"Sorry I lost my temper in there."
Abby crossed her legs and her arms, and looked away. Madison reached out, took her father"s hand, and squeezed.
A chorus of distant lawnmowers filled the air, along with tinking silverware and laughter of the restaurant patios one block north.
David sighed, sat on the stairs, and told Garith to "Bring it here!" Garith picked up the pig and dropped it in front of David. He tossed it across the yard, into the side of the garage, and Garith bounded after it. "Do you two think everything happens for a reason?"
"Not the way you mean," said Madison.
Her mother laughed her poisonous laugh again.
"I stood in there, after the last phone call, and wondered if the Big Guy isn"t trying to tell us something."
"Ralph Klein?" said Abby, crossing her legs the opposite way.
"The other Big Guy. I"m thinking maybe He wants us to move to Calgary."
"What?"
"Maybe we can afford a condo in Calgary and a little plot of land somewhere warm. A place with uncontaminated water and stable politics. English spoken. That way, if the oil runs out and the northern world descends into murderous chaos, we can still grow tomatoes and papaya."
Abby walked into the house. She locked the patio door behind her and pulled down the blinds.
"I don"t think Mom likes that idea, Dad."
"The university"s wanted this land for years. Thanks to Ben Perlitz, property values and morale are down. They know we"re weak."
"Maybe if you got a lawyer."
Slowly, a slouch worked its way into David"s shoulders. "We"re retired, pumpkin. We can"t afford a lawyer."
"Are you going to the Let"s Fix It meeting tonight?"
"What"s the point? If we"re not going to live here, we"ll just be Fixing It for the university. And I say a curse on the university. I hope Ben"s ghost whips a demonic possession on their large intestines and they all get dysentery." In his shorts, black dress socks and unreasonably tight United Way T-shirt, David went out into the yard and began wrestling with Garith. He flopped on the gra.s.s and held the dog over him. "Maddy, would you be upset if your mom and Garith and I moved to Cowtown?"
Madison felt a rumble in her stomach. The baby demanded more muesli.
29.
death and the tropical typhoon, revisited Dr. Raymond Terletsky wore his only suit to the morning meeting, with a white shirt and a plain black tie. Claudia Santino and the sleepy-eyed Dean of Arts, a South African man called Kesterman, had already met with Dannika and two witnesses from the Waterpark, Paul and Jess from Death in Philosophy.
On Tuesday afternoon, after two hours of shameless flirting, Raymond had been waiting in line behind Dannika to slide down the Tropical Typhoon. On his way up the stairs, he had studied Dannika"s behind. It was round without being chunky, though a few patches of endearing cellulite peeked out from either side of her white bikini bottoms.
As Raymond studied Dannika"s backside, he had outlined Montaigne"s views on death, and how these views might relate to North American society"s current fascination with so-called extreme sports and activities. Let us rid death of its strangeness, he said, quoting the Frenchman. Let us come to know death, befriend it. Let us have nothing in our minds as often as death. At every moment let us picture it in our imagination, in all aspects. It is uncertain where death awaits us; let us await it everywhere. Premeditation of death is premeditation of freedom. He who has learned how to die has unlearned how to be a slave.
"Or she," Dannika had said, at the top of the stairs.
Raymond smiled. "Or she."
The other students disappeared in that moment, along with his fatigue from climbing the stairs and the noisy teenage fact of the World Waterpark. Dannika smiled back at him, a warm and sweet and pure smile, and Raymond nearly lost all muscle power in his legs. She turned from him, toward the entrance of the Tropical Typhoon, and he did what any man in his situation would do.
Raymond slapped her little b.u.m.
Seventeen hours later, Raymond waited to be called into Dean Kesterman"s office. At home that morning, before she left for work, Shirley had been typically wonderful. There had been a letter in their mailbox, from the university, declaring a hostile buy-out. Shirley wanted to fight it. She wanted to study the Land Acquisition Act of 1928, find the holes in the doc.u.ment. To Shirley, it was a horrifyingly inappropriate move considering the recent death of Benjamin Perlitz. Cynical and manipulative. Raymond had just watched her, as he might watch a curling match on television.
Dean Kesterman walked into the waiting area with his hand outstretched. "Raymond."
"Dean. I"m so sorry about this awful misunderstanding." Raymond hoped the Dean would stay with him in the waiting area outside his office for a moment, so they might discuss this like gentlemen. But the Dean didn"t respond to the apology, or linger after their handshake. He adjusted his eyegla.s.ses and led Raymond immediately into the largest office in the Humanities Building.
