Algoma (15 page)

Gaetan changed out of his work clothes and tossed them into a corner with the other dirty clothes. The pyjamas he’d purchased the day before—new and full price—sat on his unmade bed. He tore open the cellophane wrapping and pulled out the matching shirt and pants. They were too large. Regardless, he put them on and shuffled out onto the balcony like a child who didn’t want to go to sleep. He sat down, lit a cigarette, and, despite the chill, listened to the two women talking on the balcony below. He couldn’t make out what they were saying, or why they were up this late (or early). He just hoped they wouldn’t stop.

Three fat pigeons were perched on the window sill, cooing and murmuring, as they had been for the past hour. Gaetan tossed a pillow at the window where it thumped against the glass.

When he heard the birds fly away, the flap of their wings, he lay back down and closed his eyes. He needed to pick up one of those plastic owls to scare them off. Better still, he wished he had a pellet gun.

Unable to fall back asleep, Gaetan sat up and wiped his eyes. Sometime during the night, he’d taken off his pyjamas and now sat naked on the edge of his bed. There were no curtains on the windows, but the sun was in his favour—no one would be able to see him. He opened the drawer in his bedside table (a curb-side salvage) and pulled out a package of postcards. He shuffled the postcards in his hands, writing side up, and randomly selected one. Toronto landmark tarot. He flipped the card over: the CN Tower surrounded by blue sky and too-perfect clouds.

He looked outside. The early afternoon sky was clear, bright, and cold. Winter’s last gasp. The windows were not rattling as they normally did, which meant there was no wind. He jotted a note on the back of the postcard, wrote down an address from memory, and tossed the pen and the rest of the postcards back into the drawer. He leaned back, head on his pillow, postcard resting on his chest, and fell back to sleep.

When Gaetan woke up again it was night. His windows were black except for the occasional sweep of a spotlight high above. He switched on the light, thinking curtains would be helpful now. However, there was no curtain rod, and that was enough of an excuse. The room was cold, the single-pane windows doing little to keep the heat in. He pulled on a long-sleeved T-shirt and a pair of jeans and grabbed his wallet. It was his night off, and he was going out. He felt like he hadn’t been heard or seen by anyone in months. Tonight, he’d change that, even if he didn’t know just how yet. He was sure the city would provide the opportunity if he just looked.

Even though Gaetan had lived in Toronto for months, he’d seen very little of it, already tethered to his new schedule and routines. Tonight would also give him a chance to adjust to the tilt and keel of this new city of cement, grease, smells, and sirens.

Instead of turning right at the end of the driveway as he did when he was going to work, Gaetan turned left. Within a couple of blocks, he’d walked past several stores and half a dozen restaurants. Had there been a Korean barbecue back home? He couldn’t remember but doubted it. The only restaurant that Algoma had ever wanted to go to was House of Chips—a diner with photocopied menus in Plexiglas holders that sat on the round, Formica tables. The waitresses were quick and the prices cheap. On Good Friday, the diner sold a lake’s worth of fish and chips. Gaetan had enjoyed the first visit, but the charm wore off after half a dozen years of weekly visits, the same menu each time.

On the main street, a half dozen scraggly young maples pierced the sidewalk of each block, each raised on an anorexic diet of car exhaust and rain runoff. When Gaetan looked down the side streets he saw one-hundred-year-old oaks and maples towering above the frayed rooftops. If even one fell, he thought, it would take out several homes and businesses, maybe a car or two. Nostalgia, he realized, was a potential liability.

After he’d been walking for some time, Gaetan found himself on the sprawling campus of the University of Toronto. Dark and gothic at its centre, it felt like another world. When one of the campus police trucks drove past him, his heart beat faster. He thought about the letter he’d sent to Algoma to ensure he would be left alone; however, every day he half expected someone would come knocking on his door, ready to drag him back to Le Pin. But no one ever came. Maybe they didn’t care. Maybe his leaving had been a blessing.

