The Adjustment League

by Mike Barnes

  Off to the side, the de-pierced girl has a hand over her mouth. “Tell him to stop groping you or you’re going to the Labour Board,” I advise her loudly, looking around the restaurant until the faces duck back down to their meals.

  “See this street?” We’re on the south-west corner, opposite Timmie’s. I look the wrong way, see Best Buy, FedEx. Snag jabs his raised hand the other way. “No, man, down Yonge. Towards the lake. This is Montgomery, man. Montgomery? This Post Office right here, Station K. Montgomery Tavern?”

  I shrug, palms out. In or out of school, History was always my worst subject.

  Snag shakes his head in disbelief. “They fought a battle here, man. The rebels. 1837. Pitchforks, clubs, a few guns against the militia. They tried to take it to Bond Head and the Family Compact. Sir Francis Bond Head. Fucker deserved to be run out of town just for his name. They gathered here and marched down to City Hall, demanding representative government.”

  I look down the hill we just walked up, trying to imagine what it might’ve looked like a hundred-and-eighty years ago. A dirt road? Through sloping woods down to a shining blue lake? It’s hard to block out the cars and jostling sidewalks. Hard to imagine anything very different.

  “Did they get it?”

  §

  “Ukiyo-e. How may I help you?”

  The girlish singsong, which some Japanese women keep well into middle age, mesmerizes me, it sounds like bird trills more than a telephone formula, so that I almost miss the name of the restaurant and lose the reason I dialled.

  “Could you hold for a second?”

  “Of course, sir.”

  Standing in my kitchen, hand over the receiver. Important to get this right. I’d hoped for a restaurant, but not the high-end sushi place four blocks up the street. A local job. More local by the day. I arrange it in my head.

  “It’s Dr. Max Wyvern calling. You’ve got a reservation for me this Friday?”

  A moment’s pause. “Yes, sir. This Friday, six o’clock. For two.”

  “I’d like to change that to four people, if it’s possible.”

  “It’s possible, of course. No problem. Four people, Friday six o’clock. See you—”

  “Just a moment, please. The other couple will be arriving early, a half hour ahead of us. I hope that’s no trouble. Their names are Nicholas and Simone. And, ah, there’s one other thing. It’s a little delicate.”

  “Delicate? If I can help…”

  “Nicholas and Simone—they may try to pay in advance, but don’t let them. This is my treat. And they may be a little shy about ordering ahead, on their own. So don’t even ask. Just bring them some wonderful drinks and appetizers as soon as they sit down.”

  “Best drink! Best appetizer! No problem!” Her excitement flits like a swallow down the line. We might be arranging a prom dress for the poorest girl in class. “It will be our pleasure!”

  Christ, will it ever.

  9

  “The Bone Dungeon,” Jared says. And watches while I print it in capital letters, pressing firmly, at the top of a clean page in his writing book. I underline it with his ruler and turn it around to show him.

  Lizard flick of tongue. He never looks more scared than when something’s pleased him, like he’s being set up.

  Our joint title definitely the high point for him. Always. The idea he supplies, which an adult prints cleanly and boldly. Everything after that, even the best parts, are anticlimactic step-throughs to justify the name of his creation. He already knows it, he visits and lives there, so it’s tedious to describe it in such halting, sketchy detail. Starting from the middle, wherever he finds himself, he moves forward tentatively, quickening if he spots something new. Backtracking reluctantly, usually at my request, to mark the trail for others.

  But no way he’ll start without the title. I learned that in an early session. Gave him all the reasons why it’s sometimes wise to hold off on titles, or fill in a working one, let the real one emerge from the story itself. Otherwise you could find yourself filling out an order you didn’t mean, programmed by your lead-off. He listened sullenly, skepticism thickening like a wall of scratched plexiglass that made his tiny, dock-eared, frown-lined face recede and grow indistinct.

