The Video Watcher

by Shawn Curtis Stibbards

  “I mean, the girl had these piercings,” Sadie said, shaking her head in disbelief.

  I shook my head too.

  Ricky Martin came on TV, and Sadie said how handsome he was. She loved how he dressed. Guys never dressed like that in Vancouver, and if they did, they’d be accused of being gay. She also said that he said the sweetest thing to this fan. When the fan asked him what his favourite type of woman was, the description he gave was exactly the fan’s description.

  “I mean, isn’t that so sweet?”

  “Sure,” I said.

  Her mother came in the room, and she and Sadie began to argue in Slovakian. I listened for five minutes, then lied and said that I wasn’t feeling well.

  As I stepped down the cement front steps, I thought, “And this is the girl I’m obsessed with?”

  Crossing Second Narrows that evening I looked to my right and saw below the dusk skies the downtown core, sparkling. The scene of it reminded me of a movie I’d seen when I was nine. It was about a stalker that kills this woman in Connecticut, and returns four years later to kidnap her son and the father’s new girlfriend. He takes the pair downtown and holds them hostage in this room under Grand Central Station. All the commuters passing through the station have no idea what’s going on under it. I didn’t remember much else about the plot but the images from the movie had stuck in my mind, probably because I’d been the same age as the boy. I’d watched in on the old TV that used to be in the den, one of those sets from the 50s, with the angled legs, and I remembered feeling cozy and safe in the house in North Van, in the suburbs, all the lights out and the room bathed in blue light from the screen, but excited by the idea that the city was out there. Waiting.

  Pacific Central, the building where Kris’s bus was arriving, used to be the Canadian National Railway terminal. As I pulled into its parking lot I noticed that the illuminated yellow letters on the station’s roof now spelled PACIFIC CENTRAL. Inside, the waiting room was brightly lit. The high gilded ceiling and the patterns on it looked to me about the same as when my grandfather had taken me down there and shown them to me. But the station clock and the skylight seemed to be new additions.

  I walked to the gate leading to the train platform—beyond the glass there were silver passenger cars—then headed for the far end of the station. A sign read “BUSES” and I stepped outside onto the platform. The air was cold out there, and even though it was summer, it felt with the dampness almost like fall.

  Back inside the station, I noticed a guy about my age alone on one of the benches, holding a khaki duffle bag on his lap. He wore a plaid shirt and hiking boots. He looked strong and confident. He returned my stare, and I looked away. The only other person in the room was a native Indian who was at the ticket booth.

  I wandered back to the other end of the station and seeing the washroom, went inside. I didn’t really have to use the toilet, but I slipped into a stall and clicked shut the door and squatted on the toilet seat. There was something about enclosed spaces that I found comforting. The three blue walls around me a sort of protection.

  I tried to urinate, but nothing came. Graffiti was scrawled into the paint in front of me:

  No more, immigration, No more!

  Die Racist Pig

  My little cock can go where big cocks can’t

  In my bum

  Fag

  Still squatting on the seat, I shifted my weight to my left hip and spreading my legs, set down my right hip. When I leaned forward, my ass spread under me—this is what they must do, I thought.

  While I sat there, a couple of men entered the washroom. One of them said something in a curt tone and I tried to hear the other’s response. Whatever he said was lost in the echo—maybe they weren’t even speaking English.

  Now there was the loud echoing hiss of a man pissing.

  I imagined what it would be like if the men started shaking the door, or threatening me, or if they came in and raped me.

  Water rushed from a faucet. An electric dryer roared. Someone said something and footsteps faded. Then it was silent except for the churning of a ventilator.

  When I returned to the waiting room, a man who I thought was a security guard followed me. I stood by the curtained hole in the marble wall where the train luggage was unloaded on a conveyer belt, keeping the guard in the corner of my eye. I was waiting for him to approach me or speak to me.

  He cleared his throat and left.

  Aunt Kris described the “horrors” of her trip as I drove her and her “travel companion” Steve back to North Van—how every flight they took was delayed, how the toilets weren’t working, how passengers (some of whom were very elderly) weren’t even given blankets. She said that they didn’t have a chance to eat in Seattle, and that she and Steve were famished and wanted to eat before they got home.

  “Is Earl’s alright?” I asked as I turned onto the Georgia Street viaduct.

  “Fine. Anywhere. It doesn’t matter,” she said, pulling a package of cigarettes from her handbag. “Don’t look at me. This trip was enough to make anyone start again.”

  She rolled down the window and described the second leg of the journey. Back east she decided to take the train between New York and Washington. To begin with, she hated New York, way too many buildings, and the trip to Washington was horrible. She had gone to use the washroom and found that someone had written his name on the mirror in shit. And then—

  “Earl’s?” Kris asked when we pulled into the parking lot. She said this as if were unthinkable.

  “I thought you said it didn’t matter?”

  “But I didn’t think—Okay. Fine.”

  When we got inside there was a line-up. As we waited, Kris let out loud exasperated sighs and checked her watch compulsively. I tried to ignore this by studying the waitresses. All were very young and very blond, and all dressed in skin-tight black slacks and T-shirts. They moved earnestly about the foyer, taking reservations and seating people, and I remembered what Sadie’d told me about working here—they only hire pretty young girls and tell each of them that Earl’s is a stage and they must always be performing.

