by Shilo Jones
In the boardroom, helping Vincent sort through paperwork, careful not to let my real intentions slip, noting the companies Marigold is involved with, hoping I find something solid to connect Peele and Bo Xi. Seated at a polished concrete slab that Vincent told me weighs more than two tons. Apparently they had to cut a hole in the exterior wall to crane the thing in. It took a team of a dozen guys a full week. I said wow at the right time. Vincent said yeah but it was worth it, he knows the artisan personally, locally sourced aggregate, non-toxic polish, very sustainable and resource-efficient, nothing else like it in the city.
Shoulders are appropriately slumped. I’m watching Vincent indirectly in that new-employee way, hopeful and nervous. I ask him if the Smithers deal went well? He laughs, says stellar. Says he knew he was right about me, that I make people feel good about themselves. I study the paperwork like it’s all a bit over my head, imagine him being charged for money laundering or worse, but the truth is it’s difficult to keep my excitement in check. I’m loving the feeling of accomplishment, something I’ve missed since Langara. Travelling, meeting people, making small talk, being scheduled in. And living close to the source of the story, watching and recording.
Vincent oohs with childish enthusiasm as he looks over the offers. He’s standing beside me, too close, resting his hands on the table, wearing brown corduroy and a tucked-in golf shirt. I’m wearing straight-legged black slacks from the Sally Ann and an incredible pale blue blouse I borrowed from Meeta. Tonight I’ll have to go home and sort through my clothes. The thought punctures my mood—I haven’t checked on my mother since Saturday. Is she doing okay? Should I call Meeta, ask her to make sure? And right behind the worry is Amar—
An assistant hurries in, hands Vincent a note. He reads it, sends a text. I use the time to compose myself.
Vincent plucks his beard, hits a few numbers on a calculator. “Great times, red-hot leads!” Checks his tablet. “Tomorrow you have an appointment with Longcon Investment. Taking them to see a parcel in Lillooet. You psyched?”
I hesitate, remind myself not to let my guard down, or maybe appear to let my guard down? “It’s just…all this is…wow! And I’m new? Might be feeling overwhelmed? I love this table?”
Vincent sets his hand on my shoulder. Heavy. I let him feel me shrink from him. “Normal. No probs. Look at this office. Bustling! Can’t get enough of it, for sure. I feed on human energy. Powerful stuff, emotional energy, is what my therapist says. Calorie-dense. Like you, a moment ago, looking upset at me, even angry? Kind of glaring? See how I picked up on that? Is there something you’d like to talk about?”
Bastard. Take a second, force myself to stop fidgeting with my pen, give him my best willing-to-confide look, blurt: “I’m sorry. This Saturday is the anniversary of my brother’s death. My counsellor says being angry is…”
Peele looks delighted. “Ah, your brother. Not me.” Lowers his voice. “You see a therapist too?”
Move slightly closer. “Grief counsellor. Is it the same thing?”
Peele folds his arms across his chest. “No, your problem’s simple, mine’s highbrow. Comes from having such an obliquely inquisitive intellect. My therapist keeps everything tidy. Like a French maid of the mind.”
A nervous laugh while I run my fingers along the edge of the table. Peele watches me with a smirky leer that he might be mistaking for flirtatious. I smell the fabric softener in his clothes, his piney beard. “I guess there are all sorts of ways to deal with trauma?”
“Can’t repress, that’s for sure. Builds, unhealthy, bursts. Big no-no.”
“Right. Maybe redirect?”
“Such as how?”
“Creatively?”
“Gotcha.”
I doubt it. “What about you? Your family?”
“Super normal.” Pretends to read a document. Whistles. The man is a pro at talking about everything but what matters. I need something personal out of him. A direction, a place to start. I take a chance: “Vincent? I guess I’m looking for ways to improve. A friend mentioned working on my conversation skills? Is that something you think I could work on?”
Without looking up: “Huh? How so?”
“He mentioned I could be…more clear when communicating with clients?”
Vincent looks puzzled. “You’re making strides, Jasminder. Wardrobe was the big thing.” Eyes my blouse, smirks. “Your boss loves the new look.”
I tell him thanks, but sometimes I’m afraid I’m not connecting with clients, you know, because of my heritage? And did he experience anything similar?
“No. My heritage is normal.” Vincent smacks his lips in distaste. “And are you, um, accusing me of not being local?”
