I'll Seize the Day Tomorrow (11 page)

“When you work in a lingerie store,” he says, “you're inevitably seen as being beautiful enough to work in a lingerie store, or not beautiful enough.You're always going to be judged against the dainties.”

“There's something about your saying ‘dainties' that doesn't sit right.”

“I'd make a good lingerie store worker,” Tony says dreamily. “Sitting on a stool, telling it like it is between bites of my sandwich. ‘That thong really brings out the blue in your eyes.'”

“The fashion world can really use a man like you,” I say.

“Of which,” Tony says, looking me over with distaste, “what's up with the vest? You look like Emo Philips.”

As Tony rips into me, I settle back into my chair and brace myself. Unlike your finer quality vests, the subtle dynamics of old friendships are not reversible.

It Can't Be That Bad

(23 weeks)

MONDAY.

Tucker calls me at the office.

“What are you doing?” he asks.

“Working,” I say.

“No, really,” he says.

In truth, Tucker's call finds me washing an apple over my wastepaper basket with coffee from my mug.

I hang up, telling him I have to get back to work, but instead I sit at my desk trying to decide what to order for lunch. I know I should have a salad but I want to have smoked meat. Either way, I should probably stop eating at my desk. My computer keyboard is starting to look like the floor of a bus station washroom. To get the dirt out from between the keys, I turn it upside down and tap it against my desk. In so doing, I inadvertently Google “IMYH.” One of the first results is a Sheryl Crow fan
site—IMYH being the acronym for her song “If It Makes You Happy.”

I take this as a sign to have smoked meat.

THURSDAY.

I take Howard out to his favourite steakhouse for a belated birthday dinner.While some men pride themselves on marksmanship, yachtsmanship, or even penmanship, Howard prides himself on steaksmanship—the ability to eat vast quantities of steak. He orders the largest one on the menu and I do the same.

Everything is so rich and heavy. Even the salad seems soaked in a dressing made of mercury. While waiting for the steak, we chomp away at handfuls of bacon bits like they're peanuts.

During the meal I try to match Howard, eating whatever he does. Across the table, he stares at me over a steak bone practically gnawed down to the marrow. His eyes are narrowed, as though sizing up an opponent.

“I see what you're doing,” he says. “You're trying to go toe to toe with the kid.”

“I'm trying to enjoy a meal,” I lie, my stomach beginning to ache.

After our dinner, we each eat a wafer-thin chocolate that comes with the cheque. I feel mine go down like an iron barbell plate.

I leave the restaurant, woozy, my stomach doing flip flops.

“I think I might have steak poisoning,” I finally admit, a sob in my voice.

“If anything, you may have pork poisoning,” Howard says. “You ate about an industrial dumpster's worth of bacon.”

I beg him to stop saying “bacon” and “dumpster” because the words are making me feel like my stomach is a plummeting elevator full of oatmeal.

In what I know is Howard's version of a victory lap, he suggests we stop on the way home for ice cream.To refuse would be to admit defeat.

“If it makes you happy,” I say, my face shiny with sweat. And moments later, at the ice cream parlour, as Howard eats a double scoop of pistachio and I force-feed myself a ball of orange sherbet, it would seem it truly does.

FRIDAY.

Gregor visits me at my office.

“What's this?” he asks, pointing to the large yoga ball under my desk.

“Someone in the office was throwing it out and I thought I'd try sitting on it while working. It's supposed to do wonders for the posture.Want to try sitting on it?”

“I wouldn't even touch it,” he says. “Balls are great for dribbling, kicking, and helping man determine winning
lotto numbers, but not for sitting on. A yoga ball is the rare object that can boast having had buttocks pressed against every millimetre of its surface. The sphere, my friend. Nature's perfect cootie catcher.”

I guess that's why it's the perfect shape for a place that's home to asses like us.

The Weight of Worry

(22 weeks)

MONDAY.

My office chair has been sinking of its own accord. Maintenance has been by to fix the problem twice and they still can't seem to figure out what's going on. In my heart I fear I know something that maintenance does not: the chair responds to emotional heaviness, and confronted with seven hundred pounds of worry, it doesn't stand a chance.

WEDNESDAY.

I'm at the airport with Gregor. We're flying to Toronto for a mutual friend's wedding on Saturday. In line at the gate, we watch as people late for their flight are rushed to the front of the line.

“I don't get it,” Gregor says. “These guys roll out of
bed fifteen minutes before their plane's about to take off, and they're treated like members of the landed gentry. It's airport welfare!”

Walking through security, my bag accidentally wheels over Gregor's loafer, scuffing it.

“Sorry,” I say.

“There's an old Russian expression,” he says, bending over to rub his shoe, “an apology isn't a fur coat.”

“Of course it isn't,” I say. “One's an abstract idea and the other's a physical object.”

“Boy, you're a barrel of laughs,” he says. “By your logic, ‘who's on first' should have been called ‘the exchange in which a personal pronoun is confused with a proper name.'”

Boarding for our plane is announced. We stand and wait as the people in first class have their tickets taken.

“I don't get it,” Gregor says. “These guys just roll in making more in a week than I do in a year and they get treated like members of the landed gentry!”

“Call it airport corporate welfare,” I say.

On the flight, Gregor forces me to take the middle seat.

The stewardess comes by with the snack wagon.

