The Adjustment League (21 page)

There's just now, now
. Lois's mantra.

Every goodness in the world owing fidelity to that. And every evil to its flouting.

A plump Jehovah's Witness with thinning hair has set up where the path meets the parking lot. You can't retrieve your car without bumping into him. The woman ahead of me pushes through his outstretched arm like a turnstile. I stop momentarily, long enough to glance at what's placed in my hand. Usual atrocious art—a couple from behind, her head on his shoulder, staring at a fading wall of photographs of a girl.
Can the dead live again?

“Of course they can,” I say. “Who else do we spend our days with?”

Push the pamphlet back at his chest and move on without clocking his reaction.

§

Sandor's at the long table in the front room of the Queen's Arms. With his group from a week ago. Some of them anyway. There's the blonde's refined husband, nodding intelligently at something Sandor's saying, but no sign of the blonde. One of the younger faces I seem to recall, but another couple are new. And a pudgy, middle-aged pair with round, cheerful faces I've never seen before. Sandor's in the center, explaining something with hand gestures.

Can a breakdown actually enrich a social life?
From what I'm seeing, maybe yes.

At my entrance, all three Kims go for the phone behind the bar, each anxious to make the call. Ella gets there first. Father watches her while Mother keeps an eye on me. I won't be staying long enough to meet the cops.

“Ah, my evil twin!” Sandor says, raising his glass as I approach the table.

It stops me for a moment. My mind goes blank. Which Sandor obviously relishes, peeking at me over the rim as he guzzles.

Then he wrong-foots me again, when I start to tug his book from my pocket. “Are you going to sit down and join us? We're always hungry for new members.”

“Goody!” says the round-faced man, rubbing his hands together theatrically. “Another quorum-booster in our claws!”

Among the glasses of beer on the table are notebooks and loose pages, a couple of paperbacks. I was so intent on Sandor I hadn't noticed them. More proof I'm not his bipolar gumshoe.

“It's not a judgemental group at all,” says the long-nosed girl with orange hair. “Believe me, I've been in other groups that were.”

“Fresh meat, fresh meat,” chants the boy beside her.

“Don't listen to him,” she says. “You share whatever you want, whenever you want. I didn't bring anything my first few weeks. Which was fine. And you can say before you do what kind of feedback you're looking for. Hard-nosed. Encouraging. Or just some ears, no comments required. If someone's not constructive, they don't stay long.”

Sandor eyeing me over the rim of his glass, obviously enjoying himself.

“Actually,” I say, “I'm a fan, not a writer. I just came in to collect an autograph.”

The sight of the book I set down brings the dark thing up in his eyes.

The young man beside him slaps him on the back. “You see, Sandor,” says the blonde's husband, “We told you it wasn't a vanity publication.”

“Depends on whether he paid for it,” says the author.

“I did. Two bucks.” Chuckles here and there, quickly suppressed. “But it was second-hand.”

“Still. Wait'll Lynette hears,” says a voice.

“Lynette?”
TAL Lynette? I don't know another by that name.

“His publisher.”

The blonde, I think. It has to be. The swirl of déjà vu I've felt around her. The tug of familiarity that made me try to stare through her Infinite Tunnel. But try as I might, I can't fit that slumped, dun-braided farm girl from the ward—TAL-consoled one night, then back in the dumpster at breakfast—with this svelte, high-maintenance blonde.

“Well, I like her style. As a publisher anyway.”

Sandor looks up at me with a weary, tapped-out expression, the red veins in his eyes prominent. A shape-changer, I can't get hold of him. I see a gamester, drinker, charmer, some kind of victim—at least in his own mind. A quitter but also a fighter, a convalescent in need of constant R&R… but also the author of the passages I've been living with, walking around with, coming back to. All the sides are there but not quite meeting. Like overlays that don't quite match up when you try to stack them. The only line that makes sense to me is the one that has him saying goodbye definitively to something in his past, closing the door on it firmly—maybe at someone else's behest, maybe feeling it was the only way to save himself. And good advice perhaps. But I keep scratching at the door, knocking on it, prying.

He picks up a pen. “You know me by two names now,” he says. “Which signature do you want?”

