by Alex Laidlaw
A little, he said, but not too bad.
I looked at the door. I looked at his coat hanging up on the wall, and then back at him. You can’t possibly have just smoked a whole cigarette, I said.
Rob smiled. He fished in his pocket and pulled out a cigarette that had evidentially been lit, partially smoked and butted out.
I only ever take a couple of drags. When I’m at work, he said, it saves time and it keeps me on my toes.
Jesus, I said. That isn’t natural. I mean, don’t worry about it, please. Smoke a whole cigarette. It’s still early, I assured him. We’ve got plenty of time.
Rob shook his head. I’ve been in this business for fifteen years, he said, and if there’s one thing I’ve learned it’s that there is never enough time to smoke a whole cigarette. Not now, he said, not ever.
The next morning Rob and I got into an argument after he accused me of being late. His position was that I should have been at the café at least ten minutes prior to the start of our shift. My position was one of disbelief. I couldn’t believe that we were having this conversation, especially since it was only his second day on the job. Besides, as I pointed out to him, there were still a few minutes left before my shift. Rob wasn’t convinced. He told me it was unprofessional, disrespectful.
I’ve been standing here for fifteen minutes, he complained, freezing my ass off in the cold, waiting for you.
Why would you show up fifteen minutes early and expect me to be here? I asked.
Once we were in the kitchen, we settled into separate tasks. The morning progressed, and then just before eight o’clock, Françoise arrived. After wishing us each a good morning, she asked if either one of us would care for a coffee. Rob said that he’d like a macchiato.
Avec plaisir, Françoise responded.
When he took a sip of his coffee though, Rob confided to me that it wasn’t very good.
I’m going to have to have a talk with her, he said. I’ll have to teach her how to pour a proper shot.
By nine we had settled into cooking for lunch. There were now two baristas working the bar, and Elizabeth was in, washing dishes in the back.
Liz was Ricky’s girlfriend. She was tall, quite thin, and had willowy limbs. She was an Albertan originally, which was where she and Ricky had met, and where they’d started living together before reaching a decision to come to Montreal. Understandably, Liz was annoyed when Ricky lost his job. She told me that Ricky was stubborn, and describing the night of the party, she said she had tried to get Ricky to leave, and that she herself had gone home at a reasonable hour having drunk only a reasonable amount.
But you can’t tell Ricky anything, she said. Not once he’s in a certain mood.
At one point in the morning, while Rob was on an errand to the storage room, Liz took me aside and told me that Vincent and Val had been in the café last night, and that they had found a pile of empty beer bottles stashed in the walk-in fridge. They suspected that Rob had been stealing beers and drinking them while on the job.
From that point on, I started watching more carefully, and I did notice how often Rob would find an excuse to go into the walk-in fridge. I went in there myself a few times, and while nosing around I found an open bottle hidden in a case of purple onions. I noted the level of beer in the bottle and came back to check on it periodically. I guessed that by lunch Rob had drunk maybe three or four beers, and still he found new reasons to excuse himself into the fridge.
Well, I thought, so what if he’s been drinking on the job? So what if he’s a thief, a bum and a drunk? If anything, I was glad. Here was someone who had been hand-picked, who had been recommended to us as a model chef, as someone for us to emulate. Teresa had practically sold this guy as a prince, and so surely this would reflect badly on her. Maybe Vincent and Val would have a moment of doubt, a moment to reconsider the vote of total confidence that they had given her.
As Rob continued to drink, he became less of a nuisance to me. He started loosening up. He wasn’t so focused on the work anymore. He even started telling jokes, and though they were awful—unbelievably abysmal puns for instance that felt forced and fell flat—it was an improvement. What was more, he started taking longer breaks. Once he stepped outside to smoke and was gone for over twenty minutes. There was a moment, then, wherein I was standing at my cutting board and the light of the afternoon splayed across the counter from a window above, and just for that moment, everything seemed calm, peaceful, set above the fray.
