The Adjustment League (16 page)

§

Watching the sign carrier from the Duke was fun, but it's even better browsing in BMV and never looking out the window. Not having a clue what's happening nearby, but feeling sure that something is and whatever it is can't be wrong. Though the browsing stokes book-lust, testing a management monk's vows. Like a celibate strolling around a harem. Asking for trouble.

Upstairs, along with comics and sci-fi and textbooks and Shakespeare, are old magazines in plastic.
Vintage
says red marker on cardboard. Some are—others just old. The Kennedy assassination in
Life
. I try to remember where I might have been, with which family, in November 1963. Not a foggy. Then Nixon, that weird boneless wave before they coptered him out. That one I know. I was nineteen. On a psych ward for another evaluation before they processed me as an adult offender. My legal aid lawyer, young and keen, thought she had an angle after reviewing my file. But she didn't. Not a good enough one anyway. I move to Comics. Batman. Superman. The Thing. Always my favourite, hands down. The others just had too much going for them. Their various “dark shadows” just stains of plausibility to brand them as mass-market wet dreams. Which, even as a kid, never got me off.

It's clobberin' time!

Ten to six, coming out of BMV, I see Snag on the opposite corner of Yonge and Eglinton. Looking in all four directions, like he's lost. I cross over to him.

“Where's Sammy?”

“He ran off chasing a bitch down an alley a while ago. I bin lookin' for him.”

I try to imagine Sammy surmounting his fear to chase anything. “Does that happen often?”

“Yeah, too often. Sometimes I lose that fucker for days at a time. He always turns up eventually. Sammy's not tellin', but I don't think it's usually a lady dog. Sammy's pretty old.”

“What else would it be?”

“He's a dog, man. Ask
him
.”

Snag gives me most of the report as we walk up the hill to Timmie's, pausing at every street and alley to look for Sammy. Birdy didn't make it past the security guard. “He tried to take too many of his flock. I told him to just tuck a couple under his jacket, but he wouldn't leave the rest behind. Like I said, he's independent-minded.” Still, they brought plenty of world to the smooth-running office. Snag got Sammy past security—distracted by Birdy's flock, a bonus—and panhandled his way down the twelfth floor, settling in the Wyvern waiting room. Gwen rousted them, of course, but panicked when Sammy, right on cue, started circling on the rug, chasing his tail in search of a place to shit. She got him out in time—“scared his ass shut”—but while she was chasing them to the elevator, a couple came in from the staircase and took the washroom keys, “the ones on toothbrushes, pink and blue. Used the facilities thoroughly, if you know what I mean, and brought the keys back super-polite, thank you ma'am, leaning in over her counter, like that. Taking their time, letting the patients see they belonged. Leaving behind lots for her air fresheners to work on.”

“His and hers. That was a nice touch.”

“I thought so.” They gave them a break after that, but kept it coming later. Bringing it on in waves that seemed random. Waiting for the blood pressure to come down, the guard to drop, before the next encounter. Making it seem not so much a special targeting as a case of the city's homeless having multiplied tenfold, so that they turned up everywhere. No escaping them. The dentist and his secretary having a quiet lunch at Starbucks when in comes another beggar, gripping their table, getting loud, until the manager comes over to evict him.

“His hygienist, you mean. Pretty, brown-skinned.”

“No, the short old lady. With the toothbrush keys, on the front desk.”

§

At Timmie's, I settle for a large Earl Grey, but order the Combo for Snag: spring vegetable soup, ham and Swiss on a croissant, donut, coffee.
Bits and pieces, Ken. It adds up
. I sip with the cup in my right hand, trying to bring the damaged fingers back into play. But it's still too soon, and I end up holding the handle with my thumb and first two fingers, the other two pointing outward in different directions. “Are we having high tea?” Snag says, starting in on his tray.

He scarfs down the soup and sandwich and is taking the donut more leisurely, when he remembers something and fishes it out of a pocket. “Oh hey, man. Don't know what this means, but Darlene grabbed it when she took the washroom key. From beside the computer.”

Gwen's Post-It pad.
Friday 6 PM
and a phone number. A restaurant reservation is my first guess. An idea starts to form. Or it's waiting for me, and I start to see it.

I describe to Snag the couple on the construction site on Lisgar. A her that looks like him, a him that—

“Nicholas and Simone.”

“Nicholas and Simone?”

