Joyland Trio Deal

by Jim Hanas

  The next week, she sat beside him while he wrote a letter — he had no one to write to, but he didn’t want to tell her this — and then walked with him to the end of the subdivision so he could drop it in a post box. They sat on a park bench without speaking. They read the marquee outside the Vue Cinema at the Meadowhall Shopping Centre and then just kept walking. She showed him her church sketches, and he didn’t laugh. At the blank page, he cried.

  The book was the only one Cordelia could read in her final years, a gift from Arthur, and she read it daily.

  At the funeral, Arthur introduced himself to the family as their grandmother’s lover. His satchel was full of Wade figurines he’d been collecting from eBay and waiting for the right time to give to her. For the next year and a half, Chris Eaton’s parents invited Arthur over every Sunday for dinner. On a handful of occasions, he brought wine. But most of the time he brought nothing.

  Then, one day, Chris Eaton’s father received a call at his office:

  “I loved her so much,” the man sobbed into the other end of the phone.

  “. . .”

  “I miss her so much . . .”

  “Me too.”

  Several hours later, Robert Eaton was called to come down to the police station. To identify the latest body at the base of the Kelvin Flats. None of the figurines in Arthur’s pockets carried even a scratch.

  Mister Monsieur

  “You’re born, you grow old, and then you die,” Mister Monsieur would always say, cross-legged on the floor as he leaned forward to collect his cards. Jorden would see that Mister Monsieur had lost his solitaire again. “By Las Vegas rules (fifty-two dollars to play and five return for each card I get up) I am now ahead by thirty-five. That’s good.”

  This was a lie.

  “Pass me that bottle, would you?”

  Mister Monsieur spent most of his life in a bottle. He was small and frail, but his voice was overpowering. He could remake you with a single word, all your troubles forgotten, your clubbed feet and plaques on your heart removed. His words had life, and Jorden listened to them as he watched the old man play solitaire in the back room of Lucien’s Pizzeria.

  But this was a lie.

  Jorden’s life was a lie.

  Mister Monsieur was also a lie. His words — his advice — leapt from his tongue like baby wasps and stung Jorden relentlessly. The wasps grew old and died, leaving behind the welts and sores that covered Jorden’s exposed flesh. Dogs died. Fish died. But whereas Mister Monsieur’s words were supposed to be universal, there were two exceptions to his favorite saying. Mister Monsieur didn’t die. Mister Monsieur never died.

  And Jorden, at the young age of twenty-one, was already dead.

  “I think you’re just paranoid.” His girlfriend Julia was a realist. She knew there was no chance for peace and happiness. She never attempted to use chopsticks, and she drove as if everyone else was out to kill her. She wore a white dress, and Jorden wouldn’t listen to her.

  “Listen to me,” she said.

  He listened.

  “When you die, it’s a lot like sleep. You put your head down, close your eyes, and never open them again. Then God comes to take your hand. He brings you to a better place where you’re always happy.”

  “Is that it?”

  “I used to tell my daughter that when her cats died. It made her feel better for a while, but now she’s an insomniac.”

  “I see,” Jorden said, but he didn’t. He got up to fix her a cup of coffee. He wasn’t tired. Julia wore a white dress and a key around her neck. He asked what it was for.

  “Once,” she said, “it was the key to a hotel room in Germany. Now it has more mystical purposes.” She would have unlocked her soul then and handed it to him on a platter of silver pocket watches, but she was, after all, a realist.

  They made love in the back room of Lucien’s Pizzeria when they felt Mister Monsieur was not watching. (He always was.) Julia’s nipples reminded Jorden of small coins, and he tried to put them over his eyes. Afterward, Julia smoked an American cigarette, and told him that the Earth had moved for her again. Life, she said, was a hockey game played without sticks. (She was very philosophical after sex.) He told her he was dead. Julia wore a white dress, and Jorden was dead. She told him to listen, and he did.

  “I once had an uncle who was dead,” she told him, “and he was nothing like you. For one thing, he was married, which you are not. He was also a businessman. Being dead was probably the best thing that could have happened to him. His company made salt and pepper shakers that resembled world leaders and great Western heroes. When he died they started selling like hotcakes...”

  Jorden couldn’t listen anymore. Julia never made sense to him. Outside Lucien’s Pizzeria, snow was killing flowers and blanketing the drunks on the park benches. How could anyone who wore white in the winter call herself a realist?

  “The thing to remember,” Mister Monsieur said as he placed the five of clubs on the six of hearts, “is that every rule has an exception.”

  Jorden cried.

  Jorden disliked exceptions, and what Mister Monsieur told him dropped him to even deeper depths of despair. After all, wasn’t an A always an A, the shortest distance between two points always a straight line...? Exceptions made things unpredictable. And if there was an exception to every rule, surely there had to be an exception to that rule as well: a rule without an exception. If that were true, didn’t that mean... It hurt his head to think about it, and he cried.

  “Pass me that Bible, would you?”

  But Jorden had had enough. He showed Mister Monsieur the key he had hung around his neck. He could still feel Julia’s nipples on his eyelids.

