squeakyclean
by
Jonathan Sprung
SMASHWORDS EDITION
* * * * *
PUBLISHED BY:
Jonathan Sprung on Smashwords
squeakyclean
Copyright © 2005 by Jonathan Sprung
Smashwords Edition License Notes
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Chapter One
A singing voice floated toward Soho from behind.
“Ev-ry thing is twit-terpated in the spring...
“Flow-ers bloom ... bir-dies sing...
“Ev-ry thing is twit-terpated in the spring...
“The whole wide world’s in love...” The singing trailed off. He was frightened.
“I love the smell of spring.” She stood behind him. “It reminds me of rabbits hopping and flowers and little paper boats floating down gutters into metal grates ... I love that.”
He didn’t have the courage to turn. “Me too,” he squeaked. It was all the voice he could find.
“All that dust of late fall ends up here, y’know. It gets kicked up by cars on dirt roads, coating leaves in the dog days of summer, or in the city, the carbon barked out by buses ... it’s captured by the snow and held there all winter to be thrown in snowballs, shoveled from driveways, and peed on by dogs ... then it melts. It’s a system. It cleans itself. It goes into the air and we smell it. They say the smell of spring is of growth, but it’s not.”
“Oh.”
“It’s part of the cycle.”
“What cycle?”
“Did you know that Easter was named for a Pagan goddess?” she chirped.
“No,” he replied, but she was gone. The alarm drew him out of sleep. He buried his head under the covers, trying to regain the boats and puddles, the girl, but everything was once again real like a mouthful of dirt.
His room was a collection of artifacts he’d brought home at one time or another. Books, pictures, scores of things found on Metro trains or on buses, in waste baskets, unidentifiable machine parts, beautiful stones, small animal skulls buried under the porch and bleached in the laundry room, children’s mittens dropped on the street, and winter clothing that would never fit him, left by samaritans on mail collection boxes.
Other objects with real memory were scattered throughout so that anyone trying to understand him by mapping his room would be foiled. Notes from his crush with her sacred looping script, a hair clip from a girl at school who’d smiled at him. He envisioned researchers thousands of years in the future reconstructing a picture of the world after a great flood or volcanic winter. People in drysuits or robotic diving bells would be entrusted to decipher the culture from clues he’d left behind. They would speak another language, English and French long dead, so that even a Metro ticket or a receipt for dental floss found in a plastic container would take on supreme importance.
He could hear his parents in the kitchen preparing for the day. Their world had been safe and numb ever since his father suffered a heart attack. That came shortly after the death of Soho’s Aunt. Joy. The two events were unrelated, though they’d been a one-two punch of devastation. Suddenly they needed routine.
Within the family Soho was a son, no more and no less. He did chores, was obedient, well fed. He had no friends or social life to impose on his time, and was always available for errands.
He rolled over to the telephone and dialed a toll-free number. Two rings.
“Youth distress hotline ... Aide-jeunes...”
“Hi. Is Tina on duty, can I talk to her?”
“Uh ... I’m sorry ... Tina’s no longer with us.” French accent. “Can I help you? My name is Andrea.” She said it ‘Ahn-draya’.
“Uh ... yeah. I guess. I’m not really in distress ... just kind of pissed off and depressed.”
“Are you in any physical danger?”
“No. I’m at home.”
“Anything you want to talk about? You can take your time...” It sounded as if she was chewing bubble gum.
“I don’t know where to start. I mean, I have to go to school, just like every other day, but today seems different. I can’t even get my body to take me there. I give the command, like, I hear it in my head saying, ‘Work, feet. Move’, and they don’t. Is that fucked or what?”
“Why don’t you want to go? What happens there?”
“I don’t know. It feels as if everyone’s against me. They avoid me as if I have a disease or something, call me ‘cling-on’ when I try to hang around them. I go to the art room because I like drawing ... and the Goths there just make me feel like I’m eavesdropping. If I go to the library there’s nothing for me to do there except homework. I can’t eat there, and I have to go somewhere to eat, but the cafeteria is full of cool kids sharing tables. I walk around alone, pretending I’m going somewhere. It’s one embarrassing event after another. I have nobody to tell about it, nobody will listen or give me the benefit of the doubt. The longer this shit goes on, the more socially inept I become. I can’t talk to people. There’s nobody to talk to who isn’t part of the problem. Everyone says that I just have to be me and people will like me. Well, I am me, and people still don’t like me. One day I’d just like to know that someone is on my side. I have nobody ... surely that’s not fucking right.”
Andrea took a deep breath. “Well, we all pass judgement on others, and it’s not right, but that doesn’t mean you have to be outcasted. Lots of people bloom well after high school, years after, and you may just be that type of person. You seem like a pretty nice guy. I’m assuming that nobody ever gets to see that because you close up around people. Am I right?”
“Ya.” He blushed.
“All I can say is it can’t last forever. What year are you in?”
“My last year ... but how do you know it can’t last forever? What if I’m one of those people who’s never accepted? What if I end up lonely when I’m sixty?”
“You’ll change, and other people will change. You can become different, and I know this is going to sound like ... a load of shit, you say ... but you have your whole life ahead of you. The reason people say ‘you have your whole life ahead of you’ is they want you to understand that life is a very long process, and you’re not at the end yet. That’s when you’ll be able to decide whether you’re a failure or not. You’re not even to the beginning of the end, yet ... perhaps the end of the beginning. It’s like looking at a marathon from the start line and thinking you’ll lose because you didn’t tie your shoes. All this stuff can be fixed.”
“But how?”
“Listen, what is it makes you feel so anxious? You’re talking to me okay... right?”
“Yeah, I guess,” he sighed. “I don’t mean ... it’s just, I get so scared to say anything, and then because I’m that way dumb things come out that make people laugh at me or hate me or something. I don’t know.”