“Whichever one wrote the book.”

A frown at the inscription to Grace—he flips the page quickly to prevent the others seeing it—and then he signs:
Wun Wing
. Closes the book and hands it back to me. I turn to go.

“Wait. Wait.” The orange-haired girl. “What about some feedback? You didn't even say if you liked it.”

“I sought out the author for his autograph.”

The faces expectant, fearful. Writers. Except Sandor. He just looks blank.

“It was a revelation,” I say. And the faces begin to smile, but tensely. The artistic ego: used to the set-up before the smash. “Seriously,” I add. I didn't get to ask him about Christmas Music—what he knows, if he knows—but maybe I'm not leaving entirely empty-handed.

§

A cop getting out of the patrol car at the curb, his partner inside at the wheel. They must have been close by. A bounce at the Arms hardly an urgent call.

“We got a call about a disturbing patron,” he says after the usual head-to-toe. “But it looks like you found your own way to the door.”

I turn towards Avenue Road, start walking. “Hey. The army jacket. Are you a veteran?”

“Soldier of fortune,” I call back, not giving a damn whether he hears me or not.

After a few steps, I hear the car door close behind me.
Walking away
, along with
not answering
, two black marks in a cop's book. But maybe, it being a slow night, they want to keep it that way.

The Face has got me in a lot of trouble with the law, no question. But it's saved me some, too.

§

“I thought we were done. I thought that was the deal.”

With a sigh, 303 lets me in. Similar-looking alien frozen on his big screen. Attacking this time—not splattering yet.

“It was. We are. This is just a bit of overtime. There's a little research I need your help with. I could do it at the library, but not Sunday—”

A bony hand in my face. Too close, but let it go. “You can stop there. I know what you're looking for. And it just happens I've already got it.”

And he does. There are a few drugs that might have been used by the producer of Christmas Music, but 303 has hit on one as the most likely. Has the name and specs written out on a torn half-sheet of paper.
Midazolam. A short-acting drug in the benzodiazepine class. Skeletal muscle relaxant. Sedative properties.
Used for inducing sedation and amnesia before medical procedures
.

“Why'd you underline that part?”

“Wouldn't you have? I quoted the next parts exactly too.”

“‘
Drawbacks include adverse events such as cognitive impairment and sedation. Used in executions by lethal injection in the USA in combination with other drugs
.'”

“You just Googled this?”

He winces, a twinge briefly wrinkling his face like I've zapped him lightly in the balls. “It wasn't a
random
search. I didn't just barge into chatrooms saying, Hey, any you freaks know a good date rape drug for knocking women out in a dentist's chair? I used some parameters.”

“Parameters.”

“I narrowed it down. I was pretty sure what I was looking for even before I found it.”

“Really? Why was that?”

303 just stares at me. My eyes flick to the alien forever charging. Emerald green with a yellow cowlick, red eyes, black talons and white fangs. The pastime looks incredibly stupid, but colourful. “You think I'm just your resident drug dealer, don't you?” 303 says.

“Any reason I shouldn't?”

“Believe it or not, I actually had another life before I became your IT man.”

“Tell me. I'm interested.”

And he does. And I am, mildly. It's not as uncommon as he seems to think. A scholarship student in Natural Sciences at U of T. Good grades, but not good enough for med school. The competition unreal against “Asians who study twelve hours straight for fun. Sixteen when they get serious.” Settled for Pharmacy, but quit after a year. Too much rote memory, which he found boring as well as insulting. Got in with a group developing game ideas, moving a little dope to support their own use. Then the gaming business—“insanely competitive” as well—fell away, and pot got moved in more substantial quantities.

“Until you became my resident drug dealer.”

A bigger zap in the balls, a bigger twinge. This one warps his face for half a second.

“You're welcome. Now fuck off, thank you.”

I owe him that much. As I'm leaving, though, something occurs to me. I put a hand on the door he's closing, stick my head back in.

“You had this information but you didn't tell me? Didn't think to slide it under my door? How long were you going to wait?”

“Not very long. I was thinking of coming up tonight. But how did I know you weren't the guy taking the pictures? Or a friend of the guy who does?”