Walking along a side street that ran parallel to Spadina Avenue, Gaetan stared at houses, a new favourite pastime. Some were massive and probably once beautiful, but they were now in a state of disrepair—half-rotted fences, clutches of bicycles chained to any available pole, mailboxes overflowing with yellowing fliers. Every window had a different type of covering, most improvised. He saw tinfoil and newspaper, Bristol board, and even a collage of McDonald’s hamburger wrappers. Everyone living with the wallet they had been born with. His father had once told him that you could tell everything you needed to know about a person by looking at their curtains. The house in front of him, likely rented to students given its proximity to the university, had five windows that faced the street. The main bay window was covered with a pink and white striped sheet. He could see the faint outlines of plants and possibly a cat sleeping on the inside ledge. There were three windows on the second and third floors. White lace, tin foil, dark green mini-blinds. The window in the front door was covered by a triangle of fabric, dark green with a large, gold pattern. Gaetan noted the drawstring dangling in the middle. A woman’s skirt. It was the closest he’d come to wanting to go back home.

A quick right turn, another left, and Gaetan found himself in the middle of Chinatown. It felt like a new city, the street overflowing with people, lumbering streetcars, fruit and vegetables spilling over onto the asphalt, piles of empty wood crates, mountains of garbage. It was near impossible to manoeuvre the sidewalk, so he walked along the curb, cars whizzing past him.

Almost every storefront was a restaurant or market. On the sidewalk, permit-less vendors sold homegrown vegetables, fake designer handbags, phone cards, pirated DVDs, and potted herbs, all showcased on overturned cardboard boxes or card tables. The smell of the neighbourhood was a mix of sickly sweet rotting fruit and fried food, which Gaetan found oddly pleasing. Between the constant noise and pervasive smells, it was impossible to hear one’s own thoughts. It was perfect. His stomach grumbled. It was time to eat.

He made his way across the sidewalk and stepped into one of the restaurants, taking his place at the end of a short lineup of people who were waiting for tables. He watched as waiters expertly manoeuvred silver carts of food through the restaurant, dropping something off at every table they passed. Within minutes, he was ushered to a seat by a crisply uniformed waiter who had a sheen of sweat coating his face; a laminated menu was put into Gaetan’s hands.

“I’ll have the whole deep-fried soft-shelled crab,” he said when the waiter came around again.

The waiter wrote down Gaetan’s order on his yellow notepad. “And…?”

“That’s it. One whole deep-fried soft-shelled crab. And hot sauce if you have it.”

The waiter shrugged his shoulders and left.

The restaurant—Gaetan hadn’t caught the name on the way in—was packed, patrons sitting elbow to elbow. It was hard to see where one table ended and the next began with the exception of those seated at the planet-sized tables in the middle of the restaurant. Family tables. Gaetan was the only person who sat alone, his extra chair immediately scavenged.

“Can I take this for my boyfriend? He’s just over there. At the back, see?” The girl, maybe eighteen or nineteen years old at the most, already had her hands on the arms of the empty chair. She had a sprinkling of acne at her temples and her eyebrows were drawn in too darkly. She was wearing cowboy boots and a floral wrap dress. Her right forearm was covered in a large tattoo of a dancing bear. Gaetan looked at the tattoo and then over her shoulder at the boyfriend, a wiry man in a three-piece dark-blue suit who was leaning up against the back wall. He was looking at his watch, which, even from a distance, looked expensive. He looked too old for the girl and Gaetan almost said as much.

“So, can I?” the girl asked again, her fingers tapped rhythmically against the chair.

“Go on, take it,” Gaetan said, “but can I ask you about your tat—” he started, but she squealed a thanks and hoisted the chair up and walked off before he could finish.

Gaetan watched the girl set the chair down beside a small table where her things were. She motioned to her companion to sit down, but he looked at his watch and shook his head. The girl kicked him in the shin.

The waiter arrived in that moment and interrupted Gaetan’s view of the squabble. A large plate of crab, huge and radiating heat, was set in front of him. “Thank you,” he said. “Maybe a glass of beer?”

The waiter nodded and disappeared.

When Gaetan looked over again the girl and her companion were gone, their table already occupied by a middle-aged couple. Out-of-towners, he guessed by the nervous way they kept looking around the room, the woman holding her oversized purse protectively on her lap.

