Westlake Soul (18 page)

U fuckn bitch. u think i care??

Don’t text me Wayne. Don’t call me. It’s over.

Fuckn whore. Watch ur back.

He went out with the boys and got loaded. Picked a fight at Shoeless Joe’s with some dude half his size. Hit a strip club in Mississauga and paid $150 for a blowjob from a Croatian dancer called Mace—saw fit to text Yvette this development:
gettin m dick sikced now. how u like tah???
Yvette blocked his number, but she couldn’t block him. He buzzed her apartment at three-twenty in the morning, screaming abuse into the intercom. Yvette cowered in her bed, and he finally took off after one of the neighbours shouted down that the cops had been called.

He tried again the following night, less drunk but equally abusive, and when Yvette didn’t buzz him up, he took it out on her car—grabbed a Phillips head screwdriver from his truck and ran it along the driver’s side, deeply scoring the yellow paint. Yvette involved the police but couldn’t prove that Wayne had caused the damage. They paid him a visit, even so, because they knew that he
had
and they wanted to put a little scare on him, tell him to back the hell off. Wayne told the cops that yeah, he’d kind of lost it and shouted into her intercom, but he didn’t damage her car, for Christ’s sake, he would
never
do such a thing. They didn’t buy his bullshit, but all they could do was warn him to stay away. The next day, Wayne followed Yvette in his truck—tailgating her, grinning behind the wheel. Yvette had been driving to the gym, but when she turned right instead of left on Markham Avenue, and started leading Wayne toward the O.P.P. detachment, he flipped her the bird and peeled off with a furious blast of the horn. That night Yvette called her mom and made plans to move back to Rouyn-Noranda, while Wayne announced to the world (well, to his sixty-four Facebook friends, at least) that Yvette Sommereux was a blue ribbon cuntstick with chicken tits, and that he was
so fuckn
done with her.

But I wasn’t
so fuckn
done with him.

I don’t know much about Wayne. I figure there’s a reason for his attitude. Maybe he was beaten as a child, or made to feel unloved. Or maybe, like Yvette, he senses something better inside, but is afraid to let it out through fear of rejection. With more time, or inclination, I would have delved into his past. Nobody is born
mean, after all. They
become
mean, through circumstance and environment. Who knows . . . maybe I would have cut him some slack if I’d discovered that his mother was a crack whore, or that, as a kid, he’d had his asshole popped by a lecherous uncle. Every supervillain has a backstory. Orphaned, betrayed, haunted, or disfigured. There’s always something that draws them to the Dark Side. But whatever happened to Wayne will remain a mystery, and I’m cool with that. I carried his hate and anger inside me, after all. I know how real it is.

Also, I was hell-bent on revenge. I didn’t want anything to diminish that.

And nothing did.

I’ve mentioned the biofield several times—more commonly known as the aura: a wave of energy that surrounds all living organisms. Sounds like something my grandma would experience during a peyote jaunt. Throw in one of her rainbows. Couple of unicorns. Spin a Grateful Dead track and away you go. But it’s not like that at all. There’s science at work, and it runs deep. Not all scientists would agree with that statement, I know, but to hell with them. I’m smarter, anyway.

It was called the Vital Force in seventeenth-century Europe. You may also know it by its Chinese name, Chi, or its Indian name, Prana. Whatever you call it, the principle is the same: in the simplest, most accurate terms, the biofield is a vibratory signature unique to the cell or molecule it represents. Think of it as a cosmic fingerprint. Every living organism has one, and no two are the same.

It resonates, this fingerprint. And it is possible, through understanding (and certainly with a mind like mine), to recognize and replicate this resonance. It’s like two musical notes tuned to the same key, becoming one concordant sound. Once this link is established, energetic signatures can be transferred—through aspects of quantum entanglement and Sheldrake’s morphic fields—from one system to another.

In other words, I could resonate with Wayne’s biofield, and interact with it. So all the hate and anger I’d collected from him could be transferred back in one brutal hit.

Which is exactly what I did.

That wall of hate came crashing down. I crushed him beneath it.

