Fairy of Teeth
Copyright 2013 Norman Crane
Chapter 1
"And you're sure your mom won't rip your head off?"
"She's not a praying mantis."
"Motherfucker."
Three of them laughed. Paulie wanted to punch them all in the nose. It wasn't a secret his mum was hot. At least by boys' standards, which meant she had big boobs and wore clothes that were less baggy and showed more cleavage than other mums. They called her Mrs Baggins sometimes because of a joke that had started after the first part of Peter Jackson's Hobbit trilogy opened in town and before everyone had seen it too many times and knew it sucked balls compared to reading Tolkien. The joke was: she wasn’t short or hairy-footed, but Paulie’s dad was, and he smoked a pipe and saw the movie more than four times and complained each time that Radagast was a wizard, not a pot smoking Greenpeace activist. They liked Paulie’s dad, too, but, come on, like he could ever fuck a pair of titties like hers.
"She sure could rip my head off if she sucked me off first," Pinder said. "I'd die headless and happy."
"She could breast feed me," Akira said.
"That's gross."
"Not in Japan," Akira said. "There are entire manga about it."
"They fuck octopuses in manga," George said.
"Just because they have tentacles doesn't mean they're octopuses," Akira said.
"As if that makes it any better." Pinder smirked. "Though I wouldn't mind seeing Paulie's mom wrapped up in tentacles..."
Paulie knew his mum was hot. He’d had it pointed out to him many times. He was an expert by now. But what was he to do but force the steam out of his ears and show his fists and yell, "Shut up!" so loud Pinder said, "You shut up, man. You'll wake somebody and get us caught."
They were still in the subdivision, cutting across the Akers' back yard because it was the fastest way to get to the path which led through the trees and down the hill they sometimes went tobogganing—swerving to avoid the pine trees—to the foot of the lake, on which winter always formed the perfect sheet of ice.
The air was crisp, their cheeks red. Plumes of warm vapour streamed out of their nostrils like smoke, meaning they were dragons—fire breathers with duffel bags and hockey sticks. They ran down the hill, half sliding, half losing their balance, laughing, making all the noise they wanted to make because now they were in the company of themselves, out of the range of the adults.
"Paulie sucks cock!" Pinder said.
"Like mother like son," George said. "They pass it down from generation to generation, like corporate shares."
"Or defective genes."
"If you were a girl, I'd let you give me a blowjob," Akira said.
Paulie raced past all of them and into the cold, crisp air that was rushing off the lake mixed with just the right amount of snow to sting your face and make you feel alive.
He dropped his stick and his bag and slid onto the ice.
It creaked.
George slid by beside him, before kicking out his feet and falling straight onto his ass.
"Did you hear that?" Paulie asked.
"Hear what?"
"The ice creaked."
"Hey, guys," George said, "Paulie's scared again." He got up, cleaned the ice off his pants and jumped a few times. Nothing creaked. "Sure seems fine to me. Of course you could always run home and hug your mom's tits till you grow a pair."
"The ice is good," Akira said. "My dad monitors it every day. If he says it is safe, it is safe."
Akira's dad was a scientist, though what exactly he studied was beyond anyone's comprehension. When he was in town he didn't do anything other than measure things, like the water temperature of the local lakes, and go birding. When he was out of town he was gone for weeks at a time, to Waterloo or Toronto. Lately, he'd been involved with some experiment that suggested time was merely the consequence of two protons—no, not protons: some other particles, maybe quarks—was the consequence of two quarks coexisting in the same physical space, which was impossible unless you applied quantum theory and, at any rate, it was not visible to anything outside of those two quarks, meaning that to an outside observer everyone and everything was as eternally still as the frozen water on the lake.
Pinder opened his duffel pack and tossed out a few pucks. Then he sat down and started lacing up his skates. "My mom says real hockey is played on grass."
"That's because she's from India," George said.
Paulie was listening to the ice, waiting for it to creak again. It refused. When he was satisfied he'd imagined the first creak, he said, "On your mom's grass, you fucking Paki."
Three of them laughed. Pinder laced up his skates tight. He looked like he wanted to punch all of them in the nose.
"My dad says Indian women are hairier than Japanese and white women," Akira said.
"I bet he has computer simulations and pie graphs for that, too." They laughed at pie graphs. "Pubes per square centimetre."
