As empty pints and shots piled up and everyone around the table got good and drunk, I felt myself lifting off my chair, my body dematerialized. Everything had had the gravity sucked out of it. Bonnie was making a train wreck of a joke, in her crooked-ass French. Bébert and Jonathan were already cracking up. Nick was resting his arm on the back of Bonnie’s chair. They were getting ready to toast, had already ordered a round of Irish Car Bombs. At this place they were called Val-Alain’s, after the town where one of the bartenders ran off the road on the long drive home from a night drinking in Quebec City. The guys were swapping kitchen stories in voices hoarse from yelling all through the shift. They’d worked together at Tasso, Jonathan told me. Instead of medieval role-playing, he was telling me about his recipe for short ribs in stout. One of his friends was laughing his head off because some idiot server ordered a lamb shank rare. Bébert’s obsession with Christian showed no sign of abating. He couldn’t get over the man’s incompetence. I was sure he was exaggerating. Nick just nodded along, while he ground up a bud in his hand under the table. I sat in silence, smelling like a dumpster.
I watched these people consumed by the joy of making it through another rush. I’d already drunk more than at my last Cegep party. But this was just an average night for them. Rancid was blasting on the sound system. Bébert turned to me, lighting a smoke.
“Is it good?” he asked, picking my book up off the table.
It was August Derleth, The Trail of Cthulu. I’d found it at the giant cheap used book store by the bus station. Tibor Csernus illustrated the cover.
“Not bad. You know Lovecraft?”
“I don’t really read. But I had an ex who used to read all the time. She’d read all those Kun . . . ends with an A. . .”
“Kundera?”
“Yeah. That’s it.”
“I’ve never read him. I’m more into SciFi and Fantasy.”
“Dave told me you draw comics. That true?”
“Dave told you that?”
I kept stealing glances at Bonnie over the dark pints on the table. She was staring at Bébert, and he was avoiding her glance. He was pretending to watch Rodney Mullen ripping through some L.A. skatepark on TV. Bonnie was starting to have a hard time sitting up straight in her chair. Nick now had his arm squarely around her shoulder. She wasn’t even trying to speak French anymore.
“Yeah. He said you were an amazing drawer.”
“He’s exaggerating. I’m studying graphic design at Cegep.”
“Oh, okay.”
“I just got my first real job. An album cover.”
“Cool.”
“Yeah, for a group called Deathgaze. You know them?”
Bébert shook his head and blew out smoke.
“What Cegep you go to?”
“Vieux-Montréal.”
Bébert broke out laughing.
“Did you go there too?”
“You could say that.”
“What’d you study?”
“I majored in fucking up. I was dealing back then, and heavy into pills. That’s pretty much what I did in college.”
I couldn’t think of what to say to that. The booze had more or less sucked all the life out of me. I forgot where I was for a second. Everything went dim; the lights on the ceiling and along the wall seemed to stop shining. The TVs showed nothing but snow. The air grew heavy. Cigarette smoke filled the room. A bartender stood up on the bar and yelled out Last Call. I lifted up my head, and wondered if I hadn’t fallen asleep. Bonnie was up at the bar, on a stool, talking to the bartender. You couldn’t tell who was hitting on whom. Nick was staring at his pint in annoyance, an empty look in his eye and a joint tucked behind his ear. Bébert slapped the table with open palms.
“Let’s finish her up at an after-hours.”
“How about the Aria?” Nick suggested.
I barely managed to get out of my chair. We all left together: Bébert, Nick, and me.
