by Todd Babiak
This was a shot at his wife’s ridiculous suggestion that they take public transportation. There were only six of them, and the Yukon Denali seated eight comfortably. Why pay to ride the smelly train with a bunch of young offenders in sweatsuits? On weekday evenings, downtown parking was only two dollars. And that way, they could have taken Garith.
As they walked across campus to the station underneath Hub Mall, David put his arm around Madison. A few paces behind, he could hear Raymond bawling again. It was an embarrassing and distasteful display, so he attempted to drown the professor out with a father-daughter heart-to-heart.
“So,” he said. “You going to go with cloth diapers you think? Or Huggies or whatnot?”
“I haven’t thought about it, Dad.”
Mindful of her mother just ahead, discussing the upcoming theatre season with Jonas, Madison spoke quietly. David wanted to honour his daughter’s discretion, so he matched her volume. “Do you think it’s a boy or a girl?”
“I don’t know.”
“What are you hoping?”
Madison bit her bottom lip and furrowed her eyebrows, a look of concentration she had mastered before kindergarten. Thinking of her at that age, three or four, ponytails and scabbed knees, could have turned him into a bawling idiot like the professor. Here was his little girl, on the verge of starting her own family. It wasn’t an ideal situation, of course, thanks to the typically boorish behaviour of the Quebecker, but she would have help. Lots of help.
“I guess I’m hoping for a girl,” she said.
To David, it only seemed natural to want a boy. If Abby hadn’t suffered debilitating complications during Madison’s birth, they would have tried for a boy and named him Jake. “If it’s a boy, I think you should name him Jake.”
“Can we talk about it later? I’m scared Mom’s going to hear, and if I don’t tell her myself, in that mother-daughter way, she’ll be crushed. You know how Mom likes things.”
“Do I ever.”
David imagined the confession. It would have to be in the dining room, over dinner, with Tchaikovsky or Cuban something-or-other playing on the hi-fi. Madison would have to announce, coyly, that she had news, and Abby would have to turn down the music and prepare herself by sitting up straight. Then she would insist on guessing. She would guess a new job, then a new boyfriend. After her two unsuccessful guesses, Madison would make the announcement and the screaming and hugging and kissing and hysterical planning would commence.
They entered the LRT station and started down the stairs to purchase their tickets. David took the bowl of hummus from his wife and whispered “waste of money,” just loud enough for her to hear. Whereafter he endured a swift kick in the shin. Then, downstairs on the platform, as they waited for a car to arrive, a couple of drunken hillbillies in jean jackets wrestled and bumped into an elderly woman reading a novel. As David started over to give them a stern lecture, the hillbillies shocked him by picking up the woman’s book and apologizing like gentlemen.
David leaned against the emergency phone and counted. That made three surprises in one night.
34
six guesses
Back when he started acting, Jonas was prone to diarrhea and even fainting before a show. Almost nothing unnerved him now. Yet in one week, he had found himself shaken by Carlos the suburban theatregoer and, oddly, by the Let’s Fix It meeting.
Inside Commerce Place, between the art gallery and the men’s spa, Jonas turned and stopped his neighbours. No one had said a word since they exited the train, not even Abby Weiss, and the tension was beginning to cause sour gurgles in his stomach. “What’s going on here?”
No one answered. The neighbours looked at one another and then back at Jonas. Madison shrugged. “We’re going to the Let’s Fix It meeting. How many glasses of wine did you drink, Jonas?”
“I know what’s going on. What I mean is, what’s going on? We’re acting like we’re about to be executed.”
Abby lifted her hummus, said, “Um, hello?” and turned to Shirley, who lifted her bowl of baba ghanouj.
“We’re all thankful for the dips, ladies. No, it’s the tension I can’t stand. I feel like going back home or turning straight into the nearest bar. Are we a community or what? Are we doing something positive here?”
David stepped forward and stood next to Jonas. He shook the bag of pitas and cut vegetables. “I think I know what Jonas is getting at. We have to go into this thinking like a team, a winning team.”
