Deluded Your Sailors by Michelle Butler Hallett Page A

Masterson offered her basement apartment to him rent-free. Homeless, he’d quickly agreed. He’d sold some paintings and sculptures, gotten some commissions, and taught drawing workshops at the Penitentiary, much to the disgust of several politicians. He started to dry out. He sometimes had to accept Dorinda’s invitations to supper or go hungry, but he had a bed. Four walls and a roof. Electricity for the kettle, and heat in winter. A draughty mock-up of heaven, he called it, privately. Now he also had a commission from the Admiral’s Rooms for the Peril on the Sea exhibit. And more loose tea than he knew what to do with. Someone – probably Dorinda, but possibly Claire’s friend, Nichole Wright – had signed him up for three different tea-of-the-month clubs, a mystifying gift. His damaged taste buds, rotburnt from drink and cigarettes, took in very few of the promises on the packets.
    I am not worth the effort.
    So, on this summer afternoon, pot of tea made and forgotten, apartment draped with spattered plastic sheeting, fingers caked with clay, Gabriel worked smaller studies for his Sea Sentry piece. He felt free and clean, playing in the mud like a youngster. Happy.
    Dorinda Masterson knocked on the apartment door, noise lost to John Lennon, cranked up loud.
    Porthole. Slightly skew; water will flood through here.
    â€”Gabriel?
    Fuck off, I’m workin. Oh, Dory. —Wha?
    â€”I just got back from the ACHE board meeting. A total fiasco. The woman we’ve commissioned to write the play is really upset and ... can I come in?
    Gabriel turned down Lennon’s plea and opened the door.
    â€”You own the place, Dory. I’m just the stray you took in.
    â€”Do you have to be like that? Oh, my God.
    â€”Yeah, bit of clay on the go. Excuse the mess.
    â€”I thought you were doing this at the studio.
    â€”The main piece, yes. These are just studies. I’m tryna figure out how to get this a decent size without havin it weigh forty fuckin pounds. That blows up, it’ll take the kiln with it. You want a cup of tea? Pot’s gone cold. Jesus, is that the time? Dory, honey, I’m sorry, but I’m after forgettin to meet Nichole at Mahon’s Galley for tea.
    â€”Nichole, who?
    â€”No need to say it like that. Just that one, Nichole Wright, Claire’s friend.
    Nichole Wright? Jesus, this town is too small. —Here, take my rig.
    Gabriel accepted the key and kissed Dorinda on the cheek. She smiled as his stubble gently scraped her. Then she watched his sweet little arse animate his tight jeans as he loped up the stairs. She started to climb the stairs herself, head rattling with the ACHE meeting, with Nichole Wright’s understandable dismay at TCR’s new Tourist Friendly Arts Template – Dory’s vigorous opposition to the template officially noted in the minutes, her moving to ram the TFAT up Chris Jackman’s arse unrecorded.
    She’d stepped in clay without noticing.
    She slipped and fell.
    The sound of her right ankle breaking sickened her nearly as much as the pain. Below her: Gabriel’s apartment and, somewhere past the clay, his telephone. Above: her part of the house, and, somewhere on the kitchen counter, probably near her grandmother’s china teapot, her cell phone. Nan might get out the bar of soap if she heard me curse like this. Yes, Nan who had slipped on the stairs...
    Dory yelled.—These very God damned stairs, in this very God damned Official Heritage House. Twisted Jesus in the garden, that hurts!
    She tried to stand, but bearing weight proved impossible, and balance eluded her. She collapsed, smacking her chin off the edge of a step, cutting her lip and chipping a tooth. Feminism long ago liberated her tongue, but she still kept one word in storage, for special occasions. She howled it now.
    â€”Fuck! Gabe? Gabriel, can you hear me?
    Ignition.
    Adjusting the driver’s seat and the rear-view mirror, Gabriel