“Is there anyone you can talk to?”
“My Mom and Dad. I just don’t want to burden them.”
“Build on that. Talk to the kids at school as if they’re your parents...”
“Ya, that’ll go over well...”
“No, bad example.”
He sighed. “Look. I have to go or I’ll be late for school.”
“Are you going to be okay?”
“Ya. I’ll be okay.”
“Call me any time. Ask for Andrea, remember.”
“Ya. Sure, thanks Andrea.”
“Anytime.”
He went to the washroom to shower and dress and rid himself of acne. He hated his face. It bubbled and boiled as if hating him also. He battled it daily, drenching it in peroxide, washing and scrubbing it sunburn pink. He followed the advice of teen magazines and left it alone, then squeezed every blemish. He tried mud-masks and avocado peels, used toner, stopped eating junk food, and still each day woke up unchanged. He wondered if the stress of having acne caused it
Downstairs his mother had made eggs, bacon, toast and home fries. They always ate like this. Soho had once told his mother to cut grease out of his diet, so he could clear up his face, but she hadn’t known what to cook for him. He ended up at the table staring at several carrots and a celery stick. She was a typical 1950’s housewife displaced in the 1990’s. She was doting and uncomfortably pleasant. She baked cookies every weekend, kept her hair in a bun, and always wore an apron. Even on her birthday she would bake her own cake and light her own candles before blowing them out. His father handed her the paycheck each week and withdrew very little for himself. They watched television, he from the couch, she from the kitchen door, and even enjoyed the commercials. There was nothing sharp about his father. His personality and features were as blunt as his fingernails. Even his eyeglasses were round.
Soho couldn’t even escape on the internet. Far from alleviating his loneliness, it became a place to be reminded of his true nature. The way he saw it, people without a social life logged on to the internet to find other lonely people, and they all became afraid to say anything real to be outcasted from that last chance social strata world, worrying that free-fall was the only next step.
***atomick has joined #canada
<hamlet> ...what?
<blusman> there’s nothing to worry about. They’ll come around.
<squeakky> hi, atomick
<denver> just chill. They’ll get tired of it and bail.
***doggy_has joined #canada
<Plexus> ya, scarf this...
<blusman> just slap ‘em around a bit.
<hamlet> scarf what? I can’t find it...
<necro> u’re a bitch, blusman.
***Airial18 has quit IRC (Ping timeout for Airial18[x14iligan.com])
<atomick> hi squeakky
<denver> blusman how old are you?
<blusman> I’ll be YOUR bitch...
<hamlet> Don’t you ever talk about anything but sex?
<necro> you can’t be my bitch, u’re a guy
<atomick> what’s on your mind, hamlet?
<doggy_> well what else is ther?
<denver> guys can be bitches, too.
<blusman> 22, are you cute?
<squeakky> ...mind? LOL (wanker?)
LOL … laugh out loud. Now even the internet had been taken over by cool cats. They were everywhere, even in the refuge for people pretending to be someone else. They had revealed him as a social failure. Nobody at school would listen. If he told his crush it would destroy his chances of getting close to her.
He sat down for breakfast. Most days he couldn’t look his parents in the eyes, instead mumbling into his lap if they asked questions. After school he saw them at dinner, then holed up in his room, playing on the computer and sorting through his artifacts. He slept a lot. He loved dreaming. He sat in his room staring at the ceiling and invented rich, textured worlds to waste time.
At the table they were mostly silent.
“All ready for exams, son?”
“Ya, I guess.”
“What’s that?”
“I said I guess.”
“Well, you’ve always been able to do well...” His father wasn’t paying attention.
“More eggs, dear?”
“No, thanks Mom. I’ve gotta hit the road. Can you give me a ride today, Dad?”
“Sorry, son. I have to go to Mirabel to get some stuff coming in on a flight.”
He’d have to take the bus.
They lived in a newer semi-detached house in the suburbs north of the city. They were far enough out that his daily trek took him a half-hour by bus to get to the Côte-Vertu Metro, and then another half-hour to reach the school. He did his homework on the train.
Outside a layer of cloud was spread over the city like grease, formless and dull. He waited alone at the nearest bus stop and remembered specific things as his eyes found them. Grass, poking between cracks, browning, the shelter itself, missing a glass panel, the railway bridge farther on, which, with the line of trees alongside, framed two industrial buildings covered in graffiti. Evergreen is Air America. What could that mean? His mind flitted... ‘Is my homework done? Will it snow? People are ugly in the morning. I need a new pair of shoes.’
The bus arrived shortly after, full, and he entered, showing his pass. He didn’t even bother looking for a seat. Empty seats were always reserved for someone else. On the bus he felt invisible and conspicuous. People recognized him and acknowledged a vague fear of connection. On the way to school he was never asked the time and was rarely looked at. Like a donut hole, he took up space where one expected to see nothing. He was the waited-for taken seat, the head in the movie theater poking into the light, or the implacable cough heard on the street. He was generic.
Soho believed he was uniquely obvious. Besides acne, puberty had wrought changes in his body. He felt dull aches as his bones grew slower than his muscles. His vocal cords had grown, leaving him unsure what range his voice would project when he spoke. He fought frequent surprise erections, washing his laundry by sneaking his sheets downstairs several nights a week.
The Metro was different. It was easy to disappear on the Metro, trains like emergency rooms, commuter patients collectively enduring an uncomfortable procedure. They were courteous when necessary, sometimes crazy, but mostly docile. Everyone avoided eye contact. Concrete walls blew past. Distance and speed were gauged by the passing of intervalled lights. Everyone was waiting for something. Waiting for the doors to open, for work to start, for a cell-phone call, for the end of the line, the end of the day, the end of the world. Even the advertisements became interesting.
