By Lucy

I slept in Sunday, which is always a nice turn of events.

It was immediately ruined because I had to run out to Kakabeka to grab my winter tires from Paul, still in my pajamas with my breakfast cooling gently in front of my PC.

Paul was in a great mood, the highest mood I have ever seen him in. Which made it suck that I was still sleepy-eyed and desperate to get back home and have my breakfast, but I stayed to chat for a bit.

The guy actually came to look at my car, marking the first time someone actually showed up when they said they were going to. He seemed very invested in buying the car but continued to insist on getting it safetied before he bought it. I sent him packing; cash for keys, as-is, I’m not arguing with you.

I spent a couple of hours looking at jobs. I found a few that seemed interesting, but as of writing I did not hear back from any. One job description was depressing: “Drivers abstract with no more than 6 demerits & no impaired driving convictions”.

Hindsight is 20/20, really and truly. There’s so many things I would have done differently in the last few months if I could predict the future; I still wouldn’t have stayed at the mill a day longer (they were probably winding up to lay me off anyway) but not going to Winnipeg the second time, staying another week at HD, would have gone a long way towards making the last month less shitty. I’ve sort of resigned myself to plugging away as it is; it ain’t over ’til it’s over.

In the evening, Kevin picked me up and we went over to Jeremy’s to entertain him and Jake. We went to Subdivision to get a pizza and played Overcooked for a couple of hours, but unfortunately I had to get to bed.

There was an especially funny vignette when we were deciding where and how to order pizza. Jeremy called Subdivision and asked if they offered delivery. When they didn’t and said he could order for pick-up over the phone or on Skip, Jeremy said “nevermind” and hung up, only to immediately dial them back to order the pizza and answered the phone with “Hello, it’s me again.”

Monday morning was the start of something strange.

As I was approaching the union hall, Richard stopped the car next to me. “Officer.” I said with a grin.

“I saw you downtown yesterday.”

My mind draws a blank for a minute, before I remember I went to get pizza. “Oh, yes. We went to Subdivision.”

“Cool, cool, I live near there.” He pauses. “Why are you walking?”

“Dude, I’ve been walking for like 2 weeks now.”

“Yeah, but why?”

“Cuz I didn’t get EI and I’m too broke to put gas in the car.”

“Did you want a ride?”

I turned and looked pointedly at the hall, maybe 100 meters away.

“Well, it’ll save you some time!”

“Thanks, Richard.” I ran over and jumped in the front seat.

Landon has a ritual of asking us how our weekend was. He usually delays the start of class a whole half an hour to do it, but I catch him checking the clock. He’s killing time on purpose. How odd.

“How’s your wife, Landon?” Richard asks, voicing what most of us were wondering after he dashed out of the room to go see her.

“She’s fine.” He says, clearly not wanting to talk about it. “Screw her. Her back is fine. She never asks me how I am.”

We all chuckle. “Why?” Also… what the heck? I can’t tell if that was sarcastic deflection or serious. Seems like a rude way to talk about your wife, even if you are annoyed at her.

He cut his hand – specifically, his middle finger on his left hand – cutting blueskin on the weekend. His finger is all bandaged up because of it. He laments that he can’t play guitar with the cut. We all joke that every carpenter knows when their last tetanus shot was cuz we get them all the time, since we cut ourselves so frequently.

He put Larry Haun on for another hour. Then bookwork.

Now we’re learning the Ontario Building Code. This is, again, extremely boring for me, with my college education. I spent several years in my teens helping my mother write PhD theses, navigating a construction manual is child’s play. I still have to listen to all the guys complain. Also, it marks the return of the hated writing out lines, although at least these ones are shorter than the IHSA ones.

We also start learning how to use an architect’s ruler. You might have seen them somewhere before; they look like triangular prisms. The idea is that it vastly simplifies drawing at scale, since there’s 9 scales on it.

There’s a jar of honey on Landon’s desk. Shortly before lunch, he mentions that he gets free honey from the beekeeper who keeps the bees out back, but he’s got too much and doesn’t want it. I note the jar is the farmer’s market regular I always buy my honey from. I’m running low and rationing mine and probably can’t afford to buy more.

Landon offers it to whoever wants it. A lively debate strikes up, during which I get up, walk over to the desk, grab the jar and strut back to my desk without saying anything.

“Guess it’s Lucy’s.” Someone says.

“Guess it is.” I reply.

After lunch we went in the shop to start assembling our chairs.

Confession time! I made a mistake last week and lost track of the days. So Thursday and Friday we were sealing our chairs, actually. Friday in particular I got to school an hour early because Landon was opening up the shop an hour before we start so Eric and Richard could catch up and I figured, why not? It was especially funny when he went to the door to let us in and asked me “What the eff are you doing here?” I know, I know, you hate me. I hate you too. Isn’t it great?

