Toby

by Todd Babiak

  “Sentimentality.”

  “I’d been up all night, with my dad. He was burned in a fire, and I was on a lot of NyQuil.”

  Mr. Demsky walked to a tall wooden bookshelf stained a deep burgundy. He pulled down a leather-bound volume with gold-embossed pages and placed it open in Toby’s hands. It was a long poem, in English on the left side and Latin on the right, “On the Nature of Things,” by Lucretius. Toby read the first few lines in English without really concentrating.

  “Wow. That’s really pretty.”

  “Out loud, for Christ’s sake.”

  Toby put on his broadcaster voice and read slowly. “‘Therefore death to us / Is nothing, nor concerns us in the least, / Since nature of mind is mortal evermore.’”

  “Lucretius was a brilliant old atheist. Whenever I’m tempted into sentimentality, I like to read him. You can borrow that if you like.”

  “Mr. Demsky, I’m—”

  “You’re serious about this business.”

  “I am.”

  “You made a mistake and you want to make it go away.”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, you can’t. But starting right now, you have to see the lesson in this. It’s time to grow up, yes? To forget about your mother and father, your friends, your girlfriend, your wife, strangers who can do shit for you. If it isn’t sleep they’re taking, it’s your centre of gravity. Your calm. Your gift, Tobias. Everything you’ve earned. You don’t have to be an asshole, but you do have to be discerning with your time and energy. Ruthless. Dwayne succeeds, you see, because he genuinely does not care about displeasing his wife and breaking his children’s tiny little hearts. He never cultivates friends who cannot help him. It all comes naturally to Dwayne, as it comes naturally to me.”

  “That goes against pretty much everything I’ve ever taught my viewers, Mr. Demsky. What about the breakdown of morality? The spiritual crisis in America? What is etiquette, if it isn’t—”

  “It’s irrelevant. It’s an effect, and men like us, we have to be in the business of causes. There is success, Tobias, and there is nothing else. It’s very, very simple. You and I can share a bottle of wine and talk about making every man on the East Coast a gentleman, but there is only one reason, one, to do it. To create wealth for ourselves, and honour.”

  Mr. Demsky sat down across from him again. They remained silent as Toby went through a mental roll call of great men and women.

  “This is why we are here, why the universe was created for us.” Mr. Demsky butted out his cigarette. “At first it’s difficult, but slowly, as with everything else, you develop your muscles. It becomes routine, and you begin to notice the people around you responding submissively. Because they sense a beast is among them, a beast of ambition.”

  “A beast.”

  “Of ambition, Tobias.”

  “I’m not young anymore. This is serious. I could be unhappy for the rest of my life, all because—”

  “You’re not sounding beastly.”

  “What should I do?”

  “That’s for you to decide.”

  “This isn’t fair.”

  Mr. Demsky sighed and spun his chair away from Toby—toward his desk.

  “You can’t help me?”

  “Not now.”

  Toby said goodbye to Mr. Demsky and thanked the woman downstairs. She was frying a steak. On the counter beside her, as she spiced the meat, sat a photograph of Mr. Demsky on a beach somewhere, smiling, a beast of ambition in a cheap black frame.

  Four

  In the car, Toby completed a mental calculation of his financial health. With the mortgage on his condominium and the lease payments on the BMW, taxes and utilities and clothes and restaurants and shoes and organic food, he had lived paycheque to paycheque with either a small surplus or a small deficit each month, based on travel. His severance package from the station had not been generous. Once he paid off his credit cards, there would be very little remaining in his account.

  He drove north to his dealership, where an open parking stall lay enticingly before him. It was one of his favourite places on the island, this showroom, and he knew it would be good to him today. Storm clouds were moving in, deep grey and purple, and a rare flash of October thunder shook the car. Toby rubbed a few crumbs from the passenger seat and picked one of Alicia’s hairs from the headrest. He put the long, wavy black hair in his mouth, tasted it, then removed it.

  The floor of the dealership gleamed with promise. A titanium silver 7-series with tinted windows and tires so shiny Toby wanted to bite into the rubber murmured to him from the centre of a faux-marble floor. He leaned inside an open window, inhaled the off-gassing of success, and stored it in a special corner of his right lung.

