Catch My Drift Read online

  “I’ll have the same,” Lorna said. She looked down at her own clothes and supposed she made surprising-looking company for a minor celebrity like Alex. Tonight she wore old jeans, a thin white sweatshirt, and canvas sneakers. Her wet hair pressed cold, heavy circles onto her breasts. No makeup. Though in fairness, she hadn’t expected to be out out. Over the last couple of months, tutoring Alex had involved reading To the Lighthouse aloud at the Burger Shack for five dollars an hour. He said he couldn’t follow the story in his own head.

  Alex finished his drink in two long gulps and ordered another. Lorna sipped her rum slowly; felt its warmth spread through her core.

  “Did you bring your paper?” she asked, though it was clear he wasn’t carrying anything. Alex had another week to turn in his final essay for a passing grade. They had planned to review his rough draft.

  “Nah.” Alex shook an ice cube into his mouth and crunched. “Student services opened today. I dropped out.” He said it casually but without looking at her.

  Lorna blinked. “Out of school?” That was crazy: the paper was so easy to do. She’d practically written his whole introduction herself.

  “Don’t take it personal.”

  “I’m not.” Although she was.

  Alex rolled back his shoulders. “I’m going to make for LA.”

  “What for?”

  “TV, what else?”

  Lorna didn’t know much about the TV industry, but “make for LA” sounded starry eyed and nutty. Alex wasn’t that big of a star. “What about Dog Daze?”

  “Actually, that’s wrapping up.”

  “Oh. I’m sorry.”

  Alex shrugged, like c’est la vie. “Makes it a good time to go.” He pushed his glass forward to be noticed by the barmaid. A drizzle was starting outside and brought a stuffy, wet pavement smell into the bar.

  Lorna wasn’t sure quite what to say. “Do you have a lot of auditions down there?”

  “Not yet.”

  “If you pass this year, at least you’ll have options.”

  Alex shrugged.

  Lorna shrugged back. “So what are you going to do there?”

  “Don’t know. I’ll see what flies my way.” He gave her a helpless smile that was really a fake helpless smile. “I don’t expect everyone to understand.”

  The last time Lorna heard that kind of line was the day Kenneth left her. She could still see his Marantz record player strapped into the passenger seat, her Paul McCartney album on the turntable. “We need to figure out who we are,” he said. It was so unfair because Lorna had known who she was. She’d been a great swimmer with times around the one-minute mark and dreams of the Olympics. She’d been nearly a fiancée. He ruined everything.

  Lorna snapped the band on her wrist. Alex didn’t notice: the shaggy-haired barmaid was pouring him a fresh drink. She peeled the lid from a can of peanuts and shook some into a small bowl.

  “Actually, I thought you might understand.” Alex tossed up a peanut and caught it with his mouth. “Being an athlete.” He looked straight at her in what seemed like an actorly way. A wise old man, sitting at a bar. “You know about having a path to follow.”

  Lorna considered the phrase. It was the kind of corny thing you could find printed on a bookmark at a church bazaar or on the wall of her physiotherapist’s office.

  “Writing papers, getting a degree, none of that means shit to me. I’m an actor. An actor acts,” Alex continued.

  Lorna nodded. “But you don’t have to go all the way to LA to do that.”

  “But why wouldn’t I? LA’s the top. Wouldn’t you go to the top if you could?” Alex nudged her glass toward her; it was still almost full.

  “If I were ready.”

  Alex shook his head. “I’m as ready as I’ll ever be.”

  Lorna lifted her drink. “I read this thing once about how thousands of people move to Hollywood every year and wind up homeless and living under bridges. Maybe you should have some sort of plan.”

  “You can’t plan everything.”

  Maybe you couldn’t plan everything, but Lorna thought it was naive, even lazy, to look at life that way. She wanted to admire Alex’s nerve in the way he clearly wanted her to, but real success took focus, preparation. You couldn’t just walk out your door, no plan at all, and expect to net opportunities like butterflies. She felt suddenly very worried for him. “And what if nothing flies your way?”