  “So, it has come to that,” said Mister Monsieur.

  “I’m afraid so.”

  He shrugged. “I guess that can only mean one thing, Jorden.”

  He got the Bible himself.

  “But what about the key?” Jorden wanted to know.

  “I thought you knew. It’s a key to a hotel room in Germany.”

  That was that. You never got the answers you wanted from Mister Monsieur. But Jorden thought he understood anyway. When they felt Mister Monsieur was not watching, Jorden and Julia caught a plane to Germany, and they made love in the hotel room. Her nipples reminded him of eyes so he put coins on them. He told her he was dead, and she talked about the weather.

  In the night, after he had closed his eyes, Mister Monsieur came to him and took his hand. He wore a big wool sweater.

  “Sometimes it’s cold in Germany.”

  “Um.”

  “You’re sure about this?”

  Jorden nodded.

  “Then there’s your door.” It looked exactly like the door to Lucien’s Pizzeria.

  “It looks exactly like the door to Lucien’s Pizzeria,” Jorden said.

  “What did you expect it to look like?”

  Jorden shrugged, put the key in the lock, and turned it. Inside was the back room of Lucien’s Pizzeria.

  Everything was a lie. Even life.

  Life was just a lie with an F.

  When the receptionist asked him what his name was, Jorden said it was Lewis Carroll. That, Jorden considered, was only a small lie in the scheme of things. His address was in the Alps, and his telephone number had a Swedish area code. The receptionist explained to him that the doctor was not running behind schedule, but Jorden would still have to wait about an hour. He said he understood, but he didn’t.

  “You can wait over there.”

  “Is it all right if I use the bathroom?”

  “I suppose so. But if we call your name and you’re not here, you go to the end of the list, okay?”

  Wasn’t that always the way, he joked. Ha, ha.

  The reception area made Jorden feel uncomfortable. There were all those chairs and magazines and
hat racks and things. No people. But the bathroom was worse. All those urinals and hand dryers and soap dispensers and things. And still no people. There’s something about an empty bathroom that makes you think everyone else is as dead as you are, Jorden mused. He washed his face and felt better.

  When he returned to the reception area Mister Monsieur was waiting for him. The old man looked out of place, and Jorden realized it was the first time he’d seen him outside Lucien’s Pizzeria. Lucien, it seemed, had brought him over in the delivery car, and the pizza chef was currently distracting the receptionist.

  “I’m sorry.”

  Jorden said it was okay.

  “No, really,” Mister Monsieur urged him. “I’m really sorry. Let’s go home.”

  “But I came here to see the doctor. I’m dead.”

  “You’re not dead! Please. Let’s go home.”

  “Am too.”

  “Are not.”

  “Am too.”

  Jorden was as surprised as anyone to see the wasps coming from his own mouth. They circled the reception area, and then settled on Mister Monsieur. They didn’t sting him though. Nothing ever stung Mister Monsieur. Life, Jorden thought, watching the wasps. Funny.

  “So, you’re not coming home? I would have let you come back.”

  “I have to know. I need proof.”

  “You were always like that. Curiosity killed the cat.”

  “I’m already dead.”

  Mister Monsieur shrugged. Lucien took him home.

  “Mr. Carroll?”

  “Excuse me?” Jorden asked. The receptionist seemed to be talking to him.

  “Lewis Carroll?”

  “I’m afraid he’s dead, miss.”

  “The doctor will see you now, sir.”

  “Um.”

  The doctor’s office was clean. The kind of place where you might put a dead body, Jorden thought. He was too excited to speak. It was hard to prove you were dead, but being diagnosed by a real live doctor was the proof he needed. The doubters would stand aside for him then. People in restaurants would stop eating, point at him, and whisper that he was dead. His name would be in all the newspapers; he would have to clear up that Lewis Carroll misunderstanding. Where was the doctor? Jorden weighed himself. They’d probably need his weight for the certificate anyway. Might as well be all the help he could be. Besides, those doctor scales were so neat....

  “Mr. Carroll?”

  The doctor stood in the doorway.

  “Well, you see... that is... My name isn’t really Carroll.”

  Ha, ha.

  “Certainly, Mr. Carroll. No reason to be alarmed. What seems to be the trouble?”

  “I’m dead.”

  The doctor cut Jorden with a gleaming scalpel. A single drop of blood hung like an omen for a split second before staining the doctor’s white smock.

  “You’re not dead,” he said. “Settle your bill with the receptionist on the way out, please.”

  Jorden laughed and shook his head. He could still feel Julia’s nipples on his eyelids, and he had a key around his neck. How could he trust anyone who wore white in the winter?

  LE FIN

  Chasing Games

  (In Memory of Edith Fowke)

  TOUCH TAG

  Martin was having distinct trouble catching the bumblebee. It is believed that bumblebees are slow movers, the tortoises of the insect world, but this is not the case. Nine times out of ten, the bubble-bodied bumblebee will outfly his sleek cousin the wasp. Ten times out of ten, the bumblebee will outfly Martin.

