Westlake Soul Read online

  This is the end of the road, Westlake Soul!

  Three seconds to impact. The supervillain boomed laughter.

  The music—our song—embraced me, as it always had. I recalled how my sun had formed, and burned still.

  Two seconds . . .

  The sun, I thought. Up.

  Through the black rags thrown over the city, I saw a crescent of red light.

  One second to impact.

  Up, I thought again, and punched a button on the console labelled, PSYCHEJECTOR. The Soulmobile’s roof snapped open and my seat thrust upward. I soared into the night, surrounded by music. Below me, Dr. Quietus’s missiles hit the Soulmobile and it exploded in a ball of white flame—KA-BLAAM!—spraying stellate cells and afferent neurons.

  Lightning jagged and the music started to fade.

  NADIA! I screamed with everything I had, my lungs full of glass.

  Dr. Quietus’s black machine rumbled into the distance. I heard him cry out in rage—vowing to return—as I arced over the Pleasure Principle. I searched the sky, looking for that glimpse of the sun, but saw only cloud.

  NADIA!

  No sign of her. No way out of this dark city. I turned my face to the sky. Rain fell into my eyes as the music faded.

  In my hospital room, Nadia clicked the stop button on her iPod and took the headphones from my ears. She sat a moment longer, looking at me, dreams slipping from her heart like snow off a roof. Still no tears. Only those big eyes and sharp lines. More the girl at the piano than the cool chick beatmatching tracks.

  “I don’t know what—” she started, but stopped. Pressed a knuckle to her lips. She never finished that sentence. If only she knew how desperately I was trying to reach her.

  Those two words again: if only.

  She put her iPod and headphones back into her beach bag and stood up. The soles of her sneakers squeaked on the floor as she walked toward the door. One final look over her shoulder, the last wedge of snow sliding from her roof. I lay among my tubes and lines like a torn parachute. My cardiac monitor chirped. The door closed softly behind her.

  So Nadia returned to her home in Rosedale with a trail of broken pieces, and I remained in my empty city—until I discovered a thread of light between two buildings, once robust, that had crumbled and collapsed against one another. I powered through the narrow gap. Opened my eyes.

  I was transferred, almost immediately, to Toronto Western Hospital, which meant that I got more visitors. Niki came two or three times a week. She showed me pictures of Hub and her various new boyfriends, and bitched to me about the shittiness of life, and how Mom and Dad had her doing twice as many chores for the same allowance. Her visits were always such a highlight. Nonetheless, I longed to reach out, pull her into my arms, and kiss her bratty little face. Darryl would drop by. Usually once a week. He never had much to say, though. Inane comments that I might once have found interesting: Got some dope new ink, bitch. Right shoulder. Tribal fire with boards bustin’ out of it. Fuckin’ dope, bitch. Mostly he would just stare at me, as if I were a new breed of creature. Something no man had ever seen before. On one occasion, he showed me some porn on his iPhone. On another—clearly bored—he ate a flower.

  Nadia came, too.

  One last time.

  I would have preferred that she didn’t come at all, with her new short haircut and the cold rock that used to be her sun. The last time she saw me—that glance over the shoulder in my Vancouver hospital room—I was (sort of) sleeping. Granted, my face was bruised and scraped, and I was plugged in to various life-monitoring/sustaining apparatus, but I was still sleeping, thus relatively normal. Awake, though, with my head cricked sideways and frothy sputum on my chin, I was shocking. Not only that, but a nurse had cut my lovely blond hair to keep it from falling into my eyes. A brutal cut, too—sheared me to the scalp in places. Frickin’ Vidal Sassoon, she was not.

  It was the worst possible time for Nadia to visit. I was ashamed. Horrified.

  Don’t look at me, I implored her.

  “Westlake,” she said. Two steps toward my bed, then she stopped, covered her eyes with one hand. Her lower lip pooched out. She broke, tears sparkling through the cracks of her fingers, shoulders trembling. Her hand had slipped from that saddle horn of strength. I ached to fly away. I ached to hold her.

  The vein in my temple throbbed. All the emotion I could offer.

  I don’t want you to see me like this, I said. Go away, baby. Please, just go—

  My sun flared painfully.

