I looked at Jesus. He was looking at me. And my breasts. Looking right at them. Jesus was sitting there on the sundeck, looking at my breasts.

  What should I do? Say “Excuse me” and push them back into my kimono? Make a little joke of it? Look what the wind blew in, or something? Or should I say nothing? Just tuck them in as inconspicuously as possible? What do you say when a wind comes up and blows your kimono open and he sees your breasts?

  Now, there are ways and there are ways of exposing your breasts. I know a few things. I read books. And I’ve learned a lot from my cousin Millie. Millie’s the black sheep in the family. She left the Academy without graduating to become an artist’s model in Winnipeg. A dancer too. Anyway, Millie’s told me a few things about body exposure. She says, for instance, that when an artist wants to draw his model he has her either completely nude and stretching and bending in various positions so he can sketch her from different angles. Or he drapes her with cloth, satin usually. He covers one portion of the body with the material and leaves the rest exposed. But he does so in a graceful manner, draping the cloth over her stomach or ankle. Never over the breasts. So I realized that my appearance right then wasn’t actually pleasing, either aesthetically or erotically – from Millie’s point of view. My breasts were just sticking out from the top of my old kimono. And for some reason that I certainly can’t explain, even to this day, I did nothing about it. I just sat there.

  Jesus must have recognized my confusion, because right then he said, quite sincerely I thought, “You have nice breasts.”

  “Thanks,” I said. I didn’t know what else to say, so I asked him if he’d like more wine.

  “Yes, I would,” he said, and I left to refill the glass. When I returned he was watching the magpie swishing about in the tall weeds of the quarry. I sat down and watched with him.

  Then I got a very, very peculiar sensation. I know it was just an illusion, but it was so strong it scared me. It’s hard to explain because nothing like it had ever happened to me before. The magpie began to float toward Jesus. I saw it fluttering toward him in the air as if some vacuum were sucking it in. When it reached him, it flapped about on his chest, which was bare now because the top of his robe had slipped down. It nibbled at his little brown nipples and squawked and disappeared. For all the world, it seemed to disappear right into his pores. Then the same thing happened with a rock. A rock floating up from the quarry and landing on the breast of Jesus, melting into his skin. It was very strange, let me tell you, Jesus and I sitting there together with that happening. It made me dizzy, so I closed my eyes.

  I saw the women in a public bath in Tokyo. Black-haired women and children. Some were squatting by faucets that lined a wall. They were running hot water into their basins, washing themselves with white cloths, rubbing each other’s backs with the soapy washcloths, then emptying their basins and filling them again, pouring clean water over their bodies for the rinse. Water and suds swirled about on the tiled floor. Others were sitting in the hot pool on the far side. Soaking themselves in the steamy water as they jabbered away to one another. Then I saw her. The woman without the breasts. She was squatting by a faucet near the door. The oldest woman I’ve ever seen. The thinnest woman I’ve ever witnessed. Skin and bones. Literally. Just skin and bones. She bowed and smiled at everyone who entered. She had three teeth. When she hunched over her basin, I saw the little creases of skin where her breasts had been. When she stood up the wrinkles disappeared In their place were two shallow caves. Even the nipples seemed to have disappeared into the small brown caves of her breasts.

  I opened my eyes and looked at Jesus. Fortunately, everything had stopped floating.

  “Have you ever been to Japan?” I asked.

  “Yes,” he said, “a few times.”

  I paid no attention to his answer but went on telling him about Japan as if he’d never been there. I couldn’t seem to stop talking about that old woman and her breasts.

  “You should have seen her,” I said. “She wasn’t flat-chested like some women even here in Moose Jaw. It wasn’t like that at all. Her breasts weren’t just flat. They were caved in, as if the flesh had sunk right there. Have you ever seen breasts like that before?”

  Jesus’s eyes were getting darker. He seemed to have sunk farther down into his chair.

  “Japanese women have smaller breasts to begin with, usually,” he said.

  But he’d misunderstood me. It wasn’t just her breasts that held me. It was her jaws, teeth, neck, ankles, heels. Not just her breasts. I said nothing for a while. Jesus, too, was not talking.

