The Dilettantes

by Michael Hingston

  “Can’t do it,” the woman said. She tapped her clipboard with a pen.

  “Yes, I understand it’s not on your call sheet. Just let me in real quick. Please? You aren’t even shooting the reserves, are you?”

  The woman’s eyes narrowed. “I didn’t confirm that. Got it? That’s unconfirmed.” Her voice turned into a kind of hiss. “I bet you’d just love an exclusive, huh? You know, we come up here to get away from the media blitz, but now everyone’s got camera phones and TMZ on speed dial. It’s out of control. This is all off the record.”

  “Listen,” Tracy said. “I’m not the press. I just copy edit the stupid student paper. I don’t care about any of this. All I want is to photocopy two articles: one that says Shakespeare was a lady, and one that says he was a series of dogs. They’re ten steps from the other side of these doors. Then I’ll be on my way.” Tracy thought for a second, as she finished off her cigarette and squished it against a nearby concrete pillar. “Funny thing about ‘off the record,’ though.”

  “Oh no. Oh no.” The woman pressed the mute button on her headset, activating a bead of red light next to the microphone. She leaned in a little. “It’s different in Canada, isn’t it? I knew I shouldn’t have said anything.”

  “So let’s recap. I’m hearing from a source on location that a crucial scene involving the monkeys is being shot in the computer lab—and possibly the reserves—on the second floor of the W.A.C. Bennett Library. Is that about right?”

  “You don’t understand. I could get mad fired for this. I’ve already gotten my official warning—and that rat in Seattle swore on his mother’s grave that he was a janitor.”

  “Possible space theme … a dystopian future, maybe?”

  “What? How did you know that?”

  It wasn’t much of a guess. Camera crews eager for a Canadian tax break were always floating around the campus, and half of what was filmed at SFU turned the campus into FBI headquarters or the home base for robot dictatorships thanks to Arthur Erickson, whose architectural style was built around concrete and right angles. Tracy was just using her home-field advantage.

  “Okay, okay,” the woman conceded. “Go on. What’ll it cost me?”

  “The public has a right to know these things,” Tracy said. “Information wants to be free, you know.”

  “It does? Fuck. Fuck, okay, shit. Listen, if I just let you in right now to photocopy your stuff, will you keep quiet?”

  “Hm. That sounds reasonable.”

  “I’ll even throw in a hat. An official one. Only the crew are supposed to have them.”

  “Deal,” Tracy said.

  The woman sighed with relief. “Good. Fine. Meet me back here tonight and I’ll have it ready. If I’m not here, check inside this plant.” Tracy took a step forward, but the woman jutted out her arm again. “You’ll have to give me your phone, though. No pictures. I’ll give it back on your way out.”

  Tracy handed it over and brushed past. “There’s no camera on it.”

  “Yeah, that’s what the guy in Seattle said,” the woman called after her. “And duck down, would you? If the monkeys see a human on set it’ll wreck their focus.”

  3

  COMIC SANS

  Here’s how it happened.

  For a few months, there had been distant rumblings around campus that the Metro, a free daily that had been blanketing the Greater Vancouver area with celebrity-strewn garbage tumbleweeds for over a year, had plans to expand to Burnaby Mountain. The thing was shockingly well read. Discarded copies pooled by the dozens in back corners of buses and SkyTrains, and even though you were never more than an arm’s length away from one, the company employed fleets of retirees and the recently paroled to stand in green aprons in the middle of sidewalks all over the city, bothering people into taking a copy. They repeated the same phrases over and over again. “Free Metro.” “Paper?” In this respect they had more than a little in common with the panhandlers a couple of feet farther down the block. Each had their slogans. But it was obvious who was flooded with business, and who was literally starved for it.

  So far the Burnaby campus had been immune to the daily’s charms, for the same reason it would have also shrugged off Noah’s flood: it had the higher ground. SFU, Ark-free Since 1965. True, it was nearly impossible to get decent take-out delivered up the mountain, but the upside was that the commute also scared off most unwanted solicitors. As a result, The Peak, SFU’S official student newspaper, had enjoyed a near-total monopoly. Its only rivals were a sporadically published newsletter by and for business students called The Buzz!, and a pamphlet written in Mandarin that, despite impressive distribution numbers, not one person had ever been seen reading.

