Seeing Red (8 page)

“Then why didn't God help all the people who died in Haiti a few months back? Is your grandpa more important than them?”

“I don't know? Maybe He is helping them.”

“So He causes a giant earthquake just for kicks?”

Charlotte sighs. “Mysterious ways. I think it's above our comprehension. He tests us and makes us face adversity in order to make us better people.”

“Well, He's doing a real bang-up job then, huh? People are really great these days, aren't they? And how come He only acts when nobody's watching? According to you, He can heal people, but He won't heal an amputee because then we'd actually be able to
see
it. He's like Woody in
Toy Story
. . . He goes limp anytime we look at him.”

“It's not like that, Ethan.”

While I'm trying to articulate my next point, I pause for a moment to survey the pub. The raucous, face-painted soccer fans are yelling at the television, taking shots of tequila and licking the salt off of their hands while a few old-timers keel over the bar counter, working on their sixth pint of the day at five o'clock in the afternoon. Then I return my attention to Charlotte and roll my index finger in a circular motion around the room. “You see ‘God' anywhere around here?”

Charlotte doesn't answer.

“Face it. We're on our own. The world is too complicated for God. He's just an old, antiquated idea that prevents us from solving our real problems.”

“So you think the whole universe is one big coincidence then?”

“Pretty much.”

“Then what's the meaning of it all?”

I shrug my shoulders. “There is no meaning.”

“Oh that's such a cop-out!” She turns to Nikki and adds, “I'm so glad Drew isn't an atheist. It'd be such a turn-off.”

“A turn-off? And your boyfriend's name is
Drew
?
Oh, for fuck's sake. . . .”

Charlotte ignores my snide remark and continues, “I could never be with someone who didn't believe in
something
.”

Nikki shakes her head and turns away from us, no doubt disappointed that Charlotte and I won't be walking down the aisle anytime soon. But I actually liked debating with her; it's not often people give you a chance to wax philosophical on God and the meaning of life. Nobody ever seems to ask the big questions anymore because they're so afraid of offending someone. Having said that, I hope I didn't offend her too much. She seems like a decent person.

We sip our drinks and there's a long, uncomfortable hush, so I decide to break the silence. “So, Charlotte . . . what's your favourite noble gas?”

Nikki grins at me in spite of herself. “I kinda like helium. It makes your voice sound all funny.”

“I like boron,” I say confidently.

“Boron's not a noble gas,” Charlotte sighs.

“I know it isn't . . . but it still gets me
hard
.”

Pleased with myself, I take another swig of gin and then count the minutes before I can go home and call Natalie.

FOURTEEN

Natalie doesn't answer when I call her, so I wait twenty minutes and try again. Still no response. Is she cancelling on me? The least she could do is let me know. I'm debating whether or not to leave a brief voicemail message when suddenly I receive a text from Scott that reads:
Hey! I bought some cocaine last night. Wanna give it a shot? Craig is here. Come over. Yaow!

Cocaine? Where'd he get cocaine? I've never known him to indulge in any drug aside from marijuana. And hash. And mushrooms. But never cocaine. I decide to give him a call.

“Hey! Reid! You get my message? I have coke!”

“Really? How?”

“I ran into this guy last night after you left and I asked him if he had any weed and he said he did, so I paid him the money and he goes, ‘Wait, sorry, I actually don't have any weed, but do you want this coke instead?' And I was like, ‘Okay.' And now I have coke.”

“Nice.”

“I eventually found some weed, too.”

“Attaboy.”

“So, you coming over? Craig's already here.”

“I don't know. I'm kinda waiting on a phone call.”

“Well, why don't you come here and pre-drink with us while you wait? I can give you a ride downtown after. You won't have to pay the subway fare.
That's a saving of three dollars, my friend.”

“. . . Alright, I'm on my way.”

About an hour later, the three of us are perched around a glass table in Scott's living room. Like mine, his apartment is a mess: dirty clothes and various pieces of sporting equipment are discarded haphazardly on the floor alongside an array of marijuana paraphernalia. We sip on liquor and smoke cigarettes until Scott finally unveils a ziplock bag full of white powder—hopefully he bought actual cocaine and not baking soda—and pours it onto a mirror in the centre of the table.

