Miles will enter first year of med school. They will start again. Neither of them mentions the promise of marriage that Miles had made the year before.
They drive through the mountains, onto the high ranges of Alberta, across the cruise-control prairies, and over the humped spine of Lake Superior, all in a brooding near silence. Alex never asks about the fire, but Miles can sense her aching to. There’s a buzz of vicious pleasure in refusing to help her open the topic, every hour of silence a greater punishment than anything he might think of to say to her. Behind the wheel, Miles takes an academic interest in his own anger. For instance, he would never have guessed he would resent Alex’s sympathy even more than her curiosity.
The sight of Toronto shrinks them in their seats. Even the lake seems to pull back from the downtown towers. Its waves reluctant, perfunctory, the water the mottled grey of desert camouflage. They drive straight to the apartment Alex has found, a basement one-bedroom on Shaw Street, the only thing reasonably close to both her work and the university that they could afford.
‘It’s not rue Rachel,’ Miles says, looking up and down the street, the tiny front yards blurred with wrought-iron fences.
‘It’s different here,’ Alex agrees. ‘It’s all different.’
They unload their minimal belongings and, after one walk through the apartment, Miles tuckshimself under the sheets of the futon and stays in the bedroom for the next week until classes start. Even then, he skips his lectures as often as he attends them. Instead, he drifts through the streets of the new city and feels its eyes upon him. He plays the game of trying to catch people staring. Most of the time, his observers are quicker than he is. But when he snags slow ones, he sticks his tongue out and laughs like a serial killer and watches them scuttle away in what they think is fear, though he knows it’s really shame.
His refusal to speak doesn’t prevent Miles from tracing the growing shape of fury within him. Alex can see it too. It comes to the point that all she will allow herself to tell him is that she loves him, but even this gives offence. He interprets her simple, desperate words as a lie, something she repeats to convince herself of. It is impossible that Alex could feel the same about him as she once did. If he has been turned into a monster, won’t their love have been similarly deformed?
More and more, Miles fears that if he stays with her, something as bad as what happened to the burned boy will happen to Alex. There is also the newfound worry that he might hurt her himself.
They make love only once after the fire. From the morning Miles was released from the hospital, over and over Alex had invited him to her. She had worn only the clothes he had most liked to remove, suggested massage oil backrubs, whispereddirty in his ear. Every time, Miles had declined. Finally, after she grazed her tongue across the back of his neck as he stood before a crackling frying pan in the kitchen, he had turned to her and said, ‘Don’t you get it? I’m not interested in a mercy fuck,’ before returning to flip his eggs. She had not tried again after that.
What hurt her more than his rejection was the extent to which he was wrong about what she was asking of him. Mercy had nothing to do with it. It’s true that she wanted to bring them together, if only for a time, as the open talk that they used to find so natural had deserted them. But her desire was real.
On this night, though, it is Miles who reaches for Alex. Aware of the sound of their own breathing, each clinging to the cold edge of their opposite bedsides, he had rolled over to bring his lips to her shoulder. Both of them are amazed at how even this tentative kiss revives something in them. Miles stays next to her, folding himself over her side. He wants to say a sweet word. Anything plucked from the standard vocabulary will do. But the mere thought of uttering any
They drive through the mountains, onto the high ranges of Alberta, across the cruise-control prairies, and over the humped spine of Lake Superior, all in a brooding near silence. Alex never asks about the fire, but Miles can sense her aching to. There’s a buzz of vicious pleasure in refusing to help her open the topic, every hour of silence a greater punishment than anything he might think of to say to her. Behind the wheel, Miles takes an academic interest in his own anger. For instance, he would never have guessed he would resent Alex’s sympathy even more than her curiosity.
The sight of Toronto shrinks them in their seats. Even the lake seems to pull back from the downtown towers. Its waves reluctant, perfunctory, the water the mottled grey of desert camouflage. They drive straight to the apartment Alex has found, a basement one-bedroom on Shaw Street, the only thing reasonably close to both her work and the university that they could afford.
‘It’s not rue Rachel,’ Miles says, looking up and down the street, the tiny front yards blurred with wrought-iron fences.
‘It’s different here,’ Alex agrees. ‘It’s all different.’
They unload their minimal belongings and, after one walk through the apartment, Miles tuckshimself under the sheets of the futon and stays in the bedroom for the next week until classes start. Even then, he skips his lectures as often as he attends them. Instead, he drifts through the streets of the new city and feels its eyes upon him. He plays the game of trying to catch people staring. Most of the time, his observers are quicker than he is. But when he snags slow ones, he sticks his tongue out and laughs like a serial killer and watches them scuttle away in what they think is fear, though he knows it’s really shame.
His refusal to speak doesn’t prevent Miles from tracing the growing shape of fury within him. Alex can see it too. It comes to the point that all she will allow herself to tell him is that she loves him, but even this gives offence. He interprets her simple, desperate words as a lie, something she repeats to convince herself of. It is impossible that Alex could feel the same about him as she once did. If he has been turned into a monster, won’t their love have been similarly deformed?
More and more, Miles fears that if he stays with her, something as bad as what happened to the burned boy will happen to Alex. There is also the newfound worry that he might hurt her himself.
They make love only once after the fire. From the morning Miles was released from the hospital, over and over Alex had invited him to her. She had worn only the clothes he had most liked to remove, suggested massage oil backrubs, whispereddirty in his ear. Every time, Miles had declined. Finally, after she grazed her tongue across the back of his neck as he stood before a crackling frying pan in the kitchen, he had turned to her and said, ‘Don’t you get it? I’m not interested in a mercy fuck,’ before returning to flip his eggs. She had not tried again after that.
What hurt her more than his rejection was the extent to which he was wrong about what she was asking of him. Mercy had nothing to do with it. It’s true that she wanted to bring them together, if only for a time, as the open talk that they used to find so natural had deserted them. But her desire was real.
On this night, though, it is Miles who reaches for Alex. Aware of the sound of their own breathing, each clinging to the cold edge of their opposite bedsides, he had rolled over to bring his lips to her shoulder. Both of them are amazed at how even this tentative kiss revives something in them. Miles stays next to her, folding himself over her side. He wants to say a sweet word. Anything plucked from the standard vocabulary will do. But the mere thought of uttering any
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