  But now it looked like the Metro was making a real play for a presence at SFU. Rick, The Peak’s business manager and resident grown-up, heard through one of his channels that the daily would be setting up a booth at Clubs Days, complete with banners and confetti. There’d be an entire squad of fresh-faced excitables wearing headbands and green jumpsuits, ready to chat up passersby and even cartwheel for a paycheque. If things went well there—and really, how could they not?—they’d leave dozens of shiny Metro boxes in their wake, scattered down the mountain like breadcrumbs. Apron-clad reverse-panhandlers wouldn’t be far behind.

  The Peak had two major things to fear from this new competition. One was advertising. Ad dollars were scarce to begin with, and the Metro was sure to take a significant chunk of them—and that wasn’t even counting the pre-existing clout that came with having successful branches installed in seven other Canadian cities. Let’s say a campus business wanted to get the word out about their product, but disagreed with a certain student-run paper’s occasional policy of running full-frontal male nudity beside all of the ads. So far they’d had no alternative. But the Metro staked its reputation on being wholesome, or at least some hall-of-mirrors facsimile thereof. It had been thoroughly market-tested and focus-grouped in all relevant demographics. It had two pages of soft local news, one page about the rest of the world, and forty about the latest in celebrity diets. It didn’t have any penis quotas, anyway, and sometimes that’s enough.

  The second problem was Sudoku. The Metro had it; The Peak didn’t.

  At that week’s editors’ meeting, this very issue was under discussion.

  “We could get it. We could totally get it. I know a guy.”

  “You don’t know anyone.”

  “Is someone taking minutes? We need to be writing all this down.”

  “And check this out, right? We’ll make it even harder. Bam. Instant victory. Beat them at their own game.”

  “Bam.”

  “Oof!”

  “You’ve got it all wrong. People don’t want it to be harder. They can barely be fucked as it is. They just want something to stare at on the bus—something to doodle on while they’re on the phone. Plus it’s already impossible. You ever try it?”

  “No. But then again I disagree with the whole idea on principle. Word searches and math have no business in bed together in my personal opinion.”

  “You mean in a dresser drawer together.”

  “Just sevens and ones all over the goddamned place.”

  “See, I can’t do anything past intermediate. There’s too much to juggle in your head. I get all dizzy.”

  “Because Sudoku is Japanese.”

  “Oh, the ones I do are scaled: one to five. My favourite is three. It’s okay. Totally doable.”

  “Do you buy the books? I saw the New York Times guy has his own line, but I don’t think his heart is really in it.”

  “Did anyone see that documentary about him?”

  “And Japanese people live in small houses.”

  “Hey! How about a crossword? That would be easier.”

  “Sure, why not.”

  “Will Shortz, motherfucker!”

  “The first obvious question is what the dimensions should be. With black spaces, or the more economic Harper’s model. Cryptic
or standard. Are themes allowed? What do we think?”

  “Come on guys, seriously. This is important. The minutes …”

  “We should have someone look into potential ink savings re: no blacked-out units. Pull some quick data together. Venn diagrams.”

  “Hey. Everyone. Hey: I really don’t care about any of this.”

  “Me neither.”

  “I’m okay with that, as long as we don’t use any of those answers that keep getting recycled every other day. No iota, no aorta. Definitely no eerie. Or with just one e. Like the lake. Shameless vowel-grabs, the lot of them.”

  “It also works because you could keep a puzzle book in a drawer really easily. That’s like its house.”

  “Do you want to go outside and smoke until this is over?”

  “Yes. More than anything.”

  “Hi all. Sorry I’m late.”

  “Tracy, over here.”

  “What’d I miss?”

  “Not word fucking one, believe you me.”

  “Where would we even put a Sudoku? Like what section?”

  “I say humour.”

  “Yep.”

  “Definitely.”