“Why you repeating everyone's names, man? You did it earlier, with Birdy. Like you can't believe we have names. Or at least not the ones you're hearing.”

“Come off it, Snag. How long've you known me?”
Why else, then?

“Yeah.
Nich-o-las and Si-mone
. They give you that face?”

“The newer parts.”

“I thought so. They like to roughhouse.”

“I may have a job for them. Sort of a special assignment.”

“I don't know. They're wack jobs when they're high.”

“Sounds perfect. Could you find them, though?”

“Yeah, probably. Someone said they're working the 401 exit at Bayview. Downtown sorta chased them out. Good luck to them on getting roll-downs.”

“Looking like he does, I kept Christof outside most of the day. Hitting people up for change as they came down from upstairs. Especially anyone working their jaws, or holding dental floss and a new toothbrush. He got into it at the end, though. Like I said, initiative. Went down into the parking garage and waited until the dentist and some babe got into his car, then squashed his face against the window asking for money.”

“How's he talk with his face squashed against the glass?”

“It comes out pretty funny. But I guess the real point is the inside of his mouth and nose from up close. He does it all over the place. Cars, restaurant windows. Gets some coin too. Probably just to make him stop.”

“What'd he get this time?”

“Said the dude just gripped his steering wheel. Super pissed, but too pussy to do anything about it. The lady, though. She got out her side right away and came around like she meant business. Christof ran off. He said she was pretty hot. Young, too. His girlfriend, you think?”

“Yup. One of them anyway.”

That wet rattle, like he's gargling his coffee. “Money. Who says it can't buy you love?”

“The Beatles. But only after it was buying them plenty.”

“Um.” A server—a team member, they probably call her. A plump, pretty girl. White points in her blush where she removed her piercings for her shift. “I'm sorry, but. Someone complained to the manager about a sme—… about an unpleasant odour.”

“I showered yesterday,” I say.

“It wasn't, um… it's not…” Her eyes avoiding Snag. It isn't the kid's fault. Across the store, the manager is taking an exaggerated interest in a pyramid of coffee tins.

“Forget it, man. You too, hon. I got the meal into me, and it was good.” Snag stands. “So here's a good juicy tip.” He puts out his hands for balance and does a Chinese-y squat, his ass very low—for all his rough living he's strong, I realize; big too, even bigger with all his layers—and waits, his face tense, until it comes: a long, rumbling, very wet and involved fart that sounds a lot like his laugh, only with the voice box removed. Rises with a look of satisfaction and signs to me that he'll be outside.

I take what's left of my tea over to the counter, behind which the manager is standing with his arms folded, scowling. He's fortyish, husky, balding. A huge silver buckle with a Libra symbol centering his brown belt.

“If I dump this on your floor, you'll just make one of these minimum-wagers mop it up, won't you?”

“Yes, I will. So don't do it.”

His high voice and the trace of a childhood lisp almost stop me.

I grab the buckle—it's solid as a doorknob—and in the split second before his body follows it, pour the tea down the inside of his pants.

“OWW!” he yowls. Clutches his drenched crotch with both hands. From shock, it must've been. The tea was just lukewarm.

Off to the side, the de-pierced girl has a hand over her mouth. “Tell him to stop groping you or you're going to the Labour Board,” I advise her loudly, looking around the restaurant until the faces duck back down to their meals.

“See this street?” We're on the south-west corner, opposite Timmie's. I look the wrong way, see Best Buy, FedEx. Snag jabs his raised hand the other way. “No, man,
down
Yonge. Towards the lake. This is Montgomery, man. Montgomery? This Post Office right here, Station K. Montgomery Tavern?”

I shrug, palms out. In or out of school, History was always my worst subject.

Snag shakes his head in disbelief. “They fought a battle here, man. The rebels. 1837. Pitchforks, clubs, a few guns against the militia. They tried to take it to Bond Head and the Family Compact. Sir Francis Bond Head. Fucker deserved to be run out of town just for his name. They gathered here and marched down to City Hall, demanding representative government.”

I look down the hill we just walked up, trying to imagine what it might've looked like a hundred-and-eighty years ago. A dirt road? Through sloping woods down to a shining blue lake? It's hard to block out the cars and jostling sidewalks. Hard to imagine anything very different.

“Did they get it?”

§

“Ukiyo-e. How may I help you?”

The girlish singsong, which some Japanese women keep well into middle age, mesmerizes me, it sounds like bird trills more than a telephone formula, so that I almost miss the name of the restaurant and lose the reason I dialled.

