Three Years with the Rat

by Jay Hosking

  “I know you want me to step up, and in some way, it would be nice to be the reliable worker you need. But I’m not going to be, especially not right now. I just don’t give a shit about this job. I think you should find someone else.”

  We sit in our wood and iron chairs for a minute, sipping at our drinks and not saying anything.

  I say, “I’m happy to stick around for a couple of weeks and help somebody new learn the ropes, but I’m done.”

  He nods. “To be honest, this isn’t how I expected this talk to go. But I was your age once, working in an office doing admin crap I didn’t like.”

  I want to correct him, tell him that the work is fine, but I keep my mouth shut. We put our empty mugs on the counter, walk back upstairs, and the only sound between us is his soles on the wood. While I’m booting up the computer, I can hear him debriefing with his wife. Her voice is deep and then shrill.

  —

  A few weeks later my back is free of stitches and I have no job. The toast in Buddy’s cage moulds, the leaf of lettuce browns, and Buddy remains absent. The large box is still disassembled and leaning against my couch. John’s notebook is under the bed, thrown there in a fit of drunken frustration and never retrieved. My phone shows six missed calls, one from Officer 2510, one from Lee, and the rest from our mother. There are new empty whisky bottles next to the couch and beside the bed. Each day my stomach hurts for the first few hours after I wake up. My beard is just long enough to make the skin underneath itchy and red.

  I spend a week walking at night and sleeping during the day. I flip aimlessly through some of the books Nicole left behind, Camus and Kafka and Dostoyevsky. The days shorten and sap the city of any last heat. Autumn comes early this year.

  Brian calls one afternoon. I’m lying on the couch with my arm hanging off the side and my fingers grazing the smooth exterior of the disassembled wooden box. The phone vibrates along the floor and I let it go to voice mail. A minute later I flip open the phone and listen to the message.

  “Dude. Nobody’s heard from you in fucken forever. Lee says you quit, too? Come to the Fortress on Friday. Steve and me are playing. You and I are gonna get shittered. Hah. Seriously, though, enough’s enough. Gimme a call, bud.”

  I don’t call him but after the sun goes down on Friday, I make the walk to the concert on Bloor. The sky in the west is fading from pink skin to deep bruise and the air is perfectly cool. Smokers idle around the graffitied entrance to the Fortress and a white van with a small cargo trailer is parked out front. I recognize a few friends of Nicole but they don’t know my face anymore.

  I make my way past the venue, down the street, until I’m standing in front of the two sushi restaurants. I look up into John and Grace’s old apartment, where the windows are open and the lights are on in the second bedroom. The landlord has repainted the walls and there are cardboard boxes stacked in one corner. I’m unsure if someone new is already moving in or if those boxes hold the possessions John and Grace left behind.

  I walk back to the Fortress and Brian is now outside having a smoke, staring at his phone. He doesn’t bother with cigarettes when he’s sober.

  “You started without me,” I say to get his attention.

  He turns and smiles. “I fucken started at dinner, man.”

  “Sorry, do you want to finish that text message?”

  “Dude, this is my new fancy phone. I’m just half-cocked and on the internet, begging people to be my ‘friend.’ Lee just added me.”

  “That sounds pretty stupid,” I say.

  Brian laughs. “You’re goddamned right it is. You should get on it.”

  I take cash out of the bank machine on the way inside. The machine tells me I have just a little more than two months of rent left. I pay the girl working the door and get my wrist stamped in smudged black ink. Then we fold back the dirty curtain and go inside.

  The inside of the Fortress is a dark cube of noise. The ceiling is extremely high, all the walls and furniture are painted black, and the only lights are on the stage and above the bar at the back. The sound reverberates off the walls and turns the background music into a din. People appear as silhouetted heads unless they are a foot or two from my face. It smells like an empty, rinsed out aluminum can.

  Brian and I squint through the dark and shout over the music, all the way to the bar.

  “What are you drinking?” he asks.

  “Lately? Scotch, whisky, that sort of thing.”