  “Touchdown.”

  “Whoa, whoa. Hold on a minute. All of you can go right to hell. It’s the humour section—as in jokes only. Don’t dump your excess baggage on me just because I’m at the back with the classifieds. No word jumbles, no horoscopes. I’m not the diversions editor or whatever the fuck.”

  “Do you have a better idea?”

  “Sure. Yes. Sports. It’s a mental workout. Cerebral crunches. Chin-ups for the soul. Give it to Chip.”

  “Not a hope, chief. I’ll stonewall you.”

  “Or opinions. Give it its own column. Maybe It’s Just Me, by Sudoku Puzzle. S. Puzzle for short.”

  “If I really picture myself smoking hard, my brain will release some sweet, sweet endorphins. I’ll clench my fists.”

  “Would we have to pay this Sudoku guy?”

  “Yeah. And who is he, anyway?”

  “I should say that he’s never actually made one of them before. But he’s been meaning to for, like, forever. He’s a stand-up dude. A real think tank.”

  “Are you related to this person?”

  “Yes.”

  “Jesus.”

  “I bet I could smoke ten cigarettes at once. Someone dog dare me.”

  “If nobody takes minutes we’re never going to remember this for next week. Can someone find the Spider-Man binder? I’ll do it. I have a pen.”

  “Okay, I changed my mind, you guys. We can put Sudokus in the humour section, guys, as long as I get to make them myself. Hand-drawn. Full page. And we’ll save time, too, because they’ll be unsolvable. Just never print the answers.”

  “It never … none of this is procedural.”

  “Also they’ll be in Comic Sans.”

  “You use that for everything.”

  “That’s because it is a perfect font.”

  “Smoke, smoke, smoke, smoking.”

  “Ugh. It should be illegal to use if you’re over eleven years old. You should automatically be registered as a sex offender.”

  “Rick! Will The Peak buy me cigarettes?”

  “No.”

  “Who put this popsicle in the microwave?”

  “Don’t touch that. I’m using it.”

  The Peak employed a total of eleven editors and, in a vague homage to the school’s heavy-left political origins, had no editor-in-chief. Section editors dictated their own content, and disputes were solved by a show of hands, heroically long-winded emails, and the occasional secret ballot.

  So they sat, equals, on itchy couches and around an old wooden coffee table that was spray-painted purple from three redesigns ago, and talked about the larger task at hand. Something had to be done. Decisions had to be made. Action had to be taken. Someone made coffee. That was a start. They all agreed that the Metro’s move should be viewed as a direct assault on their autonomy, and that the student government should have already taken swift action to keep the daily at bay. A manifesto was immediately proposed, to unanimous yahs and whistles. Papers were swept off desks. Excessively long pens were drawn. Three people called the state of affairs an abomination. Chip, the perpetually red-in-the-face sports editor, announced he wasn’t “going to take this lying down.” And stood up.

  “We need gumption,” he said. “We need hustle. Now’s no time to keep our stick on the ice.” Chip was round and squat, sporting suspenders and an archaically bushy moustache. He held eye contact with the intensity of someone bound and gagged in a car trunk.

  Rachel, the news editor, said, “The thing that gets me is, they can’t just come up here and tell SFU students what news is. That’s our job.” She would know. Rachel had worked there for longer than anyone else could remember, and could cite arcane policies and protocols for which no written record existed. Nobody knew what she studied, but her hair showed constant signs of being chewed on, as if she was forever on the brink of some oral presentation or cumulative exam. “We know this campus. It’s our beat. We know what our readers want.”

  “Totally. And I see where you’re going with that, Rachel. For example, I spent all last night Photoshopping pictures of dolphins playing Connect 4. I am willing to donate my work for the cause.” This was Keith: humour editor, eater of pizza, and lifelong critic of The Peak until he found out he could get weekly free pizza and a warm place on campus to sleep off his drinking in exchange for producing two pages of content every issue.

  “Look,” Rachel said. “We need to send a message. This kind of behaviour will not stand. Okay? It simply will not.”