  Finally I asked, “Well, what do you think of breasts like that?”

  I knew immediately that I’d asked the wrong question. If you want personal and specific answers, you ask personal and specific questions. It’s as simple as that. I should have asked him, for instance, what he thought of them from a sexual point of view. If he were a lover, let’s say, would he like to hold such breasts in his hand and play on them with his teeth and finger? Would he now? The woman, brown and shiny, was bending over her basin. Tiny bubbles of soap drifted from the creases of her chest down to her navel. Hold them. Ha.

  Or I could have asked for some kind of aesthetic opinion. If he were an artist, a sculptor, let’s say, would he travel to Italy and spend weeks excavating the best marble from the hills near Florence, and then would he stay up night and day in his studio, without eating or bathing, and with matted hair and glazed eyes, chisel out those little creases from his great stone slab?

  Or if he were a curator in a large museum in Paris, would he place these wrinkles on a silver pedestal in the centre of the foyer?

  Or if he were a patron of the arts, would he attend the opening of this grand exhibition and stand in front of these white caves in his purple turtleneck, sipping champagne and nibbling on the little cracker with the shrimp in the middle, and would he turn to the one beside him, the one in the sleek black pants, and would he say to her, “Look, darling. Did you see this marvellous piece? Do you see how the artist has captured the very essence of the female form?”

  These are some of the things I could have said if I’d had my wits about me. But my wits certainly left me that day. All I did say, and I didn’t mean to – it just came out – was, “It’s not nice and I don’t like it.”

  I lifted my face, threw my head back, and let the wind blow on my neck and breasts. It was blowing harder again. I felt small grains of sand scrape against my skin.

  Jesus, lover of my soul, let me to thy bosom fly.

  While the nearer waters roll, while the tempest

  Still is nigh…

  When I looked at him again, his eyes were blacker still and his body had shrunk considerably. He looked almost like Jimmy that time in Prince Albert. Jimmy’s an old neighbour from Regina. On his twenty-seventh birthday, he joined a motorcycle gang. The Grim Reapers to be exact, and got into a lot of trouble. He ended up in maximum security in PA. One summer on a camping trip up north we stopped to see him – Fred and the kids and I. It wasn’t a good visit, by the way. If you’re going to visit inmates you should do it regularly. I realize this now. Anyway, that’s when his eyes looked black like that. But maybe he’d been smoking. It’s probably not the same thing. Jimmy Lebrun. He never did think it was funny when I’d call him a Midnight Raider instead of a Grim Reaper. People are sensitive about their names.

  Then Jesus finally answered. Everything seemed to take him a long time, even answering simple questions.

  But I’m not sure what he said because something so strange happened that whatever he did say was swept away. Right then the wind blew against my face, pulling my hair back. My kimono swirled about every which way, and I was swinging my arms in the air, like swimming. And there right below my eyes was the roof of our house. I was looking down on the top of the roof. I saw the row of shingles ripped loosed from the August hail storm. And I remember thinking, Fred hasn’t fixed those shingles yet. I’ll have to remind him when he gets home from work. If it rains again the back bedroom will get soaked. Before I knew it, I was circling over the sundeck, looking down on the top of Jesus’s head. Only I wasn’t. I was sitting in the canvas chair watching myself hover over his shoulders. Only it wasn’t me hovering. It was the old woman in Tokyo. I saw her grey hair twisting in the wind and her shiny little bum raised in the air, like a baby’s. Water was dripping from her chin and toes. And soap bubbles trailed from her elbows like tinsel. She was floating down toward his chest. Only it wasn’t her. It was me. I could taste bits of suds sticking to the corners of my mouth and feel the wind on my wet back and in the hollow caves of my breasts. I was smiling and bowing, and the wind was blowing in narrow wisps against my toothless gums. Then quickly, so quickly, like a flock of waxwings diving through snow into the branches of the poplar, I was splitting up into millions and millions of pieces and sinking in the tiny, tiny holes in his chest. It was like the magpie and the rock, like I had come apart into atoms or molecules, or whatever it is we really are.

