by John Gould
“Hooey?” says Zane. “Who says hooey?”
“Hooey,” says Matt.
“Hooey. Hey, two days in a row, if I didn’t already know I was dying this’d freak me right out.”
The park’s pretty quiet today. There’s the leisurely pock of tennis balls, an occasional “damn” from a duffer who’s dumped it into the net yet again. Nothing Zane’s likely to pick up from his end.
“And yeah, I guess it’s suicide,” says Zane. “Getting sick in the first place, I suppose that was suicide too. Russian roulette?”
“I’m not saying that, Zane. You goofball.” Matt lowers his fanny onto one of the swings, no rush. Chains and weathered leather, the kind of rig from which Mercedes might suspend a particularly naughty client. “You couldn’t know, the guy who gave it to you probably didn’t know.”
Matt’s already worked this out. It happened, Zane picked up his bug—Matt’s pretty much certain about this—during his stay with Matt in his basement suite out west that time. It was seven years ago, just about right, a typical dormancy for the virus. Plus it’s the only time Zane’s ever strayed, so far as Matt can discover, and he’s done a fair bit of prying. Zane was breaking up with Phil at that point, just pre-Nico. He’d been up in Whistler crewing for a movie of the week. Odd little project, a murder mystery set in a tree planting camp. The cook did it, no the foreman did it, no the environmentalist did it, no the elk hunter did it, no the Native activist did it … On his way back through town he spent a night with Matt at his batch, or rather he spent an evening with Matt, who then bailed on him in favour of his new woman. Infidelity, that’s what it feels like to Matt now. Unfaithfulness, a failure of faith.
When the boys reconvened the next morning, it was clear that Zane had been out on the town too. He was fidgety, flustered. “That?” he said, referring to whatever tryst he’d just staggered back from. “That’s what I never do.”
All Matt had to do was stay home. One night, he couldn’t keep it in his pants for one night? His buddy was clearly in some weird kind of space, angsty, agitated. What if Matt had just cracked a couple of beers, kicked back?
“Yeck,” says Zane. He’s sipping on something over there, some herbal potion perhaps, some stinky immune booster. Extract of skunk cabbage, powdered tiger penis. Is this fair, did Shanumi get to drink this stuff? “True or false. If somebody’s going to kill himself there’s nothing you can do.”
“What, you’ve been researching this?” Matt’s getting pretty high here. As he swings he throws in a few sheetalis, Cooling Breaths. You stick out your tongue, roll it into a tube—even the sublime Anirvachaniya looks silly doing this.
“Nico used to do a shift on a hotline.”
“Oh, dandy. You’re about to kick, you get Nico on the fugging—”
“Hey, easy there. Jealousy’s ugly on you.”
“Fuggoff.”
“You fuggoff. Oh, and I meant to say thanks for the postcards. I have them up on the fridge, great conversation starters. Not that it’s actually about being good, of course.”
“How would you know?”
“Most people kill themselves in the dark months.”
“Oh, come on. False, or why would you ask?” The time Matt came close (the bag would suffocate him if the pills failed to finish the job) it was late May, early June.
Three young Filipina women—nannies most likely, in this neighbourhood—have parked their strollers and released their little white tots. There’s a thirty-something white woman too, a young mum in person, go figure. She’s just hoisting her tyke onto the teeter-totter, giving Matt the evil eye. Could he have turned, already, into one of those cellphone shouters? He’ll have to kill himself for sure.
“Where are you, anyway?” says Zane. “Do I hear kids?”
“Yeah, it’s—no, it’s just the TV.” Shanumi opening her palm to take coins from her daughter, still young enough to sell herself as a virgin …
“What? Speak up.”
“It’s just the TV.”
“It’s the middle of the day, Matt. We need to get you a fugging life.”
“Still early out here in Eden, buddy. Quiz me some more.”
Sip. “People who talk about it don’t do it.”
“True. False.” Matt never said a word. What was there to say? It’s dumb to die, just as dumb as it is to live. “True?” The swing’s slowing now, settling to its centre point, an unwound grandfather clock. Matt eases himself out of the sling, resumes his route home. “False?”
“A gay kid is five times more likely to kill himself than a straight one.”
“Too easy.”