“I’m going to need some serious pharmaceuticals to feel like a winner,” said Raymond Terletsky.
Jonas had an urge to slap the weepy professor. But not slapping your neighbours, he remembered, is the very essence of community. Instead, Jonas whistled and waved everyone into the rotunda. Under the skylight, in the centre of the building’s chi, Jonas had his neighbours form a circle. He stood in the middle. Just when he was about to make his announcement, Madison whispered, “Kumbaya, my Lord, kumbaya.”
The neighbours laughed, and Jonas pointed at her. “Don’t upstage me, woman.”
“Sorry.”
“This is all I can do. This is all I got.”
“Sorry. Really.”
A few moments of dramatic silence passed. Then, Jonas said, “We’re going to have a contest.”
Abby clapped around her bowl of hummus. “Goody, goody!”
“Everyone has to guess what the Let’s Fix It meeting is going to be about, and whoever’s closest to the real thing wins a bottle of wine. And not just Wolf Blass either. We’ll all throw in ten bucks and buy something nice.”
It took a moment of shuffing and sighing, but they eventually agreed. The professor managed a diabolical smile. “Who guesses first?”
Abby raised her hand. “I know what it is. The people who own the High Level Diner are going to set up a charity for Katie Perlitz’s post-secondary education.”
“No way,” said her husband. “This is for time shares in Kelowna. Either that or it’s an invitation into a pyramid scheme. I smelled this one ages ago, compadres. Within the hour, we’re gonna be sitting across from closers with bad cologne.”
Jonas swivelled. “Shirley, what do you think?”
“I don’t have a guess.”
“Come on. You have to guess.”
She took a step closer to her husband. “Maybe it’s Jeanne Perlitz herself, wanting to speak to us all.”
Everyone rumbled with appreciation and approval. “Ooh, you’re going to win,” said Abby.
Raymond cleared his throat and said, “I’m hoping to walk through a portal. Either a time machine or a door into another dimension. The seventh or eighth. Or maybe we’re going to have a séance.”
“What dimension are we in now, professor?” said David Weiss.
“Third. Third or fourth. I don’t know. We’re in the TV dimension.”
Jonas pointed to Madison.
“I’ve thought a lot about it since the signs went up but I can’t figure out what it could be.” Madison stepped out of the circle toward the optical store, and then came back. “What if this is standard for neighbourhoods where something awful happens? What if there’s a nice lady, a rich fairy-godmother type from Old Glenora, who throws parties for people who live next to murder-suicides and drive-by shootings and kidnappings and rapes? Maybe there’s going to be yoga and grief counselling.”
“My hummus is grief counselling,” said Abby.
Jonas looked at his watch. “We’re five minutes late. Perfect.” He walked out of the circle and started toward the rotunda and the escalators, and his neighbours followed. It was his turn to guess, and he wanted them to ask for it.
At the top of the escalator, between the McDonald’s and the Sunterra Market, Jonas paused. No one asked. Through the doors and into Manulife Place, no one asked. To the right of Holt Renfrew and into the Manulife mezzanine no one asked. In the corridor of elevators no one asked.
“Hello?” he said, finally. “There’s one more guess, people.”
Abby squeezed Jonas’s arm. “What do you think Let’s Fix It is all about?”
“An orgy. I think we’re heading into a bacchanalian festival of liquor and flesh, whereby we will forget Benjamin Perlitz ever happened.” Jonas pressed the up button. “For one night. And it’s going to work wonders for us all.”
As Jonas intended, a few moments of shoe-looking ensued. They remained silent in the elevator, possibly considering each other naked, which filled Jonas with creative pleasure. More than happy or sad, he enjoyed making his audience feel uncomfortable. Their nervousness replaced his own.
The elevator door opened and Edith Piaf began to sing “Hymne à l’amour.” A woman in a pinstriped navy-blue suit, with her blonde hair pulled back tightly, stood before them with a clipboard folded across her chest. Jonas opened his mouth wide enough for a sparrow to fly in as he beheld the tallest and most beautiful stewardess in the world.