"No, he just has circumstantial evidence."
They laughed at cum.
"Well, is it true?" George asked.
Pinder realised they were looking at him. "How the fuck would I know?"
"Like you haven't peeked."
"Fuck you. Gross."
"Pinder the fucking Paki peeking at the poontang."
They all got to lacing up their skates. The moonlight reflected off the ice, illuminating the only world that mattered.
Pinder was half Irish and half Tamil, but his skin was dark, his hair black, and everyone assumed he was born in Bombay, or Mumbai, or whatever it was called. Bollywood. Belly dancing (not actually Indian), Slumdog Millionaire (not actually Indian), and Aishwarya Rai (Indian), who was hot even after getting pregnant, mostly because her boobs got even bigger. Everyone agreed on this, even Pinder.
Their laces fastened, they grabbed their sticks and skated onto the ice.
The surface was chippy, but there's a specific way of skating on a surface like that, and they knew it by heart. In a few minutes their careful strides extended, increasing the speed with which they zoomed and circled on the ice. When they were warmed up, Paulie and Pinder started hitting pucks back and forth, willing them to bounce over the other’s stick blade while taking extra care that it didn't bounce over their own. Catching a bullet pass softly on your stick as if it were made of pillows was one of the secret joys of hockey, unknown by the uninitiated.
They all still had wooden sticks for this type of stuff because they were cheaper and you weren't afraid to break them, and, besides, there was something downright mystical about cutting figure eights in the night on a frozen lake surrounded by tall, living trees covered in snow while holding something made from them, constructed from trees exactly like these, and feeling the wood become an extension of your body the way Marshall McLuhan once said new technologies become extensions of your body. Paulie’s dad had once met Marshall McLuhan and had signed copies of his books.
Akira took a few pictures with his phone.
"Get one of me," George said, gliding to a halt with his stick raised for a Zdeno Chara slap shot, "and send it to my Bruins account when you do."
"Fuck you." The sound of Maple Leaf blood boiling.
"Stanley Cup, baby. Stanley Cup."
If McLuhan was right, if the internet was their external central nervous system, then hockey was their external, shared, soul. Paulie liked that idea.
"I took two photos," Akira said. "But you look pretty gay in both."
George shot the puck in Akira's general direction. Akira didn't even budge. "Got that Boston accuracy," Paulie said.
"And you're a loser. A true Leaf through and t
hrough."
Pinder sped up, swung a lazy loop around an imperfection in the ice, and came to a beautiful stop. The edges of his skate blades sliced a shower of ice particles into the air. They twinkled as they fell. "Usual rules, boys," he said. "I call Paulie."
"Good," George said. "I look forward to beating your asses."
"We call Toronto."
"Good. I look forward to beating your asses even more. We call Boston, but only because I feel extra cruel."
"I don't want to be Boston," Akira said. He was a Canucks fan. Everyone glared at him.
Paulie put down one goal, made from a modified recycling container, and George put down the other.
"Just pretend you're Henrik and you got traded," Pinder said.
"Oh, come on! Like that would ever happen. Bean Town don't play with ballerinas and fairies."
"Can I be Kessler?" Akira asked.
"You can be Paul Kariya."
"You guys always say I should be Paul Kariya."
George did a deke and almost fell on his butt in the process. "I'm Lucic."
"We just saw as much," Pinder said.
"Seriously, why do I have to be the Asian guy?" Akira asked.
"Because you're Asian."
"George isn’t Slavic and he gets to be Lucic."
"But Lucic sucks," Paulie said, "and Paul Kariya was amazing."
George stomped his skates. "Oh, it's on, bitches. Now it's fucking on. Full contact rules."
"No hitting from behind," Paulie said.
"No hitting from behind. No hitting from behind," George teased. "Is that what your mom told you before you came out?" He did his stereotypical female voice, which was also his stereotypical gay voice. "You can go out and play with your friends, munchkin, but don't play too rough and remember no hitting from behind?"
"I'd like to do Paulie's mom pretty rough from behind," Pinder said.
Paulie skated by and punched him in the shoulder.
"Ow, fuck."
"You're on my team."
"So? It was a compliment, dude."
"Anyway, my mom doesn't know I'm out here," Paulie said, "so she didn't say anything."
"I though you said that she wouldn't rip your head off."
