by John Gould
I heart you, man.
Hey, I heart you too …
And here he comes. Yep, the screwy stride—extra shuffly today, maybe just because of the ginormous camera bag he’s lugging. He’s got a new style going, Zane does, not the usual collar shirt and cargo pants but black T, black jeans. Black and bald. The look suits him, though even from here you can discern a couple of peculiar planes dented into the dome of his skull. He makes his way up the circular walk, enters the lobby and heads for the bank of elevators just across from Matt. Thirteenth floor, Matt checked on his way in.
Maybe wait till he comes back down? Sure, give him space to deal with the medical stuff, then lay into him. Refusing to be saved, that’s a whopper of a sin, isn’t it, Zane? According to your people? “Death by the hands of heaven,” that’s Maimonides, right? On the punishment for suicide? Doesn’t sound good. Yes indeed, the Internet hookup has been handy.
“Whoops-a-daisy.”
“No, that’s okay.” They’re heavier than they look, those IV stands. The woman who’s just run over Matt’s foot gets righted again, and weaves her way on over to the counter.
How long will they keep Zane today? They might just be taking a little blood, so’s to update the bad news. Or they might be sitting him down for a lecture on what a lunatic he is. Could be a while.
Gulp of water, Frappuccino chaser. Outside Matt’s bit of window, parallel-parked amongst the wheelchairs, there’s a shopping cart loaded with Dumpster-diver gems. A rust-pocked wok, a wooden tennis racket, a Pocahontas action figure, a Gap bag full of empties, not a bad haul. In the cart’s shade squats a man about Matt’s age, prematurely antiqued by weather and wine. Wino, that’s what they’d have called him in the old days. Hobo. Bum. He must once have been a looker, square-jawed, rugged. Rock Hudson? Late-period Rock, Rock with AIDS but not saying so. The mustachioed gauntness. What’ll he have to do to get himself a bed here at the hospital?
When Matt leaves he’ll be sure to pop a toonie or two into the cloth bowl of Rock’s cap. WWZD? Okay, make it a five-spot. What he ought to do, actually, is he ought to give the guy half of what he’s worth, half of all he’s got. (Okay, so make it ten, ho ho.) If everybody did that, just kept on doing that, wouldn’t things work out to perfection? You’d give half yourself away every time, and get back half the other guy.
In an early Matt-Zane production, Zane once played a dude like this. A vagrant who turned out to be rich (aha!) in wisdom and compassion, a frizzle-bearded Buddha. Matt handled the camera, his favourite role—getting to frame things, give things a shape. To be present and absent at the same time, a poor man’s I-lessness. “McEye” in the credits.
What he feels today, with no lens to peep through, is an instant and dismayingly intense connection to the man. Sure, it’s partly just the standard guilt thing. By virtue of his place (however laughable) in the warp and woof of the world’s power, Matt’s responsible for putting this guy where he is. Matt’s greed and ignorance and apathy render him complicit, of course they do. There’s a worse thought though, a relatively fresh one. What if you flip it around? How far is Matt from his own little patch of sidewalk? Wifeless, jobless, what’s to catch him?
Mariko, kind soul, tends to construe Matt’s shortage of cash as some sort of ethical choice on his part. And hey, maybe there’s something to that. Maybe Matt really did intend this in some way. Having a bunch of stuff, after all, the way the new folks in his old neighbourhood do—nice car, nice pad, place down south—surely that’s connected to the fact that other folks have so little. So then the righteous approach would be to have nothing, wouldn’t it? And the most direct route to that goal would be to do nothing, or at least to do only what’s marginal, what’s economically meaningless. Opting out as a moral stance, why not? Maybe that’s how Rock wound up here too, some cockamamie principle he took too seriously for too long. Rock looks like a saint, so maybe he is one. A saint in need of a sect, or at least of a buddy …
Whoa, that was quick. Matt drains his H2O. He takes a last sip of his Frap, readies himself for action. Don’t confront the guy in here though, let him get outside. Timing is everything.
Zane whiffles his way to the end of the walk, then sets down his bag. He digs out his tripod, affixes his camera. He bends to his viewfinder, trains his gaze on the door he’s just come through.