  “Fuck me.” He laughs. He orders us two shots of whisky from the well and two cheap bottles of beer. “Nothing but the best, eh?”

  We tip the shots down our throats and clack the necks of our beer bottles together. My body doesn’t even react to the heat of the liquor anymore. The thought is alarming but my first sip of the beer washes it away.

  Brian belches into his sleeve. “Remember when you looked all young and wide-eyed and shit?”

  “Funny, you look just as rough as you used to,” I say.

  He laughs again. “Man, this city ruined us.”

  “Not just the city,” I say.

  He nods, becomes sombre. “You’ve had a bad run. I’m sorry, dude.”

  Brian leads me to the right of the stage where Lee is dressed snugly and standing with a couple of young women I don’t recognize. I smile and raise my bottle as a greeting.

  “We heard this is where the girlfriends of the band hang out,” Brian shouts into Lee’s ear, leaning his weight on one foot and then the other. His voice cuts through the sludge of sound. “Can we be band girlfriends, too?”

  Lee pushes him away with her elbow and mutters something undoubtedly rude. Her elbow rests against him for a moment longer than necessary, rubbing his chest. It’s odd and it makes me wonder about her boyfriend Steve. I look up to the stage and the first band is setting up, plugging in guitars and keyboards in the near dark.

  Lee is staring at me when I turn back to my friends. She says something I can’t hear and so I lean in with my head turned. She holds her dark curls away from her face so we can speak to each other closely.

  “How you holding up, Scruffy?” she asks.

  “O.K.,” I tell her. Even I can smell the whisky on my breath. “Brian tells me you’re his digital friend now.”

  She pauses and I can see her face flex a bit from the corner of my eye. “You know you can talk to us if you need to, right?”

  “I’ve been hearing that a lot lately,” I say, “but yeah, I know. Thank you.”

  I straighten up and smile to end the conversation. Lee looks upset but there is nothing I want to say, so I put a hand on the shoulder of her jean jacket and nod as if to thank her again.

  We drink. I make small talk and listen to news from the last few months: Lee has gone back to college; Steve and Brian are halfway through recording an album; Brian tried to quit his job and got a raise out of it; and Lee tells me she visited my bosses’ office this week for a meeting.

  “Who’s this first band?” I shout. I have no interest in talking about my old job. The lights have dimmed and the musicians are about to start. There is a thin crowd at the front of the stage.

  “Don’t you know these guys?” Lee asks. “I saw a couple of them talking with Nicole outside.”

  The look on her face is part consolation and part mischief.

  “Oh, great,” I say, and we both laugh. “Is she here?”

  But I can’t hear her reply. The drums and keyboard have started something slow and shuffling built around a single-note riff. Every hit on the snare hangs and echoes off the walls of the Fortress. The kick drum is more of a feeling than a sound. When the rest of the band starts playing, the lights come up a bit and I can see the musicians.

  Standing in the centre of the stage is an attractive young woman somewhere near Grace’s age, perhaps thirty years old. I typically reserve the expression tomboy for girls under fifteen but it is a perfect descriptor for her: short, messy auburn hair with a noticeable wave around the hairline; charcoal jeans that
hug her legs but are a little loose around her small waist; plain black T-shirt; a clean face with a smattering of freckles around the nose; and intense eyes that look like concrete from this distance. She has a guitar slung low over her shoulders and only casually scratches at it. She is completely unadorned and should be unremarkable but everyone’s attention is on her. She has my attention, too, but especially because she seems familiar. She is singing something low and rhythmic that sounds like a chant. Her voice is honey, thick and amorphous.

  The floor in front of the stage fills up and everyone in the Fortress is enrapt. The song keeps building, the guitars get grimy and loud, but the band never rushes the beat. The tomboy looks confident and only dimly aware of everyone’s eyes on her. Her voice is strong but not showy. She takes the song to its climax and then the whole thing drops on a single note. There is a beat of dead air in the room, just the whir of electricity and the hum of amplifiers and everyone holding their breath. Then the audience emits a furious cheer. Brian appears obviously impressed. Lee has her arms crossed.

