Where should he drive his new car? He thought of the persons he knew, and like the telephone calls he would make to check on them, or see whether he wanted to talk to them, and finding them all disappeared, Boysie again felt the helplessness of being without friends. There were lots of friends to be got, but these were West Indians, men he had met as he visited the Colonial Tavern during his coffee breaks from cleaning the downtown offices of his contracts, and would see leaning against the bar, talking to Canadian women, men dressed in the latest flashy clothes, like pimps, as he found out when browsing through a magazine, OUI, which the young Canadian fellow had brought into Mr. MacIntosh’s office one night. These West Indians he would see at the Colonial Tavern all wore dark glasses, shades, as if they were standing outside in the West Indian sun; and the way they walked! with their fists clenched and dropped at their sides while they moved their feet, as if they were merely sliding, and being so important and so silent inside the Tavern, but laughing so loudly when they were standing up outside on the sidewalk just in front of the place. Goddamn pimps! They disgusted him. And he would drink his Scotch fast and get away. He could not talk to any of them. To be seen talking with them on the street would be to mark himself as one of them: and he couldn’t have that! for he was moving up.
And he thought of going for a drive. But to go for your first drive in a new car, by yourself, without even a woman beside you, that was no fun. He thought of going up at the Doctor’s Hospital and showing Dots the car, but that was against his plans. This car was going to be his car. His. Not his and hers, nothing like that. His. And hers? No, he wasn’t such a Northamerican as that! If he was in Barbados, the first place he would drive a new car would be up at the airport, to see all the people who were leaving the island, and those who were coming in as tourists, and he would see many people he knew who were sure to walk round his new car and ask him, “How much horses under the fucking hood, Boys, old bean?” and kick the tires, and look inside, and ask, “Air-condition in this blasted thing?” although none of them had ever sat inside a car with air-conditioning; but they would have heard of these from the tourists and in magazines. But he was not in Barbados now, and that kind of literacy about things never owned and observed was not common here. He started the engine, and drove out of the dealer’s parking lot. He peered through the windshield, wondering why the people were a different colour from when he drove his truck. And then he turned the windows down; and realized how cold it was, and that the glass was tinted. “Good!” It meant he could not be seen easily from the outside.
He drove along College Street going west, and he relaxed inside the luxurious upholstery, fiddled with the press-buttons on the dashboard, changed the stations in the FM radio, searching for the CBC, and all the time the Buick, moving like water on glass, carried him aimlessly through the lightly falling snow. He got annoyed with the snow for falling on a day like this. It was only two in the afternoon, and he had still lots of time before he had to get home, change, and drive to work in his panel truck. For the time being, he would try hard to enjoy this latest possession, which was so difficult for him to enjoy by himself.
The light at the corner was long in changing. He looked through his tinted windows at the West Indians and Italians and other immigrants bundled up, most of them in cheap winter coats because they had little money for such luxuries, most of them walking fast but not moving fast because the ice under the snow was tricky, all of them serious with expressions of caution on their faces. A woman the size of Dots was coming out of the West Indian shop owned by a Portuguese just where he was stopped, on his left hand, waiting for the light to change. He should stop a little further along this street, right in front of the other West Indian shop which sold Jamaican meat patties, and make them see who was getting out of this big black goddamn Buick. Yeah, do that, Boysie.
There was a time when he would wrap the steering wheel of a car, of his truck, round and round as if it was a piece of elastic rubber band, and park in the smallest possible space, wrapping and wrapping, tires screeching, and he laughing as he looked out and saw people marvelling at his dexterity with a car. But now he drove slowly along the line of parked cars on the north side, looking for a space big enough to park his new automobile. And when he found one, the size of his car and almost half as much again, he pulled alongside the car in front of the space, and turned his steering wheel until the body of the car was exactly forty-five degrees from the angle of the parked car (although he could not have worked this out mathematically in his mind: it was practice and having the car at that angle from the sidewalk); he moved in, and stopped, exactly equidistant from the car in front and the one behind. He peered through the windshield and saw the greyish snow coming down lightly, and he saw a few aimless West Indians walking in the street, their colours now darker and looking purplish. He revved up the motor and then turned it off. He locked all his doors, and he remembered to press the button which lowered his car aerial. “Can’t have nobody damage that!” A man came out of the shop while he was still adjusting his clothes to get out of the car. The man stopped. He looked at the car, stared through the tinted windshield at the driver of the car, and without changing the expression on his face he walked on. “You blasted … these doors locked, though!” The man was eating what looked like a meat patty.
Boysie got out of the car, and locked the door. He straightened himself, adjusted the fit of his cashmere winter coat on his shoulders, pulled his felt hat down at a firmer level, not too cockily, and went into the shop.
Noise hit his ears the moment he opened the door. The place was filled with West Indians and it seemed that all of them were talking at the same time. It took him a while to understand what they were talking about. They were not talking about anything in particular, just talking and making noise.
“Wappning, man!” one man screamed.
“Oh-God-oh-God-oh-God!” another shouted, as if he was intending to make his words into a song, with a beat like a calypso. And he spoke so rapidly that all the “Oh-Gods” seemed to be one word.