Forcing an embarrassed flush, waving my hands at him, over-the-top conciliatory, hoping he can’t see me laughing. “No, no, of course…I just thought, I’m sorry…but not entirely European?”
“Born in Vancouver. Bit of Italian. Still very European. Ultra-European, in fact. On my mother’s—”
“Sure. My bad. So communicating was never a concern.”
“Flawless communicator. And besides. I used to teach English as a Second Language. Don’t listen to whatever moron told you that. Your English is fine, or I never would’ve hired you. Although…” Vincent leans a skinny hip against the table, frowns. “It could be a positive if you had an accent? Unique selling feature.”
Feign surprised interest to cover my real interest. “Oh, ESL? That’s cool. Before law? Here in Vancouver—”
Vincent doesn’t answer. Spends a minute messing with his phone. “Hey, have you seen this? Scientists predict in thirty years Vancouver will have the same climate as San Diego. So awesome! Will we be able to grow limes?”
“Thirty years? That’s—”
“Soon! I love key lime pie. Have you been?”
“California? No.”
“Travel, Jasminder. Broadens minds. You should do it. Anyway, desertification? That’s what we have coming. Forest fires. Rising oceans. The globe’s going hyper-dynamic. Can’t sourpuss about it.”
“Priest and shipmaster. Top careers for the millennium.”
Vincent giggles, gathers the property deals into a stack, slips them into a suede bike-messenger bag. “Although I do worry about the snowboarding. Can’t imagine life without fresh pow.”
“And if it’s that hot in Canada, imagine what it’s gonna be like farther south…”
Peele puts on a fretful face. “Can people even survive in that kind of heat? Probably barely. If they have the means? I love that, though. Don’t you? Sure.” Shakes his head, seems to forget about mass extinction. “As you suggested, new challenges present new opportunities. Innovate or die. Competitive environment. Dog eat dog!”
“Except we’re not dogs?”
“Well…biologically hardwired? But of course it’s all about the technology. I embrace change by shopping for the hottest new app. Global warming? Consider the markets all that death will open up. Levee expansions, sunscreens, seaweed farms? Boom times! Global warming is Mother Nature’s way of spurring entrepreneurial innovation. And culling the bloated herd. SeaSteading? What a grand adventure! Columbus redux! What about a forest of condo towers floating west from Vancouver Island? We could sell those. Floating cities so expensive there’s no way the low-lifes will get in. Structurally exclusive, just like Vancouver.”
“Manufactured beachfront.”
“Exactly! We chillax on our SeaSteading viewing platform, munch nori, chat about launching a Christmas Eve artillery bombardment toward shore, laugh at the losers fighting it out on land where it’s sucky and they eat each other with like no salt. And we volun-tell the women we want on board! But even now we all have to do our part. Of course, I’m an optimist who believes in…uh…never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world? Especially when they’re rich?”
“Oh, for sure. Challenges and…um, building community networks to explore new opportunities?”
Vinc
ent glances over his shoulder, lowers his voice. “Of course no free-thinking person can believe a word of it.”
“Of…?”
“Ha, yeah. Gotta be critically minded. Global warming? As if. Who benefits? Government needs to get out of the way, let business do the heavy lifting.” Peele shakes the messenger bag at me. “Like these deals? Tied up for weeks. Regulations. Bureaucracy. So some oaf can gorge at my trough? The taxes they say I should be paying…please! Massive money-transfer scheme. But whatevs. I’m incorporated in the Caribbean. Bring it!” Vincent picks up his tablet, opens a news site. “I try to read a couple headlines every day, to stay informed. I mean, I like being free, and free markets are super free because it says so in the name, so what’s wrong with that? Logic much? Freedom’s here forever. Or until people like me decide it isn’t! Ooh, look at this article. University Scientists Claim Left-Wing Violence Is Caused By Global Warming. Science! Keep it in your pants, Che! Or how about this one: UN Official Claims Global Warming Hoax Is All About Eliminating Capitalism! Wow, Jasminder. That’s an actual UN official saying that. Can you believe it? I read something about that yesterday. It’s amazing how misinformation spreads. Like the plague? Hey…you went to that cheapo journalism college. What was your experience?”
I lean over, read: “Global Warming Collapses Symbiotic Gut Bacteria, Kills Insects, Humans Next.”
