The Adjustment League (7 page)

Searing endless blue. Ash heaps of cloud.

§

At the storage place off Laird in Leaside, Max has left “oral instructions” that “family only” are to accompany the movers inside.
Not a man slow to avenge a dial tone
. “Sorry, sir, but direct authorization is part of our security package,” says the balding, Brit-accented manager, his voice strong for the stacked receptionist he goes back to ogling. Who by her revolving gum and glazed eyes couldn't possibly be interested in any package he might produce.

It's fine by me. Over their shoulders, I see, on the first of a row of black-and-white screens, Judy and the Strongbacks men unloading the elevator. Tiny Judy float-walking ahead of the two men pushing dollies as they exit through the edge of one screen and appear on the next, walking in light towards carpeted dark, ceiling strip lights coming on ahead of them. Turning corners, more corridors, dark doors to either side, the lights quivering on. Like a girl in a spacecraft's corridors, her beefy astronaut sidekicks. Like something from
2001
. Or
Solaris
, the mind-planet plucking people from memory and setting them to run down corridors, sit weeping in metal compartments.

And takes me back, too, to my four months at U of T. The similar lights in the stacks of Robarts Library. Fort Book. Automated cameras, light strips going on as sensors pick up your approach. All that knowledge sitting waiting in deep dusk the rest of the time.
Just four months. September to December
. Time enough to awe Lois's parents, nourishing wild dreams. Lois a bit awed too by the A+ papers and tests coming in on schedule, though she'd never admit it, went catfish-jawed and shook her head, insisting she'd known it all along. Time enough to awe, time enough to appall.
What goes up must come down.
At least at certain velocities.

The camera can't quite see into the Wyvern unit they unlock, roll up the door and start unloading into. Just corners of boxes and totes, a lamp. Probably waiting many years now in the dark, presumably from when the family home was dissolved.

Alzheimer's, old age by any name, a retreat under fire, finding smaller and smaller refuges as the enemy advances. Until the last cave, where they find you with your back to the wall, out of ammunition.
Butch and Sundance
. But Newman and Redford white-haired, supported by walkers? Would never work.

A better fantasy starts to form but pops when the manager says into the phone, “Another thing you need to know, it's in our contract, is that all units are for storage purposes only. No business can be conducted from them.” Chuckles at something the caller says. “No, that's right, you'll need a proper office for that. And of course”—he waits until he's got the girl's eye—“no living in one either.” Gets a skimpy smile and raised eyebrow for the hundredth time.

I fish-hook us over to Laird via the faux-fronted shops of a new Village. The usual suspects: Home Depot, Best Buy, Starbucks, LCBO. A “retail community” that went from hoardings to gala opening inside six months, thrown up like a Hollywood wild west set, minus the wildness and the west. Immense yawning asphalt instead of a muddy street between the town's opposing storefronts, so huge it makes even Home Depot look dinky. Everything looking like the first November blow will knock it down.

“Who is your mother's Power of Attorney?” I say, waiting for the light. A slump-shouldered man wearing an ad board doing a faint shuffle in front of Five Guys Burgers and Fries, moving his arms back and forth in slow passes that obscure the words on his chest. Either from the chill or from some profounder misunderstanding of his role.

“Max,” Judy says.

“And Max pays you to look after your mom.” Chancing it a bit, following it as it arranges itself out ahead of me like the strip lights in the storage vessel.

“Yes. I look after her.”

She lapses back into silence. Hasn't said much since leaving Vivera, when I asked her for a basic rundown on her brothers.

“I hope Sandor mentions that in her obituary. Probably no one will think of it,” she says just before we reach Selkirk.

The comment reminds me why, for all we went through together, living across the hall through months of siege, I haven't looked her up in twenty years or ever felt inclined to. No one else can ever really be real to her. And such a person is an active danger to one aspiring to escape the ghost world and put on solid flesh again. Who prayer-folds actions like a thousand paper cranes to that end.

4

What have you
got?

