by Todd Babiak
“I love tractors.”
“Is the store going to be all right while you’re gone?”
“The store runs itself. To be honest, Stan, I only go in when I’m lonely. My staff does everything. Everything. That’s why I’ve been able to take those trips. You know what I saw in Nepal?”
Stanley attempted to see what Alok saw in Nepal. A train. Odd vegetation. The sun and the brim of a hat. A skinny boy with his eyes closed. “Nope.”
“Buddha. The new Buddha. There’s this kid who doesn’t eat and doesn’t sleep. He just meditates and receives wisdom from the impersonal godhead.”
“Did you talk to him?”
“Oh no. Absolutely not. He was meditating really hard, you know, and his handlers kept onlookers at a distance. It wouldn’t have been proper to yell something out.”
“How do you know it wasn’t a hoax?”
“I knew. I just knew, Stan. This is my life’s work, right, to be plugged into these sorts of things?”
Stanley smiled.
“You look different. Vibrant. Sneaky.” They passed a series of overpasses and freeway junctions, big box stores, and strip malls wrapped around giant parking lots. “The city, I see, now looks like every other city in North America. By which I mean to say doomed.”
Even though Stanley was the sort of man who complained about oil refineries, strip coal mining, urban sprawl, and the unrestricted growth of the province, he felt a little bit proud of the small giant the city had become. “If this highway corridor were a country, it would be the second-richest in the world, after Luxembourg.”
“I think you should keep that sort of trivia to yourself, Stan. Really. It’s nothing to brag about.” He stayed quiet until Stanley entered Old Strathcona and stopped, randomly, at a café named for New York bagels. Alok got out of the Oldsmobile and walked to the edge of the gravel parking lot, which was tucked between a jazz club, an old mill, a theatre shaped like a wheat silo, and a number of condominium towers. He crossed his arms and looked out over the river valley.
It was simple to read Alok’s thoughts of reflection and nostalgia, of this neighbourhood and winter and the smells particular to cities of the plains. Stan wondered if it would be best to leave his old friend for twenty minutes.
“Are you hungry, Alok? If not, I could come back.”
“Always hungry. Always.”
“I think I should probably tell you why I flew you out here.”
“To get a load of my turban, perhaps?”
“I was going to ask you about that.”
Alok reached up and massaged his turban. “Picked it up in Nepal.”
“You don’t say.”
In front of the café, just as they were about to enter, Alok hugged Stanley again. Mid-hug, he kissed Stanley and picked him up. In the air, Stanley glanced to his left and saw several patrons of the café, frozen in mid-chew, as they watched a large, elderly Indo-Canadian in an orange muumuu lifting and kissing a gentleman in a grey three-piece suit purchased in 1987.
SIXTEEN
The owner of the New York Bagel Café turned on the hanging lights as the sun eased behind the houses and hills to the west. Alok Chandra removed his turban, a one-piece, and shook his head. “Why didn’t you call me, or send an e-mail, when you found out?”
“Alok, we haven’t spoken in years.”
“I know hundreds of holistic practitioners who might have cured you. This whole ‘medical management’ approach to cancer is a sham. What you have to do is convince the cancer cells to back off. Make them trust you. It’s like taming a dragon.”
“Dragons.” After a sigh, and a sip of his wine, Stanley continued. “Anyway, it’s in remission now, or something. My symptoms have disappeared.”
“Hallelujah. What treatments did they use?”
“None.”
“You’re self-medicating. Good. Good.”
A woman wearing large spectacles put a plate of organic beef goulash in front of Stanley and a spinach pie in front of Alok.
“This looks delicious,” Alok said. Then he took the woman by the hand. “Might you also bring us another half-litre of wine?”
The woman nodded and took her hand from Alok. She stared at Stanley, stuck her tongue into her cheek, almost said something, and walked to the bar.
“God bless this food,” Alok said. “You know?”
Stanley nodded. “I just feel better. A lot better. Too much better.”
“I don’t understand.”