Outside the snow had stopped. A thin blanket covered the ground, crunching under our footsteps. The cold worked its way into my damp clothing. Jonathan and his friends were walking behind Nick, who had lighted up his joint. Bébert was in front, hands tucked into his unzipped coat and a smoke in his mouth. We could hear him rapping something. I couldn’t really follow it. We crossed Saint-Denis. Bébert cursed out a cop car that had brushed him as we turned onto Roy. Three blocks up I caught sight of a night bus going my way. I said goodbye and stumbled over to the closest stop. The wind was buffeting me and my clothes were starting to freeze solid. I was relieved not to wait too long, I would surely have caught a cold. The massive, luminous form slowed and pulled up to the sidewalk. I got on and went to collapse in a seat at the back. Pulled my Walkman from my backpack and spent five minutes trying to untangle the headphones. My head was spinning. It wasn’t unpleasant. I looked out the window. Even after three a.m., Saint-Denis refused to give up the ghost. Neil Young’s weepy guitar was ringing in my ears, the instrumental bridge of “Change your Mind” went on and on. I was just lucid enough to make it home, and was proud of myself. I had a job, and I hadn’t spent all the money Malik had given me, just twenty bucks, no more. And I hadn’t gambled.
On the bench across from me two girls, not much older than me, were chatting, laughing at some interminable story. An old man stared at an invisible point in front of him, mittens lying forgotten on his thighs. A few seats farther on, a forty-year-old guy was slumbering, navy-blue coveralls open over a massive paunch, thick hand on a plastic lunch box. His tanned face was red from the cold. We passed Rosemont and I fell asleep, hugging myself, marinating in the smells of burnt olive oil and degreaser.
Chapter 5
The trouble started at the end of September, long before I was forced to skip my apartment and crash at Vincent’s.
I started doing less and less work for school and instead gambled away my rent for August, and then September, and finally October in long, listless afternoons in front of video poker machines in deserted taverns and strip clubs. There was the Fun Spot on Ontario out past Amherst, and the Axe on Saint-Denis below Ontario, and when I left Marie-Lou’s around one in the afternoon there was Brasserie Cherrier not far from the Lafleur hot dog joint. I drank beer that tasted like dish soap and burned through twenty-dollar bills until I was down to my last quarter, in the hope that finally, in the nine squares that filled the screen, the bells would align in a cross and the payout pour forth. I almost never won. What was worse, during those three months I lost more than the previous six. I still hadn’t figured out that the more you gamble, the more you lose. I was gambling pretty much every day.
October was the low point: an agonizing month of alternating bursts of angst and surges of euphoria. There were schemes to avoid paying rent. Then two thousand dollars from Deathgaze. Then the gambling cravings came on stronger, stronger even than the ones that had made me lose everything I’d saved that summer. A crescendo of intensity followed by a precipitous comedown. November: Me fleeing the apartment under Rémi’s threats. Me in the afternoon, alone at Marie-Lou’s, searching through her stuff to steal her tip money to go out and gamble. Me desperately looking for a job. The skipped classes accumulating. Nothing able to sustain my interest. A single thing—gambling—able to hold my attention. Especially during those long rainy nights, lost on the West Island or out in Lasalle, going door-to-door, hoping to sell at least one goddamn alarm system and finally lay my hands on a commission. The team leader repeated it like a mantra: one sale, one hundred dollars; two sales, three hundred dollars. It was as simple as that. But I didn’t sell a single system. I’d finish my night in a foul mood, coat soaked through by glacial rain, freezing from the roots of my hair to my toes, more spent than after a twelve-hour labouring shift, my mind numb and my ears, despite the silent headphones, filled with a mild but unrelenting buzzing that afflicted me from the moment the team leader dropped us off at Lio
nel Groulx Metro station until I got home to Marie-Lou’s or Vincent’s. It was then, when the day’s possibilities were exhausted, that I would find myself empty-handed and haunted by my debts. In my mind there was no other answer. I had to gamble. I needed a fresh start.
One night, around November 10, I couldn’t take anymore. I called Malik.
“Something wrong?” he said when he heard my voice.
Vincent was at his girlfriend’s. I went and sat on the sofa with the cordless phone.
“Are you coming to Montreal anytime soon?” I asked.
Malik moved. I heard him fumbling through his kitchen drawers.
“Maybe next weekend. Why? Are you okay?”
