Axes
by H. R. Link
Month six of unemployment. My father is sharpening his knives.
Every morning since I arrived on his doorstep with only myself and one duffel bag, he has risen at 6 AM and busied himself noisily in one room of the house. Last week, he reached the kitchen. And finally, today, he switched on his Chef’s Choice Compact Two-Stage Sharpener Unit 480 and subjected his array of culinary-grade blades to successive bouts of torture. I listened to those squealing knives and could only assume that eventually I, too, would go under those ceramic breaking wheels.
The couch where I’ve been sleeping is just a few feet away from the kitchen. My childhood bedroom, far from the site of this jarring ritual, is requisitioned.
“Full of things,” my father said when I arrived. “What things?” I said.
“My things.”
So, I’ve been sleeping down here. And so, I listen to the centrifugal shriek of metal against metal as I stare up through the dirt-caked, leaking skylight at the back of the house. I always know when it rains. Water works its way around the glass, bores through the spongy, mould-mottled plaster, and slaps against my unconscious forehead. The greyish drops are almost refreshing, a reprieve from the mind-numbing, flesh-baking heat that has held us, lovingly, to her stifling chest all month.
After the wheels wind down, my father comes around the corner, offering me a bowl of soft summer strawberries, ripe and wound-like, their green heads sliced cleanly off.
He smiles down at me as I reach a sluggish hand toward the bowl. “Did I wake you?” he asks, well-rehearsed.
“No,” I say. “I was just getting up.”
“Good.” Then he turns and heads back toward the kitchen. “The day’s a-wastin’,” he calls back. In his world, every day is a-wastin.’
Most days, as I eat, I drag my laptop up from the end of the sofa, where it has slept beside me all night.
I pry it open; it is old and sticks shut like a mollusc. I send off two or three Frankensteined cover letters, all copy-pasted from past applications with relevant words sutured in wherever they will fit. Then, my workday done, I listen to an audiobook.
I’m hooked on these things. I mean, I have been chain-smoking audiobooks, rolling a new one even as the final chapter of my current book still smoulders in my ears. I turn the virtual tape up to 2.5 times speed for max efficiency. Teetering on the edge of the intelligible, the narrators take turns berating me with thrillers, with fantasy series, with historical fiction that wins every award and still somehow feels slightly silly. I can finish four books back-to-back without pausing once to take my headphones out, speaking to my father when I must over the insistent soliloquists in my ears.
Lately, I’ve been taking my headphones out only at dinner, so that I can read my father dismal facts about Old Hollywood celebrities, a practice which began as a stab at conversation and has since become dreary routine:
“Jean Harlow died at 26, kidney failure.”
“Gary Cooper’s wife and doctor knew his cancer was inoperable, and didn’t tell him.”
“Jayne Mansfield was not actually beheaded, her skull was only crushed into her brain.”
He’ll nod, saying nothing, chewing on a hair-breadth of sashimi he has sliced for us.
Nothing holds my interest. I am trapped inside the future’s past, further back than the present, at the beginning of a painful but necessary process which will only be worth seeing at the end. I want to write a book, but can’t settle on a point of view. I’ve tried inhabiting other people’s perspectives, fictional vantage points, but my empathy is inelastic and resists even the slightest extension.
In short, I am deliriously unhappy. What kills me is, it isn’t even original to be miserable.
Lonely, also – I am not inventing the wheel.
I never hear back from any job. Never even an invitation to interview. Not even, if you can believe it, a fill-in-the-blank rejection that says, ‘Dear [NAME], Thank you for applying, but we have gone with other candidates, we hope you’ll apply again in the future,’ etc., etc. It’s all quiet on the employment front for me.
A few weeks ago, when he asked how the job hunt was going, I told my father that it had been a month since I’d had any message back. He cast such a doubtful glance that I said, like a lying child, ‘I can prove it!’ I pulled up my barren inbox, populated only by spammy mailing lists. He glanced for one moment at the screen, eyes gliding over the deals on workout dresses, teeth whitening machines that irradiate your mouth, and flights to Spain, all of which I couldn’t possibly afford – or afford to miss.
“I hear Majorca’s nice this time of year,” he said.
I should get out more, I thought.
I knew they were filming a movie on the street adjacent to ours. It would be impossible not to know, with all the noise, the litter, the men babbling into crackling headsets that infested the usually tranquil area. Last week, I went and stood for upwards of an hour watching the actors run into and back out of the same painted-over storefront, piling into and climbing back out of the same waiting, diesel-huffing antique car. The movie is set in the 1970s, if the tight leather outfits and wildly jutting hair of the actors are any indication. I think it’s about a band. Or a group of men with no clue how to dress.