“This is it, Alok. I don’t either. That’s why I asked you to come.”
“There’s no such thing as a free trip to Alberta. Is that what you’re telling me?”
“Yes.”
Alok took his first bite of spinach pie, and pointed at the pie with his fork, as though the pie had figured him out.
“When I began to notice these changes, I looked on the Internet to see if maybe it was a common thing. But it isn’t.”
“Maybe you tamed the dragon without even knowing it. Do you have any crystals at home, lying around in the eastern and northern extremities? Do you chant, as a rule?”
“Alok, shut up for a minute.”
“Certainly.” Alok gulped the final bit of his wine just as the woman with large spectacles set down their second half-litre. “Thank you, my love.”
Stanley pushed his plate and glass away. “I have powers.”
“Am I allowed to ask questions?”
“Yes. Sorry for telling you to shut up.”
“It was very rude. Very Alberta of you.”
“Shut up.”
“What sorts of powers, Stanley?”
He was embarrassed, all of a sudden. All this fuss. “It’s probably nothing.”
“Come on.”
“I seem to have acquired a touch of superhuman strength.”
“Keep talking.”
“And I can hear thoughts.”
“Really?”
“Really.”
“All right.” Alok closed his eyes and placed his index fingers on his temples. “What am I thinking right now?”
Stanley saw what Alok was thinking in a series of flashes: sex with Frieda, as she was in the 1980s. Poofy hair, tight jeans. “You prick.”
“Sweet Susan. You got that?”
“I did.”
“Wow. Wow. How do you do it?”
“No trick. I just hear and see, if I want to hear and see.”
“Why? How?”
Stanley shrugged.
“Hence the plane ticket. I’ll consider this very seriously, Stan, using each area of my expertise. How is Frieda, by the way?”
“Twenty years older than your fantasy.”
“Do you think she’s still mad? At Kitty’s funeral she wouldn’t even look at me.”
“She’ll be all right.”
“What does she think of your mind reading?”
“She doesn’t know about it. I mean, I don’t even know about it. Is this something that happens to cancer patients, by chance, just before they die?”
Alok took another bite of spinach pie while he considered Stanley’s question. The server with the large spectacles was staring at Stanley from behind the counter, as she had been throughout their meal. Finally, she walked over, pulled up a chair, and sat down. “May I?”
“If you could give us another moment,” said Stanley.
“I was wondering,” said the woman. She smiled, shook her head as though embarrassed, and removed her glasses. “I was wondering if I could see you sometime.”
“Oh. I’m married.”
“Not that way. Necessarily. I just feel I’d like to talk to you. These things have happened in my life. It’s like this mould has grown over everything. In a couple months I’ll be forty-nine, and what have I accomplished so far?”
“Well,” said Stanley.
Alok pulled out his wallet and stood up. He dropped sixty dollars on the table and beckoned Stanley out the door with a head tilt. “So sorry,” he said to the server.
“Mr. Moss is very tired. Perhaps we’ll return and you can talk then.”
“But…”
“Good night.”
Outside, in the warm night air, Alok rubbed his hands together. He led Stanley around to the rear of the New York Bagel Café.
“Alok, did you eat enough? We left a lot of wine on the table. I could have spoken to that woman afterward.”
“Forget her. Let’s see something.”
“Like what?”
“Something. Whatever you can show me. Your superhuman strength.”
During the Fringe Theatre Festival, Old Strathcona was the most densely populated piece of land in Canada, but it was currently deserted. Stanley looked around.
Alok did a 360. “I don’t see anyone.”
Stanley took a short and focused breath, jumped ten feet into the air, and thrust himself into a backflip. In the midst of it, with sky and gravel, tree and distant condominium whooshing past, it occurred to Stanley that he should practise backflips before performing them. He knew, instinctively, when to stop spinning and straighten out. But as he prepared to land, Stanley leaned too far forward. His feet hit the gravel and he stumbled forward into Alok. “That wasn’t very graceful. Sorry.”