“Don't we need a razor blade or something?” Craig asks.

“No, it's already cut,” says Scott. “But we need a credit card to divvy it up.” I retrieve a library card from my wallet and toss it over to him, watching as he starts pushing and sorting the white powder into six separate lines.

“I've never done this before,” Craig says, shifting in his chair. “Someone else go first.”

“I'll go,” I say. I've snorted cocaine on several occasions, but never this early in the evening or this sober. It's a drug that usually only makes an appearance at the end of a night, typically in a bathroom stall or at somebody's house after the bars have closed. I rarely buy it for myself because it's far too expensive; however, there was one time during a particularly heavy bender when I wandered into a busy intersection at three o'clock in the morning and shouted, “Hey! Somebody sell me some coke!”
Ten seconds later, a man in a thick black jacket obliged me.
There were two police cars in the immediate area, but somehow they failed to notice our transaction. Or maybe they didn't care. Either way, I was lucky.

I roll up a five-dollar bill until it's taut, then insert it into my right nostril and lean forward so that the bill is hovering over the line. Closing off the rest of my nose with a free finger, I inhale as hard as possible, like a vacuum, not stopping until the powder is completely gone. The feeling hits me instantly like a shotgun blast to the brain: a burning, euphoric rush that I've never experienced before. My mind elevates and feels lighter, as if it were full of air. And I want more. I desperately want more.

“How is it?” Craig asks.

“Man, I love it,” I say, rubbing my nose and sniffling. “You feel it immediately. I get why this stuff is so addictive.” I stand up from the table and start pacing around the room; my heart is beating faster and I'm overcome with adrenaline and I can't stop clapping my hands together.

“Okay, my turn,” says Scott. I pass him the bill and he lowers his head toward the mirror and slowly breathes it in. His face comes up quickly and there's white powder all over the edge of his nostril and he starts coughing and laughing. “Shit! That fuckin' burns!” He hurriedly wipes his nose from side to side. “I don't know if I feel anything though.”

“I do,” I say. “If I were rich, or if this stuff were any cheaper, I'd do it all the time.”

“It could just be me. I didn't get high the first time I smoked weed either.”

Craig points at the mirror. “Or maybe that's just sugar?”

“Nah, it's real,” I say. “Give it a shot, man.”

“I'll try anything once,” he mumbles as he bends over the mirror. He inhales deeply and it takes him longer to finish, but the line eventually disappears. “Wow, that does burn. But it feels kinda cool.”

“Alright, let me try another one,” I say, grabbing the bill out of his hand. I repeat the process and the rush feels the same, albeit with less intensity.

“You can have my second line too,” he says. “I'm good.”

Without lifting my head from the table, I go in for another hit and I hear Scott yell, “Save some for me, cokehead!” After we finish the remnants of white dust, we celebrate by rolling a joint and smoking it outside on the balcony. Then we put on our shoes and leave the apartment, ready to paint the town red.

FIFTEEN

The flashing lights and swirling neon signs of Toronto's entertainment district blur and bombard me as I peer through the backseat window of our green Pontiac Sunfire. Loud shoegaze rock pumps through the speakers and the heavy bass vibrates the car as the singer moans about space girls and sunsets—apparently it's a band called Swervedriver. The aural stimulation, combined with the dizzying high of several narcotics, makes me feel as if I'm in another world; I can see an entire city block for a single moment and then nothing at all, just an overwhelming array of synthetic colour and illumination. The city ebbs and flows above me and all I can do is watch in awe.

Scott is behind the wheel, and at one point he fishtails through a busy intersection to avoid colliding with an oncoming vehicle and the incident triggers an old memory. It's a cold, quiet night in November and I'm teaching Rachael how to drive in an empty parking lot. We're both seventeen years old and I recently earned my driver's licence. I climb into the passenger seat while she places her hands on the steering wheel, and then I tell her about the pedals, the lights, the mirrors and the turn signals while she nods and pretends to listen to my boring tutorial. Then, without warning, she suddenly presses her foot down on the gas and we start speeding through the lot. The car keeps accelerating. We're going so fast. We're running out of room and I begin to panic. I tell her to slow down and she just looks at me and smiles. Then she nonchalantly slams on the brakes and jerks the wheel all the way to the left, causing the car to spin around one-hundred-and-eighty degrees. The tires drag against the asphalt and the brakes squeal and whine and then the hood rocks forward before the vehicle finally juts to a stop. I nearly have a heart attack. I get out of the car and run around to the driver's side door and pull it open and she's already laughing so hard that I can't help but laugh too. We're both keeling over. “I should probably drive,” I tell her. She undoes her seatbelt, falls out of the car and gives me a hug before walking back to the passenger's side. Then the memory cuts out.

