Breadlosers
Weekends, holidays, I fold up the altar and pack the car, bring my cards to False Creek where the tourists pour through the market, seeking blown glass and crab legs, a taste of the local urbanity, perhaps a spiritual aperitif. This place smells like fish and ice and sweet peas. I set my stool outside the rear of the market where lost souls spool onto the dock, dizzied by artisanal charm and drawn to the smooth counsel of the bay. I wait here, low on a silk cushion, a deck of tarot on my altar and pebbles to keep them down. Genny left me six months ago. Her new man, an old guy, keeps a boat at this harbor. They come and go. Good days, I get a wave.
Today, I get nothing.
They’re out there somewhere, motoring around crowded waters. I watch from a distance, hoping to draw in a reading. I’m hopeful to a fault. That’s my curse. Genny’s curse is intelligence. She used to walk around the apartment in a sweatsuit, looking smart enough to kill a horse. She’d read standing up—magazines, paperbacks, horoscopes—and pace the rooms, humming out the words. I wish it never were, or it never wasn’t.
There’s no use. I make do with my curse and she makes do with hers.
A young man with crab shells in his beard stops to scatter bread for the seagulls.
“Excuse me,” I say. “I sense sorrow in your eyes. How about a reading?”
“How about fuck off.”
I sense anger in his lips but don’t push it. I’m a puller, a lover. I’m an understander. The man drops the crumbs and leaves. The birds fight for them, but there are too many fighters. Not enough bread. They turn and start to peck each other. There’s a metaphor here, but I’m too tired to seek it. One of the birds has a bad eye. It looks like it’s squinting and makes a run for the loaf.
Genny squinted when we watched TV from bed. I can’t peel her from my mind.
We met on a website that connects like-minded souls. My profile said that I believed in predestiny and Mother Earth. Genny believed in family and the universe as a life compass. The romantic algorithm determined that we made a strong spiritual match. She’s a wrinkle shy of a decade older than me. Some say I look adolescent. Once, when I ordered a bottle of wine at an upscale bistro, the waiter asked to see my ID. Genny told him to cut us a break, that I was celebrating graduation and I’d be legal in a few weeks. That’s an idea of her humor. And here’s an idea of her charm: The waiter winked and brought us the bottle. When I took the check, he wished me good luck in university and said the soufflé was on the house.
By then, university was a plaque on my wall, an unfond memory. I got a degree in business management but didn’t have the mind for it. All those credits and debits. I couldn’t keep score. Now I work as a receptionist at an accounting firm. When my coworkers talk taxes and bookkeeping, their words graze me like a language I listened to on tape. Sometimes, when they loiter around reception long enough, someone will turn to me and say, “You went to business school, Vernon. What do you think?”
“I’d say trust that gut of yours. The numbers don’t lie.” I say this though I don’t trust numbers myself. They’re too cold to know anything that counts.
Genny is a schoolteacher. She teaches English to kids whose favorite books are all movies. This city’s expensive. We pooled our paychecks to rent a studio with brick wall views. She used to call us both breadlosers.
I watch her sail around. An hour passes, maybe two, and I slog through a few readings. She doesn’t pay me any mind.
They say tarot finds you, but in my case, Genny played matchmaker. My first time in her apartment, I noticed a deck on her bookshelf. I flipped through the cards and found swords and specters, nymphs and goblets—a sort of pagan Arcadia. Here was a universe I could get behind, inhabited by lovers and magicians, fools and wands. I asked what kind of game this was. We sat on the floor with pillows and incense. Her apartment smelled like a matured version of her, the perfume of her future. When she leaned to spread the cards over the carpet, her hair fell over my knee.
“Pose a query,” she said.
I asked about my love life. I thought it would stimulate things. I’m someone who needs a spark in the bluntest way. Genny told me to close my eyes and select three. I peeked. She has incredible hair. It swept the floor. I wanted to stuff it down my throat or stick it in my pocket and carry it around like one of those rabbit’s feet.
I picked Reverse Star, Six of Cups, and Seven of Coins. “You’re coming from a place of hurt and heartbreak,” she told me. “Of something vanished. You’ve given yourself wholly to something that failed you, or perhaps you it. Now the pain is hardening, like paper mâché, but it’s still a little sticky. The future is hopeful. If you continue investing in love, it’ll eventually pay off.”
I studied the cards—pictures of peasants and flowers, a woman dumping water into a pond. A man raking a pile of leaves. “How do you see all of that?”
“I’m very intuitive.”
Her intuition was true enough. I’d had a few hot hearts in my days, love that was quick and sharp-clawed. I went for out-of-towners, out-of-leaguers, the unenthused.
