The Uninvited Guest

by John Degen

  “Go to bed?”

  “You’d think, wouldn’t you? Not these girls. They get a look at me, and I guess it’s the hat sets them off. Pretty goofy hat when it comes right down to it. They’re all yelling and whistling to me across the street, and I’m pointing my finger at myself like Jerry Lewis, you know, like playing around all ‘who, me?’ and they’re loving it. Next thing I know I’m up in some park past Sherbrooke there, smoking hash with three strippers and watching them dance to the sunrise. You know, them girls, even with their clothes on, they’ve got the moves. And there I am, just lying on the grass in this beautiful warm morning, my head full of hash, and all this beauty in my eyes.”

  “You still have your wallet?”

  “No, I don’t still have my wallet, but as I said, I don’t regret a thing.”

  “Still have the keys to the hearse?”

  “Yes, I do. Them girls wouldn’t go near a hearse if you paid them. Very superstitious bunch, the erotic entertainment crowd.”

  “Who would have guessed?”

  “You think they took my wallet, but you’re wrong. These girls each make more in a night than you and I combined make in a week. What the fuck do they want my wallet for? I’d be more likely to steal from them.”

  Tony ordered an omelette for himself, a bagel and cream cheese for Fred, and more coffee. They had to be at the funeral home for ten, and he wanted to hit the highway as soon as possible after that. There was another funeral home waiting for Stan in Toronto, and the Cup was expected to make a trip to Florida at the end of the week. The office had gone into a frenzy at the news of Stan’s death. There was no contingency in place, like everyone expected Stan to just keep doing his job forever.

  The young driver straightened himself and leaned across the table, grabbing at Tony’s arm. Clearly, the story of his night would continue, with or without Tony’s co- operation.

  “So then, I’m walking back along Sainte-Catherine’s there, way over in the east end, and I’ve got three different kisses to think about, still on my mouth, you know. I can still feel that last one. I think they were all trying to outdo each other, you know, and she wins. Ouch. And I’m walking along—this is just a couple hours ago now. There’s a few people on the street, the early workers, you know, picking up garbage and opening up the depanneurs, and it’s like the greatest morning of my life all of a sudden, you know, all zoned on the hash and the sun shining, and suddenly there’s this dog. It’s like this big German shepherd thing with a yellow bandana around its neck, and it’s limping around on the sidewalk in front of me, holding one of its front paws in the air. I can take a lot of things man. I mean, I move dead people around all day, right, but I can’t take seeing a hurt dog. Breaks my heart to see a hurt dog.”

  During breakfast, the street outside the hotel, Boulevard René-Lévesque, filled with the morning rush, cars and buses and business people walking fast to their offices. Montreal’s second face, the desperate, struggling centre of commerce, came out to replace the cooler, more relaxed Montreal of the night.

  “And it belongs to this street kid, this girl with hair dyed all purple and shaved up the back and sides. You know, you see them all downtown these days; they live in the empty lots. A lot of them keep dogs, for protection I guess, or maybe they just like dogs. She’s sitting off the sidewalk in this overgrown lot. I guess maybe that’s where she lives, just her and her dog among the rocks that used to be a building.”

  “She took your wallet?”

  Tony kept his involvement in the conversation minimal. The less he talked, the sooner it would be over. Stan had told him about this part of the job. “You’re not really supposed to be there, so everyone gets uncomfortable and starts telling you the story of their fucking lives. After a while, you figure out where it’s going, and you can try to nudge it there a bit faster.”

  “She won my wallet. I wanted to give her some money so she could take her dog to a vet or something, or at least buy some food for the thing, and for herself—something, but you can never tell where that money’s going to go. I don’t usually care about that. What someone on the street does with the money I give them, that’s their own business, but there was a dog involved. I’m standing there, trying to tell her what to do with the ten bucks I just gave her and she’s just smiling up at me. She can probably smell the hash and booze coming off me so who am I to give lectures at that point? But she sees that I have more than ten bucks in my wallet. That’s when she offers to play me for the rest of my money.”

