The Withdrawal Method

by Pasha Malla

  Timber's bicycle was the sort he imagined peasants riding in China: handlebars like the bow legs of a geriatric cowboy, horn wheezing with the tobacco-ravaged voice of the same cowboy's wife, three gears that sent the chain fumbling and clattering around each time they were adjusted, and a seat mounted on rusty springs that absorbed neither the shock from the road nor the weight of its cargo, Timber.

  As he made his way down the driveway and out into the streets of the town, Timber thought proudly about how he was a cyclist, a word that to him conveyed something classy and nineteenth century and southern. Those other racy types who hogged the road in shorts of Lycra, aerodynamic helmets, gloves, pointed shoes clipped into pedals the size of tic tats, Timber called bikers. The bikers' bikes were named Cliffjumper or Roadzilla and boasted hundreds of gears that slid digitally from one to the next. Instead of wheezy horns the bikers' bells chimed clear and true as ringtones; their seats were padded gel.

  Mr. Barry Parker was a biker - a biker and a divorce lawyer and bonking The Ex-Wife. He had also replaced Neil's humble two-wheeler with a gleaming new twenty-one-speed featuring front and rear RockShox. Neil didn't even like mountain biking, Parker - what an idiot. But just as Timber thought this, in the pale light of the day's first sunshine as he emerged from his subdivision onto the major road through town, Barry Parker himself went rocketing by. Timber ducked his head.

  If Neil were his son, thought Timber, would Mr. Barry Parker think of putting stickers on his ice-cream tub magpie helmet? Would he sand off the eyeholes for fear of sharp edges? Probably not. Instead Timber imagined Parker out in the garage oiling his hundreds of gears, waxing his frame, pumping his tires. And Neil would be alone, stabbing ragged holes into an ice-cream tub that the poor kid could barely see out of, and then retreating to the zillion-bit video-game system that his biker father had bought as a surrogate for love. Would Parker tell Neil stories of boyhood glory at bedtime? Would he ride his bike across the country for his cancersurvivor son? He wouldn't. Neil would feel neglected and sad.

  Timber kept on, trundling round the bend at the strip mall with the office of Dr. Sloan, whose waiting room Sports Illustrated magazines had introduced Neil to Lance Armstrong in the first place. At the traffic lights the bikers were waiting as though they were the start line to a race. Parker balanced among them without putting his feet down, twisting his front wheel this way and that. They all knew one another, nodding, smiling and joking, admiring one another's bikerly accoutrements. Timber hung back, watching, hiding.

  This was the point, waiting for the light to change, that Timber finally began to allow other thoughts to creep into consciousness. Operation Stoplight had begun six months ago, when Timber had been given a laptop, an email address (kittypuff@yahoo.ca), an identity (thirteen-year-old Tanya who loved emo but didn't like math), and an agenda: catch the sicko Ted Givens who was trolling emo chatrooms for young girls. They'd put him in touch via email with one of the other snares, a woman named Janet at sunshine_sara_xoxo@ canada.com, whose assignment was similar. Timber and Janet were to discuss tactics and provide each other support when needed. And so their correspondence had begun.

  But today was the day - for Tanya and Ted and Timber, at least. Janet was still working on Hassan AI-Taib, the sicko Sunshine Sara was trying to snare. Today Ted Givens thought he was meeting Tanya at four (after school) at the Mr. Submarine at the River Heights Shopping Centre. But instead of Tanya, Ted would meet a squad of police officers in riot gear hiding in the food-court bathrooms.

  What did Timber feel? Pride? Janet had sent him an e-card proclaiming MY HERO!!! and then some JavaScript fireworks. He had replied that only when they had the sicko behind bars would there be occasion to celebrate. Oh, but Janet wasn't hearing it. He had done amazing work and was making the world a better place for everyone. She was so nice!

  Of course it was Janet who had coached Timber through his messages about how retarded it was to have so much geography homework when geography was just colouring in maps, and how the seventh grade had been waaaaaay easier, or what colour panties he was wearing, or how, yeah, he believed that ted.givens@xxx.com did indeed have splendid genitalia. It had been tough, for sure. But Janet was a peach, a real peach.