  “Then I’ll do something else.” Alex turned his glass around slowly on the counter, drawing a wet pattern of circles that looked like Olympic rings. “I’m not afraid of life, right? I’m the kind of guy who takes chances.” He said this much louder than he needed to, glancing at the barmaid. Lorna knew that Alex was used to women listening to him, and because he was an actor on an actual TV show, some women assumed that what he said was thoughtful or deep. This probably made him believe the same things about himself. Lorna, on the other hand, had long disliked “I’m the kind of person who” statements. They were almost always self-flattery disguised as unalterable fact, like having brown hair. But Alex looked back at Lorna, his eyes greedy for approval, which made her feel slightly sorry for him.

  “I guess that’s cool,” Lorna said

  Alex’s incisors flashed with his smile. “Haven’t you ever just done something without knowing what would happen?”

  Lorna examined the wrinkled pads of her fingers. “Sure,” she said. “But I regretted it.”

  Alex didn’t say anything, and the silence between them felt too heavy for Lorna not to continue. “OK,” she said, “so when I was thirteen I read all about these women who were swimming across the English Channel. I wanted to be like them, so I signed up for this swim-across-the-lake thingy over the summer. I had no idea what I was doing; I was way younger than everyone else. Some local reporter even came out to take pictures of me, and I told him I was going to win the whole thing.” He was a grey-haired reporter dressed in an itchy-looking fisherman’s sweater. He’d said to her, “Let’s hope you’re stronger than you look.”

  “Did you? Win it?”

  “I didn’t even finish the race.”

  Open water always intimidated Lorna, but Sugar Lake, just outside of town, was particularly eerie. The shore was a slimy bed of rotted leaves. Pontoon boats and water-skiers zipped recklessly on the surface all summer long, while muskies, catfish, and broken clams lurked in the silty sludge below. The two-and-a-half mile distance across was twice as far as Lorna had ever swum, then. But she still thought she could win. Because of what happened earlier that year when the whistle blew, Lorna believed she could do anything she wanted.

  “So you regret bragging?”

  “I made it pretty close,” Lorna said. “Maybe a quarter mile left.” She had started off fast, but her arms grew shaky after the first half-hour. Within thirty or forty minutes, it seemed everyone had overtaken her, their white backs and colourful caps disappearing into early morning mist. She made it far enough to see a blur of people standing at the opposite shore, waiting around for the last place, show-off kid. Eventually Lorna flipped onto her back and cried, quietly at first, and then loud enough for the volunteer paddlers to notice. They hauled her into the canoe by the armpits, her shins bumping against the gunnels.

  Alex flipped ice around with his mini straw. When he appeared to register that she was no longer talking, he asked, “So that’s it?”

  “Yep.” And truly, that was it. Afterwards, her father took her for a club sandwich at a hotel restaurant. They ate quickly, quietly, and then she was sick in the parking lot. Her father was almost cheerful then, assuring her that nothing more than a flu bug slowed her down.

  “And ever since then?” He held three fingers to his forehead in a Boy Scout salute. “Be prepared.”

  Lorna shrugged. “I’m a sprinter, not a distance swimmer. I should have stuck to that.”

  Alex let out a low whistle and shook his head. “If that’s your biggest regret—”

  “I never said it was. That
was just an example.”

  Across from them, the barmaid was rushing to close the windows. The rain was coming harder now: fast, straight-down drops that bounced off the pavement. Pedestrians ran with newspapers over their heads and took cover under awnings. Streams of red and yellow car lights flowed together in the wide, wet street. Lorna thought it was beautiful, but she didn’t know how to point this out to Alex. It would seem like she was trying too hard to change the subject.

  After a moment, Alex swatted the air in front of them, erasing her story and whatever weirdness it had caused between them. “Let me get you another drink,” he said. “To say thanks for everything.”

  Lorna’s cheeks were heavy and warm from the first rum, but she didn’t interrupt Alex’s gesture to the barmaid. She had lost count of what he was putting away.

  They left Ballantyne’s a couple of hours later, during a pause in the rain. An earthy-scented breeze seemed to lift from the ground; the street was quiet and anything beyond the sidewalk was soft-focused to Lorna now. Alex smoked and whistled as he walked her home. There had been a lot of talk in the bar; on the street Lorna couldn’t think of a thing more to say.