"She won't, because she won't ever find out about me being out here in the first place. Ignorance, boys, is bliss."
George grinned. "Unless you lose, because I just decided them's the stakes. You're playing for your head. Maybe you'll actually play good if you feel that little extra pressure, eh?"
"If I remember correctly, you're the one who lost last time," Paulie said.
"That's because I was playing with Pinder."
"Like it was my fault," Pinder said. "If you moved your fat ass once in a while instead of trying to nail people maybe we could have—I don't know—actually scored some goals."
"And what if we win?" Paulie asked.
"If we win, we get to come on your mom's face," Pinder said.
"Dude!"
Pinder grimaced even before Paulie skated by to punch him in the shoulder again.
"I'm being serious. If we win, what do we get?"
"We could even do it on a photo," Akira said. "Coming, I mean. It would not have to be directly on her face. The photo would be a substitute. There's this site on the internet where—"
George banged his stick on the ice. "You're fucking weird, you know that? You're the Paul fucking Kariya of weird."
"More like Steve Kariya." Pinder stuck out his tongue and licked at the space between two of his raised fingers.
"That's about all you've ever ate out," George said.
"Licking pussy's gross," Paulie said. "It's also not hockey. Let's start this shit because I feel like wrapping up my win before midnight."
"Our win. And we haven't set stakes yet," Pinder said.
Paulie flashed a devilish grin. "If we win, George has to tell his parents he's gay."
"No way."
"I'll do it," Akira said.
"Your dad wouldn't even care," Pinder said.
"No, I mean I can tell George's parents that he's gay. I can even Photoshop proof, like North Korea does with its submarines."
"You guys are fags, I swear," George said. He turned to glare at Akira. "And if you ever stick my head on man on man porn, I swear I'll kill you."
"How about," Pinder said, "if we win, you have to bark in Miss Collins French class every time she says 'asseyez vous'."
"I'll bark in her class anyway. I hate that bitch. She almost failed me last year."
"That's because you're stupid at French."
"Fuckez you in your merde hole."
"I would like to do that to Miss Collins," Akira said. "Did you know that almost all Italian porn is anal porn?"
George barked.
"Doggy style!" Paulie yelled.
They all barked a bark that turned into a long, unsynchronised howl.
"Now that the stakes are settled, I propose a challenge for first puck and for lucky bounce," Pinder said. "What I propose is a race. George and Paulie to the middle of the lake and back, with pucks."
"Wait," George said—
And he was off. Long legs taking short, powerful strides.
Paulie set off after him.
He skated more gracefully, covering more ice with each push of the skate, moving with the smooth rhythm of a speed skater. It didn't take him long to catch up to George. It wouldn't have taken him much longer to pass George, either, if George hadn't lifted his stick with the aim of hooking Paulie in the chest, missed, and smacked him in the teeth instead.
Paulie dropped to the ice, covering his face.
George looked back, still skating.
"Shit."
He stopped and skated to where Paulie was just getting to his knees. Paulie spat red blood onto white ice.
"Yo, guys, get your asses over here," George yelled at Pinder and Akira, who were both already skating over.
"You OK, dude?" George asked Paulie. Paulie looked at the blood on the ice, touched his hand to his mouth, looked at the blood on that, and spat on the ice again. "Dude, check you didn't lose any teeth. If you didn't, that's great. If you did, chicks dig tough guys."
Paulie shook his head.
Pinder and Akira crowded around. "Jesus, what the fuck did you do?" Pinder asked.
"I hit him with my stick," George said. "By accident."
Paulie heard the ice creak.
"Let me see," Akira said. "I watch a lot of dental surgeries on YouTube."
Paulie waved his hands for them to back up. The ice under him trembled and whined.
"Seriously, let us take a look at the damage," Pinder said.
"You're already on your knees, just open up your mouth real wide and say 'ahhh'," George said.
Nobody laughed.
The creaking ice started to crack—
"Get back," Paulie said
But he said it with a swelling mouth full of blood and it sounded more like—
"You can get me back, buddy. I promise," George said.
"Get back now," Paulie said.
He heard the crack rush by below him.
He gesticulated.
"Now!"
He wanted to yell more, to yell it louder, but in the next instant none of that mattered any more because Pinder, Akira and George had become blurred shapes behind a window of cold and there was water in his mouth, water that he was swallowing, against which the upward force of the words stuck in his throat were nothing but rising, popping bubbles, and so, eating the bubbles, he closed his eyes because they felt in danger of getting freezer burn.
