The Age of Cities

by Brett Josef Grubisic

  “Before we move another muscle, though, I’m off to the Ladies’ Room.” Alberta handed her two shopping bags to her son.

  “I’ll wait right here,” he said.

  He was testing his eyesight—one eye squeezed shut, the other discerning shapes on the distant banks of shoes—when a voice interrupted him: “Excuse me, sir, we’re running a special offer in the Men’s Department. Today only!”

  The voice was unmistakable. Winston turned and said, “Well, hello, Dickie. What a surprise. You’re walking around the store advertising your department?” In a grey suit and somber striped tie, hair combed and parted neatly on the right, Dickie was the picture of an up and coming store clerk.

  “No, you dizzy thing, that was for your ears only. I’m running an errand for Management, in fact.” He raised his brow and tilted his head to indicate some documents in his hand. As always, his tone implied that there was trouble lurking below the calm surface: classified information, for instance, that could fall into the wrong hands.

  Department store secrets, Winston thought, imagining spies from Woodward’s infiltrating unlit rooms in the dead of night, flashlights in hand, sussing out enemy plans secured within filing cabinets. It seemed ludicrous, but who knew? Even he had been transfixed by the Rosenberg case—not least because the pair looked so innocuous. Their double-dealings remained a mainstay of conversation at work and at home for months. A lament had been uttered by practically everyone: If you couldn’t trust your neighbours, then what was left to believe in?

  The War and the tensions that had risen since then had made folks suspicious, Alberta complained now and then. “It’s hardly necessary. I mean, why in God’s name would any enemy power be interested in a sleepy valley in Canada?” she’d asked him one afternoon. Having gotten caught in a tangle of conversation—the proposed setting up of sentinels at the bridge and western exit of the city to alert citizens about the arrival of Soviets was a topic that had town lips flapping—at the Post Office, she was exasperated and in need of a kindred spirit. “Unless there’s a strategic importance to strawberries and lumber the government hasn’t told us about. Maybe they can make rocket fuel out of them.” The idea was so risible they’d both laughed and coughed up their tea. While they had poked fun at the possibility of local clandestine lives and cloak-and-dagger goings-on, they could not help holding a few newborn reservations, or think of truths disguised by appearances: who could say?

  Dickie took a step closer to Winston and glanced around before explaining, “You see, I’m hoping to move up the ladder. Before long I’m going to have a secretary who will take dictation. Just a matter of patience and timing, that’s what Johnny says. Then I’ll be heading out for three-martini lunches at the Empire Club. Just you wait and see.”

  As before, Winston felt himself at a loss for words. He drew back from Dickie and remained silent.

  Dickie continued: “And you? You just happened to take a vacation from Mudville and happened to be shopping at the Hudson’s Bay, I suppose. It tickles me that you wanted to stop by here. What a friendly gesture.”

  Winston had not forgotten about Dickie’s love affair with himself. “It’s a surprise running into you, but in fact we are shopping here. Mother and I. We ate lunch in the Marine Room and have been touring the floors. That’s why I’m here.”

  “The salt of the earth mother? Here? I’m seeing something primordial.” Dickie surveyed the vicinity like an African safari hunter who is anticipating some ghastly creature slithering toward unsuspecting innocents. Dickie’s feverish imagining was funny, but Winston realized he drew blanks when he tried to guess what such a thing would look like.

  After no more than a beat, Dickie exclaimed: “I simply must run, though, gotta grab the brass ring. ‘Those who hesitate are lost’ and all that gung-ho management bunkum. Say, we are grabbing a bite tonight in Chinatown at the Bamboo Terrace. It’s our haunt du jour. The chicken chow mein’s divine and the mezzanine’s better yet. We’ll probably head over to the ol’ Port-Land for a glass or three afterward. Say about seven give or take fifteen minutes. Care to partake?” He adjusted his tie’s perfect knot.

  “Thank you, Dickie. I’ll keep that in mind.”

  “Ta-ta,” Dickie said before moving onward to Management at a motivated pace. Dickie looked back. Winston waved in reply to the smile of his acquaintance.

