Cockroach (8 page)

Pay me what you owe me, brother, and maybe I will sit
and eat.

What I owe you is not enough for you to have a tea here. And you come
dressed like that.

Pay me and I will leave.

Okay. I am getting paid at the end of the evening. Do you want to go away
and come back around eleven?

No, I have no place to go around here. I am not going to pay bus fare
twice, and it is very cold outside.

Okay then, stay here. I'll tell you what: Sit at the end of the bar,
and do not look at the women like that. People here do not like it when a bum like you
is checking out their wives and daughters like that. I will get you a drink. Just wait
and be invisible.

Reza walked towards the owner, bent his large body towards the man's
ear, and apologetically rubbed his hands together, explaining everything with a smile.
They talked in Persian, both glancing my way from time to time. Finally, the owner
approached me and snapped in a dry voice, So, what would you like to drink?

A Coke, I said.

The owner nodded, agreeing that I had made a good choice — the cheap
choice and the respectable choice. But what I really wanted was a good glass of whisky
on the rocks. And what I really, really wanted was to sit in the middle of the bar and
rotate my liquor in time to the soft music, maybe a big fat golden ring on my finger, my
chest gleaming under a black shiny shirt, my car keys dangling from a gadget that could
open doors and beep and warm the driver's seat despite the cold snow. I wanted a
gold chain around my neck and a well-dressed
woman with kohl under
her eyes, and a late-evening blow job that began in a big fancy car and ended on an
imported carpet with a motif of peacock tails fanning shades of purple against my hairy
Arab ass.

Instead, the owner went behind the bar and got me my drink himself,
calling me over with a nod as if signalling to one of his waiters. You stay here, he
muttered.

I sat on a bar stool in the corner, close to the kitchen, and twirled the
ice in my drink with a plastic straw. The soft music in the background, the dim
lighting, the glowing red from the lanterns, and the gold atmospheric ornaments made me
think of the story of the virgins who had lost their lives in the king's castle
before Scheherazade distracted him with her tales of jinn and fishermen. I wondered
whether, if I had happened to live back then (wearing a different outfit, naturally), I
could have saved any of those women. Maybe I could have been the
saqi
who
slipped a few poison drops from my ring into the king's wine. And as I watched him
writhe in agony from the spell in his stomach, right before he fumbled another innocent
girl, I could have stuck a dagger through his silky purple robe, opened his poisonous
entrails, and watched his eyes flicker in awe and disbelief as he anticipated the next
and final episode. The smell of food from the kitchen brought me back to the land of
forests and snow. And then all I wished was to crawl under the swinging door and hide
under the stove, licking the mildew, the dripping juice from the roast lamb, even the
hardened yogurt drops on the side of the garbage bin. With my pointy teeth, I thought, I
could scrape the white drips all the way under the floor.

When Reza was done playing, he came and sat with me.
We were both silent. He leaned on me and said, they are closing in another half-hour.
When I get paid, we leave. We watched the employees folding the tablecloths, sweeping up
glass, turning the chairs upside down on the tables, sucking the carpets with electric
hoses, and mopping the kitchen floor. All the crumbs, all the loose bits of food that
had jumped during the evening from the cook's knives and tilted plates — all
that had flown and landed on the ground, all that had sizzled and escaped the rims of
giant pans, all that had been transported by gravity and chased by giant brooms and
battered by wet sweeping, all that had been expelled into the hollow of drains in thin,
calm waves of grease and water — now fell into underwaged fists and made me
sob.

The owner came out from behind the bar and silently took my glass from me,
opened the cash register, called over the musicians, and paid them one by one.

When that was done, I approached the owner with humility, my back hunched,
my hand below my chin and close to my chest. I said: Excuse me, sir. May I ask you
something?

He barely nodded, not looking at me.

Sir, I am looking for a job.

The owner automatically lifted his head at this, and looked me in the
eyes. Do you have any experience? he asked, and then bent his head back towards his
money.

Yes, I do. I can work as a waiter, I said.

I have waiters, he replied. Do you speak Farsi? Some of my customers want
to be served in Farsi here.

