The Dilettantes (17 page)

Nope. Triple nope. The only reason people accept this kind of asinine logic is because they think different rules apply to irony in real life versus in fiction. If any of this shit happened to Hamlet, they’d have no problem whatsoever. They’d write a term paper about it
.

But for some reason, these people are unwilling to treat their lives like a story, and themselves as the writer/director/hero
.

Why?

Why do the same people who maintain multiple blogs, soundtrack their every walk to the store (thereby shutting out all competing narratives), cultivate a public list of their top friends, and frame their daily existence as a string of status updates—why can’t they recognize the one basic force in their lives that feeds all the others? Why don’t they know the name of the most-used tool in their toolbox?

In total there were four candidates for the presidency. One was Samantha Gilmartin, a fiery, pathologically focused sociology major who was also the current
SFSS
university relations officer and, until a few months ago, a shoo-in years in the making. One was Piotr Ivanov, a 3rd-year transfer student who was running on a platform exclusively devoted to getting calamari added to the Pub’s menu. One was a mysterious woman known only as Kennedy, who’d filed all of her paperwork through the mail. And one was Duncan Holtz.

These were the faces and statistics running laps through Rachel’s head as she swapped tapes in her recorder, last-minute prep before her interview with the head of the Independent Electoral Commission. This was going to be a teaser story, part of her lead-up to the big debate spread later on. The
IEC
was the official election watchdog, its members charged with the thankless task of refereeing the proceedings and keeping all mud-slinging down to a tolerable level. Inevitably, they were given shit from all directions, and roundly criticized for failures both real and imaginary—even though voter turnout always stalled somewhere around
10
percent.

Rachel took the stairwell two steps at a time. Over the weekend the walls had been stripped of their election notices and replaced with a fresh coat of individual campaign posters. Each candidate was
assigned an official colour, meaning that every bare surface on campus was now a pixelated rainbow of lofty promises and almost-catchy slogans. Amidst the chaos, Rachel’s eye was drawn to the purple posters of Duncan Holtz, which seemed to outnumber everyone else’s
2:1.
The guy was clearly making a serious go of it. And you couldn’t help but be drawn to the pure Hollywood-ness of his face. Walking across Convo Mall, she passed other candidates shaking hands and handing out even more flyers.

Rachel repeated the names, slogans, and campaign promises until they were committed to memory. Usually she’d have had this stuff mapped out weeks in advance, but this year’s temporary Holtz embargo had thrown her off. She cursed herself for walking into an interview so unprepared.

Wanting to appear as neutral and unbiased as possible, the
IEC
had set up its office this year in the Rotunda, far from the prying eyes of
SFSS
headquarters. A circular study area that sat directly above the lower bus loop, this was once the epicentre of the entire campus—
The Peak’
s original office had been in there, little more than a typewriter and bucket in a windowless room, way back in
‘65.
Now it housed the women’s and
LGBTQ
centres,
CJSF 90.1 FM
, and a bunch of other advocacy and research groups. A table on one side of the common area was piled high with old clothes and ragged books, free for the swapping.

The defining feature of the Rotunda, though, was the glass column in the middle, around which all of the desks and tables were organized. That’s where Rachel spotted Lana Murphy, this year’s
IEC
head watchdog, standing on a chair and applying a strip of scotch tape to the cardboard walls of her makeshift office. She nodded at Rachel over her shoulder and wearily invited her to take a seat.

Right away Rachel could tell she was a kindred spirit, and an ally in the war against idiocy that was being fought on campus every day.
SFU
: A Sphincter Says What? Since
1965.
The giveaway was Lana’s
fingernails (polished to within an inch of their lives) as well as the skin around them (ravaged to same). Rachel thought of her own mangled split ends with pride.

“Rachel,” Lana said. “Nice to see you. Sorry about this.” She stepped off the chair, which wobbled as her weight shifted. Back on the floor, she regained her poise. “It’s embarrassing, I know.”

“What, specifically, is the embarrassing part?” Rachel put her recorder down on one thigh and got out her notebook.

