Fossil Lake II: The Refossiling Read online

  And then she opened her mouth and did her poem.

  That’s what we call it in slam. A slam isn’t a poetry reading, oh nothing so provincial as that, no, it’s a goddamn contact sport, so the poet doesn’t read or recite or even speak a poem; they do a poem. It’s meant to sound sexual and badass but mostly it’s just sad. I should know, I’ve done my share: went to Nationals with the city slam team, three seasons in a row, back when I thought this kind of public masturbation was cool and being broke delivering poems behind the mic seemed more pure than getting paid serving drinks behind the bar. Yeah, I was a poet. A spoken-word artist, if you want to be fancy, and most do. I’ve done poems. Never like her, though. Never the way Castaigne did that poem that night, drawing all the air out of the room with her words until every edge turned sharp and bright in every pair of eyes that locked on hers.

  Even now, I couldn’t tell you what her poem was about. I couldn’t tell you what she said, exactly. That hardly seemed to matter at the time. I mean, it hardly matters for most slam poetry, where it’s almost never what gets said but the manner in which it’s said that’s important. Still, you can usually tell what the subject is. Castaigne’s poem that night, though; it defied even as it thrilled. It refused classification and slipped away like the ghost of an intuition. The impression was that of glaciers calving in the arctic night, hive communications in honeyed tunnels, scraps of commercial jingles for products you don’t remember, hot gravel in the skin and blood on the tongue and it was about her eyes and her mouth, somehow.

  But that’s just the impression, and a vague one at that. I still can’t say what her poem was about, not really. Same goes for speaking about the shape of her mouth, or describing the feel of her tongue on mine and the chill of her lips between my legs. Same goes for the colour of the shadows she cast or her hair or her eyes, which might have been green.

  Of course, she went overtime. They all do, the new poets. Castaigne went over by twenty seconds, which makes for a small penalty. The five judges loved her though, awarded her an 8.9, a 9.3, a 9.5, another 9.5 and a 9.9, so the penalty barely hurt her score. The room roared its approval of the judges decision and clapped and snapped its post-ironic faux-Beatnik fingers as she descended from the stage and came over to me at the bar.

  I would like a beer, please, she said, as if she hadn’t just blown the room away.

  You were amazing, I replied. Just... I can’t even... tell me you’ve slammed before. You must have!

  Is that what the score cards are about? When I signed up for this earlier, I thought that Todd person was joking. I thought this was an open mic.

  God no. This is competition. Fierce and unforgiving. See, that Todd person? He’s gonna drop your lowest and highest scores and add the three in the middle. That’s a 28.3 right there, before the penalty. That’ll get you into the second round for sure, considering...

  Considering that her only real competition had consisted of the usual cast of slam night regulars: Donny “Dirty” MacIntyre bemoaning the seventh anniversary of his last blowjob (25.2); a kid named Fowler with a Dada-inspired scat session (23.9); a street rapper, spitting his poem straight into a zone of high-speed incomprehensibility (26.1), and a riot grrl with yet another poem reminding every male in the bar that rape? Yeah, rape is bad: 27. Same old slamming shit.

  Anyway, all that considered, I really thought it likely that Castaigne would go into the second round. I was right, too. It was intermission, and Slam Master Todd announced the eight poets for the second round: she was at the top. Scored higher than anyone, even with her time penalty.

  Good Christ, I breathed. I’ll say it again, that’s amazing! No one ever does that well first time outta the gate! This? I pulled a pint of India Pale ale and handed it to her. This is on the house.

  She reached for the sweating glass and her fingers touched mine and I know I caught my breath again. It was audible. I’d only dated a couple of girls since breaking up with my boyfriend the year before and I was having a little trouble finding my groove, I’ll admit it, pun intended and everything. I knew I was looking for a kind of emptiness I could let myself get lost in, but go a little way into most girls and that vacancy in the eyes turns out to be a pretty lie and instead they’re full to bursting with neuroses and prejudice and politics and whole histories of hurt. Souls like a well clogged with dull stones and dry sand. No refreshment there.

