Performance Anxiety

One day, when we were still in our third year at university, Tina stopped me in the hallway. I was on my way to the obligatory History of Musical Instruments, which, despite its potential, had turned into History of the Big Yawn for me.

“What other classes do you have today?” she asked.

“Library Skills 101,” I replied.

“Skip it,” she said.

“I’ve put if off for three years. They won’t let me graduate if I don’t pass it.”

“Borrow the notes. You’ve got to come with me.”

“Where?”

“To Victoria.”

“Are you crazy? It’s at least a ferry ride. It’s money. And why Victoria?”

“I’ve hitched us a ride one way. I’ll pay your part. We’ll hitch another to get back. We gotta hurry though. Wayne, this guy in my Women’s Studies class has got a truck. He’s going back to Victoria for the weekend.”

“Guys usually avoid those courses. What’s he doing in Women’s Studies,” I asked.

“Studying the women.” Tina smirked. “He’s not as stupid as he looks.”

Tina didn’t waste a lot of time, so there had to be a good reason for her wanting to go to Victoria. She looked terrible that day so I figured it was serious. Her long dark hair was stringy and her face looked drawn and ash-colored.

So I agreed to go with her and we crammed into the front seat of the appointed truck at the appointed hour.

Wayne, Tina’s friend from Women’s Studies, appeared to be majoring in Babes and Foxes at university. He was definitely eye candy, with an Olympic athlete’s body, a profile that belonged on a Roman coin and a shock of sun-bleached curls you wanted to reach out and twirl with your fingers. I imagined a lot of women were also majoring in Wayne.

He asked, “So how’s life in the music department, by which I mean, any action? You girls getting G-spots attended to?”

I flashed Tina an irritated quizzical look and said, “Ouch. Forget about the prelims. Let’s get straight to business.” But she elbowed me to be quiet.

He went on, “I mean, are you getting it often in that department, see, ’cause I was thinking, if they were short on dudes there, of changing my major. I’m running out of inspiration in Twentieth-Century Canadian Literature.”

Tina said to the windshield in a loud amused voice, “He’s worked his way through the whole faculty. Students and lecturers.”

“Hey. Only the babes, eh? Dudes aren’t my territory,” added Wayne quickly.

Tina turned to him and said, “You wouldn’t know what to do with the women in music, Wayne.”

“No?” He had an expression of disbelief.

“Music’s bigger than any man, Wayne. And they wouldn’t let you in anyway. Kazoo does not exactly qualify as an instrument.”

“Harmonica?” he said hopefully.

“Don’t think so,” said Tina.

Wayne pried and prodded a little longer, trying to get the biological profile on all the flora and fauna of the music department.

“Flautists,” he spouted enthusiastically. “All that embrasure could come in very handy.”

But Tina and I acted like a couple of brick walls and he eventually gave up.

Once we’d boarded the ferry, Wayne went off to check out the babes and foxes on deck while Tina and I sat at a table inside and sipped cappuccinos. First we griped for a while about our singing teachers and then, for the longest time, we just sat in silence.

I tried to break into Tina’s mood. “Wayne’s really, really amazing looking,” I said, “but he’s…”

“He’s gorgeous and he’s a total hoser,” said Tina, bored.

I watched the wild April ocean fracture into sapphire shards with each new gust of wind, and said, “Maybe a pod of whales will swim by and flick their tails for us.”

“Hmm,” said Tina. She was descending into a funk. If gigantic sea mammals impressed her, she wasn’t going to let me know about it that day. In fact, she was barely there.

Tina had left the planet, something she did from time to time. She was out there drifting weightlessly in the galaxy of her personal baggage. Not that she was a space cadet. Tina had no trouble being present for singing gigs. Singing gigs were easy for her because, unlike real life, you always know what’s going to happen in the end of an opera or a cantata or a song cycle. But she had other moments that were less solid.

That day I said, “Tina, you’re drifting into outer space. Don’t do this to me. Come back to Earth. Stay here.”

“I was just thinking.”

“That was not a ‘just thinking’ expression. It was a ‘Lizzie Borden works it out’ expression. You’ve made this trip to Victoria before, haven’t you? Recently, I mean.”

“What makes you think so?”

“Because you know exactly where everything is right down to what kind of coffee they make and where the stir sticks are. You know where the bathrooms are and the best seats. How come you didn’t want to tell me before now? Is this about a man?”

“Sort of.”

“A sort of man. Who?”

She crossed her arms and glowered at me.

“Okay, surprise me then.”

We were interrupted by the call for passengers to go belowdecks. Tina gave me another grim look. I followed her down to the car deck.

Wayne showed up at the last minute, looking smug. He’d obviously scored some babe-and-fox action for later. In silence, we rode past soft hills and forest, past a long strip of car dealerships, fast-food joints and cheap motels, into the mock-English center of town. Wayne dropped us off in front of a big castlelike hotel and screeched away in his truck, laying a pungent black strip of rubber.

“Show-off,” muttered Tina, then started to hurry toward her mysterious destination with such huge strides that I was nearly running to keep up.

“At least let me take in some scenery,” I panted. “It’s so pretty here, all the flowers, the hanging baskets.” But Tina didn’t answer or slow her pace. I hated her when she was like that. She made me feel so useless, closing me and everybody else out.

“Why did you bring me along if you’re going to act like I’m not here, Tina?”

“Witnesses,” she barked. “I need a witness.”

I knew it. She was planning on killing somebody.