Chapter 9 of the Trickster

Molly

What compels a person to fall apart after a broken heart? I can’t speak for others but in my case I was caught by surprise. I had always imagined myself strong and capable and independent, not a weak-willed foil crumbling under the weight of Eros’ rejection. But then I met Molly and I learned the heavy truth about just how crushing heartbreaks can be.

She has always been my heroin: celestial wine that carries me on mystical wings to a place where heart and mind rejoice. Brought to my knees by a love that never failed to hit the vein, her narcotic allure and morphine smile was my undoing. But like all junkies I had to learn a hard way. Chasing a dragon like Molly isn’t easy. Before I could win her heart, first she had to pummel mine.

I thought we were in love, but without warning she disappeared from my life, cold turkey, for five years.

My beautiful Molly miracle: a divine gift of charisma and grace, everything about my life changed after she stepped into it. Sideways, upside down, Molly set me spinning.

So many memories embedded inside of memories: vignettes of the halcyon times we’ve shared together. I shake my head in disbelief, dizzy, not quite sure how I managed to both survive her and win her heart.

Before Molly, love failed to resonate with me. But once I discovered her, she plucked my strings and drew the music from the hidden Stradivarius inside me. Suddenly my ears were no longer deaf to love’s rhapsody. Convinced that I had finally met the diva who could make my soul sing, I lived in harmony. Dancing into my life I was blindsided by the song she set free in me. With a kiss, she threw the switch, rousing tender melodies from the very essence of my being…

Ithaca: with Molly my wandering had finally reached its end!

I’ve probably replayed this memory a thousand times in my head. Every detail remains perfectly vivid: the way the morning sun and the June breeze tiptoed through her bedroom window and stirred me awake. We’d been seeing each other about ten weeks and none of the restlessness that usually accompanied a new relationship plagued me. I touched Molly’s blond locks; her head was resting upon my shoulder. She was still sleeping and her breath was warm against my neck. It baffled me. There was so much I wanted to learn about her… from her … with her. The second guessing that once undermined my faith in intimacy was gone.

Through the window a beam of sunlight illuminated Molly’s face. Her perfect skin touched my nose with its peach blossom scent. I couldn’t believe my good fortune. At 37, for the first time in my life, I was really in love. I brushed a strand of hair off of her forehead. When her eyes opened, she smiled at me. Then she kissed me on the mouth and wrapping her arms around me I began to fall…

If I’d only known what was coming next. But back in those early days, I was drifting in the ether, flying high, too close to the sun. The wax holding my wings in place was destined to melt.

Love-blind I didn’t see the fraud lurking in the shadows. Determined to make mischief with my happiness a few weeks later, Molly suddenly vanished without explanation. Of all the unnumbered woes heaven and fate could have thrust upon me, why I wondered did the gods introduce me to Molly.

There were no warning signs. With a wink of her eye, she made like a magician and disappeared. She left no clue, provided no letter. It was like a progression of punches to the face that rattled me harder and harder with every passing day without news from her. I had no idea why she walked out on me. The day before she abandoned her apartment and disconnected her mobile phone we’d spent a lovely afternoon together. But the following evening when I walked over to her place I learned from her neighbour that she had sublet her apartment and moved to Spain. How could I have not known that? Who keeps that kind of thing a secret from the person they’re sleeping with? Distraught, I staggered back home, shattered by the news. I vomited twice and broke two fingers when I punched the front door of my walk-up…

Ripped from love’s embrace by a tempest torn, I hated her for leaving me. It was such a toxic way to end our intimacy; it poisoned me with cynicism and infected me with doubt. Rejected, I felt like damaged goods. All the mojo and joie du vivre I’d been tapping into suddenly felt like nothing more than an illusion and a mirage. No matter how I tried to convince myself otherwise, I couldn’t escape the truth: only assholes get dumped the way Molly dumped me.

I couldn’t face the fact that she wasn’t coming back. Days, weeks, months and years went by… but I couldn’t stop pining for Molly. Even worse, losing her made me feel like a complete and utter failure.

The fortress around my heart that Molly demolished was brick by brick, re-erected. Only this time the walls were fortified with doubt: capped with barbed wire and manned with snipers who aimed their sights on Eros and his advancing army of love.