After turning and grinding along electric rails through vast round caverns, Soho surfaced into the midst of city chaos. This was the awed part of his journey, when he felt smallest. He was just another person. The station was several blocks from school, and walking there he passed thousands of people crossing Sherbrooke like a floodway, on their way to work, driving cars, shouting, talking on phones, , tying their shoes, cursing, carrying things. Strangers he’d never see again, who never recognized or noticed him.
* * *
The city was elusive. Montreal. It existed as two-block glimpses, identified by monuments, buildings, streets, and geography. The population was an estimate. With over two million people on the island, any census would take months to be incomplete. Its office towers stood smartly with their mirrored windows, marble entrances and glowing signs. It had four Metro lines underfoot, a Central station, two International Airports, helicopters reporting traffic for news stations, and bridges prone to high winds and winter icing.
Construction was perpetual.
Residents wandered its streets and struggled to find their place. Its image was a mental map, a smaller simplified city in their minds. It had defining features. There was a mountain in the center, sculpted parkland beside the downtown where Jacques Cartier had discovered the village of Hochelaga in 1535, now buried under the campus of McGill University. From the mountain the city was sectioned like pie. The plateau to the east was an artsy poor district with cheap housing and ancient multicultural neighborhoods. It consisted of mostly three-story buildings, flat-roofed apartment blocks with outdoor spiral staircases whose collective frontage became a postcard trademark of the city. To the Northeast was Outremont, ‘the other mountain’, a rich Francophone area. South and East were the gay village, Chinatown, and the Main, the last Anglo bastion of hip consumer culture. South of the mountain was the downtown, and beside that sprawled St. Henri and Westmount.
Westmount took up its own side of the mountain, all limestone mansions and manicured grounds where ambassadors, bank presidents, previous heads-of-state, and wealthy lawyers could set up residence relatively guilt free. The area was electorally linked with impoverished St. Henri so their conservative votes could override their socialist neighbors.
The city employed a speedy fire department and an efficient snow removal system spearheaded by tracked vehicles pushing angled blades along the sidewalks. Tow trucks patrolled the streets, hooting two-tone warnings for residents to move their cars. The city employed thousands of police officers who had been embroiled in controversy after the brutal beating of an unarmed man by twenty-seven officers in full view of a Saturday night crowd on the Main. They had removed their badges, used pepper spray, and several had drawn their handguns. The man was found to be innocent, though he hadn’t been charged. The officers were never disciplined, as they quickly disbanded the Community Policing Association, thus avoiding accountability.
There were frequent protests, always with a fresh supply of students passing their conscience years in one of the four universities before accepting a job in the real world. No doubt their attention to current issues later came in handy during interviews.
People defined the city more than monuments or buildings could. It was through their greater actions, in concert, that the mood and flavor of the city was formed. Montreal was chic, just as Toronto was superficial, or New York rude. There were landmarks. The rotating beacon on Place Ville-Marie at night. The angle-iron cross on the mountain. St. Joseph’s oratory. The bridges. Yet the real defining feature was the aura, the collected personalities of people brought together at random and averaged, blurred into one intangible being.
* * *
In lower Wesmount, near St. Henri, in the modest bedroom of his rented second-floor semi-detached home, Joshua Campbell woke and fell into his morning routine like a child. He looked out the window and found the sun obscured by a layer of cloud, like a dime reflecting through murky water. He left out his suit and tie, shirt, and socks on the bed, where he’d find them after his shower and shave, and shuddered. Something horrible could happen today. If not the weather, which promised to be simple, then something, he could feel it, dark and insatiable, waiting in the wings.
In the kitchen in his suit, he sliced a sesame bagel, setting the halves in their old side-folding toaster, and turned on the radio, “...high today of minus four with mostly cloudy skies, tonight will be mild and clear with a low of minus six, tomorrow...” As he poured coffee and enjoyed the first taste, he imagined air masses flowing as a weather person would see them, then turned the radio down to listen for movement from Barbara’s room. Not a whisper. She used to help get him ready for work, knotting his tie, and making a pot of good, strong coffee that Joshua had never been able to duplicate. She sometimes saw him off at the door. He upped the volume again, “...on cross-Canada check-in, we’ll meet a young astrologer from Saskatoon, and find out his predictions for the upcoming year and what’s in store for the next millennium...”
The newspaper was down on the stoop, and he retrieved it, feeling again what minus four was like and gauging the outer clothing he’d have to wear. On the kitchen table he sorted the paper into sections he’d read and sections he wouldn’t. The announcer spoke on, “...shores of the Saskatchewan river, the city of bridges falls into hibernation on the windy prairie. Within this winter...” The business section focused on the failure of the markets in the Far East. Analysts promised a drop in the unemployment rate. Politicians took credit. On the front page of the local news was a story of a woman who’d fallen into a pothole on Milton Avenue and had to be rushed to hospital. She then sued the city for unsafe living conditions and in turn the city passed a law stating that they could not be held liable for pedestrian injuries incurred off the sidewalks. Anything could happen on the streets. In another, a government official in Saskatoon was charged with raping a fourteen-year-old girl when he was a young RCMP officer.
“...this twenty-six year old for his predictions about the economy, the political outcomes of world regions, and for the aspects of love and careers of several...” As he read the paper, he hoped that Barbara would join him so he could talk about things, but minutes later it was too late.
The headlines hung over the city like a greater world, flavoring the air. “...the history of predictions...” a nervous voice said, “...one has to come across those of Nostradamus. It’s a poignant time for it, I mean, in twenty months we’ll have the coming of the third anti-christ...” Joshua paused for a moment to let the astrologer finish his thought, and shut off the radio. As he left he locked the door and whistled on his way to the bus stop. Nothing stood out anymore on his street. The other houses sat all neat and proper with trees and shrubs wrapped in burlap. This neighborhood had been Barbara’s choice. They had called around for more than a month from her parents’ place in Côte-St.-Luc, and Barbara had made the final decision. She had always wanted to live in Westmount, and it was the only rental that they could afford in the area. Their neighbors were generic. He never saw them. They could have been accountants, hit men, secretarial staff, drug dealers, terrorists, photographers or serial killers, though they were probably administrators. He’d never spoken to them.
