The Swells Read online

  Also by the Author

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  Terre Haute

  A Visit Home

  Realia

  Non-Fiction

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  Antigone Undone: Juliette Binoche, Anne Carson,

  Ivo van Hove, and the Art of Resistance

  Copyright © 2022 Will Aitken

  Published in Canada in 2022 and the USA in 2022 by House of Anansi Press Inc.

  www.houseofanansi.com

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

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  House of Anansi Press is a Global Certified Accessible™ (GCA by Benetech) publisher. The ebook version of this book meets stringent accessibility standards and is available to students and readers with print disabilities.

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  Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

  Title: The swells / Will Aitken.

  Names: Aitken, Will, 1949- author.

  Identifiers: Canadiana (print) 20210285141 | Canadiana (ebook) 2021028515X |

  ISBN 9781487009694 (softcover) | ISBN 9781487009700 (EPUB)

  Classification: LCC PS8551.I78 S94 2022 | DDC C813/.54—dc23

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  Book design: Alysia Shewchuk

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  House of Anansi Press respectfully acknowledges that the land on which we operate is the Traditional Territory of many Nations, including the Anishinabeg, the Wendat, and the Haudenosaunee. It is also the Treaty Lands of the Mississaugas of the Credit.

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  We acknowledge for their financial support of our publishing program the Canada Council for the Arts, the Ontario Arts Council, and the Government of Canada.

  For my dear pod, Sora Olah and Mike Tyrell,

  and for my mother, Helen Armstrong Aitken.

  At sea a fellow comes out.

  Salt water is like wine, in that respect.

  —Herman Melville

  Letter to Evert Duyckinck, 1857

  The giant manta ray’s shadow wafts across Briony’s menu as she sits alone at a table for two in the Entre deux eaux brasserie, a new seven-star underwater restaurant with sheer glass walls.

  She’s awaiting her main course — the lettuce gazpacho with brown crab and whey granita starter had been less than supernal — when her phone rings. Actually rings.

  What a catastrophe! She’s forgotten to turn it off, it rings so rarely. The first “Yeh-ay” of Tierra Whack’s “Only Child” ripples across the dining room to the dismay of all. She sees the maître d’s head bob up before she succeeds in muting the ring tone. “Sorry,” she mouths to him, but he’s already turned away in disdain.

  She knows who’s calling without even checking the display: Gemma! the only person she knows who still uses her phone for talking. Gemma! editor-in-chief of world-renowned Euphoria! magazine, where Briony’s employed as Luxury Travel Associate Editor. Gemma! whose lithium’s always going wonky. Gemma! sixty if she’s a day.

  “Briony, Briony, Briony! Where are you when I need you most?”

  She tells her even though Gemma knows perfectly well.

  “So much has happened here — volcanic! — you won’t believe.”

  “Oh?”

  “Amazing news, and I wanted you to be the first to know — why I’m reaching out to you.”

  Briony tenses. Last time Gemma reached out she got slapped. Figuratively.

  “Can you guess?”

  “No.”

  “The most wonderful thing.”

  “Yes?”

  “We’ve been sold!”

  “Sold what?”

  “Euphoria!’s been sold, you old silly.”

  “Oh?”

  “I told you we were looking for a buyer.”

  “No.”

  “I’m certain I did. But it’s been such an absolute flurry here I don’t know what I’ve babbled to whom. You remember the Macau twins?”

  “The macaw twins? Birds, Gemma?”

  “Macau. China, casinos, fabulously wealthy twins — so young! so sleek! so sharky! — looking to diversify their . . . their holdings and —”

  “Launder their money?”

  “Briony, you are such a card! Their offer, substantial if not quite generous — hard-headed, these boys — gives us a fresh new leash on life —”

  “Lease?” Briony offers.

  “No, same lease. No one’s talking about our lease, Briony. Listen up! The lease remains the same . . . for now. But Euphoria!, our dear old glossy Euphoria!, is no more.”