  When we were finally seated, Kris and Steve ordered white wine and asked me if I was drinking anything. I felt like beer, but said, “Water’s fine.” I didn’t want to invite one of Kris’s caustic comments about me becoming an alcoholic.

  While she and Steve argued about whether to have dynamite rolls or Caesar salads, I noticed that Steve was more tanned than when he’d left, that his linen shirt and his cotton pants looked new and that his blond hair was lighter. I flashed on an image of him mounting Kris in a hotel room and shook my head, trying not to think about it.

  A girl with dirty blonde hair and satin choker brought Kris and Steve the glasses of wine, and when she set the drinks on the table, I realized that I knew her. She had been in my English class in high school. She’d been interested in literature and writing poetry and hadn’t seemed like the type of girl who would work here. When she noticed me looking at her, she gave what seemed like a reluctant grin. But I wasn’t sure if she actually remembered me, or if it was part of ‘the performance.’

  After we ordered and Kris finished her first glass of wine, she ordered a second.

  “So, how’s your summer been? Have you been able to survive without your old Kris to take care of you?” she said, and laughed.

  “Fine.”

  “And school?”

  “I’m finished.”

  “It’s only June.”

  “I’ve been finished since April.”

  “And you didn’t take summer courses?”

  I didn’t know what to say, then remembered that as part of our agreement I was supposed to be working for her.

  “Wouldn’t Revenue Canada get suspicious?”

  She shook her head as if disgusted.

  “What?” I said.
<
br />   “Nothing.” Her face brightened as the waitress handed her a second glass of wine.

  When the girl had left, I said, “What? What did you want to say?”

  Kris shook her head and looked down, grimacing. “Nothing. I’m just curious.”

  Steve was leaning back in the booth, looking around the restaurant like he didn’t know what was going on.

  “What do you want to say?”

  Kris glared at me. “I think we know.”

  “What?”

  “Patterns—that’s what we are talking about, Trace, patterns.”

  I’d expected for her to make this vague insinuation about her sister and my father, and told myself to ignore the comment, to pretend that she hadn’t said it. But I could feel the jittery feeling come back into my arms, the feeling I’d been trying to push down for the past three or four weeks. Suddenly it seemed very dark outside the windows.

  Kris took a sip of her wine and twisted the bracelet on her left wrist. Steve checked his watch. He put his arm up over the back of the booth and stared off in the distance. The waitress with the choker passed our table.

  “Hi.”

  I must have sounded weird, because she looked startled. She quickly recovered the smile though and asked, “Is everything okay?”

  “Do you have martinis?”

  “Okay, I’ll bring you the list.”

  “I’ll just have a gimlet?”

  “Sorry—what was—”

  “A gimlet. Just gin and lime juice.”

  “Oh. Okay. I’ll ask the bartender.”

  After she left, Kris said, “Patterns, Trace, patterns.”

  When the gimlet arrived, I expected Kris to stop me, to tell me that I was the designated driver, or that I was becoming an alcoholic like my father. She didn’t.

  She let me order one gimlet after another.

  And when it was time to go home, we had to order a taxi, and she and Steve helped me into the backseat.

  The hour hand was almost at one. I raised my head and waited for the headache. When there wasn’t one, I sat up. I ran my tongue around my mouth and over my teeth. My teeth had a fuzzy film on them and my mouth was dry and tasted sour. Sometime in the night I had vomited, and there was a small stain on the rug by the closet. (There’d been red specks in it, and I’d panicked thinking that I was bleeding internally; before realizing that the specks were pieces of red pepper.)

  No one was in the kitchen. I poured myself milk using one of the McDonald’s glasses I had collected with my grandparents as a child; and leaning against the fridge, chugging the drink, I imagined me standing there as a scene in a film, like Malcolm McDowell drinking “milk-plus.”

  A cool breeze blew through the open patio door, and I put the glass in the sink and went outside.

  When I caught sight of Kris, she was lying on the chaise longue on the far side of the pool, tanning, her arm covering her eyes. Her mouth was half-opened, and her two top front teeth seemed more bucked than they normally did. As I sat on the grass beside her, I noticed that her breasts seemed larger than the last time I saw them, the nipples darker and more wrinkled.

  On the table next to her was a pack of Matinée Special Mild, a Danielle Steele novel, and a glass of white wine.

  “Hi,” I said.

  Squinting, she looked at me.

  “Oh, you decided to get up,” she said and covered her eyes again.

  “Aren’t you going to cover up?”

  A loud sigh. “If it bothers you that much.” She reached for her polo shirt. “I swear, you’re as prudish as your grandparents were.” she said and draped the shirt across herself. “Who would think that Jack was your father?”

  “Where’s Steve?”

  “Out. Golfing, I think. Are you going to mow the lawn later?”

  “If you want.”

  “That would be nice. How do you feel?”

  “Not bad. A bit weak.”

  “Now if you were Jack, you’d start drinking again.”

