Silently, he reached into his pocket and produced a vial full of grey powder. Ashes. “I heard this is something you do. It’s my mother. She loved Africa.”
Part of me prayed that this was a sting operation, that I would be charged and sent away for a long, long time.
“Yes,” I said, reaching for his mother. “We do that.”
He didn’t cuff or fine me. Instead he took off his shirt, then lay on the leather tattoo table. After shaving and sterilizing his back, I mixed a pinch of ashes with black ink, carbon with carbon. For the next hour, the room was abuzz with skin and dark ink and thick lines, bars becoming a trunk and roots becoming branches.
I started thinking about what type of relationship this man had with his mother, about what would make him want to stitch her into his skin. I imagined getting a tattoo with Jake’s ashes. His fingerprints on each breast. I could even imagine getting a tattoo with Jordan’s ashes. Something meta, like a tattoo of a tattoo needle. But as hard as I tried, I couldn’t imagine getting a tattoo with my mother’s ashes. What would be the point? She was already there, thousands of her, millions, each one locked in, pacing every cell in my body.
The Copy Editors
The Copy Editors decided not to pay back their student loans. This decision wasn’t motivated by lack of funds—though between them their bank statements didn’t read above four hundred dollars and their combined Visa bills were triple that—no, it was a matter of principle. Who would pay someone who sent a letter that read, Please be advised that your balance are outstanding? Surely, the twins reasoned, such egregious subject-verb disagreement rendered any contract null and void.
They were celebrating their airtight logic on Ronnie’s patio in Kensington Market. The patios had just opened across the city, as tentative and splendid as cherry blossoms on a branch. It wasn’t warm, but people were acting as though it were—the boys in short-sleeved shirts, the girls in dresses. Sitting across from Mike, Will squeezed a lemon wedge. The mist clouded the beer in his long thin glass. Mike was a step ahead, a wrung lemon in his mouth serving as a smile, juice dribbling down his chin. Spread out before them were enough wedges to make four normal lemons or one and a half genetically modified ones.
It had been a productive day. Not only had they stroked out a glaring but previously undetected redundancy from their lives, they had also, in the early morning, spray-painted over the second L on the shop sign Youthfull Flower Designs, thereby ridding Toronto streets of one more typographical error. Yesterday, from the grubby window of a westbound Dundas streetcar, Mike had spotted the sign’s superfluous letter and jotted down its location. Today Will rattled the can and guided the nozzle into a curative curlicue. That’s how they divided tasks: one detecting, the other correcting. The perfect copy-editing duo, each with his own strength. Mike could find a misspelling in a haystack; Will could spot a comma splice a mile away.
The benches around them filled and emptied with people, like the successive tides of immigrants—Jewish, Portuguese, Caribbean—who had surged through the area, opening stores and restaurants, painting houses, planting tomatoes, stuffing empanadas with chorizo and spinach. All the while they sat there drinking, talking only to each other and planning tomorrow’s edit: a missing S on a make-your-own-wine establishment sign on Ossington that currently read, Ferment on Premise. Everything was hunky dory until the Cerebral Experimentalists, also known as the Cerebralists, showed up. Composed of two girls and three guys, the Cerebral Experimentalists were a group of poets who had all removed or damaged parts of their brains with the aim, according to their website, “2 disinterrupt the ruts of language and find nu wayz of no-ing.”
The Copy Editors and the Cerebralists did not see eye-to-I.
“Who is that girl?” Mike asked.
“I’ve never seen her before,” Will said.
The girl in question was sipping on a gin and tonic and nodding serenely at George, also known as Wernicke’s Area. Like all the other Cerebralists, his name sprang from his lack. George was the most prominent member of the group. He gave poetic performances in bus stop shelters and graduate seminars. From afar, George looked as though he was speaking normally, but the twins knew that if they were closer they would hear a wilted clatter of nonsense. Why, the twins wondered, would he shove himself into linguistic solitary confinement?
