The Matter With Morris (9 page)

This city, so humble and resigned, nearly out of breath, made from Tyndall stone and fir and asphalt and brick and pine and white oak and cedar shingles and metal and glass, row upon row of houses both modest and hopeful, spreading out like a bloom, enveloping farmland where cows used to graze and shit, suburbs built on dung heaps, this city in the frozen soul of the country, a bitter and godforsaken place, not rich enough to defend itself, not important enough to require defence, a city neither soft nor prosperous, a city that held so poorly its countless poor, a city of thieves, a city of blight, a city of greed and garbage, of landfill sites where scavengers rose and fell, a stolen city run on voracity, a city whose heart was scooped out, and in that heart walked Morris Schutt, former columnist, imaginer of others’ lives, clumsily recording his own life, the tread of his Ecco shoes on strewn streets, a group of boys clattering by on skateboards,
the smell of weed, the ache in his heart: Who will protect me, thought Morris, who will be my neighbour, who will love me?

At ten o’clock Saturday night, Morris checked into his room at the Fort Garry Hotel. He carried a small leather bag into which he had put a change of underwear and socks, several condoms, a vial of pills for instant erections, a shaver and shaving cream, and a clean white T-shirt which he sometimes liked to wear underneath his dress shirt. In his room he stripped, showered and shaved, took one Cialis, and then lay on the bed in a bathrobe and watched the beginning of an adult movie. At eleven thirty, he dressed again in his suit and put on his shoes and then studied himself in the full-length mirror. He wore the Hermès tie that he’d bought in New York the year before. It was striped pink and grey and was softly textured. He admired it and the cut of his suit jacket. At his age, fine clothes could only improve his look. He was almost handsome in a suit and tie, and he knew that this handsomeness could not sustain itself as he removed his clothes, not that Alicia would complain. Her job was to prompt and carry on. What he looked like physically was of little consequence. This was a monetary arrangement, and though he would like to believe otherwise, he would be one more man on Alicia’s path. Still, he was capable of fooling himself, otherwise he wouldn’t be standing in this hotel room. He shook himself; this was a night to feel, not think.

She arrived at midnight. Her knock was light, and when he opened the door, she looked at him and said, “Mr. Schutt,” and he looked at her and said, “Oh, Christ. Leah?”

She looked at the number on the door and then she said, “Maybe I have the wrong room.” She glanced over his shoulder into the room to see if he was alone.

“Alicia?” he said.

She nodded slowly. She was thinking, he could see that, and then she smiled and said, “You wicked man.”

“Yes,” he agreed. “Unfortunately.”

She laughed, very lightly, nervously, and said, “This is too weird. Icky.” And she sucked in a small breath and asked, “Now what?”

“You can go. Don’t worry, you’ll still get paid. I’ll pretend everything was fine, and we’ll both try to forget this little meeting, though of course we won’t forget it. I’m sorry about this. Really.”

“Why are you sorry? Were you sorry before, like five minutes ago, just before you opened the door?”

“No, but five minutes ago I was a stranger, a man with no name. Now I’m Mr. Schutt.”

“That’s funny.” She tilted her head. “Where’s Mrs. Schutt?”

He made a motion with his hand, as if dismissing someone or something. “There is no more Mrs. Schutt. She kicked me out.”

“Oh. So you’re not being naughty.” “I am though.”

She shook her head and smiled. “You want to think that. You want it to be true, because that makes it more
exciting.” She said this plainly, matter-of-factly, as if quoting a statistic. She asked if she could have one drink at least. “I’m all dressed up.”

Morris studied her. “Do you want to? I mean, it would be only a drink, but I would understand if you want to just say goodbye.”

“A drink. Yeah, that would be nice.” And she shrugged and slipped her large purse from her shoulder and unbuttoned her sweater.

