Cockroach (23 page)

The owner went to the door of the kitchen and called Reza. Reza gave a sign to the rest of the musicians and followed the owner. I saw him bowing his head and shaking it in denial, quietly gesturing with his hands.

The owner come back to me, irritated, and said: Take the mop and clean downstairs. Use soap.

I took the bucket and the mop, and filled the bucket with soap and water. I put everything down at the door to the bathroom, fetched a roll of paper towels from the closet, rolled it around my palm, tore it, and walked back towards my lover's remains. I swept it all up, until the last bit, the last grain of rice, the last fluid, had disappeared into the bucket, and as I swept I wondered if any of my saliva from last night had been rejected today by her body. I dipped the mop into the bucket, squeezed it, and started to move my gondolier's pole through all the sewers that run beneath the earth. Then I poured the bucket
into the toilet bowl, and all that Shohreh had eaten was gone, feeding the city gutters honey and jasmine. I thought how the long, hollow tunnels must be happy, echoing with the joy of packs of rodents, insects, pet alligators, thirsty vampires, and blind bats. All shall feast on what her teeth ground, her eyes imagined, her fingers ordered, and her lips have touched.

AT THE END
of the evening Reza waited for me at the door, standing there with his instrument box wrapped up in a thick quilt. Let's talk, he said. What happened with Shohreh?

You were there, I answered.

I couldn't see or hear anything. The owner asked me if Shohreh and Farhoud were my friends. I've got to stop bringing people I know to this place. First you — the owner thinks he did me a favour by hiring you. Now if I want to ask for a raise he will mention you, just to make me feel like he did me a great favour. And then, this tonight! Shohreh acting like a drama queen. What the fuck! I am making a living here. What's with you people? You come here and get me in trouble. So, tell me what was wrong with the diva?

I don't know, I said. I just don't know. She kept on asking me if I knew that man.

What man?

I don't know. Call and ask her.

Which way are you going? Reza asked me.

Home.

Come over to my place.

No, I am going back home, I said.

Reza turned and left me and walked towards the subway, and I watched his big body hugging his instrument case as if it were a permanent companion. I kept walking, and when I had gone a block, a taxi pulled up beside me. The window rolled down and I saw Majeed. He gestured to me to get in. I opened the door and sat in the passenger seat.

Did you see where that man who was in the restaurant went? Majeed asked me. Did you see what direction?

What man?

The man in the restaurant — a short, bald Iranian man.

The owner?

No.

The customer?

Yes.

He left a while ago, with his bodyguard. His limousine driver picked him up. So that's what Shohreh was upset about? She asked me about the man as well. Did she send you here?

Majeed did not answer me.

What is going on? I persisted.

It's not important. Where do you live?

Pinnacle Street.

I will drive you home.

In the car there was silence between Majeed and me. Only the radio dispatcher spoke, calling out car numbers, giving addresses, making the car sound like a spaceship travelling past houses of humans and nests of squirrels. Majeed looked pensive, perhaps a little stressed. After a while I tried to make a conversation with him, but it seemed as if he was in a
rush to drop me off. He offered me a cigarette. I took one. He partially opened his window and drove with one hand on the wheel while he smoked with the other. I cracked my window and smoked too, puffing at the passing buildings, the passing signs, the passing lives, the wind, the cold, and the deep, dark sky.

You must meet a lot of different people in this job, I said at last.

He nodded, then smiled, and then he said, Yes, all kinds. In this job you meet all kinds. He was taken with his thought, swallowing the cigarette's fumes, holding every inhalation, making sure every ounce of nicotine touched his heart, stained his lungs, rushed through two cycles of his blood, yellowed his teeth, and was finally released to face the trembling cold air that rushed through the open car windows, smashed against the windshield, ricocheted off dizzying wipers that swung back and forth like a man caught between many thoughts, streets, languages, lovers, backseat conversations, red lights, traffic, metal bars, a few women, and a storm.

Yesterday these two kids got in the car, Majeed said. They wanted to go to a strip joint on St-Catherine. But they said they wanted to stop at a bank on the way. So I stopped at the bank. I watched them in the rear-view mirror. The girl was maybe sixteen. She had high heels and a very short skirt and only a small jacket. She must have been very cold. The boy was drunk. When they reached the bank, the girl took the boy's hand and they both started to run. I made a U-turn in the middle of the street and chased them with my car. They went into the back alley beside the bank building. You should
have seen the girl running with those high heels and her underwear almost showing. The boy was so drunk she had to hold his hand and pull him. I caught up with them. I made them come back inside the car. She said to me, I was looking for the manager but the bank was closed.

