The Selected Short Fiction of Lisa Moore (2 page)

The Dollar Store had been full of grey-skinned people who looked poor and they were combing the rows for tinned beans with pork and packages of crackers and sardines from Russia with an iron key glued to the side and the key had a little hole that fit a flange of metal that you could twist to open the tin and one old man who had fingerless gloves had done just that, right in the middle of the store, and had lifted a slimy silver fish from the oils and juices in the can that made his fingers gleam and it dripped into his beard and one drop hit the fibres of his herringbone coat and sat there solid as a jewel. The old man tilted his head back and his hands had a tremor and he dropped the jiggling fish into his open mouth and, noticing Laurie stare, her mouth opening involuntarily as his did, he held the tin out to her and she decided what the hell and dug a little fish out for herself. It mushed in her fingers and she caught it on the side of her hand and it was smoked and it had eyes and there was the fibrous bone or fin that had a hairy texture and subtle crunch and she thanked him with all she had in her.

Go ahead, he said. Take, take. He held out the little tin. She helped herself again.

There were chocolate Santas with marshmallow filling at the Dollar Store, and chocolates in gold foil stamped to look like ancient coins, and cap guns and extra cartridges of caps, sold separately, which made Laurie think about that smell of smoke and phosphorus that hung in the air over a cap gun when she was a kid and how it smarted a tiny nerve in the back of her nose and the sharp crack of the gun and sometimes super-white threads of light that escaped through hairline fissures in the body of the metal pistol and the round burnt hole in the coiled paper that curled out of the top of the gun where before there had been row upon row of perfect red dots of gun powder and Silly Putty and Crazy String that wiggled out of aerosol cans, glitter glue, pipe cleaners, Popsicle sticks, candy necklaces, rocket candy, lollipops with bubblegum centres, jewels with peel-off adhesive backing, and a herd of life-size plastic reindeer that galloped across the top shelves, shelves covered in cotton batting embedded with opalescent sparkles, one reindeer glancing back over his shoulder as if something menacing were coming from behind, Christmas crackers, envelopes of tinsel, mini-lights, and wind-up snow globes that tinkled out “O Holy Night.”

Laurie had bought a red yo-yo that flashed with sparks as it rolled down and shot back up, for Seraphim, who had just arrived from Sudan, and who was eight and whose sisters Chastity, Purity, Hope, and Lorraine all lived in the apartment across from Laurie. And for their mother, Elizabeth, who was in hospital being treated for cancer, Laurie had picked up Santa and Mrs. Claus salt and pepper shakers which turned out to be $4.50, not a dollar, and, also for Seraphim — whom Laurie had first seen coming down the street at dusk in a snowfall trying to catch the snowflakes on her tongue, her first snowfall Laurie was told when she asked. Really, your first? Yes. The first time you've ever seen snow? Yes. You've never seen it before now? Ever? Except on tv, I never. And what do you think? I think it's amazing. Flakes swirling under a streetlamp substantial as tissue, each snowflake, who had walked or been carried — Seraphim — through at least three war-torn countries before getting to Canada and who knew all the prime ministers and the provinces and their capitals and had become a citizen and whose whole village had been murdered the day after her family got out — a rhinestone bracelet that she had tried on herself and that winked and shot out needles of light but pinched the skin on the inside of her wrist.

And Laurie bought a package of Heroes of War playing cards (featuring George Bush, Condoleezza Rice, Dick Cheney, Colin Powell, Tony Blair, Donald Rumsfeld, with Osama Bin Laden and Saddam Hussein as the Jokers) for her nephew Wallace, who was twelve.

Wallace also collected trolls, the rubber dolls with big tufts of pink hair that became a fad in the early '80s, but a woman in a green polyester uniform and a Christmas corsage with a pricing gun that ka-chunked out orange stickers and who was down on one knee in front of a wall of merchandise said the trolls were out of stock. There had been a rush on trolls that nobody could have foreseen, she'd said.

Laurie had just come from the day's first audition — job interview, really — which required the successful applicant to dress as an elf who would toil in Santa's workshop/on-site photo studio. She had employed, that morning, what she understood of the Stanislavski acting method, which they had covered in her first semester — a method that required rigorous self-analysis and reflection, a method that understood acting as an art that demanded an inside-out approach to character exploration.

