Just as he’s starting to cool down, the back door to the restaurant clangs open, and he hears Trevor and Cindy talking. The dumpster booms and shakes as a garbage bag lands inside. Wally hears lighter flints scraping and lips ejecting spit. He holds his breath, worried they’ll find him stuck back here, like a failed rodent.
Trevor: “Your aunt come home yet?”
Cindy: “Doubt it. Mom says just to forget it. Aunt Bevie needs her space, thousands of miles of it.”
“Too bad she takes the rent money, too.”
“Like your mom is any better.”
“She’s a blimp, not a bitch. Just misses Dad.”
“I miss him, too.”
“Except you’ve got Bolek now. You’re saved.”
“Eat shit, Trevor.”
All this is very disconcerting, but Wally has his own problems. For starter’s his mother invited him to a family dinner, his first since he moved out a couple months ago. That night, he pulls up a chair at the circular dining room table in the middle of his parents’ kitchen. They’re eating the usual: a bowl of chunky mashed potatoes, a plate of burnt pork chops, another of over-steamed broccoli. The fridge hums through long and awkward silences. Silverware clatters. Lips suck and smack.
Wally’s dad sits in the same seat he’s occupied since Wally was a boy, but everything else about him has changed. He’s put on weight. His clothes are untucked, wrinkled, frumpy, stained. He’s unshaven and wears a preoccupied expression, whispering under his breath, but never to Wally or his mother.
“He gets worse every day,” she says, right in front of him, prune-creased fingers massaging her temples. “It’s too much work. Too much thankless work. And he’s ungrateful. He doesn’t remember me. He yells. And the doctors? They don’t know what to do. All they know is it gets worse. That’s what they tell me. It gets worse.”
At work, Bolek’s leaflets have drawn a crowd. Not a big one, but a crowd just the same. They’re the workboot-wearing labour set on lunch break, dry fingertips picking through the change in their palms, and dusty, sweat-stained T-shirts pungent, even from across the counter, where Bolek, his face severe, takes orders and screamingly relays them to the kitchen.
Trevor has been slow to reassemble the broiler this morning. Wally watches him, because the steamer’s empty, but he doesn’t seem to care. He lounges against various counters, smirks at Bolek’s building agitation, and shoots angry stares at Wally, who’s clad in a cardboard tomato suit, struggling to feed frozen patties into the cold broiler.
It’s a stressful time, but they manage to serve more than a dozen customers and send them back to their work sites with burbling bellies. After the last customer leaves, Bolek crashes into the kitchen and glares at Wally and Trevor. He rhythmically crushes a neon-pink stress-ball in his palm. But after a long minute of seething silence, he quits for the dining room without the expected eruption. There he sits with Cindy, coaxing her to squeeze his biceps while she manages the difficult balance between ignoring and humouring him.
It’s time, Wally thinks. Swallowing hard and mentally reviewing his dialogue, he puts his hand on Trevor’s bony shoulder. “What’re you going to do when Bolek loses interest in Cindy?”
Trevor slaps his hand away. “I’ll cancel my plans to chop him up and serve him to construction workers.”
“I’m serious, Trevor. You have to think about your future. He won’t cut you so much slack without Cindy in the picture. You could lose your job.”
“And?”
“And everything that goes with it. Like the money.”
“Money? That tracks, man. You look like the money-loving type. But capitalism is bogus, man, and I don’t need money. I’m going underground. Fuck your banks. Fuck your mindless consumer tendencies. I mean, have you even thought of the tough questions? Have you ever tried to not be a slave?”
Trevor spins away, leaving Wally with his mouth hanging open.
Later, when he’s alone with Bolek, just the harsh, buzzing lights and the hum of the fridges, Wally pushes a mop around, stealing glances at his boss, who’s leaning against the order counter and scribbling all over the day’s cash-out sheet. Would it be too much to give Wally that task? Too much to polish his day with just a few simple equations?
“Great sales made today,” Bolek says with a chuckle. “Very great. Crosstown Wallys will be coming soon. And Bolek? Maybe he will have pretty, young bride, unh?”
