Seeing Red

by Shawn Sutherland

  I halfheartedly smile and then give him a quick nod before exiting through the doorway and down the stairs and back out into the darkness.

  TWENTY

  Vanessa is a masseuse who stays open past midnight in case somebody desperately needs a massage at 2AM. That’s the official story anyway. In actuality, she moonlights as a prostitute. Andre introduced me to her one night when I was loaded and I’ve met up with her two or three times since. Vanessa often talks about going to law school, so we do have that in common. One time, we spent over half an hour discussing the admissions test and I even offered to help her study for it. Protocol says you have to book appointments in advance, but tonight I can’t call ahead because I don’t have her phone number. Still, I figure it’s worth a shot—she knows who I am by now. And I could really use the company. The streets are dead quiet and the only sound I hear is the echo of my own footsteps.

  Twenty minutes later I find myself standing in front of her massage parlour where there’s a conspicuous guard dressed in black monitoring the door. Unlike the short, round bouncer who kicked me out of Lee’s Palace, this guy is an absolute giant; he wears a black skullcap and has long hair like a pro wrestler.

  “Hey. I’m here to see Vanessa.”

  “One second.” He pulls out a phone and pushes the redial button. “Is she expecting you?”

  “No. But she knows me.”

  “Your name?”

  “Reid.”

  He nods and waits for the person on the other end of the line to answer. “Hey. A guy named Reid here to see you? Uh huh. Yeah. Okay.” He closes the phone.

  “Can I go in?”

  “No. She’s not expecting you.”

  “You told her it was me?”

  “Yeah, I told her it was you.”

  “And she’s still not gonna let me in?”

  “No. You gotta call beforehand.”

  “I left her business card at home.”

  “Well, call ahead next time. Now keep walking.”

  Nothing is going my way tonight—not with Natalie, not with Caitlyn, not with anything. It’s getting colder outside and I’m still a long way from home. Vanessa is my last refuge.

  “Let me talk to her. Can I use your phone?”

  “No. You have to leave, man.”

  “It’ll only take a second.”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I told you to fuck off.”

  “Come on, just lemme talk to her. . . .”

  I slowly reach for his phone, which he interprets as a threat, and so he shoves me in the chest with his right hand. The force catches by surprise and knocks me off balance; I fall backwards to the ground and my head smacks against the pavement. For a moment I lie motionless on the sidewalk with the whole city spinning around me. Then I touch the back of my skull and feel a small amount of blood oozing through my hair. While still lying flat, I pull my hip flask out of my pocket and take a big mouthful of gin. When I try to stand up again, my legs wobble like broken stilts. City life is hard on the knees.

  “Christ, man,” I say. “Relax!”

  “I’m not babysitting you all night. Get the fuck outta here.”

  “Wait. I’ll go. I just have one more question.”

  “What.”

  “Do you know where that after-hours club is? The one on Queen? I’ve been there before, but I don’t remember the street number.”

  “Can’t tell you.”

  “Why not?”

  “You might be a cop.”

  “Do I look like a cop?”

  “Even if it’s only a small chance, it’s not worth the risk.”

  “I swear I’m not a cop. Just tell me!”

  “Not worth it.”

  I hold up my hip flask. “I’ll give you some gin?”

  “No.”

  “Ah, you’re fuckin’ useless.”

  With that, I awkwardly stumble away. The cut on the back of my head is bleeding slightly, so I rub a little gin on it to prevent an infection, but that only worsens the burning. I continue walking for a full city block before I suddenly realize that Andre would have Vanessa’s phone number. I can just get it from him. I call Andre and he happily gives me her number which I promptly program into my phone; I should’ve made note of it before, but for some odd reason I didn’t like the idea of having a prostitute on my contact list.

  I dial Vanessa’s number and wait for her to answer. I have to call twice because she screens her calls.

  “Hello?”

  “Hey. This is Ethan.”

  “Oh, hey, how’s it going?” she says. She seems to be feigning recognition—I can tell because it’s something I do all the time. “Are you looking to make an appointment?”

  “No. Actually, I was trying to get in there a few minutes ago, but your stupid doorman manhandled me.” I notice I’m slurring my speech and I hope she can’t tell. “He pushed me around and totally knocked me over and now I’m bleeding. You should really do something about that guy.”

  “Oh, honey, I’m sorry about that. Why didn’t you call me earlier?”

  “Well, I forgot to bring your business card and that asshole wouldn’t let me talk to you. I’ve never had a problem getting in on short notice before. I just don’t think it’s fair, y’know? I shouldn’t be treated like that. I mean, I’ve been a good customer and—”

  “I know you have, hun.” Again, I don’t think she actually remembers who I am. “But we’ve been having some problems with security lately, so the best way is to just call ahead. That way, this kind of thing doesn’t happen. Why don’t you come by tomorrow?”

  “After tonight, I don’t think I ever wanna come back.”

  “Well, I don’t think that’s really fair to me.”

  “You should’ve remembered my name! I was gonna help you get into law school, remember? We talked about it for, like, an hour!” It’s then I realize I’m in the midst of a heated argument with a prostitute; I press the phone against my chest and lower my head, taking a moment to ponder how it all came to this. “I was gonna spend a lot of money in there tonight.”