He quickly reached trendy Sherbrooke Street, where clerks set out their signs, swept their walks, and threw salt as if snow could fall any moment. In a plate glass window he saw himself. Whistling to work, newspaper under his arm, a twenty-nine-year-old man, secure with moderate success. His demeanor was soft and apologetic, deferring even when deferral wasn’t called for or wanted. He censored his actions and words, giving others their say at the cost of his own opinions. He was not stunning in conversation, contributing only when necessary. He failed to intimidate, and knew, vaguely, that this was a downfall, though one that ate slowly instead of devastating all at once.
As he lined up for the bus, toying with the scarab he always wore, a gaggle of schoolgirls caught his attention. He saw them almost every morning. To him they were like birds, twittering and milling, wearing bright jackets over their patterned blue-and-white uniforms. Kilts, sweaters, blouses, tights, socks. Though they inhabited the same physical space, their world to Joshua was one of fantasy, seemingly simple. As they argued about who usually mooched the most cigarettes, he tried not to imagine feeling curves, touching faces, and smelling hair on the backs of necks. He turned away and played with the ticket in his pocket, turning it over and over. It felt a cold minus four. His breath exhaled in vapor like the schoolgirls’, except theirs mingled with smoke and lingered. One of the girls glanced at him as she pouted through a cigarette exhale. She was cute and tall, with big brown droopy eyes and over shoulder dark hair. She blinked slowly as if her eyes betrayed thoughts. The light changed, distracting her with the roar of traffic coming off the stop on Sherbrooke.
How would her breast feel, he thought, hand slipping up under her blouse and along her navel hair? Would she shudder, inhaling at his touch? The girl was not interested. He looked away, and when he glanced back she was watching him. He blushed and pulled the newspaper from under his arm, thinking about how much older he appeared.
Joshua was tall, with dark hair and a medium build. His wide-set eyes were striking, pale, stone green and pensive, as if between a logger’s bushy beard and shaggy hair. His eyes showed intelligence. He shaved every day, which rounded off his jaw and gave the appearance of youth. Barbara teased him sometimes about having a baby face. His mouth was small. A barber on the plateau cut Joshua’s hair. He called the man ‘Mr. Barber’ as if they lived in a child’s miniature village.
The stoic bus driver navigated to a stop, and pulled in beside the sign with practiced skill. The girls stepped on together, the pouty cute one last, and Joshua followed. He watched the tights stretch over the ‘H’ creases in the backs of her knees as she mounted the stairs, and put his slightly bent ticket in the box. All the seats were taken, so he wound his way to the back past a blur of people. Suits, knapsacks, briefcases, winter jackets, and toques. Generic people. He stood behind her, grabbing the rail for support with one hand and playing with a coin in his pocket with the other. He thought of sex, of her hair draped over his face as her body moved in slow rhythm on his. He inhaled the clean shampoo scent of apples.
“You know our applications have to be in, eh?”
“Shit yeah. Where you applying?”
“I don’t know,” replied the girl, “but I want to get into a place that has photography. At least that. Journalism. Maybe something more artistic...”
The bus lurched and her calf rubbed for an instant against his while they rocked back and forth. It gave him an erection, thinking about her silky smooth tights so close. He looked away to the street, and the urban grey washed his senses. Coffee from breakfast agitated his stomach.
“Dawson?”
“Fuck that. Emily goes there, and she’s living at home. I want to be as far away from home as possible. Where’s the farthest I can go? Victoria? I’ll apply to UVic.”
The last remnants of commercial Westmount behind them, they passed the park and residences separating their suburb from Montreal. The city didn’t feel like it belonged to Joshua any more. There was a time he had felt a kind of exuberant ownership, as if the world had been built up around him like a grand support system, and he was the only one on the planet who was truly alive.
Outside the clouds broke apart and the sun slowly appeared. As he thought it might be a good day after all, the bus hit a curb pulling in to the next stop, and the other passengers pushed the girl into him. When she lost her balance, she reached for the rail and her ass rubbed for an instant against his erection. She glanced back to him and whispered ‘sorry’, then went back to her friends. Joshua swooned.
A man got up from the seat next to him. She backed up a step into Joshua to let him pass, and as she pressed up close, shot another ‘sorry’ over her shoulder. Her body so close, he could feel her warmth. He gauged her size, reveled in awareness of her. For a second, he even considered moving his hand forward to brush against the back of her leg, to feel the texture of her tights, but he didn’t, and she moved back to her friends.
“Do you want to sit down?” Joshua offered.
The girl didn’t look, but a man standing next to him replied, “If you don’t mind...”
He let the man have it, and turned to the window. It was much better than staring, not only did he match her disinterest, but he also made himself aloof and therefore more appealing. He flipped the coin over in his pocket, and again the bus lurched. His hand reflexively shot out to grab the rail for support. The coin fell to the floor. As he bent to pick it up from behind her heel he pretended not to look at her ankles.
In traffic once again, she stepped to the side to catch her balance, rubbing calves with him. His erection, which had been subsiding, stiffened. As they passed a mirrored building, he caught his image in the glass for the second time that morning. He didn’t recognize himself until he traced his way through the crowd and found a man in a suit.
Sherbrooke street was familiar and busy, more and more commercial as they neared the city center. He was on the wrong side of the bus to see his own building, but he knew it would be looming above them in a few stops. He was on the third floor of a very tall tower, and all he saw from his desk was the building across the street and the street itself.
The bus slowed, then quickened, its diesel engine grinding below the floor.