  Alberta returned just as Winston resumed his eye self-examination. “Who was that clerk talking to you?” she asked. “I figured he was selling something so I watched his pitch from over there.” She thumbed over her right shoulder.

  “No, I don’t think he was selling me anything, Mother. Remember when I told you about the odd fellow I met last time I was in the city? The one who took me to a seedy beer parlour? That was him. Dickie.”

  “I see. I was thinking I’d not likely buy something from him. A bit of a flaky pastry, looked like to me. Shifty.” Alberta’s mistrust of salesmen was boundless.

  “The jury’s still out about him as far as I’m concerned,” Winston said, and quickly added: “But we really ought to get a move on, Mother. We don’t want to be viewing flowers in the twilight.” He’d prefer to guard Dickie from Alberta’s feline curiosity.

  “Southward ho, then. You mind carrying the bags still?” She strode toward the exit.

  On the bustling streets outside the department store block, they walked toward the bus stop. A pretty girl at the perfume counter had sketched them a map after Alberta purchased a delicate ampoule of Empress Jean from her. Winston thought they’d need to refer to it often, so his mother kept it clutched in her hand. Before passing the city’s first jail and courthouse—the imposing planes of grey stone evidently fertile ground for moss patches and streaks of slime—they paused at a rectangular cinder block pile set atop plywood on an adjacent lawn. Jade green letters on unpainted wood explained the crude shed:

  Junior Chamber of Commerce

  Cement Fallout Shelter

  The sign on its roof inspired Winston’s vision of cheerful high school Honour Roll students banding together to build protection from atomic bomb fallout with the same pep they might muster for decorating a themed holiday social or graduation dance.

  Alberta frowned and said, “Doesn’t look like it would withstand a strong gust of wind,” then strode toward the door-less entrance.

  “I suppose it would be underground, Mother, not just sitting there on somebody’s front lawn,” Winston replied.

  Winston could not say for sure. He remembered that Cameron McKay had touched on the topic during one of his staff room harangues. Was it that a shelter had to be at least ten feet below the surface or that they must spend ten days underground before it was once again safe to creep back outside into the light? Winston clearly recalled that the chemistry teacher had claimed that people would fry—the image of sputtering bacon in a cast iron skillet had instantly leapt up in his mind—but was hazy about the details.

  He’d never spent many minutes worrying about it. The Bend was so far away from any place that might look tempting to those Fate-like bomber pilots speeding through the heavens: why waste effort on flat farmland? Even the school’s Safety Committee—student welfare watchdogs Delilah Pierce and Cameron McKay had combined forces at the tail end of the Korean War and no one had joined up since—had deemed atomic bomb drills unnecessary. The pair would meet at the beginning of each school year and then immediately afterward offer their assessment in the staff room, always closing with a proviso: “Pending political developments.” Winston believed their caution was actually paranoia.

  A pretty young blonde woman approached them just after Alberta stepped outside the shelter. She smiled and bade them “Good afternoon.” As she handed a pamphlet to Alberta, Winston noticed her gloves were coloured a rosy pink. The blonde said, “It’s going to be the death of all,” and moved toward another clutch of pedestrians. There was no anger or hysteria in her voice; her forget-me-not eyes suggested calmness and focus. She seemed matter-of-fa
ct, her certainty unruffled—as though she had just studied the approaching clouds and her years of expertise had let her determine with unquestionable authority that rain would fall any minute. All of her faculties were intact, clearly.

  Like the Jehovah’s Witnesses with their end of the world proclamations who used to visit Wilson Manor—Alberta had shooed them away rudely enough that they had apparently decided that the Wilsons were beyond salvation—this young lady had permanently made up her mind about a singular idea. No amount of evidence to the contrary would seep into her peculiar awareness of the world. Winston granted that she had greater cause for worry than those door-to-door evangelists with their predictions of the imminent arrival of the Four Horsemen that once uttered were then regularly revised. Even so, it was possible to err too far on the side of caution. The poor girl might end up like a mole living in a windowless basement.

  “Well,” Alberta exclaimed, and showed him the folded paper. Its message was deadpan, as though typed by a dour scientist: indisputable data for the reader to consider—

  You live in a target area.

  You must get beyond this 20 mile

  limit to be reasonably safe.