Richard was hilariously behind us; he was a full day behind us, actually, the last person still sanding. Adam and Trenton are also falling behind, because they both decided to stain their chairs before sealing, which takes more time. Adam screwed up and didn’t buy stain that would match the sealer Landon offered us, so he had to go buy sealer as well. Trenton bought “ebony” stain, got to school and opened it, and exclaimed “it’s black! I wanted ebony!”

We all started laughing. Yeah, ebony means black, Trenton.

So, the chairs have dried and are ready for assembly. David was far enough ahead of us that he was finished assembling within half an hour and left for a doctor’s appointment.

I messed up a few times. My biggest problem was that when I made the ill-informed decision to level out all the slats with the mitre, I cut them about a quarter inch too short and had a gap between them and the leg of the chair…

Went home. I couldn’t remember if I was on the roster for sailing or not, but the roster was so packed Chris was declining people, so I asked. Apparently I wasn’t, but I should have been… I told Chris I was free. Bah, I’d rather be at home anyway. I want to write.

I had some intentions of studying for the test the next day, but didn’t bother. I passed fine, like 74 out of 85 or something.

Fallen leaves, fallen leaves, on the ground…

Truth and Reconciliation day. I’d like to be out doing all the ceremonies, but of course I can’t be released from school. Andrei asks for a picture of me wearing an orange shirt, so I oblige.

As we all file into class, David declares “my kid is sick, I have to go home!” and leaves.

We were supposed to have the test first thing in the morning, but Landon changed his mind. “You guys don’t seem very spry.”

Spry. Sure. I suspect the real reason is because David just left and he didn’t want to run the test without all of us there.

We finish assembling our chairs. Eric seems to have screwed his up in some way that makes it impossible to finish, which is impressive. Mine’s not perfect but it was only for completion marks, so it didn’t need to be. The last step is to cut the seat back. The classic is a semi-circle, but a lot of the guys cut theirs to a point… cuz it’s easier, I guess? I can imagine them sitting down wrong and hurting themselves on it. I cut mine in the classic coffin shape cuz I love spooky things. Landon wanders by and calls it “slick” and a couple of the guys nearby copy it.

I ask Adam to drop me off at Tacotime for Taco Tuesday. An older gentleman asks if I’m a student, and then seems very interested when I say I’m a tradie. He buys my dinner and asks me to eat with his wife and him. Sure, why not? They used to live in Geraldton and he was the principal of the school; can’t shake the old instinct to keep up with what the kids are studying these days. He tells me 2 of his grandkids are going to university for computer sciences and he thinks my career path is smarter than theirs and they’ll regret it.

My order got mixed up with someone else’s. The guy was in such a rush he grabbed the wrong one; I tried to stop him, but he wasn’t listening. I’m sure he regrets it, because I got less than he did and I didn’t order hot sauce in the side.

Go home. Write more. Tuesday is my last free day for the week, so of course it flies by.

At 9:30 PM, Eli calls me. He broke his arm at work and is at the hospital, can I give him a ride? I want to remind him that taxis exist, but maybe they want him to be escorted home because he was sedated. I haul myself out to the hospital and help him into the car. I think the fact he called me for a ride first is sort of depressing, because we’re not really that close. I think.

“Why didn’t you call your buddy [the Vagabond]?” I ask.

“Oh, don’t start that.”

I’ll start whatever I damn well please. Every time someone does something particularly dumb in class, it reminds me that the Vagabond dragged his kid into the hall to sign him up, and the hall wouldn’t sign him. The Vagabond thinks the application test is too hard; I think his kid is an underachieving stoner who possibly didn’t even write the test because he didn’t want to be a carpenter but wouldn’t admit it.

Yay, Wednesday, it’s October! My favourite.

I ended up walking to school behind a man who was taking his German Sheppard on a walk. The dog kept turning around to look at me longingly. I was tempted to ask him if he could stop so I could pet it.

My bottle broke. It started cracking around the rim and I keep finding bits of glass in my drink, but I don’t have another and no money to buy a new one so I just make sure to avoid putting the lid back on so I’m not adding more glass to it.

More bookwork. Landon goes off on a tangent about the “Sand mafia”. True story; there’s a certain kind of sand used in construction to make concrete, and it’s… well, it’s not rare, but it is finite, in a sense. It’s also precious because it’s the kind of sand you find on the beach, desert sand doesn’t work. There’s been a lot of beaches in third world countries stripped overnight, because all you need to steal sand is a truck and a front loader. They think we might exhaust the supply of construction grade sand by 2050.

