worry about it, man. All you got to do is sit there and do what you do best.
Which is?
Talk.
Talk? That’s what I do best?
You know what I mean. What you do better than anyone else. What you do best, of course, is make your films. You sure you’re feeling up to this, Leo? I don’t want to push you, bro. We don’t have to do the entire shoot today, if you’re not up to it. Maybe just a couple hours or so, or until we use up the first card. We can come back tomorrow to continue.
Diana chimes in and confirms. We can stay in Montreal all week, if it suits you, Leo. We can download and edit in the hotel as we go. There’s no need to shoot it all in one day and go back to Toronto for the editing.
Fife says, No, I want to keep you right here. Until I finish telling everything.
What do you mean, everything? Diana asks. Malcolm and I have worked up some great questions for you.
I’m sure you have.
The young woman, Sloan, has stepped from the darkness into his circle of light and is miking him. She clips the tiny mic onto the collar band of the long-sleeved black mock turtleneck shirt that has been part of Fife’s uniform for decades. He likes being touched by her. He likes the mingled odour of cigarettes and sweat and minty shampoo. He can’t catch the scent of much, but he can smell her. Young women, their scent is different and better than that of middle-aged and older women. It’s as if desire and longing for desire have distinct and different odours. When Emma leans down in the morning to kiss his cheek before leaving for their production company office downtown, he inhales the smell of English breakfast tea and unscented soap. The odour of a longing for desire. This young woman, Sloan, she smells of desire itself.
It’s not fair to notice that, he thinks.
But it is true. And Emma’s morning smell is not unpleasant. Just empty of desire and filled with a wish for it to return. He wonders what he smells like now, especially to a young woman. To Sloan. Can she pick up the odour of his medications, the antiandrogens he was on for months and the Taxotere and prednisone he started this past week? Can she smell the biphosphonates he’s taking to keep his bones from breaking under the weight of his body, the morphine patches, the urine dripping from his bladder into the catheter and tube emptying into the bag hooked onto his chair? The bits of dried feces clinging to his ass? To Sloan he must smell like a hospital ward for chemically castrated old men dying of cancer.
Tell me again why I came home from the hospital, he says to no one in particular.
Malcolm says, Well, I imagine you’re a hell of a lot happier here. With Emma being close by, I mean. And everything that’s familiar.
Fife says, There’s no more being happy or happier, Malcolm. He’d like to add—but doesn’t—that for him now there’s only more pain and less pain, more and less nausea and diarrhea, more and less dread, more and less fear. Along with more and less shame, anger, embarrassment, anxiety, depression. And more and less confusion. Forget happy and happier, he says.
C’mon, Leo. Don’t talk like that, Malcolm says.
I believe I can talk any damned way I want now.
Yes, that’s true, you can. That’s why we’re here today. Right?
Right.
Sloan puts her headphones on, and the darkness swallows her.
Where the hell is my wife? Fife asks the darkness. He can still smell Sloan.
Right behind you, Emma says in her low smoker’s voice. Renée told me you wouldn’t do this unless I’m present. True?
Mostly true. Maybe I’d do it, but differently. Very differently. If you weren’t here, I mean.
Why? This is for posterity. I’m not posterity, she says and laughs. I’m your wife.
It’s easier for me to know what to say and what not to say when I know who I’m talking to.
You’re talking to Malcolm, she says. You’re making a movie.
No! No, I’m not. Malcolm and Vincent and Diana and Sloan, they’re making a movie. They’re here to film and record me, so they can cut and splice my image and words together and make from those digitalized images and words a one- or two-hour movie that they sold to the Canadian Broadcasting Company so it can be resold to Canadian television viewers after I’m gone and before I’m forgotten. Malcolm and Diana won’t be listening to me and watching me. They’re too busy making a movie about me. I’m just the subject. Different thing. But if I know who I’m talking to, I can be more than a subject. That’s why I need you here.
Emma asks Diana for some light so she can find someplace to sit.
Sloan, Diana says, give us some light. But Sloan is listening to Fife through her headphones.
Vincent reaches for a wall switch and flips on the ceiling light, and Fife sees that they have pushed all the furniture against the far wall opposite the blacked-out windows, making the living room seem as large and empty as a hotel ballroom. With all the furniture clustered in front of the fireplace and built-in bookshelves, the room feels tilted onto its side, as if they’re passengers on a cruise ship, and the ship has struck a reef and is listing and is about to go down. Fife suddenly feels nauseous. He’s afraid he’s going to vomit. The ship is sinking. All hands on deck. Women and children and sick old men first.
Emma crosses to the pile of furniture, and the ship lists a few inches farther in that direction. She sits on the sofa by the wall and crosses her arms and legs.
Be careful, Fife says to her.
What? Careful of what?
Nothing. Diana, please shut off the room lights. It’s disorienting. The spot’s okay, but I don’t want to see the room. Or be seen in it.
Oh, c’mon, Leo, you look great, Diana says. Really, you do.
Definitely, Malcolm says. You look great. Too bad we’re only going to shoot your beautiful, brooding bald head.
The light goes out, and Fife is once again illuminated solely and from above by the Speedlite. The ship is levelled, and his nausea passes.
You know the drill, Malcolm says. Ready?
Yes. Ready as I’ll ever be. Or ever was.
Ready, everyone? Vincent? Sloan?
Yes.
Yes.
Diana?
Yes.
Malcolm says Fife’s name and the date, April 1, 2018, and location, Montreal, Quebec, and claps his hands once in front of Vincent’s FS7. The camera is attached to a tripod on a track that orbits the circle of light on the bare floor and stares at the featureless, flat-black side of Fife’s face, like the dark side of the moon. The unseen side is lit by the overhead spot. His silhouette has a molten golden edge, a penumbra surrounded by impenetrable black space. Malcolm is right, Fife still has a beautiful, brooding bald head. At least in profile. The illness and chemo have
