The Dishwasher

by Stéphane Larue

  In this state of profound relaxation I collapsed into a plush booth, as exhausted as if I’d swum two-hundred laps, and saw Cherry leaving the bar stools, followed by the guy. They disappeared into the booths at the back. My vacant look swept this room full of working girls. The dancer who’d come to see me while I was gambling didn’t bother trying her luck again. She was also going from table to table, perched on four-inch heels, taking small, fast steps.

  At the next table over, three dealers from Rue Berri were polishing off their third bottle of vodka, which lay on ice in a bucket like champagne. Two dancers were drinking with them. They’d break into laugher pretty much every time anyone said something. One of them had clearly had a boob job, and adjusted her hot-pink bra every thirty seconds. The other unconsciously rubbed her nose at regular intervals.

  I drifted off, staring at multiple reflections of myself in the mirrors as if they were other people. In the ultraviolet light my skin was luminous, like a deep-sea fish, my hair hung down over my temples like dripping tar, and my features were indistinct as if wrapped in glutinous film. I blinked and shivered. I could barely recognize myself. The guys next to me yelled something. I turned around slowly, taking a long swig of phosphorescent beer. The stripper in pink had a shooter jammed into her cleavage. One of the dealers grabbed it in his teeth and knocked his head back, gargling in his throat. I took a final sip of beer in the company of that feverish kid slumped in his booth and reflected in multiple versions in faraway mirrors all over the room.

  Chapter 10

  On the weekend when my dad took me to Sam the Record Man on Sainte-Catherine, we’d leave Longueuil early to be sure to find parking. It was usually a Sunday morning, just after my dad’s rounds at the hospital. One trip in particular is etched in my memory. I couldn’t have been more than twelve. We walked the downtown sidewalks in silence in the cold late October sun. I could feel the stiff twenty-dollar bill in my jean pocket. That was my budget: one CD.

  The store’s front windows were littered with boxes of promo materials and faded posters. It smelled like an old drawer or dusty church basement, mixed in with cold coffee, like the teachers’ lounge at school. The guys who ran the store looked like Irish bluesmen. The floor was buckled and full of soft spots, covered in old lino that shooshed under our footsteps. CD and record bins lined the walls. The overall feel was more flea market than record store. Rooms seemed to have been tacked on over the years, each expansion more improvised than planned, as if new inventory had one day showed up and colonized the neighbouring rooms. My dad walked around the record store like the creator surveying his domain. He knew where everything was, stopped to check out new releases and imports, flipped through the bins, sometimes pulling out a rarity for closer scrutiny, running his fingers through his beard with a serious, concentrated expression. Then he would disappear upstairs to the jazz section that dwarfed all the others put together. I’d browse the Alternative Rock section where all kinds of Big Wrecks and Third Eye Blinds and Marcy Playgrounds went to die along with the rest of the bands that sprung up in the second half of the nineties only to get flung back into obscurity as the new millennium approached. I was trying to choose between the most recent albums from the groups my school’s five or six skaters listened to on their discmen as they smoked in the back stairwell. Pennywise, Rancid, NOFX. The problem was I didn’t really like that stuff. I waited for my dad to go upstairs, so he wouldn’t see me, and then headed over to the metal section.

  I’d always been impressed by the album covers. They reminded me of my dad’s old paperbacks, the ones I didn’t yet read, because they were in English, but would flip through for hours on my dad’s bookshelves in the basement, trying to imagine the universe depicted within.

  Metal was in a dormant phase. A lot of groups had broken up in the nineties. American thrash had softened up and sold out, losing a lot of fans in the process. The Scandinavians still weren’t very well known in North America. Everyone was into Nirvana, punk was exploding. And then there was gangsta rap: Tupac and Ice Cube were knocking Axl Rose and Peter Steele off their pedestals.