For the next thirty seconds, Alok said nothing. The city hummed. Then Alok said, “Frick,” followed it up with a “Fuck,” reached back for something to sit on, and fell into a chain-link fence near some unused railroad tracks. “Moses. You are Moses.”
“Shh. Don’t talk like that. I’m not Moses.”
“Whatever you say. Whatever you say.” Alok pushed himself off the fence and approached Stanley. Though Stanley felt uncomfortable, even frightened, he didn’t back away. He allowed Alok to lay his hands upon him–on his chest and shoulders, in a frantic and searching manner. Alok closed his eyes, and in one motion he dropped to his knees and took Stanley’s right hand and pressed it against his cheek. “Master.”
“Stop it. I want you to tell me what this means.”
Alok adjusted his knees on the gravel, said “Ouch,” and looked up at Stanley again. “Master.”
SEVENTEEN
Frieda was not fond of Alok Chandra. Taking him home for cocktails or coffee was not an option. So after Alok had sat for half an hour on the railroad tracks, mocking the phony Buddha in Nepal and marvelling that God had chosen his new messenger here in Canada’s fifth-largest city, Stanley coaxed him back into the Oldsmobile.
“Maybe that’s it, Stan. It’s an unlikely place and you’re an unlikely person. An old florist, sick with cancer. I mean, how dull can you get?”
“Thanks.”
“Say, can we stop at a liquor store? I could really use some Grand Marnier.”
“Is it necessary?”
“This is a spiritual phenomenon on a global scale, Stan. I mean, I’m sitting next to the most important man in the world. That is, if you’re still a man. Do you feel like a man?”
“As much as I ever did, I suppose.”
Stanley parked in front of a liquor store near Alok’s hotel. While his old friend waddled inside, Stanley watched a black-haired couple in ponchos spray-painting wooden panels on the sidewalk. A crowd stood before them, sucking up the aerosol fumes. The artists had some finished pieces around them, wet-looking fantasy scenes like three-breasted women on horseback, looking sufficiently thoughtful by the light of a bleeding moon.
The idea that he was God’s new messenger was comical, and he already regretted flying Alok Chandra out. It would have been just as easy to walk into a holistic health centre and bookstore or the Russian Tea House during palm-reading hours if he had been looking for that sort of insight. And Stanley did not appreciate the “prairie rube” insinuation in Alok’s surprise.
A homeless-looking man, dressed in soiled jeans, knocked on the Oldsmobile window. Stanley opened it. The man did not speak. Instead, he shuffled warily from foot to foot with his hand out. Normally, Stanley did not give money to beggars. He worried that sustaining their way of life with financial contributions could harm their chances for renewal. But tonight he felt different. He took out a change purse and dropped almost four dollars into the man’s cupped hand.
The man stuffed the money in his pocket and looked at Stanley. Really looked. Stanley felt compelled to reach out and touch his arm. “You should really stop this. It’s not doing you any good. You can.”
“I can.”
“You can.”
By now, Alok had appeared. “My destitute, angelic brother,” he said, and put his arm around the homeless-looking man. He pointed at Stanley. “This, right here, is your salvation. Your greatest hope. Come with us.”
“No,” said Stanley. “I gave him some money.”
“Get in the back seat.”
Stanley did not want the man in the back seat. His jeans were really very dirty. “No. Don’t.”
Alok sighed. “Did you give him some wisdom? A nugget?”
“Yes.”
Alok turned to the homeless-looking man. “Did he give you a nugget?”
The man nodded.
“What was the nature of this nugget?”
“Uh…I forget now. Something nice.”
“Something nice.” Alok shook his head and turned to Stanley. While he did, the homeless-looking man peeked inside the liquor bag. “Stan! This has to be your bread and butter.”
“What has to be?” Stanley knew the homeless-looking man wanted to leave. “Let him go, Alok.”
“Are you sure you can’t perform some sort of miracle? Make him look, smell, and think better?”
The homeless-looking man was becoming impatient and a little insulted. “Excuse me, guys. I got an appointment over there.”