When the door finally pushed open and Rob came in, I said, You seem to be enjoying those more.
He laughed. I enjoy them, that’s the problem, he said. I enjoy them too much for my own good. I’m always trying to cut back. It used to be that I was smoking five packs every day. I was working two jobs, fourteen-hour shifts, and for what? He turned suddenly serious and held up his pack of Du Mauriers. Just to pay for these godawful things.
That night I had plans to go with Ricky and Liz to see a show on Avenue Papineau. It was to be the first time outside of work that I’d be with them as friends. The band was one of Ricky’s favourites. Several weeks before, when he’d heard they’d be playing a show, he immediately purchased three tickets without even asking me if I wanted to go. I hadn’t been out very much since my son had been born, so that, combined with the fact that I’d never been out with Ricky and Liz, had me feeling both excited and nervous.
Our plan was to get to the venue by bike. Ricky and Liz came by the apartment early in the evening to pick me up. When they got there my wife had just run out to the depanneur, so we weren’t able to leave right away. Ricky and Liz came to the top of our stairs and stood in the doorway. I stood in the hallway, holding my son. Since none of us seemed to know what to say, we stood there in silence for a full minute or two. Finally Liz remarked how after all this time, she’d never seen me with my baby. Ricky nodded.
You look good with a kid, said Liz.
I could tell they had already started drinking. Something in the way they stood on the fringe of our apartment, not sure of what to do with themselves. It was like they were afraid of a misstep, of stumbling or upsetting something if they came in. Soon though, my wife was home, and shortly after that we set off on our bikes. The venue was in a neighbourhood that none of us knew, but being pragmatic, Liz had studied a map of the area before leaving home and planned out a route for us to take.
She and Ricky were like opposites. He was all about passion and wanting to be lost. He wanted to be surrounded by music and didn’t care much about anything else. Liz, for her part, had started taking classes at a college in her spare time. She was studying commerce and accounting. Four months before, when she had started working at the café, she’d been hired to wash dishes because she couldn’t speak any French. Now she was still washing dishes, but she was also involved somehow in the general accounting of the business, managing our payroll among other things.
Liz had told me once that she was passionate about accounting. She loved numbers and their verifiability. Ricky sometimes made fun of her, referring to her as either his accountant or his personal manager. If she was his manager though, she didn’t seem to hold too much sway over him. On our way to the show, Ricky sped off, keeping himself about half a block ahead of us all the way there. At first Liz and I tried to keep up, but soon found we couldn’t manage his pace. We kept an eye on him though, watched him duck and weave, ride in and out of traffic, moving all over the road, senselessly, inattentively, even occasionally moving up onto the sidewalk.
Jesus, Liz muttered. She tried calling to him, but Ricky was too far ahead. He’s like this every time he gets excited, she told me. And I don’t want to be the one reining him in, but I swear someday he’s going to get himself killed.
After parking our bikes, we stopped at a depanneur to pick up several tall cans of beer and took these to a park around the corner to sit, drink and smoke. We smoked a joint
as well, and then lingered, telling stories in the cold. Ricky talked at length about the band we were going to see.
What they were known for, he said, was the depth of their sound. The production on each of their records was highly technical, experimental. They created, like a lacework of sound. Only no, he said, lace wasn’t the right word. Lace was too delicate. It was more like a landscape, he said, with parts of it melded, blended together, as if it had been done with paints.
Liz was listening too, but it was clear that Ricky was talking to me. I began to wonder about this dynamic that had grown between us. It seemed like Ricky was always trying to teach me something. Whether it was him bringing new music into the café when we’d been working together, or addressing these explanatory monologues to me, it felt like he was always trying to expand my horizons. How he’d harp on about some album or artist made me wonder: Did he think I had no taste, no preferences of my own? I felt as if he was constantly trying to fill me up with what he figured would be valuable to me. Maybe I was being overly sensitive, but these days it was as if every new person in my life wanted to shape me into something. What was I doing to give off this impression that I was but an empty receptacle, waiting to be filled?