  Sam the Record Man had a much better selection than the Music World at the mall in Longueuil that my friends and I sometimes went to. Or maybe the Metal section at Sam’s just seemed well-stocked because I was twelve years old and didn’t know shit. I essentially knew three things about metal: the last Metallica concert had turned into a riot all because of Axl Rose, one of my friends listened to Helloween under the covers because his mum thought it was too violent, and as far as my cousin Malik was concerned only one band mattered: Iron Maiden. As I flipped through the Cannibal Corpse and Mercyful Faith, I kept coming back to Maiden. I was drawn to the name, of course, but also the album art, with a recurring skeleton character. Eddie—my cousin had told me his name—was there in all kinds of fantastic scenes. On one cover he was a cyborg brandishing a laser gun; on another, a statue of Pharaoh, eyes aflame; yet another had Eddie yanking a fetus from his stomach while coming apart in a sea of icebergs. I was as excited as a kid pouring over Jack Vance’s Tschai cycle, or the Philip K. Dicks illustrated by Tibor Csernus.

  Before my dad came back down with his usual pile of CDs in hand, I chose the album with Eddie climbing out of the ground in front of a tombstone while being struck by lightning in a blue and yellow dusk. I hurried over to line up at the till, driven by an unknown impulse, as if I was up to no good. I was buying my first metal album. It felt like stealing a Playboy.

  The ten-minute wait for my dad was spent nervously shifting my weight. I’d slid the CD into my raincoat pocket. I couldn’t wait to listen to it, but was afraid of what my dad would think.

  He approached the counter with five or six multicoloured CDs. The clerk, who was older than him, questioned him on his choices. Had he seen Jack DeJohnette live? I stopped listening when I realized they were talking about jazz. Finally my dad was done paying, and he turned toward me. He could see the little plastic bag sticking out of my pocket.

  “What did you get?”

  My mouth was dry.

  “You wouldn’t know it.”

  The Offspring and Bad Religion albums I’d bought the last few times hadn’t registered with him. He held out his open hand. I pulled the bag out of my pocket and handed it over hesitantly. He took out the album and furrowed his eyebrows in a way I found hard to read. Then he put it back in the bag and gave it back to me, with no change in his facial expression. I’d expected him to say something. I was boiling hot. He looked at me. I was sure he’d send me to return the CD.

  “Don’t play it too loud, you don’t want to upset your mum.”

  He opened the door and I followed him out, legs numb, apprehensive about learning what he really thought of my purchase.

  As soon as I got home I shut myself up in my room and put the CD on my stereo, with headphones on to be sure I wouldn’t bother anyone. I pressed play. A whistling, screaming crowd filled my ears. It was a live album. That surprised me. Over the cries of the fans you could hear a speech in English and the sounds of planes taking off. The first notes rang out dramatically. The crowd started yelling louder. The hair on the back of my neck stood up. Then the song started in earnest, and the crowd yelled even louder, and I was part of it too. It felt like I was there. From that moment on the idea of seeing a metal show became an obsession. I listened to the album from beginning to end, at least three times in a row, without moving, almost without blinking, as if my body were a conduit for the electrical current that kept me lashed to my stereo. I didn’t open a single one of the comic books I’d planned to read, I just sat there listening to the album. Though I didn’t know it yet, I’d purchased the most legendary live Maiden album, Live After Death, from the World Slavery tour, an epic one-hundred-twenty-seven shows in three-hundred-one days. I wished I hadn’t been born too late to see a single one of them. Especially since Bruce Dickinson had already left the band. Just twelve years old and already m
y musical tastes were out of phase with the times.

  A few days later, mid-week, my dad came home from his clinic around nine. He was heating up his dinner in the microwave and asked me to follow him downstairs to the basement, to the library, which he also called his music room.

  “Sit down, we’re gonna listen to something.”

