The Desperates

by Greg Kearney

  “Christ, he was so mad when he got out! Thought I was trying to poison him. I wasn’t, though. Not that time, anyway. Ooh, he was mad! I can still see that big vein in his forehead.”

  “He beat the shit out of you that night. He smashed the toilet with a baseball bat. That was the day he broke my wrist.”

  Hazel bangs a bowl on the chopping block. “Do you not have a spice rack? What kind of person doesn’t have a spice rack?”

  “It’s on the wall above the dishwasher. He hit my wrist with a hammer. I had a cast.”

  “I don’t remember that at all. He saved his violence for me. You had a carefree childhood. We should all be so lucky to have such a carefree childhood.”

  “I had a cast. You sat and watched them put the cast on me.”

  “You fell out of a tree; you loved climbing trees.”

  “No, I didn’t, and no, I didn’t.”

  “I’m eighty-two, get off my back. Christ, turn the record over. We all had tough times. Someone mistreats you, then you spit on their grave and curse them to hell and you get on with things. You know what you do need to be concerned about is that goofy boy of yours, wandering the streets. He’s a goddamn menace. A tenderizer — terrorizer — terrorist, I should say.”

  “I’ve got things under control with Joel. There’s a long-range plan in place.”

  “What horseshit. The only long-range plan for that kid is drugs and then jail for life. Whose house is he stealing from now?”

  “He’s staying with —” She stops herself. Hold the line. Stick to the holy plan. Hazel doesn’t need to know anything. “I actually couldn’t tell you who he’s staying with right now. He’s in the wind, as they say. Haven’t a clue.”

  22

  JOEL SETS THE WORLD’S SMALLEST table for dinner. Donald Tait’s tiny house was never meant for guests. Joel could only find one fork; he put it with Donald’s plate, took a soup spoon for himself.

  At least he’s in off the veranda. At first Donald would only let him in the house to warm up. Then he’d make Joel go back on the veranda with a space heater. When he did finally allow Joel to stay in the house, there were several provisos: don’t touch anything — including the countless, teetering stacks of newspapers, file folders, magazines, three-ringed binders, and hundreds and hundreds of books — never knock on Donald’s closed bedroom door for any reason, ever; don’t comment on the condition of the house or its perceived uncleanliness — ignore the toilet bowl, porcelain gone brown from years of untended piss, make no mention of the fur balls, ossified cat turds, old, inkless pens, thumbtacks and pennies on the curling, tiled floor; and, if at all possible, avoid eating, drinking, moving about, urinating or having bowel movements. So far Joel has mainly made good on these promises.

  Donald enters with a plate of buttered French bread. Joel greets him with a smile.

  “It is my intention,” Donald says, “that we have a pleasant meal together this evening, but I really do not want you to get accustomed to this. I don’t have dinner parties. I lead a very intense interior life. A life of the mind. I don’t socialize very much. I do hope that you are actively organizing an exit strategy, because I may very well need you to leave at a moment’s notice.”

  Joel nods. Donald goes back into the kitchen and returns with a burned shepherd’s pie.

  “So,” Donald continues, sitting, “what is your exit strategy?”

  “I’m almost definitely going to go back to Toronto. I’m going to really be more — forceful, I guess.”

  “Forceful. Regarding what, exactly?”

  “My work.”

  “Right. Yes. Sorry. What exactly is your work again? You may have told me, I just can’t remember.”

  “I perform my — I have these — I write — I perform my poetry, except it’s not really poetry, it’s more like — statements, that I recite in a really emphatic way.”

  Donald nods, flips his braid from his front to his back, forks off a bite of shepherd’s pie.

  “Which artist would be a comparable reference point? Ginsberg?”

  “Umm, I don’t know. Sort of like Sandra Bernhard, but more stark.”

  “Sandra Bernhard … Do you mean, Sarah Bernhardt?”

  “No. I don’t think so. Or do I?”

  Donald daubs at a crumb in his crumby beard.

  “Why don’t you perform something for me.”

  Joel goes red. Giggles. Mentally sifts through his repertoire.

  “It’s been ages since I performed. This will probably be totally awful. Should I stand?”