  “No?”

  “Long live the new Euphoria! We’re going online.”

  “We’re already online,” Briony says.

  “Yes, yes, of course we are. Everyone knows that. But the old, the old — what do you call it? — non-digital, old monaural bits of the magazine —”

  “Analog?”

  “Analog. Why I keep you around, good girl with the right word at the right — The analog bits are no more, the print issue dead as a doorknob.”

  “Mouse?”

  “Who mentioned mice? Certainly not I.”

  “Not at all, no.”

  “All this will, as you can imagine, entail some right-sizing in various departments. Dear plus-size Rayon in Style Supreme! — gone! Deandra in, er, Street Meats! was it? — gone!”

  “Street Smarts?”

  “And poor little Perry in Local Colour! — love him to bits — how does he get his hair to do that? — but the concept never really soared, did you think? Or did you?”

  Briony’s too busy contemplating her own probable demise to answer.

  “But you, you, you, Briony, you are moving up and out.”

  Up she likes, out — ouf. “Yes, Gemma?”

  “The whole luxury-travel section — what’s it called?”

  “Voyageur!”

  “Is over, qua section. Long reads as well — gone. Too slow. Boggy. Freelancers — over! Too dear. But just think: Jaunt! will be all Briony all the way.”

  “Jaunt?”

  “Briony, I can hear the skepticism in your voice, but ‘Voyageur!’ sounded too foreign, ‘Vagabond!’ too passé, and ‘Traipse!’ far too rustic, while ‘Jaunt!’ has that slight retro touch I adore, that cabriolet-with-wicker-picnic-basket-packed-with-Spode-in-the-boot cachet — so ineffably right!”

  “Mmm.”

  “And it will be entirely your turf to manage as you please.”

  “What about Annabella?”

  “Gone gone gone! I hated having to call security to escort her from the building. Not a good sport.”

  “No?”

  “With her out of the picture, you choose the topics, you do all the travel, you write all the copy. Well, less space as I indicated earlier, but all for you.”

  “I see.”

  “I expected more enthusiasm, Briony. More brio! Can’t you see how this will free you up? You’ll still be on contract, ça va sans dire, but like everyone else at your level — everyone who didn’t get the chop — your position will be unruminative.”

  “Unremunerated?”

  “Bingo! So right! You will quite naturally retain all your travel perks — unlimited free jaunting for Briony girl — and will be responsible for one piece per month — 500-word max and most preferable as listicle — for which Euphoria! will pay $200 USD, plus $75 for each photo, up to a limit of two. Of course we won’t need photos for this trip — we’ll snatch them off the webernet.”

  “Yes?”

  “You will also retain your membership at the Euphoria! Supper Club and Spa, here for you to use whenever you’re in Manhattan. We’ve waived the yearly dues for you — just because you are you — and a select few others, so you will pay only a token user’s fee each visit.”

  “Right.”

  “You see now, Briony, how everything changes and yet nothing really changes at all? You remain a cherished member of the Euphoria! family and begin this terrific new adventure with us with fewer responsibilities and more time — oodles, just oodles of it! — to explore and write and generally jaunt about. Think of the freedom this entails, the opportunities that will open up before you. Now is the right time to prioritize your future! When you’re back from —”

  Briony tells Gemma her present location once more.

  “Yes, yes. When you’re back, do drop by my office so we can wrinkle out the details of —”

  “Uh, winkle?”

  “Honestly, Briony, why would you bring up molluscs as a time like —”

  Briony blows into her phone, taps it twice with her fork and cries, “You’re breaking up, Ge —”

  She ends the call, opens the FlipItFast app. A few deft keystrokes and her Park Slope–adjacent studio’s on the market — furnished! She leaves her table just as the server brings in her John Dory smothered in nettles, radishes, and squid ink. Who has time to eat? She must pack.

