Of Shapes & Shadows June 2005   Click to view Table of Contents Click to view photo gallery Click to view cover story

Fiction

'Let's pretend we never met'

An excerpt from his first novel
By nathaniel g. moore

 

9:17pm. Wednesday.

Catullus is sulking as he counts the freckles on Mahelly’s shoulder. Her heels sprout from the kitchen tiles in the kitchen—Mahelly’s family kitchen.

Mahelly, who is mildly stoned and loose, taps her fingers along the seaweed rolls, and knuckles of garlic. Green onions and strings of carrots garish themselves along the cutting board._“Talk to me. You are so quiet.” It’s been silent since the confusion over the lettuce and chickpeas, and how he crushed the lettuce by accident, a grocery collision; one he wishes he could re-live, with a cleaner conscience, finer domestic precision.

‘I am afraid saying the wrong thing.’

‘Just relax. God.’

The evening is quiet on Birchmount Crescent, and Catullus, perhaps for only the second time is a guest in someone else’s place, beyond Nelson. And he does this job with absolute confidence. But Mahelly’s energy, he thinks, it’s a bit frivolous. Even the way she smells, how her body leaves odours on the inanimate. She wears little, pockets of her girlish stink ghost the kitchen area, the hallway, he growls when he comes across a clump of this stink.

Mahelly’s shoes are cheap extravagant jelly plastic with a four-inch heel; the kind she tells him the strippers buy. She pollinates the inside of his mouth with the cool scent of ginger.

“In Waterloo,” she says, “there is only one good strip club, and it’s too dark,” she pauses, lifting her heel from the shoe, pointing her toes downwards. “These shoes would never really get the attention they deserve.”

Mahelly twirls in front of the stewing pot of chili, swishing her tail in the process. Catullus stares down at the gory navy blue tiles, so foreign to his usual peripheral. They are as clean as teeth in between. She winks back at him caustically, twitching her behind to the fuck hum of the refrigerator…

“I feel inspired.” She snakes her hair with fingers playfully bouncing to the music; stirring up the two thousand years of unopened semen, dormant and sweet, pulsing and pumping in tune to his blood, accumulating in speed with each of her pivots, his inches moan. She chops onions and taps the kitchen floor in the pink high heels. Her tiny body is plump in patches and covered tightly in a one-piece striped white and blue cotton gymnastics outfit.

‘Your bum is a sweet muffin.’

It’s the softest cotton. Her hair is unwashed, coiled in honey colour. She tilts her hips. Her boom box churns out a synthetic kaleidoscope of swirling notes, she is tilting her neck, the backs of her knees are creasing, and as Catullus watches her legs, he becomes more aroused. He watches the apron hanging on the oven door handle through the gap in between her legs. The jelly material of the heels, pink and glittery, holding it all together, her legs, shaped like twisted grass blades, short, smooth, wimpy, he salivates.

‘You look like you are from a cartoon Mahelly.’ Catullus feels blood sweating and charging through his face; the dimples in her ass, the skin niggling out of the gymnastic suit elastic grip. She forms an eye that blinks, then into a set of lips, which blow him a kiss. She sucks on a strawberry from a small basket, her plump lips, eyes roll back horror style, virtually gumball white.

He watches the still drawers and cupboards contrast her pink legs in a tangible outline. She scrapes the onions into a pot.

‘You said you liked chilli right?’

Catullus nods to her bounces. “Yes please.”

“You want it hot you said?”

“Yes please.”

She shifts swings her bum, the cotton wedge. Lifts the lid for a spectre of hot smoke to splice into the fragrant room.

‘I can’t believe we had a fight over groceries. What did you call the vegetables again?

Alienating? Because I keep them in the white plastic bags? We can eat at your place. You can make me food. I won’t complain.’ Catullus sweats, his tongue knotted in cactus fantasy. ‘Thanks for shovelling the walk. My mom thinks you’re nice.’

“Where is she?”

“She’s out for the night, visiting my grandmother in Toronto,” Mahelly grins, eyes suctioned to the ceiling, to Catullus, to her legs. ‘I love this outfit. So, you said you wanted to film me at your place? We can do that later. I’m up for it.’ Mahelly bends over for vegetable bits carrot tops, random heads, discarded outtakes, gobbled up in her paws and thrown into the garbage under the sink.

“Sometimes I feel like your babysitter.”

Cans of beans rest by her stomach, she washes mushrooms. Cuts a red pepper.