Sitting in the armchair overlooking Eglinton, I consider it. Money-man Max, his chequebook grieving. The place to start, but no dentist reachable on a Sunday. Playing golf or watching it. Sandor, a retired English teacher and “a kind of writer”—a sly jab in another mouth, but Judy's flattens it to a ledger entry. Sandor the youngest, fifty or thereabouts—retired? Can be found, according to Judy, most nights at the Queen's Arms.
Show her arms, hide her charms.
Which, unless she's got it wrong, is only a few blocks away, a five-minute walk to just past Avenue. Max, when I get to him, pulling teeth at Yonge-Eg. What started way up in Markham shaping up as a local job after all.

The last thought pulls me up like a pinch.
You're not considering an adjustment, you're in one already.
Well in. I could feel it watching the grainy floating scenes on the storage monitors. The two goons pushing piled dollies behind their ethereal little captain. Wanting to pull what I was seeing apart. Rearrange it.

At dusk I head out, after leaving messages on four machines. I like setting them out like bait after business hours, plug in my own phone in the morning and see what's in the net. I've never felt the need to be more closely connected. Hours already seem a fast turnaround, I don't need seconds. And there are enough people camped out inside my skin.

The Owner:
305's rented. They dropped off the lease and first and last. You're going to love these two. They'll never bounce a cheque or make a peep. Maybe the occasional muffled scream when the markets fall. But only during business hours.

Nicole, the Move-in Coordinator from Vivera's menu:
Hello, I'm wondering if I could arrange a tour. I don't know if you have any vacancies, but I have a family member who needs, uh, placement—it's my wife actually—and, well, I'm afraid we've hobbled along until things have become urgent. If you have no space available, I understand. We've got a short list we're working through. But if by luck I've caught you at the right time, is there any chance we could meet tomorrow morning?

Ken, my advisor at CIBC:
Hi, Ken. I'm into something here that's going to need a few extra funds. Not a lot, I don't think. And, yes, I do want you to do the drill. Standard operating procedure.

The office of Dr. Max Wyvern, though I almost give up at the interminable preamble that's designed to make me do just that. Hello, you've reached… and then later, We are located… and Our business hours are… and only then, We are presently closed and will reopen at… and then, with sadistically slow enunciation, an advisory that any emergency situation should be dealt with at a hospital… until finally, after a minute that feels like a day, the voice conceding to any masochist still on the line, If you would like to leave a brief message and your number, please do so after the beep.
Um. I don't know if you're accepting new patients, but one of my teeth broke apart just now. When I was eating some nuts. Lower tooth, on the left side. I'm not in pain, it just sort of crumbled away around the fillings. There's a back tooth loose too. Wiggling. Neither is an emergency, but, um, it doesn't seem like something I should wait on. Could you phone me at this number if you have any openings? Thank you very much.

Lure of crowns, extractions, likely canal work. Like dangling a square of red rag on a hook in front of a bullfrog. The huge mouth drops open and the great legs uncoil in a coordinated lunge. One foster dad an outdoorsman. Not with them long.

§

“Green tea or black?”

A new question. Black, I decide.

“What kind?”

Also new. Previously it was just Red Rose on offer, stale bags in a jar beside the till.

“Do you have Earl Grey?”

“We have. With milk?”

“Just black, thanks.”

Other than expanding the tea selection, the new Korean owners haven't messed with the Queen's Arms' modestly winning formula. Same TV screens with sports and news so nobody has to feel they've left home. Pool table at the back. Just enough stains on the carpet and faint fumes of draft and puke to keep it real. Our dingy, grotty local.

Family run, at least this time on a Sunday. Mother behind the bar. Daughter in hot pants handling the three guys in sports jerseys at a table. Kidding with her as they wait for a game, any game. Father's role at the moment working through a stack of Scratch 'n Win at the end of the bar.

“Straight to the hard stuff, eh?” says the guy two stools over when Mother brings my tea.

“Straight to the source,” I say, weirding him back to his pint.

But he's a talker, wants contact, and a couple of minutes later he taps the
Star
on the bar between us. Hizzoner spread over it in close-up, pig-eyed, ranting at a scrum. The mics black bulrushes he's peering over.