I said: I am getting paid or I will take you to the police.

Then the guy said, Take me to a depanneur.

I said, Okay, but only one of you goes into the store. The other stays in the car.

When I stopped at a depanneur, the girl said, I will get the money. She got out and then she ran, leaving her boyfriend in the car.

I said to the boy, Your friend left and you have to pay me or I will take you to the police.

He was scared. He got out the money and gave me twenty dollars. I said, You are not getting change back. Go now. He left. There are all kinds of stories, my friend. This business is just crazy. Then Majeed asked me: How long have you been here?

Seven years, I said.

Your family is here?

No.

I haven't seen my parents in twenty years, he said.

Shohreh is your family, I said.

Majeed looked at me, smoked, and kept quiet. Then, for no apparent reason, he said: You know, we come to these countries for refuge and to find better lives, but it is these countries that made us leave our homes in the first place.

What do you mean?

You know, these countries we live in talk about democracy,
but they do not want democracy. They want only dictators. It is easier for them to deal with dictators than to have democracy in the countries we come from. I fought for democracy. I was tortured for democracy, by both the Shah and the mullahs, on two separate occasions. Both regimes are the same. And you know what I do now because of democracy? I drive a car for twelve hours a day, he said, and laughed. Do you think if the mullahs go away there will be democracy in my country? No! They will put back somebody else who is a dictator. Maybe not a religious one, but it will be the same. Do you understand?

Yes, I do.

Does that bald man come often to the restaurant?

Maybe you should ask Reza. He has been working there for a long time, I said.

That musician will not tell me anything. He just wants to play. I will not ask him anything. He does not care about anything. He does not want to talk about politics. He belongs to that new, hedonistic generation. So, you had never seen this man before?

No, I said.

Majeed stopped in front of my home. He pulled out a business card, wrote a number on the back, and said to me, Here. This is my number. If that man comes again to the restaurant, could you call me?

What about that man? I asked. Who is he?

Let's just say he is an old acquaintance of ours.

Who is “us”?

Us! Exiles! He left me on the sidewalk and his car lights
trailed away, bouncing off the reflections of neon signs on the wet ground. I watched him disappear.

I pulled off a glove and dug with my hand in my pocket. I felt the bills the restaurant owner had given me and remembered that I had been paid today. I felt a sense of pride, and also a desire for revenge. Revenge for past hunger, cold, and those days when the sun chased me from one room to another, making me sweat and making me blind. I pulled out my house keys and shifted them from one pocket to another. I pulled down my woollen hat over my forehead. Then I turned and walked around the corner.

There was a bar there called Greeny, one of the few rundown bars that had not been given a facelift in my slowly gentrifying neighbourhood. I entered it. Perfect! Dark, just as I liked it. I entered like a panther, and I could hear the wooden floor creaking under my paws. I ordered a mug of beer, some fries, and a large, fat hamburger that came to me in a basket (brought to me by the granddaughter of Québécois villagers who, one hundred years ago, were ordered by the priest to get pregnant and to kneel beside church benches every Sunday). I gave the waitress the wrong change, and asked for her forgiveness, and to reassure her that I was not trying to stiff her out of the money, I threw her a big fat tip. This made her change her tone, and she called me
Monsieur
as I bit through the bun and the meat. I drank ferociously and looked at her in her apron, nodding as I chewed. I gulped and wiped my mouth with a white disposable napkin.

I have ambivalent feelings about these places. To tell the truth, they kind of repulse me, but I always end up coming
back to them. I am drawn to dark places like a suicidal moth to artificial lights. I certainly avoid any contact with the other customers. I keep it simple: I order, I drink, and I eat. I keep to myself. I have no interest in sports or small talk, but I like watching the other men, leaning forward on high stools, gazing through the liquid in their glasses. I also like the reflections of the
TV
screens that splash over these men's faces with buckets of light, making them change colours like chameleons. I like the waitresses. I like how strong and assertive they are. They are immune to all pickup lines, and their asses, with time, have developed shields, like those of cartoon heroes. The dirty looks of men bounce off those shields and are splashed back in the villains' faces with a
ZAP! BANG!
and
TAKE THAT!