  “I can’t imagine that.”

  “Give it time.”

  I turned to the house, but then asked, “Where? Where would he start? At home?”

  “No. He never drank around your mother. He would go to some expensive hotel downtown and drink—the hypocrite. He would never pay for your mother to go first class or to stay in the penthouse when they went on holidays. But when he went drinking it had to be the best. There probably isn’t a good hotel downtown he didn’t stay in, the Hotel Vancouver, the Bayshore. All Jess had to do was call the most expensive hotels to find him. And he wouldn’t go dancing or to the dining room or the lounge—you know, what people normally do when they stay at an expensive hotel—he would just sit in his room and drink himself shit-faced, pass out, then wake up and drink some more. He could have done it in a Super 8.

  “Then two or three days later he would call Jess—I can’t believe I’m related to such a stupid woman—he would call and see if the waters were calm, and that stupid sister of mine would forgive him and he would come home and be nice for the next month or so, and then do it again.

  “And it always happened during a full moon—you should check if last night was a full moon—and Jess and I would make plans for that weekend, because we knew he was going to go on one of his benders, and we would go with other friends and on dates and then wait for him to call.”

  I waited for more.

  “Anyway, if you’re not going to say anything, please leave. I don’t want tan lines” she said, taking off her top.

  On Saturday Alex had another party. After an hour, I was bored and decided to go home.

  I was half out the door when I remembered my trench coat. Alex had put it in her parents’ bedroom. When I went in there to get it, I found Diane propped against the headboard, smoking a cigarette and drinking a glass of wine. The bedside lamp was on, and a bottle of red sat next to it.

  “Sorry. Don’t mind me. I am just taking a break,” she said, looking as if she were about to cry.

  “Do you want me to leave?” I said, backing toward the door.

  “No. It’s okay. Just come in. Shut the door behind you. I don’t want any of them in here.”

  I closed the door.

  “Here. Sit down.” She leaned forward to move my coat from the foot of the bed, and I sat down.

  She took a long drag off her cigarette, and held it in while studying me, then exhaled.

  “You must think this is terrible.”

  “What?”

  She waved her hand in a semi-circle. “This!”

  “You mean the party?”

  “The party. The kids—everything.”

  “Um, no. Not really. I think it’s kind of—interesting.”

  “Yeah,” she said, smiling wanly. “Interesting! That’s a good word. Letting my daughter and all her friends get stoned at my house—I bet your aunt wouldn’t be allowing this to happen.”

  I coughed. “At least you’re supervising them, right?”

  “Supervising. There’s another good word.” She took a drag of the cigarette and exhaled. “I like you. You make me feel better about myself. You make me feel like I’m a responsible adult.” She picked up the wine glass. “She raised you?” she asked.

  “Who—Kris?”

  Diane, taking a sip, nodded.

  I shook my head. “I was with my grandfather. Until he got sick a few years ago.”

  “Is he in a home now?”

  “No—both of them are dead.”

  “Here, do you want some? Sorry I don’t have another glass, but just take a sip from the bottle.” She held it out to me.

  “No. Really it’s okay.”

  “No. Drink some. It will help you keep those demons at bay. You’re making me feel like some kind of alcoholic.”

  “What do y
ou mean?” I said.

  “Drinking alone, you make me feel like some kind of alcoholic.”

  “No. The other thing.”

  She looked at me confused.

  “Demons,” I said.

  “Oh! The demons,” she laughed. “You know—those pesky thoughts. Those voices telling you you’re nothing. Your husband climbing into bed with your sister, your daughter’s a slut—don’t you hear those voices?”

  I quickly shook my head.

  “Of course not,” she said, sounding almost bitter. She took a drag off the cigarette.

  A boy outside the door yelled, “Ozzy’s god!”

  “So… are you and Alex sleeping together?”

  “Uhh…”

  “Never mind. Don’t answer. I shouldn’t have asked. It’s really none of my business. I think it’s great Alex is going out with you. You’ll certainly treat her better than a lot of guys. Some of the people at this party.” She shook her head.

  “And if the two of you are having sex—no—please don’t say anything. I know Alex is responsible and she’s using protection, so I’m not worried. Though I think it a bit strange that a guy your age wants to hang out with all these kids.”

  She drained her glass of wine and refilled it. She offered me the bottle.

  This time, I took it. I took a big drink and handed it back to her.

  “No. You finish it. I shouldn’t have anymore. After all, I have to be the ‘responsible adult,’” she said, using her fingers to indicate the quotation marks.

  I took two large gulps, and finished the bottle.

  She got up and opened the door. I retrieved my coat and followed her. A group of kids stood near the door, and as we passed them, one stared at me. He had a “My name is” sticker on his T-shirt, and it said that his name was “Satan.” When I turned my back, one of them mumbled, “Motherfucker,” and I was certain that it was him.

  Though I’d spent the last week avoiding her, I found myself wishing Kris was home when I returned from the party. The wine hadn’t had much effect, and the house was dark and looked ominous set back from the road behind a row of hemlocks and towering spruces. I walked quickly up the driveway, and after two failed attempts, jabbed my key in the lock.