by Pasha Malla
Packing it in, see you tmro, came Sherene’s reply. Don’t drink too much! XO
Ash returned his attention to the TV. Though he knew nothing about martial arts of any stripe—and refused to trust anything that awarded merit by belt—the fight transfixed him. It was animalistic, but contained. Fierce, yet coyly intimate. And, as one man buried his face in the other’s neck, their grappling struck Ash as tender.
Sure you don’t want to rescue me? he wrote back.
Claiming to have recognized someone from his acting days, Matt went loping across the bar, arms out for a hug.
‘There he goes,’ said Chip. ‘Making friends.’
‘Or foes.’ Ash checked his messages: nothing. With Matt gone, the space between Ash and Chip seemed to contract. They watched the fight together for a bit, then Chip handed Ash his Blackberry to admire some photos of his son. Ash obediently thumbed through a dozen blurry selfies.
‘See the one at the Raptors’ game? Got courtside and everything.’
‘Cool,’ said Ash, returning the phone. ‘How old is he now?’
‘Ten! Grade five, can you believe it?’
‘Wow.’
‘Puberty, man. It’s happening. Pretty soon he’ll be chasing girls around.’
‘Right.’ Ash drank. ‘Otherwise though? Things are good?’
‘One sec.’ Chip keyed out a message and set his phone beside his glass. ‘Ty’s alone at the hotel so I can’t stay long. I mean, he’s fine, he’s a big boy. I just can’t get too drunk.’
Matt returned with a fistful of shots. ‘Wasn’t who I thought it was, but such a great dude! I told him my buddy’s dad just died and he bought us a round of tequilas.’
Across the bar, some guy in a backwards visor shot Ash a thumbs-up.
‘No salt, no lemon, no pussying out,’ growled Matt. ‘Just down the hatch.’
Ash tipped it back: the wince, the burn, the shudder.
‘Horrible,’ moaned Chip.
The table of francophones beside them cheered and Matt high-fived each man in turn. ‘Where’s Claudine? More drinks for my gar-sawns here!’ Matt roared and beat his chest. ‘Holy frig, boys, I feel so alive tonight. And my finger barely hurts or anything.’
—
ON TV THE FIGHT ENDED. Someone had won. Ash watched, mesmerized, as one bloodied, battered man had his hands lifted in a kind of coerced triumph. The look in his eyes, while trainers and media thronged around him, was blank and lifeless.
‘Dhar!’ Matt clapped him on the back. ‘Get in here for a photo.’
Claudine framed the three friends with Chip’s camera phone. At the last second Matt took Ash’s hand and placed it on his arm. ‘Just like your dad and his boyfriend.’
‘Stop it.’
‘I nearly forgot,’ said Matt. ‘Guess what our brown buddy here did earlier, Chip.’
‘Please,’ said Ash, ‘don’t.’
Chip leaned in. ‘Go on.’
‘We hit one of the clubs on Saint Kat-treen, I buy this guy a dons-con-tack, and—get this—oh man!—what a champ!—he tries to suck face with the stripper!’
‘We didn’t suck face.’
‘What was it then? A peck on the cheek? That’s even creepier.’
Chip slapped the table. ‘You never been to the peelers before, Ash?’
‘Are you kidding? Ash has a history of blowing it at the nudie bar,’ hollered Matt. ‘Literally, first time I took him? Busted a nut in his pants, stashed his dirty gitch in the back of the toilet and spent the rest of the day at school bare-balling it in his Levi’s.’ Everyone howled—even the Quebecers at the neighbouring table.
Ash sunk his face into his hands. Though a part of him was relieved: playing the fool provided a function.
Matt slung an arm around him. ‘Aw, I only rib you because I love you.’
‘This is what love is? I’d hate to be your enemy.’
Claudine returned with another tray of shots. As she placed them on the table, Matt casually touched her forearm. ‘Mare-see bow-coupe, sherry.’ He slammed one back and pounded the table and jumped to his feet and announced, ‘Gotta go see a man about a horse, i.e. me taking a horse-sized piss.’
Ash watched him go, shooting double-guns at strangers: hi there, cross me and die.
Chip checked his phone. ‘I should get going. Want my tequila?’
Ash gulped Chip’s shot, then his own.
‘Tough guy, eh?’