It stops me briefly.

“That doesn't make any sense. Why would I expose myself by showing them to you? Why would I think they were music, not pictures?”

“I don't know, man. You're an actor? You're a psycho? A lot of what you say and do makes no sense to me.”

I consider it a moment. “That might be why we're still on speaking terms.”

“What is?”

“Mutual incomprehension. It can be a social aid.”

“Whatever, man. Look, are we done now? For real? Quits, I mean.”

I consider that a moment too. “I'd like to tell you yes. I think so. But you and I, we're”—I search for the right image—“we're like two leeches fastened to each other. Neither of us is getting anything very nutritious, but until something else swims by, we're hanging on.”

That image is so unappealing that he shoves the door shut, locks it, and gets back to his charging alien.

14

Green light blinking
on the phone machine when I come back upstairs. First I wash the plaster and white paint off my hands. For the moment, the couple in 405 have an intact ceiling again—until the next heavy rain knocks the plug out in soggy chunks and they're forced to catch the dripping water in a roasting pan in their living room. When the season of freeze-and-thaw sets in next month, the dripping will accelerate and patches will be impossible until May. The couple, who seem intelligent, have never withheld a rent cheque, though they've lived here ten years, for eight of which their ceiling has leaked, and they should know that until he feels the sting of absent funds the Owner will play patch-and-pray rather than hire a roofer to find the leak and fix it. He calls them his “best tenants ever” and shakes the husband's hand on the rare occasions they meet.

“Ken, I'm sorry about the mystery packages,” I say when he picks up the phone. His voice in my machine was ominously solemn, asking me to call him at my
earliest convenience
. “Let's move up the timetable a bit. If you hang on to the envelopes two more days, you can return them to me using the inter-branch service. Or else just drop them in a mailbox yourself.”

Since I may not be able to pick them—or anything—up myself
, is what I mean by making my voice lean towards option number two as the best one for both of us. Silence from the other end. I can see the two envelopes with my handwriting on his desk, his hands beside them—as clearly as if I've crawled down the line and taken up a perch behind Ken's eyes.

“I assume the contents of these envelopes are… dangerous somehow. A risk to someone.”

“That's true.”

“Otherwise,” Ken goes on as if I haven't said anything, as if he's talking to himself, “they wouldn't be in my hands for safekeeping. Of course, what are the chances of an anonymous package addressed to the police being utterly harmless?”

“Also true, Ken. And again—”

“Remember how things ended last time,” he breaks in. Which last time? I'm wondering. A lot of adjustments have ended messily, and of course they all end with Stone. Though Ken doesn't know about Stone—not in specific detail, and not by that name. What
have
I told him? I'm tripping over my own loose history. Fugue states and episodic amnesia no help in a long-term relationship. But in any case,
Remember-how
advisories at this stage are like
Mind your step
to a parachutist who's left the plane. Still, Ken needs some reassurance. And deserves it.

“I know it's an imposition, Ken. But it's for something that matters to me. Matters a lot. A question of clearing house.”

“Whose house?”

I see, in rapid succession, Maude lying dead on her side in bed, Judy sipping cocoa on the porch on Selkirk Street, faces and other body parts of nameless girls and women in Max's chair, the Empress straining to break her tiny face free from stone, and, for some reason, Jared. They flip through my head like cards in a riffled deck.

“Your house. My house. Everybody's house.” Too late, I realize I've gone too far. “It's always my house, Ken. Ultimately, that's what it comes down to.”

“That's my thought too, ” Ken says. Heavy-voiced, like a father laying down a
Sorry son, but
line. “That's why I'm sending them back via the inter-branch courier. You can pick them up where you sent them from. Tomorrow, or Wednesday at the latest.”

“I should've asked you first, Ken. But you're involved now. They're in your hands.”

“Yes, they are. And yes, I am. So the best I can do is limit my involvement. After I put them in this morning's out-box, I can truthfully say—to whoever asks—that I received packages from a client without having a clue what was in them, that since the client's instructions fell outside my area of service I didn't want to keep them, that I notified the client of that, and returned them immediately via the same route by which they arrived.”