Laurie had tried to brush her teeth as though they were the teeth of an elf. She imagined them ultra-white and pointy, like a tiger shark's, a set of which her ex-boyfriend's parents had brought back for her from a trip to Mexico. The whole jaw, connected by stiffened cartilage, smelled faintly of ammonia and rot, and what the hell kind of gift was that? She'd found herself foaming at the mouth, toothbrush held in the air in front of the mirror. Her face appeared to be equal parts jilted lover and zealous Christmas elf. She remembered that the thinking had changed on Stanislavski and he was considered outdated. It was better now, her teachers felt, to stick to the surface of your character and to forget all the furrowing into the murky psychological make-up of an elf or whatever.

What makes you think you're the right person for this job, the interviewer in Santa's workshop had asked.

I am a trained actress, Laurie said. I almost have my degree.

Says here “waitress,” the guy said. He gave her resumé a little snap so it stood up straight in his hand. What happened to that job?

I put a red thong in the wash with my waitressing blouses by accident and they came out pink and the owner took me off the schedule, she said. The guy looked up from the resumé and ran his eyes all over her. She cocked her hip and folded her arms and drummed the toe of her boot on the tiles.

Basically you have to dress up as an elf and push a button on the camera when the kid climbs onto Santa's lap, he said. Think you can handle that?

Will I have to stay in character for the whole shift, she asked. They were standing in front of a cordoned AstroTurf stage near the escalators with a revolving Christmas tree and presents and a workshop with icicles hanging from the eaves and a big red velvet throne blinking with strings of led lights and there was already a long line of parents and kids in fancy clothes, one mother spit-cleaning pizza sauce off a chin. There was a camera on a tripod. The Santa had bifocals smeared with fingerprints and he was inquiring about a smoke break.

So I just push the button, Laurie asked. I think I can do that. She smiled at the interviewer and imagined her pointy white teeth.

We'll give you a shout, he said.

The text had arrived before she exited the mall. It said that while she had appeared confident and knowledgeable during the interview process and had scored high in terms of appearance and attitude, the successful applicant had scored even higher by half a point. The text offered her warm wishes for a happy season. There was an animated emoticon of a tiny snowman with a candy cane yanking him off stage.

Edward White of the Talent Hunters office was her second audition of the day and her final hope. He opened the office door and looked past Basil and Laurie down the long empty corridor.

Nobody else, Edward White asked.

Just us, Laurie said.

Okay, he said. I'll see both of you at the same time.

They followed him through an office with a single desk, the side of which had been kicked in. On top of the damaged desk was a cardboard box with a dust-coated plastic poinsettia and a keyboard and coffee maker without the carafe or the plastic basket for the filter. The basket had been flung across the office and the soggy, recycled brown paper filter, half full of coffee grounds, had spilled onto the indoor-outdoor carpeting near the baseboard and there was a brown runny stain down the wood paneling where the filter had smashed against the wall.

Edward White saw Laurie glance at the stain and said: My secretary has stepped out on me.

Laurie and Basil sat in two chairs in front of the desk and Edward White sat behind it.

So, let's start with you, Basil, Edward White said. Basil was a cowboy from Edmonton, it turned out. Basil had little to say during the interview except that he had watched nine horses die while driving a herd of two hundred to a rodeo in the centre of the city.

They had fallen over a bridge, he said. Spooked by a train. Wild broncos, the last of their kind. That's why I come looking for a different kind of employment.

Acting is a vocation, Laurie said. You don't say to yourself, I know, think I'll try acting now. You have to be born to it.

The men shifted uncomfortably.

Suggestive, Edward said. Suggestive is okay. He was talking about how they would be with each other in the glass box. How they should behave. He was providing direction.

There's no room for lewdness, he said. That isn't the sort of vacation we're selling. You'll want to appear Christmasy. Please don't tip back on the chair.

Basil had been tipping back on his chair. He brought the front legs down on the floor with a little snap.