“Could you hold for a second?”

“Of course, sir.”

Standing in my kitchen, hand over the receiver. Important to get this right. I'd hoped for a restaurant, but not the high-end sushi place four blocks up the street.
A local job
. More local by the day. I arrange it in my head.

“It's Dr. Max Wyvern calling. You've got a reservation for me this Friday?”

A moment's pause. “Yes, sir. This Friday, six o'clock. For two.”

“I'd like to change that to four people, if it's possible.”

“It's possible, of course. No problem. Four people, Friday six o'clock. See you—”

“Just a moment, please. The other couple will be arriving early, a half hour ahead of us. I hope that's no trouble. Their names are Nicholas and Simone. And, ah, there's one other thing. It's a little delicate.”

“Delicate? If I can help…”

“Nicholas and Simone—they may try to pay in advance, but don't let them. This is my treat. And they may be a little shy about ordering ahead, on their own. So don't even ask. Just bring them some wonderful drinks and appetizers as soon as they sit down.”

“Best drink! Best appetizer! No problem!” Her excitement flits like a swallow down the line. We might be arranging a prom dress for the poorest girl in class. “It will be our pleasure!”

Christ, will it ever.

9

“The Bone Dungeon,”
Jared says. And watches while I print it in capital letters, pressing firmly, at the top of a clean page in his writing book. I underline it with his ruler and turn it around to show him.

Lizard flick of tongue. He never looks more scared than when something's pleased him, like he's being set up.

Our joint title definitely the high point for him. Always. The idea he supplies, which an adult prints cleanly and boldly. Everything after that, even the best parts, are anticlimactic step-throughs to justify the name of his creation. He already knows it, he visits and lives there, so it's tedious to describe it in such halting, sketchy detail. Starting from the middle, wherever he finds himself, he moves forward tentatively, quickening if he spots something new. Backtracking reluctantly, usually at my request, to mark the trail for others.

But no way he'll start without the title. I learned that in an early session. Gave him all the reasons why it's sometimes wise to hold off on titles, or fill in a working one, let the real one emerge from the story itself. Otherwise you could find yourself filling out an order you didn't mean, programmed by your lead-off. He listened sullenly, skepticism thickening like a wall of scratched plexiglass that made his tiny, dock-eared, frown-lined face recede and grow indistinct.

Mutual stubbornnesses squared off. Thirty silent minutes later, Lucy, humming nervously, led him out the door.

the dungeon is made of old bones it has normal cave walls but long yellowish bones come down from the roof and up from the floor the bones in the dungeon turn to clear crystal over a long time eventually they become totally transparent when that happens the bones possess great powers someone who finds a clear bone and removes it carefully will possess great powers

It takes us a fair while to produce this start. Jared speaking slowly, musingly, his voice sounding as faraway as it is, relaying what he sees as he moves about the Bone Dungeon. Back on the couch in the apartment, I fashion the disjointed phrases he transmits into simple sentences, trying to give them shape and order without changing the content, removing the capital letters and punctuation for him to add as best he can. Introducing new words to his vocabulary when they seem to do no harm to his meaning.
Transparent. Possess
.

My hackles rise at
crystal
and
powers
. They seem game-fed. But Jared's slowly-going-clear bones reassure me. A gamer, I feel sure, would opt for bones that blaze luridly.

“How do you get out?”

Jared frowns. We're barely
in
.

“How do you get through the bones?” I'm picturing something like a calcium thicket.

“Follow the
birds
. The paths they make.”

“What birds?”

Apparently, Jared informs me sighing, besides the prisoners sent there, there are birds who reside in the Bone Dungeon, its only natural inhabitants. “Hollow” birds that can't fly.

“Do they have long necks?” I say, I don't know why. To say something.

“They don't have
any
necks. But they have big heads.”

We don't get much further tonight. But I can feel the Bone Dungeon operating behind his worry lines. As usual, I wonder whether I'm teaching him or leading him down a garden path. I was the one who requested a dungeon. Decide, as always, it's bound to be a bit of both.

“Smells good, Lucy.”

She looks up from the pot she's stirring. Steam has turned her brown face the colour of red brick. I pick up cumin, garlic, a curry blend.

“Is mainly chick peas. But I soak them myself. No cans. Tomato. Onion. Some eggplant.”

“Is that tofu in it?”