“Look at me,” Lana said. “I’m surrounded by pieces of a refrigerator box. My staff has been wiped out. Our budget this year is less than zero—the
SFSS
is claiming we owe
them
money.” She pointed at Rachel’s recorder, whose dusty tape made a faint whirring as it spun. “I guess you guys know a thing or two about cutbacks, too, huh?”

“Actually, that’s the same one we’ve always had,” Rachel said. “But yes. Things are rough in our office as well. We just pawned our printer. We’re getting lectures about leaving too many lights on.

“You know,” she added, the idea just coming to her, “we could put a fiscal spin on this story, if you wanted to. Budget cuts, personnel being stretched thin, that kind of thing. Recession stuff plays really well right now.”

Lana shook her head, her smile veering toward the condescending. “No. Thanks, but no. The last thing I need right now is to come off as whiny, or that I came to you guys to vent about my problems.”

“Fine by me.” Rachel felt a little slighted. Maybe they weren’t going to be pals after all. “Let’s get started, then. What do you think of this year’s crop of candidates?”

“As I’m sure you know, Rachel,” she said, slipping into her on-the-record persona, “it’s not up to me to say. Obviously it’s encouraging to see so many names on the ticket, but I can’t speak to the individuals’ relative merits. I’m a disinterested third party. The
IEC
will remain fair and impartial throughout.”

“And what do you see as your group’s main duties leading up to the election?”

“The
IEC’S
mandate is simple: to ensure that all of the protocols, as laid out in the student society’s bylaws, are followed to the word and to the letter. Candidates have strict limits on how much they are allowed to spend and how they are to conduct themselves during campaigning. We’ve already conducted a thorough inspection of the posters that have been put up, verifying that they fall within set parameters.”

Rachel sensed a soft spot. “Have there been any violations so far?”

Success: Lana went briefly marble-mouthed before replying, “Actually, yes.”

Rachel was about to keep pressing when another
IEC
member burst through the Rotunda doors. His face was drained of colour. “We have a problem,” he said. “Down at the printer’s.”

Lana hopped to her feet. “Coming,” she said, then looked to Rachel with a sly, relieved smile. “Sorry. Looks like we’ll have to wrap up early.”

“You know,” Rachel said, “I think I’ll come along. Just for fun.”

The trio hustled along the main drag of the Maggie Benston Centre to Quad Books, the
SFSS
-owned and -operated copy store from which all elections materials had to be printed. But rather than follow Lana and her
IEC
cohort inside, where a group of people had already gathered, arms crossed, at the full-service desk, Rachel fell back to chat up the lone guy leaning against one of the grubby old copiers in the hallway.

“Hello,” Rachel said to him. “I’m the news editor at
The Peak.”
She gestured with her thumb back at the door, as if to say,
Those dummies don’t know anything
. “Do you know what’s going on?”

The guy looked around for a second. “It’s all this election stuff,”
he said. “Every year it’s like this. I’ve been here for three of these things now, and it never changes.”

Rachel’s recorder whirred away inside her jacket pocket. “What do you mean?”

“Well, everyone gets fifty dollars to spend on their campaign materials. No matter what. And they have to get their stuff printed from our shop. It’s first come, first served. Those are the rules.”

“Right. I knew this.”

“Yeah,” he said, “except you probably
also
noticed that a certain presidential candidate’s got his posters in all the best spots around campus.” The guy looked around again. “Guess what time Duncan Holtz’s posters were supposed to be printed at?”

“Pretty early, I’d have to guess,” Rachel said.

“You’d think so.” The guy’s gaze wandered down to the floor for a few seconds. “Except I’m the one in charge of the wait list. Duncan Holtz was the last person to sign up.”

Rachel’s eyes lit up. “Which means …”

“His posters are still technically in the queue. They shouldn’t have even started printing until
4:00
p.m. today.”

Oh, blessed dumb luck.

Even Rick was impressed, and he told Rachel as much when he came by the office the next week to pick up his paycheque and—in flagrant violation of his doctor’s orders—take a quick look around to see what kind of shape the place was in. Due to budget cutbacks, the board hadn’t yet hired his temporary replacement. She held the cover story right up to his face.

“It’s good, Rachel,” he said. “Real good.” He still looked dazed and overtired, as if he ought to have a cartoon bandage wrapped around his head. “Were you able to get any comment from Holtz?”

