On the Up

by Shilo Jones

  “There? With you? Ugh. From when to when?”

  “Queen bee,” Holdout whispers, “flying around, harshing mellows, buzzing in our ears, bzzz—”

  “Shh!” Shrugging off my coat: “For a weekend? At least?”

  “…bzzz…bzzz…”

  Then, by way of brute retaliation, my wife says, “If Hannah develops an eating disorder, takes to the taste of lipstick and ice cubes, it’s because of the pressure you put on her. Understand? Shit, Carl. Grades? Applying her talent? Christ in fuck. You’ve become a tired, officious little man. Next you’ll be talking about her progression. Should she do a stint in Africa, charity work to beef up her resumé? Does she need another language? What about her friends? Have you vetted them? Are they all woollen vests and Point Grey vistas? Fuck you, Carl. Know what? I hope our daughter’s way stoned, got three cocks in her right now. Or whatever she’s into. Seize the day! Isn’t that what you bastards like to shout—as long as it’s only you doing the seizing—”

  “Three sounds not so ba—I mean, no thank you! Obscenity laws? I don’t think you can say that in our supposedly civilized country.”

  “Chill, Carl. Seriously. Three meaty cocks. Problem?”

  “Anyways. Grades.”

  “Fuck her grades. You want to bring Hannah inside? Change her so she fits in? Into this? That’s not the point, remember? The point is she lives so far outside she forces the world to change for her. And by the way, private school was your bullshit idea.”

  Holdout, looking inspired: “Mmm…love that rabble-rouser Heather Hellcat in da hou—”

  “So who’s repressed now, Carl? Pearl-clutcher! If you’re a progressive, we’re well and truly fucked. Hannah’s fine. Let the girl live. Remember how that feels?”

  “No.”

  “See? Told you.”

  “Are you a robot?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Cyborg maybe? Holdout says he smells it on you. Chemical lubricants? Or have you hooked yourself up to a machine that helps you experience things that aren’t there so you can live a more complete life?”

  My wife stunned silent. This is fleeting victory.

  Not that I’m particularly pining for a family reunion. It’s about enforcing an obligation, a vow made long ago and slippery-eeled out of, day after day, year after year. It’s about a marital reckoning. The strap tight on my arm. Our self-created suffering defines us. “It’s…a goddamned, y’know…crucial time for her, Heather. Standardized testing?” Grasping a bit. Sounding uncertain. Drill down to specifics. “Entrance to…and…fucking scholarships? Decisions she makes now…have real impact? Consequences? Paths narrowing, career opportunity, all that? Very competitive education environment. Different than when we were in school, wasting time getting high and reading novels. What if Hannah ends up cutting hair for a living?”

  Startled gasp. “Classist! If Hannah wants to cut hair, fine. What did you mean, about Holdout? That the pig? Thought you got rid of—”

  “Hairdresser’s fine? Seriously? Private school tuition? Wasted potential? I mean—”

  “Potential? See? That’s exactly it. You want her to achieve. I want her to be happy. But you know what? I can’t believe you. All that Marxist wankery and it comes to this. To each according to her whatever-the-fuck? You talk a good game, little man. But being happy is special enough, Carl. And rare enough. Which you, of all people, should know. Shit. I’d trade everything for three cocks and a hair salon. Then I’d be happy, or at least less bored, which is maybe the same thing.”

  I think I’m smiling. “Open your own establishment? The Cocksnip Salon?”

  “Ouch. You sayin’ something?”

  My wife’s smiling too. I can hear it. My rig’s right there. Holdout’s snuffling against my calf. My monochromatic Tesla improves me, a silly idea I know is logically untrue but emotionally…what can I say? I’m invested. What should I say? I miss you. Please, I miss you. Come home. Stand in the rain with me. Run on the beach with me. Stupid movie things. Swim naked. Ice cream in winter. Instead: “Are you smiling?”

  “I think so? It’s been a while.”

  “Me too.”

  “That’s good, Carl. I think that’s good. Fuck this place. Grrr. It brings out the…not so nice in me? Combative, scheming—”

  “—venal?”

  “Maybe some time at home would help re-centre…”

  I miss you. Would that be enough? For sure not. “What would it take?”

  “Are you offering?”

  “If I could see an end point, hope of future resolution, maybe.”

  “That’s just it. You have to put the work in without knowing how it turns out.”

  “Belief? Faith?”

