The Withdrawal Method (15 page)

Dave and everyone else were set up in the booths, empty pitchers lined up on the table. Our crowd were folks who went to high school together and had stuck around, most either working public service or jobs with CanAm. Dooley had sold the jukebox since it only caused fights, so there was no music, just the clicks and clacks of pool balls being knocked around in the adjoining room, subdued conversations filtering through wafts of blue smoke from Camels or Marlboros bought at the duty-free.

Kaede and I got chairs and added them to the end of the table. I started going through introductions when Dave slammed his beer down and stood up. His eyes blazed. "I don't know what the fuck you think you're doing, Pauly. I mean, nice of you to honour us with your presence for once, but if anyone was invited here tonight it sure wasn't you, you fucking sellout."

"Dave," I said, my hands raising in defence. "Easy, man, I'm just-"

Then the rage was swept away with a wink. "Shit, man, I'm just pulling your chain. Nice shirt." He turned toward the bar. "Shots for my man Pauly here, Dooley! Line'em up!"

Dooley came around with beakers of Canadian Club for me and Kaede: cheers and down the hatch. And right into the beer, mugs filled and pushed sloppily in our direction, half of it splashing onto the floor.

"To new friends!" screamed Dave, and everyone clinked glasses and drank.

Getting drunk at Dooley's was purposeful, steady. Conversations were two or three lines traded between big swallows of Moosehead or Blue. Dave's cousin Lisa asked me, "How are things at the store, Pauly?" and I said, "Shitty," and everyone took a big gulp of their pints. But then there was Kaede, right beside me. I turned to her while everyone else sat working away at their beers in silence, wondering how she'd fit in.

"So," I said.

Kaede lit a cigarette. "In Japanese 'so' means once, before, ever, never."

"So?„

"So what," she said, blasting smoke out the corner of her mouth. "Let's get wasted."

Within an hour we had managed just that, chatting, trading drinking stories from our school days. We got closer, her leg against mine. "Are you glad you came out?" she asked.

"Sure. It'd be better if the bar wasn't in Niagara Falls, but whatever."

"You've been back here how long?"

"Six years. Since my mom passed away. My dad and I ran the store for a year, and then one day at work about a year later a blood vessel popped in his brain. Right in front of me."

"Oh, Paul," said Kaede. Then, slowly, "Your parents never saw the Falls dry, then."

I shook my head.

"Would they have stayed, do you think?"

I wasn't ready for this question. I picked up my beer, then put it down. Kaede just sat there waiting for a reply as if she'd asked for the time or directions. Finally I just said, "I don't know."

Then we heard a shout. Dave was in the face of some guy at the bar with a full pitcher in either hand. I didn't recognize him, but he had about four inches on Dave, and the guy beside him, whom I'd also never seen before, was even bigger.

"I heard you, asshole," Dave was saying. "You called my buddy a coon."

"Koontz, dickwad. I said Koontz."

"Dude, we've got a friend named Koontz," said the other guy, stepping in. "He's in the other room if you want to meet him."

Dave kept staring at the first guy. "Pauly!" he yelled. "This guy called you a coon."

"A what?" I had to stop myself from laughing.

Kaede grabbed my leg. "Did he just say'coon'? Does that even apply to you?"

Dooley came flapping out from behind the bar. "Outside, lads, outside!" he hollered, and shooed them out the doorthe two bewildered strangers first, and then Dave, already rolling up his sleeves. A bunch of our guys followed. The pool room went silent and then a crowd poured out the door as well.

"Jesus," I said, turning to Kaede. "Sorry you have to see this."

But she was already standing. "Come on, Paul! Fight!"

Out in the parking lot the bigger guy was pointing to a Jeep with New York plates. "Dude, look at the fucking tags." Dave wouldn't, but I did: KOONTZ. "This is his car. Can you see?"

Dave stood face to face with the other guy. "I don't know who the fuck you think you are, coming up here and acting like you own the place."

There was some sort of idiotic retort, something in response from Dave, and then they were swinging at each other. Our buddies circled around to hold the other Americans back, saying, "Let them go, just let them go," while Kaede, a foot shorter than everyone else, was hopping on tiptoes and craning her neck. "I can't see! Paul, what's happening? I can't see!"