The sun has almost set. We gracefully shuffle and veer through the streets on our way to rescue Doc from the corporate hell that is Starbucks. When we arrive he's already waiting for us on the curb dressed in black, with his traditionally unkempt hair combed neatly to the side. We pull up beside him and roll down the windows and then taunt and jeer at him for having chlamydia.

“Oh very funny,” he says.

Doc climbs into the backseat and we light another joint and then hand him a beer as a way of welcoming him back into our world. He opens the can and inhales the joint and smoke tumbles from his lungs, enveloping the entire car. We take turns breathing it in and passing the joint around until there's nothing left but burnt paper and ash. At Scott's insistence, we save the roach for him. As I'm passing the remnants up to Craig, I notice the air freshener dangling from his rearview mirror: it looks like Jesus cradling a small car in his arms. I ask Scott what it smells like and he yells, “Lemons!”

“Alright, so where are we going?” someone asks.

“Well, I've gotta drop off the car,” Scott replies. “Then I figured we'd subway over to the Annex and see what's up.”

“Fine by me.”

“What about you, Reid? You coming with us?”

“Yeah, I might as well. She's probably not gonna call.”

“Awesome.”

“Okay,” says Doc, “but I gotta go home and change my clothes first. I wanna wear my ‘Dubya' shirt tonight.”

Doc owns a t-shirt with a portrait of George W. Bush looking brave and steadfast, staring straight into the wind, and underneath there's a caption that reads
NO MISTAKES
. He wears it as often as possible—not because he actually admires the former president, but because he likes to anger people.

“Sure,” says Scott. “You gotta be quick though.”

“Uh huh,” Doc replies. Then he scans the interior of the car and asks, “Hey, what year is this jalopy?”

“It's a two-thousand-one.”

“Man, I can't believe I have a shittier car than you.”

“I make more money, asshole!” Scott replies. It's true: Scott makes more money than anyone I know, yet he still can't afford to buy a decent car. What he does for a living? None of us know for sure, but it's some miscellaneous office job with computers and information systems. We don't really talk about our career aspirations—to be honest, I don't think these guys have any. They seem completely satisfied with the status quo—in other words, living paycheque to paycheque in cramped, one-bedroom apartments. As long as they have enough money to get drunk on Saturdays, they don't care.

“Whatever,” says Doc. “My new car is gonna put yours to shame.”

“What's wrong with the Widowmaker?” I ask.

“It's too old and shitty and it's gonna explode,” he replies. “I want a car with a giant engine that shakes the earth, one that inspires fear in the hearts of my enemies.” He blows more smoke from his mouth and adds, “Anyway, let's hurry the hell up. I've gotta get
way
drunker than this.”

We drop off the car at Doc's apartment and then hop on the subway at Dundas Square. When our train arrives at Bathurst Station, we walk outside to witness a crowd of people assembling on the street corner and watching a nearby building burn to the ground. Flames consume the entire structure and shoot out through an open window on the second floor. There are no sirens, no fire engines, only gawkers and on-lookers smiling and laughing, snapping photos with their cellphones and appreciating that they are, for once, seeing something out of the ordinary happen in front of their very eyes. I'm no different: I hold a phone an inch from my face and click the camera over and over again, making slight adjustments in the angle, experimenting with the flash, trying it on, trying it off, zooming in and out.

Scott is particularly impressed. “Holy shit!” he says. “That's cool. Do you think somebody died?” Then he tells me a story of how he saw a man get struck and killed by a vehicle when he was vacationing in Boston. “It was right in front of me!” he exclaims, using his hands to illustrate the angle at which the car veered into him.

I feel as if I should call somebody. Let the authorities know. I consider running over to the building to see if anybody's inside. Maybe they need my help. Indifference, however, wins out. Wins out over me, my friends, and every other spectator on that street corner. I simply stand there and watch it burn.