“Cookies or Bits & Bites?” she asks.

“The latter,” I say.

“Sorry?” she says.

“The one that isn't the cookies,” I say.

The stewardess leaves and Gregor turns to me.

“God forbid you should stoop to say Bits & Bites.”

“My grip on my dignity is tenuous.” Which is why it's important for me to at least maintain a grip on my armrest. At the moment, though, it feels as though the man to my right is trying his best to subtly elbow me off. He and I stare straight ahead, pretending to be entranced by our newspapers, but all the while, we both know that we are locked in battle.

I turn to my left to explain the situation to Gregor so that he knows, too.

“There's an unwritten rule that the man in the middle has claim to the armrests,” I say.

“Unwritten where?” he asks. “On an asylum wall? What hope is there of peace in the Middle East if two strangers eating airplane snacks can't even share a two-inch slat of plastic?”

Of course Gregor is right. I lift my elbow off the armrest and, almost immediately, I start to feel better about myself. The feeling, though, is short-lived, as to my left, Gregor shoves my elbow off our armrest, spilling Bits & Bites all over my lap.

“Sorry,” he says.

SUNDAY.

Gregor stays an extra day, and I fly back alone. The plane is going through turbulence, and every time there's a big bump I look over at the stewardess and study her face. I am looking for a wide-toothed grin. Nothing clenched
or strained. Nothing that says, “What the heck was that?” For me, perhaps even more important than bringing me bourbon, these smiles are a stewardess's most important responsibility. In such moments it feels as though it is these easy smiles that keep the plane, as well as life itself, afloat. At work on Monday, before sitting down on my office chair, I'll empty my heart of all worry, if only for a moment, and see what happens.

The Writer's Life

(21 weeks)

MONDAY.

Incapable of writing the monologue for this week's radio show, I head to the CBC cafeteria.There's a self-serve fruit salad bar, and I've gotten into the habit of seeing how much fruit I can cram into the little containers they give you. It's a bit like a game of Tetris. As I walk back to my desk I imagine pitching the cup against the wall and watching it explode. A Molotov fruit cocktail. Packing the fruit cup proves to be the most productive part of my day.

TUESDAY.

Still in need of inspiration, I set out for the Dollar Cinema to watch
He's Just Not That Into You
. When I get there, though, I learn there was an error in the ad, and the theatre's been rented out to a Sri Lankan community group for the
evening. But since I'm already there and in the mood for popcorn, I stay for the screening.

It's a romantic comedy and, although not subtitled, I do a decent job of following along—until the moment when the male lead, for no apparent reason, leaps off a balcony and graphically splits his head open. When he reappears in the film's closing credits, dancing, I decide that the death might have been a dream. Or perhaps the credits are a dream. Narratively speaking, Sri Lankan cinema is more complicated than
Finnegans Wake
.

On my way home, trying to make heads or tails of the movie, I cross paths with a skunk. It sees me and stops. We stand there, face to face.

I can't think of a single person I know, in the last twenty-five years, who's been sprayed by a skunk. Maybe it was the kind of thing that was bigger in the seventies— something that went out with the hula hoop or sitting backwards on kitchen chairs. Back in those heady days, everyone was bathing in tomato juice while listening to the Doobie Brothers, but in recent years, it seems as though our two species have reached some kind of armistice.

A part of me wants to be sprayed, like I want proof of an urban legend—if not an excuse to avoid writing my monologue. We stare at each other. We wait. Finally, the skunk runs under a balcony. I find myself feeling oddly rejected.

THURSDAY.

I've been working from home. I've told myself I wouldn't leave the apartment until I've finished my monologue. It's been three days now and my supply of martini olives is running dangerously low.

I allow myself to step onto the porch to check the mail, and I find a postcard from Starlee. It's of an elephant swimming underwater, using its nose as a snorkel. I pin it to the wall above my desk. I can't help thinking that the elephant looks like he's smiling, like he's pleasantly surprised to have stepped into an impossible world where he is as light as smoke. Perhaps he is willing himself to believe that he'll never have to leave, that he can live among the fish for as long as he likes. Somewhere deep down, though, he must know that eventually he'll have to leave. I am not unlike that elephant, content to abandon elephanthood— until the olives run out.

As I walk to the grocery store in the drizzling rain, I catch sight of myself in a store window. I look like a liveaction version of Pig Pen from
Peanuts
. This is confirmed by two pamphleteering Greenpeace workers who allow me to walk past them without a word.

Back at home, I spend the evening alternately staring at the computer screen and the rain outside the window. At about 11:00 p.m., I hear a knock at the door. It's Tucker.

“New shirt?” he asks, walking into my apartment. “The blue really brings out the despair in your eyes.”

“You smell like pizza,” I say.

“Thanks,” he says. It turns out he's brought some over for me.

At the end of
Save the Tiger
, Jack Lemmon, who in 1973 was already playing sad old men, says that he just wants the girl from the Cole Porter song, someone who can walk all night in the rain and still smell of perfume. If the smell of pizza is a kind of perfume—and I would argue that it is, or at the very least better than skunk—I guess I've found the girl from the song. Sadly, but maybe not so sadly, it's Tucker. And if he keeps up with the pizza delivery, I should be able to maintain the lifestyle of the shut-in artist that I've grown accustomed to.