by Lynn Coady
So Wade tended bar at Goldfinger’s his entire first semester at university and quickly discovered that a) it was disgusting work and he hated it and the woman who said aint looked so serious all the time because she was trying not to smile — she had brown teeth — and b) he didn’t have it in him to spend three nights a week dodging both punches and vomit ’til one in the morning (followed by another grisly hour of clean-up) while maintaining any kind of GPA to speak of.
The upside? There were drugs at Goldfinger’s. But that led to yet another downside of the job — the fact that most of his hard-won tips were going into the baggies he took home with him at the end of every shift.
It took a while for the obvious solution to sink in. In typical Wade fashion, there was no real eureka moment — he simply noticed one day that a great many of his friends — and mere acquaintances even — had come to rely on him for hash and other illicit sundries. His connection at Goldfinger’s, a middle-aged paranoiac coke-addict named Ivor who acted as bouncer in addition to his other, more underground activities, mentioned one evening that if Wade “had any kind of brain on ya,” he might think about charging his friends a percentage.
And the moment he did was the moment he realized he was crazy to keep tending bar three nights a week.
By second year, Wade was in business.
07/31/09, 10:23 p.m.
And so they party that year, our boys. God love the little fellas, how they party. They bond intensely during those pothead philosophy rap sessions — Cheech & Chong meets Plato’s Symposium — and consider one another geniuses. They admire and look up to each other, but at the same time harbour their own secret senses of superiority, which keeps them from being too resentful of the others’ particular gifts. And they intuit this — that they have one another’s respect, but not too much, not enough of it to lead to jealousy or outright emulation. They are each their own man — and, in some kind of shared psychic acknowledgement, each has been deemed worthy of the other’s friendship.
They are often seen together as a group, but they pair off just as often too. Because Wade and Kyle have their shared hometown history, they make up one side of the coin, so Rank and Adam come to be the other. Rank and Adam are one of those superficially unlikely-seeming friend-pairings that eventually make a paradoxical kind of sense — in accordance with the eternal principle of “opposites attract,” one can only suppose. Rank’s big-mouthed bruiser alongside Adam’s introverted aesthete are sort of complementary — they click. They tone down what’s most provocatively stereotypical about each other. Just as Rank’s fellow gland-cases no longer compete to hurl the weedy Adam out of windows, classmates and profs are no longer as quick to dismiss Rank, for all his overgrowth, as a special-needs, Andre-the-Giant goon.
It’s a fact that his association with Adam causes Rank to consider that he, Rank, is perhaps a smarter person than he has given himself credit for all these years. People consider Adam deep, if only because he never wastes words — he’s not a bullshitter like Kyle, a smart guy who nonetheless believes the only path to profundity is to run off at the mouth until something intelligent inadvertently emerges. Adam just doesn’t talk if he doesn’t have anything real to say. There are people in their circle who find this annoying, and unnerving, and Rank was for a while one of them, but now he can’t help but think that there’s an enviable confidence in Adam’s zipped lip. He’s not trying to impress anyone. Which is a singular thing in a community of twentysomethings.
So when Adam opens his mouth to pronounce, a part of you trembles, thinking: Oh hell, he’s going to start quoting Kierkegaard or something and I’m going to have to nod a lot and then maybe pretend I have to go to the bathroom. But Rank found he never had to do that. Rank found he could keep up.
Like the talk they had on the way to the liquor store after Rank had walked out on one of his playoff games, thereby pretty much annihilating his academic future. Rank had gone directly to find Adam because he knew Adam would be the only guy on campus who would not realize that he should be utterly appalled and horrified by what Rank had done. You don’t, of course, leave the arena in the middle of a playoff game. Nobody does that. It’s not conceivable. But Adam could be relied upon not to grasp this principle quite as keenly as the other guys in Rank’s acquaintance. Which meant that they could just talk about what Rank had done as if it had been a rational, measured decision as opposed to the cataclysmic middle finger to his future — and his current, quasi-respectable college boy existence — that it was.