  “How?” she asks condescendingly. “There’s a standard rate.”

  “I know, but I . . . I was gonna leave a tip—or something. Anyway, I think I’m just gonna take my money elsewhere from now on. So, goodbye, Vanessa. Good luck with law school.”

  I hang up the phone and take another shot from my flask. I feel staggeringly drunk. My internal compass is gone, my eyesight is blurry and dizzy, and balance is eluding me. It’s like being on auto-pilot: you can still walk and talk, but your mind is no longer in control. It follows you along like a spectator, watching you move and speak and act in the third-person. Before I know it, I’ve walked for more than half an hour and have no idea where I am. Taxis speed past me in both directions and I need to hail one, but, opening my wallet, I see I only have a ten-dollar bill and some pocket change left—not nearly enough to make it home. Spotting a park bench, I take off my jacket and roll it up into a ball and tuck it underneath my head like a pillow. Even though I’m in the middle of a bustling city, surrounded by millions of people, I can’t help but feel utterly alone.

  TWENTY-ONE

  Rachael never criticized me for drinking. Even though she had seen me “drink my weight in alcohol” on more than one occasion, she always accepted it for what it was. Maybe she saw it as a passing phase and nothing more, but she never raised the topic in conversation.

  Whenever the two of us drank together, I was always happy and content to stay indoors. I remember sitting cross-legged on the carpet and playing beer caps. I remember curling up on the couch and laughing hysterically at the British version of The Office. I remember passing an acoustic guitar back and forth and showing each other different songs and chord progressions. I remember her teaching me how to pla
y a major scale on the piano by crossing the thumb underneath the fingers. I remember taking silly black-and-white photos with my webcam. I remember her convincing me to try a gin-and-tonic for the first time and how much I hated it. I remember conversations that lasted until three o’clock in the morning, long after everyone else had fallen sleep. In retrospect, when she was around, I didn’t even need the alcohol.

  I’m lying on a park bench and staring up at a few pale stars in the night sky. It’s quiet here, but I know I’m not going to fall asleep. Not ready to pass out just yet. I stand up and gather my jacket and then continue to stroll aimlessly through the side streets, eventually passing a small church courtyard in the midst of a residential area. Three girls in their early twenties dressed like goth-hippies are crouching on the grass beside a pile of rocks and bricks and stones. They notice me as I amble past and one of them calls out, “Hey, do you wanna help us build our cathedral?”

  Curious as to what that means, I approach them. “What cathedral?”

  “Our cathedral.” She points at the rocks on the ground and I realize they’re positioned like Lego blocks to create a miniature model of the old church that stands behind us.

  “I don’t know if I’d be much help. I gotta confess . . . I’m pretty high right now.”

  “Why, what’re you on?” another girl asks.

  “Mostly booze, a little codeine, some . . . Coffee Crisp.”

  A brief hush falls over the girls, but they’re not judgmental. They casually accept my drug use for what it is.

  “So what’s your name?” the first girl asks. She wears thick black eyeliner and her hair is dyed dark purple, which matches well with her gloves, piercings and tattoos.

  “I’m Ethan.”

  “No, no, no!” she says. “That’s your Christian name! It was given to you before you were born by people who knew nothing about you. What’s your real name?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, my name is Swan. This here is Dive and her name is Hype. Your name should reflect your true self. Who you are on the inside, regardless of race or religion or what society thinks of you. It isn’t given to you. You pick it. Anything you want.”

  “Oh. Okay. So why ‘Swan’?”

  “I used to be really into Greek mythology, right? And one time I read this story about how Zeus used the form of a swan to seduce and rape Leda. From that point on, I decided to go by Swan.”

  “How could a swan rape someone?” I wonder aloud.

  They ignore my question. “I chose Dive because it’s the name of my favourite song,” says the second girl.

  “I see. And Hype?” I ask.

  “She’s a hypersomniac,” says Swan. “It means she sleeps, like, twelve hours a day.” I glance over at Hype and she yawns on cue. “But enough about us! Come on! What’s your name?”

  I consider the question a moment, trying to think of a single word that defines my true self, my entire being, my ultimate purpose on this earth. But nothing comes to mind.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Don’t worry. You’ll know it. Eventually,” Swan assures me. Then she squats down and continues working on the model cathedral. “We’re not from around here, you know.”

  “We’re from the West Coast,” says Dive. “We travelled across the whole country just to be here.” Then she tells me about their long trip and how they rode the rails all the way from British Columbia, stopping at various towns and making money by busking and selling jewelry they made themselves. It must be nice to have that kind of freedom, to be able to make a living on the road. I ask them why they’re in Toronto and they tell me they’re here for a spoken word festival.

  “Spoken word?”

  “It’s poetry,” says Swan. “Lyrical freestyle.”

  “I’ve never heard of it before.”