Back in elementary school there was a simple test. You told a guy he had a broken fingernail and you watched to see how he checked. If he curled his fingers in, palm up, okay. If he splayed his fingers out, palm down (the way somebody’s sister would show off a ring), well, there was your homo. Zane passed. Matt flunked, got ragged on for weeks. False positive.
In high school there were plenty of fag jokes—half of them directed at Matt and Zane, the clingy duo, the giggly Mutt and Jeff—but in elementary not so much, perhaps because nobody had figured out what a fag was yet. Nobody knew what a Jew was either though, and that didn’t stop them. “How many Jews does it take to change a light bulb?” And this: “Jew hear what Zane did at recess?” That killed them, that cracked them up. Zane was the only one in the class, though there were the Feldstein twins in the other grade six. People saved their jokes until Zane was almost there, until it was just possible he’d overhear. They worked the same angle with retard jokes, waiting until Chris Robinson was at the edge of their circle, Chris with his dorky grin and his green CCM helmet. Ugly-girl jokes too, in the proximity of Madeleine Vine with her horn-rims and all that glinting hardware on her ramshackle teeth. For poverty jokes they had Dick Hadley (Dickhead, with his brown hand-me-down cords), for stuttererer jokes they had B-b-b-bob Y-y-y-young, and so on. They didn’t have anyone from Newfoundland so they were all potential Newfies: instead of a dink or a doofus, you might at any time be called a Newf.
Some of the jokes were pretty good, but there were a lot of them Matt couldn’t tell, or even laugh at. He couldn’t do Jew jokes, and he scrupled, too, about Polack jokes, once he found out where Zane’s dad was from. A total rip-off, and it didn’t even make sense. Jew and Polack were just as meaningless as Newfie. Zane wasn’t a Jew the way Chris was stupid, the way Madeleine was ugly. Why shouldn’t they all be able to laugh, Zane too?
One time he did try telling one, Zane did. Not a huge success. He nailed the punchline (something to do with six million) and even followed it up with a creditable bark of laughter. Then he quit laughing and barfed up his PB and jelly sandwich onto the scuffed-wood hallway floor. Matt grabbed Zane’s books and shoved his friend ahead of him into the boys’ room.
“Fuggoff,” said Zane as he splashed his face, spat into the sink.
“You fuggoff,” said Matt. “And by the way, the world record for continuous joke telling was set by I forget his name but he told jokes for forty-seven hours fourteen minutes in a Nevada nightclub.” Matt’s Uncle Lenny had given him A Boy’s Book of World Records for Christmas, and he’d been sermonizing from it ever since, lugging it around with him as doggedly as Joel “Jesus” Atkins lugged his Bible. Matt’s most oft quoted records were about deprivation—longest time without sleep, or light, or air, or food. Weird, to be admiring the sort of dark discipline that would ultimately take his sister from him.
“Yeah, thanks,” said Zane, scrubbing with wadded paper towel at the streaks of spew on his Adidas. “That’s a big help.”
Hey, it’s still standing. Matt chokes up a little—relief that the old place is undemolished, sadness that it isn’t unchanged. The elm’s gone, for instance, the gnarly old tree from which a tire once hung here in the front yard. Elm, just the word takes you back. What was it, some sort of fungus that came over from Europe on a bug? You blinked and the whole species was gone.
“Um, false,” says Matt. “Sorry, what was it again?”
“Women are four times as likely as men.”
“True. I’ll say true. Speaking of which, Mercedes is taking good care of you?”
“Yeah, she really is.”
“Not trying to talk you into dying or anything?”
“And it’s the other way around, men than women.” Sip—or more of a slurp now, the potion must have simmered down.
No car, no lights, no action. What the hell, Matt strolls across the lawn and enters the cool canyon between his house and the next one, what used to be the Johanson place. The gap is maybe four feet, the brick walls facing each other like the jaws of a vise. In the old days Matt clowned around endlessly in here, cowboying, spying, superhero-ing. Some days Zane would submit to being a sidekick: Festus, Illya Kuryakin, Boy Wonder.
“So what’s up with you today?” says Matt.
“Not much. Husbandly duties.”
“Ha, but seriously.”
“Medical crap.”
“Where do you go for that stuff anyway?”