  “If you like. Yes, why don’t you stand. Just be mindful of the Sears catalogue collection immediately behind you.”

  Joel stands, regards the seven foot stack, moves to one side. Takes a breath.

  “This is a recent piece. I haven’t actually written it down yet. I’m still workshopping it, hardy har. Hoo. Woo. I’m nervous. Okay.

  “She threw me out of the house I can’t even believe it

  She threw me out

  Part of me says, ‘No way!’

  Part of me says, ‘Yes, way!’

  As if.

  Seriously!

  My stone pillow. Poison. Oh my God. Wow.

  “Obviously it’s still very rough. But you can sort of get an idea of what I’m going for. The, like, visceral — impact.”

  Donald looks into his plate, then starts to laugh. Tears stream from his face, his shoulders dance. He can’t stop. Finally, fingers splayed on the table, he contains himself.

  “You did not tell a lie. That was totally, deliciously awful. Oh, my stomach!”

  “When you say ‘totally, deliciously awful,’ do you mean the subject matter?”

  “Yes, the subject matter, the text, the delivery. All of it. Good on you for sharing that, though. I haven’t laughed like that in years.”

  Joel looks at the stack of catalogues. This is nothing he doesn’t already know about his stuff. Sure, it’s aggressively conversational, wilfully naïve, and his delivery is halting, but there’s still a kernel of — something, in there somewhere, isn’t there? He hadn’t been giving his performance art much thought of late, with all the upheaval, but now that he is: there is a certain something there, isn’t there? Everyone has a certain something.

  “I’m glad that I was able to make you laugh, but I don’t think it’s fair of you to condemn the efforts of a young artist. It’s a real struggle, being a young artist.”

  “I’m sure it is. You don’t have to worry, though, because you’re not an artist.”

  “That’s mean. You don’t know that I’m not an artist. Sometimes it takes a long time for an artist to find their voice.”

  “Absolutely. And sometimes it takes a long time for a person to realize their natural facility. Isn’t it better to know now that you’re not an artist, so you can discover your true vocation?”

  Joel glares at Donald. He realizes that Donald is saying reasonable things, in a pleasant tone of voice. He is still hurt. Shit-breath, ponytail man doesn’t know what he’s talking about. Or, if he does know what he’s talking about, you’d think he’d be able, as a mentor, to frame the conversation so that Joel could feel real hope for his future, rather than the ringing futility that makes him want to curl up on Donald’s veranda and cease breathing.

  No. It isn’t fair that Joel should have to start from scratch, fret and toil, while Donald Tait gets to continue with his tidily untidy, cozily uncozy life of the mind. Donald Tait needs to be reminded of the pain of personal turbulence.

  Joel puts a palm to the stack and pushes it hard. It tips and falls into a stack of binders. The binders go flying. A flurry of loose-leaf fills the room. The three barren birdcages on the buffet clatter to the floor.

  Donald scans the wreckage. He opens his mouth. A high, blurry note comes from his throat, a sound like a deaf per
son learning to speak. He gets up and looks at the long-buried places in the room now uncovered by the paper landslide. Still the keening deaf sound.

  “I’m sorry,” Joel says. “I just really needed to express —”

  “Shut up!”

  Donald moves to the spot where the catalogue stack was. Stuck deep into the carpet is some torn construction paper. He kneels there.

  “The nudes,” he says. “I haven’t seen these in thirty years.”

  “Nudes of who? Of you?”

  “Could you please not interrupt my reverie?”

  Joel kneels next to Donald. He is silent for the sake of Donald’s reverie. On the torn paper is a charcoal sketch of a fleshy, reclining male.

  “Dan the Fisherman drew these. I was your age, younger even, seventeen. Look how lovingly he drew me. He loved me. I loved him. We were in love. It was — alchemy. I sound insipid.”

  “No, you don’t. What happened to him?”

  Donald goes quiet. “He was murdered. By a bear.”

  “Really? Oh, no. Were they lovers, too?”

  Donald is aghast. “Were they lovers! It was a bear, a brown bear. And this was long before the Marian Engel novel.”