  “Play you?”

  “She’s got this plastic chessboard with her, keeps it set up all the time on one of the pieces of broken concrete. That’s her thing, right. They’ve all got a thing. Hers is she’ll play you chess for money. Jocelyn, that’s the name she gives me. You put however much money down that you want to risk and if Jocelyn wins, she keeps it.”

  Fred looked out the window, took off his cap and scratched a shaky hand through his hair. The hair stood on end where the fingers left it.

  “My guess is Jocelyn almost always wins,” he said.

  The restaurant was filling with other travellers, groups of older Americans in town on a tour. They sat in the seats surrounding Fred and Tony, wearing comfortable clothing, staring at Fred in his rumpled black suit.

  “I know a little bit about chess. My uncle taught me when I was just a kid and I got really good at it for a while there. Won a bunch of tournaments at school and travelled around a bit with it. But this girl, man, she was a monster. You know chess? It’s all about them four middle squares, right? Take control of them four middle squares and you’re on your way. But this chick, man, she didn’t give a shit about them four middle squares. She sees me setting up in the middle and she just laughs because she’s already kicking my ass somewhere else.”

  “And you’re still stoned at this point?”

  “I know, I know, I thought the same thing. The first game I lost—twenty bucks—I figured it was probably because of the hash. And I didn’t even mind losing the money because I wanted her dog to get to a vet. I was going to give her the money even if I won. I wanted her to feed the damn dog today, you know. So, I give my head a shake and play for all I’ve got left—another fifteen bucks.

  “And this time I’m really watching, really paying attention to what it is she’s doing, but you know, it’s like she and I, we’re not even playing the same game. I’m playing chess and she’s playing this other game that makes chess look like tic-tac-toe. You know the best players in the world have entire games memorized, with thousands of variations to every move. If you make this move, say you bring out your bishop on the third move, that’s standard, they look into their big box of games in their head and say okay, bishop out on the third move is when I throw my knight into the middle. Then let’s say you try to mix it up a bit and bring out your queen. Unless it’s an absolutely stupid move, they’ve already anticipated it, and they have three possible moves at their disposal to pick from.

  “For these people, chess is a room with a thousand doors, each door leading into another room with a thousand doors, and on and on. And they always know which door is best. In their minds, there is a red carpet on the floor of each room, leading directly to the best possible door to the next room. You and I step into these rooms, all we see are doors, but these people have a red carpet. It’s not really about being smarter than the other person. It’s some kind of extra sense, like mind reading. There’s this place out there, you know, in the air, where all the answers are, a place where the doors are marked with the red carpet, and if you can access that place, well there you are.

  “That’s what this chick was like. She’d make a move and then she’d sort of stare off into the street, looking after her dog, or just watching people go by until I made my move. And as soon as I made my move, you could see her seeing the right door. If you play the game to any competitive level, these are the people you eventually run into, the ones who let you know it’s time to sit down; you’ve reache
d the end of your winning streak and now it’s time to take your seat where you belong.”

  “So she won the second game as well?”

  “She didn’t win it. She owned it from beginning to end. These people don’t win, they just are. You just don’t expect to find one of them living on the street in Montreal, you know, begging food for their dog. Yeah, she took my fifteen bucks. Then she sees my wallet is empty and she gets this smile on her face, like she knows I’m a fighting fish and I’m not letting go of the hook. She smiles at me and says she’ll play me for the wallet itself, and everything in it. If she wins, I can cancel my credit cards, but I have to give her a day before I do it. She’s got it all figured out, so you know she’s done this shit before. She gets a day to throw as much on the card as she can and I don’t have to pay for it because I report it stolen. I just say I had my pocket picked and didn’t notice it for a long time and the card company forgives me all the charges that aren’t mine. They’re insured for just this kind of delayed reporting, so it’s all covered. Just a cost of doing business for those guys.