“Toronto General, the immuno clinic. There were a lot of suicides at Auschwitz.”
“Too easy.”
Around back things look pretty much the same. Birdbath, a couple of bushes to hide behind, peow-peow-peow. Matt squats, cups a hand to squint in the basement window. If two time periods could be overlaid—today and, say, a similar summer day thirty-four years ago—young Matt could peel himself free of his friend’s sweaty embrace, go up on tippy-toe and peek out the window into his own eyes. What would he make of himself?
The pink couch is gone. Well obviously. There’s a La-Z-Boy, a loveseat stacked with boxes, a foosball table. Foosball, some lucky brat.
Matt says, “Should I come?”
“What? Come where?”
“I was just wondering, would it help if I came. There to Toronto.”
“Oh, I see.” Zane’s trademark knee-jiggle rattles down the line.
“I want … I feel like we should talk about this. About what you’re doing.” Matt rocks back a bit and the basement disappears, obscured by his own reflection. He tries out his eyebrows.
“Yeah, I get that. I’d want to stop you too, if it were the other way around. But here’s a thing. What if I’m right? What if this is right?”
“Zane?”
“Here.”
“I really, really”—that internal uplift, that heave of grief—“really want you to live.”
The pause is a long one. Some kind of progress? Then, “Imagine you’re in a burning building, Matt. You and, say, ten million other people. Now imagine you could—”
“Nobody even knows, Zane. Jesus.”
“Right.”
Matt glares at himself, shakes his head. “I’m coming.”
“No. Like I say, I’m working on something.”
“With Nico, yeah. Mercedes said.”
“What else did she say?”
“That was it.”
“I don’t think you should come, Matt. I want you to come, but I don’t think you should.”
“Why? If you—”
“It’s too much.”
“Too much what?”
“It’s too much, trust me.”
Matt rolls his eyes at himself. He says, “Remember when we were kids? In my basement?”
“Yeah. Sure.”
“Did you know back then?”
“Did I know what? How much of a moron you are?”
“Yeah.” Matt rocks forward again and the basement swims into view. A young boy—gangly, coffee-coloured, clad in a bright yellow soccer shirt—is peering up at him.
“I’ve always known that, Matt.”
Matt smiles, waves. What else is there to do? The boy hesitates, then sombrely waves back, a passenger on a ship as it pulls away.
“Okay,” says Matt, “I just wanted to be sure.”
The boy seems to be saying something too—his lips move, but there’s nothing to be heard through the glass. Matt does a what? face, cups his ear.
“But you’ll forgive me, right?” says Zane.
“Forgive you?”
The boy reaches up and gives the window a shove. The sound of the alarm hits him just as he opens his mouth to speak again. It crumples him to his knees. It knocks Matt over too, flips him onto his back. This is what an aneurysm must sound like when it goes off in your head.
Matt sits up. The kid’s still on his knees, huddled over like a toddler that needs lifting. Matt tugs at the window but it won’t open more than a crack. He tugs again and a chunk of wood splinters off in his hand. He shouts, “Sorry! I’m really sorry!” As he scrambles to his feet he rediscovers the phone in his hand. He shouts “Sorry!” again as he snaps it shut. Then he starts to run.
“Why did Hamlet hesitate?” In his review of the newest screen version—the broody Ethan Hawke as the bummed-out Dane in Manhattan—Matt went for the big one. “Why did the sweet prince delay so long before killing his uncle?” And then, what the hell, he solved it. “Simple, really. Because it was wrong. That his father, the ghost, was a ghost and not a man. That the ghost wanted Hamlet to ghostify another man. That Hamlet was on his way to ghostifying himself. All this was wrong, everything was wrong. Corrupted. Out of joint. Wrong. So what was a hero to do but nothing?”
Nagy’s reply, via email, was typically terse. “Ghostify, are you putting me on?”
But Zane liked the piece. It’s one of the few times he’s ever rung Matt up over a review, though Matt mails him every one. “‘Thy Thoughts No Tongue,’ great title,” he said. “Hey, remember that time in Regent’s Park?”
“Yeah. When the Hamlet guy got hurt.”
