By Lucy

I couldn’t imagine eating, but eating is necessary. I grabbed a coffee from Timmies on the way home, changed, and ate a few spoonful’s of yogurt. I was operating on maybe 4 hours of sleep, but I felt wide awake. Grabbed the remainder of the cheesecake, which he had me take, and started walking towards the hostel.

Hanuman met me halfway down the road. I flung myself into his arms and burst into sobs.

“Stupid boy.” Hanuman murmurs as he hugs me back.

He’s right. The Vagabond might be turning 65 before the end of the month, but he’s acting like a teenager.

“I didn’t do anything wrong!” I wail.

“I know, it’s not your fault. This is all him.”

It doesn’t feel better, though. If it’s something I did wrong, I can fix it. If it isn’t, then I can’t do anything but let everything be awful.

I don’t cry in his shoulder that long. The heat, midday sun, and crowded sidewalk discourage long bouts of crying. Hanuman takes my hand and we walk towards the waterfront, me telling him what happened between hiccups and sobs, tears streaming down my face.

By the time we reach the water, I’ve mostly cried myself out. I saw this coming last week and there isn’t much to say about it.

We walked past a place where people were doing some sort of performance art. They had laid out a bunch of rocks in the shape of a snake, Hanuman said, complete with a sign. It was gone now, the rocks just said ‘moon’.

I noticed the bench.

“Holly does this, doesn’t she?”

“Yes, she does.”

“Sailboats… oh, I thought it was a rowboat. I can row, my parents had a rowing machine. Still, sailing has to be physically demanding, no? Pulling on the ropes and such?”

He smiles and nods. “It can be. I think, the first day you’d just sit on the side opposite the wind, to balance out the boat.”

I have no real interest in boats – I always joke that my family lived on the coast for hundreds of years, but stayed firmly on land. My paternal grandfather and his father before him, at least, were carpenters. But I’m comfortable on boats. It sounds nice, a free boat ride.

We keep walking along the water, talking about other things. Eventually we find a gravel road that leads down to the Alexander Mackenzie, a boat museum I keep meaning to visit. Closed on a Sunday morning. Further up is an old railroad that extends over the water, and some kind of small maintenance dock. Grass has started growing on the cement. At the end is a small platform with a bench and a tree. We stop there and talk for a bit.

“Lucy… why are you so invested in this guy?” Hanuman says seriously, sitting down and looking me in the eye.

There you go, you broke Hanuman. Hanuman never had a word to say against the Vagabond, always trying to help me sort through my emotions without casting any judgement. When someone is in an unhealthy relationship, trying to tell them to leave just pushes them away. But it was clear to me, that even his patience and understanding was wearing thin. And that meant the world.

The Vagabond was good for me, at first. I felt stronger than I ever have before. But we crossed some sort of peak and he was starting to drag me down. I was glad that he ended things as finally and decisively as he did. I could start healing immediately.

I was glad, too, that I had the New Zealand trip to look forward to. Something to pour all my time and energy into. A place to go where no one knew my past, again.

Shortly before noon, Hanuman walked me home. But the day wasn’t done with me yet.

At the corner of my street, a man had collapsed. I know homeless people sleep wherever, but he was sprawled across someone’s (gravel) driveway in full sun, so he hadn’t decided this was a good place for a nap. We tried waking him up, but he wasn’t rousing. I called 911. She had me roll him over on his back to check his breathing, which was fast – probably dehydrated, sunstroke, maybe high. Skinny as a rail, probably starving. His eyes were half-open, but he didn’t seem to notice me crouched over him.

A firetruck got there first, since the hall is around the corner on Junot. The sound of the sirens woke him up, he coughed as he woke and I quickly rolled him on his side in case he threw up.

Six firemen bailed out of the truck. They tried to talk to him, but he shook them off and got to his feet. They asked him if he wanted medical help, but he ignored them and started limping off down the road – his leg was clearly broken. So dehydrated, not just from the heat and the sun, but also from the fluids he was losing to his injured leg.

“He won’t make it far like that.” Hanuman said, and we all nodded.

“Nothing we can do. He declined help.” One of the firemen said, as they got back into the truck.

How many blocks would he make it before he collapsed again? Hopefully next time he stayed unconscious, and they could get him to the hospital and patch him up before he had the chance to say no.

Once I got back to my place, I climbed into bed, thinking a nap would be in order, but my phone lights up. The new Discord server. People are discussing going to the CLE.