It would be impossible. Her senior by perhaps a decade, innocent appearance, the uniform. Such a public place … everyone would frown. He could just imagine their steely eyes if he struck up conversation, glaring, silent, showing scorn.
If he and the girl were alone somewhere... her house perhaps. He could be upstairs looking for the washroom, find her room. He could talk to her while she sat cross-legged on her comforter. She was almost illegal. What could they have to talk about? The bus stopped, and the girls stepped off, leaving Joshua with an incomplete fantasy.
The entrance to Joshua’s building made him feel somewhat important. Laws in Montreal required that buildings of a certain age had to be preserved, at least in façade, and so the towers along Sherbrooke street grew directly from the sedate limestone mansions of the previous century like concrete beanstalks. These had been the homes of bankers, distillers, newspapermen and lumber barons. The trappings of wealth of one generation gave way to the outward flexing of power of those to follow.
Joshua worked for a fashion school, administering payroll in the head office. He had a minimum of responsibility, and yet the autonomy not to have someone looking over his shoulder. All week he absorbed information about changes in employee hours, sick days and leaves of absence. He collected the timesheets from temporary staff, loaded them into his computer, and then every two weeks transmitted them in one great load to the bank. Days later he sifted through volumes of numbers for errors. He kept mostly to himself, though he knew the first and last name of everyone in the company, and the correct spellings of all. He could put faces to the names of everyone in the head office, but most employees were disjointed voices on the phone, calling about vacation pay not added or missing checks. Nobody called to thank him for overpayments. Those he had to track down himself.
His personal office space was square, advantageously located across the hall from the coffee machine and the microwave. Bill, his superior, was right next door, and although his office was the same size as Joshua’s it was desirable for being on the corner with two windows. He’d had first pick when the business moved there.
Joshua had never taken an interest in the greater workings of the company beyond his desk. He’d often sleep through meetings, believing that the company worked like a person’s body, that in a body the individual cells need not understand anything about nuclear energy, musical theory, or the poetry in logarithms. No cell, by itself, could go out and get milk from the depanneur. By deduction, then, he wondered why he should bother learning high finance when he had no chance of using it.
His knowledge of what they taught in the school was limited, though he knew where the classrooms were. The young students were housed in a building of silver and glass containing studios, an atelier, and a number of classrooms down on hip Ste. Catherine street. He couldn’t be interested in the students. That was just asking for trouble. They were all cute and young and full of energy, and sexy. Nightly bar-stars. It had been a problem before with some of the male employees.
On his first day at work off the weekend, Joshua had to deal with the previous week’s accumulated problems. Employees left messages when they received their paystubs. He put in the data for each, and checked over his work. It took less than five minutes to find the websites of each of the Catholic schools in the area. One was a boy’s school, and two were in the direction she walked. A fourth was too far away for her to take the Sherbrooke bus, closer to take the other Metro line. It was down to two. Neither site had graphics of their uniforms.
Outside, buildings covered all but one small section of the horizon, like a wall of football players closing in on a quarterback. There were trees, like a dark brown smear on the snow, but the horizon itself had nothing to do with the edge of the earth. It was an uneven array of apartment buildings, homes, power lines, and freeway. He could make out one definite building, a copper green church steeple. Nature ended a fraction of a degree lower. Cumulus clouds eased past skyscrapers, and Joshua waited for them to snag and pull themselves inside out. Staring at the reflections on the windows of the building across the street, he couldn’t keep the young girl from the bus off his mind.
The rest of the morning he passed in a stupor, anticipating a lunch he’d eat off a styrofoam plate with plastic utensils in a basement food court. When Ed offered to buy him a pint at the pub for lunch, Joshua accepted. Ed had been Joshua’s friend since University, where they shared a room in first year. Ed took consumerism to a higher level. In University when Joshua had tapes, Ed had CD’s, new on the market. He always knew the newest bands. He leased a new car every year, wore cologne, and his teeth sparkled. If he’d ever had a deformity, it would have been fixed long ago. For Joshua, Ed defined trends. He was always onto them and off them before they were even recognized by people at large.
Ed was unusually chatty when they settled in. “I heard the shit about Gina. She’s coming back from her maternity leave. You know about things going on between she and Bill...” Gina was the previous Administrator of Human Resources, and had been replaced by temps who screwed everything up. Bill, Joshua’s boss, had been receiving calls from her when she was in the hospital with her child. “Apparently she’s come back, and now she’s got the nerve to call him here at work, visit, take him out for lunch. I saw them go out. It’s like they don’t even care...”
“Why should they?”
“I don’t know. You’d like to believe there’s some sort of decency. Keep one’s private life private. The only reason she’s got the job is she goes.”
“I don’t think that’s the case. I mean, she may be a hoochie, but she’s got skills. It’s not like she’s completely inept.”
“Ya, actually it is like she’s completely inept. Have you ever had to work with her?”
“I don’t really have to work with anyone.”
“Oh ya.” Ed paused. “So, what’s coming down the pipe for bonuses?”
“Christmas bonuses?”
“Ya, there’s always a little something. I figured you’d know.”
“I don’t. I haven’t heard squat yet.”
“Based on performance?”
“No. Usually it’s percentage salary rounded up to the nearest fifty.”
“Oh, so the rich get richer. What’s the percentage?”
“You tight this year?”
“No, just curious.”
“One percent, so if you made, say...”
“Ya, I can do the math.”
“Hm.”
“What will you be getting this year?”
“That’s confidential. I can tell you what you made this year.”
“Naw. Are you okay?”
“Why?”
“I don’t know,” he shrugged.
“My desk is full.”
“Listen, if you’re stressed I have tickets to the game this weekend.”
“Canadiens?”
“Ya, the Canadiens. Who else plays anything in this town? You wanna come?”
“Sure.”