  Mutual stubbornnesses squared off. Thirty silent minutes later, Lucy, humming nervously, led him out the door.

  the dungeon is made of old bones it has normal cave walls but long yellowish bones come down from the roof and up from the floor the bones in the dungeon turn to clear crystal over a long time eventually they become totally transparent when that happens the bones possess great powers someone who finds a clear bone and removes it carefully will possess great powers

  It takes us a fair while to produce this start. Jared speaking slowly, musingly, his voice sounding as faraway as it is, relaying what he sees as he moves about the Bone Dungeon. Back on the couch in the apartment, I fashion the disjointed phrases he transmits into simple sentences, trying to give them shape and order without changing the content, removing the capital letters and punctuation for him to add as best he can. Introducing new words to his vocabulary when they seem to do no harm to his meaning. Transparent. Possess.

  My hackles rise at crystal and powers. They seem game-fed. But Jared’s slowly-going-clear bones reassure me. A gamer, I feel sure, would opt for bones that blaze luridly.

  “How do you get out?”

  Jared frowns. We’re barely in.

  “How do you get through the bones?” I’m picturing something like a calcium thicket.

  “Follow the birds. The paths they make.”

  “What birds?”

  Apparently, Jared informs me sighing, besides the prisoners sent there, there are birds who reside in the Bone Dungeon, its only natural inhabitants. “Hollow” birds that can’t fly.

  “Do they have long necks?” I say, I don’t know why. To say something.

  “They don’t have any necks. But they have big heads.”

  We don’t get much further tonight. But I can feel the Bone Dungeon operating behind his worry lines. As usual, I wonder whether I’m teaching him or leading him down a garden path. I was the one who requested a dungeon. Decide, as always, it’s bound to be a bit of both.

  “Smells good, Lucy.”

  She looks up from the pot she’s stirring. Steam has turned her brown face the colour of red brick. I pick up cumin, garlic, a curry blend.

  “Is mainly chick peas. But I soak them myself. No cans. Tomato. Onion. Some eggplant.”

  “Is that tofu in it?”

  “No tofu. Paneer.”

  “I like paneer. I get it in Indian restaurants.” Used to get. “Matar paneer’s my favourite—peas and cheese chunks. I always thought it would be tricky to make.”

  She shakes her head, stirring. “Milk. Lemon. Cheesecloth. Half an hour, cheese.”

  “Oh yeah?”

  §

  Patrick is the name on my drug dealer’s mailbox and lease. And I’ve heard people buzzing up call him Skidder and Lump. But for some reason I can’t associate him with those names or any other. So I call him nothing to his face—same thing he calls me—and 303 in my head.

  He cracks his door. Pinkish eyes in peat puff.

  “Time to earn your keep. It won’t take long.”

  He scowls, but steps aside to let me in. Lingers a moment to check the hallway. What would he do if there was a uniform outside? Twizzler-thin, pallid and bleary-eyed, he has no words and only furtive glances for other tenants, puffs dope in the stairwell and even in the elevator, and buzzes in five-minute visitors day and night.

  “If you want to stay out of jail,” I said once, early on, “Why don’t you start greeting people, get some sun and grow a paunch, and throw the occasional dinner party?”

  “Why don’t you wear a toupee and get some dermabrasion?” he shot back. Scori
ng some points with me.

  Sweet rich funk inside. Caramel-coated straw on low banked embers. Hazy wisps and wraiths piddling about—morning mist on a pond. From speakers somewhere, a guy whining off-the-shelf rock. Electro-gear everywhere. In the living room, amid cushions, clothes, and takeout cartons, the largest screen, towers on either side of it but wired for the moment to a game console. Multi-armed alien frozen in mid-splatter, a shocked look on its face. An Obus chair in front of the screen, kidney-shaped supports at the lower back and between the shoulders. From his slouch down streets and corridors, 303 looks achey, semi-boneless. Like he’s having trouble holding himself up. Yet he’s in his twenties. What will he do at fifty-five? Seventy-five? Chiropractors might be the big winners in the wired world. A laptop on the only space not piled with dishes in the galley kitchen. Beyond, by the mattress on the bedroom floor, a larger model with the Apple logo.

  “What do you use in the bathroom?”

  “What is it you want?”

  “Just an idea of what carols some people are listening to.”

