Gargoyles (26 page)
Jay turns to me. “What?”
I've mumbled something and I now realize what.
“You know Pam, right?” I ask, and he nods. “She loved soccer on TV and used to say the guys looked like gods. At the end once when they're taking off their shirts and trading them, and Pam has her eyes hanging out, I said, âThe gods take off their shirts.' And after that, when something is perfect, really perfect, it's what we say. A perfect sports car, or prawns in garlic and butter the waiter puts under your nose, we announce, âThe gods take off their shirts.'”
“That's pretty good,” says Jay.
“We had a few good things.”
He says it's great that we had a few good things. We watch our candle-bag rise and float a little farther away, its speed not discernable. I voice my worry about it maybe coming down and landing on a wooden house. In Oregon, I joke. Jay assures me it won't and I believe him. He turns to me and asks if I know what
will
happen and I say no. We're standing almost touching shoulders, and it's as intimate as we've ever been. He turns to me in this light and his laugh lines and wrinkles are cut deep. He looks very old, almost instantly, maybe it's the night, but it's a shocking change in the Jay I know, though I
also understand that my face is doing exactly the same to him.
“What's going to happen,” Jay says, “is you're moving in here, you're going to be a big help, I'm going to die, and it's all going to be pretty much okay.”
There's no reason in the world to doubt him. In the dark horizon, eight soft lights hang, nestled symmetrically, looking better than science. I believe I'm seeing a thing no one could ever identify or explain.
Stories in this collection have appeared, in earlier and altered versions, in the following:
“The Kite Trick” in
Granta
; “Honouring Honey” in
Event
, and
Best Canadian Stories
; “The Night Window” in
Malahat Review
, and
Best Canadian Stories
; “The Walk” in
Exile
, and broadcast on CBC's
Between the Covers
; “Forms in Winter” in
Prairie Fire
; “The Beast Waters His Garden of a Summer's Eve” in
Malahat Review
; “Freedom” in
Fiddlehead
; “Work-in-Progress” in
Canadian Fiction Magazine
; “The Green House” in
Fiddlehead
.
Bill Gaston is the author of several much-praised story collections and novels, including
Sex is Red
,
The Good Body
,
The Cameraman
, and
Sointula
. He is the recipient of numerous prizes and accolades, including nominations for the Governor General's Literary award (
Gargoyles
), the Giller Prize (
Mount Appetite
), the Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize (
Mount Appetite
,
Sointula
,
Gargoyles
), and the Timothy Findley Award, presented by the Writers' Trust of Canada. Gaston lives with his family in Victoria, British Columbia, where he teaches at the University of Victoria. His next novel,
The Order of Good Cheer
, will be published by House of Anansi in 2008.
Anansi offers complimentary reading guides that can be used with this novel and others.
Ideal for people who love talking about books as much as they love reading them, each reading guide contains in-depth questions about the book that you can use to stimulate interesting discussion at your reading group gathering.
Visit
www.anansi.ca
to download guides for the following titles:
Gargoyles
Bill Gaston
978-0-88784-776-9 ⢠0-88784-776-5
The Law of Dreams
Peter Behrens
978-0-88784-774-5 ⢠0-88784-774-9
The Tracey Fragments
Maureen Medved
978-0-88784-768-4 ⢠0-88784-768-4
Atonement
Gaétan Soucy
978-0-88784-780-6 ⢠0-88784-780-3
The Immaculate Conception
Gaétan Soucy
978-0-88784-783-7 ⢠0-88784-783-8
The Little Girl Who Was Too Fond of Matches
Gaétan Soucy
978-0-88784-781-3 ⢠0-88784-781-1
Vaudeville!
Gaétan Soucy
978-0-88784-782-0 ⢠0-88784-782-X
Returning to Earth
Jim Harrison
978-0-88784-786-8 ⢠0-88784-786-2
True North
Jim Harrison
978-0-88784-729-5 ⢠0-88784-729-3
Paradise
A. L. Kennedy
978-0-88784-738-7 ⢠0-88784-738-2
The Big Why
Michael Winter
978-0-88784-734-9 ⢠0-88784-734-X