They drank pints and ate pot pies with mashed potatoes and peas. The whole thing sat heavy on Joshua’s stomach, and when he returned to the office he was disappointed to see that Bill had sent him an e-mail requesting a meeting. He felt like he’d taken a huge nap and was just waking up. He found Bill looking over papers on his desk.
“Ah, Joshua. How’s things?
“Good. Just working through problems with the last cycle…”
“Are there many?”
“No more than usual.” Joshua sat across the desk from him in a soft chair he always suspected was designed to make people feel small. He pictured it in the Ikea catalogue with a name like ‘Dominatik’.
“Good, good. Listen, a position has come up in Human Resources, and I think you should put in your resume. You’ve got a good knowledge of the employees, benefits, the whole process. You could have a shot at it.”
“I don’t know much about HR, though.”
“It uses the same system and database. Comes with a raise.”
“Who do I submit to?”
“Me.”
“Oh. I’ll get the paperwork together …”
Jenny, the receptionist, buzzed Bill, and he held his hand up to show that Joshua could leave. He stood and crossed the floor to the hall, closing the door behind him. He could hear Bill taking the call.
“Hey Gina! How’s the baby…?”
The rest of the day was a blur. Joshua played a few games Ed had e-mailed him, then brought up a search engine on the web. He blanked when he got there. He couldn’t think of one hot actress or star who’s pictures he’d like to see, not one world event to absorb, nobody from high-school to find, nothing to buy or read or listen to or watch ... nothing. He shut down the computer and left early.
Back in Westmount, he exited the bus and walked along Sherbrooke, passing Roslyn Avenue. He couldn’t be sure how far the cute girl walked to the stop, but the street was identical to all the others in the area. He knew nobody who lived there.
As he approached his house he realized there was nothing special about it. Their half was the upstairs, and after the first door was a flight of stairs and another door that opened into the living room, the kitchen partially attached. Off the kitchen was a hallway, from which the bathroom, bedrooms, and Barbara’s office all branched. Joshua stood outside for a while, envisioning the interior, watching for movement as if he could see through the walls.
The door was unlocked as he entered. He’d been meaning to talk to Barbara about that. The top door opened without a sound, and Joshua deliberately cleared his throat as he took off his shoes. The living room was a dark space, with tangerine walls and false wood paneling. Light diffused through a large maple into the bay windows, best in the morning. It darkened quickly at dusk and sparked arguments about window coverings. Barbara liked them, and Joshua didn’t. The fluorescent light in the kitchen never quite threw enough light to warm the room, even while sterilizing the kitchen, just as the sunlight in the day failed to extend beyond the brown carpet. Joshua frequently lit fires in the fireplace.
He cleared his throat again.
“Is that you Josh? How was work?”
“Kind of slow. Did you make supper?
She entered from the hall just as he was making for the kitchen, and stepped in front of him. She was slim, yet matronly, with one-length hair hanging over her glasses. She was like an aged child actor, a cereal commercial kid.
“I made cannelloni, or at least tried. It turned out kinda mushy. Kiss?”
He kissed her quickly while sidestepping her, and she sighed.
“What’s wrong? Can you tell me?”
“No. It’s okay. I’m just hungry.” If he told her he’d turn their evening into a bitchfest, about office politics. That, too, with the door. He’d talk about crime and complacency, and about how she never took him seriously.
Reluctant, she returned to the computer as he started up the microwave on the cannelloni. As it hummed he looked out the bay window into the backyard. The maple filled the window in summer with luscious green, and in autumn its palm sized leaves covered the path and gardens, choked the gutters, and blanketed the car. Now, entering winter, it was as if the yard itself was reaching up to grasp something from the air. A single dark mass pulled itself slowly from the ground.
The cannelloni fizzed as he took it from the microwave, steaming. The plastic wrap was too hot for his fingers, so he scraped it off with a fork.
“Hey Barb? How much of this do you want? Is there anything to go with it?”
“I didn’t know you’d be so hungry. If you want, there are vegetables in the freezer.”
He opened the freezer and looked over a number of forgotten packages, frozen solid.
“What’s that?”
“I didn’t say anything.”
“Oh. I said there are vegetables in the freezer...”
“Yeah. I heard. I always hate doing them in the nuker because they just cool off right away ... it’s not worth it, y’know?”
“Oh ... I can’t really hear you,” she interrupted.
“…I wonder why that is...”
He didn’t care that the cannelloni was cool on the inside. He used to be interested in trying new things. He looked forward to supper. The groceries looked promising coming into the house, but turned out to be the same meals over and over, year after year.
“Are we going to get to see my parents before Christmas?” Barbara asked while reaching for the butter for her second roll.
“I don’t mind heading down in then next few weeks.”
“You don’t mind, ya, but do you want to?”
“Sure. It’ll give me some ideas for a change. I never know what to get them.”
“I usually buy their gifts anyway.”
“Well ... ya.”
“I just know how you and Rena don’t get along. She’s staying with them now.”
“Oh.”
“Robert left her and she doesn’t feel safe any more. I always knew about him.”
“That you did.”
“When she met him I told her no good would come of it. He’s a freeloader, and now that he’s used her, he’s gone. She’s twenty-eight now, and not twenty-three.” She’d buttered her roll and filled her mouth. “There’s a big difference.”
“How’s that?”
“Lots of ways. You’re half as likely to get remarried and it’s three times as difficult to raise a family after such a late divorce...”
“Who says that?”
“Statistics.”
“Oh.”
“Five of the most productive years of her life, down the tubes. Not to mention what the false start has gotta do to her mind. He should be ashamed of himself.”
“Well you never know what his side of it might be.”
“You’re just saying that because you don’t like her.”
“Hey, I know how forked her tongue can be.”
“If we go down this weekend, things will have calmed down. It’ll be easier for you then.”
“Easier for me?”