He left the club just after midnight. Walked rain-washed streets to his truck. I trailed just behind—a weary ghost, laden with the anger I had gathered. The streetlights swam in puddles on the sidewalk. Pools of neon from the Chinese restaurants on Spadina. He bumped into an old man carrying a bundle of newspapers. Didn’t apologize. Kicked a garbage can. Hovered for a moment outside a restaurant where Han folk music warbled from a speaker above the door, then stepped inside to grab something from the takeout menu.

Clouds stirred overhead, throwing a little rain, a little thunder.

“Spring roll.”

“Number six, yeah?”

“I dunno. Spring fucking roll.”

I floated outside, my shoulders aching under the weight of Wayne’s anger. That wasn’t all, of course. Knowing I was down to my final few days, facing my broken family,
still
searching for a way out . . . I felt so weak. At least I had this, my heroic revenge on Wayne the Fucktard. One last trophy for my Wall of Achievement. My only regret was that he wouldn’t see me. I wanted him to look into my eyes as I returned every fat block of animosity.

Wayne got his spring roll and ate it on the move. It was gone in three man-sized bites, oils dribbling down his chin. He balled the trash, dropped it on the sidewalk, and crossed the street. There was an alleyway leading to the Green P where he’d parked. He started down it, weaving a little. I moved ahead of him. Got ready.

I had no idea what to expect. To interact with his biofield so violently . . . would he shudder, as if someone had walked over his grave? Would he fall to the ground, clutching his heart, eyes bulging? He veered toward me, muttering under his breath. The alleyway was illuminated by a streetlight at either end, and featureless, save for a couple of dumpsters and a fire escape snaking to the roof of the building on the right. I waited until he was halfway along, where the shadows were deepest, and then made my move.

I threw my arms wide and let him pass through me, analyzing the vibratory pattern of his biofield, a thing that writhed and kicked. I applied an identical signature to all the hate and anger I had drawn from him over the weeks, and transferred it with a fierce mental push. As much as I could unload in one hit.

Every sneer and unkind word. The birds he’d flipped. His bullish ways and arrogance. Breaking Yvette’s trophies. Running a screwdriver along the side of her pretty yellow car. His thick hand around her throat. The bruises on her arms. Punching her in the eye.

Motherfucker.

Punching
her in the eye.

I gave it all back to him . . . the way he made everybody—not just Yvette—feel. A massive gulp of his own medicine.

He broke—folded—as if someone had thumped him in the stomach. A wail escaped him and he turned his face to the sky. Fingers hooked. Shaking his head. I took a step back. I knew he’d feel something, but this . . .

This was good.

My turn to sneer.

This is how you make other people feel, Wayne
, I said.
Not so cool, huh?

He sobbed, covered his face with his hands, fell to his knees.

You’re a bully. With a heart like nothing.
I towered over him, my emotion on fire. All of my frustration and sadness. My fear and determination. A mountain of everything I had been through. Anger, too, that life was wasted on someone like Wayne, who could love but chose not to, who could make a difference but didn’t care.
If there’s good in you, I can’t see it. But I know now just how insecure you are
. . .
and how sad.

“No,” he moaned. The rain pattered off his shaved head. “Jesus God, no.”

I should have left him to his misery, but the anger burned inside me. Wasn’t fair that he could move and
live
when I—who had
so
much more to offer—was down to my last breaths. A cloud of resentment stained my energy, my judgement. I threw yet more hate at him, grabbing the bricks I had collected and slamming them into his biofield. I could almost hear the thud as the signature aligned.

He shuddered and crawled away from me, trying to protect himself. It was like running from his own shadow. He collapsed against a dumpster, curled into a ball, and I continued to unload.

“No . . . please, Jesus . . .
please
. . .”

So much anger and aggression, cloaking deeper issues that were surfacing now: his fear of rejection and powerlessness; isolation and sadness. Dude was having an emotional breakdown. A bad one, years in the making. I didn’t let up. One brick after another, until my work was done.

I’ve got no pity for you
, I said.
You’ve got problems, brother. You need to get your shit together.

He punched the side of the dumpster and dragged himself to his feet. His eyes were wide and scared. I started to float away from him. I had more work to do in the motor cortex, and damn I was weary—didn’t want to use any more energy on Wayne. A rumbling sound stopped me. Thunder, I thought, looking at the stone-coloured sky. But no; I turned around and saw Wayne rolling the dumpster down the alleyway. Its steel body scraped the wall and boomed.