We read her cards and got into a dialogue about exes. She had a talent for sniffing out exits. She’d been with a playwright, a Marine, and a retiree, to name a few. Her love life started in high school, but she didn’t go to bed with anyone until late university. Sex hadn’t intrigued her, she said. She’d figured anything that famous had to be cheap. Her college boyfriend was brainless and beautiful, and his sweetness had lasted two years. Later, she’d moved to Switzerland with the playwright, but she cheated on him with a ski instructor who held her hips and told her to lean into the edge. She should have married her military man, but she’d felt too young to settle. She still felt too young, she said, but the timer was ticking.
“Age is a state of mind,” I said.
“Tell that to my uterus.”
I got low and whispered. She hit me in the sternum.
“I’m too old for you,” she said.
“Our souls are peers.”
“You’re a baby,” she said. “Baby V.”
The question is not why I fell for her, but why she fell for me. Whenever I try to see myself from the outside, my insides revolt. I think we’re all allergic to ourselves, or maybe the problem is personal. I don’t mean to mope. I know my worth. I’m a good listener, I’m understanding, and my fingers have a thoughtful touch. Genny said all this herself, but when does all this become everything?
We messed around on the carpet a bit, cards stuck to skin.
Genny is short for Genevieve, which is German for “white wave.” When I picture those words now, I see the Seven of Cups: chalices floating in a puffy, rolling cloud—white waves in the sky. A shadowy spectator observes with wonder. The card is interpreted as overabundant imagination, wishful thinking, delusion, or in the reverse, dreams crumbled.
I need to get away. When I was with Genny, our idea of vacation was exploring spots around the apartment. We spent Labor Day with a picnic blanket over the rug and Thanksgiving fondling in the closet. On New Year’s Eve, we watched the tops of fireworks from the fire escape.
By evening at the harbor, most of the tourists are dining out, sucking down clam chowder and Riesling with views of False Creek. Genny is gone and it’s just a handful of us artists counting our earnings. The musicians pack up their obscure instruments, relics made from warped wood and copper. There’s a sword juggler here who gets a good circle going and a comedian whose same jokes get sadder every day. I’m fond of the Taiwanese man who plays old love songs on his guitar. He wears dark sunglasses and doesn’t say much, but there’s a lot of feeling behind those chords. I stop by to share the sunset, the lights over the bridge.
“Good day?” I ask.
“Very good.”
“Beautiful night.”
“Beautiful, yes.”
“How about a reading?” I say. “Simple three card spread. On me, amigo.”
He declines, the sun goes down, and he’s gone. The rest of the gang heads to a bar for happy hour. They look like a band of wandering minstrels, six centuries displaced. Their cheeriness gets me feeling wistful. I consult the tarot. Ought I join them for a drink? I pull the Ten of Swords. A man with ten sharp ones in his back lays horizontal, bleeding.
“Next time,” I call over. “Have a good one!”
The days are getting dark early. Summer’s leaning on fall. I pack up my goods and punish myself with a glance at Genny’s man’s boat. Vessels like that cost a fat ticket to moor. The upkeep is enough to keep me up at night. This guy renamed his boat after her. I watched the painter go down to the docks and scrape off the old letters. The new name is “White Wave.” You’re not supposed to rename a boat. It’s bad luck. I guess Genny’s new man doesn’t believe in luck, or maybe he’s so flush he can afford some of the bad stuff.
Genny gifted me my first deck of tarot. She showed up one day with the cards wrapped and bowed. We sat down and played, traded readings, and studied the cards for signs. I didn’t start playing alone until after my own queries started. We had been dating nearly a year, and she wanted a baby. I was hesitant—I was youngish and careerless—so I consulted the deck. I drew reversed Death, Two of Pentacles, Temperance. We ditched the plastic and pills, made our most naked love, but it didn’t take. After a while, we consulted a doctor, offered up blood and other fluids. When the results came in, the doctor called us back. She crossed her legs and called Genny’s eggs gorgeous. My sperm were the problem. There were options. The doctor handed us pamphlets full of them. “Donors,” she said. “Adoption.”
Genny said she needed time, though time was one of the issues. She moved out and went dark. She stopped taking my calls. That was her way of dealing. Mine was confronting the universe. I shuffled the deck, laid Celtic Cross, Horseshoe, and Planetary spreads. Results were muddy. I pulled more cards, dug deeper, sought clarity in the cosmos. I hammered the cards to the wall and studied each picture until they individuated, became little worlds, colliding and conversing. I looked for the good. I listened. When I ripped them off, the nails in the drywall looked like constellations. I searched those, too. Neighbors started complaining about the hammering, the cursing.