“No tofu. Paneer.”

“I like paneer. I get it in Indian restaurants.”
Used to get
. “Matar paneer's my favourite—peas and cheese chunks. I always thought it would be tricky to make.”

She shakes her head, stirring. “Milk. Lemon. Cheesecloth. Half an hour, cheese.”

“Oh yeah?”

§

Patrick is the name on my drug dealer's mailbox and lease. And I've heard people buzzing up call him Skidder and Lump. But for some reason I can't associate him with those names or any other. So I call him nothing to his face—same thing he calls me—and 303 in my head.

He cracks his door. Pinkish eyes in peat puff.

“Time to earn your keep. It won't take long.”

He scowls, but steps aside to let me in. Lingers a moment to check the hallway. What would he do if there was a uniform outside? Twizzler-thin, pallid and bleary-eyed, he has no words and only furtive glances for other tenants, puffs dope in the stairwell and even in the elevator, and buzzes in five-minute visitors day and night.

“If you want to stay out of jail,” I said once, early on, “Why don't you start greeting people, get some sun and grow a paunch, and throw the occasional dinner party?”

“Why don't you wear a toupee and get some dermabrasion?” he shot back. Scoring some points with me.

Sweet rich funk inside. Caramel-coated straw on low banked embers. Hazy wisps and wraiths piddling about—morning mist on a pond. From speakers somewhere, a guy whining off-the-shelf rock. Electro-gear everywhere. In the living room, amid cushions, clothes, and takeout cartons, the largest screen, towers on either side of it but wired for the moment to a game console. Multi-armed alien frozen in mid-splatter, a shocked look on its face. An Obus chair in front of the screen, kidney-shaped supports at the lower back and between the shoulders. From his slouch down streets and corridors, 303 looks achey, semi-boneless. Like he's having trouble holding himself up. Yet he's in his twenties. What will he do at fifty-five? Seventy-five? Chiropractors might be the big winners in the wired world. A laptop on the only space not piled with dishes in the galley kitchen. Beyond, by the mattress on the bedroom floor, a larger model with the Apple logo.

“What do you use in the bathroom?”

“What is it you want?”

“Just an idea of what carols some people are listening to.”

“Carols?” He stares at the USB stick I hand him. “I loathe Christmas.”

“So do I. It's the Ebola of holidays.”

“I'll use the laptop in the kitchen. You actually want to hear this shit?”

“Not if it's the usual. ‘Silent Night,' ‘Jingle Bell Rock.' Just give me an idea of the playlist.”

He goes through the kitchen into the bedroom, rummages under some clothes and comes up with earphones. Keeps fishing for something else. As he crouches, his pants slide down his skinny hips, treating me to gamer's crack. He rises slowly, a hand on his lower back. Taking another step into the living room, I come to a telephone table. No telephone, but three large art books under a Finger Eleven T-shirt.
Assassin's Creed
.
World of Warcraft. Final Fantasy.
A flip-through of
Creed
confirms the cover blurb: glossy drawings exactly as they appear in the game. Strange. You sit and look at a book of what you sit and look at on a screen. “Hearing any reindeer yet?”

“Not going to,” he calls back. “These are JPEGs, not audio files. I'm going to open them on the Mac. The graphics card on this is shot.”

Adjustments, arrangements. 303 and I are an arrangement. Each an arrangement for the other.

I help you keep up with the wired world?

You help me any way I need.

I see. And for that you turn a blind eye.

My eyes are working fine. I'll tell the cops whatever they want to know when they knock on my door. When, not if.

So what do I get then?

I don't call them tonight and I don't evict you.

All in place after a first night's sniff. Easy as a one-handed download.

A cleared throat. I turn and see 303 in the kitchen doorway. He shrugs, palms up. “I don't get it. Someone's homemade porn. So what? The dental set's not my thing, but whatever. It's pretty soft—”

“Dental set? Let me see.”

§

The first picture shows a girl in a dentist's chair. Twelve, maybe thirteen, with long blonde hair. Her eyes are closed, her mouth open slackly. Her head lolls to one side on the headrest. The photograph, rich and clear on the Apple, shows her from the waist up—her face and hair and the dental bib, her narrow shoulders, and her arms on the arms of the chair.

Max's chair. Dentist's offices are generic, but I'm sure of it. The USB buried in Maude's “Precious Things” box.
Buried by whom?