  Janet didn't know that Timber was into Barely Legals. Which was fine. Eighteen was fine. The law said so. But, still. There were times when Timber was enjoying the Barely Legals web site when he thought of Janet, and then he began to question if the girls were indeed eighteen as the site suggested. Any younger than eighteen and he'd be no better than Ted Givens. Some of them looked so young though. They were so pretty but so young. And then Timber would slam his laptop shut in a sweat and have to tuck his woody into his waistband and go outside for a walk.

  Timber watched the crosswalk sign change from man to flashing hand.

  When Timber had told Janet, in their first non-businessrelated email, that he was struggling to cook meals for Neil, she had sent him recipes for spaghetti sauce and meatloaf. The meatloaf had seemed complicated, but the spaghetti sauce, until Neil had vomited it everywhere, was exquisite. Then there were her messages, sometimes two or three a day: funny, caring, sad, conflicted. Timber and Janet began to share what they were telling their respective sickos, the humiliating, disgusting things. But it was okay. It was for a good cause, maybe the best cause of all. Nothing they told the sickos was real.

  Over Instant Messenger Timber told Janet everything - about his work, about his son, about his life. And Janet did the same: she was divorced too, but with no kids. She had a dog named Barney and joked about her weight, although Timber hated that. Who cares? he wrote. Also Janet liked reading and Frisbee.

  Timber was supportive, and Janet was supportive, and it was really great. Meanwhile, the Barely Legals were bookmarked on Timber's browser and at 5:ol p.m., right after signing off with Janet, he'd hit the page for the daily update. His favourite Barely Legals were Grace and Sari. Once Grace and Sari had done a shoot together and Timber had for a while archived the images in a folder on his computer named Taxes 2003, and then one day panicked and deleted them and obliterated any trace of anything and stayed off the site entirely for five whole days.

  After six months, Timber had got to know Ted Givens nearly as well as Janet, almost felt sorry for him, certainly felt sorry for his wife, his two teenaged sons, his ailing, rheumatic mother. Jail would not be kind to a man with designs on bonking a thirteen-year-old, real or not. Jail might even, as retribution, do some bonking of Ted Givens of its own.

  But Ted Givens was a sicko, and Timber was doing the right thing, he knew - a heroic thing, according to Janet, a thing of glory. Still, it remained a silent, secret sort of glory; even when Ted Givens would be revealed by the press, cowering under a hoisted suit jacket on his way to trial, the man who had unearthed this scurrilous creature, mastermind Timber B. Kentridge, would remain anonymous. No one would ever know about him, or Janet, or any of the other snares of Operation Stoplight scattered around the province; little would be made of their tireless crusade of e-deception for the greater good. Besides, would he want people knowing about the things he had written as a thirteen-year-old girl to seduce Ted Givens? And what if his own appetites were somehow leaked, despite how many times he cleared his Internet history and deleted every cookie in sight. He couldn't imagine Neil finding out about all that flesh and fluid. Or Janet.

  But look, the light was green and the cars were moving and the bikers were off like shrapnel. Timber eased off the curb and, wobbling slightly, made his way forward. He was halfway to work. The morning sun shone down palely from above. A few magpies went flapping across the sky.

  What would Neil be doing, right now, at school? Acing a test. Or gazing out the window of his classroom and thinking suddenly and for reasons beyond him, cosmic reasons, of his dad. Timber figured he would call Neil from wherever he ended up the following evening, the first stop on the Tour for the Cure - Quebec, maybe, if he could make it that far - and surprise him. Neil would get off
the phone and tell his mother, Dad's biking across the country! And The Ex-Wife, in the den of Barry Parker's yuppie condominium, everything monochrome and sterile, would look at Neil radiating pride and affection, and all The Ex-Wife could say would be, Wow. Lost in this fantasy, Timber went pedalling through a yellow light, and a car turning left had to swerve not to hit him. Timber waved: Wopes!

  Safely on the other side of the intersection, Timber thought again of Janet, shut away in an office just like his, alone at her computer. Even before knowing about the Tour for the Cure, before Timber had sent her a PDF downloaded from MapQuest with his route plotted out and a spreadsheet of potential sponsors, she had commended him as a real hero - but Janet threw that word around a tad too liberally. She said that the snares of Operation Stoplight were all heroes. He wanted to believe her. They were in this together, this business of busting sickos, and also maybe Timber was in love with Janet a little bit.