I could hear a dish being set down in the sink, water pouring from the tap. My mouth was dry. I hadn’t eaten since morning. I cleared my throat and asked him:
“Do you think we could hang out?”
“For sure. Since when do we not hang out when I’m in town? Man, you’re being weird.”
He was putting dishes away, opening and closing kitchen cupboards. I could picture his apartment. I wished I could be at his place, far from Montreal, far from my life. We’d make nachos, drink some beers, watch a movie, maybe play chess. I could hear him trying to figure out what to say next. There were no more sounds on the other end of the line.
“What’s going on? What’s up with you?”
I took a deep breath.
“I’m in trouble. I need some cash.”
He stayed quiet for a little while. I heard a barely audible sigh.
“You need some cash, eh?” he finally said.
I had hot flashes. I was sitting on the end of the sofa. He asked me why.
“It’s complicated. That’s why I want to hang out. I got kicked out of my apartment. I’m kind of fucked here.”
“What? What’s going on? Where are you?”
“I can’t really explain it all over the phone.”
My voice started shaking.
“I’m at Vincent’s. We have to have a real talk. Not long-distance, it’ll cost too much. When are you going to be in Montreal?”
“Tomorrow if I have to. What time?”
“Uh, I don’t know. Don’t you have class tomorrow? I don’t want to screw up your schedule. . .”
“My cousin’s more important than my classes. Pick a time.”
We decided to meet the next afternoon. He had some stuff to take care of at the university in the morning, then he’d drive to Montreal. He could be there around two. He’d pick me up at Vincent’s. We’d go somewhere nearby to talk. I was relieved. Malik would definitely lend me some cash. I was almost looking forward to it. I was so exhausted I fell into a deep sleep, right there on the sofa, fully dressed.
The next day around noon I started waiting for Malik. He showed up a little late, around two-thirty. When I got in his VW Golf, Symphony of Enchanted Lands was playing for what must have been the ten-thousandth time. We went driving around town in the rain, kind of randomly. It felt like he was trying to cheer me up. We stopped at a red light.
“Do you know where you want to go? You hungry? I haven’t had lunch.”
I suggested getting out of the city and going to the Georges in Longueuil. I was hungry. All I’d had to eat was two pieces of toast and peanut butter, and a few sips of Sunny Delight.
He drove to Papineau to take the Jacques Cartier Bridge. I felt a shiver as we crossed Ontario. But as soon as we were safely across the bridge I felt better. He took the backstreets instead of the 132 to Roland-Therrien. We parked in front of what used to be the ice cream bar. It was drizzling here too. We went in. A waitress in a white shirt and bartender’s belt was reading a newspaper next to the till. Aside from a few ageing truckers chatting over their club sandwiches we were the only ones there. We took a booth by the wall covered in framed photos. The owner fishing. The owner with Céline Dion, in front of a hotel. The owner with Ginette Reno. The owner with Claude Blanchard in front of a white Cadillac. The owner with Peter Falk in some kind of casino.
Malik ordered coffee right away.
“All right, what’s up, man? It sounded serious.”
He took two sugars and emptied them into his cup. I flipped through the menu for a while. I knew it by heart.
“You already know what you want?”
“Yeah,” he said. “So are you gonna tell me what’s up?”
I put the menu down on the table. The waitress came back. She took our orders. Pizza-ghetti for me; a sub for Malik. I looked outside. Across the 132 the St. Lawrence River looked grey and sad. In the distance the Olympic Stadium’s tower disappeared into the rainclouds.
“Rémi kicked me out of the apartment.”
I could feel Malik staring at me. I kept looking out the window.
“It’s been messed up ever since school started, in the apartment. One of Rémi’s buddies is always crashing in the living room. I asked him to pay me back a bit of rent from September and October, since this other guy is taking up part of my space, eating my food. He was all ‘no way.’ Said if I didn’t like it I could leave.”
Malik scratched his forehead and sniffled.
“Is your name on the lease?”
