Morning

He woke up somewhere south of Calgary, looked down and realized he was still dressed for the funeral. He watched the Malibu’s shadow stretched 100 feet long by the morning sun, bouncing off golden chunks of dead grass and patches of snow. His neck hurt, his forehead was cold from being pressed against the window, his white shirt was twisted around shoulders.
She was driving with her right wrist crooked over the top of the steering wheel, the other hand tapping her thigh, the noise from the Walkman headphones a small, tinny echo. The sun behind her lit the inside of her mother’s car, and when he moved he could see dust rise from the seats and smell the stale cigarette smoke. He shifted, felt his forehead, sat a little straighter.
She pushed the headphones off, turned and smiled. He realized he didn’t know her age, and couldn’t guess.
“Glad you decided to join me.”
“How long did I sleep?”
“Passed out, you mean. You were gone before we hit the Alberta border.”
He paused, looked around, saw mountain smudged grey in the distance, a dog or coyote running slowly along a ridge above a house.
“I should really call somebody at the shop.”
She looked at him, then put the headphones back on and turned up the sound. But 10 miles later she pulled off at a Husky Truck Stop, bumping the car hard and fast off the shoulder and running up beside the cafe, the sun already higher.
“Wait a minute,” she said, when he started to get out. “Maybe we should say goodbye here.”
“What do you mean.”
“Call somebody at the shop? And tell them what?”
“I don’t know, just that I’m not there.”
“They aren’t the brightest people in Biggar - though that’s not saying much - but I’m pretty sure they know you aren’t there. So what would you tell them?”
“I don’t know. Sorry, I guess. They thought I’d be in at work today, and now we’re heading for Los Angeles. They’ll be a little surprised.”
“Look bucko, my father’s going to wake up with a house full of dirty dishes, a fridge full of casseroles he doesn’t want and a low-grade hangover, and he’s going to find me gone with the dearly departed’s car.”
“I just want to let them. . .” But she stopped him, leaning back, one hand on the wheel.
“I’m 32. I’ve learned exactly six things so far, and one is about decision time, and it’s here for you. You can talk and let people know, or you can do things. Only one choice includes me. And you’ll be sorry if you choose wrong.”
He paused, about to point out he’d known her for 21 hours and had left friends, apartment and job at her father’s car dealership. He paused just for a second, but maybe one second can be too long.
“Let’s have some breakfast and get going,” he said. “California’s not getting any closer.”
The air almost touched him, it was so clean, and the cold felt good in the few steps to the restaurant. He almost touched her, but they were in that strange time, lovers still too new to be familiar.
They ordered huge breakfasts, eggs, ham, potatoes, laughed at the truckers, her laugh too loud, until a large, greasy driver in an International cap asked if there was a problem and she had to claim he reminded her of her uncle . He held his breath, not wanting to fight a man 60 pounds heavier and twice as mean.
She caught that, looked at him again.
“You know,” she said, “I come back for a funeral and don’t even wait to see if there’s an inheritance - just grab you and a 12-year-old car. My mother would probably like that.”
The coffee was the second best part of breakfast, not good coffee but still good. The best part was when she reached out and touched his shoulder.
She left him to wait for the bill and went to the bathroom. He knew right away she wouldn’t be back, but he waited for 15 minutes anyway and never did look at where the car used to be.