Gaetan wondered about the girl and her bear tattoo, its significance. Since Leo’s death he made note of any bear reference he came across and there were many. He didn’t understand everyone’s fascination with the animal, their reverence. It was made out of meat and bone like any other. He’d hunted them with his father when he was younger, and they’d ended up in the stew pot like anything else. No special meaning or divinity—just dinner. And to the bear, maybe that’s what Leo had looked like: just dinner. An easy meal.

Gaetan wiped the sweat from his forehead with his shirtsleeve. The restaurant was as humid as a rainforest. Even the walls were beaded with pearly drops of condensation. Only the ghostly shadows of passersby were visible through the fogged glass. The neon lobster that hung in the window blinked on and off like a broken streetlight. He reached into his back pocket for his weather journal, frowning when he realized it was not there. He longed for a barometer.

Three waiters simultaneously descended upon the table beside him with fresh plates of fried rice, chop suey, and a large, steamed fish. Chopsticks darted through the air as the family snapped up the food, chatting back and forth as they ate. Seven people sat at the table. They seemed inseparable, all part of the same effortless machine. Gaetan wondered what it would take to break up the group. A divorce? Infidelity? A car accident? A missing child? It wouldn’t take much, it never did.

Belly full of crab and beer, Gaetan pulled out his wallet to pay the bill. He took out a twenty and a ten and set them on the table. Thirty bucks. Algoma could do a lot with thirty dollars, he thought. She could feed a family for a week with that amount, and well. In that moment, he knew what he was going to do. He looked around. His waiter was taking an order on the other side of the restaurant. Gaetan stood up slowly and put on his jacket, willing himself to look normal, relaxed even. He picked up the money from the table and stuffed it into his coat pocket. His blood thumped a nervous beat against his temples. A woman at the table next to him looked over. Gaetan smiled, sweatily clutching the bills in his pocket.

“Another beer, sir?” the waiter asked.

Gaetan jumped, surprised to find the waiter beside him. “Sure, sure,” he said. “Just going to the washroom.”

The waiter arched his eyebrow and stared at his jacket.

“I’m cold.”

“One beer,” the waiter said, looking at him sternly.

Gaetan nodded. “Where’s the washroom?”

The waiter pointed to the back of the restaurant, the furthest possible place from the exit. Gaetan said thank you and walked over.

Inside one of the stalls, he leaned up against the walls and shut his eyes. When someone walked in, he walked over to the sink and washed his hands. “Thirty bucks,” he whispered to his reflection in the mirror. “Thirty bucks.” When he exited the washroom, he took a deep breath and looked around. His waiter was at the bar, his back partially turned to him. Gaetan sped toward the door, opening it just in time to hear his waiter call out, “Mister!”

He ran down the street until he tasted blood at the back of his throat and he was sure there was no one following him. He felt exhilarated. Not only had someone noticed his absence, but he had thirty dollars to show for it. He pulled the bills out of his pocket and stared at them. He shook and smiled. He felt alive.

Several blocks south of the restaurant, Gaetan stepped into a shop that sold everything from pesticides to nylons. Still buzzing from his run, he spun the carousel of postcards around until one caught his eye. Mixed in with the new postcards was a throwback, something from the ’80s. Maybe someone had found an old box in the basement and was trying to sell them. The postcard had the Ontario parliament building on the front, sober brick set against an oversaturated neon blue sky.

“Pretty dry,” he said, trying to joke with the woman standing next to him, her arms rifling through a bin of discounted underwear. She rolled her eyes and walked away. He took the postcard to the cashier. “Wait a minute,” he said, and grabbed a birthday card from a display on the counter, “this, too.” When he asked for stamps, the woman sold him a half-used book of stamps out of her own purse.

Outside the store, leaned up against the building, Gaetan wrote on the back of the postcard and pasted a stamp onto it. He put the postcard in his back pocket and grabbed the birthday card. He put thirty dollars into the card and addressed the envelope to Algoma.

The closest mailbox he found was covered in a collage of local band and fruit stickers, Sharpie tags, and posters for events that had already happened. Even the door had been ripped out, so that letters and bill payments were readily available to anyone with a good reach. He looked in the box and saw a pop can and some trash mixed in with the envelopes and wondered if anyone actually came by to pick up the mail anymore, but dropped the postcard and birthday card in anyway.

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