Fiction: A desert loving Englishman

Jo’s date scratched at his red beard and it made a scratching sound. It wasn’t a noise she was familiar with, but it was similar to the sound a pencil made on paper. Scritch scratch. She wondered how she always managed to end up at the Cactus Club. The interiors of them all looked the same, sanitized and modern. The menus changed a bit, but held no surprises. Fake foliage hung from the walls of this one. It was dark enough that if she squinted, she could imagine that they were real.

Jo hated Cactus Clubs. She hated them in Toronto, but in Vancouver they were omnipresent. This was the third unique one where she had eaten. It was expensive and the food was mediocre, but most annoyingly it was loud. People with poor taste, spending habits, and finance jobs were scattered across the dining room, trying to make themselves heard over the thumping music. She couldn’t hear anything above the din, much less her date. But somehow she heard the scratching sound. He was going on about how much he skied. Like that was considered a personality trait in Vancouver.

“He said that the Ikon pass made no sense because he wasn’t trying to ski internationally or offseason. But I told him that Canada and the United States were some of the most expensive places to ski in the world. He’d be better off in Japan if he was going to Asia anyways, and that Chile had some cheap skiing available. Anyways, do you ski?”

“No,” replied Jo with a slight smile.

“Ah, so you snowboard?”

“Not that either.”

“Really?” asked the bearded man in mock shock, “What are you doing in Vancouver then?”

“I was looking for change of scenery,” said Jo.

“Oh, yeah, I love the mountains too. In the summer, there are some great hikes.”

He scratched his beard again. Scritch scratch, fingers in red hair. He continued prattling on about nature, and the beauty of the West Coast. Jo silently thanked her herself for insisting on a lunch date instead of dinner. Even though it was a bit boring, Jo agreed for the most part. Vancouver was beautiful. The weather was great. The people were the same surface level friendly as the rest of Canada: convivial and polite, but difficult to become close with. This suited Jo fine. The food arrived. He ordered a parmesan chicken while Jo had an avocado kale salad. Jo was grateful for the distraction, and cut into her food, continuing to nod at his stories.

When the bill came, Jo offered to split it twice, but the redhead insisted on paying. He had that going for him at least. Well, he wasn’t bad-looking, and dressed well too. But he was the same as any boring out-of-town transplant who worked a corporate job. Jo would know. She was one herself. They said their goodbyes.

“Which way are you going?” asked Jo.

“This way,” he said, “West.”

“Oh, I’m going east,” said Jo.

“See you.”

“See you.”

Jo turned a corner and waited a little before continuing south, then doubled back west. She hated running into people after saying goodbye to them. It was a cloudy winter day in Vancouver, but strangely not overcast, the fast breeze racing clouds through the sky. She smelled rain in the sky. She liked rain.

It was a five-minute walk to the nearest SkyTrain station, and she ascended its concrete steps with a gentle clopping of her Blundstones. The cars were busy on weekends, but Jo always stood near a window on the outside edge of the track so she could see the city. She liked peering out the window as the light rail train sped along. When she caught a glimpse of someone, she would sometimes wave at them, though there was no chance that they would wave back.

She lived in a low-rise in Mount Pleasant, and loved the neighbourhood. It felt like a neighbourhood, not one of those apartment complexes to the north in Olympic Village. There were independent grocers, bakeries, and bookstores. Not that she frequented either of the first two. Far too expensive. She didn’t know any of her neighbours either. They all seemed like older, moneyed folk who wouldn’t approve of a yuppie moving into their neighbourhood. But it felt right to live there.

She clopped up three flights of stairs to her unit. It was cozy, not in the realtor-euphemism for small sort of way, but in the young millennial with her first paycheque kind of way. It was littered with candles, books, throws, and tea-stained mugs, always in a perpetual state of being too cluttered to have people over, but not yet messy enough to clean. Jo took of her clothes and changed into a set of sweats, and then dug through the mess of blankets and clothes on the couch to find a nice spot to sit on, like a cat. She picked up a book and turned on the television.

She was a quarter of her way through her third viewing of Lawrence of Arabia, and Alec Guiness as Prince Fiasal appeared on the screen. Would the depiction be problematic? It wasn’t exactly blackface, and he was a rather charming character. It was a great movie, and she had to watch it a few times to catch everything because she was reading at the same time. A Little Life turned out to be a pretty boring book so far, but she was promised trauma and sadness.

She managed forty minutes without looking at her phone. Quite impressive, even by her standards. There was a day for night scene in the movie, reminding her of Vancouver in the winter: dreary and prematurely dark, even during the day. She had two notifications. One from an unsaved number about lunch. Since Redbeard was not going to get a second date, she responded immediately. No point in playing coy there.

“Hey! It was nice to meet you in person too, and I also had a great time at lunch. Unfortunately, I didn’t really feel a spark today, so I think we should see other people. Best of luck out there!”

I should create a standardized template, she thought to herself.

The second text was from a large groupchat with some colleagues. They were deliberating whether to still meet for dinner and drinks with the imminent rain. The sentiment seemed to be leaning towards canceling. Jo went through the messages and thumbed-up all the pessimistic ones. Another person cancelled on dinner, suggesting that they might arrive for only the drinks portion if they were around.

Then Jo heard the sound of rain. The slow hissing of a drizzle, slowly picking up into a pitter-patter of an earnest shower. She turned to the window, snapped a picture, and sent it to the chat. Within a minute, more reactions sprang up, and dinner was called off.

Satisfied with her work, she turned back to the bright skies and dark shadows of her movie. She lit a candle, then wrap herself in throws once again. Bliss. She loved the rain.