I hang up feeling like I've just played a game of speed chess against Garry Kasparov. Reminded that any game between the two of us could only
be
speed. Ken's moves as crisp and prudent as you could wish from an experienced banker. But with a hint of ice in his voice I've never heard before.

Damage control now. Best spin possible? The package stays at the branch up the street until you pick it up. A safe drop box. Almost a safety deposit box.
And if you don't show up to claim it? If you can't?

After a while someone at the branch phones Ken.
Your client never…

And Ken—a good citizen, a good guy—calls me all the names I've earned and delivers a police matter to the police. Probably in-person, so he can explain in full his involvement.

Sorry, Ken.

§

Gwen's voice in my ear: “Dr. Wyvern can meet you tonight at 9 p.m…”—with an address and unit number on Bayview. The condos at Bayview and Sheppard, I'm guessing.

And my voice back in hers: “Hello, Gwen. I asked for a home meet but you didn't give me that, did you? You didn't mention home at all. Which was cute. But we both know that thirty years of ‘Family & Cosmetic Dentistry' buys you more than a balcony overlooking Loblaws. Or even the penthouse facing south.”
And of course Sandor helped me to that, telling me of the family's condo-flipping proclivities—but better you assume I'm a master of deduction
. “So I'll think about going to this meeting, which is not the one I asked for. But in the meantime—Gwen—could you please quit dicking me around?”

And—when she's brought her tremulous hands under enough control to move on to the next message—there, instead of matters dental, I am again: “You know, Gwen, up till now I've been trying to hold to the idea that you're somehow clueless about what's going on. What's been going on a long time. Which, when the shit hits the fan—very soon now—would be the only way, if there is a way, you'd avoid going down with the others. But you've got me wondering. When you pretend you can't hear a simple message—I have to visit him at home, I said—then I'm tempted to bump you up to the fully knowing and willing category. Which is a different brand of coffee altogether. Have a nice day.”

§

And since you're yammering to people about complicity, how about the complicity of seeing Christmas Music Wednesday and on Monday its makers are still running free? Normal office hours again today. Assuming they restrict themselves to office hours.

With a wrench of her stem-like neck, the Empress jerks her furthest fraction free yet. Muscular effort passes like a shiver through her shadowed far side. More smooth skin, yellow hair. And welling blood.
Blood?

She can't wrench free and stay whole, both. It's fused or damaged.
Either or
.

§

the birds in the bone dungeon walk about looking for food they are always moving since they are always hungry there are no seeds and no farmers pellets and no kernels of corn the dungeon is a starvation chamber as the birds

“Can you remind me what they look like? Sometimes that's a good—”

which are hollow and have no necks and big heads walk around looking for food they break some of the bones by pecking at them and trying to squeeze through them this makes pathways that other prisoners can follow most of the paths are very narrow only the size of one bird but sometimes a path gets wider where several birds have been pecking and moving around in a circle

“Do they also get wider if they fly? Do they break bones by flapping their wings?”

the birds can't fly they are flightless birds like an ostrich but with big heads and no necks they have little wings but even if their wings were bigger they couldn't fly because they have no feathers instead the bone dungeon birds have little dark stubs sticking out like broken pencils

“Broken pencils?”

as everybody knows when pencils break off there are dirty little ends that are dark and shiny the hollow birds have these dirty stubs poking out all over through their skin when the birds peck at a bone that has become clear sometimes it breaks off if it is a thin bone and they peck hard enough inside a clear bone are drops of liquid that the birds catch in their beaks and swallow this is how they stay alive even though there is nothing else to eat they suck on the broken clear bone to get all the drops out one time one of the smartest birds pushed his body under the broken bone so that it would pierce his skin and all the drops would run into him after they saw that all the birds copied him even though some of them only did it once because it hurt too much the birds still peck at the old yellow bones not just at the clear ones even though the old yellow bones don't have any nourishing drops in them the hollow birds have very small brains when they swallow the drops they don't get smarter but their dirty skin stubs start turning soft and white and fluffy

“Are they turning into feathers?”

these are flightless birds so they don't need feathers also their wings are too small to fly even with feathers also there is no room to fly in the bone dungeon this is their home and they have lived there forever there is no reason for any bird to escape and no bird wants to they peck to collect drops for nourishment but they are glad when the dirty stubs turn white and soft the white is very white and there is no other thing that is white in the bone dungeon since the bones are yellow or sometimes clear and the walls of the dungeon are gray and the hollow birds are pinkish brown so white is a very nice colour to be and the birds are very glad

§

“Is this going to hurt?” Max says, looking in the direction of my voice.