Molly’s Houdini-deception corroded the blood within my veins, fermenting it into piss and vinegar. The magic carpet that had lifted my spirit turned out to be nothing more than a rug that had been pulled out from beneath my feet. Set tumbling I plummeted back to earth. The crimson-coloured splat where I smacked against the pavement was all that remained of our intimacy.

Five years: no phone calls, no emails, nothing. I was so distraught that I tried to hypnotise myself into believing that I never wanted to see her again. But the moment she strolled through the bistro door where I had been enjoying a lunch, my resolve began to crumble.

In the middle of buttering a baguette, I thought I was hallucinating… drawn into a flashback a half-decade old. The knife I was holding fell out of my hand, bouncing off the table before it somersaulted onto the floor. Alarm bells started to ring. Loaded with a weight of woe and not knowing what to do, I remained perfectly still, as petrified as a sculpture of Buddha.

Fearing her eyes, I pulled my gaze away from her immediately. But it only took one glance to see that she was even more delicious than she was before.

To calm myself I began drawing long draughts of air into my lungs. Five years without a word! Five years since those icy blue eyes caressed me. In through my nose, out through my mouth, I tried to keep my breathing slow and deep. Remain cool, I told myself that Molly’s Titanic beauty was no match for my glacial will… that my heart was now an iceberg.

She was staring right at me. I could feel her blues washing over me, making assessments, sizing me up. If she was hoping that I would acknowledge her, I was determined to disappoint her. It felt deliciously cruel. Ignoring her, not meeting her gaze is exactly what she deserved. But the alarm in my head wouldn’t stop clanging. In close proximity, Molly was her most dangerous. I had to be careful or the IED’s she’d left behind in me would begin exploding up and down the roads leading to and from my heart.

I had long since convinced myself that there was no salvation in her watery ways. As five years of the anger and bile percolated through me I steeled myself against her.

Gratefully she veered straight towards the counter. Her majesty uncontested, she floated through the bistro on air divine while the gazing eyes of the men around her undressed her with their eyes. Latent jealousies exposed… my blood began to boil.

She sat amongst the early afternoon drinkers, slurping pints of homely brew that never ceased to flow. I vowed not to turn towards her, willing myself to transcend her proximity. To acknowledge her, I believed would empower her, leaving me weak and vulnerable. After a five year absence, all redeeming memories of Molly had been vanquished from my psyche. What remained were cannibalistic recollections of a succubus who’d pillaged the sacred within me. I vowed to be stronger than her, to never be drawn into her web and feasted upon again.

In retrospect, the only person I was hiding from was me. As much as I tried to convince myself that the opposite was true, I was incapable of resisting Molly. Like water feeding into a basin, I was drawn to her depths… carried by her undertow far from the shoreline.

The impending tsunami was on its way and my head kept tolling the alarm. Sonorous through the shaded air it rang, urging me to fly towards freedom. It was beyond comprehension. I’d given up hope and now here she was sitting at the bistro counter not twenty feet away from me. The earth was shaking, water levels were rising and as much as I wanted to run, the fool in me felt compelled to remain exactly where he was.

I had fallen so completely and utterly apart after Molly left… I gave up on painting. I gave up on hope. I gave up on love. I gave up on myself. Bleak days and even drearier nights; her absence blanketed me in darkness. And now here she was sitting at the bar in ‘my café’ looking as nonplussed and cheery as ever. It unnerved me. I didn’t know how to react.

Haunted by the shower of sorrows shed, I felt like we were characters out of a Hollywood movie; spiralling into a Bogart and Bergman cliché. Rudderless and cast adrift, after she disappeared, I felt so empty and worthless all I wanted to do was drink. And like the cynical and heartbroken Humphrey in Casablanca I found my version of Rick’s café.

For a long time I played the role of a barfly. Tripped by fate, I wallowed in black doom, marked by the kiss of death. Seeking the company of Jack Daniels, the firewater, punctuated with cocaine almost made me forget. But the amnesia I craved was never sated. No amount of liquor, narcotics or indiscriminate sex could truly free me from Molly. It took me more than two years to learn that truth. And if it wasn’t for a beating that knocked some sense back into me, I may have never escaped the inebriated fog that had wrapped its arms around me.