Should I go with them?

Out of bed, shoes on, out the door. Since the Vagabond lives walking distance to the CLE and he hasn’t left yet, it makes me feel quite anxious. The midday heat and sun, lack of sleep, I haven’t eaten much and I’m fighting the concussion still – it’s a wonder I can put one foot in front of the other.

I go in and post that I’m there. Go to the building with the palm reader.

I’m sort of into that stuff and I’m sort of not. I laugh at people who make relationship choices based on astrological signs. I’m well versed in both hot and cold reading. But I also think there’s room in life for some magic. I paid her the 25 dollars for a brief palm reading and three questions answered.

I was impressed. Either she is psychic or good at cold reading beyond any skill level I’ve seen. She called things like, I like travelling, based on nothing. Which could be generic by itself, but she said I’d prefer travelling east and west and not south, because I dislike the heat. Even though it was 30 degrees out, I was wearing full length pants and a black shirt, not perspiring heavily, and I didn’t even have a water bottle with me. I tried to just nod and not say anything about her statements so she’d have less to work on if it was just cold reading.

She used a regular card deck, not tarot cards. The questions were telling, obviously. My first question was the reason I had allowed myself to drift here; should I go on the trip I’m planning?

She said one person was against me going, but everyone else who loved me thought I should go, and I was going to have a great time there. Also, I was going to start travelling by water.

By water… the sailboat I was contemplating.

It was silly, but it galvanized my resolve. The fortune teller said the powers that be wanted me to go on the trip. What more of a sign did I need?

As I walked away from the table, furiously writing down everything she said so I wouldn’t forget, a man with a beard and a long ponytail came up to me. “Are you Lucy?”

Ah yes, the people I was meeting here! His name is Kevin and he is a hoot and a half. He does everything – he plays live music, is planning a lecture on mycotoxins, and he also does the sailboat racing. He extended an invitation to me to go with them the next day, which I gladly accepted. Noticing the bench this morning, the fortune teller saying I’d start travelling by water, and now this.

We walked around the CLE for a couple of hours, talking about ourselves and commenting on the goings-on around us. Three separate people stopped us to say hi and chat with him – he’s well-known.

Eventually I had to excuse myself and head home.

I went home, stopping at the store to grab a bottle of vodka and some unsweetened cranberry juice. I was halfway through the bottle when Duff called me to commiserate, and we talked on the phone for two hours. I felt another pang of guilt for leaving the job, but even with how things had ended with the Vagabond, I still didn’t want to have spent my entire summer in a hotel room in Regina.

Then the Vagabond started texting me.

Holy cow, can you let it go for even 24 hours? Are you drunk already? I kind of doubted it, because it’s a dry camp and the bar in town charges 10 bucks a beer, but it isn’t outside the realm of possibility.

Because I was drunk and bolstered by Duff being on the phone with me to laugh about it, I texted him back a bit. This wasn’t even like last year, when we’d just been messing around and hadn’t committed to anything, and I figured the break-up wasn’t permanent. I had been 100 percent committed, and he had really hurt me this time. So I was fully venting how pissed off I was without a single concern. He might be angry back, he might block and never talk to me again, I don’t care.

Thing is, when you break up with me, it’s over. Lots of ex’s try to get back with me and sometimes I entertain the notion of being friends. But for me, when you fight, you’re at least trying to save the relationship. I hate, hate threats to break-up, and when you break up with me it’s over. You stopped trying.

He tried putting it back on me, but it slid off me like water off a duck’s back. You’re 65. As the man said, act your age, not your shoe size. When we reached the portion of the evening where he said he regretted it and wanted me back, I replied “don’t waste my time” and put the conversation on mute.

Sleep did not come easily. Slept in, made myself breakfast, threw up breakfast. Hangover, concussion, stress? I grab myself the tub of yogurt instead – cool things go down easier.

Finally checked my phone. More texts, both last night and this morning.

It reminds me of this boy I dated in high school. Our relationship lasted two years, give or take, but I was always honest with this guy that I wanted to be single for college and we’d be breaking up before graduation. I graduated in January, so I was planning my escape to be sometime in January – after Christmas, before Valentine’s.

Two days before Christmas, he calls me over to his house. He starts the speech and I realize he’s breaking up with me. But I’m elated – he’s done the dirty work for me. Not only that, I get to go around and bitch to everyone that he broke up with me before Christmas! I mean, who does that? I sit patiently and nod along with his speech. When he’s done, I stand and inform him I’m gonna go grab my things and leave.