“Ya. She’s odd around men.”
“She hates me.”
“She doesn’t hate you. She hates men. Don’t take it personally. My parents have been asking about you. They haven’t seen you in such a long time. It’ll be good for you to see them again before the Christmas blitz.”
“Maybe the Christmas blitz will distract them so I can go unnoticed.”
“I know you don’t mean that.”
Joshua chose his moment. “Could you start locking the door when I’m not home.”
“Why?”
He stopped midair with a fork of pasta and cheese. “Um...” He thought the argument for locking the door was obvious. “I don’t want you to be stolen.”
Being cute wasn’t going to make this easy. “If I lock the door, how much safer is it going to make me? I mean, if someone is going to go through the trouble of coming up to the door, opening it, and coming into the house with the intention of stealing our stuff, or worse, then what’s the extra deterrence of the lock? You know they can just break the glass and turn the knob, anyway. Besides, if they find an unlocked door, they may just think someone’s here and go away. Locks are only for honest people.”
“Okay,” he said, “...okay, I grew up in a quiet area, and we never had to lock our doors, but this is Montreal. Are you aware of the number of attacks and burglaries that happen...”
“Oh, Josh. You’re being paranoid.”
“I’m not! This stuff happens. Eight out of ten crimes are within two kilometres of either workplace or home.”
“I thought that was accidents.”
He hesitated. “Most of them are on freeways.”
“That’s not what I heard.”
“Whatever.” He was defeated even before he brought it up. He didn’t want to confront because he was afraid, and yet he wanted to shatter their everyday world. Where did he learn this? His parents were always bickering, so he should have learned to do it properly. For once, he thought, maybe he should just have it out with her. No, he countered. He’d never win while he was angry about her always winning. Maybe it would be okay if she left the door unlocked, he thought. Then after the attack he could say, ‘I told you so...’
“What’s so funny?”
“Nothing.”
“No. You’re smiling. Tell me.”
He tilted his head, coy. “I was just thinking that you’re right, y’know, about the whole door thing. Nobody would break in here, anyway, with all the rich houses up the hill. Could you pass the parmesan, please?”
* * *
Althea Allen knew in her gut that something important was about to happen. She finished work at the bookstore and jumped on the #80 bus up Avenue du Parc, thinking of a bizarre dream her roommate had shared with her years earlier. Leo was a shy, curly-haired overintellectual master’s level dropout who had pretenses of writing fiction in lieu of his thesis. Like a mother, Althea would badger him to help around the house, but mostly he’d lie around watching television and writing useless notes about his novel. Althea would find them everywhere, scribbled unreadable and left to sit where they had been tossed.
Leo had the power to divine future disasters, and the details of this dream had convinced him that his true love would be revealed to him by a tattoo on her foot, a sort of inverted question mark with wings. He lived with the fear that some clingy, doting woman would find out and have the tattoo done to subject him to a life of emotional servitude. He couldn’t explain why anyone would go to such trouble, but he was absolutely certain of the tattoo dream’s authenticity.
Althea had been seeing Michael for a while. They had gone to several galleries and parties together, and she had passed books to him, knowing he liked literature. They’d progressed from her helping him in the bookstore to a date for coffee, to an invitation to a party, to sex at her place, to breakfasts in greasy-spoon restaurants, and on to domestic comfort, sharing space together without having to entertain. Even Leo enjoyed having the third voice around the house, and hadn’t said anything about the whole thing being doomed. Her little voice was telling her that something was wrong. He seemed nice. He was funny and kind, and yet there was something in her that screamed out for the kind of certainty that Leo had found in his dream. Was her tattoo-girl boy equivalent out there? Nobody had appeared in her dreams.
As the trip progressed she worked her way to the back of the bus, squeezing her way through the usual students, locals and oblivious commuters. When she reached the back doors she scanned for a seat and saw Michael holding hands with a cute girl she knew from the plateau. She had long, dark hair and striking eyes. What was her name? Althea furrowed her brow. They were comfortable, talking and smiling, and occasionally touching or pointing things out to one another. She didn’t even see him as her boyfriend but part of another happy couple. She held the rail and watched them for a full three stops. It would have been better, she thought, if he had given her a hint of instability, a clue leading her to discover that he was on medication, an alcoholic, a heroin addict, a sociopath or rapist, but he had been nice, kind, and gently intelligent.
Thisbe. That was her name. Thisbe.
She prepared to get off the bus, near her stop. She was hoping to just exit and leave him there, leave a message on his answering machine. Never talk to him again. When she glanced over to see him, to galvanize her resolve, his eyes met hers, and he blinked, once, twice. The doors opened. She stepped off, and started down the sidewalk, but he followed.
“Althea!” he yelled after her. “Althea! Stop!” He caught up to her and stood in front of her. She sidestepped him, pivoting, and dodged her shoulders to avoid looking at him. “Altheaaaaa...” he pleaded, “listen to me.” The bus pulled away.
He stepped in front of her again and she stopped, hiking her bag higher on her shoulder.
“Look, I’m sorry you had to find out like this. It’s just I was caught in a shitty situation. I was with you and I met Thisbe ... You’re both so incredible. If it was a matter of not being in love with you it would be easy ... then I could just make my decision and stick to it.”
“Michael?”
He blinked.
“Save the bullshit. You’ve lost me. There’s no way you can see us both at the same time, and I can’t trust you any more. Does she know?”
“About you?”
“Not that it really matters. Look, you don’t need to chase after me to stop me from badmouthing you. People will figure things out.”
His color drained.
“Look at you, chasing after me without an explanation to that poor girl you left on the bus. Now you’ll have her wondering why you had to jump off in such a hurry. You’ll probably lie about that, too.”
“Althea, don’t…” he stuttered, “it’s not...”