  Was Timber a coward? He had been a single man for only eight months. Dating so early would be a mistake, said the advice column in the local paper, "Ask a Woman," which The Ex-Wife herself penned and had been the reason they'd met in the first place, ten years prior, after Timber had emailed her asking why no one dates good guys any more and she had - perhaps rather unprofessionally, in hindsight - written back to suggest going for coffee, claiming to be tired of dating bad boys and wanting to settle down. Coffee!

  Timber had not been able to drink coffee since the divorce, but he had emailed "Ask a Woman" from a phony address, and "Ask a Woman" had published the letter with the suggestion of waiting a bit longer before jumping back into the throes of courtship. But hadn't The Ex-Wife moved on even more quickly, bonking Mr. Barry Parker while still married? Her moving on had been pre-emptive. If computers could reduce everything to zeros and ones, why wasn't life so easy? Zero, zero, one, zero, one, one: plug something in, get something out, an answer, simple. Timber slowed at a Stop sign, sat there contemplating this while a pickup went by in front of him, the goateed driver inexplicably giving him the finger.

  Well, thought Timber as he pushed off, maybe when he came back, victorious, he could track Janet down - like, physically. He'd find her lP address somehow and locate her with a blip on a GPS that meant: Janet. He would go to where the blip was and fling the door to her office open and announce, I'm back! Oh, god, she would say and she would be beautiful, not too thin, healthy, with her T-shirt bulging slightly where her bra strap carved a channel through the skin of her back, and she would tell him, I've been watching you on TV. Timber would shrug: It was nothing for a father who loved his son. Janet would say, Now everyone knows what a hero you are, and Timber would shrug again. They would lock eyes and Timber would take Janet in his arms and hold her close: Hello, Janet, at last. Or, better: Move into my duplex with me, Janet, let's make a life together, I love you.

  Or maybe he could just call her sometime. Either way.

  Regardless, here Timber felt a longing to be - what? Someone else. Someone who shone beyond the Internet, in the real world. Who was that famous hero-slash-romantic, that Spaniard? Don Quixote? Yes, no, but Don Quixote was someone else entirely, wasn't he, and goddammit wasn't Timber always getting these things wrong, people, history, facts, idioms, things that every other human being in the universe seemed to know innately and which time and time again caused him to hang his head in shame. Timber pedalled faster, harder, pumping his legs and whizzing through the rush-hour streets at a speed that seemed breakneck.

  He should have called her before, sometime - Janet. There had been a chance once, when she had hinted at wanting to hear his voice and messenged him her cell number. But Timber said maybe that wasn't such a good idea. Something about professionalism or something. Oh, but wasn't that just his way, Timber thought as he signalled and made the turnoff toward Frog Hill, tiptoeing through life. When Neil had been sick The Ex-Wife had remained a pillar of strength, rational, while Timber trembled and wept nightly in the kitchen, collected Neil's hair in Ziplocs as it fell out in clumps around the house.

  Ahead loomed Frog Hill, steep. By now Timber's legs were pumping, the wheels turned, the bike creaked and rattled, the sky was blue, the sun shone down. He wasn't pedalling: he was stomping his feet. Starting tomorrow, he was going to ride his bike across the country. TV stations would get word of his plan and follow him along and at the end of every day they'd ask, Wow, how do you keep going? and Timber would look right into the camera, imagine all those people at home waiting for him to give their lives meaning or direction or something, anything - and Neil, held captive in the condominium of Mr. Barry Parker, his curly little head silhouetted against the glow of Parker's hi-def Tv, knowing that his dad was looking at him, that this was all for him - and Timber would shake his head slowly. Keep going? he would scoff and tell the world about Neil, about what a trooper his son had been, how he was the real hero. Not Timber. Timber was just doing what any good, loving dad would do.

