The Video Watcher (4 page)

When we turned onto Seymour Street, Damien said “Sorry dude, sorry dude,” making his voice sound like a stoner's. “Sorry dude, Sorry dude—
Fuck
!
”

“Is that what he said?”

“Fucking hippie.”

“He didn't have a knife, did he?”

As if in explanation Damien said, “Look what he did to my jacket.” He held up the coat, the Manchester United windbreaker his dad bought for him in England.

“A brand new fucking jacket, and some Rastafarian dumps beer on it.”

 

We were almost at the car when Damien said, “Just one more beer.”

“You sure?”

“Just one.”

We checked one place—that bar wanted five dollars to enter. The next club was the same. When we finally found a bar without a cover charge, it was a café on Burrard Street. There was a group of young men in the fenced section under the canopy, but inside the café it was deserted. The woman behind the counter was olive-skinned, and was so short only her elfish face showed above the glass. Damien ordered the pitcher special and I asked for steamed milk. When I placed my order, the young woman made a cute expression. I tried to think of something witty to say to her as she prepared the orders.

“I should have wasted that fucker,” Damien said.

“Yeah, you should have,” I said, watching the woman froth the milk with steam.

“But I didn't, did I?”

“No, you didn't,” I said.

When we were seated, Damien asked, “Why did I even order this?” and pointed at the pitcher.

“Because you're an alcoholic,” I said. I began to laugh, but stopped, noticing the expression on his face.

“Sorry,” he said. “We'll go soon. I probably won't even finish this.”

“Whatever.”

He showed me his jacket again and said, “I should have wasted that fucker.”

“Uh huh.” My eyes followed the server as she wiped the counter with a cloth and washed the cloth and wrung it out.

“But I'm so controlled. I mean, isn't that the most controlled thing you can do, a guy spills beer all over your jacket and you're like cool about it? One of the guys standing there said, ‘Man, I would've wasted the guy,' but I didn't, right? I just stayed cool. Now that's controlled, isn't it? Right, Trace? Right?”

“Uh huh.”

The server was now on the lap of one of the guys under the canopy outside. He'd passed her a hand-rolled cigarette—or maybe a joint—and I wondered if she knew them, or if they'd just invited her to join their group.

“That's controlled, isn't it?”

“That's controlled,” I said, wishing that I knew the answer.

“Anyway, I'm almost finished,” Damien said, dumping the last of the beer into the schooner.

The bubbles on the top of the foam in the pitcher started to pop.

By the time we got back to his place, he'd want more. That, and to listen to the cassette tapes we made of our band when we were sixteen. He kept them in a shoebox by his ghetto blaster, and when we stayed up late drinking, he brought them out and said how good we were, how we should have played Seylynn Hall, how
we
could have been Nirvana.

And if I had been Kurt Cobain…

 

To save money Kris had flown into Seattle (instead of Vancouver) and taken the bus. It was due in at Pacific Central at about nine.

On the way to meet her, I stopped by Sadie's house. She was sitting on her bed when I came in her bedroom, cutting split ends out of her hair and watching television. “Men are
so
fucked up,” she said. I was tempted to ask her who fucked them up, but instead asked if she was still going out with Brad, but she said I meant Chad (whom I think was the boyfriend after Brad) and no, she wasn't going out with him anymore because he'd cheated on her, that her friends caught him downtown with this Asian girl.

“I mean, the girl had these piercings,” Sadie said, shaking her head in disbelief.

I shook my head too.

Ricky Martin came on TV, and Sadie said how handsome he was. She loved how he dressed. Guys never dressed like that in Vancouver, and if they did, they'd be accused of being gay. She also said that he said the sweetest thing to this fan. When the fan asked him what his favourite type of woman was, the description he gave was exactly the fan's description.

“I mean, isn't that so sweet?”

“Sure,” I said.

Her mother came in the room, and she and Sadie began to argue in Slovakian. I listened for five minutes, then lied and said that I wasn't feeling well.

As I stepped down the cement front steps, I thought, “And this is the girl I'm obsessed with?”

 

Crossing Second Narrows that evening I looked to my right and saw below the dusk skies the downtown core, sparkling. The scene of it reminded me of a movie I'd seen when I was nine. It was about a stalker that kills this woman in Connecticut, and returns four years later to kidnap her son and the father's new girlfriend. He takes the pair downtown and holds them hostage in this room under Grand Central Station. All the commuters passing through the station have no idea what's going on under it. I didn't remember much else about the plot but the images from the movie had stuck in my mind, probably because I'd been the same age as the boy. I'd watched in on the old TV that used to be in the den, one of those sets from the 50s, with the angled legs, and I remembered feeling cozy and safe in the house in North Van, in the suburbs, all the lights out and the room bathed in blue light from the screen, but excited by the idea that the city was out there. Waiting.

 

Pacific Central, the building where Kris's bus was arriving, used to be the Canadian National Railway terminal. As I pulled into its parking lot I noticed that the illuminated yellow letters on the station's roof now spelled PACIFIC CENTRAL. Inside, the waiting room was brightly lit. The high gilded ceiling and the patterns on it looked to me about the same as when my grandfather had taken me down there and shown them to me. But the station clock and the skylight seemed to be new additions.

I walked to the gate leading to the train platform—beyond the glass there were silver passenger cars—then headed for the far end of the station. A sign read “BUSES” and I stepped outside onto the platform. The air was cold out there, and even though it was summer, it felt with the dampness almost like fall.