“Wappneeeeen! wapppneeeeen! wapppneeeeen!”
“Oh-God-oh-God, why all-you didn’ come to Dresser partee, last night? Dresser had par-tee for soooooo …”
The place was cluttered with pictures of soccer stars and cricket stars from the West Indies. “Two more patties here!” There were old photographs of the Honourable Marcus Garvey. All the photographs were taken in the same shot. Garvey was wearing a derby hat, and his cheeks were fat as they say of a man who eats too many pork chops, and his lips were thick and his whole face like the face of a prosperous West Indian small merchant, who was dressed in tweeds and standing in the hot sun. There were flags of red black and green. The music was loud. Nobody was listening, but they all seemed to be moving to the rhythm of the song. “… give the donkey first second and third …” and Boysie wondered what Sparrow was singing about: he had never heard this calypso before. It might have been the latest tune from the last Carnival in Trinidad. “Bring more pep-puh, bring more pep-puh, oh-God-oh-God, all-you turn Canadian fast, yes!” … if you was the king of beasts, you would be toting that … Boysie wasn’t sure whether one of the customers had spoken this, or whether it was part of the calypso; and the place was dark, and he couldn’t get his eyes adjusted to the gloominess, although he used to be at home in the Paramount Tavern just down the street from here. “… oh Christ, man, this blasted country hard like rass! I know two-three fellows who walking ’bout for six months still looking for their first work, and people telling me this country, Canada, more better than the States … give me the States any time!”
“What can I do for you, sir?”
A man was shaking most of a bottle of pepper sauce on his patties, and the waitress, a young woman from one of the islands who hadn’t talked yet, was standing like his judge over him and over the bottle, waiting perhaps to see that he didn’t use too much of the pepper sauce, for this was a West Indian eating place, and a lotta Wessindians goi
ng come in here and first thing they going axe for is for pep-puh, and if there ain’ no rass pep-peh in the patty shop, what the rass, man, “What the rass!” Some of the pepper had been spilled on the waitress’s dress. She was not wearing an apron. “Looka this man, though!” she said, and moved away holding on to her dress which was very short for this type of weather. “What can I do for you, sir?”
The man behind the counter had been talking to Boysie almost the moment he came into the shop. And he had moved away to serve other customers, but had come back to stand in front of Boysie, behind the counter, where Boysie was now watching a fly. A goddamn fly in winter?
“Can I help you?” The man had seen the fly too. He swiped at it, knowing he would miss it, but would chase it away for the time being. “Hey!” Boysie did not know what he wanted. He did not remember why he had come into this shop.
“You want something?”
He was watching the man, very young and very strong-looking, dressed like black Americans with long hair, and floppy hats pulled threateningly close to one eye, and looking so very strong and masculine and like criminals … criminals? “Criminals?”
“What you want, my man?”
And there were some women too, and some of them were dressed in white as if they were nurses, could be nurses, and carrying on with the young men, and laughing and talking while they were eating.
“Gimme, ahhh, please give me a pack of chewing gum, sugarless!”
“Ha-ha-ha-hah!” The man behind the counter started laughing. He had overheard something said down in the dark back of the eating shop, and he was giving his approval to the joke. His eyes were closed during his laugh. When he opened them, Boysie had placed a ten-dollar bill on the counter. He looked at it, he looked up at Boysie, and he exploded again, and he made change. “Hak-hak-hak-yak-yak …”
Sitting back in the car, Boysie was nervous. The doors were locked, and he was glad the windows were tinted. He could hear the laughing and the shouting and the noise and he give the donkey first second and third! … he gie the donkey fuss secunt and tird … he gave the donkey first, second and third …
It became peaceful again inside the car. It was warm like a bath. He would take a very hot bath very often when he didn’t need to bathe; but he would take the hot bath, as hot as he just could bear it, and he would sit in the water, and try to think of nothing. He was thinking of nothing now. Just sitting in the warm womb of the new car, protected from discovery and disclosure and recognition behind the tinted glass. He wished he didn’t have to go to work tonight. If he didn’t have to, he could remain sitting here, just a few more minutes, and when he was rested drive all the way up to the Toronto International Airport, watch a few planes take off as he sat in the bar on the roof of the terminal building, drink a few slow Scotches, and then return home via the Don Valley Parkway, and he would try out the power of the engine on that highway. There was nothing wrong with the world at this moment. Olivia was a bore, and the woman who wore the brown winter coat, well, she could arrive in the morning or not: nothing was wrong with the world now. Those letters to the editor of the newspaper, and to Chatelaine magazine, if he had them in his pocket now, he would tear them up, for nothing was wrong with the world as he sat in this new, black, shining Buick.
