Chapter 13

The roller door at the back of the yellow box truck slammed down with the finality of a guillotine. One of the movers we’d hired wrenched the locking mechanism closed and walloped the sheet steel three times with a thick hand the color and texture of a boiled ham. The engine of the truck started with a thick tubercular cough and a cloud of diesel fumes that made our eyes water.

The mover swung up into the cab and the truck rolled down our driveway, taking the last of the house contents away to various charities. Vi and I stood side-by-side for a long moment without moving, watching the truck disappear down the quiet oak-lined street.

Finally, when the moving van was out of sight, we turned and went back into the bare, empty house.

We’d been forced to add another week to clear the place and make it ready for sale. Fucking at every possible opportunity tended to mess with a timetable.

Vi and I had christened every room in the house with sweat and semen. But as the weeks passed our lovemaking had developed a desperate, almost manic edge, both of us acknowledging that time was running out.

And now it had completely. Violet’s table read for her show’s first episode of the season was in five days; my publishers were circumspectly but very insistently asking when they could expect to receive the articles I owed them.

There were things that would keep me here for a few more days. A real estate agent had to be commissioned and the property listed. But that was mostly paperwork. It certainly didn’t need two people. And since the house was now in my name, none of what came next would require Violet’s involvement at all.

Neither of us had spoken aloud about what we were going to do with ourselves, or each other. We didn’t seem to have words for what lay before us. This new kind of silence was not comfortable. It had grown malignant, twisting in my stomach like a tumor.

Any claim that the opportunity to talk had never come up would have been a lie. We both might have used sex to avoid discussing things, but there were still quiet moments where I could have raised the subject.

The truth was, I was a coward. I didn’t want to bring up the thought of what might be next because I was enraptured with the pleasure of the present and dreaded that the merest word might shatter what we had. I had fallen into Vi’s mentality: I wanted to keep things as they were for as long as I could and consider the future as little as possible. So I had ignored the deadline, even as it inexorably approached, second by second.

And now it was here, unavoidable.

I felt a sense of doom as we headed back into the house, our footsteps echoing against the bare walls. I clung desperately to one tiny, tenuous ray of hope, a single fact. Violet hadn’t yet visited her Vancouver apartment, not even to clear her mail. She had remained with me. I’d hoped that it might be some kind of sign, but I was equally certain I was just fooling myself.

Every small movement had consequence now. I was achingly aware of every passing second. Violet took her house keys out of the pocket of her shorts and placed them on the kitchen counter. For some reason their metallic clatter became my signal. I couldn’t wait another moment.

“Vi.”

“Hmm?” She turned to me, her oval eyes widening slightly.

“Come with me.”

“Okay...”

Vi followed me obediently back into the lounge and sat on the leather couch, the only piece of furniture left in the room. I took my place beside her, holding her hands in mine.

“We have to talk.”

Vi took a breath as if she was about to go underwater. “Okay.”

“I know I’ve left it to the very last moment, and I’m sorry for that. But I have to know, for my own sanity.” I squeezed her hands. “What is this?”

Vi blinked. “I come to your bed when you call. We have great sex. Isn’t that enough?”

I shook my head. “No. Not for me.” I tried to think, to bring together all the thoughts I’d had over the past several weeks.

“That ... that sexual adventurism has been your relationships with men before. I’ve seen you with them, and how they treat you. I’m not one of them. I’m –” A good guy, I was about to say, and stopped myself. Violet would have been entirely justified in laughing in my face: every male asshole she’d ever met had proclaimed and defended himself as a “good guy”. “I don’t ... I can’t be a substitute for them. I think this is different.”

She shook her head. “I never said –”

“You didn’t have to. Vi, you’ve traded intimacy for drama your whole life.”