I wasn’t a happy drunk. Instead, I was one of those bitter drinkers who took great pleasure in needling others about their foibles. Striking nerves, I was looking for trouble. Fury burned on my careless tongue… what cruelties it conveyed. A powder-keg of raw emotion, my combustible state was exasperated by the dragon fuel I was consuming. Although my intoxicated belligerence made some, at the watering hole where I numbed myself, laugh, those being carved up by my uncensored wit were much less appreciative.

I’d been warned on more than a couple of occasions by bartenders that my sense of humour was rubbing the wrong people the wrong way and that if I wasn’t careful there would be some unpleasant consequences.

I needed someone to teach me how to seek redress for all my woes. Unfortunately, that learning curve was violent.

The brute that set me straight had some mixed martial arts experience and had been waiting to unload on me for a long time. He was a bigot and a bully and every word out of his mouth smelled of fascism. One night while he was pontificating to the regulars around the bar about same sex marriages and the will of God, I foolishly and drunkenly decided to wind him up. When he groaned: I hope all faggots burn in hell I couldn’t resist the temptation to make him the butt of my bourbon-soaked sense of humour.

I think that the lady doth protest too much. Some of the patrons began to laugh. Albeit nervously. The look on the brute’s face, unable to accept that he was the object of ridicule, suddenly turned ugly with rage.

What is that supposed to mean?

I staggered forward. Stop fighting it, dude. Just come out of the closet already.

To my right, the bartender shook his head and muttered to the client opposite him. Uh oh, he’s gone too far this time. And no sooner had that sentence has been uttered than a fist cannonballed straight towards me, clubbing me on the side of the head. I was sent reeling backwards. But the terror wasn’t finished with me; a second blow caught me flush on the nose. And as I folded up onto the floor, blood pouring out of my beak, a half-dozen foot-stomps rained down on my ribs before the gathering throng of patrons finally managed to pull the badger off of me.

The woes unnumbered sent from heaven and fate! To be both broken hearted and beaten like a dog.

When I woke up the next day I hobbled towards the bathroom. The person in the mirror hardly resembled me. My nose was a swollen pancake and both my eyes were bruised blue and black. Dried blood was clogging the inside of my nose and if I wasn’t already having enough trouble breathing, my bruised ribs stabbed with pain whenever my lungs expanded. Adding to my humiliation was the dreadful magic of a commanding hangover. Standing there in front of the mirror, I knew what type of tragedy was waiting for me if I continued down the alcoholic path I was traveling. I’d turned my back on my art and my spirit was being extinguished. The drugs and the drinking weren’t going to get Molly back. I had hit rock bottom, and I vowed to the face in the mirror that I was going to stop feeling sorry for myself.

To have remained a swine that grovels, I would have never heard the lion’s roar…

It wasn’t easy, but I finally returned to painting. After such a long absence my art instincts had atrophied. It was hard going at first and I equated my situation to that of a stroke victim struggling to redevelop use of a paralyzed limb. But turning my back on the bar was my first step towards recovery and gradually my creative rhythm and discipline returned. But despite sobering up and reinvesting some blood, sweat and tears into my craft; the ghost of Molly remained determined to haunt me.

She spooked me: a deer in the night suddenly materializing before a car on a dark stretch of highway. That’s how Molly would appear to me. Always when I least expected it, when I was my most vulnerable… while I slept. I couldn’t tell you how many nights she guest-starred in my dreams. But it was often enough to be unsettling. Dream-Molly was a poltergeist who entered through the portals opened wide and lingered about my sleeping. And on those mornings following her visits, I always felt possessed by an uncanny presence: and I would yearn for the life of the barfly I had left behind.

The problem was that for those brief moments of dreamtime when Molly and I were together, I willingly suspended my disbelief and surrendered to the illusion. That’s how lost I was. No matter how obscure or obtuse, my heart ballooned with hope whenever I dreamed of her. But when the alarm clock chimed and my eyes opened, my loneliness would feel more acute than ever.

To grisly Pluto and his gloomy bride, I mined the underworld frantically searching for her. In dark caverns, in the uncharted regions of the mind I found reoccurring motifs constructed around an unrequited theme. Two dreams in particular repeated ad nauseam. In the first I would find myself divided from Molly by a sheet of glass: the type of one way glass used in police stations. I was able to see her, but the window kept her from seeing me. I’d bang frantically on the glass, hollering out her name, desperately trying to get her attention… but no matter how hard I hammered my fists, she would never hear me.