  In front of the Northway, Lorna searched her gym bag for keys. “Thanks for the drinks,” she said.

  Alex leaned against the door’s rippled glass panel, relaxing into it like the walk had been exhausting. “And now what?”

  “Now I guess you go to LA.”

  “Yeah.”

  “They say it’s nice down there.” Lorna’s fingers found her cold metal key ring. A fresh raindrop smacked down on her wrist.

  “I could write that paper,” Alex said suddenly. “If that was the best thing for me right now.”

  “I understand,” Lorna said. But she didn’t believe it. Alex was sweet, but he wasn’t a focused person. Or maybe he was, maybe that was the lesson here. She pulled out her keys with a jangle.

  Alex dipped his chin and looked up at her. She noticed his eyelashes for the first time. Thick and girlish. “I’m sorry if you think you wasted your time.”

  Lorna shook her head, came up with a polite smile. “Really, it’s fine. You paid me.”

  “You’re a good teacher,” Alex said. “You could probably be one, if that’s what you wanted to do with your life.”

  “Thanks,” Lorna said. “It’s not, but thanks for saying that.”

  It was like he was waiting for something from her. Did he want her to invite him in for a drink? She wasn’t sure there was anything to drink in the apartment. She had to swim early the next morning. Plus Debbie could be home. But Lorna just kept standing there. She wondered what it would be like to kiss him. She’d only kissed two people before: Brett, her cousin, behind a row of transport trucks at a motel during Expo ’67. Then Kenneth, of course. More rain spattered onto the concrete steps. She unlocked the door. “Thanks for the drinks,” she said again.

  “Raining again.” Alex put his sneaker in the gap of the door. His wild grin gave her a tugging feeling below the belly button.

  Debbie was not at home. Lorna found a bottle of sherry, fuzzy with dust, in the cupboard above the stove. A granny’s drink, probably given to Debbie as a gift, but it would do. She poured them each a shallow glass and set his on the trunk by the couch. Alex sat and took off his shoes. She leaned against the window ledge across from him.

  “Wait,” he said, leaning forward. “You don’t have a boyfriend, do you?”

  Lorna blushed and brought her glass to her lips. “No.”

  He relaxed into the couch. “I didn’t think so. Not that you’re not cute.”

  “I don’t have a lot of time for dating.”

  He looked around the apartment as though trying to discern what had such a grip on her time.

  “Varsity season’s coming up.”

  “Right, right,” Alex nodded vigorously. “Your path.” Lorna pictured a bright blue swimming lane that never ended.

  “You wanna come sit here?” Alex patted the spot on the couch next to him.

  Lorna felt her pulse everywhere. She pressed the glass to her mouth, buying time.

  Alex’s glass clicked down on the trunk. He crossed the room, took her drink from her, and put both his hands on her face. His mouth felt cool. She put her hand up against the window, felt the rhythm of the rain rushing against her fingertips as he leaned his body into hers. Alex held her lower lip between his teeth for a second or two. When he let go, he tilted his head toward the closed door down the hall. She let him lead her there.

  Sex turned out to be unexpectedly easy. With Kenneth, Lorna had always wondered if she was doing it right, if there was something else he wanted her to be: stiller, faster, wetter, tighter. Alex’s expression, when she opened her eyes to check, was greedy then grateful. He fell asleep immediately afterwards, his warm forehead pressed into her shoulder. Lorna pulled the sheets over her scarred knees, the smell of chlorine rising from her skin. She wished she could find her clothes, but she didn’t want to disturb him.

  The next morning, Alex walked Lorna to the pool and they hugged goodbye. She began her warm-up feeling giddy and modern. Blue skies had taken over the city, and she could feel the sun on every surface of her skin. Sleeping with Alex was the proof that she was finally over Kenneth. If Alex called, fine. If not, that was fine, too. They had their paths to follow. Now she could focus.

