* * *
Her colleague only just has time to duck before the phone hits the wall.
* * *
The stranger lays a creased sheet of paper on the bar, a list of names. “Do you know these people?”
The old bar owner looks at the list without touching it. “Today’s lunch is meat, potatoes, and sauce. When you’ve finished, you’re welcome to leave in any direction of your own choosing.”
The stranger’s nose wrinkles. “Do you have a vegetarian option?”
Ramona swears and disappears into the kitchen. A microwave oven pings; she comes back and carelessly puts a plate down on the counter. Meat, potatoes, and sauce.
“I’m vegan,” the stranger says, as if it were perfectly natural and not something a normal person should ever have to apologize for.
“You’re what?” Ramona grunts.
“Vegan.”
“In that case we’ve got potatoes and sauce,” Ramona says. She picks up a knife and starts pulling the pieces of meat off and putting them down directly on the counter, like an irritated mother.
The stranger watches this process, then asks, “Is there cream in the sauce?”
Ramona finishes her beer, swears again, snatches up the plate, and vanishes into the kitchen again. She returns with a different plate, one that contains nothing but potatoes.
The stranger gives an unperturbed nod and starts to eat. Ramona looks on irritably for a while before putting a glass of beer down next to the plate. “On the house. You need to get some sort of nourishment inside you.”
“I don’t drink alcohol,” the stranger says.
“Nor do I, I’ve given up!” Ramona says, pouring herself another beer and hissing defensively, “This? Not even five percent alcohol! It’s practically milk!”
The stranger appears to ponder asking Ramona what sort of cows she gets her milk from but decides not to. Ramona pours two shots of whisky and downs one of them. The stranger doesn’t touch the other glass.
“It’s not for the alcohol. It’s good for the digestion,” Ramona declares.
When the stranger still doesn’t touch it, Ramona downs that one, too. Twice as good for the digestion. The stranger glances at the pennants and jerseys on the walls. “Have you always been this fond of hockey in this town?”
Ramona snorts. “We’re not ‘fond’ of hockey here. People in the big cities with their bloody popcorn and VIP boxes, they’re ‘fond’ of hockey. Then the next day they’re fond of something else. This isn’t a big city.”
The stranger doesn’t react. That frustrates Ramona, because she’s usually better at reading people. The stranger finishes eating and stands up, puts some money on the counter, tucks the list of names away in a pocket, and is halfway out of the door when Ramona bellows, “Why are there only men on that list?”
The stranger turns around. “Sorry?”
“If you’ve come to Beartown to ask about hockey, why have you only got men on that list of yours?”
“I haven’t. You were on the list as well.”
The door opens and closes. The stranger pushes past the men in black jackets outside. Ramona stays where she is, confused. It’s not a feeling she’s used to and certainly not one she likes.
8
When a Relationship Breaks Down
When he was younger, Benji was always running away from home once the trees had turned green, and he would walk for hours before climbing up into one of them. If the wind was coming from the town, he would scream as loudly as he could, roaring out everything that hurt. If the wind was coming from the other direction, he would sit still until it numbed his cheeks so much that he could no longer feel the tears.
It was his three older sisters who taught him to hunt. Not because they wanted to, but when their mom was working, the boy clearly couldn’t be left alone at home without causing all sorts of chaos. The only reliable thing about Benji has always been that he’s unreliable. But to everyone’s surprise, nature managed to get through to him where people failed. When someone learns to be in the forest as a child, it’s like gaining an extra language. The air talks here, and Benji understands. It’s mournful and wild.
His sisters were taught to hunt by their father, and Benji hated them for that, for being able to remember him. So when he met Kevin, it was the first time he had anything in his life that was his and his alone. In the summer they would disappear to their secret place, a small, overgrown island in a lake that not even the hunters went to. The boys could be themselves there. They swam naked and let themselves dry in the sun on the rocks, they fished for their supper and slept under the stars, sometimes not saying a word to each other for several days. The first summer they spent twenty-four hours there, but by the time they were teenagers, that had stretched to weeks, every moment until hockey training started again.
During the first years of their friendship Benji still wet the bed when he dreamed about his father. But never on the island. Once he’d rowed out and knocked a stake between the rocks and made the boat fast, the dreams couldn’t reach him there. Kevin meant everything to Benji. The best friends of our childhoods are the loves of our lives, and they break our hearts in worse ways.
Benji leads Ana and Maya to the tangled, overgrown shore. There’s no jetty in the lake, but he pulls out a rowboat hidden under the bushes and throws his backpack into it. Then he dives into the water and swims.
At first the girls don’t understand what they’re rowing toward; there are just some overgrown rocks in the middle of the lake, a few low trees, and from the water it doesn’t even look possible to go ashore. But Benji appears behind some big rocks and pulls the boat toward the island with water dripping from his arms and his bare feet pressed hard against the ground.
Ana finds some metal stakes in the backpack and uses the hammer Benji gave her to knock them into a crevice in the rocks and ties the boat fast. Maya gets out after her, and only then do the girls realize what they’re looking at. In the middle of the little island is a cleared rectangle in the grass, impossible to see from anywhere on the water, just large enough for a two-man tent.
“It’s a good place to hide,” Benji mumbles quietly, looking down at the ground.
“Why are you showing it to us?” Maya asks.
“I don’t need it anymore,” he says.
He’s lying, she can see that. For a fleeting moment he looks as though he’s about to admit it. But instead he points, almost shyly, and adds, “If you swim over there, you can’t be seen from the forest.”
Maya and Ana don’t ask who he used to share the island with. It’s theirs now. The best thing about nature is that it isn’t nostalgic; rocks and trees don’t give a damn about their previous owners. Benji walks toward the water, but just before he jumps from the rocks Maya calls after him, “Hey!”
He turns around. Her voice breaks. “I hope you’re one of the people who gets a happy ending, Benji.”
The young man nods quickly and turns away before she has a chance to realize how much that means to him. The young women stay on the island as he dives into the lake and swims away.
Ana follows his arms as they break the water, peering at the taut body as it climbs up into the forest on the other side. Mournful and wild. She bites her bottom lip happily. When Maya shoots her an accusing glare, Ana snaps, “What? I was just thinking . . . he didn’t have to go off right away, did he? I mean, he’s welcome to watch while I go for a swim . . .”
Maya taps her temple. “You’ve got serious mental problems.”
“What? Did you see his arms? All I’m saying is that he’s welcome to watch when . . .”
“Thanks! That’s enough! If you keep going on about it, you can’t stay on my island!”