  “Sorry,” Nadia said, wiping her eyes, stroking mascara across her cheekbones. She was sorry for crying. For not being strong. I wanted her to be sorry for coming. She looked at the plain white ceiling, as if she’d find composure there. Impulsively, I leapt into her mind. It sounded like a subway train—like the wave that had killed me. Her thoughts were not images. More like shaped feelings. I deciphered them and saw our former togetherness . . . pink sunshine . . . how I looked in her eyes: a pale, partial thing.

  Just leave. Please. I threw these thoughts at her. Vehemently. They thudded off her wall like stones. I don’t WANT you here. I can’t take it.

  She took a seat, not beside my bed, but in the corner, where I couldn’t see her. This wasn’t ideal, but it was better. I could still hear her, of course. Shaky breaths, uncomfortable movements. Long minutes passed. I prayed—of all my superhero powers—to be invisible, and wondered if I could mentally refract enough light to at least fade into the white hospital sheets. I tried, of course, but nothing happened. I was too emotional to concentrate and had to settle for the room dimming when a cloud moved over the sun.

  Literally. Figuratively.

  “I can’t do this,” Nadia said. I couldn’t see her, but knew she was crying again. “It’s just too much. I can’t bear to see you like this, and I’m not strong enough to handle it.”

  You are, I said bitterly. You just don’t want to.

  “Can you even hear me, Westlake?”

  Of course I can hear you.

  “Do you even understand?”

  More than you realize.

  And I did, but not because of my super intelligence. I didn’t need to pluck thoughts from her mind to know that the love was gone. She emitted no heat, no energy. This hurt so deeply that I felt it in my spine. A bleak fluid. Coupled with the shame, I could have died—thrown myself at Dr. Quietus’s feet. And yet my sun still flared, trying to provide light for us both.

  Could I blame her, though? I have pondered this so often since, and asked myself what I would do in her situation. Nadia was young and beautiful. She had everything to look forward to, and I could offer nothing. Furthermore, I didn’t know what I wanted (other than my body, of course—my life). I loved her too much to lose her . . . too much for her to stay.

  If only she had been stronger. It would have made it easier for us both. If only she had held my hand, and told me that we would still have our garden made of sand. I needed her faith, but it was as cold as the rock that had once been her sun. She didn’t want to be my Soul anymore. My pale, partial image had eclipsed everything. I was already dead to her.

  Just get out of here. I wished she could see how angry I was. How desperately hurt. Please, Nadia . . . you’re not helping.

  “I didn’t know if I should come,” she said, her voice a little firmer. “But I need to end this. I need to move on.”

  I groaned involuntarily and my head rolled to the other side so that—dammit—I could see her again. Sitting on the edge of the chair. Knees together. Purse in her lap because she didn’t plan on staying long. Her short, painfully cute haircut much cooler than mine.

  Still breathtaking. That was the adjective I had used when she played Beethoven’s Sonata pathétique, referring not to her playing (which was dope), but to her. And despite her lack of faith, and her wanting to end this, it still applied.

  My eyes tracked toward the sunlight like two lazy flowers and a long thread of spit hung from my lower lip. Inside, I was coming
apart. Thrashing and weeping. I wanted to release—fly to the ocean and let every wave crash against my bruised soul. But I stayed with Nadia, because some things have to be endured. As much as it hurt, I needed to end this, too.

  This is who I am, I thought, remembering the pristine girl at the piano. Take it or leave it.

  She stood up, wiped her eyes again, then glided toward my bed. I could smell her body. The familiarity was overwhelming. Her hand inched forward, tentative, then curled around my forearm. I expected the cardiac monitor to explode, but it didn’t sound any different.

  “I would have married you,” she said. “A thousand times over. I wanted to. You know that, right?”

  I know that, I said.

  “And I don’t regret one single moment I spent with you.”

  The hurt . . . I just wanted it to end. And still I threw my heat at her—even tried to twitch the muscle in my forearm, desperately wanting her to feel something.