After drinking in the park, we crossed over to the venue, an old, baroque theatre that had at some point been renovated to accommodate a standing crowd. There were two bars serving drinks in the room, and as soon as we arrived, Ricky went off to order us a round. The show hadn’t even started yet, and already I was feeling drunk. I reluctantly accepted a beer from Ricky, but then decided I was going to have to stop drinking. I went to the bar and ordered myself a soda water. I tried to buy a round of beer for Liz and Ricky, but for some reason Ricky didn’t want to accept. In something resembling a vaudeville routine, he went back again to the bar for a beer, maybe thinking this would pressure me to drink the one I’d gotten for him, but I didn’t give in. In the end, Ricky wound up drinking both of them.
We got stoned again after the opening act, and then Ricky disappeared for a while. I stood with Liz by the front of the stage while she danced to the intermission music. She looked happy and was glassy-eyed. She seemed to be off in a world of her own. At one point, she leaned in to tell me that it had been a year tonight since the last time she had taken cocaine.
You and Ricky? I didn’t know you were into that.
Usually we aren’t, but when we are… she said, trailing off.
She told me a confused story about one of their first nights in Montreal, something about an overweight man, their connection, and a narrow set of stairs into a loft. After that she laughed and went back to dancing alone.
I watched as she moved across the floor, coming close then going farther away. Somehow I’m missing something, I thought. I don’t know who I am anymore, I don’t know who I’m with and I don’t know where we are or what we’re doing here.
Ricky reappeared carrying two plastic cups, evidently from the bar. As he approached, I saw that they were filled with an amber-coloured liquid.
It’s Scotch. That’s a fifteen-dollar shot, he said pushing one of the cups into my hands.
But I don’t want this, I said.
Don’t waste it, he chided.
It’s too much money. Aren’t you unemployed?
Ricky rolled his eyes. Take it up with my accountant, he said.
The next thing I knew, the lights went down and the band took the stage. Ricky turned with wide-eyed attention, and I followed his lead.
All in all, the band played for an hour and a half without breaking. There weren’t even any breaks between their songs, but they did use all kinds of effects, layering and looping things, so that it was like one song never ended, but instead went on progressing, changing and coming apart. New songs would take shape out of the old ones, as if formed of the same material. The result was an accumulation of sound, it was sound as material, sound as mass. The effect was hypnotizing. You could get lost in a sound like that.
And part of me wanted to get lost. Part of me wanted to submit to the music, to submit to this night and get carried away. But still I didn’t drink any of the Scotch, though I held onto the cup until the liquor warmed. I even lifted it up to my lips several times, but I only breathed it in. After a while I got tired of holding it, so when I thought that Ricky wasn’t looking, I put it on a nearby table and left it there. Not twenty minutes later though, Ricky was handing me another cup.
This one, he said, was twenty-five dollars.
You’re wasting your money, I told him. You know I’m not drinking this.
Liz came over when she saw what was happening. She didn’t say anything, but she shook her head. I gave her a questioning look and she shrugged.
Ricky turned his attention back to the band. He was obviously bent on getting drunk. I had to admit I had been there myself, and though I hated to make him do it alone, I had my own life to think about. I put that second cup down on the same table as I had the first one. Another twenty minutes later, Ricky was back with another two drinks.
These are doubles, sixty dollars each, he said. That’s the most expensive shit they’ve got, so drink it up and enjoy it.
By now, he was bleary, and whether or not I was drinking with him couldn’t make any difference. Liz yelled something in his ear, but over the music I couldn’t make out what it was. He didn’t respond. He just stood there wearing a sideways grin, keeping his eyes on the stage. Liz shrugged and went back to dancing, but I went on watching him. Ricky looked almost victorious, proud in some way as he lifted his cup. The music at this point was thick and loud. Ricky was transfixed. He stood there, eyes on the stage, gulping his Scotch as the music played on.