‘Do you like this music?’ She asks.

Catullus nods. ‘Sure I do.’ He scans the muffin shapes in her hips and waist, the system pulses. A bottle of white wine is gagged with a cork.

‘Are you thinking about my body?’

‘I have told you. I am licensed.’ He pauses, looking at her squinting bum. He is surrounded in a cheap blinding musk of onions and red peppers. She presses her tummy against the counter edge; she throws her head back, shakes.

“What do you think of it?” This, Catullus thinks, is Mahelly’s favourite question.

“What do I think of it? A lot of things.” He licks his lips, her corduroy pants in the chair, tiny cracks filled in with semen, his dried donation walks towards her, grabbing her at the hips. ‘Oh yes?’ she says, polite, unassuming. He kneels behind her, spreads her legs slightly. It’s awkward in the heels, and he can feel her adaptation to footing. He inhales.

‘What does it smell like?’

‘So good.’

‘I’m putting pants on, my bum’s getting cold.’

 

 

* * *

 

6:47pm. Thursday.

The video camera sits by the entrance of the living room; Nelson has collapsed on the couch and stares blankly at the news on television, which is barely audible.

“I could not give up even if I tried; I have a horrible day Nelson. I spilled cola on my new underwear.”

“How did you do that?” Nelson asks.

‘The cap was not closed properly.’ Catullus says, demonstrating the motion of a cap being tightening in mime fashion.

‘No, how did you get new underwear? Where do you keep getting money from?’

A knock on the door splits Catullus from self-pity. He reacts quickly, darting from the living room couch session, swishing past hung scarves and coats.

‘Just a minute Nelson.’ Catullus says, picking up the video camera on his way out of the living room.

‘You expecting someone?’ Nelson inhales on the couch.

Now well into the winter night, a shade of black pastel has spread itself in rare sleeveless jets: the house on Amos Avenue has certain electricity that runs its hand through the carpet of the stairwell upon entry. Mahelly invents a new yawn, her fingers spreading her mouth open, as she is waved from the side door up the driveway from her car, she blows a kiss to Catullus with eyes and lips all puckered in unison.

Catullus watches the door open, this is Waterloo; nothing here is ever locked. Mahelly walks in; he shuts the door behind her and begins to unfasten her boots and laces, takes her hat and scarf, and helps her out of her thick grey coat. He pries the lens cap off and feeling the same inclination towards his bathrobe, thumbing the knot. They play on the stairs and in the hallway ignoring Nelson.

Mahelly crawls upstairs, the baby blue and white lines lie tightly on its snake belly. Faded jeans spread thin and hum beneath her waist. She is flat, pressed into the shape of the stairs, prowling her lips around the invisible projection of the video camera lens. Catullus lures her, slowly. On her knees, neck low, chin into fibre; her palms push against the carpet, turning it lighter for a second. The broadloom returns to form, a coral reef of static.

Nelson takes his plate and puts it in the sink. He slips on his boots and hats, opens the door and walks across the street to Clo’s place. He looks up to the side of the house and sees the light in the bathroom turn on. He only stops to watch for a moment; sinks his foot into fresh snow, and begins the thirty-seven step journey.

The camera is rolling. There is no pause or knock. She will have lines ready in her mouth to spit out into his hand, for the camera too… He feels it, her breath on the doorknob. Something, something is on, not a light just the nightmarish sliding of the door, he waits…Eyelashes treading in a still bath of mascara. Catullus puts index cards on the sink counter. He sets the camera up facing most of the full bathtub and a small amount of foam at the sides.

Mahelly gets up from her belly, lights a cigarette. A ghoulish chill squirts from her lips.
Her blue top shoots across the white tiles on the wall. She lets her lime bra straps fall one at a time. Eventually both will entertain Catullus snickers in anticipation and her cackling eyelashes, small round teardrop tits point out nipple-antennas wrapped in steam tongues.

A package lies on the bathroom counter.

A ghoulish chill squirts from her lips. She kisses her hand, as spit hangs at the side of her mouth and drips onto her other hand. She undoes her belt buckle. She stands up, letting her pants fall like a gown dropping around her little legs. She is here, now leaning on the counter, walking out of her pants, no underwear today, she says, gurgling. “This is sort of fun I guess, though I don’t want to watch it, let’s just do this, like this okay, I don’t want to watch it though,” she repeats, Catullus nods, shutting the bathroom door.