  A long list of related facts filled the sheet. An address had been printed on the back. Readers were implored to contact their local political leaders. Winston could not imagine what one would say should he decide to write a letter. The likelihood of any local politician getting riled up about the threat of nuclear bombs looked remote: what could he hope to accomplish, after all? The matter would be out of his league.

  “Now there’s a fine reason not to take that job at the Hudson’s Bay,” Alberta remarked. “Unless of course Bailey’s Farm is also a target. Those damned strawberries. Then we’ll be done for.” She slipped the pamphlet into her purse and turned her attention to the girl’s crude map and waved it at him. “Flowers will cure what ails us, my dear,” she said warmly.

  The street was radiant and festive, lit by a strand of pulsating colours, each one amplified by the fresh slick of rain on cars and pavement and put into stark relief by the starless night sky. Next to the flashing gold, red, and blue of Ming’s FAMOUS CHINESE FOODS, the cool green neon leaves and glaring yellow stalks of Bamboo Terrace Fine Chinese Food formed an inviting arbor. Winston decided the restaurant’s striped metal awning, the only one he had noticed in the entire area, was an incongruous but pleasantly homey touch.

  At the Hudson’s Bay, Dickie had not been specific about details, and Winston was already worried that he had no idea whether a reservation had been made, if one could be made, and whose name it would be under. Making a fool of himself: that was what he strived to avoid. Seeing his own inclination to worry about details stir to motion, he told himself not to get flustered. It was a bantam-sized restaurant so they would probably be seated in plain sight. The moment he stepped inside, they’d beckon him. He wondered if his on-the-dot punctuality would cause him grief. These men struck him as being slapdash about a social nicety like timeliness.

  Through double doors—solid glass and heavy as lead—Winston was still for a minute as his eyes responded to the assault of fluorescence. Like the Port-Land, this place was no different from others he’d visited. The Bend’s Prawn Gardens, where he and Alberta had eaten beef chop suey too many times to count, was a carbon copy—a coat of paint a mint lozenge hue that was decorated with lanterns and misty watercolour nature scenes glued onto rectangles of splintered bamboo; particles of scent—onion, fish, soy sauce—hung heavily in the humid air. This slight variation boasted two plaster statues of Oriental ladies in flowing robes, one at the cash register and the other at his feet. It was cookie cutter otherwise. And lit so brightly it could substitute as a surgery theatre. Winston noticed that all the tables were packed with Oriental families. Now, that was definitely not the case anywhere in the Bend.

  There was no sign of Dickie. Maybe the gang had changed its dinner plans. At the far right, Winston saw a narrow staircase and grinned in relief. He pointed to it when an elderly woman with unnaturally jet hair approached. Gauging by her silky emerald dress, Winston concluded she must be the hostess. Yet she remained impassive, speaking no words and giving no welcoming gesture. While Winston couldn’t see the gang, he did recall Dickie’s comment about the mezzanine. When the hostess maintained her ghostly silence—Winston imagined she was trying to intimidate him so that he’d leave—he stepped past her toward the stairs. Hoping to avoid any awkwardness with the mute hostess, he did not turn around to see her response. He felt foolish pushing past her, but bolting out the door would have been worse.

  Winston looked up to see that a worn carpet runner began at the midpoint of the wooden stairs. Ahead, the light was faint; he fancied that he was about to enter an opium den and smiled at his unfounded expectations; if nothing else, the Port-Land had taught him that lesson. He reached the top and stood before a room of chattering Caucasian faces—unencumbered adults, their children at home with babysitters. Spotting the gang at a distant table, he noted that they had chartered a new member. Winston paused to take in the surroundings. The contrast between floors was startling; it looked as though a tornado had ripped one restaurant from its original location and slammed it atop another. If it was no decadent lair for dreamy, slack-muscled addicts with heavy lids, there was no denying its exotic lushness. The room ably met his oversized expectations.