  In the week that followed, the last before the start of school, Lorna doubled her efforts at the pool, swimming three thousand yards or more every afternoon. She charged across the water with nothing whatsoever in her mind. There was no doubt that she was swimming faster. Perhaps faster than she’d ever swum. In the evenings, Debbie encouraged Lorna to go out, to take a load off, but Lorna declined with the same acid mix of jealousy and smug satisfaction she felt the year before when she returned from early practices to find the girls still asleep in the dorm. Must be nice, Lorna thought, just to while away the time, but that wasn’t who she was. Lorna’s time mattered.

  On the Thursday before school started, Lorna arranged for Debbie to time her. She arrived at lane swim at six to find the gates locked and the water being drained. There was a chemical issue, Debbie explained, and the pool would be shut down until Sunday at least.

  Debbie said a few days of rest would be good for Lorna, but Lorna felt on edge without her routine. She tried another pool across town, but the lanes were too short and the children were too noisy. She considered the pool at the university athletic complex, but she couldn’t face the girls she might run into until she was sure she was ready. So Lorna did try to rest. She tried to shop for new clothes but found that she couldn’t focus on the task, only wandered the department store, touching fabrics, deciding on one item and then putting it back. Cleaning the apartment was even more bewildering. Hair and dust were everywhere. She bought a sports magazine and brought it to the park, as she’d seen other girls do, but the sun made the pages too bright and she could never find the right casual position. She managed to read one story about four mountain climbers who’d gone missing somewhere in Washington, the likely victims of an ice avalanche. “They didn’t know their own limits,” the brother of one of them said.

  At the laundromat down the street, Lorna was dumping clothes into a washing machine when she heard a familiar voice. The season finale of Dog Daze was playing on the wall-mounted TV. Lorna sat down to watch Alex hug his TV family goodbye, the show ending with the ironic premise that Alex’s character, Marty, was going away to university. Harvey, the family sheepdog, was stretched out at the end of the driveway in protest. The laughing family managed to lift the beast out of the way, but he took off after the station wagon, pink tongue flapping from his mouth. An eruption of “aww” came over the audience track as the car slowed and the door swung open to let the dog hop in. There he goes, Lorna thought as the station wagon disappeared down the shady street. The summer is over. Alex is off to Hollywood; swim trials are just a few days away. The washing machine shuddered and then stopped, dropping towe
ls with a heavy slap. Lorna filled with dread for both herself and Alex.

  When the park pool reopened, the water was bluer and colder than before. Lorna crashed through her lengths, eyeballs and nostrils stinging. Worst of all, she was struggling to find her rhythm. Her mind and body would not work together. It started with jingles. Radio commercials pinged up and down in her head, her body adapting too easily to their breezy pace: Back-to-school shirts! New slacks and skirts! Come on, get ready at Thrifty Threads first! She tried to lock her mind to her breathing but thinking about how to think made her concentration worse. Loose thoughts squiggled in and got stuck, stubborn as hair on the bathroom tile. She thought of the people in the ice avalanche. She thought of Alex getting off an airplane into blinding sunlight and palm trees, that sweet but dumbfounded look on his face. Her fastest strokes came from a breathless sort of fear, a sense that she was being chased. Rather than somersault at the end of those panicked lengths, she grabbed for concrete, swallowing air and trying to calm down. She’d hold on to the edge for a long time, watching her shadow grow longer on the deck.

  On the Sunday before school began, Lorna stopped several times to look over at the pool fence. She wondered if Alex had changed his mind, if he’d become suddenly realistic. She had some idea that if she only just saw him, if he returned, if they slept together again, she might get her rhythm back. Things would be in place. But when she looked up, there were only fallen poplar leaves, dull and yellow, pressing up against the fence.

  Before Debbie said a thing that evening, Lorna knew her time wasn’t good. Debbie’s voice was too chirpy. “One minute thirteen. That’s better, isn’t it?”

  “I’ll go again,” Lorna said.

  Debbie shook her head. “I have to close the pool.”

  “Come on.”

  “It’s getting too dark to read this thing.” Debbie slipped the stopwatch into the pocket of her shorts. “Let me close up and we’ll go to a movie.”