  A salesman in his late twenties put his hand on Toby’s upper back. “I am such a fan of your work!”

  A Mozart concerto emanated from hidden speakers. Toby adjusted his posture and took a step back to tread on the outer layer of the salesman’s cologne field. Behind him, modest signs on the wall advertised monthly interest rates and payment plans beyond the budget of nearly every working household in recession North America. Which was the point, really. “Thank you.”

  “I heard you were a customer here and I flipped.” The salesman had braces and shoulder-length blond hair. There was a faint orange to his tan that blended unsuccessfully with his beige suit. “My hard drive tapes your show for me. I have a collection.”

  “Really, thank you so much. I’m Toby Ménard.”

  “I know!”

  “Good.”

  “Oh, what crap etiquette of me. Gary Dunlop, sales associate.” He extended his hand for a shake and left his business card in Toby’s hand like a gangster dropping a Benjamin. He pulled back his left cuff to reveal a round watch with a faded leather band. “Recognize this?”

  “I do.”

  “You wore this bad-boy on your show about the classics. I had one of those stupid save-the-day watches, and after I watched the show I pitched it into the river. I actually did!”

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Dunlop. But may I speak with the sales manager?”

  In the span of three seconds, Gary Dunlop appeared to go through a series of emotional and psychological changes. He was trained for this moment—to capture his commission despite all impediments. “I can help you, Mr. Ménard. I can. I know I look young and whatever, but I’m empowered to help you.”

  “Well.”

  “You must be here to upgrade.”

  Mozart crashed deeper and louder toward an ancient climax of orchestral doom. There was no point waiting for the sales manager if Gary Dunlop was sympathetic. Outside, another gust slapped a layer of dirt from the roadside flower beds into the window. Toby did not know if he could say it out loud. “It turns out I’ve lost my job, Mr. Dunlop.”

  “You?”

  “Very soon my lease payments will be prohibitive.”

  “Pro—”

  “I can’t afford the car, for now. What I’m hoping for is a reprieve, Mr. Dunlop, a break from my payments. Just while I find a new, and better, position.” He adjusted his posture, strained for belief. “It shouldn’t take longer than a month or two.”

  The salesman slouched, ever so slightly. He took a couple of steps to his right and leaned on the 7-series. Moment by moment, as Gary Dunlop adjusted to this knowledge, Toby felt his social superiority float up into the artfully exposed ventilation system and away.

  “How long you had ‘er?” Gary Dunlop said.

  Toby supplied the relevant data, and Gary Dunlop frowned. He informed Toby that interest payments were top-loaded in lease contracts. “You gotta wait for Donny.”

  New customers, actual customers, an Asian boy and his parents, entered the showroom. Gary Dunlop corrected his posture and strode toward them with such relief it verged on a sprint. For almost half an hour, Toby flipped through pamphlets and compared himself to images of authentic BMW people as the boy’s parents argued rancorously about the appropriate options on his grad
uation present.

  The manager, Don Chana, walked into the showroom with a Starbucks coffee. He was tall and thick, with a red tie turned around in the wind to reveal the word Togo—a former house brand of the Hudson’s Bay Company. He spotted Toby and feigned a stagger. His black loafers squeaked on the faux marble. “About time you came back to see us. How long’s it been?”

  “Some months.”

  “Goddamn, it’s good to see you.”

  In the manager’s office, which was decorated with BMW posters and sales awards and icons with Punjabi script, Toby discovered that the story of his dismissal was a common one. Don Chana looked up at the beams and ducts and asked God to commit an act of violent yet creative sexual assault against Toby’s boss. He vowed never to watch the television station again and mimed a spit on the floor.

  “That is really too kind, Mr. Chana.”

  “It’s the least I can do.” He put on his reading glasses, looked up Toby’s file. “Well, I’ll be damned. That can’t be right, can it?”

  Toby recalled thinking, less than a week before, that he would never again need to send out a C.V. The next stage of his career was supposed to be in Toronto or New York or London, with Alicia, as soon as the headhunters noticed them.