“Coach was a dick,” explains Rank.
“Right,” says Adam. “But you’ve been saying he’s a dick all year. Aren’t they all dicks?”
“No,” says Rank. “My high school coach wasn’t a dick.”
“So why is this guy a dick?”
“My high school coach would practically stop the game if a guy even got checked. Whereas Francis figured I should be an enforcer. He put me out there to bash the shit out of guys and I wasn’t gonna do it.”
“Isn’t that part of the game?”
“Yeah, it is,” says Rank after a moment. “It’s everybody’s favourite part of the game. So I quit.”
“I still don’t get why you quit now, though. If you knew it was part of the game.”
“It’s like I said, my high school coach coddled us. He was a social worker. I thought I could just keep my head down here and play defence like I did in school. And, you know, I’m good, so the coach gets pissed off but I figure he’s not going to kick me off the team for neglecting to maim people as I was clearly born to do.”
Adam just keeps quiet now — listening.
“Anyway, we’re losing, is the problem. We’re sucking hard. And Francis is practically bashing his head against the wall at half time. And he’s got his eyes closed like he’s praying to Jesus and he’s saying: I’m so sick of having pussies on my team. I’m so sick of trying to coach a bunch of goddamn pussies who don’t even have the balls to get out there and punish those bastards. And then his eyes pop open and he bulges them at us like he’s going to pick up a sledgehammer or something any minute and he barks: I want you to put up your hands. Who hasn’t fought all season? I’m fucking serious. Who hasn’t got out there and really slammed someone? And of course he’s glaring right at me, because I’m conspicuous, right, like he saw me at the beginning of the season and he’s been thinking I’m going to crush everything in my wake. But I haven’t, no matter how much pussy talk I get from Francis — and I’ve been getting a lot of it, Adam, and I don’t give a shit. And so he’s looking at me and we’re both aware of this.”
“Wait,” says Adam now. “Why not?”
“What?”
“You said it was part of the game. So I don’t understand. Why not?”
“Why not what?”
“Why don’t you want to be an enforcer?”
They are trudging down the hill on their way to the liquor store and Rank stops walking at that moment and he pulls down his scarf so Adam can look him full in the face. Adam finds a patch of ice and deliberately slides a couple steps like a little kid would, until he notices Rank is just standing there on the sidewalk waiting to tell him something.
“Because I could kill a guy, Adam.”
Adam’s jaw actually drops. Rank can’t help but feel affection for him — he’s not like anybody else on the planet. He doesn’t possess the same frames of reference.
“Seriously?” says Adam.
“Yeah, seriously. Or give him brain damage. It’s a very easy thing to do.”
“But that’s unconscionable — that he would want you to do that.”
“Yes — thank you!” exclaims Rank. “But it’s like people don’t really believe in it. They think death is . . . like a dream. Like it’s something out of stories. They don’t realize it’s . . . always . . . right fucking there. Just hovering over everything we do. It’s always waiting for an opening, and this coach, Francis, he’s there dying to let it loose.”
Adam o
pens his mouth but instead of saying something, starts walking again, crunching snow. Rank follows him.
“OK — go on,” says Adam.
“Well, since he’s looking at me, I have to put up my hand, right? I can’t just whistle a tune and pretend I didn’t hear him or whatever. So it’s just me and a couple of other guys, the captain and the goaltender, but it’s pretty much all about me at that moment because I’m the meathead, right?”
“Right,” says Adam.
“So that’s when he says it: Tonight’s the night, boys. You either fight tonight or you leave right now.”
“Was he looking at you when he said it?”
“Well he actually followed up with: You got that, Rankin? So, you know, not a lot of ambiguity.”
“So what did you say?”
“I said: Bill Masterton. Ted Green. Ed Kea.”
“Who are they?”
“Those are the names of guys who got their heads bashed in playing for the NHL.”
“Did Francis know that?”