Despite the lopsidedness of her smile, the girl didn’t look like the others. Her clothes—a jean miniskirt and a white T-shirt—were too conventional and unless the wispy, chin-length strawberry blonde was a wig, she lacked the telltale head scar.
After the fourth missed payment, government officials informed the twins that they’d transferred their loans to a collection agency. Mike and Will decided to move. Having consulted Craigslist and ignored all ads with promises like “newlly-built basement apartment” or “emaculate, clean!” they found a cheap place in Chinatown. They slept in the living room and converted the single bedroom into a rarely used office, as not too many copy-editing contracts were coming their way.
“It’s too bad we can’t write Mandarin or Cantonese,” Mike lamented one day as they walked back from the grocery store where they’d purchased obscenely cheap produce and witnessed a crab scuttling across one of the floors, its claws raised as though in surrender.
“Yes,” Will agreed. “Imagine how many mistakes are going uncorrected every day!”
“Did you notice the Cerebralist girl peeking at us from behind the hot sauce pyramid?”
“Yes,” Mike said. “I see her everywhere.” Meaning he imagined lifting her jean miniskirt up to her waist and pulling her tiny panties off every night as he rubbed his way to sleep.
“Me too.” Meaning her strawberry blonde hair grew from the branches of all the trees in his dreams.
“What do you think she wants from us? Do you think she’s really a Cerebralist?”
“Can we be sure it isn’t a coincidence?”
“Next time, I’m going to say something.”
“How? She vanishes a second after we spot her.”
“We’ll figure something out.” Mike extracted a cassava tuber from the bag and waggled it in front of his crotch. “Any idea how we cook this thing?”
Taffy light spilled through the sparsely leaved trees in Dufferin Grove. The twins were on their way to save their next victim.
“So,” Mike said as he shoved his hands into his jeans, “we’re agreed on Operation Unplug the Phone to Avoid Further Menacing Phone Calls from the Collection Agency.”
“Agreed,” Will said. “Hey, did you see the thing in Now about those dumbasses?”
“You mean the Cerebralists’ reading series?”
“They quote Broca’s Area and—”
“I read that. What was it again? Absence make present absent speaker no natural absent reader present construct the self othernessed one.”
“Classic.”
Neither mentioned the picture of the Cerebralists that had accompanied the article, the girl’s head poking out between Angular Gyrus’s and Arcuate Fasciculus’s shoulders.
Mike pointed at the arena. “Okay, right over here. Did you bring the whiteout stick?”
Nodding, Will touched the breast pocket of his jean jacket.
It would be at least another month before there would be ice on the arena, but the rules were already posted in white paint on a red board:
NO
Tag
Roughousing
Pushing people on chairs
British
Mike kept watch while Will uncapped the whiteout and added an extra H to roughhousing and the word Bulldog after British. He was just perfecting a special flourish to the G when he felt a tap on his shoulder.
“I’m almost done.”
“It was better before,” a girl’s voice whispered.
Will dropped the cap and by the time he’d retrieved it, Mike had run over to join them.
Despite all their speculations about what they would say to her g
iven the chance, both of them just stared. She wore a white jean jacket and skinny black pants. A cigarette hung out of her mouth drawing attention to her bright purple lips, which clashed with her hair. Still no scar.
“It was better before you messed with it,” she said. “Funnier, too. Besides maybe these guys really hate British people.”
Waving smoke out of his face, Mike was the first to speak. “Doesn’t fit with the context of the sign. All the other items refer to types of behaviour, not nationality.”
“Killjoy,” she said.
“Let me guess. You’re going to spout some bullshit about the empty relationship between the signifier and the signified. Or about the multivalency of language.”
“Now that you mention it.” She ground the butt into the concrete with her Doc Marten.
“Listen,” Will said. “That’s just theory-head nonsense. We’re on the front lines here, preserving the dignity of the English language.”