But I know, I know how to disarm those shields, and it is not by using kryptonite; it is not through the power of my penguin suit or my flying umbrella or the big tip or the smile. It is done with politeness and also, even more important, gratitude. On my days of pay I am grateful, I am grateful for everything, and it shows. I am grateful for the good food, the warmth, the service, the forgotten ketchup that is relocated from a nearby table by the waitress's own hand and offered to me. I am grateful for the waitress's thumbs that grasp the edges of the food plates, and their palms and their wrists that juggle them all my way. And at the first sip of beer, the first fries, I forget and forgive humanity for its stupidity, its foulness, its pride, its avarice and greed, envy, lust, gluttony, sloth, wrath, and anger. I forgive it for its contaminated spit, its valued feces, its rivers of piss, its bombs, all its bad
dancing. I forgive it for not taking off its shoes before entering homes, before stepping on the carpets of places of worship. I also forget about the bonny infants with the African flies clustering on their noses, the marching drunk soldiers on their way to whorehouses. I forget about my mother, my father, the lightless nights I spent with my sister playing cards, dressing up toy soldiers, undressing dolls by candlelight, reading comics. And as soon as my eyes become accustomed to the dim light of these places, and just when people start to become more visible, more shiny, their shapes as humans more defined, it is then that I realize how exposed I must look to all these creatures who arrived before me. They must have seen everything. They must have seen my gluttony, my conspicuous tendencies, my aloofness. I feel X-rayed, as if every bite of the fries that went down my stomach was anticipated, watched, analyzed, and bet upon. It is then that I start rushing, frantically waving my skeleton-like index finger at the waitress, and with my clacking jaws insisting on the calculation of the bill, the check, the record of the meal, its price, its nutritional value, the list of ingredients sugar to sulphites, everything that keeps food conserved like Egyptian mummies, and it is then that I demand to see the little squares in the waitress's book, squares that graded me an average, satisfactory, good, or very good customer.

Finally I managed to rush out into the street. I was stunned to realize how the change of scenery felt suddenly burdensome in the aftermath of my consumption of dead animals, alcohol, scratchy soggy lettuce, and tomatoes. And I was overwhelmed with the particular guilt of the impulsive poor who,
in a moment of grandiose self-delusion, self-indulgence, and greed, want to have it all. The poor one is greedy. Greedy! Greed is the biggest stupidity. But I was filled with greed.

I stood on the street corner, undecided, satisfied but undecided. Then I thought: I deserve another drink. I deserve to spend. I deserve every drop of substance, every drip of intoxication. I deserve not only to forgive but also to forget. I walked down St-Laurent to the Copa and entered the bar. The Anglos of this city love this place — unpretentious, with an air of the pseudo-working class, it even has a fake plastic coconut tree that sways only for those customers who have drunk a great deal. All those McGill University graduates love to hide their degrees, their old money, their future corporate jobs by coming here dressed up like beggars, hoodlums, dangerous degenerate minorities. They sit, drink, and shoot pool. The few old-timers have their stools reserved like Portuguese monarchy. They have blended in with the old wooden bar to become part of the retro decor. And after a certain hour, they sway with the coconut tree.

I have never understood those Anglos, never trusted their camouflage. Some of them are the sons and daughters of the wealthy. The very wealthy! They live in fine old Québécois houses, complain about money, and work small jobs. I have never understood their fathers and why they hold money over their children. My father was a generous man. When he had money he showered us with it. Once he bet on a horse called Antar. No one else had bet on it. The horse crossed the line first and my father came back with cigars, two bottles of arak, five pounds of kebbeh, a row of livers, Arabic sweets, six
pounds of fresh almonds, and five of his gambler friends. They ate and drank all night. They sang, repeating the same chorus for hours. My father called our names, chased us, and asked my sister for kisses as he spilled tears and drooled words of love and regret at her. He handed us money, large bills, left and right. He called my sister by his mother's name and kissed her on the mouth. My sister did not blink, did not move, when he caressed her hair. My mother stood there silent, watching the men getting drunk. She even filled their tiny glasses. They all toasted her health, and she nodded and waited. Then, when they all started to wobble towards the bathroom and aim their urine at the floor, she pulled them aside one by one and pushed them down the stairs. And when my father fell asleep on the table, she asked me to help her, and we carried him to the bedroom. I watched her remove his shoes as she muttered and cursed. She stripped off his pants and dug her hands in his pockets. She pulled out the rest of the money and closed the door; that night she slept on the couch. She turned to my sister and said: How much did he give you?