“Yeah, I assume, because at this point he goes completely apeshit. Face turns purple. It’s like he can’t breathe for a second, like he’s having a heart attack. And then all of a sudden he starts yelling in this high, really gross voice, like he’s trying to sound like an old lady talking to a little kid: Oh! Are we afraid we’re going to hurt ourselves out there? Are we worried we might get an owie? Big boy like you, Rankin?”
“So he thought you were worried about yourself.”
“No he fucking didn’t, Adam, everyone in the room knew I wasn’t worried about getting hurt myself, he was just trying to shame me into cracking skulls.”
“So what then?”
“So then intermission’s over and he drops the old-lady voice, and the purple goes out of his face a little — you know it’s all an act, really,” says Rank — interrupting himself when this revelation hits him. “On one level, yes it’s real, yes he’s really and truly pissed, but on another he’s just doing what he thinks he’s supposed to do.”
“I know what you mean,” says Adam, to Rank’s surprise.
“So he stands aside to let us back out onto the ice and he’s just like, All right boys, you have your marching orders. And he points at the other guys, the captain and the goalie and he’s like — you guys gonna kick some ass out there or what? And they’re like, yeah, sure, even though it’s idiotic. Just a stupid way of trying to save face. He’s telling the goalie to just grab the first guy that comes anywhere near him, no matter what he’s doing. We’re gonna go out there and create mayhem boys, he’s saying. We’re gonna show them well and truly who they are fucking with tonight. Is everyone clear on that? And all the guys are like, Uh-huh, yeah.”
“And what about you?” asks Adam.
“No, I’m just staring back at him because he’s been staring at me pretty much this whole time. So finally it’s: And what about yourself Mr. Rankin? Still worried you might get a boo-boo or are you ready to kick some ass? And I don’t say anything. And all the guys have stood up at this point, and they should be heading out onto the ice but they’re waiting to see what I’ll do. But I don’t say anything, because I’m waiting for that ultimatum again. Because we both know, if he restates the ultimatum, what’ll happen. I’m positive he knows. And he doesn’t have to do it — he could just say something like, Okay, get out there Rank, and I probably would’ve gone back out and played. So I’m leaving it in his court, right? I’m just not saying anything — I’m waiting. And I can see him thinking about it for just a split second — realizing that if he decides not to be an asshole, I’ll go back out there and play and not crack skulls, and he’ll be pissed off and we’ll lose, but we’re going to lose anyway, so big deal in the grand scheme of things right? But no — his pride gets the better of him and he decides to play the asshole card.
“And there it is: there’s the ultimatum. Because, he says, drawing it out, Anyone who’s afraid to get their knuckles bloody this evening can leave right now. And I have never been more serious in my life, gentlemen. There’s the door.”
“And what’d you do?”
“Stood up. Opened my locker. Grabbed my shit. Out the door,” says Rank. “Didn’t even take off my skates. Of course I had to skulk in the hallway for a while until everybody was back on the ice, because I couldn’t go anywhere in my gear. Kinda anticlimactic. Then I went back in and showered and came home.”
“That’s fantastic,” says Adam, holding open the door of the liquor store.
And Rank smiles as he crosses the threshold, contrasting Adam’s reaction to the sick groans of his disbelieving teammates. To them it had been an experience like watching that space shuttle explosion on TV a couple years back — seeing it combust before it even left the atmosphere, fall to earth in blazing chunks.
“What did the coach say then?” Adam wants to know.
“He was sort of beyond speech at that point.”
“You left him speechless,” says Adam. “That’s great.”
Of course, none of it is great — it is catastrophic, which is why Rank is now in the process of gathering a potpourri of liquors into his arms, upon which he will spend an allotment of money that was meant to last him well into the next month. But Rank is throwing caution to the wind on this day, in celebration and acknowledgement of his newfound status of Completely Screwed.
But — it’s hilarious. He doesn’t feel so bad. It’s clear now why his first instinct was to dig up Adam and tell the whole story to him before anybody else. He must’ve known that only Adam would react this way — only Adam would applaud. As Rank rings up his bottles, it occurs to him that this is the first time in their acquaintance Adam has given any indication of being impressed with Rank. Everyone else is impressed with Rank more or less immediately. But this is what it took to get Adam’s approval. Upending the contents of his life into a toilet and flushing two or three times for good measure.