In another recurring theme I’d find myself on the floor of the sea where Molly would be sitting at a piano. She would smile at me longingly, conjuring a Chopin nocturne from the ivory keys. The music, always mellifluous and divine, would swim coolly along Neptune’s currents. Hypnotized by the sound of her playing, I would remain underwater holding my breath; a sailor caught in a mermaid’s web. But Molly, who had no difficulty extracting oxygen from the sea, would regard me with mother of pearl eyes that begged me to remain with her. The dream would always conclude with the same suffocating ending. My lungs would begin to burn, but rather than surfacing towards air and life, I would hold my breath until I could hold it no longer… and like clockwork I would wake up, surfacing out of sheets and linen towards the white curls of wave above, gasping and fighting for air, the vexed ocean still roaring in my ears.

Months turned into years and the dreams just wouldn’t stop. There seemed no getting over her. The wall was just too high.

Molly’s unexpected presence in the bistro was an intense reminder of all that I had lost. All the anger and hurt she’d inflicted upon me immediately began to well up again. Stunned, I was held in a grip of overwhelming awe and shame.

Revenge and doubt were alive in my chest; she deserved to be ignored!

I needed her to know that I was the better, smarter swimmer now. That I wasn’t going to be carried away by the pull of her beckoning blues and their seductive undertow. I wanted her to understand that the tides she commanded no longer held power over me.

Resembling Venus in her irresistible state… I vowed that she was no longer my navigational center, no more my morning star.

It was her nonchalance that blew me away. She was so full of life and promise; it made the piss and vinegar churn inside my veins. Five years without a word and suddenly Helen of Troy returns. Seemingly indifferent to the scale of destruction her betrayal caused, she appeared cool and casual and not the slightest bit self-conscious about being so close to me.

Did she have no shame, I wondered. Why didn’t she just turn around and leave the café? Her cruelty, I naturally assumed, knew no limits. After such an epic absence I had grown blind to her redeeming qualities. Where once I believed her modest and void of guile, now all I saw was someone who was as incapable of remorse as I was forgiveness.

Her head was tilted towards me and I could feel the tide in those pale blue eyes rising. The lunar pull of her gaze was compelling but I knew that if I dove back into those blue pools I’d risk drowning. But like a heroin addict I couldn’t say no to a fix… just one quick glimpse.

Of course her eyes were waiting for me: sea blue and flickering with sunlight. She had untied her hair and a waterfall of blond splashed down upon her shoulders. By all the deathless powers that reign above, I swear the shock of contact was a lightning bolt that seared through my defenses. My heart skipped a beat and I was pulled back under.

Her eyes have always commanded me: soulful magnets, topaz blue, as blue as the blues of Muddy Waters, mermaid eyes that harbour the deadliest of deadly illusions. With just one look Eros’ dart hit its mark. It was beyond the pale, in that one second of contact… she smiled.

Panic-stricken I turned away. Could she have been any more audacious and galling? Not a word from her in five years and now she was smiling at me like she’d never left. It was sinister. I felt like prey squirming in a lion’s jaws. I shifted in my seat, turning further away from her…

Of course I was fighting a losing battle. As much as I wanted to impress upon Molly how little she now meant to me, both of us knew it was just a bluff. There was no hiding from the fateful chemistry between us.

But in my mind it was better to fall upon my sword rather than acknowledge that I still loved her. And although I had rehearsed this moment ten-million times, now that she was this close, the levy that was holding back a flood of contrary emotions began to crack.

Fearful whispers bouncing around my brain kept insisting: run… hide… seek cover. She’s going to eat you alive.

Of course I hesitated. I couldn’t pull myself away. When I closed my eyes I could almost smell the lilac in her sun-streaked mane. And her smile: I was still swimming in its opiate afterglow.

My heart seeking redress for all my suffering wanted to live again… But my head would have none of it. Where once I believed in her... now all my brain craved was amnesia.

The memories I had cloistered away were now picking locks and escaping from their holding cells. Rewinding, I found myself returning to that fateful day when we first met… I was jogging along Olmstead road on Mont Royal when I found myself pacing beside her.

I recognized her right away; she was the same woman who shared a smile with me at a vernisage a week earlier. It was at a group exhibition of photographers in the Mile-End gallery. The exhibition space was jam-packed with visitors and when our eyes met from across the room blue waves of electricity flashed through me.

