Free The Selected Short Fiction of Lisa Moore by Jane Urquhart, Lisa Moore Page B

upso that you come upon it suddenly. Its head and forepaws tower over the divider, but Olivia has been looking at a stuffed mother skunk and suckling skunks on the floor. When she walks around the corner she almost bangs into the bear. The animal’s coat is yellowed, its jaw wide.
    â€œShe scared you,” chuckles Harold and he pats the bear’s coat twice, as if it’s the bear that needs reassurance.
    â€œThis polar bear is my drawing card. The only animal not hit by a truck. This bear was shot. It wandered into a small town here in Newfoundland. It had been trapped on an ice floe. Starved. Dangerous. A mother bear separated from her cub. At seven in the morning a woman was putting out her garbage. The bear chased her back into the house. There was only an aluminum screen door between them. She got her husband’s shotgun and when the bear crumpled the aluminum door, just like a chip bag, she shot it in the throat.”
    Harold parts the fur of the bear’s throat. He has to stand on tippy toes to do so. Olivia can see the black sizzled hole, the fur singed pink.
    At the end of the hall Olivia can see the woman in the ticket booth for the movie theatres. There’s just one woman on tonight, although the twin booth is also lit with flashing lights that circle the outline of the booths. The ticket woman has taken a Q-tip from her purse and is cleaning her ear.
    â€œYou have a truck outside?”
    â€œYes, an eighteen-wheeler.”
    â€œWould you consider joining me for a beer? I can give you my address and you can pick me up later. I have a daughterbut I have a babysitter lined up for the evening. I was going out anyway.”
    Olivia has asked the taxidermist out for a beer because she suddenly feels sad about being alone on her birthday. She has an image of this man driving across an empty Saskatchewan highway with these wild beasts frozen in attitudes of attack, stretched in frozen gallops in the back of his truck. He is the first person she has met in months who seems lonelier than she is. There’s the chance he won’t show up.
    At the bar Olivia gets drunk very fast. Harold drinks the same bottle of beer most of the evening. At last call he buys himself another. He feels jumpy, excited. He’s been on the road for six months and almost always finds himself eating in empty hotel restaurants where the waitress watches a miniature TV with an earphone so as not to disturb him.
    Olivia is beautiful, Harold thinks. She’s wearing a man’s shirt of moss-coloured material, and grey leggings. When she walks to the bar he can see all the muscles in her long legs. She reminds him of a giraffe, graceful despite her drunkenness and the fact that her legs are too long for her. Harold is adept at recognizing different kinds of drunkenness. In some people it twists free something bitter, but Olivia is blossoming. Her cheeks are flushed, her s’s are lisping against her large front teeth. She has been telling him about the father of her child.
    â€œMy memories are like those animals in the back of your truck. I can take them out and look at them, all but touch them. Today is my birthday. I’m thirty, but time hasn’t moved atall since he left. I don’t look any older. I’m just waiting, that’s all. Do you know what I think? I think he’ll be back. I know he will. I know how to get in touch with him if there’s an emergency with Rose, our daughter. I’ve got the number in my bedside table. But I haven’t called him since he left. I’m waiting until he comes to his senses. You know what I think? I think he’s been enchanted by an ice queen. You know, a splinter of glass in his eye, but one of these days an unexpected tear is going get it out. He’ll be back, don’t you worry, Harold.”
    Suddenly Harold is seized with worry. He removes his glasses. He puts his hand over hers on the table.
    â€œBe honest with me, now. Does it