Y’know, I hesitate to talk too much about Landon because I don’t want this to become the Landon and Lucy show, but I do find him to be the most interesting person in the class because he makes no sense. He looks like he escaped from Sum41 or Tony Hawk; 2 full sleeves of tattoos extending across his shoulders and up his neck; those spacers in his ears that make it so you could pass a nickel through his earlobes; the mohawk/ fauxhawk, although most of the time that’s hidden under his ball cap; and the skinny jeans that aren’t on his hips but he’s engineered so they don’t slip below the hem of his shirt even when he bends over. And yes, tradies do usually look “alternative”, but he’s a little out to left field even for us.

Outside of that, his collection of interests is eclectic, although again I can’t throw stones in that department. He skateboards and plays guitar, but he also enjoys golfing for some reason, and often complains when the weather is nice that he’d rather be out on the green. He doesn’t want kids because ‘then he can buy more guitars’, but he also doesn’t seem to be harboring any great desire to be a musician, and even though he does live shows he never wants to talk about it.

But of course, what really ties it all together is body language. Cuz I can see all his little tells; not just the fact he’s always wearing a baseball cap, but the way he tilts his head down to shield himself from us. The way he speeds up his step as he approaches a door, as if he’s escaping from a zombie horde and not the hallway. How he narrows his eyes as he surveys the classroom, and the way they flick around the room if he’s on the phone, even if the room is empty, as if he’s concerned about being overheard. I recognize all these behaviors as my own; a man who’s anxious, not in the sense that he’s fearful, but that he’s weighed up all his options and decided this is the best course of action, but he still doesn’t like it.

‘Cause there is a lot of weight on him, whether or not anyone wants to acknowledge it. We have no other trainer, and there is a two year waiting list; if he walked off the job tomorrow, we are all royally screwed. If he has to fail anyone, whether or not he wants to, he will be hearing about it for a good long time at full volume, and that’s gotta suck when he probably has a ministry mandated quota. There’s other stories between the lines; how often he complains of losing time on the weekend because his buddies roped him into carpentry work for free. I laughed when Julie told me he needed to decompress between jobs, but I get it now. Not for the first time, I wonder why the hell he’s done this job for 7 years. What’s in it for him?

The pièce de résistance, naturally, is that he resists my attempts at prying. Not that I pry hard; because he always notices when I try to, and closes himself off immediately. I hesitate to test his boundaries when he’s the only teacher and I ought to stay in his good graces. But it is rare for someone to resist my attempts to get under their skin with such vigor, which of course just makes it all the more tempting.

How do I unravel you? What makes you tick?

I was wrong earlier when I said Landon was dumb. He’s actually really smart, he’s just so abrasive you don’t want to talk to him long enough to appreciate it.

When we’re doing some bookwork after lunch, David and Trenton start comparing answers. Landon tries politely to ask them to be quiet for the rest of us, hunched over at his desk looking tired, but they aren’t listening.

“Guys, it’s not a f*ckin’ group project.” I snarl. They both go quiet.

Landon sits up and says, “What Lucy said,” before staring at me for a minute. Surprised I stood up for him?

We can’t take our chairs home yet, he isn’t done marking them. Before he dismisses us for the day, he tells us to go home and think of ideas and measurements for a table we want to build. He refuses to give us any more information than that.

Paul picks me up from school so we can grab some OSB to fix Kevin’s shed. We stay and talk to David for a few minutes. David seems thrilled to have Paul’s attention; Paul seems annoyed. I don’t think Paul realizes David worships him a bit. David is the baby of the family. It also cracks me up because next to each other, you could be forgiven for thinking they are blood relatives and not in-laws, ’cause they look very alike.

First things’ first, to the grocery store. I’m not moving my car if I don’t have to.

After we grab the OSB, Paul wants to stop at TacoTime.

After we eat our tacos and drop the OSB off at Kevin’s house (he’s out sailing) we stop by a pawn shop. Paul’s looking for something. We leave without finding it.

After I sit down for a bit, I get to cooking. I don’t feel like it, but I’ve got nothing for lunch. I should have grabbed extra tacos.

I made bisque. I feel like soup; I’m very sick. The corticosteroid spray irritates my nose and I have the runs from the antibiotics. I also made a pie from the huge pile of pears Kevin gave me.

Thursday ends up being somewhat bollocks. I came in with some general ideas of what I wanted to do, because I expected Landon to throw us a curve ball, but I wasn’t expecting the curveball we got.

“You guys got some ideas for the tables you want to build?” His eyes glint with mischievous intentions.

We all make noises of assent.

“Good!” He comes around with a big grin and hands out a booklet to each of us. The booklet is titled “Castle Joint Table”.

No points for guessing that threw all my ideas in the bin.

Landon gave us most of the day to draw a plan for our tables, and he consented to letting us use our phones to look up inspiration. I dunno why he didn’t just hand this out the day before, except for some sadistic satisfaction at looking at our crestfallen faces. Like, I’m asking; is there some practical reason??