She offered me the same bashful smile on the mountain path that I had savoured seven days earlier. I recognize you. Her words were punctuated by steady breathing... inhaling and exhaling long drafts of air.

From the photography exhibition, I huffed and puffed.

Exactly, she kept a pretty quick pace: her running was smooth and economical.

I extended my hand towards her: My name is Valek.

We shook hands on the run. Molly.

What did you think of the show?

I thought the photographer who exhibited the triptych of the woman eating a hot dog had a wonderful sense of humour.

Molly giggled. Thank you.

Those were your photographs?

She nodded her head.

I had no idea. I sucked in air. You’re good…

She smiled happily.

I haven’t laughed so hard in a long time. It’s quirky stuff. That series reminded me of Diane Arbus.

She blushed: the compliment plus the heat of exertion reddened her shoulders, neck and face.

On the wings of wind, we sailed along the tree-lined path. When we reached the stairs at the Peel cutoff Molly pointed towards them and I nodded my head. We climbed them two at a time ascending towards the mountain summit. At first neither of us said a word as we climbed the hundreds of stairs sculpted into the cliff’s face. We ran side by side up the lower section, but then Molly giggled: Race you to the top.

She bolted ahead, gaining a six step advantage on me. By the time we reached the half-way point, she’d pulled ten stairs ahead. It stayed that way until the three-quarters mark when I began to sneak up on her, reaching deep inside myself for the extra energy required to catch her. And when only thirty or forty steps remained we were dead even. With twenty left I’d pulled ahead by two. We ran that way till the final four steps when I allowed Molly catch up to me and we both reached the summit at the same time.

We were both huffing and puffing trying to draw as much oxygen into our lungs as possible. Molly was standing still but I had to keep moving or I feared my heart would stop from the shock.

You let me catch you. Molly brushed strands of blond off her face.

I was running on the spot and sucking in air so hard I could barely talk. I shook my head and winked. That nearly killed me!

Normally I don’t take a break… but today I’m thinking of stopping for some ice-cream, she pointed towards the snack bar. Care to join me?

I’d love to. I smiled and tapped the empty pockets of my jogging shorts. But I didn’t bring any money with me.

My treat.

At the concession stand near the lookout we ordered ice cream. Montreal was stretched out beneath our feet. Cones in hand, we stood near the outpost that offered a view of the downtown core. Molly pointed at the skyscrapers in the valley below. She was a mix persuasion and eloquence. Standing there on the top of the mountain Molly said it was her favourite spot in the city.

After we finished our cones we found ourselves wandering through the cemetery that connects to the park.

At one point, I looked at Molly and couldn’t stop myself from smiling stupidly.

What’s so funny?

I shook my head and opening my arms with an expansive gesture I answered. This, I go out for a run and I end up eating ice-cream and walking amongst the dead with a beautiful stranger.

We were near the polished marble of Anna Leonowens, the resting place of the king of Siam’s governess.

Molly blushed and looked at her feet. I worried that my comment made her uncomfortable because she just kept her eyes focused on the ground. But when she finally looked up, she smiled timidly. Would you like to have dinner with me?

I gulped. Sure… When?

How is tonight?

I nodded. Compelled, I leaned forward and kissed her. She kissed me back, sighing.

When we unwound from our embrace, she laughed nervously: Whew, déjà vu.

I laughed: I think it’s just the cemetery talking.

Is this where you take all your dates?

I sputtered and coughed.

Outside, on St Laurent, a honking horn drew me out of my reverie back to the present. Beyond the window a bicyclist flipped a motorist the bird. The driver rolled down his window and uttered obscenities français, Tabarnac! Va chier idiot! He squealed his tires and sped away.

It was at that moment that I knew I had to leave. Hanging around was weak, futile. So I waved towards the waitress, gesturing for the bill. She smiled as she shimmied over to my table: It’s already been taken care of. My consternation apparent, the smile on the waitress’ face disappeared. The woman at the bar, she gestured with her head towards Molly, paid for your lunch.

Dumb went my voice and mute the tuneful string. Light-headed, I could hardly breathe. I stood up and moved towards the door with neither purpose nor pride. It was 22 Celsius outside: the skies were the purest blue, smog free. I held my head high, face tilted towards the sun, soaking up the rays. I didn’t dare look back in Molly’s direction.