She shook her head. “I got his manager on the phone, but he said he couldn’t comment on the—oh, what was the phrase? The ‘efficacy or lack thereof of a business run by the current administration.’”

“Yuck.”

“Yep,” she said, grinning. “So I just ran that.”

“Good girl. Did anyone else up here cover it?”

Alex jumped in from two chairs over. “I heard
CBC
mentioned it. And the
Metro
got it the day after we did. Just a short thing at the back, though—and Mack Holloway didn’t have our source from Quad Books. He was basically cribbing from us.”

“Nicely done.” Rick started moving toward the door. With his health still fragile, he couldn’t afford to be around these kids for more than a few minutes. The way they carried themselves, with an air of independence, but so obviously looking for a parental figure to latch onto and suck approval out of—it put Rick in constant fear of relapse. He was a PhD student, for crying out loud. How had he ended up with a job that was such a terrifying simulacrum of middle age: the equivalent of eleven clingy kids and a mortgage he couldn’t afford?

At the door, he turned back and saw, with a wince, the naked expectation on the editors’ faces. They had no idea how bad the situation really was.
Well
, he thought,
at least there are some moments you get to relish
. “It’s a victory, guys.” Then, reaching for the right combination of inspiration and tough-love inflections borrowed from an old soccer coach: “Keep it up. There’s lots more work to be done.”

Rachel looked down at the cover again in wonder.
“Yeah
, there is,” she said.

Lately Alex had been feeling weirdly optimistic. He’d banked a few of the better features from the
CUP
newswire and so was on easy streak at work, and his classes were as mindless as they’d ever been. The film course was a particularly good wheel-spinner. His professor began every lecture by quoting from that week’s film’s
IMD
b
page. She had an ongoing pop quiz where students had to identify that particular movie’s plot keywords; among the correct answers for
Antitrust
, a
2001
tech-thriller starring Ryan Phillippe, included One Word Title, Racist Comment, and Babe Scientist. One week they’d walked around campus for all three hours, re-enacting scenes from the syllabus and comparing celebrity sightings.

And it turned out that the week of the debate was also the week that Holtz was scheduled to drop by
FPA 137
and give his hotly anticipated guest lecture. Thinking this might be an opportunity to pin the celebrity to the wall about the photocopying scandal, Alex offered to sneak someone else from
The Peak
into the class. There was an allotted time for questions following the lecture. Holtz would have nowhere to hide, and several hundred witnesses would be there in case he said or did anything stupid and tried to lie about it later. Rachel was ecstatic, until she realized she had to give an in-class presentation at that exact time. She groused about having to find a competent replacement, until, to everyone’s surprise, Tracy volunteered.

“Copy editors,” Rachel muttered. “You people think you can do everyone else’s job better than they can.”

“‘You people’?” asked Tracy.

“Okay. Let’s give it a shot. Do you know what you’re doing out there?”

“I’ve been reading your stuff all this time, haven’t I?” Tracy replied. “You think I didn’t pick up a thing or two? And besides, Alex here will be my co-pilot.”

Rachel chewed on a piece of her hair, then nodded. “Take as much space as you need. Just make sure you get a good question in, okay? That pretty boy won’t even know what hit him.”

That afternoon Tracy and Alex headed to the lecture together, armed with hidden tape recorders and dummy binders. The class was big enough that Professor Monahan would never notice one new face in the crowd; in fact, other students had already started routinely sneaking in their friends, since it amounted to watching a free movie on a theatre-quality screen in a pleasantly air-conditioned room. But since they had to sit close enough to the front to make sure the
Peak
recorder would pick up Holtz’s voice, they weren’t taking any chances. It was all part of Alex’s plan—he’d even made a photocopy of the course syllabus to stick in the front page of Tracy’s fake workbook. When she saw it, she had to laugh.

“So what’s this movie we have to watch?” she asked.

“Maximum Death 2
. You ever seen it? A real thinking-man’s killing spree.”

“And they filmed part of it here?”

“Yeah. There’s this terrorist/computer hacker with a secret mountain lair—located conveniently near Convo Mall.”