Alok shook his head in profound disappointment and released the man. A few paces away, the man pulled a pile of money out of his pocket and proceeded toward the liquor store. “Damn it, Stanley. See what you did?”
“Get in the car.”
There were several hotels in Old Strathcona but Stanley had decided on the Varscona for Alok. It was conveniently located near cafés, restaurants, liquor stores, and left-wingy retail outlets that sold recycled toilet paper and books about crushing the man. This way, Alok wouldn’t be too needy. While Stanley checked him in, Alok inspected books on the decorative shelf. The clerk offered an upgrade to a suite for an extra fifteen dollars a night, but since Stanley was already keen to send Alok back to Toronto he quietly rejected the offer. Stanley handed the key card to Alok and they hugged again in front of the fireplace.
“Breakfast tomorrow?”
“Sure.”
“Will Frieda come?”
“Maybe. But you can’t tell her I brought you here. She doesn’t know about this and, well, you know how she feels about you.”
“All that was so long ago.”
“Yet so vivid, if you allow yourself a second to think about it.”
“Right. Right.” Alok chewed on his thumb. “Anyway, tonight I’m going to consult a few bookstores, the mighty Internet, and my own internal databanks through meditation and Grand Marnier. Bringing me here, it was destiny. It is destiny, Master.”
The automatic wooden doors opened for Stanley. “If you call me Master one more time, or Holy Teacher or Almighty or anything else of that nature, I’ll use the muumuu to hang you from the nearest lamppost. Yes?”
Alok clasped his hands together. “He is beautiful in his wrath.”
EIGHTEEN
At home later that evening, Stanley and Frieda listened to John Coltrane and played a couple of rounds of Boggle. “What’s he doing here?”
Stanley had prepared for this query. “There’s some sort of spiritualists’ convention. They use Ouija boards, conduct séances, read tea leaves, that sort of thing. It’s in a different city every year.”
“Where’s he staying?”
“The Varscona.”
Frieda looked up from her list of words. “There aren’t any convention halls in Old Strathcona. Shouldn’t he be staying dow
ntown?”
“I’m not a convention planner, sweetheart.”
Since the day Stanley threw the kid across the Chinatown parking lot, Frieda’s eyebrows had been permanently raised. The only mind he wanted to read was hers, but Stanley had no access. For a full five seconds, even as she sipped her tea, Frieda stared at her husband. “How are you feeling today?”
“Comme çi, comme ça.”
“I noticed you snuck out of bed again last night. I woke just after one in the morning and you were gone.”
“Yeah, sorry, I’ve been restless. I watched TV downstairs and fell asleep in front of some movie.”
“That’s odd, because I went downstairs. You weren’t there.”
Stanley had not prepared for this. “That’s right. I went for a stroll.”
“A stroll.” Frieda smiled through the chanty bit of A Love Supreme. “In our neighbourhood, a stroll.”
“Yep.”
She looked down at her watch. “Are you up for another stroll tonight? If so, how about I join you?”
Stanley traded his slippers for shoes, and they stepped out into the heavy and moist night air. There was no wind. Fumes from oil refineries east of the city tasted like a rancid biscuit. He had to work hard, reaching and grabbing and gently wheedling with his pinky finger, but eventually he convinced Frieda to take his hand. They walked without speaking for several blocks, televisions flashing in every window, until they reached the Mill Creek Ravine. Instead of asking his wife’s permission, Stanley led her down into the trails along the creek. Here the air was cooler and cleaner.
They passed a young man and a woman in matching flannel, walking two black Labrador retrievers in the moonlight. They smiled at one another, said hello. Once they had passed, Frieda said, “Usually, when I see couples like that, I think about your illness. I wonder how many walks we have left.”
Stanley nodded.
“Now I’m almost nostalgic for that feeling of hopeless certainty. There was my husband, dying. It was…clear. I know it’s grotesque but there it is.”
“What are you saying?”
“Stan, I’m saying I want you to be honest with me. You don’t cough any more. You threw a boy fifteen feet in the air.”