  This is how Briony’s life of sumptuous new homelessness begins. She will now travel from gig to luxury travel gig, with only the designer togs in her luggage, paying nothing, earning le
ss, and never ever really setting down.

  Next morning she whisks out the revolving door — the tropical sun nails her to the Royal Morningwood Hotel’s scarlet runner.

  Mimi, the Emerald Tranquility’s PR flack, calls up from the open limo door: “Hurry, Briony, we’re going to be late.”

  Descending the wide marble stairs, Briony senses a stirring in the topiaries. “Careful, Miss!” the greatcoated doorman calls out. In a burst of blue-black hair and sparkling teeth, a street kid leaps out of the topiaries and bounds toward her, palm already outstretched. Briony’s about to give him her last few palagosi when the doorman pulls a wooden cosh from the inside pocket of his coat and clubs the boy mid-flight. Whoosh and soar crumple into rags, ribs, and tarry feet. The blood haloing his head darkens the runner from scarlet to aubergine.

  Briony makes to go to the boy, but the doorman clasps her elbow and propels her down the stairs and into the limo back seat, crushing Mimi against Gigot, the new young travel journalist from Paris, who’s pressed up against the tinted window, bronzer running.

  “That was close,” Mimi says.

  “We can’t just go.” Briony tries to re-open her door but the driver has locked them in. “Open this door!”

  “Calm down, Briony.” Mimi touches her shoulder. “You know better than to interfere in a local problem.”

  “We have to help him!”

  Mimi looks at her doubtfully. “This isn’t at all like you.”

  Gigot bestirs. “He will be all fine?”

  “He’s badly hurt.” Briony looks out the window.

  “Only unconscious,” Mimi notes. The limo begins to pull away.

  A phalanx of gardeners in picturesque conical hats advances through the topiaries. They lift the boy-shaped limpness and carry him not into the Royal Morningwood’s marbled lobby but down a nearby bleak laneway.

  “Where are they taking him?” Briony asks, frantic.

  “To a small free clinic run by nuns, probably.” Mimi rummages in her tote.

  “He will not die?” Gigot says, his face gone ashen.

  Mimi pats his tremulous hand. “Street kids — tough as old boots.” She taps out two gold capsules into his palm. “You poor kid. Hold these under your tongue till they dissolve.”

  “We have to go back!”

  “You should have a couple of these too, Briony.”

  “The poor homeless kid,” Briony cries.

  Mimi looks her in the eye. “I’d never have taken you for a sentimentalist.”

  ···

  Gold staff-pass flashing, Mimi ushers them through Her Imperial Majesty’s Royal Embarkation Hall and Eco Centre, a semi-conscious Gigot softly raving. Past regular passengers with fortresses of leather luggage stacked round their ankles, past guards brandishing assault rifles, past veiled women waving drug wands over passengers’ bodies.

  The jolly customs officer holds out a crystal bowl: “Please take mint.”

  He stamps Mimi’s American and Gigot’s French passports but pauses to study Briony’s navy blue one.

  “Canada!” he cries, “Dancing friend to the free world!”

  Mimi and Briony propel Gigot up the gangway. The Emerald Tranquility’s Atrium Lobby opens out before them — hectares of ormolu, gold fringe, bevelled mirrors, linenfold wainscotting, plushy Aubussons. Up on the mezzanine, an old man in a paisley bow tie plinks out “Slow Boat to China” on the glass grand piano.

  And everywhere the very aged perambulate, white-uniformed attendants following closely.

  “I may not have mentioned,” Mimi says to Briony, “the Emerald Tranquility appeals to a slightly older demographic.”

  A veteran of many cruises, Briony knows this — the pricier the ship, the older the clientele. She knows as well the Emerald Tranquility’s the richest ship afloat. “Lot of burials at sea?”

  Mimi giggles. “If only that were allowed. You can’t imagine the freezer space they take up.”