Eyes watering, Ash looked away. ‘I’m not sure if you saw,’ he said, ‘but there was an older lady in a scarf at my dad’s…thing.’
‘Okay.’
‘Well, Matt fooled around with her.’
‘Making memories as always!’
‘What, are you impressed? She’s like seventy years old!’
‘This is the dude who had a threesome the night of his mom’s funeral, keep in mind.’
Ash shook his head.
‘Though who can blame him,’ said Chip. ‘I can’t imagine my kid finding me like that.’
Ash stared. ‘What do you mean?’
‘In the garage?’
‘What?’
Chip leaned in. ‘You didn’t know?’
‘He found her? Matt was the one who found her?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Jesus.’
Ash looked across the bar at the bathroom door. Matt refused to wash his hands in public restrooms, convinced that passing them under the hand dryer was somehow more hygienic. Ash pictured him thumping the button, wet fingers whisking the hot air, a smirk of pity at the fools scrubbing away in the sinks, then breezing back into the bar on the stink of steamed urine. There had once been a time when his friend’s follies would cheer him. Now, more than ever, they seemed pathological.
‘Don’t say anything,’ said Chip.
‘I wasn’t going to! God, do you think—’
‘He’s coming.’
Matt loped back across the bar, bald head glistening. ‘Seriously, Ash,’ said Chip, his voice forlorn. ‘I’m surprised you didn’t know.’
Matt loomed over the table. ‘You maggots talking about me?’
‘As if,’ said Ash. ‘We’ve got better stuff to—’
‘Just about how well you’re doing,’ said Chip. ‘How yourself you seem.’
Matt nodded. ‘I am. I really am. Dropped finger aside, I mean.’ But he seemed suspicious, didn’t sit down.
Again Chip offered a reprieve: ‘So how’s life out west? Any stories?’
‘Funny you should ask,’ Matt said, at last sliding into his chair. ‘I told myself I’d be good once school started. Buckle down, study. Turn my life around.’
‘But not until school started,’ said Ash.
‘Exactly. So I had a week.’
‘Uh-oh,’ said Chip. ‘A whole week!’
That’s like four months in human years, Ash thought, but said nothing.
Matt gestured to the neighbouring table. ‘Maize-ameez,’ he said, ‘aycoot-mwah. Here’s one I bet you’ve never heard before: how I really got this dropped finger.’
As his old friend commanded the crowd, Ash observed him as he might an adversary, searching for weakness. Not to strike. Just for a glimpse of the sorrow beneath that manic facade. But Matt was too good a storyteller, his voice swelling with drama and joy, and Ash quickly joined the rapt audience (Chip, the Quebecers, Claudine, a few intrigued outliers), seeing the guy as they did: a nutcase, but loveable enough in his madcap way, eyes lingering on each listener to ensure they felt connected. What a story! Ridiculous, improbable. And, to a point, possibly even true.
‘So there I am,’ Matt narrated, ‘wrist-deep in my own arse, and the door swings open and who’s standing there but my frigging landlord.’
Everyone roared. Even Ash. This should have been the kicker, a good place to stop. But Matt wouldn’t concede the stage. He shifted into a ‘Pakistani’ accent: ‘ “Mister Matthew sir, please-please are you knowing your rent is due?” ’
Too performed,
too needy. Also a touch too racist. Ash sensed Matt’s audience withdrawing. As the story slid from fact to fiction, he was losing them.
‘So I tear my fist out of my rectum’—Matt raised his hand: the evidence—‘and my ring catches on my sphincter. Tears it open. Poop everywhere.’ His eyes flashed from face to face to gauge how this played.
The laughter was hesitant, perfunctory. Someone coughed. Claudine looked over her shoulder. For an out, an escape.
Matt blundered on: ‘Poop down my legs, poop up my arm…A literal poop-storm.’
Chip giggled. But he was alone.
‘I’m frigging drenched in the stuff!’ he cried. ‘And what’d I eat the night before? Chinese food. So there’s this gross sweet and sour sauce poop, and egg noodle poop, and wonton soup poop everywhere and this guy’s just staring at me, he’s probably going to evict me. And I don’t know anyone in Kelowna, I’ve got nowhere else to go…’
Ash filled Matt’s glass, pushed the fresh beer toward him. But it was ignored.
‘And my finger!’ Matt held it up again. ‘Tore the ligament right through!’