Vincent waits to see if I have anything to add. I don’t. He’s wide-eyed, tapping the tablet. Seems he finds this shit rather agitating. “That’s exactly it! I affirm gut bacteria, freedom-hating lefties don’t. Truth in journalism. Although it was only a diploma at Langara? Not a real degree?”
“A diploma, yes. It’s considered a real degr—”
Vincent gives me a sad face. “Ah, and here we are, with you only a sales assistant. Ah, well. Get what you pay for in education, too. Of course I’m a properly educated man. They made me skim-read an Edward Said excerpt. So I get it must be especially difficult. For you in particular? To understand how things work over here? Which is why I’m so proud to have you at Marigold.” Peele stuffs his tablet in the messenger bag, pushes his chair under the boardroom table. “I can’t imagine what it’s like, you know…uh, to be…trapped, yes…trapped. Caught. Helpless. Between two cultures. Mine and…whatever one is yours? Stuck in the middle?” Peele brightens, looks like he’s about to sing the chorus of the Stealers Wheel song, manages to restrain himself. “Anyway. I’m glad we can speak so openly. And thinking about your struggles? It’s hard. To think about? Always confused, never feeling you belong, never…well, I guess never truly knowing yourself? I mean, how hard is that? And sad? For me to have to think about?”
“Thanks, Vincent. It’s a real trial.”
Peele bows his head, clasps his hands like he’s at a funeral. “I commend you, Jasminder. Super glad we had this talk. You’re an incredible person. Almost a hero. From Canada…or at least in Canada? Because we let you in? You give me hope. You know, I have friends in the industry. Film? Documentaries? I could call in a favour, ask so-and-so to do a mini-doc on you, something upbeat to show the world how fantastic you’re doing in Canada, for everyone to see?” As he’s about to leave Vincent hands me an envelope, says, “I guess what I mean is…it all worked out in the end? Was rough going like a million years ago but now we’re all good? No sense dwelling! I mean, look at that view!”
I take the envelope. Stuffed with cash. How much? And what do I do with it? Count it in front of him? Or pocket it, cool, pretend I’m fine with whatever he deigns to give—
“So…this is cash?”
“Payroll, accounting, need to get you updated in the system. Problem?”
“Well, taxes? And…legally? I’m pretty sure—”
“In the end? Always works out. Look at you now, killing it in Vancity. Bygones! So now that’s over, ancient history, and we’re looking back…it couldn’t have been all bad, or bad at all, could it?”
I tuck the envelope in my purse.
Carl “Blitzo” Reed
Oh, to wake naked, crusty-eyed, lathered in vomit, in the driver’s seat of a Tesla Roadster at forty-nine years old. I need an infusion, something lacy that begins with a needle and ends with me falling asleep. Paw beneath the seat. Scrounge the glovebox. Sweating. Leaking urine, let’s qualify that with a perhaps. Give me the benefit of the doubt, but the truth is I’m as well put-together as the renminbi. What would Mao do?
When I hear the word culture—
“Hey, Blitzo? I mean, Mr. Reed?”
“Nobody calls me that, Narc.”
One of the painted boys is in the backseat, ass up, hugging himself while Holdout licks his face. Cross-fertilization. Interspecies menagerie. Don’t think I haven’t considered it. I’m for heterogeneity. Everything at once. You with your petty morals. The walls torn asunder. You with your stick-in-mud repressions. Take a peek, marvel at the boy’s stubborn tumescence. Like the Titanic: that fucker will never go down. Something about hubris. Vanity.
“Will you take me…,” the boy mumbles, painfully endearing, and I’m listening until he says the word home.
Hannah. Check the clock on the dash. Two hours late! My teeth chatter. “Speaking to the young person I did not invite into my vehicle: you need to get out.”
“Home?”
I tell the feckless miscreant my daughter’s waiting at the airport, for me not him.
“Don’t you have, like, a limo to send?”
“Too impersonal. Uptight. Wrong message entirely.”
