The Last Season by Roy MacGregor

Author:Roy MacGregor [MacGregor, Roy]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: General Fiction
ISBN: 9781459706866
Publisher: Dundurn
Published: 1983-01-01T05:00:00+00:00

She wants to talk.

How many times have I been through this same idiocy? She wants to talk. Talk, in all the years of Batterinski’s experience, has yet to solve a single goddamn thing. Talk I can do without.

But she wants to talk. She says we have to talk.

Why can’t people just screw until they solve things?

It is Sunday and I am no longer Batterinski, I am Christ, walking on water. We are approaching Helsinki from the sea, walking; fortunately, the harbour has frozen solid. When I breathe in too fast my nostrils solder together and my lungs cringe. I love it.

The walk, that is, not the talk. We met at the market, walked up through the Kaivopuisto hills and down onto the ice off the island fortress, then on toward the harbour. The conversation seems to have raced ahead of us, all sorts of meaningless talk of Tsar Nicholas and hot baths and armed Russians at the city gates, but I have not even bothered to chase it. My mind is caught between leather and wool, aware only of the life in the small mitt I hold in my glove. Kristiina has a ski jacket so white she stands out startlingly even in the new snow. She has her Lapland toque on, reds and yellows like an electrical circuit, and carries a birch sucker with yellow and pink dyed ostrich plumes dancing from the tip, a purchase she forced on me in the market.

The mitten loosens in my hand. It is time, obviously. She pulls it free and pretends to adjust the ostrich plumes, an unnecessary act for the plumes but necessary for her tactic. She steps away just enough.

“I think you did not have any reason to embarrass me in front of one of my friends,” she says at a reasonable level.

“I thought I was your friend,” I say unreasonably.

“Jorma was very good about it I thought,” she says. “He behaved admirably where you did not. Why did you just jump up and leave?”

“I had a practice next morning.”

“You could have said good night.”

“I forgot.”

Her mouth curls into a frown. “He is a good friend of mine and I would appreciate you treating him this way. Do you understand?”

“How good a friend?”

“A good friend. Why — are you jealous?” She smiles.

“Should I be?”

“No. You should not be. My friends are my choice, not yours.”

“Ever sleep with him?”

She stops, turns. “What?”

“Did you ever sleep with him?”

“Why would you ask something like that?”

“I want to know.”

“It is not for you to know, I think.”

“So — then you have.”

“I did not say that. What if I have, as you say, ‘slept’ with him? What difference does that make?”

“A big difference.”

“What difference, please?”

If she were only in hockey uniform I would hit. But I am helpless here. Talk — always goddamn talk. She should know the difference without having to ask. She should feel the same things as me.

“Please, Bats, what difference would it make?” she laughs, but not with amusement. “You don’t own me, you know.

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