“Who pays any attention to the syntax of things that will never wholly kiss you,” she said.
Mike stepped in. “Now how about you tell us why you’ve been following us around?”
“Thought you’d never ask. You see, I’m doing my Ph.D. on the Cerebralists.”
“Waste of time,” Will said.
“Bet she’s funded out her ass.”
“As a matter of fact yes, I am indebted to the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, but that is neither here nor there. My Ph.D. on the Cerebralists needs a little more context, more conflict, and I’m hoping to include a chapter on you two. I’ve been watching your work for a while, and I think I’m ready to interview you now to flesh the whole thing out.”
“When?” Will asked.
Mike glared at Will. “We’re not interested.”
“If you change your mind, here’s my number.” She handed both twins pieces of paper on which were written: Vanesa, one S, and her phone number. Then she walked over to her bike, which was leaning against the brick wall of the Dufferin Grove Centre. As she pedalled away, Vanesa yelled over her shoulder, “I’ll pay you a thousand bucks each.”
Mike sipped his bourbon and Sprite out of a jam jar and tried hard not to stare at Vanesa’s ass, crammed into tight jeans, as she bent down to open her oven and retrieve a steaming sheet of chocolate chip cookies.
“Don’t get too excited,” she said. “They’re Pillsbury, not homemade.”
“Whatever,” he said. “I’m kind of in a hurry.”
Vanesa chiselled the cookies off the plate with a spatula and placed them in front of Mike on the kitchen table. Click went the tape recorder and down sat Vanesa across from him. “Please state your name and occupation.”
“Mike Young. Copy editor.”
“Good. Now Mike, could you give us a brief summary of your activities as a copy editor?”
“We fix any incorrect sign postings around Toronto.”
“And why do you do this?”
Mike took a bite of a cookie and immediately regretted it as the chocolate heat scorched a layer off his tongue. “To bring orther to the world.”
“Orther?”
“Sorry, the cookie is a bit hot. I meant order.”
“Well, that’s ambitious.”
“It’s an ambition worth having. It’s an achievable ambition and an ethical one. Language used to be a noble stallion, but now people treat him like he’s glue.”
“He?”
“You’re right. I should have said him or her. Gender bias is more Will’s specialty.”
“And you think that the Cerebralists are part of this corruption of language?”
“Absolutely. They try to reduce it to electric pathways in the brain, a cognitive blip. They abdicate their reason, their ability to control language to the whimsy of the brain. They’re cognitive fatalists.”
“And what would you say to someone considering joining them?”
“I would urge him or her not to.”
Vanesa licked her finger, leaned over the table and rubbed a speck of chocolate off Mike’s lips. “Would you urge me not to?”
Mike took a deep breath and closed his eyes and by the time he opened them Vanesa’s shirt was off and he was staring at her breasts, smallish with loonie-sized nipples.
“Urge,” he said.
“Yes,” she said, pushing his chair back and straddling him.
The red light on the tape recorder stayed on.
On his way to Vanesa’s, Will noticed a flyer taped to a tree:
Hot Yoga, Only $8
increase muscular
flexible
great for cardio
di-stress
He didn’t have the energy to fix the entire shoddy mess, but he turned the I in di-stress into an E. The correction was rote, pure habit. There hadn’t been any joy in it since he and Mike started copy-editing the city alone. It happened one evening when the collection guy came around and started banging on the door.
Will peeked through the peephole and saw a repo guy standing there, muscles popping through his shirt. “Shit!”
“Ssssshhhhhhh, dumbass,” whispered Mike.
“I heard you,” the man said. “Don’t make me call the police.”
“Don’t open it,” Mike said, but Will had already unfastened the latch.
“I’ll need that television,” he pointed at the ancient black and white in the corner. “That computer. That couch. That bookcase.”
“Wait a sec,” Mike pleaded as the man yanked the Strunk and White off the shelf and tossed it on the floor.