No, but I can work as a busboy. I am very good at it. I
have the experience. Ask my friend Reza here. I worked in a fancy French restaurant
here in Montreal, Le Cafard, on Sherbrooke Street.

Reza was annoyed at me for saying that. I could see his raised eyebrows.
He stood up, turned his back, and walked towards the door with his instrument case,
zipping through the erect upside-down legs of the chairs on the tables.

Come back on Tuesday, said the owner. We can talk.

Thank you, I said, and retreated by walking backwards, my face to his
highness, my turban bowing repeatedly, until I reached the royal gates, and opened them
from behind my back with an awkward twist of the wrist of my left hand, in the process
fumbling against the glass with its Visa card stickers that reminded me of the world
outside and the cruelty of the cold.

Outside, Reza was silent and brooding and nervously smoking, and smoke
shot out of him like straight arrows, splitting their exit between his nostrils and his
tight lips. Finally he couldn't hold in his words any longer. As soon as the last
of the smoke had left his chest he ground his voice at me: How could you do that? First
you come in just like that, to this respectable place, dressed like a bum. And just look
at your shoes. And then, and then — he stuttered with anger — and then you
ask the man for a job and you tell him to check with me as a reference. Well, if he had
asked me, I would have told him what a deranged, psychotic, spaced-out case of a petty,
unsuccessful thief you are.

Give me back my money! I shouted at him. You are the only thief here. How
many meals did you get from those Canadian women with your sad stories?

Reza took off his gloves, biting them with his teeth,
and dug his fingers into his tight pants and pulled a few dollars from his pocket. He
counted his money and gave me a twenty-dollar bill.

Forty, I said, and I was ready to kill for it. You owe me forty. And I was
about to pull out my curved dagger, poison his drink, make sure he was dead, and then
escape towards the sun on a rug woven by flying camels.

Ah, right. Forty. Relax, here is your money, said Reza. Now I am meeting
Shohreh in the Crescent Bar. Are you coming? And by the way, I shouldn't pay you
after what you did to that innocent girl.

Who? Who? I said.

You know who. Shohreh! he shouted. You took advantage of her.

Hypocrite! I shouted back. You always wanted her for yourself. Well, too
late, musician of doom. She is mine now.

Mine, Reza laughed. No one would keep you, deranged man.

Carpet musician, I retorted.

Fridge thief. Are you coming or not? he asked and walked away.

Yes, I am coming, I said. Because I am sure she wants to see
me
tonight.

WE ENTERED THE BAR
and I saw Shohreh sitting at a table with
a man, an older man with a moustache and grey hair. Reza looked around for his drug
dealer. When he found him, he
bought some “baby powder,”
as he put it, and then he came back my way. Do you want a line? Just to show you what a
nice guy I am.

I will consider it interest on my money, I said.

Ungrateful bitch, Reza said, and wobbled his way to the bathroom. I
followed him. He pulled out his credit card, sprinkled the powder on top of the
counter's white ceramic, and cut it into vertical lines. He pulled out a brand new
five-dollar bill, rolled it up tight, and gave it to me. I stuck the money in my nose,
and like a rhino I charged and snorted a line before the elephant beside me could change
his mind. As I moved to the tip of the second line, Reza leaned his big body over my
shoulder, pushed me against the wall, and dove like a kamikaze towards the shiny white
counter. He vacuumed up the rest of the white stuff, opened the door, pinched his
nostrils, and swayed his way out of the bathroom onto the dance floor.

I walked towards Shohreh's table, very awake, with a numb upper lip
that felt as solid and stretched out as an elephant's trunk. As I passed the bar,
I picked up a few peanuts and clapped my hands, and continued through the crowd to my
love. Before I reached her table, however, Shohreh got up and met me. She took my hand
and we started to dance. I danced with confidence, my forehead lifted high towards the
sparkling mirror ball that beamed over us with its happy light.

Who is the guy? I asked Shohreh.

A friend.

He looks more like an uncle.

No, he's just a friend.

