Alligator - Lisa Moore [74]
And these men begin to hack at the ice. They chop a path that closes over as soon as it opens.
The freighter was stuck and she had a cast and crew numbering in the hundreds whom she had to pay to stand around, waiting on those bloody horses that she would not give up on because she had got an idea in her head.
She’d had a meeting with the premier at the Newfoundland Hotel. He was on his way to China, a trade mission. She wanted some leverage at the bank, that’s what she wanted. They’d chatted about politics and she’d ordered bakeapple jam for her toast and insisted he have some of hers.
China, how marvellous, she’d said, pushing the dish of jam over the tablecloth. What an adventure.
She’d wanted him thinking of summer. She could not put into words about how she’d captured the history of Newfoundland in this film, new because she was inventing it, or how this film had spiritual implications, how it would transfigure human experience, how bloody gorgeous the landscape, the actress with red hair, and Archbishop Fleming and the church bells but she could distract him with the jam.
She watched his knife dip into the little pot. He tasted the jam and he was thinking and then he waved the knife at her about to say something. Something had occurred to him. He waved the knife like a magic wand.
She had a thought: I am having breakfast with the premier. She saw herself as if she were looking down from the rafters, her amber pendant and the rose-coloured blouse. She was stirring her coffee.
The premier put down his knife. He had closed his eyes and was nodding to himself about how right he was in whatever thought he was having. He had convinced himself of some small matter.
About your film, he’d said.
She’d been drinking martinis in a castle in Ireland — what was this? A year ago? A slate floor, cold underfoot, and there was a fire in the hearth kicking out a bank of heat. She was there with an international committee of filmmakers and the blotch-faced Irishman sitting beside her with the white, wax-tipped, handlebar moustache: he had a brother who ran a stable in Austria.
He was a person worth $27 million, a benefactor of the arts. That’s how she justified the Irishman’s hand on her knee: white stallions. What kind of man wears a handlebar moustache? She wanted to give it a good hard tug.
I think we can do something, the premier said. Let me jot this note. We can definitely get in touch with a shipping company. I can get those horses over here.
COLLEEN
THERE WAS A bouncer checking ID at the door but he let Colleen and her friends through because she stood in front of him with a tiny pot of lip gloss. She unscrewed the lid and dipped her pinky in the gloss and the crowd pushed behind her and she let them press her into the table. There was a lot of noise and smoke and the bouncer’s muscles were gym muscles but he was unattractive and very slowly, drunkenly, she ran the tip of her pinky over her top lip and then her bottom lip and she pressed her lips together and made a big smack.
She made the smack deliberate and she was leaning near the bouncer, her breasts over the table, she couldn’t believe how much fun it was coming on to an ugly bouncer in order to gain admittance to a wet T-shirt contest that she wanted to do because she was loaded and because she had big beautiful breasts and she might win $1,000. She was very drunk and desperate to get to the edge of an anger she couldn’t describe because it was new. There was a neon sign in the window that said Open and the lime green light flushed through the tubing over and over and Colleen thought it was like the anger she felt, a surging, sobering anger full of neon. She wanted to commit an illicit act. It struck her as comedic — to undress before a crowd — both nightmarish and goofy. It was a banal act that had the potential to change her. It was none of those things. There was some part of herself she wanted to shed. She wanted to have fun. Colleen had waited through the whole month of July for the youth