They were in London, the very start of their Europe trip together. Outdoor Shakespeare with folks who didn’t have to fake the accent, how much better could it get? They caught The Tempest in the afternoon, slipped away for a pint and a vat of shepherd’s pie, came back for Hamlet at dusk. The theatre was a grassy stage ringed by raked benches and a screen of bushes and bendy trees. Verdant bower—no way not to put it that way, so they put it that way about a billion times. They’re putting it that way still.
When Hamlet got hurt it was hard to tell. It was during the final scene, when Hamlet and Laertes are fencing and Laertes gets him with his unbated rapier. Hamlet’s supposed to be stunned, so when the guy being Hamlet was stunned it wasn’t clear whether he was being Hamlet or being the guy who was being Hamlet. By the time that got sorted out, the guy being Hamlet had recovered enough to keep on being Hamlet until he died, until Hamlet died.
“Verdant bower,” said Zane.
“Verdant bower,” said Matt.
“But yeah, good piece,” said Zane. “Worm of consciousness impaled on the barbed hook of its body, not bad. Nothing, though? What a guy should do is nothing? Are you absolutely sure about that?”
For today’s stakeout, Matt’s come in out of the heat. He grabs a water and a coffee at the café in the hospital’s cavernous rotunda. More specifically, he grabs a plastic bottle of Eco H2O (“Thank you for supporting our Ethiopia hand-pump project, sir!”), and a monster skinny double iced Frappuccino (“Chocolate or cinnamon sprinkles with that, sir?”). A trifle extravagant, but what’s ten bucks relative to the honking great debt Matt’s racking up this week?
Civilizations do this too, don’t they? Thoroughly spend themselves once the writing’s on the wall? In Rome just before the fall, didn’t they indulge in this same kind of unhinged decadence? So maybe Matt can conceive of himself as a cipher, a stand-in for his culture, smashing up the furniture to feed the fire before the stove goes cold that final time. And if there’s anything to this, if Matt turns out to be a great big symbol of something, then maybe it’s okay that he’s letting all this happen?
When he got back to the house the alarm had just quit ringing. He’d run a block or so, one-eightied and run back. He never did get to see the boy again, but he managed a longish chat, through the mail slot, with
the boy’s mother. The only way he could think to prove his innocence—to persuade her that she and her son had never been in danger—was to produce a bunch of memories. “This was my home too,” he said, and he launched in. Mini-pool with Zane in the basement (he left out the humping bit), marathon games of Monopoly with Erin in her room at the top of the stairs (she’d give you Boardwalk or Park Place in exchange for any of the worthless purple ones), afternoon snacks with his mum in the kitchenette (Ants on a Log, loads of Cheez Whiz), rocket launches with his dad in the living room. By the time he was done he’d vividly envisioned for her every room in the house, and convinced both of them that his childhood had been a perfect idyll. The woman declined to open the door, but she did call off the security people, and allowed herself a laugh when Matt explained that it was actually her son breaking out that had set off the system.
Tricky to sip coffee when you’re wearing one of those nose tubes, but the guy at the next table seems to be managing. Most of the patrons look healthy though, staff and volunteers and visitors and hey, who knows, maybe another spy or two. Matt’s got a place by the window, the better to maintain his surveillance. Outside there’s major construction going on, a new ward or wing for the hospital, and all that plywood has given rise to a pretty impressive graffiti gallery. Back home in rural BC what you tend to get on the public canvas is earnest, awkwardly executed murals—local flora and fauna, historical high points, white explorers rowing ashore to be greeted by frowning Natives. Here in the city what you get is super-dense text, unreadably rococo. Most of the letters have been twisted into Tolkienesque runes, or 3-D’d and interlocked like some nightmarish Mensa puzzle. “Astral Rugburn rule.” “Burping Not Smiling rule.” “Freddie Mercury’s Overbite rule.” Sheesh, band names sure have come a long way since the Beatles, the Monkees. “What if there were no hypothetical questions?” Ha, not bad. “Jesus Wept Chuckled.” Chuckled is good. And this: “I heart Kyung-Soon.” Is the guy joking? Love to? to heart, a word to an image back to a word describing the image. Must be the new thing. Instead of “No Smoking,” you’ll get a sign saying “Lit Cigarette with a Diagonal Slash Through It.”