  After that I was dizzy. I began to feel nauseated, there on my canvas chair. Jesus looked sick too. Sad and sick and lonesome. Oh, Christ, I thought, why are we sitting here on such a fine day pouring our sorrows into each other? I had to get up and walk around. I’d go into the kitchen and make some tea. I put the kettle on to boil. What on earth had gotten into me? Why had I spent this perfectly good morning talking about breasts? My one chance in a lifetime and I’d let it go. Why didn’t I have better control? Why was I always letting things get out of hand? Breasts. Why wasn’t it Lucille? Or Millie? You could talk about breasts all day if your name was Millie. But Gloria. Gloria. Glo-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-oria. I knew then why so many Glorias hang around bars, talking too loud, laughing shrilly at stupid jokes. Making sure everyone hears them laugh at the dirty jokes. They’re just trying to live down their name, that’s all. I brought out the cups and poured the tea. Everything was back to normal when I returned except that Jesus still looked desolate sitting there in my canvas chair. I handed him the tea and sat down beside him.

  Oh, Daddy. And Phillip Nicolai. Oh, Bernard of Clair-voux. Oh, Sacred Head Now Wounded. Go away for a little while and let us sit together quietly, here in this small space under the sun.

  I sipped the tea and watched his face. He looked so sorrowful I reached out and put my hand on his wrist. I sat there a long while, rubbing the little hairs on his wrist with my fingers. I couldn’t help it. After that he put his arm on my shoulder and his hand on the back of my neck, stoking the muscles there. It felt good. Whenever anything exciting or unusual happens to me, my neck is the first to feel it. It gets stiff and knotted up. Then I usually get a headache, and frequently I become nauseous. So it felt very good having my neck rubbed.

  I’ve never been able to handle sensation very well. I remember when I was in grade three and my folks took us to the Saskatoon Exhibition. We went to see the grandstand show – the battle of Wolfe and Montcalm on the Plains of Abraham. The stage was filled with Indians and pioneers and ladies in red, white and blue dresses, singing In Days of Yore from Britain’s Shore. It was very spectacular but too much for me. My stomach was upset and my neck ached. I had to keep my head on my mother’s lap the whole time, just opening my eyes once in a while so I wouldn’t miss everything.

  So, it felt really good having my neck stroked like that. I could almost feel the knots untying and my body becoming warmer and more restful. Jesus, too, seemed to be feeling better. His body was back to normal. His eyes looked natural again.

  Then, all of a sudden, he started to laugh. He held his hand on my neck and laughed out loud. I don’t know to this day what he was laughing about. There was nothing funny there at all. But hearing him made me laugh too. I couldn’t stop. He was laughing so hard he spilled the tea over this purple stole. When I saw that I laughed even harder I’d never thought of Jesus spilling his tea before. And when Jesus saw me laugh so hard and when he looked at my breasts shaking, he laughed harder still, till he wiped tears from his eyes.

  After that we just sat there. I don’t know how long. I know we watched the magpie carve black waves in the air above the rocks. And the rocks stiff and lovely among the swaying weeds. We watched the poplars twist and bend and rise again beyond the quarry. And then he had to leave.

  “Goodbye, Gloria Johnson,” he said, rising from his chair. “Thanks for the hospitality.”

  He leaned over and kissed me on my mouth. Then he flicked my nipple with his finger, and off he went. Down the hill, through the quarry, and into the prairie. I stood on the sundeck and watched. I watched until I could see him no longer, until he was only some dim and ancient star on the horizon.

  I went inside the house. Well, now, wasn’t that a nice visit? Wasn’t that something? I examined the clothes, dry and sour in the living room. I’d have to put them back in the wash, that’s all. I couldn’t stand the smell. I tucked my breasts back into my kimono and lugged the basket downstairs.