A bunch of the guys starting pissing and moaning that they’re not artists, blah blah, and I wasn’t thrilled with it either, but Landon’s been doing this for 7 years and if it’s between him and you, he’s probably the one who’s gonna be staying. So why argue? I quickly decided to go with the KISS option; Keep It Simple, Stupid. I opted to do a coffee table, so I could keep the length around 3 feet and the legs short, and picked a version of the table that highlights the castle joint since it’s the star of the show we’re being asked to put on. Pick the total length, and work backwards to figure out the size of each piece. I decided I wanted to stagger the boards for the tabletop to create a running bond pattern, my one concession to my own personal style.

Y’know, trade school is weird because, unlike regular school where you are all younger and less experienced than the teacher, some of us are actually older than Landon. Most of the guys in this class are in their early 20’s, but Richard is 35 and Adam is approaching 60 (although I’m not sure how old Landon is, I’m thinking 40’s). So it’s hard to remember Landon’s meant to be our superior and not our contemporary.

I kept my mouth shut and adjusted my rough drawings based on feedback I was overhearing from the other loudmouths, who seem to be trying to convince him to mark them down for talking back to him.

After about 4 hours, when I finally had a version I didn’t think he could pick apart, I went up to the front and showed him.

“You can’t do that tabletop.”

“Why not?”

“You won’t have time to glulam all those boards together.”

I dunno, I think I could. It takes our glue about an hour before you can pop the clamps off, so I could just do them back to back to back while I work on other things. Perhaps he’s just not used to someone who can plan and multitask.

Whatever, I’m not arguing with him like the rest of the cretins. I go back to my desk and pare it down until I still just barely have the running bond pattern. I’ve more than halved the number of glue joints I need to have, he can’t argue with that.

He looks it over for a very long time. Eventually he grabs a sticky note and writes “taper” on it. I’ve decided to taper the legs, to give it a bit of flow, but I wasn’t sure how to indicate that on the drawings. He also asks me to draw out the rails in details.

Easy. I go back to my desk, modify it as asked, and then set about making a nice version by tracing the patterns onto a larger piece of paper with a pen, so no smudge marks. As he walks by, he says, ‘Nice. Looks clean.”

I’m beaming. Me, David and Adam are the only ones who get our finished drafts ok’d the first day, and Adam’s taken a draft-making course so he’s cheating. When I take my pen version up to his desk for a final ok, he goes over it for a very long time in silence but eventually has to concede that it’s perfect.

Mitchell comes back to his desk, behind mine, dejected. “This was my nice one and he wrote all over it, so now I have to draw it all over again.”

I glance at the scribbles and then over to mine, with the sticky note stuck to the rough draft. Landon is being noticeably gentler with his criticism towards me than the others, but I am also one of the few who just quietly got on with my work instead of complaining. I think Landon is starting to ‘get’ me, if not understand me. We’ve reached some sort of begrudgingly respectful entente.

I walk out to the hallway and drop an F bomb on the way. As I come back out of the bathroom, Julie stops me, “I happened to catch a word that rhymes with trucking! There’s children in the building, you know, I already talked to Landon about it.”

Really, Julie? How am I supposed to know there’s kids in the building? This is our hall, if I can’t swear here what’s even the point? And tattling on me like I’m 5.

I go back in the classroom. “So I’m in trouble for swearing?”

He glances towards the hall, the whites of his eyes barely showing from under the brim of his cap. “Yeah, she always does this to me. Just ignore her.”

“Understood.”

Home again, home again. Adam drops me off like usual. I have time enough to make myself some Mr Noodles, then Kev shows up to drive me to an event we are attending. Ironically, I spent the day worried we’d be late because he usually is, but the event was at 6 and he picked me up at 5. We wandered around outside the venue for a bit, chatting, then the organizers noticed us and invited us inside.

The event was for “flint-knapping”, which is how you shape flint and stones like it into knives, arrowheads and the like, but it also turned into an impromptu archaeology course. Me and Kev went primarily because we are preppers and learning how to make a knife out of a rock seemed like “surviving the apocalypse” 101, although it has some practical everyday applications as well.

The first guy giving a lecture is from Woodlands Heritage, a company that performs archeological digs on jobsites before construction starts. As he talks, it reminds me that my parents said there’s no money in archeology. Couldn’t I work at a company like this? And they have a course at Lakehead. Options, options.