Back inside the station, I noticed a guy about my age alone on one of the benches, holding a khaki duffle bag on his lap. He wore a plaid shirt and hiking boots. He looked strong and confident. He returned my stare, and I looked away. The only other person in the room was a native Indian who was at the ticket booth.

I wandered back to the other end of the station and seeing the washroom, went inside. I didn't really have to use the toilet, but I slipped into a stall and clicked shut the door and squatted on the toilet seat. There was something about enclosed spaces that I found comforting. The three blue walls around me a sort of protection.

I tried to urinate, but nothing came. Graffiti was scrawled into the paint in front of me:

No more, immigration, No more!

Die Racist Pig

My little cock can go where big cocks can't

In my bum

Fag

Still squatting on the seat, I shifted my weight to my left hip and spreading my legs, set down my right hip. When I leaned forward, my ass spread under me—this is what they must do, I thought.

While I sat there, a couple of men entered the washroom. One of them said something in a curt tone and I tried to hear the other's response. Whatever he said was lost in the echo—maybe they weren't even speaking English.

Now there was the loud echoing hiss of a man pissing.

I imagined what it would be like if the men started shaking the door, or threatening me, or if they came in and raped me.

Water rushed from a faucet. An electric dryer roared. Someone said something and footsteps faded. Then it was silent except for the churning of a ventilator.

When I returned to the waiting room, a man who I thought was a security guard followed me. I stood by the curtained hole in the marble wall where the train luggage was unloaded on a conveyer belt, keeping the guard in the corner of my eye. I was waiting for him to approach me or speak to me.

He cleared his throat and left.

 

Aunt Kris described the “horrors” of her trip as I drove her and her “travel companion” Steve back to North Van—how every flight they took was delayed, how the toilets weren't working, how passengers (some of whom were very elderly) weren't even given blankets. She said that they didn't have a chance to eat in Seattle, and that she and Steve were famished and wanted to eat before they got home.

“Is Earl's alright?” I asked as I turned onto the Georgia Street viaduct.

“Fine. Anywhere. It doesn't matter,” she said, pulling a package of cigarettes from her handbag. “Don't look at me. This trip was enough to make anyone start again.”

She rolled down the window and described the second leg of the journey. Back east she decided to take the train between New York and Washington. To begin with, she hated New York, way too many buildings, and the trip to Washington was horrible. She had gone to use the washroom and found that someone had written his name on the mirror in shit. And then—

 

“Earl's?” Kris asked when we pulled into the parking lot. She said this as if were unthinkable.

“I thought you said it didn't matter?”

“But I didn't think—Okay. Fine.”

When we got inside there was a line-up. As we waited, Kris let out loud exasperated sighs and checked her watch compulsively. I tried to ignore this by studying the waitresses. All were very young and very blond, and all dressed in skin-tight black slacks and T-shirts. They moved earnestly about the foyer, taking reservations and seating people, and I remembered what Sadie'd told me about working here—they only hire pretty young girls and tell each of them that Earl's is a stage and they must always be performing.

When we were finally seated, Kris and Steve ordered white wine and asked me if I was drinking anything. I felt like beer, but said, “Water's fine.” I didn't want to invite one of Kris's caustic comments about me becoming an alcoholic.

While she and Steve argued about whether to have dynamite rolls or Caesar salads, I noticed that Steve was more tanned than when he'd left, that his linen shirt and his cotton pants looked new and that his blond hair was lighter. I flashed on an image of him mounting Kris in a hotel room and shook my head, trying not to think about it.

A girl with dirty blonde hair and satin choker brought Kris and Steve the glasses of wine, and when she set the drinks on the table, I realized that I knew her. She had been in my English class in high school. She'd been interested in literature and writing poetry and hadn't seemed like the type of girl who would work here. When she noticed me looking at her, she gave what seemed like a reluctant grin. But I wasn't sure if she actually remembered me, or if it was part of ‘the performance.'

After we ordered and Kris finished her first glass of wine, she ordered a second.

“So, how's your summer been? Have you been able to survive without your old Kris to take care of you?” she said, and laughed.

“Fine.”

“And school?”

“I'm finished.”

“It's only June.”

“I've been finished since April.”

“And you didn't take summer courses?”

I didn't know what to say, then remembered that as part of our agreement I was supposed to be working for her.

“Wouldn't Revenue Canada get suspicious?”

She shook her head as if disgusted.

“What?” I said.

“Nothing.” Her face brightened as the waitress handed her a second glass of wine.

When the girl had left, I said, “What? What did you want to say?”

Kris shook her head and looked down, grimacing. “Nothing. I'm just curious.”

Steve was leaning back in the booth, looking around the restaurant like he didn't know what was going on.

“What do you want to say?”

Kris glared at me. “I think
we
know.”

“What?”

“Patterns—that's what we are talking about, Trace, patterns.”

I'd expected for her to make this vague insinuation about her sister and my father, and told myself to ignore the comment, to pretend that she hadn't said it. But I could feel the jittery feeling come back into my arms, the feeling I'd been trying to push down for the past three or four weeks. Suddenly it seemed very dark outside the windows.

Kris took a sip of her wine and twisted the bracelet on her left wrist. Steve checked his watch. He put his arm up over the back of the booth and stared off in the distance. The waitress with the choker passed our table.