.
    We finished our beers, opened more, and talked a little about everything, books and magazines recently read, movies missed, and so on. And then I had a strange thought: what if one of them knows something about the other that they’re not supposed to know? I tried to recall all the conversational indiscretions I’d made in speaking with one or the other at various times. What did Molly know that she oughtn’t? Martin? I was suddenly paralyzed with the thought of whatever that thing
was
, being introduced innocently into the conversation and the ballooning silence afterwards.
    Molly asked him, Do you live down here now?
    Oh geez, he said, no.
    I turned to him with my eyes narrowed. Whaddyou mean, ‘oh geez no’? I said. Tell me again what would be wrong with living down here, Martin.
    Molly glanced back and forth between us, mouth pursed. I should change the subject.
    Nooo … I think he should tell us what he means.
    I live in two places, he explained to Molly. In Toronto, I’m alone and I do my work. Down here, I’m with Jolene.
    And you do your work, I said. I pointed to a ramshackle building at the back of the lot. And yes, he said, I work here too. In fact, I work in both places and I love Jolene in both places, but it’s only in one that we’re together.
    That’s sweet, said Molly.
    But I’m banned from Toronto, I said.
    You’re not banned.
    He’s always telling me what I wouldn’t like about Toronto. His apartment has no bathtub. The city is cold.
    In the winter, you mean?
    No, said Martin. Well, yes, but what I mean is the people aren’t as friendly up there.
    I wouldn’t be going to accept the key to the city.
    He stared hard at me. His expression said, Any reason why you’re doing this right
now?
    Just because, I said out loud.
    Fine, he said. I come here because I love getting away from a place I hate being in to one I love being in. And it isn’t true the other way around: you love Bloomington, you’d hate Toronto, and there’s nothing to do up there. So I come here. I go to all the
trouble
of coming here.
    I
want
to come to Toronto.
    Fine, he said, raising his arms a little off the armrests. You’ll come, then.
    I pulled my head back a little, astonished. When? I turned to Molly. You’re my witness.
    I don’t think I better get —
    Whenever you want, said Martin.
    I jumped up and made him shake hands. You