“Welcome to the thirty-eighth floor,” she said.
35
the thirty-eighth floor
Madison’s Uncle Sid was a criminal lawyer in Toronto. Every three years until her late teens, Madison’s father would insist they fly east for a couple of weeks to stay with Uncle Sid and his family in their Edwardian mansion in Forest Hill. There were two servants, one to cook and one to clean and garden. There was a well-dressed aunt and two cousins, a boy and a girl, who had unimpeachable grammar and always seemed to be taking tennis or Italian or fencing lessons.
As long as Madison didn’t think about Uncle Sid’s house and family and cottage in Muskoka, growing up as the daughter of two schoolteachers in Edmonton seemed perfectly acceptable. But in the aftermath of every trip, on her way back home, surrounded in the airplane by people who looked and smelled and talked like Albertans, Madison felt like smashing her Walkman. It wasn’t fair that Uncle Sid was rich and her dad wasn’t, that her cousin Anita had a sailboat and she didn’t even have a decent bicycle.
Madison would interrupt the inflight movie to ask her parents, “Why can’t we live in Toronto?” It wasn’t because she enjoyed her cousins, who were stiff and remote. She just wanted to live in a city of ravines and mansions and well-dressed people who drove German sedans and spoke in full sentences.
As she grew older, Madison learned there were several other neighbourhoods in Toronto, and that Forest Hill wasn’t representative of the city at large. In her twenties, oil prices went up and Edmonton filled with German sedans and well-dressed people who spoke in full sentences. At that time, Madison learned to appreciate the wealthy, even the Edmonton wealthy, for what they were: extraterrestrials.
The thirty-eighth floor of Manulife Place was the most impressive piece of real estate Madison had ever seen, including the Edwardian mansion in Forest Hill. The floor was modern and classic all at once, with stainless steel playing off deep, reddish woods. In every other high-rise office complex she had been in, the walls were thin and the furniture was cheap. Nothing about the thirty-eighth floor was cheap. There were paintings and photographs on the outer walls, with a series of glass partitions creating mini-rooms throughout the floor. Some rooms housed nothing. Others, sculptures and desks. The music played out of tiny speakers hidden in the ceiling.
Residents of the Garneau Block followed the six-foot woman, stumbling and bumping into one another. The view south and west, of the river valley and the pink setting sun, caused vertigo.
Since they exited the elevator and began their long walk through the maze of windows, Madison hadn’t seen a corporate logo. She tapped her father. “Dad, what is this place?”
“Heaven.”
“No, really. Is this one of your political friends?”
“I sure hope so. If it’s an angry Liberal I’m in big trouble.”
The woman opened large wooden doors that led into a boardroom–one of the few concealed corners of the thirty-eighth floor. Two men in tuxedos, one behind a bar and the other tending a miniature buffet table, stood smiling with their hands folded before them. “Please, make yourselves comfortable,” said the tall woman in the navy pinstriped suit. “Your host will be with you shortly.”
She closed the doors behind them. A new romantic French song played through the stereo system. Madison walked to the southwest corner window and looked out over the vastness of Edmonton, the western hills leading to Jasper and Jean-something.
“Well, I guess hummus and baba ghanouj don’t really cut it, do they?” said Abby.
Shirley didn’t respond.
Two of the walls in the rectangular room were wooden. So was the long table and surrounding chairs. Behind what must have been the head chair was a small nameplate. The logo Madison had been looking for, to explain this place. It said, “Anonymous.”
Jonas had already secured himself a crab cake. Now he was at the bar. “So, sailor boy, how about an old-fashioned, what say?”
“Yes, sir. Brandy, bourbon, or Canadian whisky, sir?”
“Bourbon.”
The bar man set to work. Jonas turned to Madison and winked. He was a social chameleon. Even without a tuxedo, Jonas seemed to be wearing a tuxedo. The bar man garnished the drink with a twist of lemon, and Jonas bowed and accepted it. He took a sip and said, “Marvellous,” a word Madison had never heard him use.