“Tell you what. You run back to her and tell her whatever you need to tell her, that I’m the psycho ex-girlfriend from hell and that you had to confront me, or whatever, but just get the fuck away from me and we’ll leave it at that, okay?” Althea retreated a step to break the moment.
Michael gaped. “Bye,” she said, and walked away.
* * *
Ed and Joshua passed time under a cloud of malcontent, sitting in the new Forum, looking around at ads for Provigo and Bell Mobilite. The banners seemed trivial. Ed bought popcorn. When the second period started, the Canadiens promptly scored. Seconds later, two Sabres checked a Hab forward in the corner, and he went down. The crowd reacted. The puck slid across to center ice and the linesman stopped play. Everything seemed to be happening in ether.
In formaldehyde, Joshua thought, preserved. Nothing was real.
Ed, being a guy’s guy, loved this stuff. He jumped at each good play, yelled at every brutal hit and every missed breakaway. During power plays he was on the edge of his seat. Joshua sometimes found himself studying the ventilation. The violence affected him. It reminded him of playing as a kid in Thomasburg when he had been weaker and hits were a way to intimidate and overpower rather than to advance play.
“Americans are threatening to go into another pisspot nation,” Ed said as they carried the injured forward away on a stretcher.
“What do they want over there?”
“Oil.”
“Fuck.” Joshua shook his head.
“As long as someone on the planet has something someone else wants, there will be war. Fact of life.”
“You’d think by now we’d be beyond war.”
“Naw. We’re just as barbaric as we were two thousand years ago. We just have better technology.”
“I don’t believe that.”
“What’s your problem today? You’ve been disagreeing with everything I say.”
“I don’t have a problem. I just believe that most people want happiness, security, and peace.”
“Not everyone has those goals.”
“Some things are universal.”
Ed rolled his eyes. “Look at this game for instance.” Play resumed with a clatter of sticks. “What if this game is a fabrication of people like you who truly desire peace, constructed to keep naturally aggressive people like ... hockey players, from harming the people you love by exerting their aggressions on each other...”
“That’s like saying pedophiles should be given child-porn to stop them from fucking little kids.”
“...and ... what if it’s true?”
“I refuse to believe that some people are inherently violent. I think it’s nationalism or religion, some cause. Frustration.”
“Isn’t frustration inherent in life?” Ed said, and became silent. He was thinking. He turned to Joshua. “When we were in school, did you ever think that you’d have to tell someone else everything you were doing, every time you did something, forever?”
Joshua looked over at him and shook his head. There was nothing to say back.
Ed continued. “I think we have affairs because we get to be individuals again. We get to own something. Everything in the house, every item, every tangible object is jointly owned. We need to feel we truly own something, even if it isn’t real ... even if it’s just sex.” He nodded. “That’s what I think.”
Joshua was silent. He didn’t even want to shift in his seat.
“Midlife crisis. It’s written all over your face. You feel you’ve made the wrong choices in life, and you’re wondering how to fix it.” He ate some popcorn. “Fuck, Josh. That’s why they gave a name to it. So you could deal with it.”
“It’s not that simple, though. I mean, sure, you could say it’s a ‘midlife crisis’ or whatever, but a label makes it sound trivial.”
“I’m not trivializing it. I’m saying others have gone through the same thing. It’s normal.”
“Ya, but is it normal because it’s the way things are, or because our patterns are all fucked up and we all believe that crisis and tension are necessary?”
“C’mon, Josh,” Ed pleaded. “What is it? Is it Barb?”
Joshua nodded.
“Does she disgust you in bed or something?”
“It’s just not the way it used to be. We sleep in separate beds, we don’t get along as friends anymore. We’re two people sharing a house. Hell, then there’s like you said, having to keep in touch all the time, tell her what I’m doing, what I’m planning, where I’m going. It’s not like I pictured marriage would be. I’m tired of it.”
“Whatever you’re thinking, man, don’t get a divorce. They’re not worth all the legal shit, losing the house, the car, half the cash. At least you don’t have to ‘split and divide’ when you separate.”
“Yes you do. It’s the same fucking thing.”
“Well, no. A separation is the best of both...”
Joshua interrupted. “So you’re saying stay with someone you don’t like because the legal pain of going your own way is worse?”
“It’s more than that, it’s...”
“What if there are no kids, and you don’t own anything?”
“Then maybe it’s simple, then,” Ed replied, and motioned for the hotdog vendor.
“What other options are there?”
“Get yourself a lover, man. Find some young cutie to fuck and have an affair. You’d be surprised how it solves so many problems.”
“Ed. You’re not ...” Joshua stuttered.
Ed smiled.
“You’re having an affair!?”
“Shh. Keep it down. They’ll think we’re gay lovers. Yes. I’ve been fucking this cute young Eaton’s clerk for a few months now. She’s good in bed, loves that I take her out for meals and shit, that I’ve got time for her ... and she’s really great in bed. Cynthia doesn’t know, but our marriage is better for it. We haven’t been this close in years.”
Ed bought a hot-dog.
“What if she finds out?”
“What if? She won’t.”
“Yeah, but what if she does?”
“It’s like this. Marriage is a joining of people for long-term companionship. It’s not the be-all and end-all of relationships. It’s more complex than that. We’re all looking for companionship, but when it comes to sex we’re all bored with our partners. It’s genetic. So it’s ideal to have a companion for life, and serial-monogamy on the side to satisfy the sexual cravings.”
“Don’t you feel guilty?”
“I have a dream, Josh. I’m a professor of some subject taken only by women. Cute women. The ones we used to dream of in Queen’s that we never thought we could get.”
No doubt, Joshua thought, his class in a similar version would be full of the not-so-good-looking friends of women in Ed’s class.
“They ask me questions I can always answer, and look up at me in awe, batting those cute eyelashes...”
Studious and shy analytical types, Joshua thought, without the nerve to ask questions.