Claudia stood up from her seat at the small conference table. "Raymond," she said. "Thanks for coming."
"No, thank you. I was so pleased to be invited."
Neither Claudia nor Dean Kesterman found this amusing, so Raymond laughed to encourage them. It didn"t work. The Dean walked around to his chair, looked down at a couple of closed file folders before him, and sat. "Please," he said, and motioned for Raymond to do the same.
There was, at that moment, a tightening sensation in Raymond"s chest. He hoped, before the proceedings got underway, that he might suffer a mild stroke or heart attack. Sympathy, in that case, would trump punishment. The tightening pa.s.sed with a burp, so Raymond said, "Pardon me," and sat in the stiff chair.
"You know why we"re here," said Claudia, as she opened the red file folder. "My office received a complaint yesterday afternoon, from a pay phone at West Edmonton Mall. We followed up on that complaint, meeting with the complainant and two witnesses earlier this morning."
Complainant, thought Raymond. What sort of word was that for a philosophy professor to use? Obviously, her veins were filled with weevils and black ice.
The Dean took it from there. "These are serious accusations, corroborated by two witnesses, Raymond. But we"d like to hear what you have to say for yourself."
"What did Dannika say?"
Claudia looked at the Dean for permission, lifted her chin, and said, "Quite simply, Raymond, that you slapped her in a private place. While she wore a bathing suit. The fact that you took your Death in Philosophy cla.s.s to the World Waterpark without permission, using five hundred dollars of departmental petty cash, is grounds for disciplinary action, but s.e.xual hara.s.sment takes us into a whole new league."
The Dean tilted his head in thoughtful confusion, as though he were regarding a piece of abstract art. "Did you do it?"
Raymond had considered pleading academic freedom, claiming the slap was a bit of social science. In the office, however, this defence seemed dangerous. "Yes," he said.
"But why?"
"I thought it was our little thing." Raymond felt the muscles in his neck and shoulders soften.
Claudia shook her head and removed her eyegla.s.ses. "Your little thing? Do you understand how demeaning it is, to slap a student on the backside?"
For ten or twelve seconds, Raymond held his breath and flexed every muscle in his body, hoping for an aneurysm. Nothing. He turned to his right, to the river valley out the Dean"s window, bathed in glorious autumn sunshine. No clouds today and only a slight breeze. The inst.i.tution that was about to sack him had also announced it was going to annex the Garneau Block and render him homeless. Unemployed, and with housing prices this high, he imagined the noisy beige condominium of his immediate future. "Are you going to tell my wife?"
For the first time since he arrived in the office, both Claudia Santino and Dean Kesterman smiled. They covered their mouths. The Dean actually snorted. A minute later, as Raymond walked to the Dean"s north-facing window, Claudia outlined the terms of his dismissal.
30.
the next hit at sundance Jonas had a concern. The writer, director, and producer of Haberdasher, a feature film set in Detroit, sighed and put his hands on his waist. "What now?"
With respect, Jonas outlined the concern. His character, the wise older brother of a doomed gangster, was supposed to be an accountant. Jonas couldn"t imagine an accountant, even an accountant who grew up in the hood saying, "Yo, dawg, your lifestyle is wack. You gots to be on dat Gandhi tip."
"Dude," said the writer, director, and producer, a twenty-four-year-old named William, "I"m paying union rates here. I"m paying you to realize my vision. Are you gonna realize my vision or what?"
William, Jonas, and several other actors and crew members were in a quiet southeastern playground. The surroundings were more suburban Idaho than Detroit, with a Tim Hortons and Blockbuster Video strip mall on the other side of an abandoned soccer field dotted with lost Safeway bags, but Jonas had opted to keep quiet about this. He and the gentleman playing his doomed younger brother were sitting on swings and having, according to the script, a mano-a-mano.
At the end of the day, Jonas would make $280 for this mano-a-mano. And from what he had seen in the script, no one would ever see this movie outside William"s family and circle of close friends in a rented theatre. Unless, of course, someone uploaded it onto the Internet as a joke.
"Yes, William, I apologize. I am here to realize your vision. I"m just wondering if a white accountant in his early forties would say dawg and wack and dat. Do gangsters in Detroit even say that stuff?"
The writer, director, and producer squeezed his chin and looked around at the rest of the people in the playground. Most of them glanced down to avoid William"s gaze. With his chin-squeezing hand, he summoned Jonas. "Walk with me."
It was a bright day, just after noon. Even if Jonas delivered his lines as they appeared in the script, the shot would be burned out by the sun. The way William had said walk with me made it clear that he saw himself as the star of Haberdasher. And the star of contemporary human existence.