“Wait, what? No, you’re supposed to beg me to take you back.”

I burst into laughter at this. Why, cuz you’re such a catch? Cuz I haven’t been clear enough that this was never intended to be a long-term thing? Or do you somehow think my self-esteem is that crap?

I head to the stairs, but he flings himself in front of the door and tells me I can’t leave.

Excuse me?

Smirking, I pull my cell phone out of my pocket, call my dad, and calmly tell him my now-ex boyfriend won’t let me leave the house, could he come pick me up?

My ex blanched and hurriedly changed his tune, but I had none of it. I wait for my dad to get here, and had him escort me around the house as I collected my things.

I don’t want to believe the Vagabond is doing this, partially because it seems so absurd. He couldn’t possibly believe I was curled up in bed with a tub of ice cream, waiting for him to call? Something like that, you want to give it a few days to really build up. Some of this distress must be real, and yet there didn’t seem to be anything truly impulsive about the break-up. Because if it had been a real spur-of-the-moment, it would have been the night before.

Whatever.

I call a dentist. The last part of me that hadn’t been checked out from bumping my head is my teeth, although I am also overdue for a check-up. I tried calling on Friday, but they were closed. They had a cancellation that day, at 1:30. Sure, why not?

I make plans with Paul to do a photoshoot after the dentist and before sailing at 5. We’d decided to do a shoot that would look good with my split lip, so I’d asked Eli if I could borrow some coveralls from him, as we’re roughly the same size. He’d dropped them off the night before.

At the appointed time, I walked down to the dentist’s office.

The appointment went relatively smoothly. This dentist is relatively new and young, but he seems quite competent. They didn’t have time to pull my old Xrays from my old dentist to compare to my new ones. He told me I had a few cavities, so I guess that grouchy old dentist was right. He tested the two teeth that seemed to be affected by my fall and said that they weren’t dislodged or broken, but they might be dead and I might still need a root canal, but it was too early to tell.

Then he pulled up the panorama scan and my heart fell.

No…

No no no.

“I can tell by the look on your face that you know what those are. Could you tell me? I’ve never seen them before.” The dentist asks gently.

Odontoma’s, surely. I’ve never seen them either, but they can happen with my condition. I explain it to him and the hygienist writes it down so he can do more research later. The reason my teeth are rotting out and my jaw hurts. I have cancer again.

There was four, actually, but the scan he sent me didn’t have them marked, and I forgot which indistinct blob was the fourth one.

I feel kind of silly for declining the Xray in January, but I didn’t know my benefits would start all over again. It’d be nice to know how much they have grown. They certainly weren’t there during my last scan.

The dentist tells me he’s going to refer me to an oral surgeon, and send the scan to my personal email so I can send it to my oncologist. That sounds like a good plan.

I run back to my place, grab a water bottle and the coveralls, and hop in the car. Paul sends me an address last minute, on the farthest side of town. He found a construction site where everyone was going away for a bit, and they were ok with us messing around and taking pictures as long as we didn’t post the address or the name of the company. I realized as I threw the coveralls on that I had forgotten my work boots, but my motorcycle boots were still in the trunk and they look close enough.

It was fun, as talking to Paul always is. I wished I didn’t have so many things spinning around my head and I could have focused more, because dressing up in coveralls and pretending to hit things with my hammer is my jam. Vacation, concussion, being dumped, and now my cancer reoccurring – could the universe stop piling on me for a couple of days?

I’ve also decided, if money falls into my lap I’m buying Paul a new camera. I found a nice, dry stake and managed to split it with the claw of my camera, but his camera isn’t fast enough to get action shots like that. Not just for me, but for all the awesome pictures he’s going to take in the future with other people!

After we were done, it was another mad rush back to my place. Fill up my water bottle again, grab a package of jerky, a windbreaker and a whistle, and dash to the marina. I had given myself too much to do today, not anticipating that I wasn’t able to eat breakfast, and hadn’t cooked or eaten lunch or dinner.

I skidded to a stop at the marina at 5:02, anxious that I was too late, but Kevin strolled up behind me. I laughed at myself – for at least part of the journey, he had to have been behind me, laughing at me rushing for no apparent reason. He led me up the dock to a boat, not this boat but the same model, a C and C 32, 32 for 32 feet long.

