Bicycle

, a short story (centred around Ottawa's Dominion Tavern) from my forthcoming collection (now available to pre-order!) On Beauty (University of Alberta Press, 2024,

Okay, so I completed final copy edits on the collection a couple of weeks ago, so thought I should offer this short story from On Beauty (University of Alberta Press, 2024). If you are familiar with elements of Ottawa’s Chinatown, Centretown and Lowertown, perhaps you might even notice some familiar details, not the least being that a whole bunch of the story is set at the Dominion Tavern.

The final book is due to land in-print in August, and this is your enticement to pre-order a copy, yes? There are some stunning blurbs to accompany the collection, from Laynie Browne, Douglas Glover, Gail Scott and M.A.C. Farrant, so if you don’t believe me, maybe trust what they have to offer. Or, I suppose, see what you think of this story, below (which originally appeared online at Bending Genres):

_____________

Bicycle

But did she return?
—Gail Scott, The Obituary

1.

He paints a bicycle on her shoulder blade. Etches. The needle cadence, carves. Her red utility design, a bicycle like hers. He stretches canvas skin.

She is topless, lying on her stomach, and paying for the privilege of each pained expression.

An hour passes. Three.

Ottawa is too hot for anything. A heat advisory. Rideau wishes, wash. She pays her money and walks; itself, a rarity.

It is muggy, warm, and underneath her bandage sweat, an unbearable itch.

2.

Six-hour block, her evening job, coffee shop. Shifts, she stands. Her shoulder throbs. Order, change and cup. Order, change and cup. Shifts include junkies in the washrooms. Too often, staff scraping blood from beige walls.

Ugly service industry. Shouldn’t be so fucking hard. Muzak, soft. When no one notices, she turns the satellite to something more palatable. Something with an edge. She groans out lattes, chillers, americanos. The window washers, you could set your watch.

The hours melt, a seeming mass.

3.

She has been attempting to catch the attention of the girl in the apartment below hers. Blonde, curved, university age. She hovers at the window, alert to how the house breathes, exhalations as the front door opens, shudders. She hears movement. Footfalls, creaks, the downstairs kitchen cupboards. House-breaths rattle her apartment door the slightest, ripple. If the house was a body, the hallway and the staircase might be lungs.

She hopes to catch, an eye. A simple glimpse. A purse of lips.

A week prior, she ran quick fingers through their shared apartment dryer, skin against her neighbour’s clothes. She daydreamed. A little creepy, sure. But the fabrics were so warm, and soft.

4.

She knows there are two kinds of people: cat people and dog people. Everything comes down to this.

There are no “bird people,” simply self-hating cat people, or dog people who don’t think they deserve to be loved.

Specimen, the cat, tears into her skin. Spec. The clipper pares his front claws, never makes it to his hind legs. He squirms, slices, escapes. She yelps in pain, surprise, release. His cries a mix of anger and such deep betrayal. He catches carpet, slips beneath a chair.

She heads to the bathroom, washes cuts and scrapes, her blood. Returns to offer him a treat from the kitchen as apology.

Decides she will reattempt, tomorrow. He does not understand.

5.

Tucked away, apartment turret. Her cuckoo clock, exhumed from antique salvage. Discarded doorknob. She knows the importance of tokens. A guitar pick rescued from the sticky black of club floor, used onstage by Andy Stochansky. A blue scarf gifted from her favourite aunt, plucked from her favourite Parisian shop, when she was ten. A jar of smooth stones collected from the beach in Cobourg, when she was fifteen. The tales her father told along the boardwalk, of the summer when he was fifteen, strolling the same beach.

6.

Canada Day, 11 a.m. The downtown core empty of human activity but for revellers, in big red. Abandoned office towers, dark shops. Flags descend, draped as cowls, capes. Rare cars doppler. Centretown, toward the Hill, toward the Market. The occasional OC Transpo bus. She rolls her lengthy way down. Bicycle slow.

Snowbirds, overhead. A quintet swish, and smoke trails.

Parliament Hill, the hole that must be filled. Groups gravitate toward the centre, a Capital nexus that strengthens throughout the day. Gravity, it pulls and pulls.

She, too, almost aimless. Catcalls from the occasional balcony along Somerset, indirect cheers from a patio group at the Royal Oak at Gloucester. Empty spaces fill.

What is a country? Her references are not the same.

Pamela Anderson’s birthday. Canada’s Centennial baby, from Ladysmith, British Columbia.

You can’t blow up the earth. A line she recalls from the animated series, The Tick. That’s where I keep my stuff.

A woman, from the waist up, sporting only stickers.

7.

She pulls along, aside. Ties her bike on York Street, locks. Horse, up to the hitching post.

Torn, the way she paces. Anxious, parse. Chains her heart up to a metal post. Leaves it, here, where she might just be. No matter.

Bicycle, candy-apple red, with Granny-Smith green trim. A birthday present from her mother, three years. Three years since cancer withered her body, and stole her away.

She steps, into the steady dark. The series of daytime drinkers in the Dominion Tavern, unaccustomed to this rare weekday deluge of patrons. They know something is wrong, but they couldn’t say what. The old and young alike.

Recollecting, this once “Dominion Day,” celebrating, what. Dominion. Over what, she does not understand.

Bartender pulls a pint and passes, over. She sits to read her book. She, quiet.

Her friends will be there, soon. Sooner or later.

8.

The Dominion Tavern, big screen plays a documentary on golf and mentorship. Overhead blasts audio, the Pixies, Surfer Rosa. She is entirely too comfortable. She reads her book, and waits.

Punk kid strolls over from the pool table. Aims to interrupt her reading. Bartender silent, floats by with the back of the hand, deflects. They know her here.

Her friends arrive. She slips her book away. Mary Ruefle, Madness, Rack, and Honey. They pool, collect in the corner of back patio.

Pulls a pint and passes, pulls another. She swims in Kichesippi, Beau’s, a local wash. She genuflects for local flavour.

Older than she looks. The late-night rain begins to fall. Warm, on their faces.

9.

Midnight, fireworks. Mouth presses mouth, outside. She, and she. They’d ignored the official display, now catch the whistle-squeal of ruin, releasing packets of individuals in brush, a counsel of trees, beside apartment trestles from the Byward Market east into Sandy Hill, low-income dwellings. The whistle-squeal and pop, most often followed by the strawberry swirl of sirens. Police cars, run.

She pictures happiness. The colour green.

10.

A bicycle, like hers. An empty post, broken chain. Her mother is dead.