Morris stepped back and Leah entered the room. His brain was muddled, and though he believed that he should ask her to please leave at this moment, he took her sweater, with its Peter Pan collar, and saw that she wore a silky top with thin straps that revealed her smooth shoulders and fine clavicle bones, shoulders he would normally at some point during the night have kissed. He placed her sweater on the bed and asked if she would like some champagne. She said that that would be lovely. The word “lovely” seemed wrong for a girl who had once known his son Martin at school, and who had perhaps even kissed him, though Morris had always believed they were just friends. She had come to the house occasionally, even eaten a meal with the family, and Morris had been impressed by her composure and confidence. She was Vietnamese, the child of parents who had left their country in the early eighties, thinking they were heading to New York by boat but ending up in a Thai refugee camp for four years. She was born in the camp and spent her first year there. When she told the Schutt family her story, she had been nonchalant and almost dismissive, both
of her parents’ sacrifice and of her own history. Martin had been quite vocal that evening, surprising Morris with his political knowledge; it was as if Leah had loosed something in him. Now, in the hotel room, she stood by the window that looked out towards the small park eight floors below, a park that held large stones, the remnants of a fort from hundreds of years earlier when settlers had required protection. She parted the curtain and stood with her back to him and he recalled Ursula in that same position, looking down at the streets of Minneapolis and asking him to smell her, and as he thought of that now, he was aware of the space he took up in the world. She turned back towards him and giggled and said, “Wow. This is weird.”

“Yes, it should be,” he said. “And if it isn’t, then there’s something wrong with us, isn’t there?” He removed the wire that held the cork and then popped it and poured champagne into each glass and walked towards her, holding out her glass. She took it and said, “Thank you.” She dipped slightly, as if in deference. “Wow,” she said again, and then she said, “Cheers,” and held up her glass and he reached his glass out and said, “Cheers,” and they drank. The champagne was expensive, and he wanted her to notice, but she didn’t. She wouldn’t appreciate the finer things in life. She drank greedily, as if she had run a marathon and was now drinking water. She held out her glass for more. Her hand was shaking.

“It’s okay,” he said. “I’m not treacherous.”

“Oh, I know that, Mr. Schutt. You don’t scare me.”

“Are you disappointed?” he asked.

“Oh, no. No. Not disappointed. I don’t think so, anyway. Why? Are you?”

“A little. Maybe. Or it might be embarrassment.”

” “For me?”

“No, no, not at all. Not you. It’s me.” And he raised his glass and drank as she sat on the edge of the bed and crossed her legs. She was wearing a black skirt. Her legs were bare and she wore high heels that he believed must be quite expensive and he thought then that this was not her first time, and this excited and dismayed him.

She said, “I guess we both have secrets.”

“Secrets are necessary,” he said, and immediately he cringed. He was standing outside of himself, observing, and he did not like what he saw. He did not like his words or how they came out of his mouth; he did not like his lack of hair or how his chin doubled when he lowered his head; he did not like the tie he wore anymore or his own luxurious shoes or how he was trying, yet failing, to impress her with pricey champagne. He did not like anything about himself and he felt a moment of panic.

Leah was nodding and she held her mouth in a certain manner, as if the situation she had found herself in was not at all surprising, as if she had experienced too many men who were trying to fend off boredom. How many? Morris wondered.

“Well,” Leah said, holding out her glass for more champagne, “what’s next?”

Morris held up the bottle. “We’ll finish this and then you can go. How about that?”

As they drank, Leah wandered about the room. Morris sat on the chair by the desk and observed and listened to her as she wandered. She went straight to the point and asked Morris if he wasn’t curious about her and why she was doing this, and then without waiting for an answer, she talked about her situation. She used the words “my situation” as if it were something that had fallen down upon her, as if she had had no choice, and Morris thought that this was wrong, but he let it pass, he wasn’t interested in debate. She had removed her shoes and she moved about in bare feet. She had a bruise on her left calf, and later, when he asked her about it, she said that she played Ultimate Frisbee with friends. A sports injury, she said, and she smiled sleepily. That was later, but now she was talking about men and sex. She saw sex, this kind of sex, as less dangerous than sex with love. She said that she had been in love once with an older man who treated her very well, and the affair had lasted for a year, and he had flown her to New York for weekends and they had spent time together eating wonderful meals and going to plays and making love in grand hotels, but then the man had gone back to his wife of thirty years and had stopped calling her. This was the last time she had let herself go, the last time she had allowed herself to become crazy with desire and love. What she had learned from that experience was that she liked older men, that they were softer and more generous than younger men, who were often arrogant and egotistical. They knew nothing about understatement or coaxing. “I imagine that you, Mr. Schutt, know how to coax. Am I right?” And then she continued, not waiting for his response. “I plan on studying
medicine in Australia. I need money for that and this is the best way to build up my bank account. I’m young, I have a beautiful body, I’m free, and I have no hang-ups about sex. Older men who have money, men like you, Mr. Schutt, they are men who can afford to pay me. They want to pay me, it makes them feel strong and helpful. I’m very close to my goal.” She paused and then said, “So, that’s me.”