Some of it is stuff I knew already, like there’s nothing in the area older than 10’000 years besides the rocks. When the Laurentide ice sheet started retreating, it scraped everything down to the rocks, so there was nothing left here but bare rocks and the wind. Nonetheless, the indigenous people managed to ek out a life here. It seems, at first, they used to just visit here from the plains – interesting – and then around 6’000 to 500 years ago is called the Woodlands era, when there were tribes that lived locally. The Superior area is actually the site of the oldest known metal-smithing, older even than the stuff in Egypt and Mesopotamia. Since copper is so plentiful in the area you can literally find it lying on the ground, the paleoindigenous people would cold-hammer it into knifes and atlatl heads.

Then we go outside for an atlatl throwing lesson. I decline to participate; I’d rather pick the archaeologists brain. I do snap a photo of Kev.

I try to strike up a conversation with him – maybe he could use a carpenter for consultation – but he doesn’t really engage with me until he finally asks, “which high school are you attending?”

I burst out laughing. “I’m not from a high school, I’m 30.”

“Oh, gosh, my apologies!”

That explains why all the male scientists here aren’t responding to me! They think I’m just a pretty little girl, what a…. Christ. And people think being beautiful is some sort of advantage!

We are chased inside by a pitch-black thunderstorm moving in.

The next speaker is a diver. He takes us on a merry tour of all the local shipwrecks, of which there are a lot. Superior, freshwater inland sea that it is, is infamous for taking down even ocean-going ships, and never returning the dead. In the roughly 20 kilometers between here and the Sleeping Giant, the depth drops to more than 60 meters and there’s at least 12 shipwrecks. It makes me shudder to imagine us having our races over a gravesite. There’s a few “famous” ones; the Mary Ann tug, which is still missing. The Gunilda, a luxury yacht that ran aground when its American owner was too miserly to hire a local guide (keep in mind the yacht was so fancy it had gilding) and is one of the “best” shipwrecks to dive to in the world. He also mentions a documentary filmed on Michipicoten, in search of two minesweepers who were lost with all hands shortly after the second world war, which seems in poor taste because it’s sacred to the locals. They didn’t find the ships either. He informs us with a chuckle that the documentary filmmakers engineered an exciting moment of “finding” a shipwreck everyone knew was there already so there’s be something exciting in the film.

A brief lesson on pottery making in the area. Even back in the day, there were pottery “styles”, which is why they know the indigenous people who moved here were from the plains and not from southern Ontario. Then on to flint-knapping.

Turns out, where Lakehead is currently used to be a “quarry” for the locals to find rocks to shape. They would break the rocks into carriable pieces and take them by canoe back to where the main camp was, which was around Wild Goose/ Mackenzie area. The rock here isn’t strictly flint, more like yellow jasper.

That’s interesting. I live across the road, and walk to school through, a site that’s been a hub for thousands of years.

Then we gather around in a circle to practice knapping.

I pick a good rock and have a few nonstarters. Then I get it; it’s like whittling, you have to see the shape of the rock. Whack, whack, whack. Chunks of jasper fall off in wedges, perfectly shaped for cutting already.

Huh. I had no idea if I’d be good at it, but I’m glad. Kev struggles. It is a bit of a luck-based-mission. Not every rock can be shaped, so you have to know when to call it.

I decide to head home before the class is technically over. Kev used up all my spoons dragging me here early. I still have to get stuff organized before I can head to bed.

The lightning continues all night. I leave my curtains open to watch it and fall asleep to the flickering lights. The thunderbirds have come to visit; something significant is going to happen.

I sleep in Friday, a rare day where I turned off my alarm, rolled over and fell asleep again. I have no choice but to drive myself in. Richard is the first one there, like usual.

“Hey Richard, could you drop me off and pick me up?” I ask, having a lightbulb.

“Sure, I can do that! Where from?”

I give him a location that I know is on the way to and from his place to here. There’s no point in him trying to make that left turn into my place when I can easily walk across the street.

“What’s your plan for the weekend, Landon?” Richard asks, once we’re all settled in class.

“Got a set tomorrow at Nortenos.”

“Really? When? What band?” We all chirp.

He goes a little pale as he seems to suddenly realize that actually, no, he doesn’t want to tell us or we might show up, and mumbles some unclear answer before changing the topic.

I text Kevin on a whim and ask him which band it is, since he knows every local band or how to find them. He hasn’t actually heard them play, but he finds Landon’s band easily enough.

Hmm… Do I want to go? At first, the idea is silly; for starters, I hate live music. Audio mixing is hit or miss, I can’t control the volume or the setlist, there’s drunk people everywhere, the list goes on. I also have no idea what kind of music Landon plays and if I’ll like it. A medium intensity Google confirms they don’t seem to write or play original songs, so it’s all covers and who knows what kind of mix that will be. I wasn’t impressed by Nortenos the last time I was there, but then that’s just kind of the scene; you don’t go to downtown PA at 10 on a Saturday evening for quality food, you go to suck back cheap beer while the band screams at you thru the speakers.