“The Big Man's quite the distraction, isn't he?” says my neighbour.

“He is that.”

“Distracting us from the city's business.”

“Distracting us from himself.”

“How's that work? You can't get away from him. He's everywhere.”

“Exactly. He is. Not his policies. Listen to these stories enough and you might start to believe he's a civic-minded gent whose outsize appetites led him astray. But he couldn't be civic-minded if you dried him out and slimmed him down and locked him in a room with Thomas Merton for a year. An alligator doesn't lose his taste for meat if you starve him.”

That restores the silence between us. He pulls the paper over and starts leafing to find more the kind of thing he's looking for.

A UFC cage match takes place on the main TV. A two-minute flurry capping a half hour of build-up, clips and commentary by three talking heads. The jerseys at the table cheer the jabs and kicks that connect, then, when the wiry fighter trips the bulky one, they pound on the table in sync with the face punches to the tap out. Father doesn't pause in his lottery mining, rubbing just enough with his dime to verify a loser then dropping it in the trash and starting on another. As bloody and brutal as the mayhem in the octagon is, it's also far more graceful and choreographed than any real-life fight I've seen. And far briefer and more decisive than what must be occurring in kitchens and bedrooms within a short walk of us.

Public horrors. Never as raw and terrible as the private kind. But only a gruesome enough spectacle lets us forget that.

“When's Sandor usually show up?” I say to Mother Barkeep. “I'm supposed to be meeting him here.”

After a deft Face-over, almost delicate, she says, “If you sit where you're sitting, you'll see anyone who arrives.”

Which sounds close enough to a perfect koan that I order another tea to keep my seat.

§

Sandor's party sweeps in on a gust of talk—seven of them, different conversations going—and take their seats around two tables pushed together near the pool table. The pretty brunette beside Sandor not saying much, concentrating on smiling at the right lines, especially his. Another couple, longer-term, beside her: the blonde a stunner, her husband, balding over wireframe glasses, looking like polished intelligence has lifted him somewhere high. The other three singles, a man and two women, younger outriders—students or assistants maybe. I've seen some of them at Shoppers, where all of the neighbourhood shows up eventually. The blonde for sure. Her fluffy white dog waiting chained to the railing, gray streaks in its fur like a dirty snowbank.

Watching them through the first round, sipping my tea. Sandor not loud or pushy. But commanding without effort. Getting the biggest laughs.
Oh you!
pokes from the ladies.

My neighbour tries a last time. He can't be alone.

“I gotta ask about the tea. Curiosity and the cat, I know. But I don't see someone sitting here as long as you have if they were in 12-step, really following the program. Or being in here at all, really. So?” He gestures at his tall glass of yellow, gliding a hand alongside it like a salesman in a showroom.

“It makes me see things I can't see.”

“Heh heh. Why we invented the stuff, wasn't it?”

Which sounds so stupid that I decide to let him have it. Though probably it has nothing to do with him at all. Locking onto his eyes, I stare through them at a kitchen six long blocks away.

“One drop and I see a crazy man grabbing a woman boiling water for spaghetti, trying to get her to dance. She just wants to cook, see. But he's a dancing fool. Grabbing at her waist, trying to twirl her. Her pushing him away. Their little girl with her face raised, laughing at them.”

The guy has his beer up—mouth open, ready to laugh at the punchline, puzzled when it doesn't come. I go back to my tea and leave him with it.

After a bit I hear him chuckling softly—now he's got it, so subtle he missed it before. Then falls silent. There's just no stopper like the truth. Hand it to people and they'll never believe it. Will pronounce you a clown, a raving lunatic, or a complete shit—will do anything except sit still and look at it.

Though who in hell
could
look at the fright-pic you're peddling? Toddler scalded head to hips because her lunatic dad just had to boogie.

Eventually he says, “What happened to the little girl?” Not sure how he should deliver it, straight-man-firm or sombre-gently. It comes out an awkward mix.

Sip of the Earl's black.

“Just because I invited you in for a kiss doesn't mean I'm going to let you fuck me ragged.”