“Well that sucks,” Doc says as he exhales a long puff of cigarette smoke.

Scott pats me on the back. “Come on. Let's get hammered. I got the first round.”

We leave the fire and walk eastward along Bloor Street toward Lee's Palace, a popular music venue for touring bands. A long lineup of people are leaning against the colourful mural on the wall by the entrance waiting to get inside. We join the back of the line and a few young guys follow behind us. They look like they're still in high school; when I ask how old they are, they admit they're only seventeen, but they're going to try to sneak into the club by greasing the bouncer.

“Why do you wanna get in there so badly?” I ask. “You know it's just loud music and overpriced drinks, right?”

One of the boys looks at me with a blank expression on his face and says plainly, “What else are we gonna do on a Saturday night?”

The line moves forward and we wish the boys good luck and then show the bouncers our IDs and walk inside. Instead of following the hallway straight into the main room, we ascend a black staircase with black walls to a large black room with bright lights and a dance floor where two hundred people are dancing to “Transmission” by Joy Division. I've never heard Joy Division in a club before and I'm impressed by their choice of music. Leaving my jacket on a bench, I notice some of the female patrons look quite young. I warn my friends to be careful.

“Ah, I'll be fine,” Doc assures me.

I watch as my three friends approach the bar and return a minute later with a bottle of beer in each hand. Scott buys me a double gin-and-tonic and we stand and drink, gradually gathering up the courage to join the crowd on the dance floor. It doesn't take Doc very long: he jumps into the crowd after a few sips of beer and Scott follows closely behind. They immediately start dancing next to a group of girls while Craig and I lean against the bar and spectate. I wonder if he's thinking the same thing I am: people look really stupid when they're dancing. Unfortunately, I'll soon be out there too, fumbling around with the rest of them.

If Natalie's not coming tonight, if she's not even answering my calls, then this entire expedition is a waste of time. As if he's reading my mind, Craig asks, “So, what happened to Natalie tonight?”

“I don't know. I called, but I haven't heard back.”

“That sucks,” he says, casually drinking his beer. “She seems kinda flakey, man. Like, I look at her sometimes, and she doesn't seem to react to things like a normal person. More like a robot. Anyway, I wouldn't take it too personally.”

“Screw it. I'm gonna try to have fun here tonight.”

“Good call. Who needs a girlfriend these days anyway? Porn is amazing.”

“That's true.”

“I downloaded this one last night that I'm
pretty
excited about. This guy's on a golf course, right, and he's getting a lesson from this chick, and she starts talking about his three-wood and—”

“I really wish she'd call me though,” I interrupt.

“Well, wish in one hand, shit in the other, dude.”

“Huh. Maybe that's my problem. . . .”

“What is?”

“Maybe I've gotta stop
wishing
and
shitting
on my hands all the time.”

Craig laughs. “That's the spirit.”

I finish my drink, slam the cup on the counter and order another one. When I turn around, I'm surprised to find Nikki standing right in front of me. She grabs me by the collar and shakes me, spilling gin-and-tonic onto my shoes.

“Hey! I'm drinkin' here!” I yell.

“Ethan Reid! What the hell was that today?”

“What's she talking about?” Craig asks me.

“We went to the Duke a couple hours ago,” Nikki explains, “and I introduced him to Charlotte and he totally scared her off!”

“That's surprising,” Craig deadpans.

“Oh, c'mon,” I say. “It's not my fault. She's a goddamn Pisces!”

Nikki sneers at me and then glances down at my wristwatch and asks me what time it is.

“I don't know.”

“Tell me!”

“No, seriously. My watch is busted. Look.”

I show her that the hands aren't moving.

“Then why are you still wearing it?”

“To remind myself to get it fixed. Besides, it makes me look cool.”

Nikki lets out a sigh of frustration and shouts, “You're all over the map!” Then she suddenly perks up and taps me on the forearm. “Oh! By the way, I was talking to a friend of mine on Facebook and she said she saw you at a party on Thursday. Apparently you were
totally
wasted. She said you smashed an iPod on the pavement and then kicked it into a sewer grate.”

“Really?”

“Yeah!”

“Huh. So
that's
where that went.”