Forget Magazine. Remember, Remember, Remember.

Eat Your Heart Out, Dallas Drake
by David Hickey

PART TWO

A few weeks after he'd been let go, Jack found the following note stuck to the fridge:

Jack,
Dallas called. Said he wants to go
for beers next time he's in town.

There were others, from time to time, some in Silo's handwriting, some in Brenda's:

Jack-
Bad news: Dallas needs a kidney.
He hopes you'll give it some thought.

Then, two weeks later:

Dad,
The D-man called to say thanks for the organ.
He said he's getting remarried this weekend,
wants you to be his best man.

* * *

Dallas couldn't have called back at a worse time. A power line had gone down in a fall storm the night before, so Jack had spent the entire day dealing with customers. He took call after call, each one informing him the power was out in the same area. Even though he had been doing it for years, Jack still marvelled at the amount of people who called during an outage. It was as if none of them believed their neighbours could find their telephones in the darkness, or that, in the storm, only their homes had been robbed of light.

Customer after customer called, and eventually Jack lost his patience. He started pretending he was shocked when people told him their power was out. Sometimes he went into a mock state of panic that led customers to believe the power outage was part of something larger, a predicament so serious that even his supervisor wasn't privy to all the details. He told another caller that if he flipped the light switch one hundred and seventy times the power would, in fact, return. And another that the power wasn't so much "out," as it was "on" elsewhere, the city taking part in a power exchange program that would provide extra power to another neighbourhood while it left his in darkness. And then, finally, just as he was about to pretend he was a woman with a severe hormonal imbalance, Jack got the call.

"Manitoba Hydro," Jack said in a deepened voice, "Judith speaking, how may I help you?"

"Oh, I'm sorry Judith. I must have the wrong number. I'm trying to return a call from...let's see here... Jack Martin? Something about my account not being closed properly. My name is Dallas Drake. Do you know anything about that? Hello, Judith, are you there?"

* * *

Jack brings his scarf up around his face. He jostles back and forth a little, performing a makeshift dance. The water has long since settled into its flow, and it won't be long until he can turn his attention to the trees on either side of him.

Jack wonders about the weight of the water in the branches. He thinks of the coldest shower he's ever taken, then imagines the water slowly clinging to him until it hangs in place, the ice coloured with soap and shampoo, turning him pink and green.

He lowers his hose, realizing that the mist is reaching the tree to his right, the one nearest the driveway where he first hung up his coat. Jack goes over to it and tugs on the coat's collar. As he does so, he notices that the tree's branches have a glossy appearance, more like the magazine picture, in fact, than the tree he's been working on.

* * *

At the beginning of Brenda's second pregnancy, Jack had the following dream: he's watching a group of professional hockey players play street hockey in his driveway. Instead of wearing boots, each player sails by on skates, spraying pavement left and right as they go.

Then Brenda appears beside him. When the play stops, she drops her housecoat, and skates into the play. When she reaches the face off circle, Dallas Drake smiles at her before she drops the puck.

And then Jack recognizes them, all of them, even the ones he never knew:

BRODIE HASTINGS
BORN: 9/25/65
HEIGHT: 6'1'' WEIGHT: 169

SEASONS WITH BRENDA:
1
NUMBER OF TIMES SLEEPING WITH BRENDA
.5

POSITION:
Geological Engineer in the North West Territories

1 of 12

CHARLES GREGORY
BORN: 2/31/63
HEIGHT: 5'10'' WEIGHT: 185

SEASONS WITH BRENDA:
5
NUMBER OF TIMES SLEEPING WITH BRENDA
56*

POSITION:
Stripper/Bartender/Part-time Inventor in Gimli, Manitoba

*Second all-time on Brenda's list

10 of 12

Her boyfriends from high school, from college. The man she was supposed to marry before she met Jack. All of them skate past, tearing up his driveway, hair loose in the suburban wind.

* * *

The dream left Jack feeling like a drafty arena. Each morning he woke feeling less and less rested, the players he had dreamt of still skating around in his head. The worse he slept, the more he caught Brenda off guard with questions like "you really think that, don't you?" to which she would respond, "I really think what?".

"What? What? Jesus, Brenda I'll tell you what the `what' is," Jack would say, without ever having any idea what the "what" was, or where it had ever came from.

David Hickey is almost done with you. Bubba.