  “If I could change just one thing,” she said, more tears spilling onto her cheekbones. “I would go back to that pink morning in Tofino. I would pin you to the bed and stop you from leaving. And you’d be . . .” She let go of my forearm, used both hands to wipe her face. Her body jerked as she broke again. “You’d . . .”

  She couldn’t finish.

  I know. I wanted to hold her. One last time. To feel her body in my arms. To give her my strength. I know, baby.

  “It wasn’t supposed to be like this,” she spat, and for just one second that cold rock inside her glowed. A momentary light. Then it was gone. She shook her head, perhaps at the unfathomable cruelty of the world, and stepped toward the door.

  I listened to the tears fall on my soul. A sound like the high notes on a piano. B-flat, C, B-flat again. The world laughs at you sometimes. Wocka Wocka.

  “Goodbye, Westlake.” She looked over her shoulder one final time, just as she had in Vancouver. “I’ll always remember you.”

  I couldn’t speak. Not even inside. I watched her leave forever and then took flight. A breathless, heartbroken rush of light. To the ocean, where we roared together. I let the waves rush through me, knowing they couldn’t hurt me any more than they already had. Then I soared toward the sun, breaking through the exosphere into outer space, until—ninety-three million miles from home—I arrived at my destination. I threw my arms open and let it burn me. Ten thousand Fahrenheit. The world’s light. The world’s love. But still it couldn’t make up for what I had lost.

  8. A Week in the Life.

  The tension remained thick and uncomfortable in the Soul homestead. Hub was right; some unrighteous shit was going down, and there were too many silences for me to get to the bottom of it. Dad and Mom would often be in the same room, looking at each other, but rarely communicating. The occasional stiff smile, perhaps. Maybe a hug. One time Mom started crying on Dad’s shoulder and he stroked her hair—as loving as I had seen him in quite some time—whispering, “It’s okay, sweetheart . . . everything will be okay,” over and over, until his throat was choked with emotion and he couldn’t get the words out anymore. I held them both, wishing they could feel me.

  Niki isn’t the most astute seventeen-year-old in the world. I’ve often thought that, if she were a bird, she’d be the kind that would fly into a window. Pretty feathers, but a little bit dim. Even so, she picked up on the vibe, as well. One evening, at the dinner table, and during a particularly leaden silence, she slammed her knife and fork down so hard that her plate almost tipped over.

  “Like,” she started, “what the fuck is going on?” Then she clapped a hand over her mouth and her eyes switched between Mom and Dad with a clicking sound, reminding me of those executive ball clickers you find in . . . well, executive ball clickers’ offices.

  I hovered over the mashed potatoes, eager to hear my parents’ reply. Equally eager to see them haul Niki over the coals for dropping the F-bomb at the dinner table. Given the mood in the house, I thought it possible they’d be burying her in the garden at sundown.

  Mom and Dad exchanged a look. I saw Dad’s jaw flex as he gritted his teeth. Mom gave him a near-imperceptible shake of the head, then went back to her Polish sausage.

  “Eat your dinner, Phereniki,” Dad said. The use of her full name indicated his displeasure, but it was still a monumentally disappointing reaction. I thought food was going to fly. Maybe knives, too. Niki lowered her hand and went back to her meal, incredulous that she had gotten off so lightly. Her eyes continued to click from right to left, though, still wary of being sucker-slapped by a half-pound of grilled kielbasa.

  But more disappointing than not seeing a reenactment of Passchendaele over the dinner table was the fact that my parents didn’t answer Niki’s question. Did this mean that it was too serious to discuss with her, or not serious enough? I waited through another uncomfortable silence, hoping someone would speak. But no one did. Only the clash of cutlery on dinner plates. Eventually, I gave up and reentered my body—went inside and surfed the universal wave function. When I emerged, the house was dark and sleeping.

  So I consoled myself with the knowledge that, if I needed to know, I would know. Wasn’t much consolation, to be fair, but short of violating my parents’ minds—their secrets—it was all I could do.

  It’ll pass, I had said to Hub. Trust me.

  I believed this, but it was taking longer than usual. Even when Dad had fried the old home computer with viruses from porn sites, and Mom had thrown her favourite Laughing Buddha ornament at him, it hadn’t taken this long for the icicles to thaw. Thank God I could release, and did so often—preferring ghost-like wanderings to the bum vibe at home.