  I sat down on one of the armchairs. He pulled a record out of the chest that held his collections. He held out the big album sleeve. The first thing you noticed, standing between trees that had lost their leaves to autumn winds, was a woman with green skin, dressed in black, standing in front of an old canal. In the background there’s an ivy-covered watermill with darkened windows, and a stone wall; above her a grey sky. I looked closely at the image while my dad placed the record on the platter with the same care he’d use to stitch a wound or pull a glass shard from a child’s hand. He eased the stylus into the groove, then rubbed his hands together—an unconscious tic—before picking up his plate again to take a bite of chicken and rice.

  In the speakers the sound of rain and a faraway ringing bell rose over the scratching of needle on the vinyl. Then a first epic chord thundered forth. I jumped.

  It wasn’t the same high-voltage galloping as Maiden. The melodies weren’t as catchy; it was more muffled and bassy, and the heaviness of the guitar gave me the shivers. I felt like my whole body was vibrating, and I was being filled with a strength that had always been latent in me without my ever suspecting its presence.

  “What is it?”

  “Black Sabbath,” he said, over the music filling up the room.

  I took another look at the album cover.

  “They invented heavy metal. Without Black Sabbath, there’d be no Iron Maiden.”

  So he had heard of them. Of course he had. He turned up the volume a bit. One of his hands followed the chord changes on the neck of an imaginary guitar. The rhythm gathered speed, it was starting to make me want to throw myself around.

  “Aren’t you afraid of waking up Mum?”

  My dad turned back to me. He was smiling. At that moment he was transformed into the fourteen-year-old kid who used to hurry off to hang out at Phantasmagoria the second his classes at Stanislas College finished, impatient to flip through the stacks of psych or prog rock, in the hope of finding the album that would spend the following weeks glued to his turntable.

  The next evening when I got back from school I found, right next to Live After Death, a CD of Black Sabbath by Black Sabbath. Since my mum wasn’t home from work yet, I listened to it as I did my homework. When she got home I put my headphones on and kept right on listening.

  Chapter 11

  I might have heard Vincent getting ready that morning. Or maybe it was afternoon. I was deep in unrestorative slumber. When I opened my eyes a thick paste lined my mouth. It was already dark, and I was alone in the apartment again. I was all curled up in a ball, my lower back stiff as a board. 3:34 pm. I started at six. I felt hollowed out and depressed. Hostile creaking sounds were all around me. I thought about the wad of twenties in my pocket. I thought about my relapse, about the indelible colours streaming by on the screen. It hurt to force myself into sitting position, pushing with my arms. I had to call Malik. If I didn’t do it now, he’d think something was up. My head filled with pictures. Call him, I told myself weakly. I collapsed onto the sofa. The sound of a chair scraping reached me from the next-door neighbours’. A voice emanating from the kitchen kept repeating its message: “Call him!” “Call him!” I was standing at the living room door, looking toward a kitchen bathed in violet. I still had my dishwashing clothes on, like a heavy weight paralyzing me. Video lottery tickets stuck out of my pockets. I still had to cash them in and collect my winnings. I heard the voice again. It was my voice, but the words were out of sync with the lip movements of my doppelganger perched in front of a video lottery terminal that had taken up residence where Vincent’s microwave once sat. “Call him,” my face said to me, in slow motion. I didn’t know who I had to call. Imprisoned in clothes that grew more and more constricting, I tried to move. I struggled to stick a hand in my pockets, to take out the tickets before they got so soaked by my sopping wet pants that they disintegrated. I jumped up under my covers and opened my eyes. It was like waking up for a second time. Gradually I came to my senses, and felt a touch less numb. I reached for my pager. It was almost 4:30. There was no one in the apartment. The living room was completely dark. I got up for good, opened the curtains, turned on the light, and started tidying up a bit. I gathered my dirty clothes in a heap, ready for a load of laundry. Comic books and paperbacks were scattered all around the couch. I began arranging them into some semblance of order, the reprinted Ghost Rider 2099s I’d found at Millennium, the first Meltdowns illustrated by Kent Williams, the last Sandman still in my possession—I’d lent the rest to Marie-Lou—a Clive Barker, Volume Two of the Imajica series, and a Richard Matheson I was struggling through in English, a few pages at a time. The Derleth was still in my bag. I put the PlayStation games back in their cases and threw away the gravy-encrusted poutine containers. I flipped through my sketchbooks, then stuffed them in the bottom of my bag of clothes.