Claudine was gone. Chip was texting. One of the Quebecers stood and clapped Matt on the shoulder on his way to the bathroom. ‘Great story, man.’
Matt shook his head. Chugged his pint—all of it. Refilled his glass. Stared at some point just past the edge of the table. Drank. Nodded emphatically.
‘Craziest part?’ he said, turning intently to Ash. ‘Every single word is true.’
—
THE REST OF NIGHT became something that Ash could later recall only as dubious flashes of sights and sound. Had he really collapsed in tears against a payphone? Did Matt have to shush him when he began lipping the Quebecers at the next table? Was it really ‘Vive le Canada!’ he’d been chanting? As the bar-lights went on and the stools went up, had Ash actually been carried out by Matt on one side and an eye-rolling bouncer on the other?
And then a window of clarity. Ash was standing in the snow.
‘Check this out,’ said Matt, tilting his head back, mouth open.
Ash did it too: flakes sizzled on his tongue. The view above turned vertiginous, astral, less a snowfall than a plunge through the cosmos. Ash closed his eyes. The world reeled. Matt caught him before he hit the ground.
Then, something else—food, maybe? Mustard and meat, the glare of some all-night diner. The edges of this folded inward and everything ceased to exist for a while. Next thing he knew Ash was in the backseat of a taxi with his head lolling against the window and the cabbie eyeing him in the rear-view.
‘Eel-ay-bun!’ cried Matt. ‘Nuh-vomay-pah!’
The taxi merged onto the 20, launching out of the glitter and hum of the city into a stiller sort of night. The snow here seemed thicker, more determined.
‘So,’ said Matt, ‘Chip seemed pretty good.’
Even the thought of speaking made Ash’s stomach lurch. A perilous clot of spit had collected in the back of this throat. Let it be or swallow it down? Fearing the worst, he spat into his hand and deposited the results in his pocket.
‘Classy,’ said Matt.
Ash closed his eyes, ducked his head between his knees.
‘Easy now,’ said Matt, rubbing his back: gentle, clockwise circles from shoulder blades to tailbone.
The hand lifted, seemed to remove some nausea with it. Ash straightened.
‘If you’re gonna hurl,’ said Matt, opening his toque under Ash’s chin, ‘aim in here.’
‘I’m fine,’ said Ash, pushing it away.
They were passing the low-rise grid of St-Henri, cathedral domes blooming like tumours. A neighbourhood Brij had pronounced Sent Ennui.
‘So where are you from?’ Matt called into the front seat.
‘I?’ said the cabbie. (Mahmoud Abdurrahman, according to his tags.) ‘From Pakistan.’
‘Cool,’ said Matt. ‘My buddy here’s Kashmirian.’
‘My dad is,’ clarified Ash.
‘Indian side?’ said the driver.
‘Where your…’ Words were hard. Ash tried again: ‘Where in Pakistan?’
‘From Peshawar. You know Peshawar?’
‘Is that far from Kashmir?’ said Matt.
‘Afghanistan is closer.’ The cabbie turned down the radio. ‘You speak Kashmiri?’
‘When I was a kid,’ Ash slurred, dimly aware this was untrue. ‘I forget it now.’
‘Kashmir is very beautiful,’ said the cabbie.
‘Should we go?’ said Matt, tilting forward. ‘Me and my friend, here?’
‘To Kashmir? Can be dangerous.’ Mahmoud Abdurrahman eyed Ash in the rearview. The particularities of this danger were contentious; clearly he didn’t want to say the wrong thing and compromise his tip.
‘What about the pilgrimage?’ said Matt.
Ash kicked him in the ankle. Don’t, he mouthed.
‘Sir?’
Matt rolled his eyes. ‘What about the women, I said.’
‘Yes! My wife and I went for our honeymoon and stayed on a houseboat. The floating markets, the mountains, the shikaras, the food—the people! So kind, so hospitable. She was very happy there. Wonderful place. Paradise on earth.’
‘Okay,’ said Ash.
‘Your father is from Srinagar?’
‘Yeah.’
‘But he lives now in Montreal?’
Ash sensed Matt watching him. ‘Montreal, yeah.’
‘Do you go back with him, to visit?’
Ash shook his head. The conversation swirled around him. He felt less a participant than its hostage.