  “Yes.”

  I’m not smiling anymore. “It could all be—”

  “For nothing? Yes. That’s probably even likely. At this point.”

  Suddenly so exhausted I can barely keep my eyes open. Probably even likely. So casual, how she says it. Clinical, a diagnosis, like it’s the most obvious thing, written in every authoritative textbook, and where was I, skipped that class, peaking in the corner of the school parking lot. Then the terror hits as I realize there’s an entire trajectory of future possibility my wife has not only considered but already neatly come to terms with. I’m choking in her dust. “Would you? If I did try?”

  “I might…be willing to take it on faith? For the last time.”

  “You’d have to come home.”

  “After the legislature. Sure.”

  Holdout shakes his head, whispers no, Heather has to take the ferry home now, stick to my guns, be a manly man, this is important, a matter of mutual commitment to our marriage, talk is cheap, proof in the pudding.

  I press my palm over the phone. “Come home tonight? She’ll never agree.”

  “Do you want her to agree? Really? Is that what you want? Think about it.”

  “I want to start this very expensive vehicle.”

  “Just driiive off.”

  “Yes. Drive right the fuck off. Very fast.”

  “Freedom. The road. Aggro old man speeding.”

  “All those.”

  “Thank fuck I’m so lucid,” Holdout says. “I remain true to us. Not the opportunistic traitor Zenski. Not that gold-digging Heather chick. You owe me.”

  “I do. I owe you big time. One day, I’ll lay down and let you eat me alive while we make love. Truth is the idea’s becoming oddly attractive, the generosity of it, a nurturing impulse; there’s something heroic about feeding myself to another living being, reinventing myself as the avant-garde headmaster of an ecophagic cult.” Then into the phone: “Heather? You have to come home now, in time to meet—”

  “Now?” Irritated, raising the drawbridge. “Carl, it’s late. Why now?”

  “Let me talk to her.”

  “Heather! Do you want to talk to Holdout? Get an unbiased opinion?”

  “The pig? Oh Christ, Carl—”

  “Turn it back around, ask if someone’s with her,” Holdout says, a cruel spark in his ungulate eyes.

  I cover the phone. “With Heather?”

  “Oh, c’mon. In that oak-panelled office? Cluck cluck! This very second, on the phone with you, she’s—”

  “Heather! Is someone with you?”

  “Things are coming to a head,” Holdout growls while gnawing on an army-green Bug-Out Bag he found under the passenger seat. “Cataclysm. Final conflict.”

  “Things are coming into my head!” I yell, mimicking Holdout’s grave tone. “Cataclysm lurks in my skull and bones—”

  “Ahead? Skull and Bones? Do not put words in the pig’s mouth. Carl? Or however it works? Use your own words. Who am I talking to?”

  Distraught, close to breaking down—

  “You heard me. Wife! We’re too polarized and self-interested to recognize one another as human beings, never mind hear each other out. That spells imminent mutually assured destruction.”

  A horrified, thoroughly satisf
ying gasp. “Spells of destruction? Is that a threat? Don’t do anything unusually stupid. Okay? Or self-destructive? Not again. I will not have…that…hanging over my head every time we argue because you’re being a ninny—”

  “We don’t have much time,” Holdout says, nodding at my rig.

  “We don’t have much time,” I tell Heather. “We’re running out of time, like, pronto. Sand through the hourglass. Can’t you feel it? The end is nigh.”

  “Nigh? Nothing’s fucking nigh! What’s it now? Lizard men? Asteroids? Mayans? Black-swan death machines? Blood moons? We have time. Do not do this. Not through the pig—”

  “Hannah,” Holdout advises, my peerless sage. “Bring it back around. Moral high road, sign off easy, big win, man of the house, no looking back—”

  “Fine, Heather. But what’s best for Hannah? Eh? I’m talking about our daughter’s future. Jeesh. Bad moons? What are you talking about? You on that Wiccan kick agai—”

  Holdout waves his cloven hooves. “Easy now, tone it down, high road…”

  A fierce exhale, “Just let Hannah be. Back off. Stay away from her.”

  “No can do. She’s a child, a teenager, not an adult. I for one intend to be involved in her life.” We’re a hair’s breadth from I raised that girl since I got out of prison, and my significantly better half knows it’s true. Ace in hole. You chose a late-blooming political career over family, woman. “Well, uh, Heather? I know our daughter better than you. And I, for one, am sincerely worried about her recent blips. Bleeps? Anyway, we need to talk. Doesn’t talking always help?”