  “Oh, sorry. By ‘bear,’ I thought you meant a hairy gay guy. That’s horrible, I’m sorry. A bear, gosh. But an actual bear can’t commit murder, in the strictest sense, can it?”

  “It most certainly can, in this instance. Dan the Fisherman was a woodsman, a seasoned camper. The bears were his friends. And then one of them eviscerated him, ripped him limb from limb. What would you call that?”

  Respectfully, Joel says nothing. Donald pries the drawings from the rug. He spreads them out, six sketches in all. They study them awhile.

  “You were kind of chunky back then, heh? What was your weight-loss secret?”

  Donald scowls. He looks at Joel’s earnest face. His scowl dissolves. He laughs, not the wracking cackles of a few minutes ago, but a soft, friendly laugh. He playfully thwacks Joel on the side of the head. Joel’s temple stings but he takes it in stride. Maybe, he thinks, this new, smiling Donald will actually lend him a proper pillow tonight.

  23

  “EDDIE, PLEASE TAKE ME WITH you. Please just leave with me right now!” Through the crack in the door Lila grabs at Edmund, then looks behind her, terrified.

  “Who is that, Li? Is that Edmund and friend? Let them in.”

  Lila’s eyes fall shut in despair. She opens the door all the way. Marci is standing in the hallway in a sweat-drenched, baby blue leotard. “You just caught me doing yoga in the basement. Lemme freshen up and I’ll join you all in a bit.”

  “Marci,” Edmund says, “this is my close friend —”

  “Hold that thought,” she says, putting a hand up. “I want to be properly introduced. Back in a minute.”

  She bounds up the stairs two at a time.

  “Wow,” says Binny. “You guys have a really nice house, eh? How come there are towels covering all your paintings and shit?”

  “Those are mirrors. It’s a custom in Judaism, after a death. I’m sitting shiva. I don’t care what Marci says. She says you can’t sit shiva for a miscarried baby, it’s not permitted, it’s tacky and maudlin, but I don’t care. My grief is my grief. You watch, when she comes downstairs she’s going to pull down all the towels off the mirrors. I don’t understand why she’s being so hard and bossy, like more than usual, at a time like this. We’ve just lost our baby boy, and she’s acting like I tracked mud in, or broke a vase or something.”

  She sighs the sigh of someone completely depleted and leans into Edmund.

  “She’s mourning in her own way, Lila,” Ed offers, stroking her hair.

  “Well, she’s mourning in a stupid gay way, I say,” Binny says. Lila looks up at him.

  “Aren’t you a sweetie! I’m so glad to meet you again. Please forgive me for last time.”

  “Aw, group hug!” Binny throws his arms around Edmund and Lila. “You really are so pretty, Lila!”

  “I tried to tell Marci what you said about my hair, it was so charming, but I couldn’t remember exactly how you said it.”

  “About your hair? Your hair is very Diva Suzanne, solitude stands in the doorway realness.”

  “Yes! That’s it. I love it, it’s like you’re talking in a gay, umm, patois. It’s like that wonderful documentary about the black drag queens.”

  “Paris is Burning! That movie saved my life! You saw Paris is Burning? Work!”

  Lila smiles. Then it fades, and she gropes along the wall into the living room.

  The walls of the living room are covered with posters from films that Marci has worked on. She’s a line producer or project manager, something like that; Edmund can’t remember. None of the films are familiar; one poster features Nancy McKeon dressed as a nun, another Melissa Gilbert in a blue wig, holding a butcher knife. Above the television is a black and white photograph of Lila and Dean. Edmund isn’t sure when it was taken, but Dean has a beard, so it had to have been close to the end.

  They sit.

  “I should’ve brought food!” Edmund says. “I absolutely should’ve brought food.”

  “That’s fine, Eddie. I know you’re not a food person anymore. Besides, Marci made a whole bunch of food. I told her not to, but since we’re not officially sitting shiva, she went hog-wild and made munchies.”

  Binny shakes his head disgustedly, like he knows all about sitting shiva. “That’s awful,” he says. “What a bitch.”

  “Binny, you shouldn’t call Lila’s partner a bitch.”

  “Yeah, you’d better not. I don’t mind so much, but if she catches wind — look out.”

