Seeing Red (12 page)

TWENTY-TWO

My phone vibrates. It's Doc calling to inform me they're on their way to the after-hours club. It doesn't have a name, but we call it the “White Room” on account of the colour of the walls and the prevalence of cocaine. He reminds me of the address and I tell him I'll meet him there in ten minutes. Then I hang up the phone and ask the three girls if they know how to get back to Queen Street and they point me in the right direction. I give them my thanks and wish them good luck with the spoken word festival.

“You better come tomorrow!” Swan calls out to me. “Remember, you promised!”

“I will!” I answer as I sprint across the road.

“It's your
only hope
!” she warns, stressing the last two words like a ghost in a Charles Dickens novel.

You would never find the White Room unless you knew precisely where to look. There are no lights, no signs, no noise. Nothing but an inconspicuous white door and a street number above the frame. Inside, however, is a different story: you can typically find about a hundred people smoking cigarettes, shooting pool and listening to live bands perform next to a fully staffed bar serving every kind of alcohol for a reasonable price until six o'clock in the morning. During prohibition, they would've called this place a speakeasy or a blind tiger and it would've been just as illegal.

Before going inside, I sneak into a deserted alleyway around the side of the building and find an alcove to cower in. Then I unwrap the folded paper I bought from Andre to reveal a small mound of cocaine. I reach into my wallet and roll up my ten-dollar bill and use it to snort the drug into my nasal cavity. The instant euphoria briefly returns and I exhale in relief, but the emptiness is still there, stewing in the pit of my chest. I desperately inhale more of it in an attempt to recapture the exhilaration I felt earlier, accidentally spilling some of the drug all over my nose and upper lip. In frustration, I crumple up the paper and throw it against the wall and a small flurry of dust evaporates into the air. What a waste of money.

I wipe my nose and mouth and return to the front of the building and tap on the door three times. Within seconds, I'm swiftly ushered inside by a tall man in black and led through several empty rooms until I'm brought to a desk where a young woman is collecting a cover fee. I pay her using the same ten-dollar bill before walking inside.

Behind the curtain there are two pool tables, a smoking room and a long lineup of people waiting to use the bathroom, but the real party is on the second floor where a punk band is belting out a raucous version of “Something I Learned Today” by Hüsker Dü. A few stoners bob their heads in front of the stage while the rest of the patrons lounge on the couches and chairs that line the walls, which are decorated with thick purple drapes hung from the ceiling. You would never know it was an illegal bar from the inside: the security, the waitresses, the bartenders and the decor all bear resemblance to every other law-abiding establishment in the city. The only difference is, in here, we can drink and smoke and take drugs until sunrise.

I meander past the bar through a mob of people until I find Doc and Scott relaxing on one of the couches with their legs outstretched. They're clearly drunk; when I pull up a chair, they can only muster a halfhearted greeting and for some reason their hair is wet.

“Oh, man, you missed out!” Doc exclaims. “We went to this swimming pool at Christie Pits and it was awesome. Me, Scott, and like thirty other people hopped the fence and swam in our undies! There's a huge water slide, a bunch of diving boards, and a lot of the girls went topless. . . . It was awesome.”

“I'm going back there every weekend,” Scott mutters.

So while I was busy arguing with a prostitute and listening to spoken word poetry, I could have been jumping down a giant water slide and staring at half-naked women. Well done, Reid.

“What happened to Craig and Nikki?” I ask.

“Nikki had to go home early for some reason and Craig left the bar with some blonde chick,” says Doc.

“She was fairly attractive,” Scott tells me. “And she had big cans. But yeah, I don't think I can stay out much longer. I gotta go to job tomorrow.”

“What time do you have to ‘go to job'?”

“I gotta leave my place at, like, eight-thirty.”

“Man, that's in six hours! You'll never make it.”

“You . . . shut your mouth. I'll make it easy.”

“C'mon, Scott!” says Doc. “Don't be such a goddamn pussy. Stick around for another couple hours.”

“Okay,” he replies.

After a few more minutes of lazing on the couch, Doc grows impatient and starts surveying the room. “Man, there are some decent-looking girls in here. We should be hitting on them.”

“You really shouldn't,” Scott replies. “Your genitals are riddled with diseases.”

“One disease!” he shouts, holding up an index finger. Then he turns to me and says, “Craig texted me earlier and said his new lady-friend has a couple roommates. He's gonna try to get them to invite us over . . . so, basically, he's our last hope for getting laid tonight.”

“No!” Scott objects. “He's not our last hope! He's not
Star Wars
! I still have a shot. I just need another drink. Then I'll go find a girl with low self-esteem.”

“Dude, I can't buy another beer,” Doc says. “I don't have any burn money left and there's no ATM. But look! Some girls left their drinks. Let's just take them.”

On the table in front of us there are two yellow cocktails served in curvy glasses with little plastic umbrellas and rims garnished with maraschino cherries.

“No way,” Scott says. “What are they?”

“I think they're called ‘bee stings,'” I tell him. I raise one of the glasses to my nose and it smells like honey. “Yup. Definitely a bee sting.”

“I'm sure they taste good,” Doc says.

“Well, I'm not drinking those,” Scott declares.

“Hey!” Doc yells, slamming his fist onto the table. “Are we gonna drink these bee stings . . . or are we gonna be
faggots
?”

Long pause.

“Fine, I'll drink it,” Scott replies.

“Dude! You shouldn't say that,” I warn Doc.

“What, ‘faggot
'
?” he repeats loudly. As expected, people in the immediate area take notice and frown. “I can say anything I want all the time!”

“You're gonna offend someone!”