In other words—and to the three pairs of eyes watching him from above—the ice under Paulie had opened up and the lake had swallowed him whole.
When he was a baby, Paulie's parents would wrap him in warm clothes and blankets and take him for stroller walks in the dead of winter. It was a memory he shouldn't have been able to remember, but he did.
; He first kissed a girl in the sixth grade. Her name was Diana and she was a Jehovah's Witness. Pushing his tongue into her mouth felt like nothing had ever felt.
In 2013, the Maple Leafs took the Boston Bruins to the seventh and deciding game of their first round Eastern Conference playoff series. That night, the Leafs led 4-1 in the third period, only for the Bruins to score three times in the final eleven minutes of the game, including twice in the final two minutes, take the game to overtime, and win on a goal from Patrice Bergeron. Watching in his living room, Paulie had thrown up all over the carpet.
Now he felt like all of that at once, like his layers and layers of warmth were soaked through with wetness, like being a tongue thrust into a dead girl's cold mouth, like being floored with a shot to the liver that went past the goalie and rippling the mesh.
Paulie knew he was drowning.
He knew he was dying.
He swung at the cold water with his fists and kicked at it with his feet, but the circle of light that he knew was his salvation refused to grow bigger.
He screamed into relentless, icy liquid.
The blood pumping through his ears sounded like disintegrating kettle drums.
He felt numb.
He couldn't breathe and he had no more breath left in him. His lungs were but twin sacks of water.
He stopped struggling.
And the world turned so cold it was warm and so peaceful that Paulie pretended he could remember exactly what it felt like to have been born...
The light went out, eclipsed by—
Akira's head.
Steam was escaping from between its moving lips.
The sound was still turned down low.
Paulie was shivering.
His cheeks stung.
Akira slapped him again and again. Each slap turned up the sound, turned it up to:
"Paulie, can you hear? Paulie!"
Behind Akira's head was Pinder, kneeling down, chewing on his nails, and George's naked cock.
"The fuck?" Paulie puked out half a liter of water.
"He's alive!" Akira yelled.
"The fuck," Paulie said again, "are you naked for?"
"Jesus, Paulie. I thought," George said without finishing the sentence. He was shaking, too.
"He saved you," Pinder said. "George saved you. After you went under, he—he stripped off his clothes... and dove right in."
"I thought you were dead," George said.
Paulie propped himself up on his elbows into something of a seated position. He was naked, too. He knew that meant he should have been cold, but he wasn't. He was shaking and feeling nothing. "You should put your clothes on," he said to George.
George smiled.
"Those are for you," Akira said. "They are dry."
Pinder looked at his wristwatch, pressed a button and looked back at Paulie, his mouth hanging slightly open and his eyes the shape of saucers.
"I suppose there's no not telling my mom now," Paulie said. He was trying to sound as ordinary as possible, but, inside, he was terrified. He wasn't entirely sure whether he was dead or alive, an uncertainty that was made increasingly surreal each time he thought about it. So he tried not to think about it. He tried instead to think about how pissed off his mum would be, and how long she'd ground him for, and whether he wasn't already too old to be grounded, which might mean she would send him to live with his grandma in Texas...
Yet even as he was imagining these things, his three best friends taking turns blinking at him, he couldn't shake the sensation that he was different in the world than he remembered: that some part of him was still at the bottom of the lake while the rest of him had sunk through the bottom and landed somehow back on top of the ice covering the lake. In the days that followed, he would try to describe this sensation. "Think of being in bed," he would say. "It's one of those nights when you're really tired but you can't actually fall asleep, so you're just lying there, your mind collapsing, making your body feel like you keep falling and falling—and now imagine that you do fall, and you fall so deep that you fall all the way through your ceiling and right back onto your bed, causing you to wake up and not feel tired any more."
"Dude," George said, "I am so fucking glad you're alive."
"Alhough your mom would look super hot in a tight black funeral dress," Akira said, before looking sheepishly down at the ice and pecking at his phone with his fingers.
"Too soon," Pinder said.
But they all laughed way too hard anyway, until Paulie saw the paramedics flicker into existence on the side of the snowy hill, making their way between the trees, toward the four of them gathered at the edge of the lake.