  “Wow.” Brian nudges me with his shoulder.

  “Yeah, not terrible,” Lee shouts with too much emphasis. “But Steve tells me their other stuff isn’t as good.”

  “He does, eh?” Brian says sourly. Again the moment hangs just a little too long between them.

  I watch the tomboy as she tunes her guitar, a crooked grin on her face, and I say, “I think I know her.”

  The rest of their set doesn’t disappoint, although Lee was right: the first song is their best. Their music is delivered with precise, terse vocals that suggest more emotion than is actually expressed. The guitars are dirty and wild but the vocals never lose their cool. It is a great juxtaposition and the crowd voices their enthusiasm. They play for thirty minutes and the tomboy speaks only once between songs to thank the other bands. Throughout their set I try to grasp where I’ve seen her before. Nothing specific comes to mind, only an opaque recollection of her sly and unimpressed manner.

  —

  I signal to Brian that I’ll buy the next round. On the way to the bar I stop at the men’s room and it is almost as dark as the rest of the club. While I wash my hands, I look into the mirror and see the faint profile of someone standing behind me. I throw an apologetic glance for monopolizing the sink and rinse the suds off my hands. When I turn, though, there is no one waiting. I pause. The men’s room door is next to me and it’s impossible that someone could have left without my noticing. I’m starting to get worried but then I notice that one of the two stalls is closed. I shake my head and leave.

  And on the other side of the door is Nicole, standing in line just outside the women’s washroom. Her eyes are on the floor but she looks up when she feels me staring at her. She doesn’t smile, of course, but she says, “Here’s trouble.”

  Instinctively I say, “You’re Trouble. I’m Danger.”

  “Not anymore,” she reminds me.

  There are two very opposite feelings mixing in me and I’m unsure what to say next. She looks at the six or seven women in line in front of her, looks at the men’s room door.

  “Is it empty in there?”

  “One guy in a stall,” I tell her.

  She makes a little wave of her hand, a shining bracelet sliding along her bare arm, and she says, “Come on. You’re on point.”

  I follow her back into the men’s room. She bends at the waist to look under the stall doors. She wears a thick belt over her dress, just above the hips. Then she straightens up and focuses her cat eyes on me. It has been a long time.

  “I thought you said someone was in here,” she says.

  I shrug. She looks bored. Her eyes linger on me for a moment and then she goes into one of the stalls. I’m not sure what to do so I run the cold water and splash a bit on my face.

  Her voice flutters over the half-door. “Tell me it’s good to see me.”

  “It’s good to see you,” I say.

  I can see her red Mary Janes under the stall door. Soon she emerges.

  “Tell me I look good.”

  “You always look good,” I tell her.

  “And you look like shit,” she says. She uses her shoulder to gently push me and puts her hands under the already running tap. “You look tired. Defeated.”

  I laugh but it is not funny. “And how would you look, exactly?”

  She turns off the tap and doesn’t meet my gaze. “I would look like I’m doing something.”

  She turns to leave the washroom but I block the exit. Her eyes get fierce and her nostrils flare. I don’t move. This is how we communicate.

  “You don’t know about it,” I tell her. “This constant grief.”

  “And why exactly don’t I know about it?” she asks. She is focused, framed, crystalline. “I know you don’t think they’re dead. You said as much without ever saying it.”

  I open my mouth. I want to say, There is nothing I can do. No words come out.

  “I never saw a wild thing sorry for itself,” she quotes, from whom I don’t know. She puts out a hand and touches my arm. I remember this feeling. “Man up or suck it up, Danger. Commit to something or stop your maudlin pity party. You can make your choice or you can have it taken away from you again.”

  She sidles past me and out the men’s room door, leaving only a trail of citrus in the air.

  I stand there for a minute doing nothing. There is nothing to do. Why couldn’t I say it aloud? A sweaty man enters and starts to piss in the back urinal. I leave.