Instantly, Father pauses in his dime-rubbing and Mother in her counter-wiping—their heads come up and they look at each other, not at me. Perhaps as much notice as they ever have to give in the place, it's a pretty placid neighbourhood for all the posturing. My Grand Inquisitor settles up and leaves.

§

The daughter flinches at my touch on her arm. For all the skill a barmaid—any maid—hones at forcing down distaste, she can't keep all of it out of her face.

“This round is on me.” I give her three twenties. All I got out of the ABM on the way here, all I was sure the account would cover. Ken will have to come through tomorrow. “Be sure to tell them it's for the Wyvern wake.”

When she heads back with their tray of pints and wine glasses, I order my third tea. Mother sets this one down with a clatter. Looking up, I see a shaven-headed monk whose
zazen
is dime-rubbing, regarding me with mild regret.

Strange how just being in a bar induces drunkenness. Prepares the way for it—opens some kind of loose-hinged door and invites it in. Even on a string of teas. Memories, of course, but not just. Something more like spectral auras housed in wood, glass, upholstery, carpets, cushions. Even in sinks and toilet bowls. Spirit armies fighting to leave the body, face-punch free of its good sense.

When the touch on my shoulder comes, it's light, almost apologetic. So is the voice—deep, but quiet. “Look, I don't know what the idea is exactly. We're just trying to have a few drinks and a conversation.”

I let him finish before I turn. Then we both see what there is to see. From my side: thick, curly hair tumbling to broad shoulders. Only a little silver in it yet. Fleshy, well-formed nose. But reddening with alcohol use, hairline red vines scrolling out into the cheeks. Not yet the ruddy blasts of the lifelong drinker—but a start on them. Dark, sad eyes which would attract many women, some kinds anyway. A taller, darker Roger Daltrey gone to seed. The kind of guy women, if they go for him, don't say
I like him
or
I'm attracted to him
. They say
I'm smitten
, maybe with a girlish hand twirl recalled from Drama Club. He's honey to that kind of fly.

“There's no idea,” I say. Oddly enough, it's the truth. There isn't. The procedure is to toss out actions in advance of the idea, see if you can tempt it to show itself. It passed this way, you sense, too swiftly to catch. Bits of its own scent may bring it back around.

“That's good, because when the round came with a mention of a wake I wondered—”

“Oh, no need, no need. Never wonder. It's exactly the way to do it, I think. And what Maude would have wanted. Celebrate the life, don't dwell on the passing.”

Something turbid comes twisting up slowly in his dark eyes. Really dark, brown where it verges on black. Something muddy, something glum, something heavy and inertly strong and barbed, comes spiralling up slowly from its home, like a catfish dragged up from the bottom of a pond. It wants to thrash at something. Which isn't me, though I may have to do.

“Whatever it is you're implying… Who are you anyway?”

“Nobody. A friend of Judy's.”

The thing at the surface sinks back down, not all the way. Hovers at a depth. The blue cable-knit sweater he's wearing makes him look huge.

“A friend of Judy's. That would explain a lot. My brother said she had a new one sniffing around.”

“You can't help it when you catch some smells.”

And go back to sipping my tea. Trying not to tense my neck, though I see it through those black eyes, a pale twig at the end of big arms and shoulders.

And then I feel him leave.

From the door, two minutes later, I look back and see him sitting on the other side of the table, his back to where I was, his head down, the blonde woman sitting beside him rubbing his sweatered back in slow circles. Her husband and Sandor's date, the brunette, shooting death rays at me from the other side of the table. The other three clueless but obscurely roused, busily settling jackets and drinks in their new seats.
Musical chairs.

§

A mangy mood blows me further east, down the hill past Sleep Country to Shoeless Joe's. The air around the Oriole intersection always heavy and tainted, Burger Shack venting soggy charred fumes, doused carcass breaths the morning after the slaughterhouse fire. Some of it oozes in with me through the door. Some of it always inside Shoeless Joe's, where it hovers rancidly amid the TVs bringing us football, hockey, soccer across continents and time zones. Not so dead on a Sunday. More screens.