And then he saw the woman. He saw her first. The moment he saw her he was still thinking of how comfortable it was sitting there in the car. He did not expect to see her, certainly not in that frame of picture and reality and surprise; so that when his eyes first picked her out from the rest of the people, in his eyes and in his mind, who she was, was farthest from his mind. But he saw her. And after his eyes got accustomed to this reality, which was not in the first place reality, but just a dream, perhaps a desire or even a suspicion, he became alert. The woman was coming out of the Jamaican patty shop, and close behind her was a young man. And he would have looked off, just at that moment, had he not noticed that the man held the woman’s elbow helping her, like any gentleman would, through the door. And they came out into the bright winter sun, and they stood up for a while, and the man turned the woman in the direction he wanted her to go, and the woman succumbed to his directing, and they moved together along the sidewalk as if they had been accustomed to travelling over this same portion of cement many times in the past, in the heart, at all hours, and at all feelings of emotion. And when they drew near the part of the street where they crossed, day after day it seemed, the man held his hand near the woman’s waist, to protect her from the traffic coming along the street. Boysie saw the hand, and he saw the hand wander lower than the waist, and he imagined the hand being placed on other parts of the woman’s body: in the dark, in bed, in a movie, in the elevator when only the two of them were travelling up and down; and he wondered how long this had been going on. But most of all he felt very angry that he was there, that he should be there to see it, for it was something which appeared to him to be unfortunate for him to have seen: it was not meant for him to see. The woman crossing the road, with the young man, was his wife, Dots.
2
“DONKEY FIRST, SECOND AND THIRD!”
He was fully dressed. And he was listening to “Both Sides Now.” The weather was turning warmer, and he could not see the clouds in the snow falling, but he could see real clouds in the sky. The song no longer held the meaning of peace and comfort which he had got from it all throughout the winter; and his dispirited feeling, plus the regularity of the woman arriving every morning at the same time and disappearing out of his view a few seconds afterwards, nothing new taking place in his life, nothing strange in the apartment — all this made him feel hollow inside. He had spent a long time thinking of what to do with the discovery of his wife being handled by the young man. He would have been happier had he permitted his imagination to take its course to the natural conclusion of the man’s handling his wife, but he blocked his imagination from going along to that extremity. He had come to assume too much about his wife: that she was there when he wanted her; and he did not want her above the ordinary performances of her duties. She would cook. She would wash. She would iron. And she would occasionally lie close to him in bed at night, usually on weekends. And if the magnet of need got the better of her body, she would roll over and lie on him, and he would breathe slowly and then fast, and then he would breathe more heavily and that would be the end of that. He had grown accustomed to her, as he was becoming accustomed to the cat. The cat “meeooowed,” he called the cat “You goddamn cat!” kicked it out of his way, and then fed it. The cat understood what relation it was living in with regard to Boysie, and it left Boysie alone. But he was so used to Dots, to her sound in the apartment, and to have to let his mind follow the picture of the young man holding her round the waist, and travel down the concluding road, with the man’s hands touching the naked body, was too frightening for him to face. And he had nobody with whom he could even lie a little, and give half the facts to, and from the person’s replies try to chart the correct action he should take; think the correct and manly thoughts he should harbour, or inflict manly violence on her.
The afternoon it had happened, when he did eventually get the car started, and had almost smashed the car behind him (he tried to move off in reverse gear), he moved out of the parked spot like a man moving out of a movie house, after an entire generation of life and death had come before him: moving out into the street as it had been before he went into the cinema, and returning to the street like a lifeless tableau, with all that action and vitality and life and death in the back of his mind. He had moved the car, more cautiously after his near collision, up College Street, up, up, going West, into the Italian district, through a stretch of road filled with West Indians and black Canadians, through the High Park area where there was a park and large beautiful houses one of which he wished he had owned, or was living in, until he found himself approaching the airport. It was only then that he realized how far he had driven. He had come far in this car, and this car was not to him like the vehic
le which people called life: and he had come far in life too. He parked the car, and he walked through the terminal, and he found himself standing at a ticket counter. “I wonder what the temperature would be like in Barbados?” He did not know. He had remembered very little about Barbados, and things like the names of streets and the shapes of things he had forgotten long ago. But he would not think of leaving right now. The man’s hands might be free to travel over further expanses of his wife’s body. And although the sight of the hands had not welled up inside him any feeling of vengeance, or even a feeling that Dots had betrayed him, he did not want to leave now. So he went up in the elevator, and got off at the level where the bar was, and he chose a seat near the large picture window where he could see the planes taking off and coming in.
After his first Scotch, he felt a little better. But then a large plane landed, and out of it came many West Indians. At the distance he was from the plane, and protected from the full blast of the engines, he thought he heard them laughing and talking as they went into the building and out of sight. He had seen hundreds of them down below, with their faces flattened even more than their noses were, stuck against the glass, peering into the Arrivals section, waiting for their friends and brothers and sisters and delayed husbands and wives. They were wearing clothes which seemed to shout at him; and whereas the Canadians were just as many, they seemed to be in the minority, due to the noise of the West Indians. He searched among them for the men in their midst, looking perhaps to see whether the young man with his hand round his wife’s body had followed him here to the airport, perhaps to see whether he could see a duplicate of that man’s body among these merry West Indians. But even to think about that had hurt him a little, and it was then that he went up into the elevator.
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