  A gong sounds at the top of the curving glass staircase. A small golden boy in a saffron robe cries out, “All hail His Great Holy Abundance, Little Butter!”

  A dozen similarly clad boys descend, waving joss sticks, clacking finger cymbals.

  A bald man of indeterminate age bowls forward, golden as the boys but less lissome, saffron robe draped to reveal one podgy shoulder.

  “Who the hell is Little Butter?” Briony asks too loudly.

  “Little Butter?” Mimi looks confused. “Oh Briony, Little Buddha!”

  “He’s a real Buddha?”

  “He’s cagey about that. His real name’s something else. Honestly, my memory . . . freezer time for old Mimi. Sounds like ‘shrimp cocktail.’ He claims his followers insist on calling him Buddha — oh yes, Praun Thalat.”

  He floats down the stairs as the golden boys weave in and out of his ambit, cymbals stuttering faster now, incense smoke billowing.

  “Little Buddha!” an ancient woman in an electric wheelchair calls out. Her coterie take it up. “Little Buddha!” an old fellow in an embroidered silk dressing gown cries. “Little Buddha!” a woman wearing a fingertip veil over ivory sunglasses sighs.

  Briony assumes he’s headed toward his adherents, but he plants himself directly before her and smiles a golden smile.

  “What does he want?” Briony whispers to Mimi.

  A golden boy steps forward, a gilt cage dangling from his forefinger. “His Great Holy Abundance would present you with this small token of his esteem.”

  Briony sticks out her finger, and the boy loops the gold cord over it. A scuttle and whirr within. Through the bars she makes out a live cricket: iridescent wing shields, flying buttress legs.

  “It is a sign,” the golden boy announces, “of plentiful squid and related fecundity.”

  Briony smiles down at Little Buddha. “Please thank His Great Holy Abundance for me.”

  Little Buddha whispers to the boy.

  “His Great Holy Abundance would also like to bestow on you the Kiss of Peace.”

  This sets the old people behind her aflutter: “He’s granting her the Kiss of Peace?” “What has she done to deserve the goddamn Kiss of Peace?”

  Little Buddha stands on tiptoe. Puckering lips zoom in on Briony’s.

  He cries out, a drop of blood depends from his second chin. Briony steps back, wipes a hand across her mouth. Not the Kiss of Peace but Kiss of Tongue.

  Louis Armstrong’s crusty voice fills Briony’s penthouse suite. “‘Sail away, sail away/We will cross the mighty waters —’” Then, “‘Sail away, sail away/We will cross—’”

  What happened to the rest? “‘Sail away , sail away/We will cross —’”

  They’ve looped it!

  The casting-off whump of the Emerald Tranquility’s ship horn vibrates her veneers.

  “‘Sail away —’”

  Thuds at the massive mahogany door. She hauls it open. Gigot tumbles in.

  “‘Sail away —’”

  Whump! Whump!

  “Briony, what is this most terrible sound?”

  “It’s the ship’s horn, Gigot. It means we’re casting off.”

  “Mais non. I know the sound of the ship horn. I am not so inexperience I have not cruised before. But what is this voice that sounds like le gargarisme?”

  “Gargling?”

  “‘We will cross the mighty —’”

  “Please make it stop.”

  “It’s the Emerald Tranquility’s signature tune. Louis Armstrong. Before your time. Before mine for that matter. You’ll be hearing it a lot.”

  “So disturbing. Like this old man who chokes on his own flegme. This is an English word?”

  “Unfortunately. Come on, time to go up on Wraith Deck for the casting-off party.”

  “All I desire is to return to my room for a small siesta.” For the first time Gigot takes in the sleek Italian minimalism of Briony’s suite and the wide veranda where the torpid sea makes its first slide-by. She suspects that down on Zircon Deck he’s got a Juliet balcony he can’t step out on, a bathroom he can’t turn around in, and a Farrow & Ball accent wall. “Your place is such huge!”