“Then like how about you loan me your lim—”
Holdout interrupts with a flurry of snorting. Useful for a change. I ask him when he forgot how to talk. Lovely timing, though, this revert to the mean. I empty the contents of the glovebox, claw at the leather seats, praying I was smart enough to pay a mechanic to build in a stash box, a secret passage, a Silk Road cyber-key. Me and Dread Robby are tight, Green Lead backed the pioneer onion routers early, although that dude’s politics are like Ayn Rand and Yosemite Sam mixing fluids. I’m digging under the seat for my gear, babbling, trying to get used to living in constant terror, feeling nameless security agency scan-bots red-flagging me, tagging my identity, geolocating good ol’ Blitz, so I take out my cellphone, scrawl texts and Tweets like:
XKeyscore/NSA/lonewolf/riseup/anarchistchef/MotherofSatan/death/death/jihad/allseeingallknowing/MUSCULAR/revolution/holywarforever/death/LOLCATASSASSIN/death/stircrazy/CHAOS/killthepresident/mad/sex/boom!!!/FIVEEYES/death/werewolfpacklove/revolution/chickenCOUP/turnupthenoise/allahandjesussittinginatreeK-I-S-S-I-N-G!!!/seededdeep/DEEPDIVE/secretconspiracytoconsume/RAMPANT/boom!!!/bloodmakesmehorny/YokotaAirForceBase/hatemakesmereal/vampiredominant/QUANTUM/deathcult/doyoufeelsecure?/TAO/overthrowsupranationalundead/eveofdestruction/yourdataisourdata/SpecialCollectionService/madhattersex/TATP/ucantstopmehaterzforlyfe/stickyfangs/cybercommando/death/TEMPORA/alldownhillfromhere/Semtex/unconventionalwarfare/ coup/TimMcVeigh/boom!!!/callingallheros/weseeuforwhatureallyare/revolt/WEKNOWYOU/revolt/riseup/revolt!!11AbAG!!1!!!!!1!!
Hit send, wait for the Black Hawks to come thudding in, consider purchasing a fully loaded Belgian Malinois, try not to think about Hannah—
“You find the gear?” Holdout asks. “Cuz you don’t look so good.”
—seriously fucking with the Tool’s automated tracking searches, hurling syntactical wrenches in the cyber-snoop transmission, feeling low-level NSA analysts zeroing in, scanning my usernames, indexing metadata, dusting digital fingerprints, reconstructing network activity, parsing private emails, profiling, searching for that needle in the ceaseless shitstream, hoping they get lucky, bland and blind sticky-fingered moles nosing through my business, well it’s all right here, guys and gals, in the open sunny sunshine—
“I think I’m missing Housewives,” Painted Boy sulks.
—but they won’t take me head on, nope, the spooks’ll flame me, doctor my image and my rep, cyber-steal my shit, remotely disconnect my internet or my refrigerator, threaten m
e in other chickens hit cyber-bully ways I’ll have to google for like three hours just to realize I should be scared, am being offered the weak-kneed digital equivalent of Tony Flatface tapping on my door with a lead pipe—
“Time is it?” Holdout says. “Hannah might still be at the airport.”
I’M AFRAID
PLEASE DON’T HURT ME
I TAKE IT BACK
YOU’RE BIGGER THAN ME
I SHOULDN’T HAVE SAID THAT
Truth is I think I blew it, missed picking my daughter up, creating domestic distress even in my absence. Try to pry open the Tesla’s centre console, resort to biting the dash. The human face is not optimized for gnawing something flat. Nose gets in the way. Eyes water. I find a seat corner and begin in earnest. Holdout bounces from front to back, snorting, spitting, licking, his face rotating through the zodiac signs. The pig’s feeling inspired, gets hung up on Libra, decides to substitute Gandhi.
“Be the change you wish to see in the world.”
“Shut up, prig. I’m still evolving. You eat my gear?”
Painted Boy starts belting a tuneless round of “Wonderwall,” which has either deep-seated emotional significance for the lad or has, unbeknownst to me, accumulated a sinister retro-cachet. Holdout tells him to shut up, then joins me in chewing apart the seats. Solidarity among species.
I tell Holdout: “Regardless, I’m not sharing my stash.”
Who knew Tesla Roadsters were stuffed with newspapers from London during the WWII bombing campaign? Yellowed and crumbling, they disintegrate in my hands. For a second I feel I’ve broken the code. Directed energy weapons? Eidetic thought?
Cast aside. More pressing needs consume.
And then I find it. Not my rig, but the most secret of encrypted buttons hidden deep in Teslaean viscera. A button disguised as a keyhole? Ah, you tricky buggers. Tinfoil hat, my ass! I’m shooting lasers now! Give me something to throw money at! Holdout’s shaking his rump in an excited manner, inviting me to deploy. I press the button. The Tesla’s interior shifts, swells, pulsates. Like being trapped inside a stomach.