Well now, hm. Could this be Matt’s big break? On his way out he slips Rock a twenty. “Hey, thanks, chief.” Then he goes into his silly walk. It’s John Cleese mostly, from the old Monty Python days, but Matt seeks to give it a little something of his own—the strut of a gnu with a nasty chafing problem, say.
It’s a good moment. Damn good. Zane actually staggers back, as though a charge has crackled down the barrel of the camera and zapped him right between the eyes. Amazing how swiftly the stunned look morphs, though, into the usual goofy grin. “You sneaky son of a gun,” he says as Matt completes his inane approach. “How long have you been stalking me?”
“Too fugging long. If I’d had any idea how boring you are …”
“Yeah, sorry about that.”
It could be worse. It could be way worse. Zane isn’t the wraith, the undead apparition he’s become in Matt’s mind. He’s slender, yeah, but he’s not emaciated. He’s pale but not ashen. He isn’t the old Zane, but he’s Zane. You can see how he got here from there. How long will that continue to be the case? At what point will Zane cease to be himself? Who’ll bear witness to that moment, since Zane, by definition, will not?
“Next time I stalk a real star,” says Matt.
Hug or shake? They’ve never quite sorted this out, so there’s always an awkward moment when they first meet. Last time they settled on one of those two-handed deals, clutching each other’s forearms like a pair of fawning politicos at a photo op. Matt figures he’ll hang back this time, let Zane make the first move. Zane seems to have hit upon the same strategy. They stand there grinning foolishly at each other for a while and then, in something like unison, lurch into a hug. Zane (Matt’s going to have to break this to him someday) hugs like a girl. He hugs like an umgirl nervous about her new boobs.
“Oh shit,” says Matt as they pull apart, whacking at each other like teammates after a big goal. “I shouldn’t be touching you.”
Zane gives his head a grim shake. “You’ve gotta get over this, man. You aren’t even my type.”
“Ha,” says Matt. “No, it’s just, my body’s been messing with me this week. Or I’d have seen you sooner.”
“I’ll be fine,” says Zane. He shakes his head again, trying to stop disbelieving. “This is so good.”
“Yeah,” says Matt.
“So why are you … what’s going on?”
“Oh, I figured it was time to get back here, check on Dad.”
“Right.”
Matt gestures at the camera. “And what’s with this?”
“That project I was talking about. You know, it’s strange, I was just thinking about you when I got here today. Isn’t this … wasn’t Erin here too?”
“Tenth floor,” says Matt.
“Christ. That must be weird for you, extra weird.” Zane grimaces. “Oh hang on, here he comes.” And he bends back to his peephole.
Matt’s pieced things together before he gets himself turned all the way around. Yep, here comes Nico, craftily oblivious of the camera and its googly stare. Didn’t he do a little acting before the social work? Matt recalls an ad for Pepto-Bismol or some such, Nico a pink superhero prancing around after a green blob of stomach acid. Yeah, and the dancing too. You can still see that, the straight spine, the cocked vitality of the limbs.
When he catches sight of Matt, though, Nico blows his cool. He’s no actor, he’s just a guy genuinely pleased to see another guy. This impression gives Matt a little zing of guilt—a good thing, because it helps him go into the handshake with added gusto.
“Matt!”
“Nico!”
“Zane didn’t even tell me you were in town. Hey,
what’s goin’ on here, fella?” Nico gives Zane a funny-business glare, hands histrionically on his hips. Then he lets it go with a hoot of laughter, claps them both on the shoulder. “It’s beautiful. You two are beautiful.” Another hoot, though he somehow manages to tear up at the same time.
“I think we should reshoot,” says Zane.
“Right, okay,” says Nico, pulling himself manfully together—Brando after a big scene.
“Who are you, Nico?” says Matt. “I mean in the movie.”
“Oh, just me.” A self-deprecating smirk. “The only person I’ve ever been any good at, to tell you the truth.”
“Only this time,” says Zane, “maybe don’t go gaga over Matt?”
“‘Kay.”
“And I wonder if you could be carrying the scrip, if we could actually see it.”