This is the worst part: I know what she was thinking that day in the doctor’s office. Her shoulders sank and her eyes fixed low. The doctor went on about my ruined sperm and I heard her think: What if this is a sign? What if we’re not supposed to be together?
She’ll be thirty-seven in March. I’m twenty-seven. Love’s a bigot.
Everyone at the harbor has a story. It’s part of the busker application. I was illegal for the first few weeks, before the Parks crew caught on and served me forms. I’m fighting my way back into their good books, but trust takes time, and now the city takes ten percent. For an emergency contact I put Genny’s name. So I sit around all day hoping for disaster.
An elderly woman wanders the pier, looking lost. I call her over and offer a reading. “My husband,” she says. “Say no more,” I tell her, and begin. I flip the Three of Wands and explain that wands are associated with the element of fire, that it’s a very spiritual suit, primal and energetic, even erotic, that this card in particular signifies progress and growth, new beginnings. Might she be mulling long-term plans or life changes, perhaps a vacation abroad? Maybe she’s rethinking retirement or expecting grandchildren? She tells me she’s looking for her second husband. He’d called and asked her to meet at the pier. They would’ve been married twenty-five years today. He was reconsidering things, he’d said, mistakes, regrets. She’s on to her third husband now—their anniversary is next month. But she can’t find her ex anywhere. She’s been wandering the docks for hours. Now she’s worried that she got the dates mixed up—that the anniversary with her second husband is next month and her third husband is today. She doesn’t know whether she’s sabotaging her future with the past, or the past with her future.
This does not look like a woman with a tangle of exes. She’s pushing eighty, a hundred.
“Tell me if you see him, will you?” she says. “Blonde hair, narrow eyes, beautiful legs.”
“Which one is that?”
“Both.”
When I get home, I pour a drink. The woman’s mess has me down. I defrost a bagel and finish a couple glasses of Tanqueray before giving Genny a call. I get her voicemail and leave a message. It’s senseless, a tangle of thought. I go off on the universe, signs and signals, intuition and fate.
I hang up. I slice the bagel, but the knife slips, slices into me. My fingertip rolls onto the cutting board. It takes a moment for the pain to arrive. Then the blood floods and leaks over my kitchen. I wrap the finger with a rag and elevate, place the tip in my pocket, and drive myself to emergency.
I wait in a room with the sick and the wounded. It’s the same hospital we attended for fertility, a few wards over. When it’s my turn, the doctor takes a look and asks me to rate my pain. “High,” I say. He prescribes some Percocet and tells me to lay low for a while. I show him the tip, but he tells me it’s not worth saving. He asks if I have someone who can drive me home. I drive myself.
Next week, I’m back at False Creek with altar and cards, a bandaged finger. Genny walks down the dock with her man. It’s late September and the days are getting crisp. Genny checks the lines and he raises the sails. I spend the afternoon reading cards and watching from a distance. She comes and goes, sitting over the bow, looking bored. I make a couple bucks, intuit what I can. Someone’s career is about to blossom, another is learning how to forgive. One lady asks for a refund. When the sun starts to set, the boat moors and Genny hops down the ladder. The old guy washes the hull while she walks toward my altar.
“Let’s hear about this future, V,” she says, and takes a seat. “Lay it on me.”
“You sure?”
“Why not?”
“Close your eyes and pick a hundred.”
We flip some cards, talk, and joke a little. She asks what happened to my finger. “Little home improvement accident. Fixing up the place.” She’s glad I’m keeping busy. I apologize for calling. It almost feels the same if you don’t count the burning in my throat or the hole in my gut. I’ll take what I can get. When she stands to leave, her tone changes. “We’re winterizing,” she says. “I won’t be back until spring. I don’t think you should come around anymore. This isn’t really healthy for anyone.”
Now that she’s standing, her stomach at eye level, I can see the bulge in her belly. Sometimes I need to stare at the facts to see them straight.
The old man brings the car and Genny gets in. I wait until they’re gone and head down to White Wave. I climb the ladder into the boat. It feels good, surrounded by dark wood and waxed floors. I can see why Genny’s happy here. I think about taking it for a spin, or maybe keying the side deck, but I’m no sailor, no vandal. I’m a nester, a preserver. The sun is gone. It’s growing dark and I’m tired. I pop a couple Percocet, lay low on the cabin floor and curl up, consider winterizing myself.
Miles Coleman’s (@milescoleman) fiction has appeared or is forthcoming in The Literary Review, Epiphany, Columbia Journal, and The Washington Square Review. He holds an MFA from Columbia University and lives in Deep Cove, BC with his wife and two daughters.