  “Not if everything you say is demonstrable bullshit.”

  “Hostility? All right. That’s all I got. Apologies for interrupting your otherwise productive evening, honourable minister.”

  There. Un-fucking-stoppable.

  A muffled curse followed by an agreement for a family weekend that comes like worrying a splinter from skin. I get ready to hang up, satisfied, greedy for a well-deserved blast of stimulant when my wife lowers her voice, asks if I’m compromised.

  I stop cinching the dope strap to my arm, unsure what to say. Compromised? I’m tempted to feed her the line about being a high-functioning something-or-other, but I’m afraid of her metallic cackle. Instead I ask what she means.

  “I mean will you remember a goddamned word of this conversation?”

  “I’m getting older. Anything’s possible.”

  “Shit.”

  My initial masochistic self-denial has become a burden. Nerves are pinging. I smack my lips, try and muster a response, flick my Zippo, tell my wife this conversation is taking for…ever, to which there’s another sharp intake of breath.

  Then an image of Heather in her early twenties, southeast of Pemberton, way down the In-Shuck-Ch Forest Service Road on our way to Sloquet Hot Springs, sitting in the passenger seat of my Chevy, turquoise Lillooet Lake shimmering in the background, late-summer leaves airborne behind us, my future wife smiling somewhat in my direction, bare feet smudging through dust on the dashboard, toenails unpainted, carefree, idyllic, add a daisy in her hair and the ensuing decades might seem worthwhile, the romantic sublime, but I’ve grown suspicious of these images, sporadic, without context, past and futureless, no longer certain of the line between memory and something far less appealing.

  There was a shared ideal. That much remains certain. Life in the moment. An eternal now. Living like a newt with bulbous blue eyes. A process of consciously devolving oneself to discover an unspoiled essence, but the battle was lost, or maybe there wasn’t an essence, or maybe we were successful in our pursuit and this is the essence—

  I ask Holdout if he has my Zippo.

  “…North Van property…corrupt little asshat named Vincent Peele,” my wife’s saying. “Carl? This government has well-established plans for that property. Understand? Political shitstorm if Peele scoops it from under us.” Then again, something about the solstice and a word that sounds like Bo-shee, which is obviously the hot new thing out of Riga, Hampi, maybe Addis. My wife sounds like she’s in the bathroom. Sitting on the toilet. Urinating.

  “I don’t have your Zippo,” Holdout says, showing me he has it clamped between his teeth.

  “Excuse me?” I ask Heather, meaning it. “Bo-shee?”

  “Yes. Bo Xi intends to run money through—”

  “Riiight. Gotcha! I’ll try anything once. Bo-shee! Like the new ayahuasca? Does it cause vomiting? Why should the kids have all the fun?”

  “Mother of hell. You’re in for how many million and you have no idea.”

  “Who’s in who for what?”

  “Listen: this government needs that North Van property. I’m campaigning on it becoming a green space. Well-heeled riding. Serious party financing on the line. Understand? It’s my political future. Green Lead’s going to sabotage Vincent Peele. Follow? We need you to…”

  Blah blah blah blah. The point is, we flirted, she’s coming around. Can’t stay mad forever! Plans are being made. A surprise party for Blitzo? My own peeps trying to keep me in the dark? I’ll play along. We’re doing a group holiday, flying somewhere sticky and desperate for a bacchanalian Bo-shee intercultural solstice celebration eco-journey. Maybe it was my idea? I can at least take credit. I don’t have to clarify because I’m certain I have it parsed. Vincent Peele must be the eco-lodge owner. A classic Canadian guy. Concerned about his operation’s resource footprint, equitable pay, authentic experience. “Heather? How ’bout a Wreck Beach bonfire when you’re home? Sounds invigorating. Bo-shee with balanced stones?”

  “Fucking forget it. I’ll talk to Michael again. It was important, though, in case you were wondering.”

  I wasn’t.