“You know, I’m proud of you,” says Adam, once they are back outside and making their way toward the Temple. They both live in residence, but Kyle and Wade’s has by this time become their default destination after visiting the liquor store.
Rank is pleased to notice they are passing an enormous snowbank when Adam says this, ploughed to towering proportions along the edges of the drugstore parking lot. He takes the opportunity to shove his friend directly into it.
“You monster — you could’ve killed me!” complains Adam, emerging from the nerd-shaped hole created in the bank. “I could have cracked my skull and died!” he jokes, shaking snow off his glasses.
15
08/01/09, 9:59 p.m.
SYLVIE USED TO HATE IT when Gord and I would sit around Sunday afternoons watching the televangelists on the American stations, but now that she is dead and I am stuck here and we have no other means of entertainment in common, we can do this as much as we want. Unfortunately, the heyday of the televangelist is long over. No more does Jimmy Swaggart perform his loony goose step across the stage to the ecstatic howls of his arena-sized congregation. No more Jim and Tammy Bakker swapping earnest platitudes, directing bald-faced cries for money into the camera.
Sylvie refused to watch with us. She had a superstition of evangelicals. But she’d listen from the kitchen.
“Such crooks!” she’d cry after Jim and Tammy’s hundredth extortionate demand of their viewers. “How do they get away with it?”
“Americans will believe anything,” Gord explained.
But we watched Jim and Tammy only to feel superior. To see what lengths they’d go to — to what money-grubbing depths they would descend in His name. To laugh as Tammy Faye’s mascara turned liquid on her cheeks.
We watched Jimmy Swaggart, however, to feel awe — even though neither of us would ever admit it. We laughed at him the whole time — the shameless way he bellowed and bawled — but secretly, he amazed us. He believed, was the thing — you could smell the faith pouring out of his sweat glands. It seethed beneath his skin. Every on
ce in a while Gord and I would forget to laugh and just get caught up. Jimmy would be howling his holy ecstasy into the microphone, his audience would have devolved into a shrieking, blubbering human tide, and Gord and I would be silently riveted. God. God? God! The way Jimmy spoke the name made you realize that this was the way it was meant to be spoken — in awe and fear and dumb, sub-literate rapture. You should be shitting yourself, Jimmy conveyed, at the idea of the Lord. You should be rolling around on the floor in convulsions — it’s only right. It is appropriate. You should be swallowing your tongue in a seizure. The Lord was awesome and terrible. He was pure power. This was the Dude who smashed the planet between his hands and pushed up mountains, exploding them like zits between His fingertips. This was the Guy who turned the earth into one boiling ocean when He was finally fed up with all our crap. Who begat dinosaurs and the bubonic plague. This Guy. Him. And what’s worse, what’s most terrifying of all? Dude loves you. He loves you like a psycho girlfriend. Endlessly, obsessively, for no good reason. Dude will stalk you to the ends of the earth.
Sylvie had an instinct — a kind of papist radar that alerted her whenever Gord and I were getting sucked in. “Stop watching!” she’d call from the kitchen if we’d been silent before Jimmy a little too long. “It’s a cult! They just want your money.”
“Oh, Mother, it’s not a cult,” Gord would say as he came to. “It’s bullshit, sure.”
“It’s witchcraft,” said Sylvie, frowning in the kitchen doorway. It seemed to me Sylvie was seeing witchcraft everywhere in those days. She had recently returned from a Catholic women’s retreat where she had been taught to identify as witchcraft pretty much everything that was a) potentially more influential than Catholicism, and/or b) something people enjoyed doing. She’d arrived home vowing to never check her horoscope again, for example, or put her feet up in front of the soaps.
“Don’t let him watch that,” Sylvie would say to Gord, referring to me, her one and only son.