I notice all the promo art for the band has the symbol for earth all over it…. you know, the one I have tattooed prominently on my arms? What a weird coincidence.

As the day crept on, the idea grew on me. Letting my hair down, getting a little drunk and messy, dancing to the band. I also can’t deny that’s it’s a little tempting to see what Landon is outside the classroom, because like me, he also seems to be constantly biting back incisive commentary, and the sarcasm that does squeak out is pretty erudite.

“Do you want to go to Nortenos?” I ask Kevin.

“Sure!”

Sounds like a plan.

Copying more lines.

Copying more lines.

Copying more lines.

David is the loudmouth again. He pushes back on our bookwork. When Landon starts to shut him down, David counters, “What if I could pass the Red Seal right now? Would I have to do the rest of my training?”

Shut up, David, before he fails you out of spite.

Landon glares at him for a minute, before spinning around and grabbing a stack of papers. Evidently he keeps practice tests in the room. He starts reading off questions, but David can’t get a single one right.

“There.” He turns around and tosses the practice test back on the shelf. “Now shut the f*ck up and do your work.”

David’s quiet for the rest of the morning.

Since I finished my plans the other day, I just doodle. I’ve been working on the tattoos the main character of my book will have.

Eventually he unleashes us into the shop to start working on our projects.

The wood we have to work with is bollocks. Yes, I knew it would be SPF 2 by 4’s, but this wood has clearly been used for something else because there’s screwholes in it. They’re not even decent quality; it’s framing quality. Good luck making something straight out of that!

Whatever. I grab a couple of pieces, cut them to size quick, and run over to the jointer before anyone else can. I’m willing to bet most of the guys will try to cut all their peices first and then joint them at the same time. I just need enough material to have something to work on while the lines winds itself down, and I’ll come out ahead.

My plan works out pretty well. By the time Landon calls us back into class, I have 2 legs done and 2 more in the clamps, and I’m technically ahead of everyone else in the class, including David. Landon walks by and nods in approval.

Trivia tonight! I go home to finish it up – I’ve been so busy – and realize that I forgot to get prizes! I run to Walmart in a panic. It’s Halloween trivia, so I grab a pumpkin and a bag of Halloween candy. There, done.

Trivia is quiet. Too quiet. Painfully quiet.

Only 3 people show up.

Crap.

One is a Thunder Bay local and the other two are visiting her from northern Saskatchewan. I resolve to give it 100%, like always, and I’m reward when I discover the man is a trivia nut. He knows as much on all the questions I’ve picked as I do, occasionally more, and he argues with me about the answers. His Tbay friend seems mortified, but I’m enjoying myself. Towards 8, a few of the regulars who come just for me show up, and some regular Howl customers show up and jump in because we make it look like so much fun. Yay!

Still, I feel like I’m ripping them off a bit, because they didn’t get the whole experience, and the way Kahoot weighs the answers means no one but the original 3 had any chance of winning. I change my next night to 8PM. Later than I want to be up, but this isn’t about me… entirely.

Towards the end, Kevin and Emily show up from sailing. Emily has to rush home, but Kevin stays and we order some food and chat about the week and sailing.

Next day is Chilly Buns!

Chilly Buns is so named because in theory, it’s cold out, but this weekend is insane. The breath of winter has gone and it’s 27 degrees for some reason! This is the race where you get to bring water guns aboard and fire at anyone who gets close to you, and then afterwards we all go to OnDeck and have chili.

Me and Emily take the bus down to the Marina and are there early. I wander off to help Kevin bring in the water guns from his car, and notice Richard skateboarding at the park. On the way back, he’s taken a seat. I stay behind to talk to him.

“Oh, hey Lucy.” He gestures. “Water guns?”

“Yes, Officer.” I giggle.

We talk for a bit. He asks if I’m going to Landon’s show.

“I was debating it.” I reply. “Are you going?”

“Yeah, I actually know that band already. The singer is pretty good. I didn’t realize Landon was in it!” Richard owns 4 guitars, although he isn’t currently in a band. I wonder if he knows Kevin, by reputation if nothing else.

I excuse myself to head out to the boat.

It’s a short race, just tooting around inside the break walls. Chris throws Doug on the main, like usual, so I’ll just yell at him.

At first, the water is glass and everyone starts discussing the spinnaker, but I spot a wind line coming in. I point, “Wait for that gust.”

My hunch was correct. While every other boat is busy switching their jibs for spins, the gust grabs us and throws us way ahead of the rest. It occurs to me that even if I’m not on the main, I can still grab the ropes from Doug and make him do what I want, so I do. By the end of the first leg, we’re so far ahead of the rest of the boats it’s not even a race anymore. We win handily and have to wait around the finish line to record everyone else’s times.

Hah! We won! AirAura on top!

