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CBC LITERARY AWARDS

Second Prize
Fiction

VERTIGO AND THE SEX QUEEN (p. 3 of 3)

1 | 2 | 3 | JUN '04

It is a cold bright day in mid-October. We are at the Jardin des Plantes in the menagerie. Sara loves to visit this remnant of a Victorian-style zoo where lions and panthers still pace behind steel bars in tiny cement enclosures. Red-throated vultures perch, the slow descent of an opaque white eyelid the only indication of animate existence. We have just witnessed the spectacle of the male lion pissing through the bars onto the head of a schoolboy. Even his teacher cannot hide her amusement. The feral stench is powerful and Sara says now she has to pee too, so we find a sign pointing to a set of cement stairs leading underground. Sara goes down alone because it is awkward with the baby in the stroller. But suddenly I am worried she will come face to face with an attendant sitting at the entrance like a spider demanding fifty centimes for a square of toilet paper. So I pick up the stroller and start to follow her down. A few steps down and a foot miscalculates the width of the step. Then the nightmare catch in my throat and lungs and all I know is the slow spiral as the stairs whirl around, then the cracking sound at the bottom where the stroller lands on top of me, wheels spinning. I have caught the baby in my right arm and she is making a kind of cooing noise. She’s enjoyed this free-fall. Somehow, I had forgotten to strap her in. Now I feel the lump coming up on my left wrist and I am screaming and watching myself calmly at the same time. Nobody comes to help me up or get the stroller off me but somehow I get myself back to the top of the stairs and Sara is there with me. My wrist swells but the x-ray that afternoon shows no broken bones. Each night that week, my hands search the baby’s skull for signs but it is as smooth and round as they say Caesarian babies always are. The soft fontanel pulses regular as a metronome.

On a mild night in April, the following spring, I am leaning out on the railing of the balcony watching an animated conversation between a panhandler and the cafe owner across the street. The air is fragrant with chestnut blossoms; the streets are full of people. Mark is at a free organ concert at St. Medard Cathedral and even the baby is sleeping. I am surprised to hear the knock at the door. It is the sex queen. "I am leaving for Martinique tomorrow," she says, "and I want to say goodbye to my friends."

She tells me about how her new boyfriend has bought a yacht on Jersey Island. "We are leaving tomorrow to sail the canaux to Espagne and then to cross the ocean. His family has a hotel in Martinique. They give me a job at the front desk. Working only at night. All day we lie in the warm sand, or dive under the ocean. No more to climb all these steps everyday. And no more to jump from your terrace to mine." We toast her new job with a glass of red wine and I tell her about my vertigo, my fall at the Jardin des Plantes, and the miraculous way the baby came through unscathed. "But it is of course natural," she says. "And now you are cured. What else did you think?" [ ]

Janice McCachen teaches creative writing and English in Victoria, B.C., where she lives with her husband and three children. "Vertigo and the Sex Queen" is her first published short story.

A second-year student at George Brown Toronto City College, Janis Yee creates art with a true urban edge. She is currently developing her own Web-design company, ParaDoX.

Jury
Austin Clarke’s most recent novel, The Polished Hoe, won the 2002 Giller Prize and the 2003 Trillium Prize.
Leading playwright Tomson Highway’s latest children’s book, Fox on the Ice, is the final instalment of an English-Cree trilogy.
Anne Michaels is the author of the award-winning novel Fugitive Pieces. She has also composed musical scores for the theatre.

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1 | 2 | 3 | JUN '04