“Like I said, pretty tame,” says 303, somewhere to my right. “They get kinkier, but still. You want heavy, live-action shit, it's a mouse-click away.”

“This is closer than a mouse-click. A dentist just down the street. I can introduce you if you want.”

A pause.

“Like a real dentist, you mean? Real girls?”

I glance at 303. Even a ghost gets whiter when it's scared. He's blinking long blinks, like he's trying to wake up.

“Real girl. Real
minor
girl. Take a look at her face. Does she look like she volunteered?”

303 puts his hands up in a surrender-no-hassle combo. “Hey, man, your get-off is your business. Whatever. And our deal is what it is. But this sounds heavy maybe. I can't have my name anywhere near it.” He's still muttering as I turn back to the screen and click ahead.

The next picture is of the same girl in close-up, her face filling the screen. Her head has been positioned to face the lens straight on. A plastic retractor has been inserted in her mouth, pushing her lips in four directions, exposing all of her teeth and gums. The rectangular grimace, wider than any natural laugh or scream could be, is reminiscent of Francis Bacon's screaming popes, hugely baring their teeth while immobilized in a high-backed chair. Her eyelids are open a crack in this second picture, showing a seam of white sclera.

It is the start of a long series of such photographs. Variations within the constant of a dentist's chair.
Is it the start?
It's the first picture encountered on this USB, but the pictures have no dates or titles, no indication of whether or how they might fit in a larger series of photographs. But the first two photos give the sense of something starting, a discovery made. A quick shot, perhaps on impulse, of an unconscious girl. And then—when no heavens fell, when no voice roared objection—a bolder and more deliberate arrangement of the same subject.

With a mixture of sick apprehension and compulsion, a sour reeling sense, I click on the mouse to advance the series. 303 doesn't say anything. Neither do I. What is there to say?

Each woman is in the dentist's chair. Since the chair reclines, the postures of the women range from halfway sitting up to lying almost flat. Most of the women have their eyes closed. The eyes that are open look glazed, unfocused, sometimes rolled back to show mostly whites.

They range in age from pre-teen to late middle age. From girls as young as eleven or twelve to women who might be fifty-five or even sixty. The majority falls where it would with most men—between eighteen and forty, roughly. A few of the women are beautiful, most are pretty, and even the minority that would be considered plain have at least one feature that the photographer found attractive. It's obvious what the feature is because, about fifteen pictures in, he starts undoing and removing pieces of clothing to reveal it.

A blouse unbuttoned to reveal plump breasts in a bra. A skirt rucked up above shapely thighs. And then the same woman a few pictures later—with other girls and women in between—with a different skirt pushed up to her waist and her panties pulled down to above her knees, showing thighs and black pubic hair. A shot of slim ankles and bare feet with red toenails, the feet angled out and the legs parted. This shot of calves to toes fills the frame in clear focus, the plastic chair covering a blur behind them, but the photograph before showed the same woman reclining in the chair with her eyes closed, her red toenails peeping out from high-end sandals.
Like a director's establishing shot. So he can match the whole face and body with the fetish part.

As the series goes on, the poses become more graphic, and the use of dental equipment props, occasional before, more frequent. A woman lying face down on her crossed arms, her slacks and panties pulled down and the middle of the chair raised, presenting her buttocks to the viewer. This is the shot that reminds me of what I should have realized earlier. The shots, like any photographs, are frozen moments, telling nothing about what went on before or after this staging.

The bizarre retractor grimace—a hideous smile or clinical scream—combined with an exposed breast, its nipple erect. A hand made to grip a flattish rubber thing and push it halfway into pubic hair in which it pauses, a pale gray slug. A metal examining pick like the one Max bent over me with, hooked into the hole of a zipper tab pulled down to reveal deep cleavage, a screaming female pope above.

“How many are there all together?”

303 does something with the mouse, brings up an information tab. “A hundred and fifty-three,” he says.

A new hobby? Or a recent scrapbook of an old one?

“They could have been taken over years,” I say, thinking out loud.

“Maybe.” 303 shrugs. It's almost palpable, his effort to return to his base camp of blasé. “Every so often he meets someone willing to pose. A lot of chicks—”

“You're forgetting that none of these women volunteered.”

“You don't know that.”

“Look at the eyes. The limp bodies. They're drugged senseless.”

303 is looking at me the way Danika did near the end of our meeting. As if just seeing me for the first time. Peering at me with a seriousness I wouldn't have thought him capable of.