Quietly disgusted, Wally lowers his head, hiding beneath the short curtain of his hair, and swirls his mop across the floor near the wiry pervert’s feet. Bolek gives Wally a sudden slap on the back, and it sounds like a balloon exploding.
“Look, Wally, look.” He points at a few crushed pickle slices slopping out from under the counter. “You miss a puke-making pickle mess. You clean it.”
At home later, his microwave loudly warming a few slices of pizza, Wally wants to ignore the flashing light on his answering machine. He knows it’s his mother, knows she’s calling about his dad. He’ll press the button, hear her voice, and feel compelled to call back. Then his evening will be ruined by her tearful entreaties to work hard and save them all.
But the only other force bombarding his attention is his collection of credit card statements, which haunt him always, the paperwork ostensibly innocuous in an elastic-bound pile on top of the fridge. The microwave chimes and Wally pops the door, promptly burning his tongue on a sagging slice. Wincing, he waddles to the answering machine and presses the button.
“Wally? Wally, it’s your mother. I didn’t want to call you at work. Work comes first.” She swallows a groan. “But something terrible has happened. Your father has run away. He left the front door wide open all evening. And there was a squirrel on the coffee table when I came into the living room. A fat, ugly squirrel, like the house is a stump.”
The next day, Wally’s an hour late for work. He was up until three in the morning looking after his mother. After listening to the message, he left his pizza to congeal, rushing clumsily out of the apartment to the nearest bus stop. Sweat trickled from his armpits during the clattering bus ride across town. His mother came to the door with tears in her eyes and her anniversary brooch pinned to the breast of a plain, black dress. A bearded police officer sat on the couch taking notes and stifling yawns. He told them dementia patients frequently wander off, that they’re usually found in days, and that there was nothing to worry about: his father would be home soon.
Bolek is furious. His deep-pitted eyes blaze when Wally finally lumbers into the restaurant. He shoots out of his seat across from Cindy, who watches him stride toward Wally with a frown on her punctured face. “Why you are late? During competition week? What you think your job here is for?”
Wally makes feeble motions with his hands.
Bolek stabs his sinewy index finger in Wally’s face. “You are fat, stupid imbecile, Wally. Like a boy! You go into backroom and prepare for competition now. You not be late again. Or else fired.” He walks back to Cindy and happily tugs the hem of his sweater. “You like this? Matka, she knit for me in Poland. She knit clothing for all Murzyn family. Hard work keep us warm in Polish winter and air-conditioned North America. You like it, yes?”
“No,” she says. “It’s ugly.”
The kitchen reeks of chemicals used to clean the broiler, the parts of which are scattered everywhere. And even though the construction crowd will be here soon, Trevor slumps against the industrial sinks by the back door, his hands in the pockets of his baggy, black jeans. He waves as Wally squeezes through the narrow corridors between deep fryers and counters.
“Trevor, we have to get the broiler put back together soon. The lunch rush is on its way.”
Trevor shrugs, pushes off the sinks, and fingers an oversized card from his back pocket. “You shouldn’t let that asshole talk to you like that, man. It’s not right.”
Wally pushes
his glasses into the flesh of his nose. “I have no choice right now. Neither do you.”
“You sure about that? Check this out.”
The card’s an advertisement for some kind of lecture: Adopting Alternatives to Capitalist Political Economies. There’s an image of a man in a suit holding a hammer. The top of his head is bashed in, presumably from a self-inflicted blow, and his brain leaks out in thick, gray streams. Tiny, green lizards crawl out of the wound in his skull. Written in fine print at the bottom of the card are the words: Event is dope and liquor friendly. Participants respectfully asked not to shout during lectures.
Wally shakes his head. “I don’t understand.”
“You don’t have to be governed, Wally. It’s time to wake up, man. Fuck civilization, dude. Starting right here with Burger Life Fitness.”