  I decided to call Malik right away, to get it over with before showering. Pretty soon I’d have to leave for work. You couldn’t even see outside, it was so dark now.

  A chipper-sounding Malik picked up right away. He told me he was going to Cuba with his girlfriend for Christmas. The news came as a relief, and that relief brought a sense of guilt. I talked about the Iced Earth show in April, and said we should go together. Good idea, he said, promising to take care of tickets. Then he cut our conversation short. It felt like he might not be alone. We made plans to meet at Henri-Bourassa Metro station, at noon the next day. He didn’t mention the eighty dollars he’d lent me three days earlier. I hung up with an ominous feeling of unease. I was already dreading our meeting.

  Chapter 12

  It was six o’clock when I got to the restaurant. I hadn’t seen daylight since noon the day before. I went in through the back door, left open by the last smoker. The smell of chicken stock again wafted through the alley, but gone were its pleasant associations. It no longer brought to mind my parents’ kitchen in the winter dusk, when I’d come home from school or a day of snowboarding. Now it was the smell of a steam pot to be emptied, of garbage bags to fill as grease streamed down my face and arms, of pans to be scrubbed until the steel wool yanked the nails from my fingers.

  I crossed the already full dishpit, went along the service kitchen to the dining room, and stopped by the computer to punch in.

  The dining room was already half full. I envied the people who had the luxury of sitting around chatting while they waited for their meal, sipping on a beer or glass of wine. Servers circulated between clusters of customers and the still-empty tables, wine bottles in hand. Nick was polishing cutlery, and asked how I was doing. I said hi and punched in my number the way the owner had shown me. Then I turned around. I saw Bonnie in the service kitchen, taking inventory in the fridges, explaining to another cook which backups to do first. The guy’s name was Steven. He’d worked with Renaud somewhere else, and been brought in for a trial shift. I acted as if I hadn’t seen Bonnie. She intimidated me so much I couldn’t address her without mumbling. I went down to the basement, but the owner appeared out of nowhere and harpooned me as I was stepping onto the first stair.

  “Next time don’t punch in till you’re dressed and ready to work!”

  Her tone was sharp, her judgement final. She was off to the dining room before I even had time to agree. I slipped down into the basement and saw Bébert arguing with Jonathan over some instructions left by the chef. They said hi at the same time without interrupting their argument. Renaud was prepping veal for a group of 45 that had reserved for later that night. A copy of their menu was hanging by the prep counter. Salade composé. Lobster bisque with seared scallops. Osso bucco or mu
shroom ravioli in a blue cheese and walnut sauce. The kinds of things I’d never tasted in my life. At home my mum made pasta, but nothing like this: there was spaghetti, lasagna, sometimes tortellini in rosé sauce. She also made pork cutlets, meatloaf, roasts, steak of course, lots of white fish, salmon and salads sometimes, chicken and fried rice. That was pretty much that. On the group menu, Bébert had scribbled a picture of a dick next to the prices, as he often did next to instructions and notes the chef left on the prep counter. I had a hard time understanding how he managed to get away with all his little pranks and the trouble he couldn’t help stirring up. I especially wondered how he slid it by Renaud, who seemed to run a tight ship and was strict with everyone—except Bébert, who was constantly testing his sous-chef, when he wasn’t outright laughing in his face. Only much later, after years in the kitchen and on the floor, would I understand that an employee like Bébert can keep his job as long as he can soldier through the rush and get everything done by the end of the shift. And no one could soldier through a rush quite like Bébert. It didn’t matter how wasted he was, and he was most of the time. The truth was that Bébert had charisma and leadership in spades, and that was what let guys like Renaud and Christian take it easy.