  And here is Marci, in navy velour track pants and a flimsy pink peasant blouse, hair raked away from her face by a plastic headband. Now that she’s close up, Edmund notices a faint rash covering the left side of her face, roughly in the shape of South America. She immediately extends her hand to Binny, but says nothing until he catches on and stands up.

  “Marci Laylor, great to meet you, welcome.”

  Binny hangs a heavy hand from Marci’s, tugs it once, then sits again. “Binny. I’m sorry about your baby.”

  Marci shrugs, almost jaunty. “Well, these things happen. It’s part of the process. We’ll try again.”

  “So this last one was on purpose?”

  Marci looks around with disbelief. “Well, two monogamous lesbians can’t accidentally have a baby, so yes, it was on purpose!”

  “Cool. And so who were you pregnant for?”

  Lila starts to speak but Marci barges in. “We weren’t pregnant for anyone, other than each other. We used an anonymous donor.”

  “Cool. I guess you can’t, like, get a refund?”

  “Why don’t you bring out those plates of hors d’oeuvres you made, Marci?”

  Marci offers her blazing grin and gnawing jaw. She wordlessly goes into the kitchen.

  “She’s intense, eh?” Binny whispers. “Is she — She’s not tweaking, is she?”

  “What’s tweaking?”

  Edmund’s gut seizes. Binny, stop talking, say no more, shut it. “Marci has an incredibly demanding job; I don’t know how she does it. She’s an iron lady.”

  Marci returns with two blue plates. She sets them down on the coffee table.

  “Don’t those look wonderful,” Edmund says. Little round flaky things topped with white stuff. Long, slick black things drizzled with red stuff. Edmund used to consider himself something of an epicure. Now he can’t even put a name to — what is that white stuff on the flaky thing? Goat cheese? Must be. He takes one of the flaky things and holds it in his palm.

  Binny asks if he can smoke in the house. Marci says no. Binny says he understands, totally no problem.

  “So, Binny,” Marci says with a strained smile, “what do you do?”
<
br />   “What do you mean?”

  “For a living, or for fun?”

  “This and that.”

  “Sounds mysterious! Like what?”

  “Why you on me? I’ve never been in jail. I know how to sit and chat and be nice. I’m not going to steal your shit. Sorry, I think I do need a cigarette.”

  He bolts for the front door.

  “I’m sorry about Binny,” Edmund whispers. “He’s a bit volatile. He’s quick to take offence. He comes from trauma. He’s really a very gentle soul. He’s a big fan of an assortment of black female singing stars and black female rappers. I think he might be quite talented.”

  “I wish I hadn’t been such a fucking snob last time,” Lila says. “It’s only natural he’d be defensive. God, you know, we all present ourselves as uber-sensitive to issues of class and privilege and, you know, the sex industry, but when you encounter an actual representative of all that stuff, it’s so easy to fuck up and say something stupid.”

  “I totally support your friend in his journey through his — issues and — experiences,” says Marci. “But I feel the need to make it clear that our home must not be considered an injection site. I’m sorry if that sounds harsh, it’s just that the last thing either of us needs to cope with is a needle-stick injury.”

  Edmund laughs, looks at the round flaky thing in his hand, puts it back on the blue plate.

  “I completely understand. You guys are the sweetest people. Binny doesn’t do needle drugs. He’s really very grounded. At the most all he does are very light party favours.”

  Now Lila’s all concerned-looking. “Okay. Party favours? Tweaking? Is this just more of Binny’s gay patois or is this drug lingo?”

  “Oh, you. I’m not sure — a bit of both? It’s all in good fun. Binny and I are really committed to fun. It’s a time to heal.”

  “You can’t — you cannot — do drugs, Eddie,” Lila says sternly. “Your health is fragile. Please don’t do drugs. What would Dean say if he were still here?”

  This irks him. “First of all, Dean is not here; he left a long, long time ago. It’s been just me for a while now. Secondly, I don’t think it’s appropriate for you to be invoking the name of Dean, because he was mine, he was the love of my life, thanks very much, and anyway, he was the biggest coke whore in Toronto when he was alive, which you know full well. But all of this is irrelevant, because I am not doing drugs.”