  The sight prompted a recollection of a production of The Mikado put on by the Valley Players he and Alberta had attended a few years back. Here, the walls were papered in muted golden brocade; narrow glass tanks holding darting fish and swaying aquatic plants divided the room. He saw that there were crabs, too, crowded at the bottom, their heavy claws knocking helplessly against the transparent wall of their prison. At the room’s far end hung what appeared to be a caravan’s wooden wheel thickly coated with red lacquer. Directly in front of it was a bronze Buddha—arms raised in celebration—on a platform of thick bamboo rods. The ceiling glowed green and blue; the lights were perched behind upturned paper umbrellas whose frames were visible like X-rayed bones. Regular beats of neon streetlight passed through the bare windows.

  As he approached the table, he heard Dickie bark a demand: “Waiter, we need an extra chair.”

  With his back to the corner, Dickie had a clear vantage of the room. He spoke loudly: “Farmer, welcome aboard the SS Shanghai. We weren’t sure you’d find your way. You’ll have a chair in a sec. We ordered about half the menu, so there’s plenty to go round.”

  Customers from other tables looked up. Winston flushed and wondered whether Dickie was already dead drunk. He glanced at his wristwatch.

  A boy arrived just as Dickie finished his sentence. Winston imagined a hidden door that the waiters used instead of the narrow staircase.

  “Thank you, Dickie.”

  “Left Mother to fend for herself, did you?”

  “I couldn’t be sure she’d enjoy herself.”

  “You think we’re an acquired taste, do you?”

  Winston smiled. Dickie’s bantering game could be sabotaged by an unanswered question. “This place is fantastic.” He turned to Johnny.

  “Yes, it is, isn’t it?” Johnny replied. “And while I’m able to get a word in edgewise.… Winston, you remember Ed, yes? This young man is Frankie, Frankie Jones, he’s, er, my nephew.”

  “Nice to meet you, Frankie.”

  Frankie stood and extended his hand across the table. “Pleased to meet you, sir.” Even in the kaleidoscopic lights, Winston could see that the cheeks of his pale marble face bloomed with a rose flush.

  “Frankie here was in the army, so he’s used to formality with ‘senior officers.’” Dickie spoke with a master of ceremony’s command.

  Frankie shared his uncle’s nervous caginess, though his crew cut and collegiate sweater made him appear less a wary gangster than a lanky, nail-biting student. Before sitting down, he handed a highball glass to Dickie.

  As he glanced at each man, Winston realiz
ed that he was surprised and a touch disappointed that they were real. He had come to think of them as remote, having fantastic movie star lives that required constant costume changes and a stream of adventures. Yet here and now Winston could see that Ed’s face could use a shave and that Dickie wore the same coat and tie, even though tonight he’d added a white carnation boutonniere. Their days had been running in routines similar to his since the last time they’d all been together. Work, chores, and leisure were constants; the difference was that their big city setting had deluxe venues.

  “Would you like a drink? We’re drinking Manhattans, so it’s that or—blech!—jasmine tea.” Dickie held up an empty glass.

  “Is beer not a possibility?” Winston enjoyed the mixture of beer and salt. He and Alberta always shared a large bottle with their chop suey.

  “Well, we didn’t think to bring anything so proletarian.”

  In answer to Winston’s perplexed face, Ed and Johnny—with competing Morse code bursts—explained that Chinatown merchants, like the Kwoks who owned Bamboo Terrace, had a longstanding feud with liquor control bureaucrats, and the result was often suspension of liquor licenses.

  “They have philosophical differences,” Dickie interjected.

  Johnny, speaking on the side of laissez-faire Chinatown, favoured a lenient, pro-American stance (“This backwater province has its dainty little head stuck in the goddamned Prohibition. Everyone’s a lot happier down south”), while Ed dizzily asserted that “rules are rules and everyone has to follow them,” and that “rules are made to be bent.”

  Ed was good-natured, but not a man who would have said much of value on a high school debating team, Winston decided. The happy medium was the restaurant’s mezzanine, where customers in the know could bring their own booze. It was a delicate arrangement: the proprietors were aware that Ed was a liquor inspector because his last official visit there had resulted in a letter that informed them of their suspended liquor license; they also counted on his bending the rules—if they looked the other way while the customers (including a provincial liquor inspector) defied an insignificant technicality of the law, then it would be a benefit to them the next time an official inspection passed by their address.