Trevor pumps his fist and several things begin to happen at once. First, the lunch crowd shows up; they pile through the door with smokers’ coughs, residual stink of booze on their breath, and voices raised and profane as they discuss sex, beer-fuelled violence, and the finer points of automobile repairs. Then, like the first deafening clap of a thunderstorm, Cindy starts bellowing at Bolek, her words barely intelligible, even though her meaning becomes clear enough when she grabs a chair and hurls it into the window, causing an enormous, web-like crack to flash across the glass. Next, Trevor appears carrying pieces of the broiler into the dining room, and he starts throwing them across the restaurant, shrieking about how he wants to save them all from another lunch hour of diversionary state tactics.
Bolek scrambles around the dining room, tripping over tables as he tries to stop broiler pieces from sailing through the windows. The maelstrom overwhelms the lunch crowd. They tuck their necks between their shoulders and rush the exit, dodging debris as they flee.
Bolek tries to appeal to them. “Stop! Stop! Is just performance! Is not serious!”
He doesn’t notice Cindy positioned beside him, combat boots laced tight, hair a multi-coloured explosion. “Fuck you, creep,” she sneers, soccer-kicking his shin. Bolek yelps, high-pitched and canine. And then a broiler component strikes his face, slicing his cheek, bright red blood spurting from the wound. He collapses into a ball, shouting for Wally to phone the police, but Wally can’t move. He’s paralyzed in the back room, his heart thumping with dread.
Trevor and Cindy run off with whatever money is in the till. “Reparations,” Trevor explains on his way out the door. “Fuck the system!”
And then they’re gone. Bolek hauls himself to his feet, swaying, wincing, limping to the phone behind the order counter, where he frantically dials numbers. “Help,” he whimpers into the receiver. “I have been stolen.”
The police come. They ask questions, take notes, toggle the buttons on their radios, and send units after Trevor and Cindy. Wally dutifully cleans the dining room. He collects the broiler parts, which are undamaged, and reassembles them in the kitchen. Later that afternoon, he hears Bolek in his office talking to the lead investigator, hears him swear and slam the phone into the receiver.
“They catch the bitch,” Bolek says, emerging with dumbbell in hand, the enormous bags under his eyes darker and heavier than Wally has ever seen them. “She was packing her clothes at home. The boy, the Trevor, he gets away for now.”
Wally nods, the last of the broiler pieces in its place. “I have to go see my mother.”
“Fine. And tomorrow, we give up contest. Throw towel in. You go make like onion on sidewalks of competition restaurants.”
On the bus, Wally tries to imagine himself mounting his own insurrection against Bolek, but his mind draws blanks. At the house, he finds his mother sleeping on the couch. He sits in his dad’s chair, pulls at the hair around his navel, and dozes off.
IV.
A week and a half later, Wally takes the day off and boards a bus to the city’s industrial zone. He has a job interview. Water technician, he keeps thinking with a smile. Water technician. A job with numbers. Units of measurement. Conversions. Spreadsheets and flow charts.
Amazing.
He finds the storefront off a side street crowded with autobody shops and flooring retailers. Right away, something seems off. A tall, broad-shouldered guy stands out front smoking a cigar, his brown leather jacket open, a crushed-velvet tie shining through, his black hair sticking up in gel-encrusted spikes. He greets Wally with enormous enthusiasm, exhaling a jet of smoke over his shoulder and ushering him into the lobby, which is decorated with ornate wood carvings and a huge flat-screen TV showing football on mute.
The secretary, with blond highlights and blinding teeth, leads Wally to a room at the end of a bright, orange-painted hall, where she invites him to sit on a leather couch and wait for his recruiter. After a few minutes, Wally hears a deep voice booming in the hallway: “Yeah, Jamie, heard you have quite the effect on the ladies, buddy. Yeah, heard that whenever you talk to them, they just fall right off to sleep.” An explosion of wheezing laughter, followed by a bout of hacking coughs, and then the cigar-smoking guy from outside strides into the room and paces in frenzied circles. Wally leans forward, begins to pull himself to his feet.