The hell are you doing, Wayne?

It quickly became evident, and I realized I had underestimated his anger, the emotions it masked, and the impact of throwing it all back at him.

Wayne rolled the dumpster to where the fire escape was bolted to the wall and used it to hoist himself onto the lower platform. I watched as he thudded up the stairs, taking them three at a time, moving from one platform to the next with alarming purposefulness. He clearly wanted to act before he could change his mind, and within moments was climbing the short ladder to the roof. He wiped his eyes and veered across the rooftop, muttering denials and apologies that were lost to the wind.

I followed, the city lights shining through me, feeling my physical body rattle and bleed. I needed
to return, but this was something I couldn’t look away from, any more than I could look away from a helicopter spinning out of control, or a train hurtling toward a collapsed bridge. I was fascinated. Was he going to leap to his death, or was this a cry for help? Either way, I had brought him here. I had done this.

Wayne reached the edge of the rooftop. Stepped onto the ledge. Sixty-five feet above Spadina Avenue.

Do it
, I thought, a line straight out of Dr. Quietus’s script. I hated that I’d had such a dark thought, but it was easy to remember the bruise beneath Yvette’s eye. The way she had sobbed into countless scrunched Kleenex while Alicia Keys sang—delightfully appropriate now—“Fallin’.” Sad but true: a world without Wayne wouldn’t be missing much. Do the whole
It’s a Wonderful Life
routine, and folk’d be happier.

The rain picked up, falling in grey lines that veiled the city. The skyline was a switchboard of blinking lights in the east, with the top of the CN Tower lost in a swag of cloud. Thunder ripped. A callous gust that made everything swirl, including Wayne. He teetered on the edge. Almost fell.

Could I stop him from jumping? Did I want to?

He leaned forward. I thought he was going and my instinct was to grab the back of his jacket, pull him back, even though I knew my hand would pass right through. But he held himself, an inch—no more—from plummeting to the sidewalk. The rain bounced off his broad shoulders. Ran down his face with the tears.

Do it.
That thought again, like Dr. Quietus working through me. I pushed it away and floated closer to Wayne. Below us, the glow of traffic on Spadina Avenue. Neon fading as restaurants closed for the night. A couple, hand in hand, hurrying to get out of the rain. Nobody noticed Wayne, as veiled as the skyline. First anybody would know would be his broken body bleeding into the gutter.

This wasn’t a cry for help. I’d crushed him beneath a wall of his own misery. Dude was going to jump.

He muttered something. I don’t know what. It was drowned by the rain, by the tears in his throat. His right leg twitched, about to step into emptiness. I knew that all I had to do to send him over was throw another brick at him. Not even a brick. A stone. A pebble. It would send ripples through his biofield and he would be gone.

But who was I to drop the hammer? My life had been ripped from me. I knew its power and beauty. I knew that, for all the universe, only death was bigger. I let go of the anger inside me. Some of it Wayne’s. Most of it mine. Ghosted out above the drop, faced him, and then flowed through him. I found a fragment of hope and threw it back at him. It was enough. He stepped back off the ledge and slumped to his knees, wrapped himself into a shape that seemed too small. A world away from machismo. The alpha role was dead. I left him, crying on the rooftop, contemplating a life without anger. I drifted back to the groovy room, where I shook uncontrollably and stared, pale-eyed, at the ceiling.

Where Dr. Quietus spread his wings.

Laughed like he had a shoal of insane people hiding beneath his dark robes.

And took me.

I was dragged into a world that reminded me of a movie set. The location for the thrilling finale. An abandoned factory with banks of dusty machinery—drills, saws, and presses—waiting to whir into life. Vats of corrosive substances. Steel catwalks. Chains hanging from the ceiling. The air smelled of oil and burned metal. I looked around, expecting to hear the cinematic score—tension ramped up by the high notes on a piano. Maybe a long, ominous tone lured from a cello. Something fluttered in the partial lighting and I jumped. A butterfly with burning orange wings that had found a way in but couldn’t find a way out. It flickered out of sight, lost in the darkness at the far end of the factory.