  As he crested the hill Timber wanted Neil to know that everything was for him: the magpie helmet, the cycling, the purging of sickos, maybe bringing lovely, sweet, smart, generous and voluptuous Janet into the family but not as a replacement mother, regardless of how vastly superior she was to the original in every way. Even so, Janet would be good about it. She would be like a nice aunt whom Neil would grow to love and she and Timber would only bonk when Neil was at his mom's - kids don't need to hear that - and their bonking would be tender and soft and Janet would be kind even if Timber sploodged early on her tummy. And he'd never look at Barely Legals again.

  There had been nothing Timber could do while Neil shuttled bravely in and out of the hospital; he could only watch as every week the doctors pumped his son full of chemicals to burn away the black dregs of cancer in his body. But that was then! Here he was sailing down Frog Hill with the breeze blasting his face, hair rippling, on his way to what he knew would be one last, final question typed and sent to Ted Givens, a question that suddenly struck him as delightfully ironic after the number of times he had answered it himself: What are you wearing today? And then he would forward this information to the office of Operation Stoplight, who would inform their squad to look out for a middle-aged man in a black turtleneck and Dockers, or whatever, and when the fellow came sauntering into the Mr. Submarine they would nab him, pin him down at gunpoint, and just like that the world would be a better place.

  And tomorrow! Tomorrow would be the beginning of something special - a man and his bicycle, nothing flashy, just pure love and honour and dedication. Timber would even wear a Lance Armstrong bracelet. The Neil Kentridge XCanada Tour for the Cure, Operation Stoplight, Janet, they all became a harmonized hum in his brain, and thinking of these three very good things Timber spun his pedals backwards so something down there made that whizzing noise he enjoyed so much, and the pavement of Frog Hill zoomed by smooth and grey-black below, and gravity pulled him down, down, now at the bottom and the road starting to even out, flattening, and the sky above was a blue sheet slung arcing across the heavens.

  TIMBER WAS AWARE of a woman upon him, blubbering, with a run in her support hose. Another pair of legs stuffed into high-tops came shuffling into view, and from above them came a voice Timber recognized, a boy's British accent thick with phlegm: Cor, that's Neil's dad. The woman knelt down, reaching out but not quite touching Timber, hesitant, as though he might scald or infect her on contact.

  Are you, she managed, all right?

  The boy was mumbling something else now, something about Frog Hill, something about Timber being just like the frog and the coupe just like the truck, and now he was fumbling with a cellphone, flipping it open, the burble of it coming to life.

  The woman stood, smoothed her skirt, looked anxiously up and down the empty street. Timber closed his eyes. What was he supposed to be doing? There was a task, today, right now, that he was neglecting. He tried to think of what it was, what he could ask or tell these people, but only the most banal question seemed to come to mind. He thought
he'd try it anyway, and whispered, What are you wearing?

  The woman looked down sharply at him.

  Was this right? He couldn't think of anything else, so he willed his eyelids open and repeated, slowly, What. Are. You. Wear. Ing.

  What are you wearing, Mum. He wants to know. Go on, tell him.

  What am I wearing? the boy's mother repeated, her gaze tracing down over her power suit, noticing for the first time the run in her nylons, then down to the man splayed across the pavement, one leg at a funny angle, and bleeding.

  Timber whispered it again, What are you wearing?

  Almost before it was out, the woman was backing away and hissed, Get in the car, at her son, and she gave him a shove and there was a quick tapping of footsteps and doors slamming and Timber waited for the revving of an engine and a car speeding away. But it never came. He looked up and there in the front seat sat Rick on his cellphone and his mom had her head in her hands. Was she weeping? Why?

  Timber's body felt strange and cold, and here was the pain, coming in surges from his toes to the tips of his fingers. Everything throbbed in time with his pulse. He closed his eyes and here appeared Lance Armstrong. And here also was Neil, standing between his hero and his father, a great wheel around them. The boy gazed back and forth between the two men.

  Timber wanted to say, Come this way, son, but when he opened his mouth to speak nothing came out; he felt like a fish wordlessly blubbing away as it bobbed about its tank. Lance Armstrong stood beaming. Neil looked confused. But then Timber realized that it wasn't a wheel at all, but a web, and Lance Armstrong held the opposite end of the same flimsy strand of silken line as Timber, and Neil balanced precariously in the middle, tightrope-style, and they were working together to keep the boy from falling.