A Monkey Fur Coat

The coat was right. Carson saw it hanging from the ceiling, above the racks, shining blue-black, like the hair of beautiful and dark women.
He edged past a woman with purple hair holding a beaded dress draped in front of her, stretched up to look at the coat. Small neat handwriting on the tag said it was made from monkey skins, in the ‘40s.
But it was $700.
He’d bought her a fur coat three years before, when the company had handed him a surprising $1,100 bonus at the end of the year.
“Good for a fur coat,” the card said, 11 $100 bills in the envelope, propped in the branches of their spindly Christmas tree. That turned out to be not much money in a fur store. The coat was coyote faces, long, to her knees and her tall brown leather boats. When they left the store he lagged a step or two behind on the street, staring at her back, trying to find the features in the patterns of light and dark brown, the sun bright white off the snow.
She had stopped wearing it about a year later.
“Is it because of the fur thing?” he’d finally asked her, pretending to have just noticed.
Liz had switched from wine to vodka then, kept icy in the freezer. She took a sip, licked her upper lip, slid off the counter to move into the living room, so he could half see her through the opening to the kitchen.
“No, it’s not that. I just don’t want to wear it right now.”
Carson had been chopping a yellow pepper into thin strips, the pieces leaving the knife like small twisting animals.
“It looked good, I thought.”
But she didn’t answer and didn’t worn the coat.
He reached high, touched the monkey skin coat, soft, not what he expected, like a child’s hair.
They put the coat in a box for him, folded in a tissue paper nest. He was lighter, the box under his arm, a little bounce in his step when he crossed the street. Standing on the bus he leaned back against the pole with both hands in his pockets, the box tucked under his arm, bending his knees and balancing when the bus stopped or went around corners.
The air even smelled different when he got off outside the condo. Raw earth, like someone had been pawing at the muddy ground, and a softness that came from the ocean, even though they were almost four miles inland.
She was in the kitchen. They had laughed when they bought the place at even calling the narrow space a kitchen, a counter and gas stove on one side, fridge and sink on the other, barely enough room for two people to pass. In the first weeks, Liz had sat on the counter, drinking wine, while he played cook, pasta and rice and seafood, bread from the breadmaker.
Now she was eating an apple cut into small sections. He held the box behind him, watched her dip the apple into the vodka, hold it submerged as if the thick liquid could freeze it.
“I got you something,” he said, and before she could think what to say slide the box towards her.
“What is it?” Liz didn’t move. She was just home from the office.
“A surprise, that’s all. It seemed right.”
Carson set it on the counter beside her, called to her from the next room as he hung his coat up.
“Open it. It won’t hurt you.”
Liz was staring at him when he came around the corner. She hadn’t touched the box.
“It’s a gift.” She kept watching, and he edged past, careful not to touch her, poured a large glass of her vodka.
He leaned against the counter, waited until she pulled the box open.
“It’s a coat. I saw it at Second Chance, and thought of you.”
She touched it, pulled a sleeve loose from the box and held it lightly in her hand, white fingers on blue-black.
“It’s monkey skins.” He took a drink, watched her as she just stared at the coat. “It’s vintage.”
He couldn’t see her eyes. Her head was tilted forward and her hair, a dark brown, hung in front of her face.
“You really shouldn’t have.”
“Try it on. See if it fits.”
“You really shouldn't have,” she said, quietly.
“Please,” he said. “Just try it on.”
Liz walked across the kitchen and touched the switch, making the lights brighter. She got the vodka, poured the glass half full, it coming out like heavy syrup, turning the outside of the glass white with frost. She took a drink, and her eyes shone.
“You don’t want to do this, do you?”
“I just want to see if it fits, if it’s you. Just try it on.”
“And it’s monkey skins?”
He nodded.
Liz pulled the sweater over her head, got it tangled in her hair, threw it over his head into the eating area. She had on a cream bra, and took it off too, then undid the skirt and let it fall to the floor, kicked off her underwear. Her feet were bare.
The coat looked even blacker in the bright light and against her white skin. It came to halfway to her knees. Her thighs were white, with a thin blue vein running under the skin inside her left leg.
“All right?” She brushed her hair back and looked at him, held her arms out from her side, the coat, unbuttoned, stretching open. “All right?”
She turned slowly, all the way around. Her arms were still out, brushed against the wall. He saw the monkey skins, hundreds it must have taken, draped over her, white and black, soft and shiny.
“All right?”
She dropped the coat from her shoulders, let it slide to the floor behind her, and stared at him.
“I’ll be back for my things,” she said, and turned and walked into the bedroom to dress. He folded the coat carefully before he put it back in the box.