  “This is not what you wanted to hear, my friend, but with your down payment, if your car is in utterly pristine condition, utterly, I can release you from your contract. That is, if you write us a cheque for $1,500. Of course, we can go to the used lot and see if we can’t somehow help you out of this damned carlessness.”

  “So I can’t keep the 335?”

  “No. No, you absolutely cannot. If you stop making payments, we will take it from you and destroy your credit rating, my friend.”

  “I was hoping, Mr. Chana, that given my high profile in the community…”

  “But you have lost your job, sir.”

  “Just temporarily.”

  Don Chana sipped his Starbucks.

  One hour and $1,800 later, Toby pulled out of the BMW dealership in an orange 1980 Chevette. Don Chana had just received the car and the “union fucks” in the service department had not found the time to clean it out or inspect it. Toby stayed off the autoroute, fearing a breakdown, but the sun broke through the clouds again just as he re-entered the stable and happy environs of Westmount. Schoolchildren, joggers, the elderly, and new mothers stopped to stare at the Chevette, which growled and farted as he passed Alicia’s house on Strathcona Avenue. He slowed and stopped, hoping that she would come running out and restore him to dignity. A smorgasbord of colourful pollution rose up behind the Chevette and filled his rear-view mirror. He had once described car exhaust as “a crime against humanity” in a segment of Toby a Gentleman.

  A rust-based ecosystem thrived in the Chevette. A mature spiderweb dotted with mosquito carcasses was on the passenger-side floor. A late-season bee hovered at the back of the car, slamming into the rear window. For the first time in two days, Toby checked the messages on his cellphone. There were a number from Dwayne and his secretary, two from Alicia—pre-confrontation Alicia, pretend Alicia, I love you Alicia—and one from his mother, dated from that morning: Edward was being discharged.

  Karen sat and Edward stood in the waiting area of the burn unit, the television still tuned to CNN.

  “Where in hell have you been?” Karen jumped up from her chair, and brown crumbs fell from her shirt. “They kicked him out of his room hours ago. We were just about to hire a taxi. A taxi. How much would that have cost, do you think?”

  “Forty dollars.”

  “At least. You have that kind of money to dump in the toilet, but your father and I are in altogether different circumstances.”

  Edward walked a line of grout on the tile floor, his arms out for balance. His mouth was open, a seven-year-old at his birthday party five minutes before he opens his presents. Every ounce of yesterday’s dourness had been drained away, replaced by delight. His hands and arms were free of bandages now, but a large rectangle of gauze remained on his head. He wore a pair of mauve hospital pants that covered the burns on his shins. “I’m a tightrope walker,” he said.

  Karen spoke through her teeth. “Do you see what’s happening here?”

  “Dad?”

  “Embrace me, my son.” Edward jumped off the tightrope and hugged Toby, gingerly. He whispered, “We’re just so blessed to be here together, the three of us. What’s the magic number? You remember the song. What is it?”

  “Three.”

  “It’s the magic number.” He broke out of the hug and raised his fist in victory. “Can I get a witness?”

  A number of the burn victims had turned away from CNN to watch and listen to Edward.

  Toby addressed his mother silently. She shrugged in response.

  “Three is a magic number,” Edward sang to his fellow patients. “Everybody now.”

  The patients backed into their chairs.

  “I left messages at home and at Alicia’s, on your cell, at work,” Karen said.

  “It’s been quite a day.”

  “You’ve had quite a day? You? Well, sonny, you missed your dad being Barry the Butterfly for the apprentice nurse.”

  “Oh, Toby, you have to meet her.” Edward returned to them. “She could be a model.”

  “It made her plenty comfortable when Cary Grant over here told her so. And that was before he did Barry.”

  Toby picked up his father’s belongings, in two white plastic bags, and his mother’s small leather valise. He led them to the elevator and began planning his afternoon. The bank would not immediately foreclose on his condominium. There were still two English-language stations on the island to phone—then Toronto and Vancouver, where they knew nothing of what he had said in front of Roslyn School. A beast of ambition.