“Here, would this make a difference?” Mike opened the Chicago Manual of Style and pulled out an envelope fat with bills and handed it to the man. The man stopped and counted the money before shoving it into his pocket.
“I never saw you,” he said as he made his way out the door.
Once he was safely out of earshot, Mike said, “Well, I’d guess I better be honest with you. I did the interview.”
“So did I,” said Will. “How do you think we paid the last two months rent?”
“Wait, you did the interview, too? I am deeply hurt but I forgive you because you are my brother.”
“I forgive you, too, but now that we’re being honest, there’s something more.”
“Yes, I have something more to tell you, too.”
“You first.”
“No, you.”
“I’m in love with her!”
“Well, I’ve been sleeping with her.”
“Yes,” said Will. “That’s what I meant.”
“Oh,” Mike said.
The memory made Will pull his scarf on tighter. He was on his way to Vanesa’s apartment, a tiny bachelor in Little Korea above a karaoke bar. On nights when he slept over he could hear soulful renditions of “Purple Rain” and “Life Is a Highway,” the smell of alcohol practically seeping through the floorboards. Most of the time Will could forget about Mike, but once he found one of his undershirts draped over the back of a chair and another time, Vanesa called out Mike’s name as she dug her fingernails into his back, rocking to climax. On these occasions, Will would joke bleakly with his inner Mike: Well, at least she believes in parallel structure.
Last time he’d seen Vanesa, she’d said, “I’m adopting a more experiential research methodology paradigm.”
“You’re being redundant,” Will had said. “Is it methodology or paradigm?” He couldn’t deal with the meaning behind her statement.
“Surgery is scheduled for next Saturday. Will you come and see me? Saturday afternoon?”
“Of course.”
He pressed on the buzzer and, receiving no answer, tried the door. It was unlocked, so he let himself in, climbing the flight of stairs that led to her apartment. He could hear people talking, waves of jabber that grew louder and louder, but he couldn’t make out the individual words. A champagne cork flew past his head as he entered the noise. The Cerebralists were guzzling champagne out of jars and measuring cups, huddled around the tap
e recorder at the kitchen table, hooting with laughter.
“It may sound idealistic, but I believe that we can strive, we must strive for transparency and clarity of language. Only then can we live in a just society.” It was Will’s voice.
No one seemed to notice him. He made his way towards Vanesa’s bed. Mike was already there, holding her hand. Her beautiful hair lay in drifts on the floor. Bandages caked with blood were wound turban-tight around her head.
“You’re here,” Mike said.
“Yes,” Will said.
“It’s too late. She’s totally out of it. The Cerebralists conked her out with some heavy-duty meds.”
“What parts did they take out?”
“Corpus Callosum.”
“The part that joins the left and the right side of the brain. What will that do?”
“No one will tell me.”
By then the Cerebralists had reached the part of the tape where Will began to grunt toward orgasm.
“This is bullshit.” Will stomped over to George and scraped the poet’s chair away from the table. “What’s going to happen to her?”
George launched into emphatic gobbledygook, punctuated by Will’s moans. At the end of the sermon, he patted Will on the back and handed him an envelope. “Heshe got plink.”
Red pounding in his face, Will raised his arm, setting off a fit of Cerebralist giggles, but Mike restrained him. “It’s not worth it.”
After absentmindedly pocketing the envelope, Will walked back toward Vanesa with Mike following. “I never understood her,” Will said.
Mike put his arm around him.
Will continued, “Can one person love two people equally or does it have to mean two different things?”
“I don’t know.” Mike retracted his hold on his brother and moved to the other side of the bed.
“Do you think she loved us?” Will’s hand grazed her bandages.
“I think she was loved by us.”
As the Cerebralists babbled in the background, the twins kissed Vanesa on the cheeks, both at the same time.
Huddled at the bottom of the stairs, they opened the envelope. It was a letter from Student Loans stating that their loans had been paid off. There was a short letter attached.
Difficult People Page 9