The mood is jubilant! Chris wants to take the boat to the drydock already, so we motor over to Mission Island. All of us crack a cold one on the way there; we won, consequences are for losers! Halfway there, the waves are too much and Chris turns on the engine and autopilot instead.

The party continues at the dock, until someone texts Chris to inform him the winners of the race are still missing from OnDeck. We all pile into cars and head out.

There’s not a lot of chili left and everyone is several beers deep. Holly is there, but she won’t come say hi because Emily is there. God I hate drama.

“What’s your plan for tonight?” Marissa asks me.

“I’m thinking of hitting Nortenos. There’s a band I want to see.”

“Oh, cool. You know, I haven’t been to a bar to hang out in ages.” Marissa works at a bar, so most Saturdays are a work night and then she doesn’t want to go out drinking afterwards, for obvious reasons. “Can I come?”

“Sure!”

Well, I’m locked in now.

We all head out around 6:30 and agree to be at Nortenos by 9:30, to grab good seats.

Emily agrees to come as well, but the trouble starts once we get home. Hanuman is mad at her for staying out so late. I try not to overhear, but the sound of tears is unmistakable.

I kinda regret coming home now.

Kevin’s on the fence about coming out, now. He’s tired. But I don’t want to be here. I run out to grab the bus, but miss it and start walking. Halfway down the road, I give up and call him to ask for a ride. I don’t want to go home.

As we enter Nortenos, Kevin leaves it to me to decide where to sit. Uh oh! There’s lots of seating near the front, but I’m still undecided what I think Landon will think of me showing up and opt for a less than ideal seat at the back. Marissa shows up shortly after and we get a pitcher of margaritas and nachoes. The nachos were fine – there was too much salsa – and the margaritas were more like lime-flavoured water with some tequila thrown in, but it was alcohol so who cares.

As they start to prepare for the show, a crew of 4 bouncers start manning the door. Good thing we got here early; no cover for us! Then the lights in the bar dim and I realize to my horror that we are perfectly illuminated by the red TACOS sign at the back, but I can’t see a better spot. Maybe he won’t notice.

I text Richard, cuz he still hasn’t showed up. If he’s here it’ll be less weird.

There’s a guy sitting with a dispenser behind us and a sign that says “toonie beer”. The spirit of the Apollo lives on. It makes sense; no point in occupying the bartender’s time when people just want a quick fix.

Then the band files up onto the stage. The singer is a woman in shorts, knee-high boots, and a big shawl. The drummer is indiscernible behind the drum set. The other guitarist and Landon look so alike at a distance, it’s hard to tell who is who at first. He’s wearing a backwards baseball cap, his jeans hanging off his butt like always, and a sleeveless shirt with the armholes cut all the way down to the level of his navel, exposing his sleeve of tattoos and a fair amount of pec and abs. He’s also framed under a white stage light, directly opposite of where I am sitting, so my eyes naturally rest on him and his have to find me just as easily. Oops.

“That guy on the right is hot!” Marissa exclaims.

“That’s my teacher!” I protest.

“Ooooh, so he’s a carpenter. He’s got strong hands.” She giggles.

“I’m not discussing this with you.” I say, but my mind is already drifting in the wrong direction. She’s not wrong; Landon is very capable in the shop, and under the stage lights, dressed down a bit, he’s not… unattractive. “He’s also very married.”

“Oh, fair.” She agrees.

The band’s first song is No Doubt’s “It’s My Life”. I’m not wrong, the audio mix is horrendous; we can barely hear the singer’s voice, and she doesn’t have the vocal presence to carry over the sound of the drums and the guitars, although she is good. Good, but not great; I suspect Richard just thinks she’s hot. After the first song, they step off the stage for a few minutes so the audio engineer can try again. It’s a bit better… just a bit.

“What do you think of Landon’s guitar playing?” I ask Kevin.

I can’t tell if Kevin’s puzzled out that Landon irritates me, but he says, “What guitar? He’s holding a bass.” With a huge grin on.

Shots fired! I kinda figured that out, but I also don’t pretend to be an expert, guitar playing lessons notwithstanding. Generally speaking, the joke is that bass guitar requires less skill, and so career bassists have a reputation for not being very bright. We also both agree, the songs are technically good but feel soulless – they’re just kind of grinding away, hitting everything on time but there’s no feeling in it.

Fairness to Landon, he is a good player, and they tend to pick songs that mix in some higher skilled bass pieces. He also switches out guitars at points, so he probably can play lead guitar, he’s just opted not to today, for whatever reason.

The band’s setlist weaves all over the place; No Doubt, Nirvana’s ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’, Billy Idol’s ‘White Wedding’, but the last song they play before taking a break is Lady Gaga’s ‘Just Dance’. They do a good job converting it to their style. I text Richard again; he’s bailed on me.