I went back the next day, and the next, every day for a week. They are filming out of order, so no matter how long I watch, I never pick up even a thread of the story’s plot. I always stand in the same place on the pavement opposite all the action, my back pressed up against the rotting brick of the abandoned métro stop. A PA is always standing nearby, each day the same one. His job is to stop clueless people from walking onto set. The sticky heat clings to everything, giving us no room to breathe, and I don’t envy him the yellow vest he wears over his dark clothes.
Yesterday, he sidled over, got to talking with me, asked if I was interested in films. He posed this question with the barely-inflected tone of someone self-important enough to think he can carry off saying the word ‘film’ out loud. On a film set, no less!
“No,” I said. “I only live nearby.”
“Really?” he said. “Where should we go then, for a drink? When I’m off, I mean?”
“Nowhere,” I said.
He laughed. “Seriously,” he said.
“I am serious.” I resisted the urge to cross my arms, fighting the resurgence of that defensive habit. I thought I had ironed this out of myself over the course of countless practice runs in the schoolyard, in the office hallway, on the métro platform on my way home to my old apartment. I must be rusty.
The walky-talky at his hip crackled a string of numbers, some sort of cryptic film code. He swore and turned the volume down. As he did so, I turned and started to walk away.
“Hey!” he called.
I stopped, turned back. He stood in his high-vis vest, hands flapping at his sides, eyes wide. I knew he wasn’t allowed to move from his post, that he was the only guard at his entrance and therefore would be fired if he took one step off his spot. Still, he might have followed me a little ways. I began to doubt his interest.
“What?” I said.
He raised a hand to shield his eyes, squinted and cleared his throat. “You really don’t want a drink?”
I spun around and trotted the rest of the way home.
Over dinner last night, my father told me he had decided I could have my old room back on one condition: “If you help move all my stuff.”
“The stuff can stay,” I said. “I won’t be here much longer.”
His fork clattered against his plate. He had the face of a man who had suddenly and inexplicably been relieved of the agony that had dogged him for 30 years; the face of a man who has been granted a miracle. “What do you mean?” he said stiffly, afraid to let himself celebrate his impending freedom before he was sure of it.
“I mean, I got a job.”
My father sat back in his chair, wiped a trembling hand across his forehead. “That’s excellent,” he sighed, his voice quivering. He cleared his throat to keep from laughing joyfully. “Congratulations.” He reached out and touched my hand. His fingers were cold and I shivered. He pulled back again, undeterred, still smiling. “I’m so happy.” He paused, then said, “For you.”
“Thank you,” I said.
He didn’t ask for details, just hummed a happy little tune as I recounted what would be my last litany of celebrity tragedies:
“Steve McQueen died from the asbestos the movie studios used for fake snow.”
“Clara Bow’s crazy mother woke her up with a knife to the neck when she was a child.”
“Joan Crawford used to soak her eyes in boric acid as part of her beauty routine.”
As I read, I finished my beef carpaccio, sliced so thin it called to mind a flaying victim from the Bible. Then I excused myself and curled up on the couch. In my ears, the narrator of my latest audiobook competed with my father, who clanged the dishes about, so thrilled that he didn’t even mutter about me doubling the dishwasher’s workload.
This morning when I finish my strawberries, I forgo my usual routine and head to set. The outlandishly costumed actors aren’t here yet, but I see the groggy crew crowded around the folding table with their soggy breakfast burritos. It is going to be another boiling day, and already sweat slicks the back of my neck. I take up my usual spot, cross my arms over my chest, and wait.
After only a few minutes, the PA notices me up against the crumbling wall. He grins.
Yesterday I hurt his pride. Now here I am, proving it has all been part of the game.
It has, hasn’t it?
He comes sauntering over, turning down the dial on his walky-talky so there will be no distractions this time. “Hiya,” he says.
“Hiya,” I echo, arms still crossed.
We stand several feet apart, him grinning, me willing a breeze to come rushing down the street and revive me. A puny breath of air trembles, then falls still again.
“So,” he says.
“So,” I say.
“Bit early for a drink.” He has not stopped smiling since he noticed me.
“I want a job,” I say, my face absolutely still so he will know I am a serious applicant.
“Oh,” he says, after a moment. “Yeah?”
“Here,” I say. “I mean, I want one on set.” His lips go slack with surprise.
I push on. “You guys always need more people, right?” He stares at me. I stare back at him.
“I can ask,” he says after a minute. “No promises.” He lifts his radio to his lips, asks for someone named ‘Robin,’ then replaces the handset in its holster.
A willowy woman with a clipboard comes trotting up promptly. She wears an earpiece instead of carrying a radio, signifying that she is higher up on the food chain than the PA. She smiles first at him then at me.
“What’s all this?” she says. She has the air of a no-nonsense primary school teacher and the PA reacts like any shy child who has just made a fuss, shuffling his feet, averting his gaze.