After the show, our plan was to smoke some more pot for the bike ride home. Ricky stepped out of the theatre, and I was right behind him. He stepped over the curb, but I told him to wait.
Where’s Liz? I asked.
Ricky turned around. She’s standing right behind you, he said.
As he turned to cross the road, a van sped by and it clipped him with its side-view mirror. It happened fast and was surreal as Ricky was thrown sideways, hitting a parked car. He was bounced against the van again before he finally hit the ground. Liz and I ran to him immediately. He was unconscious and laid out on his back. There was blood on the road, but it was hard to see where it had come from. There wasn’t much of it, only a sort of patina spilled over the asphalt.
A crowd gathered out in front of the theatre, and a young man came forward who displayed such a level of confidence that he inspired our trust. He quickly took charge of the situation, instructing his girlfriend to dial 911. He pulled some other fellow out of the crowd and had him kneel next to Ricky with instructions to support his neck, and not to let him move his head, his neck, his arms or legs.
As we waited for the ambulance, Ricky regained consciousness but then it faded again. This happened a handful of times and whenever he came to, Ricky would try to sit up, so that fellow from the crowd had to continually pin him down. I helped as well by keeping my hands on his chest. Every time Ricky tried to sit, we had to push to keep him laid out on the ground. Liz tried to discover where the blood was coming from. I kept glancing at her, expecting maybe hysterics, expecting at least for her to be in dismay, but I found her to be strangely calm. It was as if she were trying to figure out the source of the blood not so much for the sake of Ricky’s well-being, but to satisfy her own curiosity. Of course, I knew she must be worried, but she kept telling me that this was just like the skiing accident Ricky had suffered while they had been back in Alberta. She said she’d seen him come out of worse than this.
When the paramedics arrived, they strapped Ricky to a board and loaded him into an ambulance. Apparently he had smacked his head against the road and they needed to take him to the hospital. There was only room for one in the ambulance, so Liz hopped in. I told her I would follow on my bike. A
fter asking where they would be taking him, I left the scene and crossed the road to where we had parked our bikes. Leaving Ricky and Liz’s bikes on the rack, I headed west toward Mount Royal. The paramedic had said the hospital would be on the mountain, so that’s where I went. Eventually the ambulance caught up with me, and in an eerily quiet blaze of lights it fired past, blending into the city’s distance.
When I got to the hospital I couldn’t find the entrance to Emergency. I couldn’t see any ambulances or any activity. Through the front doors, there was no one at the main reception desk. There was no one milling, fretting or sleeping in chairs. In fact, everything was quiet, the lights were low, and the building seemed almost abandoned. I followed a wide corridor, past the shuttered gift shop and a closed café, and then turned onto a smaller hallway, all the while looking for a person or an obvious sign of life. The deeper I went, the more empty the building seemed to be. Passing through secondary hallways now, all dimly lit and full of unmarked doors, I thought I could forget what I was looking for and still feel compelled to keep going, but it was only an errant thought. The truth is, I was still deeply embroiled in the practical matter of finding my friend.
While wandering, I met an old man who was doing more or less the same as me. He was wearing a heavy coat and looked to be about seventy years old. Speaking in French, he explained that he was looking for his nephew who had been admitted here. The old man didn’t know where the nephew was, and like me, had been wandering the hospital. Together we found a bank of elevators and decided to move onto the second floor. The old man waited inside the lift and held the doors as I had a look around. Finding nothing on the second floor, we moved up to the third, the fourth, the fifth. On every new floor it was the same routine. The old man stayed back and held the doors as I walked for some distance into the darkness. Back in the elevator, we would carry out a debriefing about whatever I had found, which was invariably nothing. As the doors shut we would see ourselves reflected in the sheet-metal panelling. At one point, the old man started laughing, so then I started laughing too. Then he started crying, but I kept on laughing doggedly, persistently. Eventually the old man gave in and we were both laughing again, riding from the fifth to the sixth, and so on.