Well, he just sits there, brooding through the loud
boom-booms, smoking like he is about to recite poetry.

Well, actually, he could be a poet.

Ah! So he is a poet.

Do you want to dance or ask questions?

I am dancing.

Good.

While I danced, I looked at the man. Our eyes met. He turned his head,
crushed out his cigarette, stood up, and walked towards us. He laid his hand on
Shohreh's shoulder and said something in Persian to her. She answered with a brief
nod, gave him a kiss on the cheek, and he left.

Reza danced alone. He was happy and energetic, and like a bear his large
body secured a void around it. When I squeezed Shohreh towards me and slipped both hands
onto her torso, she pushed me away and danced alone. And then slowly she drifted away,
and disappeared into the middle of the crowd.

I walked to the bar and bought myself a drink. A hand rested on my
shoulder and someone laid a kiss on my cheek.

Farhoud, you man-killer, you should buy me a drink first, I said to
him.

He laughed and asked: Is Shohreh here?

Yes — over there. I pointed at the dance floor. Farhoud danced
towards Shohreh, and when she saw him she jumped up and down with joy, and moved into
his arms.

Though I was filled with energy and the music became even more intense and
energizing, I did not dance. Instead I went and sat at Shohreh's table on the same
chair the poet had occupied. I smoked and watched the women dancing. Many
were young and good-looking. I searched the dance floor until my
eyes alighted on a woman dancing barefoot, her shoes swinging in her hand. She laughed
and danced in a circle of girlfriends. I watched her and smoked. When she left the dance
floor, I stood up, followed her to the bathroom, and waited at the door. When she came
out, I faced her with a smile, blocking her way as she tried to squeeze her shoes
between my ankle and the wall. She looked at the floor. She pushed her right shoulder
against mine. In my high state, with my elephant's head and my ever-growing numb
lips, I dipped my arm, swung it like a dangling lasso, and seized her wrists. She
stopped pushing and lifted her head. Her face rose from beneath her hair, delicate,
cautious, and still.

I like the way you dance barefoot, I said. Excuse me, I did not mean to
scare you, but I saw you dancing without your shoes and it reminded me of dancing
gypsies.

Do you know any gypsies? she said.

Yes, my sister is one.

Your sister, but not you?

I can't dance like her. So I guess I do not qualify as one.

I dance like a gypsy?

Yes. Will you take off your shoes again?

I will.

I wish I was a gypsy like you or like my sister, I said.

Well, you stole my arm like a gypsy, she said, as she slowly pulled away
her arm and walked towards her friends. She must have told them about me because they
all looked my way. They formed a shield, a circle of human hair balancing on heels. Some
of them were barefoot. In the middle of the circle
of sweat and
flesh that flashed and disappeared through strobes of light I saw those girls laughing,
and I felt ashamed to be a hand-thief and a gypsy-lover.

I looked away, and I saw Shohreh's wide brown eyes watching me. I
knew she had seen everything. She turned her head away. I went and sat next to her, and
she ignored me. She stood up immediately and went to the bathroom.

Later that night, I walked Shohreh back home. She lived down the hill,
towards the train tracks. She told me that she had ambivalent feelings about trains.
When a train passed in the evening, she said, it made her sad.

When I asked her why, she held my chin and said, Well, there are some
feelings that are only one's own. Then she ran towards a snowbank and threw
snowballs at me.

I chased her and we threw snow at each other. I caught her by the coat and
wrestled with her in the snow, both of us breathing hard, our eyes locked onto each
other's. I crucified her wrists and moved my face towards her lips, but she moved
her face away and said, Let go. Let go, she repeated, shaking her neck in the snow,
dodging her face away from my lips.

I pressed her some more, and she turned and shook her whole body
violently. Let go, you bastard. Now!

I still held her, not letting go. When I tried to hold her face between my
palms, she liberated one of her hands and scratched my face, cursed me, and threw ice in
my eyes. She pushed me into the snow and shouted, You fucking bastard, you fucking
bastard, you let me go when I tell you to! And she ran down the hill and disappeared,
cursing me in Persian into the cold night.