  “And if I win, she says, I get whatever I want. I get all my money back, I get the dog if I want it; and if I want, I get her. She says she’ll come back to my room with me if I win, if that’s what I want. I’m still thinking of walking away, and she must know that because that’s when she pulls out the blindfold. She’s going to play the whole game without being able to see the board. I’m supposed to tell her my moves, and move her pieces for her when she decides on a move. This I’ve got to see, so I put my wallet down and she blindfolds herself. She plays the entire game looking only at a board in her head. She has to keep a picture of where every piece is on the board at all times. It’s not impossible, but I’ve never seen it before, so we play.”

  “And that’s when she took your wallet.”

  Fred gave Tony a weary look.

  “Yeah, and that’s when that happened. You know, I might just have brought her back to my room if I’d won. I might just have done that, because right now I’m thinking I’m in love with that girl. She beat my ass blindfolded.”

  Tony picked up the breakfast cheque, put it on the League’s expense. He brought the Cup down to the parking garage. Fred dozed in the driver’s seat while Tony loaded it into the back of the hearse. On Ontario Street, two guys from the funeral home loaded Stan for them. A block from the highway entrance on René-Lévesque, Tony had Fred pull over and took charge of the wheel himself.

  “You know, you need a special licence to drive one of these things, man.”

  “And right now, neither one of us could produce one. If we get pulled over, I’ll just show the cop the Cup.”

  “That’s one all-powerful cup you got there, man.”

  It was Tony’s turn to shoot a tired look.

  “Fred, man, I have to say, I’m not buying this line you keep handing me where you have no idea what’s in that black case back there. I mean, we live in the same country, right? You’re younger than me, but what difference does that make? You’re telling me you’ve never heard of that trophy.”

  “What’s your question? Have I heard of it, or do I care?”

  “Yeah, that’s what I thought.”

  “I mean, do you know what the international cricket trophy looks like? The Ashes—it’s called the Ashes.”

  “Absolutely not, but that wasn’t my point.”

  “Because about a billion more people care about that thing than about your shiny little cup back there.”

  “I’m aware of that.”

  “No offence buddy, but get your head out of your ass. Hockey is a money game.”

  “I can’t argue against that.”

  “You know, when India plays Pakistan at cricket for the Ashes, people die. Did you know that?”

  “I think I knew that.”

  “With all due respect, who gives a crap about your cup?”

  Fred smiled the smile he’d learned from tired strippers that morning, threw his cap on the floor and climbed over the seatback to lie down beside Stan.

  Tony drove the limit on the 401, a six-hour trip, with Stan’s casket locked into the back, the Cup in its case on one side of him and Fred stretched out asleep on the other side. He stopped for gas in Brockville, coffee and a doughnut in Kingston. He was surprised to find a radio installed in the dashboard. It brought him a minor league baseball game from across the lake in New York somewhere, until it faded out in the crowded airwaves around Toronto. Somewhere, the Trojans were doing the unexpected and beating the Bulls by one run. Off the highway, on the crowded streets of Toronto, Tony woke Fred and let him drive the final few blocks to the funeral home where Stan would lie three days, visited by hockey players and League dignitaries, but no family or friends other than Tony, who showed up every day.

  Eight

  On his first overseas trip of the new off-season, during eight turbulent hours between Toronto and Italy, Tony sits in an aisle seat in first class beside the trophy. Across the aisle from him is Dragos Petrescu, the first Romanian-born hockey player to play on a Cup- winning team. He is flying to his homeland days after his family and friends have already arrived there. The promotions schedule for a new champion is making him very nearly late for his own wedding.

  Beside Dragos, a young woman reads a book and glances now and then out the window. She is Diana Petrescu, the young player’s cousin, also travelling to his wedding. Her mother, a sour looking woman dressed in black, snoozes in the window seat. Tony was introduced to them, and to Dragos’s tall, imposing father in the first-class departures lounge in Toronto. He felt surrounded by family, and enjoyed the atmosphere while understanding almost nothing of what was being said around him, the group switching from Romanian to English so quickly here and again that all the words ran together unless someone spoke directly at him.