The mayor of Fun Royale

Colin saw the boy’s fingers slip, and thought I knew this would happen. It was a small Nissan van, five flimsy rows of seats. The boy looked about 12, deep black skin and one eye that stared off to the side. He hung out the open sliding door of the van, hammering on the roof to tell the driver to stop to let someone off, arguing and pushing to find a way to get two dozen passengers into the tiny space, collecting the fares.
Colin’s knee hurt, and one foot had fallen asleep, his ankle pressed against the boney shin of the man with the shovel. He had watched the boy’s hands, one reaching in pressed flat against the van’s ceiling, the other with a thick pile of bills wrapped through his fingers. Colin’s shoulders were pulled tight, giving room to an older Dominican woman, being the polite Canadian. Then he saw the boy’s right hand slide a little against the light brown ceiling, and he was gone, waving once with the hand with the bills. Colin and Marie were facing each other, and Colin saw the boy out the back, bouncing sideways on the road, ungraceful cartwheels, a sandal flying high in the air.
The passengers shouted, the driver stopped and backed up, the gears whining, and they all jumped out.
Three men on a moped had stopped, and helped the boy to sit up. He was bleeding, from his forehead and his knees and the back of his left hand, and he held his back. His eyes were cloudy, rolled high in his head, and he shivered. He still held the bills, but they were covered in blood, several torn. Colin watched, as Marie turned and stared across the alaming green sugar cane fields to the sea, blue and grey and stretching on and on. The sun was already low in the sky behind them, and the fields were mixed dark shadows and lurid highlights. Her hair was reddish in the sun, and her face, burned, was darker. He looked up from the boy, and saw her, and for a second didn’t know who she was.
A taxi driver stopped to join the crowd. They paid him 150 pesos for a ride back to the resort.
They ate too much in Lin Tran’s, the Chinese restaurant that was part of the resort, with two couples from Calgary and a large bullet-headed young British man and the sunburned, toothy woman who had married him on the beach the day before, all of them drinking rum punch with the egg foo young and curried pork fried rice and sweet and sour something.
“How the hell could he fall?” Jeff was a stockbroker in Calgary, polite and curious and neat. “He must have done the drive a thousand times.”
Marie had told them the story, describing the over-crowded bus, the bruises on the boy’s forehead and the blood. “You didn’t get any blood on you, did you?” That from Cal, who struggled to focus on them. “I mean, you know, AIDS and all.”
Marie took a large drink of the pinkish rum punch, clean after the food. She ignored Cal, considered Jeff’s question, smelling the greasy food and the light scent of some sort of mosquito repellent on the British woman. She pushed a piece of slippery pepper around the plate with chopsticks, put them down, and looked at her husband.
“Actually.” And she took another drink. “Actually I may have nudged him, a little.”
The British woman - Cecily, her name was - laughed, a sharp, high shriek, so Colin did too, then before anyone could speak he asked if anyone had signed up for scuba lessons and the talk moved away from the boy.
In bed, he felt the room move just a little from the rum, lay looking at the ceiling fan as Marie switched around the channels, watching a game show in Spanish.
“What makes you think you pushed the boy out of the van.”
“I didn’t say that.” She looked at Colin, but he was staring at the fan, steadying himself with the round blur of the blades. “I said I may have nudged him.”
Colin had brought a large glass of rum up from the bar, now reached for it and took a drink, felt the rough warmth on the back of his tongue.
“What makes you think that?”
“It doesn’t matter, does it? I don’t even know, really. It was something to say.”
“But why would you say that, if it wasn’t true?”
She got up from the bed and pulled the drapes open about a foot, looked out at the palm trees and the road and the lights of the hotel rooms in the next building. He could only see her back, and her head was resting on the window glass so he could hardly hear her.
“It doesn’t really matter, does it?”
The next day all eight of them met at the beach. Cal was bulky in a large orange T-shirt that said Galvin Klein, and bargained angrily with the skinny vendors selling carvings and suntan oil,. They all drank from the beach bar and ate hot dogs and watched a Dominican dog, thin brown hair with a sore on a back leg, limp slowly from group to group. Cal threw sand at the dog, who looked at him and then lay down about 15 feet away, in the shade of a small palm tree.
By 2 they were all a little drunk, except for the large British newlywed and Cal, who were a lot drunk and turning red as they lay on the beach chairs with their eyes closed, plastic glasses scattered around them like washed up jellyfish.
Colin lay on his stomach, and turned his head toward Marie. The sun actually touched his back. His eyes were almost closed; he could see her silhouette, against the sun, her neck stretched out as she lay on her back, one hand over her head.
“You didn’t push him,” he said.
Marie lay still, didn’t open her eyes. She may have been asleep.
“I stretched just a little,” Colin whispered to the sun, “tried to find space for my foot so my leg would stop hurting, and he stepped on my shoe and fell.”
He waited, but she didn’t speak.
“I’m going for a swim,” Colin said, and he got up so quickly that he wobbled a little from the heat, but was down six steps over the hot sand and into the water before anyone could come along. He liked the coolness, the way the waves pushed him around, and he swam steadily without looking back until he was past the sailboats moored offshore, out to where waves were breaking over the reef. He felt the water moving around him as if it were deep. Ahead the reef came near the surface, and waves broke crazily, sideways and backwards, water sucked in to fill the void over the coral. He swam there, slowly, buoyant in the salt water, waited for the water to flow over the reef and tried to swim across, made it halfway before the wave was past and he was rolling across the dark, dead coral, trying to use his hands to keep his body from touching it, bouncing off palms and shoulder and hip and knees as the wave rolled sideways over the coral, then pushed him back into deep water. His skin stung from the salt in the scrapes, and when he held his hand out of the water thin, watery lines of blood ran down his wrists.
He floated on his back in the water, and waitied for the next wave to break on the reef.