These were animals, Basil said. You see a horse with his eyes so wild with fright they roll up in his head. All you see is the white of it. It affects you. You don't sleep. We'd brought tourists on the ride knew nothing about horses. It wasn't right.

Are you a horse whisperer, Laurie asked.

I'm a goddamn cowboy, Basil said. I speak with a volume appropriate for normal conversation.

Do you take steroids, Basil, Edward asked. Is that how your arms got that way? Basil glanced down at his arms. They seemed to be made of bowling balls.

I was born with these arms, Basil said. Edward flicked a pencil back and forth in the air so it appeared to waggle like rubber. Eyeing was a component of the interview. Edward White eyed Basil in an instant, and then he swivelled his chair a touch and eyed Laurie. A sizing up of all that Laurie was and could ever become.

I'll be straight with you, Edward White said. He threw down the pencil. Three days, $500 a day. New York and environs. We're selling Christmas vacation packages. You have to look like you're having fun.

Can we read a book, Laurie asked. People read books at the beach.

No you can't, Edward White said. Books aren't fun.

What's our motivation, Laurie asked. She had read that during job interviews it was good to turn the tables, ask a few questions of your own.

You're just kids having Christmas at the beach.

But are we travelling to find ourselves, or anything like that, Laurie asked. Is there a quest?

Fun, Edward White said. Can you do fun?

I can do fun, Laurie said, but she sounded dispirited.

That's the concept here. Fun is the concept.

There was a string of tissue-paper Christmas bells on the wood panelling behind him and the tape must have let go because one end dropped and swooped back and forth without Edward White's noticing it. Basil and Laurie glanced at each other. It seemed like they had the job.

You'll pick up Max, the third actor, just outside New York, Edward White said. I want you to wear these at all times. He tossed them red sequined Santa hats and little red sequined bathing suits that glowed like bonfires in their hands.

It turned out Max was a Mormon from Salt Lake City and his blond head was almost shaved so his skull appeared to be gilded.

Not really Mormon, he said. We're a splinter group. We broke off from those other guys. We have a different read on the Second Coming.

His bathing suit was a couple of sizes too small and showed everything. He used the evening hours to exercise while Basil and Laurie lay on the recliners and watched the fields of snow whip past, interrupted now and then by the silhouette of a farmhouse, or a Christmas tree in the distance, all the coloured lights twinkling in the frigid air, until the long empty stretches of blackness were broken up by small towns and then small cities.

I hear compliments about my back, Max said. He was looking at his reflection in the glass. Here and there a traffic light burned through, red on his shoulder, green on his thigh, and an office tower checkered him with sliding light.

They had woken near dawn on the third morning and they were on the outskirts of a town and crowds were preparing for a Christmas parade. Laurie thought she heard the jingling of bells. She had suffered from carsickness ever since the beginning of the trip and sometimes had to bang her fist against the glass to get the truck to stop so she could run outside and puke. But for the first time in three days she felt fine.

She had to press her nose to the glass and cup her hands around her face to see beyond their own reflections, the sandy beach and tropical sunset that lay itself over the snowy streets they were floating through. A flare of her breath steamed the Plexiglas wall.

Under the pearly lambency of a single streetlight she saw fifty or sixty Santas each holding a hand-bell. Some of them had cups of coffee and there was one in a wheelchair smoking a cigar. Several of the Santas were crowded around a hot dog stand. An army of toy soldiers in white tutus and red top hats with red and white pompoms were milling together, one or two tossing batons that turned end over end, silver splinters winking in the night and dropping down, and a couple of clowns with big red light bulbs on their noses were talking to a reindeer. Just as quickly the crowds were swallowed up in swirling snow and gone.

Then out of black, frozen nothingness between one streetlight and the next: a single man in a Santa suit on a unicycle. The wheel lurched and zigzagged violently under him. His eyes were cast heavenward and Laurie saw with astonishment that he was juggling oranges. She could not count how many, they were a blurred circle of motion with daubs of fierce orange like flames haloing his upturned face, and her own reflection slipped over him in the glass or passed through him or he passed through her like a spirit and she slapped her hand against the wall as if to touch him but he was gone.