  All three gasp in disbelief. Then Hype stands up suddenly and launches into a verbal stream of consciousness, enunciating each syllable with a rhythm and a flow as if it were set to music: “You must be blind, what will it take you to see? This confusion, collusion, and conformity? Like a celebrity on the screen surrounded by whores, with a cold sore mouth and an unnamed source. Delusion, contusion, that’s affecting my brain. An appetite, a hunger, that could never be tamed. What can I do, to make you believe—”

  “Alright, I get it,” I interrupt. My mind is too murky to follow along and the multi-syllabic words hurt my brain.

  She ignores me and continues: “—the stress in this mess is only somewhat conceived, by a gov’ment that’s supposed to comply to the need—”

  “Aw man, you gotta stop!”

  “—of the people they ignore to a narrow degree, as a threat to their nest but what we can achieve, if the limit is to live it in the realm—of possibility.”

  Having finished her poem, she stares at me a moment, the two of us blinking at each other in unison. Then she quietly slumps down with her legs crossed and calmly carries on with the construction of the model cathedral.

  “So yeah, that’s spoken word,” says Swan.

  “Neat,” I reply.

  “You should come see us tomorrow night,” says Dive. “We’re all performing at this place in Kensington Market. It’s us and, like, eight other people. They’re all really good too.”

  “I would, but I’ve . . . uh . . . got a lot of stuff to do.”

  The girls look disappointed, and a long pause ensues. Then Swan says ominously, “You can’t keep running like this, Ethan. You can’t.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You’re running! From us. From the truth. From your dark past. From everything!”

  “What makes you think I have a dark past?”

  “Oh, come on! It’s so obvious. Only someone who’s trying to punish himself would get high on drugs and then stumble into a church at two o’clock in the morning.”

  “You called me over!”

  “Because you need to be saved!”

  “From what?”

  “From yourself. From society. From that dark past of yours. You don’t even know your real name!”

  “I don’t have a dark past!”

  Swan glares at me, skeptically. “Who are you trying to convince, huh? Us? Or you?”

  “Look! He’s blushing!” says Dive.

  Hype begins to chuckle under her breath.

  “Alright! Fine! Maybe I do have a dark past! But . . . fucking poetry isn’t gonna change that.”

  “Did he just say ‘butt-fucking poetry’?” Dive asks.

  “No, I meant—”

  “Spoken word,” Swan corrects me. “It’s butt-fucking spoken word. And it’ll change your life, if you let it.” Approaching me, she runs her fingers through my hair and gently brushes her hand down the side of my cheek, all while staring straight into my eyes as if she’s trying to put me into a trance. “Put aside the past, Ethan. And come see us tomorrow night. In Kensington Market. Five-dollar cover. Three-dollar beer. Domestic only.”

  TWENTY-TWO

  My phone vibrates. It’s Doc calling to inform me they’re on their way to the after-hours club. It doesn’t have a name, but we call it the “White Room” on account of the colour of the walls and the prevalence of cocaine. He reminds me of the address and I tell him I’ll meet him there in ten minutes. Then I hang up the phone and ask the three girls if they know how to get back to Queen Street and they point me in the right direction. I give them my thanks and wish them good luck with the spoken word festival.

  “You better come tomorrow!” Swan calls out to me. “Remember, you promised!”

  “I will!” I answer as I sprint across the road.

  “It’s your only hope!” she warns, stressing the last two words like a ghost in a Charles Dickens novel.

  You would never find the White Room unless you knew precisely where to look. There ar
e no lights, no signs, no noise. Nothing but an inconspicuous white door and a street number above the frame. Inside, however, is a different story: you can typically find about a hundred people smoking cigarettes, shooting pool and listening to live bands perform next to a fully staffed bar serving every kind of alcohol for a reasonable price until six o’clock in the morning. During prohibition, they would’ve called this place a speakeasy or a blind tiger and it would’ve been just as illegal.

  Before going inside, I sneak into a deserted alleyway around the side of the building and find an alcove to cower in. Then I unwrap the folded paper I bought from Andre to reveal a small mound of cocaine. I reach into my wallet and roll up my ten-dollar bill and use it to snort the drug into my nasal cavity. The instant euphoria briefly returns and I exhale in relief, but the emptiness is still there, stewing in the pit of my chest. I desperately inhale more of it in an attempt to recapture the exhilaration I felt earlier, accidentally spilling some of the drug all over my nose and upper lip. In frustration, I crumple up the paper and throw it against the wall and a small flurry of dust evaporates into the air. What a waste of money.

  I wipe my nose and mouth and return to the front of the building and tap on the door three times. Within seconds, I’m swiftly ushered inside by a tall man in black and led through several empty rooms until I’m brought to a desk where a young woman is collecting a cover fee. I pay her using the same ten-dollar bill before walking inside.

  Behind the curtain there are two pool tables, a smoking room and a long lineup of people waiting to use the bathroom, but the real party is on the second floor where a punk band is belting out a raucous version of “Something I Learned Today” by Hüsker Dü. A few stoners bob their heads in front of the stage while the rest of the patrons lounge on the couches and chairs that line the walls, which are decorated with thick purple drapes hung from the ceiling. You would never know it was an illegal bar from the inside: the security, the waitresses, the bartenders and the decor all bear resemblance to every other law-abiding establishment in the city. The only difference is, in here, we can drink and smoke and take drugs until sunrise.