  That’s what happened to me in Moose Jaw in 1972. It was the main thing that happened to me that year.

  from

  KING LEARY

  PAUL QUARRINGTON

  The brothers of St. Alban the Martyr started putting together the boards. They were usually a quiet bunch, but they got even quieter, all of them rushing around with hammers in their hands and nails sticking out of their mouths. The only thing us lads heard from them was pounding out in the playing field, pounding and the occasional grunt. I personally thought the monks were crazy, and I’ll tell you why: they laid out the boards in a circle. A huge and, as far as I could tell, perfect circle. I even asked Brother Isaiah about it. He just grinned and fastened his strange eyes on my left shoulder. “Have ye not known?” he asked me. “Have ye not heard? It is he that sitteth upon the circle of the earth that bringeth the princes to nothing.” That’s the kind of answer I used to get from Brother Isaiah. So anyway, they laid out the boards in a circle, and around the beginning of December they raised them. The monks took the old horses off the cart. It took the horses and sometimes six or seven brothers to raise each section of board. The weather stayed pleasant for a week or two, the sun all biting and bright even though the trees were naked as firewood. We all waited; the monks prayed.

  On Christmas Eve the temperature fell about forty degrees. The brothers rushed out with buckets and hoses. They stayed out there all night, and to keep themselves amused they sang. They sang strange songs with words I didn’t understand. All night long the monks watered the world, and the winter air turned the water to ice. Blue-silver ice, hard as marble. On Christmas morning the round rink was ready. Brother Simon was out there skating, his face even uglier, reddened by lack of oxygen, his carbuncles polished by the stinging wind. For a huge, monstrous man he sure could dance out there on the ice! He had some figure-skating moves, dips and twirls, his arms raised slightly, the hockey stick acting as a balancing pole. And as I watched him, Brother Simon the Ugly became airborne. It seemed he was up there for a whole minute, and during that time he pirouetted lazily. This stunt robbed me of my breath and made my knees quiver… I said to myself, Leary, if you could do that, no one could ever stop you. It took me some months to learn to skate like Brother Andrew the Fireplug. I call it Bulldogging. Miles Renders, who is currently coaching the Toronto Maple Leafs, calls it “achievement through perseverance and mental imaging,” and I say that one of the reasons the Leafs are faring so poorly is that Renders would call Bulldogging something like that…

  One night, I couldn’t sleep. There was a full moon, and it filled the window across from my cot, and for some strange reason I could make out all the mountains and craters. The moon was a strange colour, too, a silver like a nickel had been flipped into the sky.

  Then I heard the sounds, the soft windy sweeping of hockey sticks across ice. At first I thought I was dreaming, but then I recalled that I never did dream to speak of. I moved across to the window, soft on my feet so as not to wake the other delinquents. The moon was so bright that I do believe I squinted up my eyes. I have never seen it like that since.

  I could see the rink, and I could see the shadows moving on it. The monks were playing a little midnight shinny. It quickened my heart. I threw on some clothes and flew outside.

  There were five of them. I watched from a distance at first. I couldn’t understand what sort of game they were playing. The action would move erratically within the circle, and sometimes the five would split so that three men would rush two, or four would rush one, and then sometimes the five of them would move in cahoots, the idea seeming to be to achieve a certain prettiness of passing. Then a man would break from the pack, and another man would chase him around the circle, and as quick as that happened they’d rejoin the three in the centre. There were no goal nets on the ice. Just five men, a puck, and a lot of moonlight. They played in silence. I moved closer.

  Simon the Ugly was the easiest to pick out, because he was the biggest. He was dancing, jumping into the air, and sometimes I could see his monstrous frame silhouetted against the trout-silver moon. Theodore the Slender cut a shadow so fine that it was hard to pick out, but I could tell him from the quick, precise movements of his twiggy arms as he took a shot. And Andrew the Fireplug, it was he who was likeliest to make a break for the boards, to drift like gun smoke around them. I watched him scoot off with the puck, and then I watched a man slip up easily behind Andrew and relieve him of the rubber. That was Isaiah the Blind. I could scarcely credit it. Playing goaler is one thing – I mean, at least Isaiah was standing still between the pipes, and you could always convince yourself that he was simply the luckiest son of a bee ever – but here he was skating around like a madman, stealing pucks, passing and receiving, and the moonlight was sitting on his dead eyes like it does on the still surface of a lake…