Dave got a few shots in, but the other guy was just too big for him. A few seconds later he grabbed one of Dave's punches out of the air, like picking fruit from a tree, and hauled him in. Dave took a solid elbow to the chops and then a big left hook came swinging around, the crack of his jaw releasing an empathetic gasp from the crowd. Then our guys were diving in - although now the Americans were holding them back to let their buddy go for it.

"You didn't miss anything," I told Kaede. "It's over."

Kaeded slumped beside me. "Why didn't you tell me what was going on?"

"Oh, come on. I hate this bullshit. You want to get out of here?"

"I guess so," she said, turning to me. "But where do you want to go?"

IF DURING THE daytime it was a ghost town, N.F. at night was more of a graveyard. We tottered through the empty streets, Kaede clinging to my arm with her nose buried in my shoulder, the world swimming up underneath our feet. Those buildings that weren't boarded up loomed, their windows black and empty, on either side of the street. Drunkenly I tried to focus on the road ahead, one step after the next. Everything was a muddy fuzz. But when something went scuttling by in the shadows, my brain snapped to attention.

"What?" Kaede said. "What was that?"

"Nothing. Just keep moving."

"Paul," she said.

I looked straight ahead and took her hand. "Let's go," I said.

But there was someone following us. I could hear whispering from the shadows: up front, then behind, off to the left, then the right. I thought about Dave, losing it on that picker on the American side, smashing the poor guy's skull in with his nightstick. Over a broken fridge.

We stumbled along a little faster, the clopping of our footsteps echoing all the way to the end of the street. "It's not far," I said. "Maybe you should get your keys out now."

At the door to her housing block, Kaede struggled with the deadbolt while I watched the street and listened. The shadows seemed to shift and ripple. I strained to tell if the wisps of voices I heard were real or imagined. And then I saw something that looked like a child rise up from the ground at the end of street, as though it were getting to its legs from all fours. Kaede's keys clattered on the lock. The shape stood there, facing me, unmoving - a dark blot hovering in the shadows of the next block.

When the door finally opened, I nearly pushed Kaede over to get inside.

"Is it one of the pickers?" she asked.

Her eyes were red from booze, that usually perfect bob all askew and wild. I didn't say anything, just put my hand on the small of her back. She reached up and wrapped her arm around my shoulder. Together, we wobbled our way down the hall to her apartment.

"You should stay here," she said, letting me into her place. "You know, just in case."

"Sure," I told her. "What, on the couch?"

"No," she said, reaching past me and locking the door. Her arms looped around my waist, her face turned up at mine so I could smell the sweetness of booze on her breath. When she spoke again the words were slow. "My bed's much more comfortable."

THE NEXT MORNING, while I was struggling to ignore a pounding headache and find my socks amid the mess on her bedroom floor, Kaede lay in bed piecing together the night before.

"There was a fight, right? Did you start it? I feel like it was your fault, for some reason."

I threw a pile of shirts to one side, only to discover a pile of pants.

"Or was it because of something you did? Man, I was so drunk."

"That's what happens when you drink, I guess. Imagine that."

She was silent for a minute. I could feel her watching me as I went rifling through her stuff. "Paul, do your friends always fight for you?"

"Jesus, Kaede," I said, kicking my way through laundry and books. "You've got no idea what you're talking about. And I don't know how you expect to get any sort of project done when you can't even keep your bedroom in order either. Look at this place. It's like a twelve-year-old got her own apartment."

She sat up in bed. "Get my project done? Excuse me?"

"Yeah, you know, the one where you come rolling into town, taking pictures of people's homes - like we're animals in a zoo or something. These are real lives, Kaede. We're not just something for you to leech off."

"Oh, give me a break. At least I'm doing something, Paul. Look at you, rushing around to get your stuff together so you can go sit in your parents' store where no one ever comes."

I froze. A million things went through my head to scream back at her for this. I pictured myself grabbing fistfuls of her stuff and whipping them around the room. But I was not the type of guy to lose it. I breathed, looking away. Very calmly, I peeled my jacket off the back of her desk chair, made my way in silence down the hall, and quietly closed the front door on my way out, walking sockless in my shoes all the way across town to work.