  TOUCH ONE, TOUCH ALL

  Martin’s story, as I see it, has many possible variations and meanings. The bumblebee stands for any number of things, from all of humanity to Edith Fowke, from the simple short story to all of Canadian literature. If, as he does in variations 1–4, Martin succeeds in catching the bumblebee, the corresponding meanings of the story are as follows:

  1. The author, disguising his own dreams of world domination through the character of Martin, manages to convince himself that these goals may be realized through perseverance and cunning.

  2. Luck conquers all.

  3. Martin’s fictional desire to catch the bumblebee — never sufficiently explained by the author — symbolizes the author’s real desire to capture Edith Fowke; the obvious reference to “the birds and the bees” can hardly be ignored.

  4. The author once knew a boy named Martin who chased after a bumblebee and caught it.

  However, should Martin fail to catch the bumblebee (see variations 5–9, in particular variation 8 entitled “Ante, Ante, Over the Shanty”1), there is only one possible interpretation. It is a story of loss.

  FREEZE TAG

  A tableau of Martin: following Cauliston’s Silver Sector rule, the artist has here chosen to split the tableau vertically down the middle with a white birch tree with three germinating dandelions growing at its base and a trunk that splits into two equal tributaries (if you begin at the painting/tree’s apex) exactly three quarters up the canvas. This gives the effect of a triad of images, the left and right being of identical size, the upper section covering one eighth of the tableau’s entire area (if you take the center of each branch to be the hypotenuses of the two smaller triangles contained therein).

  The three images — or symbols — break down thus (from right to left): a “four-winged hairy insect with sting, living in a colony and collecting nectar and pollen to produce wax and honey,” airborne, yellow and black stripes perfectly vertical and corresponding to the ratio of 5:4 in favor of the black, small toothy grin; hidden partially and strategically (only careful inspection provides this realization) in the crotch of the tree, you and I, myself in an elegant yet tasteful tuxedo, the tails of the jacket forming a mirror V to the lapels, transforming myself into an X variable inside the tree’s Y, you in _________________ (whatever you like2); Martin*.

  *Martin’s legs (his position on the left generating the narrative and the dilemma of the tableau: that Martin is running, but why?) form a V, each limb parallel to a limb on the tree. He is seemingly — grotesquely — without knees.

  BALL TAG

  Martin could imagine being tossed across the room like a crystal vase, but instead of shattering against the wall, he would be caught on a draft of air, momentarily lifted higher, and set gently, miraculously, on the table beside the piano where Annie kept her dead insect collection. (Hint — she was missing only the bumblebee.) The object of this imagining was to place himself in close proximity to Annie as she played, and to develop the idea of being carried by the wind, which he secretly cherished but was afraid to admit.

  “What are you thinking?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, are you thinking about the wind again?”

  “No,” Martin answered. But he was too quick in his response.

  This is what he is thinking about as he loses his balance and tumbles over the cliff.

  S-P-U-D

  The letters of Martin’s name, when rearranged, form the two smaller words min (Swedish for my) and rat. This should not be ignored.

  STANDO

  In his dreams, Martin became the great explorer Buscaglio Constando, sailing the seven seas with Annie as his first mate. They communicated through short messages left in bottles, secreted in various cubbyholes around the ship. Sometimes, when the mood was upon him, Martin would climb the riggings, toss his love for Annie into the air, and hope that she would catch it as it drifted down on the wind. The wind filled his sails, his hair, and his speech.

  BABY

  In the version of Martin’s story entitled “Baby,” Martin succeeds in catching the bumblebee. There is a short struggle resulting in the unfortunate demise of said insect, the remains of which Martin is forced to lick from his hands. He becomes sick and, having learned his lesson, resolves never to chase after bumblebees a
gain. Of course, this version precludes the possibility of Martin tripping over a rock (unseen in the tableau) and falling off a cliff, which he has.

  POISON TAG

  Possible reasons for Martin’s present situation: Annie, bee sting, the cliff (?), desire, his environment (the rock?), Fate, games, hubris, iguanodons (whose fossilized bodies have, over millions of years, formed into the solid earth on which Martin once stood; out of their bodies now grow the plants they once fed upon; evolution and progress are often direct and ironic), Jehovah (?), kinetics, leverage, Martin, narrator, oppression, perspective, quests, the rock (his environment?), snake bite (?) . . .

  SHADOW TOUCH

  The real reason for Martin’s present situation: Edith Fowke.

  SQUAT TAG

  In this variation of the story, Martin takes possession of the narrative and I am chasing bees. Annie, birds in her hair, crouches at Martin’s right hand, filling in the more finite details of the story, the ones that escape Martin’s notice.

  For instance, she describes the shirt that I (once Martin) am wearing: plaid, button-down, cotton twill, chest pocket, back yoke, box pleat, import, machine-washable.

  The pants: pine, 100 percent cotton, five-pocket jean construction, zip fly.

  The shoes: lug sole work oxfords, leather uppers, air-cushioned, winged, soles of fire.

  And Annie makes note of the absence. There is now an absence of Annie in the story (where I am) because she has remained with Martin (the fictional me?).

  This is not so far from reality.

  TELEVISION TAG