  I wade back into the Fortress’s sea of silhouettes. I can do nothing. Or I can reconstruct. I know where Buddy the rat comes from. The bag of earth and the lab notebook are less clear but I have a few ideas. And the large wooden box is missing only one panel of mirror.

  I pick up one bottle of beer and deliver it to Brian at the stage, where he’s setting up his drums. Then I explain to Lee that I have to leave. She’s not impressed and not surprised.

  As I move to the door I search for Nicole, then for the tomboy, but it’s impossible to see faces in such a dark space unless they’re right next to me.

  —

  Back at the house, just before bed, I go to the kitchen. The small wooden box is still on the counter, pushed to the back corner, the slat with the rubberized hole still removed. I try to slide the panel back into place but it won’t form a tight seal. When I look closely I can see I broke the grooves when I pried it off with the butter knife. I dig through the apartment until I find the miniature box’s extra wall, no hole, no rubber. I slide it into place and complete the wooden cube.

  I wake in the night to the sound of broken glass. I turn on every light, move from the bedroom to the living room, hands balled into fists. In the kitchen is the source of the sound: the small box has fallen from the counter to the tiles, coming apart, flattening, and breaking some of the mirrors. And in the wreckage is Buddy, staring up at me as if nothing is out of the ordinary.

  This is the only way back for us, the note said.

  I want to be surprised and so I stand and wait. When no shock registers I pick up Buddy under his stomach, not at all the way John taught me to handle the rats. As I’m about to put him into his cage, I feel a lump in one side of Buddy’s stomach. I lift him upright and gently probe his belly with my fingertips. There is something hard and square inside the rat. The telemetry device, implanted two years ago by Grace and John.

  2007

  STEVE AND BRIAN ended their set at the Fortress with a long, droning note, Brian hammering the kick drum and cymbals every four beats for what felt like two minutes. It was supposed to be a crescendo but instead it felt like a dull wash of sound. I felt my phone vibrate in my pocket but I didn’t take it out. John and Lee and I made our way to the edge of the stage and shouted our support to Steve and Brian, who were kneeling to greet friends. John reached up to shake both of their hands and clasp them on their shoulders. I simply smiled and raised my beer bottle in tribute.

  Over at the bar Brian laughed and tol
d us, “Couldn’t keep my fucken sticks in one piece for the second half of the set. Flubbed the intro to my favourite song. Fuck, I forgot whole verses of lyrics.”

  “It was incredible from where we were standing,” Lee told him, one arm around Steve’s waist but facing our direction. Steve tried to smile but only the muscles around his mouth moved. I remembered what Grace had called that fake smile: non-Duchenne.

  “Don’t mind that gloomy prick,” Brian leaned into me and said. “He’s just fighting with the bassist again.”

  Fighting. I put my hand on the pocket of my jeans where I kept my phone.

  “That reminds me,” I said, and excused myself to the outside air.

  —

  “Why the hell do you even bother with a cell phone if you never pick up?”

  “I was watching a set, Trouble. Our friends’ show. You know, that you should be at.”

  “They’re more like your friends than mine, now.”

  “Don’t be like that, Nicole.”

  “Like what, precisely?”

  “Nothing. Nothing.”

  “So how were Steve and Brian?”

  “Well, it wasn’t incredible from where I was standing.”

  “God, can’t you ever be supportive? You’re so judgemental. What do you know about music?”

  “Why did you ask if you didn’t want to know? At least I came to the goddamned show. Where are you?”

  “Out with my friends.”

  “The Cuckoo, then? Great. Awesome. So we’re not going to see you?”

  “You don’t sound like you want to see me, Danger.”

  “Look. Why would I be asking if I didn’t want to see you? For Christ’s sake, Nicole.”

  “I’m not being talked to like this.”

  Click.

  —

  We didn’t stick around for the last band. Brian asked if they could store the gear at John’s apartment for the night, since their jam space locked up at midnight. John didn’t immediately say yes, which surprised me. Once he’d agreed, though, he hoisted a blocky amplifier cabinet and walked straight to his front door, two streets away, without complaint. I have no idea how he got it up the stairs by himself.