“Don’t get up, big guy, don’t you move a muscle. I want you nice and relaxed for the most important speech of your life. This little room right here? This is where lives are transformed, big guy. Lives are made new right here in this motherfucking room. You don’t mind if I swear, do you? Good. Right on. So here’s the deal. We’ve been in business thirty-five years. Since way before I was even born. Most people, they don’t know their water is toxic. They haven’t a clue. Even the bottled shit. No one knows. They just drink it. They just get sick. They just curl up and die. What do we do? We got people in another building who call them up, right? Suggest that maybe they’d like their water tested for free, know what I’m saying? And then a guy like you, Wally, you go over there and give them what nine times out of ten is the worst news of their gullible, shitty water-sucking dumb-fuck lives. Now you’re not there to sell them anything, understand? You’re just there to test the water. You’re a specialist. They’re a sack of toxic cells. But if they want one of our purification systems, you know, once they get all the salient information, then goddamn right you sell it to them and take home fifteen per cent commission. Fucking right for sure, you know? Duh. So what kind of car do you drive?”
“Car?”
“Yeah, big guy. No offence, but you don’t seem like the type who rides a bike, you know what I’m saying?”
“But I don’t have a car. The job ad. It didn’t say anything about a car.” He clears his throat. “Sir.”
The recruiter tilts his head and considers Wally anew. He runs a palm down the length of his tie, rolls his eyes, and waves his hand as if shooing a fly. “Sorry, big guy. This ain’t the room for you. My bad. But don’t worry, you know what I’m saying? There’s another room for you out there somewhere, okay? Just this ain’t the one, okay? Alright. Bye now.”
He cocks his thumb over his shoulder, makes a slight farting sound with his lips, and motions for Wally to leave.
When he gets home, Wally’s answering machine light is blinking. His mother. The cops have called off their search. They haven’t found a thing. Not a scrap of clothing. Not a tattered shoe. Nothing. “It’s almost like he left me,” she says in a cracking voice. Wally takes the bus to visit her and sits quietly beside her on the couch while they watch sitcom reruns and eat from a box of stale donuts. He wants to mourn his dad, but all he can think about is his life sentence with Bolek.
At work the next morning, dressed in a white T-shirt as he supervises a window crew come to replace the glass Cindy broke, Bolek complains about the heat invading the dining room from outside. Finally, Wally sees a chance to strike back. He hurries into the kitchen. He stops at the toppings station, then sneaks into Bolek’s office, where he finds his boss’s brown sweater draped over a chair. Casting nervous glanc
es over his shoulder, he slides a few juicy pickle slices into the pockets of the sweater. Then, because there’s no one else to do it anymore, he cleans the broiler.
Halfway through the job, Bolek calls him into the office. Wally assumes he found the pickles, that he figured out the ruse and is about to fire his last employee. But Bolek is sitting in his chair, obscuring it, the sweater pinned to the backrest, and he holds a sheet of paper and a pencil out to Wally.
“You will learn this procedure to be done nightly when store closes. I promote you. This simple accounting, so no mistakes, okay?” Bolek tries to smile. The corners of his grizzled mouth twitch with the effort. He gives up and claps Wally on the shoulder instead. “Last week very bad. But things change very soon. You and I, we wait and we hope. Wait and hope. Like soldiers.”
Wally adjusts his glasses, reaches for the sheet, and feels a dull tinge of relief somewhere in his stomach.
Bolek scoops his dumbbell off his desk and curls it five times without effort. “Hard work, yeah? You lift this, Wally, and the work it goes inside you. My papa, he like to say the work is in the people.”
“Yes,” says Wally. “And there are people everywhere.”
Bolek frowns at this piece of nonsense. He sets the dumbbell on his desk and shrugs into his sweater. Shaking his head, he pushes past Wally, and just before rounding the corner to the kitchen, shoves his hands into his sweater pockets.
“Great Jesus,” he says, frowning. “Pickles in pockets? How sick-making.” He throws them on the floor. “Wally, you clean it, okay?”
Intermission
Dream of a Better Self
PROLOGUE
A Plea for Constant Motion Page 11