  “I wish we could just tell them to eff off,” one of the younger editors said from the back.

  “Yeah,” another agreed. “It’s actually sort of mean, if you think about it. Why would they come here just to wreck everything for us on purpose? We’re just trying to have fun.”

  Rachel muttered, “Some of us are here for something bigger.”

  “As if anyone’s going to read their stupid paper.”

  “Eff right off, that’s what I say.”

  “Yesterday their front-page story was Boy Loses Tricycle.”

  “Ha. Totally.”

  “Ridiculous, I know.”

  “Does anyone know if he found it? That story was such a cliff-hanger.”

  Rachel snapped her pencil in half. It was mechanical.

  “That’s because they’re just awful writers,” Alex said. “Pure and simple. They wouldn’t know an inverted pyramid if they went on vacation to inverted Egypt.”

  Keith sat up, sensing a riff in the making. “They wouldn’t know a lede if … they were … winning a race!” As the words left his mouth, his face screwed up like he’d licked a battery. “Shit. That was awful. I’ll get it. It’ll come back.”

  “Plus they only have one writer in the whole place doing news,” said Tracy. “Have you looked at their bylines? One guy does all of the city stuff and compiles the world section. What a tragedy. Mack Holloway, the loneliest man in newspapers.”

  “Egypt …” mumbled someone from the back. “Oh! An inverted sphinx!”

  “Shot in the face by an inverted Napoleon!”

  “Yeah,” sighed Keith. “That’s the same joke a few more times. Fuck, you guys. Step it up already. Anyone else?”

  “King Tut.”

  “He was super young.”

  “Like six or seven, I heard. Baby pharaoh and shit.”

  “You guys remember when Geraldo Rivera did that TV show where he opened his tomb? I was just watching it on YouTube a few days ago. It was crazy, this super big ratings thing, but then it just turned out to have some broken bottles in it.”

  “In elementary school I had to do a project on Egypt. I drew the raddest sphinx head for the title page.”

  “Isis.”

  “Actually, that’s a lie. I totally traced that shit.”

  “Didn’t they have a goddess called Isis
? Goddess of … grain. Or sleep. Sheep?”

  “Isis! That’s another banned crossword clue.”

  “Or those snakes that live in baskets.”

  “Asp! Another!”

  “Isis is the goddess of desire.”

  “Really?”

  “Yep. ‘Isis’ is the goddess of Desire. No question about it.”

  “What are you … oh. Goddammit. Not this again.”

  “Hold on: did they find it or not?”

  “I think they did.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah, yeah. There was a thing about it on the news.”

  “So where …?”

  “On a bus someplace. They put out an amber alert, and no problem. Totally found—what was he, Mexican.”

  “Mexican? What does that even mean?”

  “Amber alerts are for missing children.”

  “Yeah. What are you guys talking about?”

  “A tricycle.”

  “Why would he bring his tricycle on the bus? Someone should abduct that retard again.”

  “So what do we do?” Alex asked in a near yell. “I mean, literally what do we do next?”

  The strategy seemed to work. Several sets of eyes did a slow pan toward his corner of the ratty wool couch.

  “We draft it,” someone offered. “The manifesto.”

  “Might I suggest something either dolphin– or Connect 4–related?” Keith asked, tipping an imaginary hat to the group. “I have a picture we could use.”

  “Okay, first of all, I really don’t think we should use the word manifesto,” Alex said. “Makes us sound like douchebags, don’t you think?” He looked around and saw he did not speak for the room. “Fine. Never mind. Does anyone here know how to do this? Has anyone actually done it before? What are we basing it on?”

  “Nah, fuck all that,” someone said from the back. “It’ll come from the heart. You don’t need to look up the truth in a book. Don’t sweat it.”

  “Right.” Alex rubbed his eyes in vigorous circles, pulling toward the inside corners every few seconds. “Okay. Sure. You new guys are great, by the way. Full of moxie.” Clapping his hands, he said, “Let’s go for it. Who’s going to transcribe?” He looked toward one of the youngsters. “You still got that pen handy?”