  Castaigne’s cool fingers against mine as she received the glass, the mere brushing of skin on skin and I was back at that cliff edge in the dark, a moist wind curling up from below. She looked at me, half-aware, perhaps, of what I was feeling: shock, vertigo, embarrassment. The beginnings of lust. I coughed and started wiping at the bar with a rag while she sipped at her beer.

  I don’t have a second poem, she said, her eyes wide. What do I do?

  What, really? I said, simultaneously grateful to move further into the conversation and regretful of moving away from that delirious precipice. No second piece? I pointed at her yellow notebook. Nothing more in there?

  No. Nothing usable, at least, not yet. Like I said, I thought it was an open mic.

  Then you, my dear, will simply have to forfeit, said Todd as he came up behind her. Not all Slam Masters are preening, self-promoting, sexist creeps with the grabby hands, but the ones that are would likely select Todd as their one true King. Which is a fucking shame, he continued. Because that was a spell you weaved up there, sweetness. That was, like, rare witchcraft, what you did...

  The way Castaigne’s slight frame went rigid, the pressure wave of cold air that came off her shoulders... well, the effect was impressive. The thing about Todd is that the creepiness gets slipped in beneath obvious physical and sure, I’ll even allow him some intellectual charms. Most girls miss it the first few times around. Not Castaigne.

  It wasn’t about the words, she said, and she wasn’t looking at Todd when she spoke. And I guess I’ll just have to live with the shame. She was looking at me. Thanks for the drink. Will I see you later?

  I stammered some kind of reply, a string of affirmative noises, appended with the hour I was off work. She smiled, a little, turned from the bar and walked off to find a seat to watch the second round. Slam Master Todd fumed for a moment, thrown off his balance by the early frost. He cast me an evil look, easily deflected with a shrug and a grin.

  Try not to corrupt her too quick, alright? he snapped. Did you see that score? We need her back. We need her on the team.

  You’re one to talk. And yeah, I saw.

  I’m trying to build a decent team for Nationals, you know. You used to care about that.

  Uh huh. You’re also trying to get into as many pants as you can, Todd. Now, there’s people who care about drinking behind you. Walk on, little man.

  He did, grumbling about what a bitch I was. I knew he’d like to move the slam to another venue, but what other place would have him and his crew, or an audience like this? Cheap hipsters all, half of them drinking coffee at a bar; I really had to hustle to sell anything worth selling. The Moon Under Water, with its shit sound system and its largely unseen, apathetic owner, was as good as they’d ever get, and they knew it.

  Second round at a slam is tight, fast paced. The poets save their best for last and become Howitzers behind the mic, words flying like shrapnel. Second round is almost always the angry stuff, the political stuff. I’d steal glances across the room as I worked, trying to gauge Castaigne’s reaction. The room would erupt around her after each overdone rant, but she was calm like lake water at dawn, still like the ruin of a building. When Todd got to Castaigne’s name on his list, he sighed like an old theatre queen and announced that the winner of the first round had no more poems for the night and was forfeiting her spot. A groan went up and heads turned to Castaigne in disbelief but she only smiled.

  Next time, Castaigne? Todd pleaded. Next time you’ll take this thing, baby girl! Don’t leave us hanging, am I right folks? C’mon!

  The ghost of a nod from her and
the applause boomed again.

  The round finished with the last two poets; riot grrl with a devastating poem about her mother’s battle with cancer, followed by Dirty Donny, aware already that he was beaten, phoning it in with an onanistic ode to the crusty graveyard of sweatsocks under his bed. I caught Castaigne looking at me, one eyebrow raised, and, feeling weirdly bold, I mouthed cancer at her. She smiled. I hadn’t really been keeping track of the scores since she dropped out, so I didn’t actually know who the winner would be, but hey, cancer poems beat jerk-off poems every time. Todd briefly checked in with the scorekeeper and announced the winner.

  Yeah, cancer beats everything. Cancer got riot grrl a spot in the finals. Thanks, sick Mom. Thanks for hanging out at Death’s door long enough for me to get a fucking poem out of it.

