In the mountains there’d always been something new
to look at.
In the months leading up to tour, Willa had been
saving up podcasts. But from Kamloops to Calgary, Willa and Kiki—a.k.a. The
Oblititrons—listened to their last episodes of This American Life and the last of the All Songs Considered episodes with music.
They were sick of listening to The Magnetic
Fields’ 69 Love Songs and were
well done with the Neil Diamond Greatest Hits CD, Dusty In Memphis and Le Tigre’s Le Tigre. All Songs had done nightly roundups from South by Southwest, one of which
they’d listened to, all of which had just one song at the end, so they’d
skipped them. Then, between Edmonton and Saskatoon—actually between Vegreville
and Vermilion—they listened to them all.
And apparently THEESatisfaction had synchronized
dances.
So, in a hostel in Saskatoon, where they hadn’t
been able to book a show, they played their song “F.U.T.U.R.E.” at the lowest
audible volume and creaked around the floor practicing moves somewhere between
a cheerleading routine Willa remembered from middle school and a ballet
choreographed by Miss Marlene, the woman who taught Kiki dance in the basement
of the United Church in downtown Oakville when Kiki was eight. They debated
over handclaps and only did the routine through twice because Kiki was
embarrassed about the sound the floorboards made.
Out of new music and podcasts, from Saskatoon they
listened just to the hum of the tires. Kiki, in the passenger seat, started
guessing how long it would take to get to the next visible grain elevator.
Willa blamed Kiki for the poor turnout at their Canadian shows, which had been
Kiki’s responsibility to book. And why hadn’t she been able to find a show in
Saskatoon, hunh? Kiki said the US shows weren’t much better and accused Willa
of picking the easier job. After that the prairies seemed to get even flatter
and the grain elevators even further away, though Kiki realized that she was
counting in rhythm to her faster, angrier breath so she practiced some
mindfulness to slow that down, which got the elevators back to predictable
distances.
Willa pulled the car over onto the gravel
shoulder.
“What’s up?” Kiki asked.
“I’ve got to piss.”
“OK.”
“What?”
“Normally you say so before we pull over.”
“Isn’t this spot good?”
“Well, I’d prefer to strategize—like maybe we
could stop somewhere with coffee or chips or something—but whatever.”
Willa rolled her eyes and got out.
While Willa squatted in the ditch, Kiki looked
across the street. She saw the prow of a boat peaking around the corner of an
overgrown hedge. She got out of the car.
“Good idea,” Willa said.
“What?” Kiki asked.
Willa zipped up her pants. She saw Kiki looking
both ways along the highway. “Oh, I thought you were getting out to pee too.”
“Nope,” Kiki said. She crossed the road and took
her cell phone from her pocket.
Willa followed her across the street.
The boat had been beautiful. The boat had been a
boat. Now it was a crumbling pile of painted wood belching an anchor onto
overgrown grass. Kiki was taking pictures on her phone. “For your dad?” Willa
asked. Kiki nodded. Willa looked around. There was a rutted trail leading
around a windbreak over which she could see the roof of a house. There was a
field of stubble behind them that curved neatly into the horizon. Kiki’s phone
made the whooshing “message sent” sound.
“Who’s that for?”
“My dad and sister.”
Willa nodded. Kiki’s dad was really into wooden
boats. His bathroom in the basement, where he was exiled to shit, had a stack
of Wooden Boat magazines, one
of which always had a pen tucked inside it so he could make little notes in the
margins. Willa couldn’t figure out why Kiki had sent the picture to her sister,
Linda.
Hinges squealed, a screen-door banged and someone
ran across a wooden deck. Willa ran instinctively towards the boat’s prow and
the edge of the ragged hedge—the only hiding places for miles around. The
hinges squealed again once, twice, and feet supporting tinier bodies beat an
arrhythmic staccato across that same stretch of deck. Kiki just stood there. Willa
ducked down and leaned against the boat’s hull. Kiki’s phone jingled and when
Willa looked up her band-mate was wondering at a text.
A boy, seven or eight, came running around the
windbreak between the Oblititrons and the house. He was wearing a skeleton
costume with the hood and mask hanging between his shoulders. Playing cards
fluttered in the air behind him and he was laughing. Two girls, one wearing a
stained pink dress, the other a too large hockey jersey, chased after him
picking up cards and whining, “Jaw-on,” or squealing “John!”
When he saw Kiki standing in his yard, John’s body
spasmed and the playing cards burst into the air. They hadn’t finished
fluttering and falling to the ground, though, before John had clearly decided
that Kiki was no threat. John waved to her, then started picking up the cards.
The girls were almost immediately at his feet and for a moment they were both
tugging at cards in John’s hands. The girl in the dress managed to snap the
card she was pulling free of John’s grip. John stepped backwards, dragging the
girl in the hockey jersey along the ground a few feet. When the playing card
she was tugging on popped out of her hands, John held it above his head and
started dancing with his pelvis. Never mind how rude it looked, doing that at
girls who were, presumably, his sisters—both Kiki and Willa knew that crotch
was what their dance had been missing.
The girl in the hockey jersey spotted Kiki and let
out a high-pitched scream before turning and running for the house. The girl in
the princess dress was startled, but recovered quickly, set her brow to scowl
and walked menacingly towards Kiki, who turned and ran for the car. Willa
followed. They hopped in, giggling and sped away.
A few kilometers down the highway Kiki said, “So,
I sent that picture to my dad and sister, right?”
“So?”
“Look what Linda sent me back.” Kiki held her cell
phone up just under the rearview mirror.
“What is it? I can’t see it,” Willa said.
“A skull emoji.”
Linda was some sort of fortune-teller, seer person.
“Whoa,” Willa said.
“Right?”
“And she sent that without knowing any of the . .
. ?” Willa waved her hand in the air, her body tingling.
“Yeah.”
“That’s amazing.”
When Kiki texted Linda the story of what happened,
Linda wrote back and said that she thought someone had died in that boat, but
that you couldn’t always know how to interpret visions.
When they got to Winnipeg, they went shopping for
CDs. Kiki bought Missy Elliott’s The Cookbook and THEESatisfaction’s EarthEE. Willa bought a Gordon Lightfoot Complete Greatest
Hits.
That night at the club, during “F.U.T.U.R.E.”, The
Oblititrons broke into their dance and it was sort of synchronized, but when
they got their pelvises into the act, the modest crowd clapped and laughed and
shouted for more.
Toronto, May 2015
Emoji sequence: Regan Clarke
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