The captain’s name is Chris. He watched as I gracefully grabbed one of the lines and swung myself onto the boat one-handed.

“Hello there! What’s your experience with sailing?” Chris asked, after Kevin introduced me.

I felt the colour leave my cheeks a bit. Basically non-existent. I knew roughly the parts of a boat and how they work from playing Wind Waker, Black Flag, and Sea of Thieves, but obviously I didn’t want to say “I know boats from video games”. I’ve been on boats, mostly the large ships like the Pictured Cruises boat, and occasionally a paddle boat or a kayak. I couldn’t remember if I had ever been on a regular outboard motor boat, although I’m pretty sure the answer is no. But I realized, boats have limited space and he wanted to make sure I was halfway competent, and I’d have to sell myself. I waffled a bit. I’m from the east coast, used to boats, etc. I made a point of being entirely honest about my complete lack of experience with sailing specifically.

He seemed satisfied, if not fully convinced. They were short-handed anyway. I went below-deck to grab a flotation device and a pair of gloves so the ropes didn’t cut my hands, and left my windbreaker and water bottle on the small table.

A dark-haired woman named Gillian was also on the boat. Just before we cast off, a tall, skinny man named Jeff jumped onto the boat.

Not that I was worried about falling overboard or anything, but it turned out we were just going to be puttering around inside the breakwaters. So we were never going to be more than a few hundred meters from shore, easily swimmable, especially with the flotation device. Actually, I was a little disappointed we weren’t going further onto the lake, but beggars can’t be choosers.

My task was fairly simple – I would be helping to jibe the jib sail (or tack it). I’d release the rope from the side the sail was currently on, then help Gillian pull the rope on the other side to bring it around. Then, because the wind pressure can tilt the boat up to 45 degrees, I had to sit on the “high” side, that is to say, the side being pulled out of the water, as ballast. To bring that side of the boat closer to the water, for aerodynamics.

I know it sounds like I wasn’t doing much, but we were technically gearing up for a race, if an informal race with no prize. Speed was key.

I got the motions down easily. When the captain yelled “jib!” or “tack!” we scrambled to position. I quickly learned to let off the first loop or two of rope and hold the sail steady myself, so the last couple of loops were quicker to get off. Then spin on my heel in the small space, grab the rope Gillian was flinging behind her, brace my foot on the floor and haul on it with her until the captain said it was enough and she tied it off. Then we’d scramble back up to whatever side was the high side and watch the water go by for a few minutes.

Even I was confused by how quickly it came to me, actually. My new shoes were perfect for this – the leather moves with my foot like a second skin, and the deep ridges in the sole helped me grip the top of the boat, which is slightly gritted for traction. Grabbing the thin cords or rare handles around the top of the ship and slipping past the other crew members as the boat pitched beneath us reminded me strongly of flying around scaffolding. Hauling on the ropes is just like roping or chaining gear up the scaffold, and I already know the bowline knot from Duff making me practice it in Regina. Out on the water, the oppressive heat was cut by a stiff breeze, and the sun had descended behind some clouds. It was a lovely day for a sail.

At one point when it was just me and Jeff on the high side as Gillian and Kevin did something else, Jeff asked me how long I had been doing this for. Apparently I took to it naturally enough that it didn’t look like it was my first time, and Jeff had missed the discussion of me being green.

“Look!” Kevin points to a boat struggling to let out a brightly coloured sail. It flailed and hit the water. “That’s a spinnaker. When it touches the water, it’s called ‘shrimping’.”

“I presume shrimping is bad.”

“Yes!” He chuckled.

The race took about an hour, zigzagging back and forth across the shoreline. I was pleased with it – some exercise, some fresh air, and importantly, free. I could spend a lot of money on a gym and still not get as much of a workout, and this had the advantage of mirroring many of the motions and using the same muscles as I use at work, so I was keeping myself conditioned.

Once the race was over, the captain set the sail to lose the wind a bit, and we drifted along at a leisurely pace. Kevin had packed snacks, so they set out a table in the ‘pit’ of the boat and we watched the shore drift by as we snacked. I had a couple of crackers so as not to be rude.

After we finally brought the boat back to the dock and packed it up, Chris turned to me. “Well, Lucy, are you interested in consolidating your knowledge on Wednesday?”

On… Wednesday… he was asking me to come back! So not only did I do well enough not to protest my joining them again, he was asking! Gillian gave me a high five!

I skipped all the way home. Psh, who needs boys? I am a sailor now!