  Jasminder Bansal

  I suffer through takeout sushi with Eric feeling overly conscious of being overly quiet. Eric’s all irritating smiles and clingy handholding while I help him manage the construction crew. Later, standing outside the condo display units, hunched under an umbrella, shivering in a wind sweeping across the ocean, Eric grabs my arm and gives me the look he always does when he’s about to ask me over. Before he can say a word I interrupt, tell him I have a mirror to practise in front of. He blusters, says something about me being stressed, and that’s how I leave him, my heart quickening as I walk past my car, knowing I should go home, regroup for the open house tomorrow, begin again…

  But there’s a history I have, a past life I regress into, and this afternoon when Vincent Peele asked about Amar I knew how the day would end. So instead of saying goodnight to Eric and getting in my car, I continue east, boot heels clicking loud and oddly reassuring on the slippery cobblestone sidewalk. I feel Eric’s questioning glance against my back. Is he going to follow me, demand to know where I’m off to at this hour? Part of me wants him to. Then he heads back inside the display suite. Eric Hull is not a man to run after a date and impose himself. A true gentleman. He’ll go home, pour himself a cup of orange juice, brush his teeth, go to bed, sleep perfectly for seven-point-five hours, wake up, do it again.

  Cabs and replica steam trolleys rush by, hissing spray, passengers’ faces blurred by rain and motion, and for some reason seeing those indeterminate souls peering through the streaked glass frightens me in a vague way that settles into my stride, makes me quicken my pace. Weaving through huddled club kids done up for a night out, teal mascara, angled bangs, and pitched chattering, heads bent to text. Feeling envious and lonesome. Where are my friends? Lost touch, let them go, or vice versa? The people I pass are my age, but I’m nothing like them, not anymore; there’s something trivial about their lives, flimsy, or maybe something ruined about me? I was never a social butterfly, never realized how much I relied on my siblings for friendship until Meeta was married and Amar was gone.

  Hurrying beneath faux-antique street lamps; yellow bulbs clustered in threes and suspended on ornate wrought-iron posts, crossing the street because one side of Water is cordoned off for filming, umbrella reflectors glowing pale as a fifties starlet wh
ile stainless-steel panel lights cast strictly envisioned shadows against brick facade backdrops. Catering trucks, coffee and maple-dip donuts, sequestered stars worried about catching colds. It might be a pretty night, but I’m keeping my head down. Thinking about real estate: how to sell it; the story: how to write it. My business dreams align with my core values—

  “Hey, easy girl. Back up back up back up…”

  A firm hand settles on my shoulder; I offer a mumbled apology for no reason besides habit.

  “There’s a line, yeah? Ladies get in free but you have to wait—”

  “Please tell Sim,” I say, surprised at how faint my voice sounds, wondering at the urge to run. “Tell Sim that Jaz is here.”

  “What? Speak up.” The bouncer bulks into my face. “Can’t hear—”

  “Sim Grewal,” I repeat, raising my voice. “Tell your boss it’s Jasminder Bansal.” The bouncer towers over me, an Indo-Canadian man with a black leather jacket and slicked hair, good-looking in a focused, intense way. A crowd surrounds us, men mostly, whites and Asians and Indians shouldering for position, sucking cigarettes and vapes shaped like rifle cartridges, craning their necks, curious about this girl out alone and trying to barge her way into—

  “Sim? Not how this works,” the bouncer says. “I’m not your errand boy.” His eyes light up. “Although there are certain errands…”

  A few jeers and nasty catcalls. I imagine a piano falling from a sixth-storey window, flattening the crowd. The bouncer hesitates long enough for me to compose a confident smile. The rain’s nailing down and everyone’s soaked, bored, impatient, more than happy for the drama I’m providing. In fact, what they hope is that I get tossed on my ass so one of them can come over, say hey baby what’s up how about you and me—

  The bouncer shoves forward, calls my bluff, forces me to step from under the awning and into the rain and right when I’m about to retreat a woman shouts from inside the club, tells the bouncer to fuck off and let me through, she knows me, I’m with Sim. The girl’s dressed as some kind of animal, a flamingo or fluffy kitten responsible for the well-being of a plastic barrel filled with ice-chilled beer. A Styrofoam Corona logo’s draped from her neck. Her name escapes me. She’s been here a while. Long enough to move up from busgirl to front-door beer-girl. Sarah? Cindy? It doesn’t matter. I peek around the bouncer and give her a smile of thanks. She shrugs, hands a guy a Corona dripping with condensation, wipes her hands on her skirt, stares at the rain dripping off the awning. The bouncer pats my shoulder, yells at someone trying to cut in. I slip through an arched doorway beneath a cursive sign that says Cherry’s in pink neon timed to pulse and throb with the beat.