He knew that she was closing one door and opening another, and that it was now his turn to speak, but he did not have anything that he wanted to say. Her voice had lulled him into a sense of safety and ease and he did not want that feeling to disappear. He asked her if she smoked marijuana.

She grinned. “Weed? Of course I do.” Then she said it would be terribly cool to smoke up with a famous columnist. “Cool,” she said again. She looked up at the ceiling and around the room. “Isn’t this a non-smoking room?”

“It is, but we just have to open the window in the bathroom. Whatever, the smell will be gone by the morning.”

“Am I staying till morning?”

Morris lifted a hand. “Don’t worry. We’re not going to have sex.”

“I’m not worried, Mr. Schutt. Everything’s chill.” She fluttered a hand, as if shooing him. “I don’t have issues.”

“But
I
do,” Morris said. He took some papers and a pouch from his bag. Rolled a joint and lit it, inhaled twice, and then handed it to Leah, who took it willingly.

She smoked, luxuriating in the moment, and then she handed him the joint again. They smoked without talking, as if the ritual offered something beyond words, as if the sharing
was a stepping inwards, a slide back into a shallow cave. At some point, she motioned with the joint, pointing at his chest, and said, “Love your tie.”

“Hermès,” he said. “God of commerce.”

She lay back on the bed and patted the blanket beside her. “Come here. Nothing serious.”

“Convivial,” he said, and he rose and went to the bed and lay down so that they were side by side, both staring up at the ceiling.

“I don’t know that word,” she said. Then, “I don’t know many things.”

“You’re too beautiful to be doing this. It means friendly.”

“And if I’m ugly, then it’s okay?”

“It doesn’t bother you? A man like me? Not me, I know, but like me, desperate, lonely, old.”

“Are you lonely?”

“Of course I am.”

“And desperate?”

“I don’t know.”

She lifted her hand towards the ceiling and they studied it together until she let it fall back onto the bed beside them. She said, “I was at his funeral.”

“I know. I saw you there.”

“I cried and cried.” She searched for his hand and held it. “I’m so sorry.” She squeezed his hand and then pulled hers away.

“Yes,” he said. “Yes, so am I.”

“He was funny, you know. He made me laugh and laugh. He didn’t like fake things and he wasn’t interested in money
or status. He wouldn’t like what I’m doing. This. He’d give me shit for sleeping with strange men. The day he joined the army he called me and said he was going to go to Afghanistan to kill some fanatics. He was making fun of himself, of the world, of the army, of something. I didn’t get it. I called him stupid. What was he thinking? That wasn’t Martin.”

“But he
was
stupid,” Morris said. “And I was stupid. One time I got really mad at him and pushed him up against the refrigerator and told him that I could fuck him over, if that’s what he wanted. He looked so hurt. So surprised. Even though just before that he had been saying fuck this and fuck that, but now that I was suddenly using the same language, the rules had changed. He said I didn’t know how to swear. That the word ‘fuck’ sounded phony in my mouth. This made me even angrier, as if he was the only one who could be vulgar. What would he make of me now?”

“He loved you.” Leah’s words fell sideways and down the canal of Morris’s ear. Her voice went up and down and it was lilting and soft and she did a little singsong thing at the end of some sentences, an inflection that implied a question but wasn’t really a question, so that you weren’t sure if she was posing some serious problem, or maybe just being playful. And even now, he wasn’t sure if those three words were a question or a statement.

“He might have loved me, but he loved his mother more. They ganged up on me. Martin and my wife attacked my thoughts, my ideas, my words. They laughed at me. They were like lovers. And then Martin and I had a fight, a terrific argument, and I called him lazy, a coward coasting through
life, and he called me middle class and boring and a liar. I told him he had to leave, go find his own apartment, or he could join the army. I was not serious, of course, but within a month he had signed up. He came home gloating. Showed me his uniform, wore his green beret around the house, throwing everything back at me. I’m a pacifist, you see. I was raised one, I’m still one, I will always be one. Martin understood my weaknesses. And he knew how to hurt me. The strange thing is, after he joined the army, he changed. He became clearer and kinder and he tried to respect me, but I didn’t go along with it. I didn’t believe he could alter his personality so quickly. But now, after, when it is too late, I see that he did change.”