They stopped for coffee at the foot of the gleaming new
FPA
wing. Suddenly Alex felt the full weight of his nerves come down on him. He shifted his backpack around and jingled the keys and change in his pocket, too embarrassed to tell Tracy he hadn’t even brought
his wallet, for fear of being identified. All he had on him was a small wad of bills, in case of emergency. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d taken a risk even as slight as the one Tracy was about to—if this was how strongly his body reacted to being an accomplice, how would it feel to be the actual perpetrator?

On the other hand, he was a liberal arts student. Fostering timidity was what the discipline did best. It taught you about Shakespeare and Dostoevsky, and then expected you to venture forth into the world and become a citizen of action? What a joke. Every semester
SFU
was churning out hundreds of Hamlets, hundreds of men from the underground. The professors made crippling indecision sound like a virtue, those sneaks—and students paid them for the privilege.

Just then Alex saw Tyson strolling down the corridor toward them. “Hiya,” he said. “What are you two gaylords up to?”

When they told him, his jaw fell open. “No kidding. I
love
that movie.”

“Why am I not surprised?” said Tracy.

“You’ve got to let me come with,” he pleaded.
“Please.”

This was more than Alex had bargained for. Discretion had never been Tyson’s strong suit—in a way, it was surprising he’d never applied for a job at
The Peak
. A list of worst-case scenarios presented itself. Would Tyson whoop at every explosion during the screening? Catcall Holtz as he approached the podium? Maybe he’d try to pick up a girl sitting all the way across the hall, just for something to do. And since Alex was the only one actually enrolled in the class, he’d be the one to take blame when the truth inevitably came out.

Relax
, he told himself.
Just tell him the room is full. Put your foot down, for once
.

But Tracy was already begrudgingly pointing out the classroom at the top of the stairs.
Never mind
. Alex sprinted a few steps to catch up, scalding his thumb in the process as his coffee splooshed up over the rim.

At the entrance to the class, Alex reeled as he saw Keith and Chip standing there. Neither he nor Tracy had seen either of them since the firing.

“What are
you
guys doing here?” he said.

“We’re here for Holtz’s thing,” Keith said. Chip nodded vigorously in agreement. “And, uh, we figured you might be here, too,” he added.

Alex felt sincerely happy to see them. They were from the same generation, after all.

“Not even going to introduce me, huh?” Tyson elbowed his way in front. “I’m Tyson. You assholes must be from
The Peak
, too.” They swapped introductions. “Oh! You’re the ones who got canned. You must hate my boy Alex right now.”

“On the contrary,” Chip said. “We all took the same marching orders. As they say, politics stops at the shore.”

“You’re goddamned right about that, Chippo,” Keith said.

Tracy said, “So what’s new? Have you guys been—hanging out together?”

Keith and Chip belched at the same time. They both looked a little disheveled, Alex thought. And Keith was sporting what appeared to be the wispy beginnings of his own moustache. “How could you tell?” he said. “Hey, by the way, I have a copy editor question for you.”

“Go on, then.”

“What’s a funnier comeback: stick it in your dick?”

“Well—”

“Or stick it
up
your dick?”

“It’s nice to see you, too,” Tracy said.

Chip added, “What about, ‘Think quick, dick pic’?”

The kid was a quick study.

Christ
, Alex realized.
How am I supposed to get all of us in there? I’m gonna get busted for sure
.

He needn’t have worried. Inside, the lecture hall was packed to the gills, now more closely resembling an actual movie theatre—right down to the jackets splayed over chairs, placeholders for those yet to arrive, and the kids huddled in circles, staring hypnotically into their phones. The usual pre-class chatter had tripled in volume.
Better still
, thought Alex with relief,
it was crammed full of people who didn’t belong there
. He followed Tyson to the middle of the centre section, where his friend kicked three jackets onto the floor and brusquely told another couple to make room. “Go on
—move.”

Keith whispered to Tracy, “Who is this guy? I like his style.”

As for the specific make-up of the crowd, Alex couldn’t get a good read. There were some obvious fans—had someone made a
poster
way in the back?—but also plenty of others in full nonchalance mode, not giving an outward fuck about anything. The kind of person who smirked at their every surrounding as if it were quaint enough, passable for now, but so completely outclassed by the places where they usually hung out. Alex found this pose frighteningly convincing, at least until he reminded himself that if such a Mecca of Hip actually existed, wouldn’t these people just fuck off there already and leave everyone else alone?