  For the first two floors, they were alone in the elevator. Karen continued to poke him about all the better things he had done today, in his family’s time of need. She counted each of his imagined exultations on her long fingers. “You went to a nice café on the Plateau, I would think, for a late breakfast. Perhaps you signed autographs for some teenage girls with their underwear showing. Oh, then what? A massage.”

  “I was fired this morning. And Alicia and I are finished.”

  “Finished,” said Karen. “What does that mean? Finished?”

  “Is there a clearer word for ‘finished’?”

  “You’re being funny.”

  “I wear the green hat.”

  Edward looked up at the fluorescent light on the ceiling of the elevator car. “Like father, like son.”

  Karen pressed her fingers to her forehead.

  The elevator stopped, and two women, doctors, stepped on, each with a cup of coffee. They whispered.

  “Is there anyone I can phone?” Edward poked Toby when he did not answer. “To make this right?”

  The elevator stopped again, on the mezzanine level, and a woman helped her one-legged husband into the car.

  Edward’s voice trembled. “Do they know who you are? Do they even know? Your boss, the Jew with the hair. He knows. He must!”

  There is a spiritual component to etiquette, an instinct that precedes and supersedes the most comprehensive book of rules. Toby could practically hear the doctors, the unfortunate couple, bursting with perspiration. The car reached the lobby, and it seemed to take several lifetimes for the doors to open.

  “Do they?”

  The man with one leg murmured a plea in his wife’s ear. “Let’s go. Quick, quick.” One of the two doctors looked back at Edward as she walked out, more curious than afraid. When they were alone, Toby answered his father. Yes. They knew exactly who he was.

  In the lobby there were stand-up signs carrying bilingual public service announcements about sexually transmitted diseases, as well as two tables where it appeared a miniature craft sale was imminent. A woman and two men organized a collection of crocheted and carved goods, and chatted with Gaspé accents.

  “You’re my gen
ius boy,” said Edward. “It’s so clear.”

  “Dad. Wait until we’re in the car.”

  Toby and his parents stopped near the tables to put on their jackets. “You’re the best. You’re my boy, and you’re the very best, and that’s the truth. Since the fire, I have resolved to speak the unvarnished truth.”

  “Oh goody,” said Karen.

  “Look at you: pure frustration.” Edward, in the black overcoat Karen had packed for him, opened his arms to her. His voice echoed in the hall. “Release it. Release!”

  The sellers of crafts looked over. Three elderly women, nuns, sitting on a bench, slowly turned their heads in unison. Toby reached out to quiet his father and whisk him out the doors, but Edward broke away. The burns on his shins extended to his knees, so he walked stiffly, pelvis forward, Chaplin-esque. He pointed to Karen with his left hand and placed his right hand on his heart. “Deep river,” he sang. “My home is over Jordan.”

  Three young men passing through the lobby stopped and smiled. One of them laughed. All other discussion in the room stopped.

  “Deep river, Lord, I want to cross over into campground.”

  Karen pushed Toby. “Stop him.”

  It was, at first, exquisite. The fire, or something, had added a dimension to Edward’s voice that Toby did not recognize. Singing, at home, was quite natural for Edward—in the shower or in the yard as he cut the lawn. Never in public, though, and never anything holier than classic rock and R & B; his oeuvre had consisted primarily of Credence Clearwater Revival and Otis Redding.

  Edward repeated the first two lines of the song, and one of the nuns stood up and joined in, quaveringly. At the second “campground,” his voice rose beyond his ability to hold the note and passed into the grotesque.

  “Oh, don’t you want to go to that gospel feast? That promised land where all is peace?”

  There was aggression in his interpretation now, rock and roll, as he moved through the rotunda. Karen began to cry.

  “Oh, deep river, Lord, I want to cross over into campground.”

  The nuns applauded as Toby guided Edward tenderly through the doors, saying, “Bravo, Dad, bravo,” and into the parking lot. One of his segments, on how to deal with beggars, had touched on insanity and how one must confront it. Karen followed them, several paces back, blowing her nose and delivering sarcastic thank yous to no one.