“No.”
“Hmmm.”
He put one more cream in his coffee.
“I’m in trouble, man,” I said. “I’m totally broke and I’ve got no place to live.”
I was fiddling with a corner of the paper napkin. My stomach was grumbling. I started sweating, could feel it running down my sides. I was overdoing it. Malik coughed a bit.
“And your friend Alex, didn’t you say he was paying you for the album cover?”
“Yeah but they aren’t going to pay me till it’s done. That’ll be like after Christmas.”
“Huh.”
Malik took a sip of coffee. He was calm, his face relaxed. I was nervous as hell, but trying not to let it show.
“So there’s November’s rent. What happened to December?”
I really wanted the food to get here. I started tearing my napkin into strips.
“I paid Rémi in advance. And he’s not gonna give it back to me either.”
“What was your share of the rent? Three hundred? Four hundred?”
“Around four hundred. With Hydro.”
He nodded. He’d finished his coffee.
“What’s with all the questions, man? I’m broke. Why are you asking me about money like this? I don’t have any.”
“You worked your ass off all summer. What’d you make? Four grand?”
“Nah, not that much.”
My heart was beating at my temples. Malik put his empty cup down.
“Well, you were making eleven bucks an hour, forty hours a week, from May to August. After tax it must have been close to that. Four grand. I’m lowballing here. Even if Rémi stole sixteen hundred in rent, and you spent a few hundred to eat and go out for beers, I don’t see how you could be broke already. It’s not even December.”
Outside it already seemed to have gotten dark. The air was thickening, compressing itself against us, against me. Clouds of fog were rolling into the restaurant and swirling around us. I looked him in the eyes.
“I need some cash, man.”
“Why? You should have a nice chunk left in your account.”
Images of Crazy Bells danced before me. I wasn’t hungry anymore. I could see the bright colours rolling out before my eyes.
“Yo. I’m talking to you, man.”
He was angry. His anger was quiet, undramatic.
“Anyway, I’m not lending you a penny unless you tell me how you managed to spend all your money. I need you to tell me what’s going on. Before I lose my patience. Your story doesn’t add up, man.”
I couldn’t see anything anymore. Outside, a foggy darkness h
ad descended, engulfing the river, the highway and the parking lot and everything in its path. I felt at once empty and heavy. I looked down and said:
“I gambled. I gambled it all away.”
Our food was getting cold. I looked up. I might have cried. I don’t remember anymore. Malik scrunched up his eyebrows, as if he hadn’t understood.
“You gambled it all away? What do you mean, you gambled it all away?”
I took a deep breath and then told him about the machines. He listened, with his arms folded, leaning against the table, flabbergasted. He’d been expecting some kind of confession, but not that. I told him I didn’t know what to do. Malik rubbed his face and eyes. His lips were pinched tight. He sighed. He got up and went outside for a breath of fresh air. When he came back he started poking his sub with a fork.
“This is utter horseshit,” he said, chewing his food. “Who knows about this?”
“No one.” I hesitated a minute. “No one except you and Marie-Lou.”
“Did you ask her for money?”
I still hadn’t managed to take a bite of my food. I didn’t answer.
“Does she know you gambled with her money?”
He was really chowing down now. He didn’t take his eyes off me.
“No,” I answered. “She doesn’t know. She thinks she’s helping me out of a jam. I promised to pay her back as soon as I could.”
Malik wiped his face with a napkin.
“You have to tell your parents.”
“No. I can’t.”
Malik thought about that. The waitress came by, and asked if I was enjoying my meal. I said I was.
“I have to go back to Trois-Rivières tonight. I’m going to lend you enough to live until Friday. But I need you to keep your receipts. You buy a fucking pack of gum, I want a receipt. On Friday I’m coming back to town. Then I’m going to take you back to Trois-Rivières for a few days. It’ll be a change of scenery. We’ll have a serious fucking talk. Between now and then, get your shit together. Get a job.”
The Dishwasher Page 7