  Coulda been yours tonight, I said to Castaigne as the bar emptied out. We close early on slam night; the poets frighten our regulars away and then they don’t stick around to pay for booze.

  I dunno, she breathed. Seems a little arbitrary?

  Yeah. The judges are random. Different people each time, and they can’t know any of the poets. Sometimes Todd just pulls judges in off the street. Scoring’s entirely subjective. Assigning numerical value to artistic output? Jesus. It’s meaningless. A game.

  She smirked at me. But I could have taken it tonight, huh? Like Todd said?

  Yeah, well, for once I agree with him. Your piece was just... it was pure. Behind her I could see Todd working his way through the thinning poets toward the bar. But we’ve spoken of the Devil, so I’ll let you deal while I finish up, and then, I dunno...

  She reached a pale arm across the bar and caught at my wrist with those cool fingers that sent a shock up to my shoulder. My vision spun. My lungs emptied.

  There’s beauty in the death of meaning, Castaigne whispered. When it bleeds out, finally? That’s purity... Todd was bellowing stupidly behind her, his mouth working like a fish, but his voice was distant and faded to me, as Castaigne’s words vibrated and howled in my ears. I yanked my arm from her grip and she instantly turned away, plastering a smile on her face for the oblivious Todd.

  The next hours were lived in fog. I closed up The Moon Under Water, my movements automatic, and when I was done, there was Castaigne, waiting for me in the street. She smiled at me and I found my voice. The sound of it startled me, as if I’d never spoken before.

  I didn’t catch your first name over the feedback, I said as she took my arm.

  Technically, you didn’t catch my last one either. Names are false. All language is false, but names especially so. Shall we walk? I’m new to town. I suppose that’s obvious, though. New to this great, old, terrible city of numberless crimes...

  She laughed and I laughed with her. It sounded strange, like I’d laughed yesterday or last week or only once, just the one time, back at the beginning of things when everything shone and I was new, and the sound was only catching up to me now in this exhausted street of dull brick and smashed glass under sickly orange clouds lit from below.

  Where’d you hear that? You’re giving this place too much credit. Naw, nothing ever happens in this city.

  She sighed. There’s that, too. I know another city like that. It’s perfect.

  If you say so. Where are we going?

  She told me she lived at the docks, on a converted trawler that used to belong to her father. Or at least, that was the impression I got, of fathers who were not to be named and absentee mothers. Ships on dark water, making dark crossings of weary seas between tired, ancient ports. And with those impressions came a vague sensation of Castaigne wrapping her arms around my waist and drifting with me, attached to me, lamprey-like. Her head on my shoulder, hair scented with wood smoke and brine.

  She told me so many things, as we moved through nighted streets like dreaming rivers, our faces flashing halogen-bright with oncoming traffic. Things I can’t remember now or more likely never understood at the moment of telling. I do recall that a police siren punctured her low murmuring at one point, and that the thickness around my head lifted, in time for me to hear her ask whether any poet had ever received a perfect score from the judges. Had she been asking questions all along? Had I been answering?

  Like a perfect ten, you mean? I clarified, and the asking sharpened my mind. I shook my head violently and pressed a palm to my temple. All five judges unanimous?

  Yes. Unanimous in their arbitrary, random, entirely subjective, essentially meaningless decision.

  I’d only seen it happen once, and it was a joke, really, at an off-season novelty slam. Dirty had done an impromptu and completely predictable haiku about his dick. Over in twenty seconds, well under time. Gales of stupid laughter. Tens all around.

  No, I’ve never seen it, I told her. Not for a real poem. A true poem.

  You believe in such a thing?

  A true poem? Yeah, I guess I do. Something that speaks truth to power, makes you bleed, breaks your heart. Yes.

  I meant Truth. That phantom...

  Before I could answer, she resumed her murmuring, there at my shoulder, the sound of oily water sliding up over pebbled shores and drawing back in a steady lunar rhythm. The moment of clarity passed and I fell back into fog.