“Whatever, man! Why should I give a shit if they take it the wrong way? I meant it, like, ‘stop being an annoying faggot.' Not the homophobic way.”

“But some people might not make that distinction!”

“Hey! I support gay rights, dude! What do I care if two consenting adults wanna engage in hot, man-on-man action? I'm using the word in a different context in order to
change
the definition. I call everybody faggots! I told my sister she was being a faggot yesterday! Those people should be
thanking
me.”

“Just shut the fuck up and drink your bee sting!”

The two of them sip feverishly on the straws of their stolen cocktails and within a minute the glasses are completely dry.

“Well, that was delicious,” says Scott.

Unsatisfied, Doc mutters, “I'm still kinda thirsty though.”

“Well, I'm gonna go buy another gin-and-tonic,” I tell them. Thankfully, I still have enough coins on me for one last drink. Doc follows me to the bar where we stand in line behind several other people. One of them looks a lot like the bouncer from Vanessa's parlour; I lower my head and turn away to make sure he doesn't see me. The last thing I need is another confrontation with that goon. Fortunately, he buys a drink and immediately leaves through the stairwell. We order our drinks and the bartender—a very attractive girl with long blue hair—hands us a gin-and-tonic and a bottle of beer. I give her my change while Doc empties out his pockets, trying to pay with something other than money.

“All I have are these subway tokens. . . . Oh! And an individual pack of crackers. They're salted.” To my surprise, she actually accepts the tokens as payment. Apparently she rides the subway quite often. “Keep the
change
,” he tells her, pronouncing the word as though it rhymes with “dawn.”

Doc and I take our drinks to the front of the stage and watch the band play a paint-by-numbers punk set including all of the classics from Black Flag, The Sex Pistols and the first record by The Clash. As we stand there bobbing our heads to the music, I notice a girl making eye contact with me. She has straight black bangs, dark eyes and massive breasts—obviously, she's way out of my league. Throughout the night I watch several other men try to make a pass at her, but not one of them is even remotely successful; she bats them away like she's swatting at flies. Occasionally, when we're all jumping around to the chorus, she intentionally bumps into me and then leans up against me, as if she wants to say something, but she never does. Maybe she's teasing me.

When the band hits the cymbals on their final song, we applaud and cheer and whistle as they vacate the stage. The girl with the dark eyes finally locks onto me and advances. I feel Doc shove me forward from behind, and then he scurries away like a cockroach in daylight and it's only me and her. She speaks first.

“Hey. I like you. You're polite . . . unlike some of the other boys in here.” Her accent is Eastern European and she reminds me of a James Bond villain. “I have a surprise for you,” she whispers, holding out her hand to reveal a small yellow capsule.

“Whoa. What's that?”

“MDMA. It'll make you feel amazing.”

“You're not gonna take advantage of me, are you? 'Cause I'm feeling pretty vulnerable right now.”

She laughs. “If you don't want it, I'll keep it for myself.” She slowly brings the pill to her lips and I grab her wrist to stop her from putting it in her mouth.

“Wait. I'll try it. But . . . just don't let me pass out here.”

“I won't.”

I place the capsule on my tongue and chase it with gin. I've tried ecstasy before, but this is supposedly more potent. Every time I experiment with a new drug I feel a deep fear of the unknown—the fear that I might have an allergic reaction or hallucinate or lose control of myself and run around naked screaming “Attica! Attica!” In this case, my fear is amplified because this girl is a stranger; for all I know, she could have given me a roofie. Maybe she'll steal my wallet. Or my kidney. If I wake up tomorrow in a bathtub full of ice with a big scar across my back, I'm going to be really pissed off.

“Wait until it settles in,” she tells me. “You'll feel amazing.”

“What's your name?” I ask.

“Sofia.”

“Ethan. Where are you from?”

“Russia. Armenia, to be exact. Do you like Armenian girls?”

“You're the first one I've met, but you seem pretty nice.”

Whenever I meet someone from Russia, I immediately ask them about the Cold War, the Summit Series and
Rocky IV
, but with Sofia I refrain.

“I love Canadian boys. You're so nice.” She grabs me by the wrist and scratches me with her fingernails, digging deep into the skin, so deep she almost draws blood. “Do you feel it yet?”

“I'm starting to get a little tingly.”

“Good,” she says.

Suddenly, I hear Doc whistling and catcalling at me from across the room. I figure he's teasing me, but when I turn around I see him standing at a table with four other people and he's motioning for us to join them. Sofia and I approach the group and he introduces us to a handsome, well-dressed man in his mid-thirties named Ben who apparently works as a television producer in Los Angeles. Ben, his tall blonde girlfriend, and his two buddies are out celebrating because he recently sold a new reality show to a major cable network. In his right hand he holds a ziplock bag full of white powder which he periodically offers to the table, bringing it directly to our noses with a tiny metal scoop. We all partake, including Sofia.

“I grew up here, but I moved out to L.A. like, ten years ago,” Ben tells us. “Eventually, I'd like to get into movies, but you gotta start somewhere, right? The fact of the matter is, reality shows are the most lucrative thing in the business right now 'cause they're so cheap to produce. You don't have to pay actors, you usually don't need writers, so your production costs stay low. That's why practically every channel is jumping on it—even the artsy, high-brow ones. But it's hard to keep it fresh, you know what I mean? I mean, you can always . . .”

For the next five minutes he continues to drone on about his issues with the contemporary television industry and I have no interest in what he's saying, but I nod and smile and listen politely nonetheless while I wait for him to offer me another hit. I feel like a real big shot, snorting cocaine from a TV producer with Sofia hanging on my arm. I could get used to this.