“Sure.”
“Scrip?” says Matt.
“For the antiretros,” says Nico. “I start on them this week.”
“Ah,” says Matt.
“‘Ah,’ says Matt,” says Zane. He gives Matt a sorry-about-this look. “Do you mind if I just get this one shot? I’m going to run out of steam any minute.”
“Sure, of course. Let me clear out of the way.” Matt backs off a few yards, gives them both the thumbs-up. He waits till Nico’s back inside the hospital, Zane’s lost behind his camera. Then he turns, and again he’s off and running.
Matt’s still got the postcard thumbtacked up in his study, the one Zane sent him from Jakarta when he was shooting his documentary there a few years back. Which is probably where the idea came from, the whole postcard campaign.
Dear Matt,
Took a couple of days off filming. Visited Komodo Island and met Calvin, pictured here on the front (at least I’m pretty sure that’s him, that roguish look in his eye). Back to the city now, still stinky from the annual floods. There are 20 million people here, plus me. 20,000,001. What if I disappeared? Is there any calculation fine enough to detect the difference that would make?
But I’ll be home anyway, early next week. Gimme a call?
Z
The postcard was printed by a conservation group, which explained the caption: “World’s Largest Lizard in Grave Danger!” The photo depicted a Komodo dragon—a giant leather handbag on four right-angled legs—coming at you, sampling the air for your scent with its yellow forked tongue. Pretty nifty.
Had Zane already titled his film when he popped that postcard in the mail? Dragon, the second instalment in his AIDS trilogy, wedged in between Rio and Lagos, Cato and Shanumi. Its subject is Budi, a twenty-ish kid who’s been hooked on low-grade heroin—putaw, he calls it—since the start of high school. Actually, he’s off the stuff now. Oops, sorry, he’s back on … The film zigs and zags with him as he quits and fails, quits and fails. Each time he gets clean he clues back in to his real situation, remembers that the virus he picked up from some other kid’s needle can’t be kicked. So he goes looking for a hit. There’s a sense of grand tragedy to the tale, the way that one flaw, that one bit of inattention—the moment he said, “Yeah, what the hell,” to his friend and his works—leads relentlessly, step by step, to his ruin.
How baffled by it all he is, that’s what sticks with you. He says, “Dragon claws,” and he points at the track marks climbing his arm, as though they really have been left there by some other creature, some wild thing that savaged him in the night. With equal dismay he shows you the slit marks on his wrists, explains the junkie trick of sucking your own blood in hopes of getting a second kick out of the drug. That blood is of course poisoning him now, the HIV evolving into AIDS. Budi and his body, they’re two separate beasts, endlessly betrayed and betraying …
How would a person survive exposure to this much pain? Why? Why is Zane still alive?
Sheesh, those nerds must have had big ol’ stiffies under their laptops today. Kate’s trussed up tight in black skirt and jacket, a red blouse that vees hard into her white flesh. She steps out of one elevator on her floor just as Matt steps out of the other.
“Hey,” he says, briefly buffaloed.
“Hey. Did you see Zane?”
“Yeah.”
“Well? And?”
“I straightened him out.”
“Wow.”
Matt’s already been up to his room for a quick swoosh in the shower. After his episode downtown, and his trip back via subway and bus, he pretty much needed it.
Subway. The soul of Toronto, or anyway the looped subtext of its psyche. That’s how Jesus would have got around, right? So, three flights down into the fuming earth, a descent that was also, for Matt, a return. One of his very favourite memories—that time he and Zane brought along toilet plungers. They did it during rush hour to be sure all the railings would be taken. In unison they pulled out their plungers, suckered them to the ceiling of the subway car—do-it-yourself handholds—and stood swaying amongst the thicket of dour commuters. They got cold stares, sure, but they got grins and giggles too. And then charging up the steps at the far end, wailing “Bohemian Rhapsody” in wild harmony …
Matt says, “How about you? How’d it go?”