No one wanted to be an actor anymore. In the era of reality television and pop star movie crossovers, craft was irrelevant; everyone wanted to be famous, as though it were a legitimate career goal. This was the fourth local film Jonas had worked on this year. Each had been bankrolled by some kid"s parents, each had included gunplay, and each was set in an American city to improve its potential in Hollywood.
Jonas followed his employer into the adjacent area of slides and swinging bridges. "Umkay, Jonas. Are you the writer and director of this movie?"
"No."
"Did you put up the cash?"
"No."
"Have you graduated from a recognized radio and television arts program?"
"No, William, I haven"t."
"Then why are you trying to be the writer and director of Haberdasher? You"re here for one day, in one scene."
Jonas wanted to reach down, pick up a handful of urine-encrusted sand, and stuff it into William"s underbite. Yet as much as he despised William and everything he represented, it wasn"t the boy"s fault. Walt Disney, sitcoms, teen novels, the school system, and William"s parents were to blame for telling him he could be whatever he wanted to be as long as he followed his dreams.
William"s parents should not have supported his pa.s.sion for film. They should not have called him special and smart when he was a teenager. If they were honest people, with integrity, William"s parents would have encouraged himnay, forced himinto a career in the navy.
"You"re right about that, William. I apologize for my behaviour. This morning, I received a rather disturbing letter in the mail. It seems I"m going to be evicted."
William removed his beret and looked up at a cloud that had obscured the sun. "We all got our problems, buddy, but we"re making magic here."
"Right, right."
"So are you ready to get back on that swing? To make this happen for us? In a few months, in our hospitality suite at Sundance, we"ll look back on this moment and laugh."
"Ha ha." Jonas slapped William on the back. "I suppose we will."
On his way back to the swing set, Jonas had trouble getting back into character. His landlord in Vancouver would receive the letter he had forwarded that morning, and before long Jonas would have to find a new place. A new place in Edmonton, the antic.i.p.ation of which tasted quite a lot like that handful of urine-encrusted sand.
In truth, he wanted the same things William wanted: respect, success, millions of dollars, a proper tuxedo and an apartment in New York, perhaps some cocaine from time to time. But that was impossible now. A twenty-four-year-old moron with an underbite had a better chance of getting that apartment in New York than a theatrical genius.
"Action," said William.
The gangster talked about their dead mother, who had perished from a marijuana overdose. Jonas didn"t have an encyclopedic knowledge of street drugs, but he didn"t think this was physically possible. Of course, he wasn"t going to bring it up. Earlier that morning, when Jonas asked why a film without any clothing manufacturers is called Haberdasher, William told him he "didn"t understand creativity."
As the gangster delivered the remainder of his lines, Jonas scanned the playground for Carlos. He supposed even stalkers had days off. Or maybe he"d begin stalking this afternoon or evening. Maybe Carlos would follow him to the Let"s Fix It meeting downtown, and enjoy some of Abby"s hummus.
"Yo, dawg." Jonas made what he took to be a gang sign from the 1980s, and turned to his doomed brother. "Your lifestyle is wack. You gots to be on dat Gandhi tip."
31.
convincing david Shirley Wong and Abby Weiss stood on the sidewalk in front of 12 Garneau with bowls of baba ghanouj and hummus, respectively, while Madison begged her father to attend the meeting.
"There"s nothing to fix." He sat in front of the television in a Bush-Cheney 2004 T-shirt. On the television, Wheel of Fortune. "Gin rummy. The phrase is gin rummy."
Madison looked at the screen. Her father was right about gin rummy. "The future of this block is important to me, Dad. I grew up here. We have to fight for it."
"I called everyone. No one can do anything."
"They"re Tories. They never do anything for gay liberal Edmonton."
David Weiss sighed. "That"s a myth. A dirty, lazy myth. Take it back."
"If you agree to come, I"ll take it back."
"Bah." David waved her away and went to stand in front of the bookshelf in the living room, filled with Abby"s favourite novels in hardcover. He pulled out Love in the Time of Cholera, shook his head, and then slid it back into place. "I"m disillusioned, Maddy."
"Because your friends blew you off?"
David grunted. "Last night I kicked Barry out of an a.s.sociation meeting. I can"t stop thinking maybe it was the wrong thing to do."
"Barry the street paper guy?"
"Yes."
Madison shifted the bag of pita and cut vegetables into her right hand and looked out the window at her mother and Shirley. Abby lifted her bowl of hummus.
"I don"t know, send him flowers. Come on, Dad."