The actual
FPA
students were easier to pick out. They’d at least bothered to bring books, if not open them. Alex realized the dummy binders he’d rigged up were about a thousand times more elaborate than necessary. A few of these budding cinephiles had removed their glasses and were rubbing the bridges of their respective noses, trying to block out the chorus of idiots surrounding them.

From his pocket, Keith awkwardly pulled out a theatre-sized box of Milk Duds. Tyson leaned across the others to demand a handful; settling back, he said to Alex, “Who is this guy? I like his style.”

Alex thought he also saw some of the other
SFSS
candidates milling around at the back, but he couldn’t be sure. This year he’d paid even less attention to the nominations than usual, since whoever won would be sworn in after he’d cleared out his stuff from the
Peak
offices once and for all. They would be the first government of the Post-Alex Era, and he couldn’t be bothered to keep up with the new narrative.

“Hey,” he said, nudging Tracy. “Am I crazy, or is that Holtz’s competition in the back?”

She shrugged. “I have no idea.”

“Me neither. Seems weird, though, doesn’t it? To spy on a guest lecture about exploding aircraft carriers?”

“Maybe they know something we don’t.”

“Yeah,” Alex said. “Odds are good on that.”

After a few minutes, Professor Monahan came in and started anxiously shuffling papers at her podium. Holtz’s manager approached from one of the side exits, whispering something in her ear and moving away again. He kept watch at the exit like a bodyguard, hands crossed over his crotch. Professor Monahan looked up, and squinted at the newly tripled size of her audience. The class’s hum gradually dwindled, then disappeared.

“Hello, ladies and gentlemen,” she began. “I see some of you have brought a friend or two with you today.” Alex glanced furtively at Tyson, who was holding his cell phone out in front of him, brazenly filming the whole thing.

Professor Monahan broke out in a girlish grin. “Well, I suppose that’s all understandable.” She gestured to both sides of the room. “Welcome to
FPA 137.
This is a course that’s
100
percent devoted to filmic media created right here at
SFU
. It’s the first of its kind, I don’t mind telling you. We are studying these wonderful films and television series in the hopes of coming to better terms with how our
school’s representation in the media impacts our own identity as the students,
TAS,
and faculty who live and work here.”

Tyson shouted, “Bring on the Holtz!”

A woollier quiet overtook the room. Alex stared hard at the floor, the guilty ringing in his ears rivaled only by the creak of his tape recorder. Tyson, unfazed, still held his phone aloft; its red recording light blinked on and off, on and off, on and off.

The silence was broken by Keith guffawing, his mouth full of chocolate-caramel goo:
“Fang City!
”

A tidal wave of new chatter rose from the audience, dozens of whispered meta-commentaries from people who all assumed they were speaking much too quietly to be heard. Tyson turned to face the other students, chanting, “Bring on the Holtz! Bring on the Holtz!” A few scattered fans chimed in.

Holtz’s bird-eyed manager was whispering to someone hidden in the wings of the lecture hall. He nodded, smoothed his lapels, and coolly walked over to Professor Monahan, who was shouting, “Please, please, class, could you—do you think—?”

The manager gave her the a-okay sign with one hand and neatly shooed her away from the podium with the other. Alex could tell this was how he dealt with a lot of people, the kind of guy whose assistant had her own smaller assistant. The manager gripped both sides of the podium and took a hard look around the room. In a quiet, even tone, he said, “I think that’s quite enough.”

The volume in the room wavered a little, but too many of the students were once again staring down at their phones, and therefore unreachable. He added, raising his voice only a little, “Mr. Holtz has other places to be, you know.”

Dead silence.

The celebrity’s name snapped the crowd back to reality like a hypnotist’s safe word. Tyson and Keith swallowed their Milk
Duds and sat at attention. Chip folded his hands politely in his lap. Tracy slipped her dummy notebook out of her dummy backpack and uncapped a pen. Even Alex found himself leaning forward in his seat.

The manager looked around the room, then gave a nearly imperceptible nod. “Without further ado, I present to you my client, Duncan Holtz.”