  “Carols?” He stares at the USB stick I hand him. “I loathe Christmas.”

  “So do I. It’s the Ebola of holidays.”

  “I’ll use the laptop in the kitchen. You actually want to hear this shit?”

  “Not if it’s the usual. ‘Silent Night,’ ‘Jingle Bell Rock.’ Just give me an idea of the playlist.”

  He goes through the kitchen into the bedroom, rummages under some clothes and comes up with earphones. Keeps fishing for something else. As he crouches, his pants slide down his skinny hips, treating me to gamer’s crack. He rises slowly, a hand on his lower back. Taking another step into the living room, I come to a telephone table. No telephone, but three large art books under a Finger Eleven T-shirt. Assassin’s Creed. World of Warcraft. Final Fantasy. A flip-through of Creed confirms the cover blurb: glossy drawings exactly as they appear in the game. Strange. You sit and look at a book of what you sit and look at on a screen. “Hearing any reindeer yet?”

  “Not going to,” he calls back. “These are JPEGs, not audio files. I’m going to open them on the Mac. The graphics card on this is shot.”

  Adjustments, arrangements. 303 and I are an arrangement. Each an arrangement for the other.

  I help you keep up with the wired world?

  You help me any way I need.

  I see. And for that you turn a blind eye.

  My eyes are working fine. I’ll tell the cops whatever they want to know when they knock on my door. When, not if.

  So what do I get then?

  I don’t call them tonight and I don’t evict you.

  All in place after a first night’s sniff. Easy as a one-handed download.

  A cleared throat. I turn and see 303 in the kitchen doorway. He shrugs, palms up. “I don’t get it. Someone’s homemade porn. So what? The dental set’s not my thing, but whatever. It’s pretty soft—”

  “Dental set? Let me see.”

  §

  The first picture shows a girl in a dentist’s chair. Twelve, maybe thirteen, with long blonde hair. Her eyes are closed, her mouth open slackly. Her head lolls to one side on the headrest. The photograph, rich and clear on the Apple, shows her from the waist up—her face and hair and the dental bib, her narrow shoulders, and her arms on the arms of the chair.

  Max’s chair. Dentist’s offices are generic, but I’m sure of it. The USB buried in Maude’s “Precious Things” box. Buried by whom?

  “Like I said, pretty tame,” says 303, somewhere to my right. “They get kinkier, but still. You want heavy, live-action shit, it’s a mouse-click away.”

  “This is closer than a mouse-click. A dentist just down the street. I can introduce you if you want.”

  A pause.

  “Like a real dentist, you mean? Real girls?”

  I glance at 303. Even a ghost gets whiter when it’s scared. He’s blinking long blinks, like he’s trying to wake up.

  “Real girl. Real minor girl. Take a look at her face. Does she look like she volunteered?”

  303 puts his hands up in a surrender-no-hassle combo. “Hey, man, your get-off is your business. Whatever. And our deal is what it is. But this sounds heavy maybe. I can’t have my name anywhere near it.” He’s still muttering as I turn back to the screen and click ahead.

  The next picture is of the same girl in close-up, her face filling the screen. Her head has been positioned to face the lens straight on. A plastic retractor has been inserted in her mouth, pushing her lips in four directions, exposing all of her teeth and gums. The rectangular grimace, wider than any natural laugh or scream could be, is reminiscent of Francis Bacon’s screaming popes, hugely baring their teeth while immobilized in a high-backed chair. Her eyelids are open a crack in this second picture, showing a seam of white sclera.

  It is the start of a long series of such photographs. Variations within the constant of a dentist’s chair. Is it the start? It’s the first picture encountered on this USB, but the pictures have no dates or titles, no indication of whether or how they might fit in a larger series of photographs. But the first two photos give the sense of something starting, a discovery made. A quick shot, perhaps on impulse, of an unconscious girl. And then—when no heavens fell, when no voice roared objection—a bolder and more deliberate arrangement of the same subject.

  With a mixture of sick apprehension and compulsion, a sour reeling sense, I click on the mouse to advance the series. 303 doesn’t say anything. Neither do I. What is there to say?