  “My cousin is a very talented athlete,” Diana had told Tony, “but he could lose his own ass trying to get from one place to another. He has been known to show up at the airport twelve hours late for a flight. It’s amazing to me he can find the ice whenever he falls off his skates.”

  Tony had watched Dragos submit himself to Diana’s verbal abuse, and had wondered at his almost instant attraction to her because of it. “What a horrible girl,” he’d thought, wanting her. She’d nagged her cousin until everyone was safely belted in, at which point she pulled out her book and treated the two of them like they had never existed for her. About the trophy she’d had only one thing to say. “You’ll ruin your back in a job like that,” she told Tony, as he heaved the bulky trophy case toward the boarding gate. “You’ll be no good to anyone in a few years.”

  “My uncle has already called to tell me my picture has been in the Bucharest papers every day since the seventh game,” Petrescu tells Tony. The jet has levelled off, the warning lights relaxed and the first round of drinks is being circulated through the cabin. “They’ve even published pictures of my fiancée. It feels very odd to return this way. It’s not my first time back, of course, but I think it will be the first time I can’t come back unnoticed.”

  “It bothers you, being noticed?” Tony asks.

  “I don’t know that it bothers me, Tony. It’s not as though I am a player on the national soccer team. That would be trouble for me. Those guys can’t take a drink of water without people fighting for the glass afterwards. I think it will be odd to return this way, that’s all, especially considering how it was that I left Romania.”

  “Kicked out for sucking too much blood?” Tony smiles at the younger man.

  “A joke about Dracula. That’s good, Tony. I’ve never heard anything like it.”

  Tony lifts his glass of orange juice to Petrescu, toasting the successful sarcasm.

  “Does Canadian hockey mean anything in Romania?” he asks.

  “It’s a game. That’s what means something. I won a very important game, and to Romanians being the best at any game is what matters the most.”

  The young hockey player’
s father sits on the other side of the Cup, in the window seat of Tony’s row. On his chin he wears a manicured goatee, midway in its transition from black to grey. In the airport he had not said a word in English, had never addressed Tony, but now he leans across the trophy and looks Tony in the eye.

  “Romanians are masters of all games,” he says, slowly and with a growing smile. He waves down a passing steward and orders his first of many transatlantic drinks. “I am master of all games.”

  When he says this, Diana sighs loudly and closes her book.

  “Master of all games,” she repeats, rolling her eyes. “That’s good, Miki, play the foreigner for our new friend. You know, we’re in an Italian airplane, and soon we’ll be over the ocean. Who gets to play the exotic foreigner then?” She leans her body forward a few inches and addresses Tony. “He works for a department store in Montreal. He is a master of nothing. He is a master of talking about being a master.”

  There is a brief exchange between everyone in Romanian. It is not in the least heated, more bored than anything else, and at the end of it, Diana sighs again and pulls a silky black mask from her seat pocket. She fits it on her eyes, pulls a blanket up over her shoulders from her knees and collapses sideways against her mother’s shoulder. Dragos watches her and makes an attempt to adjust the blanket for her, to bring it more securely over one shoulder. She bats his hand away blindly and says something decidedly affectionate. The two of them laugh, and Dragos turns back to Tony.

  “For me,” the older man begins again, “the very act of living is the playing of a game against the greatest opponent. So, we meet then. I am Nicolae Petrescu-Nicolae. Call me Miki. Everyone does.”

  “That’s a lot of Nicolaes.”

  “Everyone of a certain generation in Romania has Nicolae somewhere in their name. We are also lucky enough to have it also as a family name, though. Some, like my son, have chosen to use only the first last name. It makes it easier to fit on his hockey sweater. This is what he says.”