  Whatever was wrong, I didn’t think it spelled the end for our tight family unit. Mom and Dad had weathered worse (me, for instance), so I had little doubt the mood would improve. Maybe Mom had found an inappropriate text on Dad’s cell phone. Something to—or from—one of the secretaries in his office. Or maybe his performance at work had dipped and he’d been given his marching orders. I saw no point in trying to guess the problem. It could be one of many things, or an accumulation of petty annoyances. The deep ocean of married life. Sometimes smooth enough to skip stones on. Sometimes wild enough to ride. My concern was that it was because of me—that, when you stripped everything away, I would be bedded there like a leech. Hell, I know the situation; they love me, but I am hard work. Emotionally draining. That could be my epitaph: Here lies Westlake Soul. Son, brother, surfer. A badass dude, but EMOTIONALLY DRAINING. Had Dad sought comfort in the arms of a secretary, or failed to secure lucrative contracts, because his home life was a tower of stress? Had Mom been getting a little too familiar with the Crown Royal because wiping the sleepy sand from my eyes every morning was all too much?

  I went to where the world was light, and where there was hope. A field full of poppies in Belgium. A pearl-white waterfall in the heart of the Amazon rainforest. Rescue centres and moments of triumph. Maternity wards and kindergartens, where children—babies, really—held hands and absorbed the planet through wide, beautiful eyes. I rode elephants across the Serengeti, and swam with a pod of orcas in the deep of the Atlantic. I knew I was turning my back on the problems at home, but the escape was like a balm.

  Darryl came to see me, which was unexpected (he has only visited me at home a couple of times—he finds it difficult, seeing me the way I am), but welcome. His empty-headed manner helped soothe the tension, albeit temporarily. Mom and Dad—never big Darryl fans—threw their arms around him before he had even kicked off his sneakers.

  “Whoa,” he said, grinning sweetly. “Good to see you, too.”

  He dropped by so he could show off his new car. A 2011 Chevy Camaro, straight out of the showroom. Dad lifted me into my chair and we went out to see it as a family. Even Niki came out, somehow lured from watching The Situation flex his abs on Jersey Shore. It was, all told, a nice moment. Darryl’s new car was mean and green, easy on the eye, but I found the smiles and laughter—after such a long period of sullenn
ess—more appealing.

  After much complimentary cooing over such things as the Synergy Green paint job and the twenty-inch rims (Hub wanted to piss on those rims as a left-libertarianism revolt against the exploitative ideology of a capitalist society—I told him not to spoil the good vibe), Darryl offered everybody a ride. But he looked at me awkwardly, realizing that I would have to sit up front, flopping around and drooling all over the interior. Mom registered Darryl’s expression and came to his rescue.

  “You guys go,” she said, clasping the push handles of my chair. “I’ll take Wes back inside. Maybe he can . . .” She trailed off, as if she had forgotten what she was going to say. A glance at Dad. An uncertain smile.

  “Sure. Okay. Whatever,” Darryl said. Carefree words, but he spoke and moved too quickly for them to have substance. He was behind the wheel, gunning the engine, before Mom had even turned my chair around. Niki hopped in the back and Dad in the passenger seat. They ripped out of the driveway in a flash of green.

  Mom wheeled me back inside with Hub padding along behind, grumbling under his breath. She pushed me through to the living room, where I sat in a belt of sunlight while she read The Globe and Mail. I watched her for a moment. My beautiful mother, holding her figure at forty-eight, but with too many creases on her brow. Not enough laugh lines. I reached for her and, coincidentally, she looked up from her paper.

  What is it, Mom? I asked, still reaching. What’s been getting you down?

  No reply, but she kept looking at me, studying me, the way I used to study the ocean—gauging break and current—before going in. I would ask just one question, almost without fail (and the one morning I didn’t ask, it cost me everything): What do I need to do? Without reading her mind, or needing to, I could see that same question flickering in her eyes. As clear as moonlight on a lake.

  I know it’s breaking heavy, Mom, I said. But you just have to stay focused. You have to ride this wave out.