  Each woman is in the dentist’s chair. Since the chair reclines, the postures of the women range from halfway sitting up to lying almost flat. Most of the women have their eyes closed. The eyes that are open look glazed, unfocused, sometimes rolled back to show mostly whites.

  They range in age from pre-teen to late middle age. From girls as young as eleven or twelve to women who might be fifty-five or even sixty. The majority falls where it would with most men—between eighteen and forty, roughly. A few of the women are beautiful, most are pretty, and even the minority that would be considered plain have at least one feature that the photographer found attractive. It’s obvious what the feature is because, about fifteen pictures in, he starts undoing and removing pieces of clothing to reveal it.

  A blouse unbuttoned to reveal plump breasts in a bra. A skirt rucked up above shapely thighs. And then the same woman a few pictures later—with other girls and women in between—with a different skirt pushed up to her waist and her panties pulled down to above her knees, showing thighs and black pubic hair. A shot of slim ankles and bare feet with red toenails, the feet angled out and the legs parted. This shot of calves to toes fills the frame in clear focus, the plastic chair covering a blur behind them, but the photograph before showed the same woman reclining in the chair with her eyes closed, her red toenails peeping out from high-end sandals. Like a director’s establishing shot. So he can match the whole face and body with the fetish part.

  As the series goes on, the poses become more graphic, and the use of dental equipment props, occasional before, more frequent. A woman lying face down on her crossed arms, her slacks and panties pulled down and the middle of the chair raised, presenting her buttocks to the viewer. This is the shot that reminds me of what I should have realized earlier. The shots, like any photographs, are frozen moments, telling nothing about what went on before or after this staging.

  The bizarre retractor grimace—a hideous smile or clinical scream—combined with an exposed breast, its nipple erect. A hand made to grip a flattish rubber thing and push it halfway into pubic hair in which it pauses, a pale gray slug. A metal examining pick like the one Max bent over me with, hooked into the hole of a zipper tab pulled down to reveal deep cleavage, a screaming female pope above.

  “How many are there all together?”

  303 does something with the mouse, brings up an inform
ation tab. “A hundred and fifty-three,” he says.

  A new hobby? Or a recent scrapbook of an old one?

  “They could have been taken over years,” I say, thinking out loud.

  “Maybe.” 303 shrugs. It’s almost palpable, his effort to return to his base camp of blasé. “Every so often he meets someone willing to pose. A lot of chicks—”

  “You’re forgetting that none of these women volunteered.”

  “You don’t know that.”

  “Look at the eyes. The limp bodies. They’re drugged senseless.”

  303 is looking at me the way Danika did near the end of our meeting. As if just seeing me for the first time. Peering at me with a seriousness I wouldn’t have thought him capable of.

  I want to go on, don’t want to let myself go on. End up clicking rapidly through what’s left, seeing no changes except for an escalating intensity. The photographer getting bolder, following his urges more insistently.

  Perhaps because he has a trusted assistant. Can work more safely and quickly.

  Vivian appears the first time around the thirtieth image. Comes back every so often after that, the only woman to appear so regularly, though there are other repeaters. It’s the first time I’ve seen her without her mask, but it’s her. Wavy black hair, caramel skin, in a white or pink or blue uniform of slacks and top. Plus her mask. Up over her mouth in some shots, down around her neck in others. Tugged to one side like a bandana in the picture where she’s wearing nothing else, sucking her thumb.

  Woman? Vivian maybe fifteen, sixteen in the nude shot. It’s hard to say exactly, she’s wearing lots of make-up—but no, she’s very young. And how old now? Twenty-five? A decade at this already. And the younger and older shots of her out of chronological order. Selections saved to this USB from a larger cache? Many caches?

  The only total nudie in the bunch. And different for another reason too. Though her eyes are closed, her head lolling to one side, there’s a suggestion of muscular tension in her body that the others lack. It’s hard to go totally limp—all those gunshot victims in Hollywood movies who look like what they are, people who fell down and are waiting to get back up and hit the food truck. Bad acting. Or perfect acting—depends on what the director wants.