He’s gotten me this far, now I can close the deal.
“I want a job,” I say. “I’ll do anything. I can carry things, whatever. I really don’t care.”
Robin turns to the PA and tilts her head. “She’s your friend?” she asks.
“Yeah,” the PA says. “She’s a hard worker.” I regret ever doubting his attraction to me.
Robin frowns. She raises the clipboard. Her papers flap in the insufficient breeze. “I don’t think, um…” Her eyes scan down a list. Then they stop. She slides a finger across a row of minute text. She clucks her tongue, shakes her head. “Actually, it’s your lucky day. We do need someone to babysit the bus.”
Is that some kind of euphemism? Some movie term of which I am completely ignorant? “Great,” the PA says.
I push myself off the wall. “Show me the way.”
As we walk, the PA reaches out, pokes me in the ribs and positions himself so closely on my heels that I can feel his breath on my neck. It would make my skin crawl, if the temperature was not already well into the 80s, stymieing all sensation.
“You owe me,” he whispers. I elbow him. He laughs.
Robin leads us to a bright-red double-decker bus parked around the corner, looking fresh off a UK street. “Here it is,” she says. “Our other PA quit last night.”
“Something about human rights and greenhouse gas,” the PA adds.
“Anyway,” Robin goes on, “we don’t need the bus ‘til the afternoon. If you could just sit in here and make sure no one tries to steal it.” She pushes on the bus’s front doors, and they fold inward, granting access to anyone who wants it.
I hop inside and perch on the driver’s seat. The wheel is massive and digs into my stomach. I gaze out of the panoramic windshield at the quiet street, imagine seeing London through this frame.
“Here,” the PA calls. I turn back to the doors. He has taken off his high-vis vest and dangles it toward me. I lean over, take the vest, and put it on. “It suits you,” he says, smirking. It reeks of BO, his and that of countless other PAs before him. I blink away the realisation that I will be spending the night with him. I smile back. Robin shows me how to shut the doors from the inside, then she and the PA head back around the corner, returning to set.
I slip from the seat and examine this new terrain, my appointed territory. I climb the stairs. This can’t be the original interior, because the seats are polished and shiny and do not show the tell- tale scuffs of years of use. I try to imagine it, this unwieldy thing making its way through decades of winding streets, almost a century of constant motion, and then across an ocean, only to wind up here, melting and neglected on a foreign side street.
I wipe a thick layer of sweat from my forehead and grip the nearest seatback for balance. I’ve come to understand the PA who quit. Oh well. He has other things going for him, I imagine. Reasons not to suffocate inside a vintage bus.
As I descend the tight spiral staircase at the back of the bus, returning to my post, I look out the window and see my father. He is coming up the road, heading toward the grocery store, a reusable shopping bag hooked over his forearm, swinging in the breeze. He smiles to himself and hums, tickled by the heady miracle of existence without a grownup child on his couch.
His presence does the opposite of move me; it strikes me so still that no impulse from my flailing brain can shake me. I stand centred in the rectangular pane of the back window, my vest making me, by design, highly visible. With one knee bent and the other ramrod straight, I am poised halfway between fight or flight, the prey still calculating its odds. I consider crumpling completely, going limp on the floor of the bus, a sweaty, disgusting pile, but a hidden one, at that.
Doesn’t matter what you do, as long as you do something. Do anything.
His eyes meet mine. He is struck still. We endure a long, muted moment, untouched by the clamour of the set nearby. I can hear my heart but can’t feel it. I tell myself to smile but don’t do it. Dread thicker than the heat falls over me. Only my father’s shopping bag moves, flapping on his arm like a flag of surrender printed with cartoon fruits and vegetables. I begin to warm to the idea that we will be stuck like this forever, a tableau of silent, thoughtless surprise.
My father bursts the moment with his laugh. The spasm begins in his chest, rattling out of him like a deep, unproductive cough. He raises one hand to his forehead, keeps his eyes on me, and shakes with the ferocity of his laughter.
I began to laugh, as well. The violence of my fit throws me off balance and I sit back on the steps, clutching at the metal handrail to keep somewhat upright. I throw my head back, cackling so loud I taste blood. My father doubles over. My stomach aches, and I can’t catch my breath. Our laughs degrade into a compulsive cacophony. Ours is an uproar so loud it drowns out the birds in the trees.
“Quiet on the set,” a faraway voice cries. It is frantic, pleading. “Quiet on the set! All quiet, please.”
ABOUT THE CREATOR
H. R. Link is an Anglophone poet living in Montréal/Tiohtià:ke. She is a founding editor at Ekphrasis Magazine. Her poems have appeared in The Malahat Review, and are forthcoming in Contemporary Verse 2 and Acta Victoriana. In 2024, she received the Mona Adilman Prize in Poetry from McGill University.