Maybe half an hour later Kaede showed up in her uniform, breezing in through the front door while I was going through some paperwork. She browsed absently through the postcards, moved a few things around on the shelves, not acknowledging me until she held up a maroon and gold Canada sweatshirt to her body. "What do you think?"

I had no reply, just made a note on the page I was working on and turned to the next.

"You guys are so tense."

I flipped through the pages as though I were looking for something.

"In Japan they have places for people like you, for businessmen."

I glanced up from the files. I was a businessman now?

"To blow off some steam," she said, coming toward me. "Shops where people buy a ticket and they can smash things."

"Shouldn't you be at work?"

"People go nuts for it. Apparently it's a huge release, destroying all these delicate things - china, crystal, glass. They just smash the shit out of everything."

"What do they use?"

She clasped her hands together and swung them, whistling.

"Baseball bats?"

Kaede nodded. "And whatever else - tire irons, swords, you name it."

"Swords?" I struggled not to laugh. "People pay to do this?"

"Lots."

I stood there looking around the shop at my stock, wondering. But Kaede acted first. She grabbed a snow globe from the shelf. "Let's smash this."

"Whoa."

"Come on, aren't you mad at me?" She winked. "Won't this be a good release?"

I paused, she let out a frustrated huff, and before I knew what was happening, she hurled the thing against the tiled floor. It shattered, sending its contents - an igloo, a snowman, a couple of evergreens, a handful of white confetti - flooding outwards on a wave of murky water and broken glass, leaving half the cracked globe rocking back and forth on its side.

"What the fuck are you doing? That's our stock!"

But she just handed me another one, giving me a look like, Come on.

"Kaede."

That look again.

I took the globe from her hand, felt the dust that had accumulated on the smooth glass, weighed it, then dropped it beside the other one. It bounced harmlessly, rolled a bit, and came to rest against the counter. Kaede picked it up, looked at me with a frustrated expression.

I sighed, took it from her. "Okay," I said, "fine."

When the globe exploded I honestly felt something, a rush, as though a floodgate inside me opened up when the glass bulb split and spewed its contents all over the store. I looked up at Kaede. She smiled, already handing me a paperweight in the shape of Horseshoe Falls. This I hurled at the ground, laughing, screaming, "Motherfucker!" Ceramic shrapnel sprayed up as it hit. My body was buzzing. I put my hand out, greedy for more.

Kaede took another paperweight from the shelf, juggled it from one hand to the other, then put it back. "We need to save things for other people."

THAT NIGHT KAEDE made me spaghetti at her place. Over dinner we planned the whole thing, settling on twenty dollars a person - all my friends could afford, I figured - and decided that a week would give us enough time to get everything ready. Kaede made it clear that we had to be very specific in the area we allotted each participant. Otherwise, she advised me, there would be mayhem. "In Japan there are very strict rules. Do you think we need to do the same?"

I thought of Dave. "Yeah, that's probably a good plan."

When dinner was done I offered to clean up, but I'd only washed two dishes before we were peeling each other's clothes off right there on the kitchen floor. She pushed me down and climbed on top, hands running up my chest. In the light I noticed her face: a weird half-smile played at the corners of her lips, as though she were trying not to laugh. I scooped her up and flipped her around, wedging myself between her legs.

She went rigid.

"Kaede - is something wrong?" My pulse quickened. I'd been too rough, too creepy.

"Um, sort of." She looked uncomfortable. "It's just that - well, these tiles are really cold. I know it's boring, but can we just go to my room?"

After we'd finished, chatted each other to sleep, and then rolled away to opposite sides of the bed, I woke up in the middle of the night freezing. In need of clothing, I stumbled in the dark into the kitchen to retrieve my boxers and T-shirt. On the walk back to the bedroom I stopped at the living-room window. I'd forgotten that strange shape, that kid, whom I'd seen the night before. I stood for a while gazing out into the night. But there was nothing, no sign of any movement or anyone skulking around in the shadows, no kids or adults or anyone to speak of.