Théodora Armstrong - Clear Skies, No Wind, 100% Visibility

Later that night on the Floor I had my first urge for a taste of that freedom. I was two months into my new job and I’d memorized the dates of every holiday for the rest of the year.

I didn’t realize how close I was to the ground until I felt Angie’s hand.

“Don’t worry, I got you,” she said.

“I’m fine.” I shook her hand off my ankle.

“I got you.”

“I don’t need you to get me.”

OUTSIDE THE WINDOW THERE’S a black sky and evergreens even blacker beyond the perimeter of the backyard fence. The trees surround the valley; the city feels insignificant, almost unwanted. I feel unwanted. None of it holds a thing for me, not a memory or a future, and it’s peaceful in its emptiness. What are your intentions? The question comes from some dark corner of Sophie’s bedroom. Even with the fan whirring in the corner, the air in the room is oppressive. I close my eyes and hold Sophie against my chest, rest my chin on her damp head. In the baby’s room during the blackest hours of the night I can breathe, stare out the window, smell her hair, and let my mind bottom out. It’s like turning down the static on a radio.

“What are you doing?” Angie’s standing in the doorway naked, her head a mess of dark curls.

“Didn’t you hear her?”

“I heard you.” She crosses her arms and leans to take a look at the monitor.

“She was crying,” I whisper overtop the baby’s head.

“I didn’t hear her.” There’s skepticism in her voice. I’m almost always the one to get up with Sophie in the night. It’s my way of making up for those four lost months while I was away at training, but for whatever reason Angie doesn’t trust my effort. She’s told me none of the other dads are so willing. She feels the need to lie to the other parents and feign exhaustion. She gets a solid eight hours every night but still guzzles coffee all day long.

“Sh!” I hold a finger to my lips.

“I must be wiped out.” She tousles her thick dark curls until they nearly stand up on end. “How was work?”

“I’ll tell you later. You’re naked.”

“It’s hot.”

“Go back to sleep.”

Out the bedroom window, the apex of the spire has a blinking red light. What are your intentions? I’ve barely thought about the pilot since sealing the envelope of data for the TSB, but now the question is nagging me. I hear my own voice, cold and flat as the computer teller at an automated checkout. The crews probably won’t have had time to recover the plane tonight. The valley isn’t easily accessible and there are spot fires all over the region, making a recovery dangerous. It could be days or weeks before they find anything, depending on the fire’s temperament. When I was a kid we used to watch the bombers flying low over the Okanagan Lake. They travelled narrow valleys other aircraft never flew, their planes heavy with cherry-red chemical water, flying through thick smoke at treetop level and dropping their payloads right over the tips of the burning evergreens, then suddenly rose — lightened and askew — toward the sky. Some summers the edge of the mountain was like one long flickering orange ember at night. I met a few of those guys going through orientation. The pilots accepted the dangers of their job and some of them lived for it. Some of them would pray for a fire so they could bomb. Otherwise, it was sitting around twiddling thumbs. Rapping their knuckles on particleboard desks, waiting for something to happen. It’s not that they wanted the forest to burn, but there was an itch there they couldn’t ignore.

I put Sophie down and head into the living room. Angie has fans in every corner of the house, a small one spinning on the kitchen counter and a standup pointing out one of the open living room windows, sucking the hot air out of the house. The only movement in the room comes from the propellers and the screen saver on the laptop, a twirling planet in a black cyber sky. I sit down at the computer and find a new message from Thom headed: The Useless Bungling of Wes’ Own Ineffectual Life.

The new message reads: Dear Asshole, have you ever considered the fact that my very purpose in life is to be the existential thorn in your side? You left me with no choice since the day you cut off your own balls and became a so-called reasonable adult.

For the past week, he’s been trying to convince me to call in sick so we can meet up in Osoyoos a day early. The lake cabin has been a summer ritual since we met in first year. The message goes on to question, for the hundredth time, my decision to flee Vancouver for Kamloops and leave him to drink cases of beer all by himself. He blames me for the broken coffee table and overflowing recycle bin.

I reply: Dear A-hole, have you ever wondered if the reason you seek my company is that you cannot, for even a single moment, stand yourself ? This is the nature of our relationship.

When I met Thom we were both first-year students at the University of British Columbia. After our English classes we’d end up at the same pub and eventually we ended up at the same table. I was with him the night he met Veronica at an art show in the student union gallery. She was showing some photographs and we had stumbled in at the sight of free food on our way back from the pub. Thom spent the entire night standing at a table stuffing his mouth with spinach phyllo pastries and drinking glass after glass of cheap red wine in plastic cups, wine he knew would make him angry enough to kick over every garbage can he spotted on the way back to his place. Veronica went home with him despite it all. She says she likes to photograph his tragic face. When they say goodbye, she grabs him by the chin and pushes his lips into a pucker she kisses. Mornings she wakes him up by straddling him and taking his portrait. “For a project I’m building,” she says. Twice he’s had to shell out a considerable amount of money for broken lenses after he wacked the camera out of her hands in a groggy, flash-stunned confusion. It was Veronica who introduced me to Angie, made her appear at our table one night as if by magic. She said, “Wes, this is my friend Angie. You don’t want to fuck this up.”

Mostly Thom is happiest lying on the rotten sofa on their front porch, smoking weed and reading. The two of us never talk about work or offer details of our day to day, and in that way we can exist together in a world separate, a world perhaps a bit loftier, a bit brighter than the one we live in, a life we would have dreamed up after a lecture in Comparative Literature and a row of pitchers at the pub. Occasionally — though I can’t be sure — I think Thom forgets I have a child. He likes to talk about ideas. He likes to argue — is happiest, even, when arguing. He likes to remind me that I wasted my MA and subsequently my contemplative life. He likes to remind me that he can drink me under the table. This is the way I see Thom at this very moment: in his living room, pacing the creaking floorboards, practically climbing his bookshelves stacked with the Western canon, fist in the air for reasons fair or concocted, a neat row of beer bottles arranged in patterns along the coffee table, trying to engage in debate the figure of his girlfriend hunched over a computer, photo editing. He’ll argue with himself, if no one else will listen.

The last time we were all at the lake cabin was almost two years ago. Angie was pregnant but not telling anyone yet. Thom and I spent the weekend getting absolutely bombed, drinking whiskey and coke out of plastic cups and barbecuing on the beach. I was feeling celebratory — in sharp contrast to Thom, who was bemoaning the fact that I was dropping out as an unclassified student and moving to Cornwall to start flight service training.