Bathroom time. There’s a line of girls I imagine are waiting to fix their make-up, but John later points out they’re probably doing lines. The line goes fairly quicky. I’ve seen grosser bathroom stalls, but I can’t deny the places gives me the ick. I’m glad the nachos are gone cuz I feel like even washing my hands doesn’t get them clean.

John shows up and quickly downs a couple of beers. When he goes back for a third, Marissa leans over, “He’s hot! Is he single?”

“Oh, he is single. Want his number?” I ask mischievously.

I feel stupid, and contagious
Here we are now, entertain us

The band comes back up on the stage. Landon is now visibly glistening, the hat is nowhere to be seen and he whips his fringe to the beat and sings back-up now. He also pauses between sections – not songs – to grab drinks from a beer.

It occurs to me that Landon still has a bit of a serious cut on the middle finger of his fretting hand. You can’t play with a bandage on… is he just playing thru the pain and the blood dripping down the strings? Maybe that’s why he opted for bass today. I still find it curious; does he view this as his regular job and teaching as a steady back-up pay? He’s not in all the promotional images for the band, so I imagine he’s not a regular with them, but maybe he’s just camera shy. The group gels really well, but then a good musician should just read everyone else and blend in, like being part of a good chain.

Both Marissa and Kevin are yawning and disappear, leaving me with half the second pitcher of margaritas, a good buzz, a dangerous mood, and no desire to go home. John scoots his chair closer so we can hear each other over the music; the crowd has mostly left their seats so they can go mosh at the front.

“Is your friend single?” John asks.

“Oh, yes, and she already asked me for your number.” I say, with a wicked grin.

“She has? Give it to her, please!”

We talk a bit longer about other things. The alcohol starts doing its job. Maybe he notices me somewhat eating the eye candy, cause he comments, “The bass player is kinda cute, isn’t he?”

“Oh, shut up, that’s my teacher!” Good thing I’m sitting under a red light, so no one can tell I’m blushing.

“Oh yeah? I can go tell him for you, if you want.”

“No, no, he’s married.” I say, which I instantly realize is the wrong protest to make. Oh crap… “And it’ll make school super awkward.” Hmm, not doing any better.

He is kinda hot, though. And smart. A bunch of girls dancing next to the stage shriek with delight as he steps up to the front and sings at them, baring his teeth in a feral grin, soaking up the energy. What it is about carpenters and animal magnetism? We all seem to be barely a step down from vampires in terms of sexual allure and dangerous vibes.

“He’s checking you out, too, eh?”

“He is not.” Who could tell from back there?

“You are hot, you know, that dress is great on you.”

I snort. “James was right, you are a player.”

“No I’m not!” He protests with a laugh. “I’ve only slept with, like, 6 girls.”

“Oh, you really aught to stay away from me, then. I’ll corrupt you.”

“Really? What’s your body count?”

I’m too drunk to count. 15? 20? Way more than 6, that’s for sure. The pitcher is empty and he offers to buy me another drink. It’s almost 1 and I’m way past when I should be in bed, but I’m enjoying being loose. I’ve spent the last 6 weeks being a good girl and it’s nice to let my hair down. I accept the other drink, which is a Long Island iced tea, my favourite.

“Want to come back to my place?” John offers.

Yes and no. Yes I want to, but I should go home and sleep because I foolishly agreed to be at the boat by 8:30 AM for the tear down. Also, since Marissa has expressed interest, I’m unsure if this falls under the technical definition of “sisters before misters”.

The set ends some time between 1:30 and 2 and everyone starts filing out of the bar. Me and John hit the bathroom one last time – Uber is a little busy right now. Landon awkwardly shuffles past us in the narrow hall as he’s taking his stuff down off the stage. If he didn’t know I was here before, he does now. But he says nothing.

“There’s still time.” John says to me.

“No, don’t tell him!” I giggle, too loudly.

A moment later, Landon scoots by us again. Oops, I hope he didn’t hear. Or didn’t know what he heard was about him. Or maybe it doesn’t matter cause nothing is going to happen and sexual tension is just a background noise in my life.

I realize part of what draws people to me. There is something intoxicating about unbuttoning someone who is usually pretty buttoned up. I can’t really say I’m attracted to him so much as I’m attracted to the idea of unravelling him to see what makes him tick. Why he’s so rude and abrasive.

We finally get a ride. John orders the Uber to my place and we talk outside for a long minute as I debate emailing Chris an excuse for why I can’t be at the boat tomorrow and blowing off all my responsibilities.

You’re in time for the show,
You’re the one that I need, I’m the one that you loathe,
You can watch me corrode, like a beast in repose,
‘Cause I love all the poison, away with the boys in the band

---

John walks home alone.

Guess I’m not that bad after all.