A small line formed in front of the bar man. Jonas walked to Madison with his drink, saying hello to Raymond and David as though they belonged to the same gentleman’s club.
“So, Pond, old liege,” Madison said, in her best rich-girl voice. “How are your watermelon futures performing?”
“Very well indeed, sister, and your polo ponies?”
Madison pointed out the tiny Anonymous sign and together they watched everyone else get their drinks. Everyone but Raymond, who sat at the table and held his chin up with both hands. Shirley slipped a glass of white wine in front of the sad professor and he said, in a wounded whisper, “Thank you, my love.”
Soon, the residents of the Garneau Block were sitting at the long table with appetizer plates and drinks before them. Jonas was quietly singing along to “Non, je ne regrette rien,” complete with rolled Rs, but everyone else was quiet. What was it about a place like this that inspired silence? Madison wondered. It would have seemed coarse or impolite to talk about weather or that new Chris Rock sitcom or health concerns. The thirty-eighth floor demanded more from them.
As the sun set, soft overhead lights gradually eased into brightness. Jonas went up for another old-fashioned, this time with extra bitters, while the man at the food carriage took his leave. After the bartender finished with Jonas’s drink, he left too.
No one spoke or even sipped. Now that the serving men had departed, it was obvious their host would enter the room at any moment. Without the aid of alcohol, Madison was giddy with nervous anticipation. She hoped her son or daughter–who had eyelids already!–wouldn’t be subjected to acidic conditions or become more likely to inherit anxiety attacks every time Madison felt this way. She so often felt this way.
The door began to open. David stood up as though he were preparing to salute a general, and Abby clapped. Raymond and Shirley swivelled their chairs and Jonas lifted his drink.
Madison closed her eyes.
36
the young indian man from across the street
The young Indian man from across the street thanked everyone for coming. With a slight accent, he asked if the snacks and drinks had been to their liking, and if they had any trouble finding Manulife Place.
When no one answered, he commanded his neighbours to get up at any time during the meeting to get more food or to fill up their glasses. “I want this to be an informal gathering,” he said, standing in front of the closed wooden doors in his black suit. “I want this, if at all possible, to be fun.”
David Weiss remained standing. So far, he hadn’t saluted the young Indian man from across the street. Madison worried for a moment that her father had been stricken with a heart ailment, as most of the blood had drained out of
his face. She was relieved when he lifted his finger to point. “You.”
“Yes. Me.” The young Indian man from across the street moved into the centre of the room, directly in front of the Anonymous sign on the wall. “Please, Mr. Weiss. Sit down.”
“Yes, darling,” said Abby. “You’re making everyone nervous.”
David sat and stared at his hands.
“My name is Rajinder Chana and I am twenty-seven years old. I have lived at 13 Garneau since 1998.” He walked to the bar and continued. “You may be wondering why I have never spoken to any of you, and I am afraid I do not have a good answer for that. For a few years after my parents died I rarely spoke to anyone and these habits become difficult to break. They enter your personality like footprints in wet concrete.”
With a quivering hand, Rajinder Chana removed a glass from the cabinet behind the bar and poured some red wine. He took a sip. “I apologize. I practised and imagined this moment, and it never involved an urgent need for alcohol.” He took another sip and looked at Jonas. “Not that I disapprove of drinking. It is healthy, to have a little wine every day. Is it not?”
“You bet it is, Rajinder,” said Jonas. “And if you really want this to be informal and fun, you better sit down too. I can’t speak for anyone else, but you’re freaking me out.”
“Right.” Rajinder sat. “Before we begin talking about Fixing It, does anyone have any questions?”
“I have a million questions, Rajinder,” said Abby. “But let me just say I love the way you’ve decorated this floor. It’s gorgeous.”
“And the music,” said Jonas. “Edith Piaf’s on my top-five list.”
“Thank you both. I am interested in both interior design and French culture.”
David Weiss raised his hand. “What is this place?”
“My office.”
“The entire thirty-eighth floor of Manulife Place?”
“Yes.”