  I returned to myself somewhat when I no longer felt concrete below my feet, but slick wooden planks. The tang of creosote and diesel fuel and low tide filled my lungs. Castaigne had brought me to the docks, and not one of the fashionable marinas either, but a crumbling collection of jetties between the decommissioned naval yard and an oil refinery. Her home was a black hulk among hulks at the end of the least decayed slip, and the only one that still floated. I felt a terrible anxiety well within me, tremors of fear skipping up and down my vertebrae, worsening when I saw the name of the trawler in faded gold paint on the stern: The Heart of the Hyades.

  That’s an awful name for a boat, I whispered, though exactly why I felt this way was lost on me. I sensed some crime associated with it, something deep and unthinkable. I don’t know why but why? God. Why that name? It’s horrible, oh, I can’t even... but her voice was suddenly at my ear again, sibilant and laced with spiced honeys, and her hands were guiding my own to the ladder bolted to the hull and then I was aboard The Heart of the Hyades and then shaking with reasonless terror inside the wheelhouse and then breathing hard below deck with her sure hands beneath my clothes, lifting, pulling, tearing and then naked and numb in Castaigne’s bed.

  The numbness became a dream of viscous ruby seas, of floating, and I was but one floating thing among many, so many, floating soft and aimless with the wrack and detritus of a thousand ruined worlds fallen to the waves that rolled unheeded beneath blackened stars. And Castaigne, borne to me out of the dark on whispers and keenings and murmured anti-promises; Castaigne a pale, muscular serpent rising from lightless depths to pierce my dreaming with hollow staccato pleasures; Castaigne the walls of a cavern above and below me and on all sides and pressing in in in on me with nothing, nothing but weeping rock extending beyond the walls of her forever and ever...

  I cried out.

  I cried out in the dark of that hull many, many times.

  Finally, I stopped. Whatever receptacle in me that held those cries had emptied. My heart slowed. My vision cleared and adjusted to the dark. Castaigne’s pallid features and indifferent eyes drifted before mine and I felt her cool palm on my cheek.

  That’s not your name, I sighed.

  I read it. I read it in a book about a play about a place. It’s not true. It’s as good as any. And it doesn’t matter.

  She lit a few candles, then, and showed me her books, arrayed on secured shelves either side of the bed.

  Here’s Borges, the complete works. I love him. Clever little essays, so dry. He gives me chills. Here’s Spicer, she said. As he lay dying in hospital with a ruined liver, he said “my vocabulary did this to me”. Poets, right? She giggled.

  I’m a poet, I whispered.

  Ah, you were a poet. But you went too fa
r in, like all the good ones do. Too far in to meaning and then out the other side. Look at Spicer. Blaming the words, when it’s the reality behind them, the thing that languages are built to conceal, that, that is the problem. No matter. It’s easily fixed, with what I’ve learned. Things my father taught me, from the book. She selected two volumes from the shelf. And here it is. The book about the play. And this is the play...

  She read it to me. When she was done reading, and I was done weeping and being sick over the side of her bed, she handed me her notebook bound in yellow leather.

  Here’s all my poems so far, she said. There’s space for one more, I think.

  Something embossed on the cover, only noticed through touch, a symbol I refused to discern clearly. Feeling it writhe beneath my fingers was enough to know I did not want to see it. Pages with single words, the letters scribed in insect-thin lines stretching the height of the page but crushing the eyes nonetheless with intolerable weight. Pages with short phrases that opened into the void. Pages blackened to the edges with howls. A single page in the centre of it, blank. I nodded, the numbness returning. Castaigne lifted her book from my dead hands and pressed it to her breasts.

  So, when’s the next slam? she said.

  What is a week? Arbitrary collection of hours to be sold or ransomed, random meals and collisions, arguments and sleep and stupid joys that fade into aches of misplaced longing. I know that being with Castaigne caused me to lose time; of my escape from her I could recall nothing save bright panic and hot bursts of pain deep in my bones each time I fell while running. The time that had passed since my flight barely registered on my consciousness. What is a week? A planet spinning for a while in the dark.