“It shouldn't. Not really.” I pause, the headphones in my hand. “There'll be some discomfort involved, but it won't last long and the freezing will block any stronger sensations. Isn't that what you tell them, a dozen times a day?”

“Who?”

“Your patients.”

“I guess so. Something like that. But we're not in my office.”

“No, we're not. We're in mine. Still, it's the truth. You'll experience some unpleasantness, but not for very long, and it won't be nearly as unpleasant as it would be for a normal person.”

“I'm normal,” he says.

Which can't help but sound odd coming from someone wearing safety goggles smeared with Vaseline, and oven mitts with which he's awkwardly holding open a book of poetry. He keeps shifting the big padded thumbs along the edges of the paperback, trying to get a better grip. It must feel constantly as if the slim book is sliding shut or about to fall, since he can't feel it clearly through the mitts. He moves his head about in a bird-like way—which I don't think he's aware of, since it would offend his vanity to show me this—trying to get a clear view of me through the unsmeared, or less smeared, slivers in the goggles. Like shards in a kaleidoscope, but worse, since almost every bit is blurred, and they don't repeat in any regular pattern.

Without answering his claim of normalcy, I put the headphones on him. 303 wouldn't lend me his iPod and ear buds, but I didn't want anything so sleek and contemporary anyway. He rummaged in his clothing piles and came up with an older-model player, slightly clunky-looking, and these big headphones that make the ears disappear completely and block out all outside sound. Perfect, I told him. I start the first of the two songs he downloaded for me.

Max starts tapping his foot at the sound of Stiv Bators's “Evil Boy.” It's partly pure relief, no doubt, at finding something familiar in the sea of strangeness I've concocted for him. That sense of safe ground will vanish when I crank the volume to a painful screech—then abruptly drop it to a whisper like dead leaves—twiddling the wheel either way. Still, I realize I chose the wrong music. The Soft Boys' “I Wanna Destroy You” follows “Evil Boy.” Max would have heard both songs in his early twenties, just as I did. And a return to punk rock sentiments, at any volume, is bound to stabilize him—any original venom long leached out to the man in the Clash shirt sampling Ukiyo-e sushi. It was stupid to think otherwise. I let myself be seduced by lyrical content—trying too much to make a poem of the scene, forgetting that the essence of successful rock is to devolve quickly to a danceable beat, minimizing all elements that distract from the groove. “Bitches Brew,” my other choice, would have been perfect. Those random honks and squirts of disconnected sound, the ominous drums like geiger counters—what was I thinking? Miles might have composed that fearsome weirdness expressly for this smug white dude.

I thumb the volume up to maximum. Max squints at the pain in his ears. I can't see his eyes through the Vaseline, but deep creases appear below the goggle arms, his cheeks rising into his temples, his lips wide around clenched teeth. His hands come up to remove the headphones. I grab one wrist, reminding him of our deal. But I turn the volume back to midway—I can still hear it crackling from around the headphones—and then down to a mumble, a nasal mosquito whine only Max can hear.

And then off. A test.

“When does it start?” says the man in the cane back chair beside me. He's lifted the headphone away from one ear. He looks silly and helpless, and, with his shoulders slumping from humiliation and vulnerability, small. Much smaller, with an almost-sixty's inevitable pot belly that was not visible on the tall, trim-figured man I've seen till now. He received my condition of a little demonstration coldly—“a demand before the demand,” he managed to sneer. But the altered and unpredictable state of his perceptions have sucked all the haughtiness out of him, reducing him to nervous dependency in less than a minute. Just as the book promised.

“Start reading when you hear the music come back on. Read the title and keep reading till you reach the end. Then we're done. This part anyway.”