“Go? Oh, good, great.” Kate’s laugh has a slightly hysterical edge to it—she’s still buzzed, evidently, a rock star feeding off the residual energy of her fans. The door gives her the green light and she pushes on in, tosses her purse. “I think they got it.” She does that earring thing, tipping her head, fiddling the jewel with both hands. Like an adult. Matt pictures his mum by the bureau, just back from a party, Inga Johanson having let him fall asleep in the parental bed. “I think they really got that it’s dangerous, this fling.”
“Fling?”
“This love affair? With, you know, the absolute. The world as one thing?”
“Right.”
This was Kate’s topic for her big lecture today, the world as one thing. She expounded it on the drive home from Charlotte’s last night. No, it was a question: Is the world one thing? “People have always looked for the one behind the many. When you’re born you’re broken off, right? You’re cut off? And from then on you’re trying to put things back together. One guy thought it was water, that everything comes from water. That down deep everything is water. Thales, that was Thales.”
“Glub glub,” said Matt. He did gills with his hands.
“Heraclitus thought it was fire.”
Another guy thought it was earth, another guy thought it was air. Then intellect, math, music. “If you were the only girl in the world,” Matt crooned, “And I were the only booooy …”
“And that’s what we still dream about, is a way to make it all whole again. What are the symmetries behind these shattered things?”
Something along those lines.
“Right, good,” says Matt. The heavy door swings shut behind him. “You know what I think? I think all this talk, what it does is it puts you in the mood.” And he grabs her, and he heaves her onto the bed. She actually bounces, he’s tossed her that hard. It’s a me-Tarzan moment, meant to be funny and maybe a little bit thrilling too.
“In the mood?” says Kate, sitting up. “No, not really. I’m actually sort of …”
Matt’s standing over her, Trojan at the ready, a twist of foil between his teeth.
“Oops, but you’re all …” And she grabs him by the belt, and pulls him to her.
Lordy. Why is this so … what? The eerie intimacy of it. And the shifting of layers—it’s as though she were suddenly to start spouting theory from the slit between her legs. The personal and the impersonal absolutely conflated, mind and body.
And the sexlessness, in a weird way. Genderlessness. Matt paws at her buttons so she’ll know he wants her to lose her blouse and bra, which she does. He can’t get at her breasts so she attends to them herself, weighs and worries them and before long she slips a hand into the dark slot between her belly and her belted skirt. She times it (sheesh, it sure doesn’t take long when she handles it herself) so that they collapse as one onto t
he bed. Done, finished, kaput.
Average caloric content? Four calories.
“Freedonia?” Kate, it’s safe to say, rebounds from these sated moments more swiftly than does Matt. He’s barely flopped a wedge of bedspread over his funny bits before she’s up and rebloused. “And the other one, the one where Chico and Harpo …”
“Sylvania?” says Matt.
“Sylvania!”
“Not bad. Okay, so you’re getting a tougher one tomorrow. Way tougher.”
Kate makes an I’m-so-scared face, and then, “You have a lovely cock, by the way.”
“Really? Well hey, so do you.”
“Thanks.”
That’s the best sex I’ve ever had. Matt’s been with Kate four times now and these are the words that pop into his head every time. That’s the best sex I’ve ever had. Weird, because what pops into his head after sex with Mariko is nothing. It goes all hushed in there is what it does, a room where the TV’s just been turned off. Everything’s stopped, and nothing’s started up again.
Kate’s at the window peering out, contemplatively hipshot against the mellowing light. Matt says, “So it went well, eh?” He wriggles up to the head of the bed, props himself on a pillow.
“Hm?”
“Your lecture. They liked it?”
“Oh, they loved it.” Again with the elated laugh.
“Did you always want to do this kind of stuff?” This is weird too—he wants to talk, whereas with Mariko it’s pure cuddle. “I mean, how did you find it?”
Kate turns, pauses. He can’t make out her face, but he can make out, in silhouette, her shrug. “Mr. Barclay, I guess,” she says. “I’m in high school, Sheet Harbour. Small small small town. There’s absolutely nothing going on. All of a sudden in science class we’re talking about, I don’t know, cosmic rays and stuff, and I start to see how humongous and amazing the world really is.”
“For me it was the sound of music,” says Matt.
“What music?”