‘Well, you should go. That would be a very nice trip, you and your father.’
‘He’s right,’ said Matt, nudging Ash. ‘It would be.’
That was it. Darkness engulfed the rest of the ride to the hotel, the walk to their room, the path to sleep, and the next morning Ash awoke with his shoes on and a shadowy murk where the previous night’s memories should have been. Also a raging headache, a lurching stomach, and a first pee shocking for its colour and smell: pennies.
‘Morning!’ Matt cried from his bed. ‘Forty-five minutes until SLAW!’
Ash managed not to vomit until Matt fed him a strawberry smoothie, and the subsequent, Pepto-Bismol-coloured expulsions weakened gradually to coarse, wracked hacking. Then he showered and, throat scorched and bleary-eyed and full of self-hatred, dragged himself through the snow to Matt’s truck by 10:30.
‘If it’s fine by you,’ said Matt, lighting his one-hitter on the way out of the parking lot, ‘I’ll just drop you off at the restaurant and hit an IHOP or something? Don’t really need to see Barbara again. We had our time.’
Ash pressed his cheek to the window. The glass was cold, clean, punishing. ‘Kill me now. I feel like someone worked a hand-mixer through my brain.’
Down the 20 they went, back into the city. Traffic was solid, and Matt weaved and zagged across all three lanes: any opening was a chance to get ahead, to win.
‘Pretty crazy night,’ said Matt.
‘Can you drive normally, please? Unless you want my guts all over your dash.’
‘Don’t blame me, hero. Got to a point last night where I couldn’t have stopped you if I wanted.’ He chuckled. ‘Let’s just hope that video doesn’t turn up anywhere.’
‘What are you talking about?’ Ash sat up. ‘What video?’
‘You don’t remember? One of those guys at the table beside us, after we went for food. Filming you on the street?’
‘Filming me? Why? What was I doing?’
‘Don’t worry about it. I’m sure—’
‘What was I doing?’
‘Honestly, it’s not a big deal. Just some frog with his cellphone. And it was dark, there’s no way to tell who you were or what you were doing.’
‘But what,’ said Ash, ‘was I doing?’
Matt lifted his fingers from the wheel in a gesture of abdication. Replaced them to lurch around a dawdling cube van. ‘Meh, you were drunk, you’re going throu
gh some stuff. We’ve all lost it after a few too many. You think I’ve never acted like an arsehole?’
‘I don’t think that, no. But what about me?’
‘Happens to the best of us, is what I’m saying. I mean, I’m no teddy bear’s picnic—’
‘Matt, holy shit. Just tell me what the fuck you’re talking about.’
‘You really don’t remember?’
‘Nothing. Tell me.’
He nodded, eyes on the road. ‘Okay.’
—
INSIDE THE RESTAURANT Ash was greeted, horrifyingly enough, by six people holding copies of his novel. Barbara Bloch indicated the seat, at the head of the table, from which he could be besieged from all angles.
‘He’s here!’ she announced.
To his dismay, the book club applauded.
Other than Barbara SLAW included Jerry, a woman in a fur hat of feral/Soviet lineage, which upon closer inspection turned out to be her hair. Across the table, the group’s ‘token man’ seemed straight from central librarian casting: reading glasses on a chain around his neck, grey moustache, sweater vest. ‘Honoured,’ he whispered with a neat tuck of his chin and a slow-blink.
Beside Jerry was ‘the writer of the group,’ as Barbara introduced her. ‘Interesting piece,’ this woman offered collegially. Her copy of Ash’s book appeared unread.
Second to last was a girl with a kind, open smile. She looked about twenty, hair chopped into an asymmetrical bob and stars tattooed on both wrists. Ash wondered if she might be Barbara’s daughter, dragged along with familial obligations.
‘Karina’s at McGill,’ said Barbara. ‘She found us on Facebook.’
‘Undergrad?’ said Ash.
‘Ha!’ said Barbara, perched behind the poor girl with her hands on her shoulders, as if presenting her for Ash’s assessment. ‘She’s here on a Fulbright. From Princeton.’
‘Sounds impressive,’ Karina said with a laugh, ‘until you hear my French.’
Ash smiled. He liked her. And her copy of his novel was thoroughly dog-eared. A decent, modest human being—and a real reader! His headache and shame eased a bit.