Monday Night Man Read online

  A table finally comes free — except there’s only three chairs.

  See! thinks Horst. Fuckin’ Gull. If Gull wasn’t here I’d have a seat! He looks around. Spotting a chair he points, questioningly — but the woman next to it shakes her head and pulls the chair closer. Horst walks across the bar and spots another chair.

  “This seat free?”

  The kid next to it doesn’t answer. He’s involved in a very serious draw on his cigarette and is not to be interrupted. He’s wearing a Panama hat, as if Vancouver is the tropics.

  Horst repeats: “This seat free?”

  The kid, all of Gull’s age, finally finishes exhaling smoke. He butts his cigarette, sniffs, then, not bothering to turn his head, says: “Nope.”

  Horst stares, jaw hard. The kid ignores him. Horst returns to where Bunce and Rupp and Gull are sitting, and stands. First Horst puts his hands in his pockets, then he pulls them out and folds his arms across his chest; he stands on one foot, then the other, and finally ends up shoving his hands back into his pockets again. He tries being at ease, as if — Hey! I’d rather stand, I always stand … And it does give a different perspective. At one table, everyone’s wearing black leather and sunglasses — sunglasses in a dark bar. Pale white guys trying to be blind black jazz men. At another table a big black guy is going on in some loud Caribbean accent, like he thinks he’s Bob Marley. He’s got one of those tea cosies on his head and all his gestures are exaggerated, like he knows he’s being watched. And he is. Half the bar is glancing over and listening in. Wow! A real live rasta man right here in Vancouver. The white girl with him eats it all up. She’s got her hair done in corn-rows and beads, the whole shot.

  Twenty minutes Horst stands, and no one sits in that chair. The kid was lying. So Horst heads over and just takes it.

  “Hey man!” The kid grabs at it.

  But Horst holds on. The entire bar watches. Even Bob-Marley-the-bullshitter’s shut his yap to watch. Horst yanks — the kid comes lunging toward him. Then Horst plants his feet and gives a good shove, letting the chair go, saying — “Take it!”

  The kid stumbles backward into a table, chair and all, toppling a pitcher of sangria and half a dozen glasses.

  Somebody grabs Horst from behind — the owner — and drives him toward the door, which one of the people waiting obligingly opens.

  Horst stands on the sidewalk. It’s raining and his coat’s inside. Groups of kids in Doc Martens, pig-shaves, and nose rings pass by ignoring him. Gull comes out with Horst’s coat.

  “I’ll give you a ride,” says Gull.

  “I’ll walk.”

  “C’mon!”

  “I’m walking,” says Horst, thinking please, don’t be nice to me.

  “I got something for you.” Gull opens the door of his ‘66 Falcon.

  Horst shakes his head. A ‘66 Falcon with a white stripe. Who’d of thought that some day a boat like this’d be cool to drive? Horst knows what Gull’s up to here with the car, the clothes, the track. Gull’s playing. He’s having a good time, too. Horst is exhausted. He wants to sleep. Then he thinks of that Toronto guy upstairs, snoring.

  “Here.” Gull thrusts something out the passenger-side window.

  Earplugs. Horst stares at them an entire minute before taking them. “I tried earplugs.”

  “Not like these.”

  Horst takes them and says thanks.

  “I’ll drive you.”

  Suddenly feeling bad for giving Gull shit all night, Horst says, “No. I need a walk.”

  When Horst gets home, he moves through his apartment watering his plants, listening to the soft crackling of the soil soaking up the moisture, and smelling the wet dirt. Every shelf, ledge, and corner has plants. Plants. All you have to do is water them. They’ll even flower! Horst can’t believe it. Sometimes the blind optimism of flowers tortures him.

  Upstairs, the guy is snoring. Horst fits the sponge plugs into his ears. They work. He thinks of Gull; he thinks of himself; then he recalls old man Fraser. Old man Fraser was a crabby neighbour who kept rocks on his window ledge and threw them if you yelled too loud, touched his fence, or simply got too close. Horst stands in the middle. of his room with his watering can. “That’s me.”

  BUNCE WAS OBLIVIOUSto Gull and ‘66 Falcons. Bunce did not envy or fear the young. Bunce had one wish — that the races ran seven nights a week, fifty-two weeks a year. Bunce had two daughters. He also had an ex-wife and an MA in Philosophy. Spinoza. But Bunce never talked about Spinoza, or his daughters, or his ex-wife. He talked about horses. He talked about track conditions: slop versus mud, the percentage of sand in the surface, mile tracks versus bullrings. He compared speed handicapping with trip handicapping, the effect of Lasix, front wraps, blinkers. He discussed trainers, alcoholic jockeys, grey horses versus black horses, sprints versus routes.

  Bunce liked his life.

  If anyone mentioned Bunce’s ex-wife, he said, simply, “She dumped me.”

  “That’s ‘cause you’re an asshole,” Boyle would add.

  And it was true that a lot of people disliked Bunce. For one thing, he took pleasure in causing discomfort. He asked awkward questions, told waitresses the food was a four out of ten, and stared at people with a smug, heavy-eyed gaze that implied he thought they were fools. This had embarrassed and aggravated Star, his ex.

  STAR

  Star stares from the Volvo hating what she sees. Her daughters, Karla and Jill, swinging Bunce’s briefcase between them and walking in step across the racetrack parking lot. Star grips the steering wheel until her rings pinch. Star gave Bunce that briefcase. Now he fills it with Racing Forms. An hour she’s been waiting, hungry, needing to pee, sweat sliding drop-by-drop down her ribs, her skin stuck to the seat, a fly battering itself against the rear window. What’d Bunce do, she thinks, take Karla and Jill out to the stables and introduce them to those low-life alcoholic midgets? Star might miss her Arete meeting because of this. Whatever Bunce did, she’s convinced he did on purpose, and this is going down against him in the custody hearing. Responsible men take their daughters to the Museum of Anthropology, Science World, Stanley Park, not the fucking race track.

  They’re almost at the car now. Time’s up. Karla knows it and stares hard at the pavement, thinking. Nine-year-old Karla’s a thinker. Star wonders, Why doesn’t she know her father’s relieved he only sees her once a week? Why doesn’t she realize her precious Dad took the big hike on them? Sometimes Star has to walk around the block to calm down so as not to slap Karla’s face and straighten her out. Star terrifies herself with those surges of rage. She’s appalled at the thoughts she has when Karla is obstinately loyal to Bunce.

  Star opens the door and Jill shouts, “They shot a horse!”

  Karla shoves her. “Did not. They injected it.”

  “Broken leg,” says Bunce.

  “So they kill it?”

  “They put a tent over it and put it to sleep.”

  “Vanned and foxed the fucker,” says Karla, kicking a stone.

  Bunce grins guiltily.

  Karla explains how horsemeat is good for foxes; it makes their fur shine.

  Star drives across the city in silence, from East Vancouver to Kitsilano. She pulls up in front of the babysitter’s house.

  “Now, no laughing at Mrs Gurniak’s moustache.” Mrs G. has a moustache that would make a pirate proud.

  Jill leans and whispers that Mrs G. has hairy armpits.

  “So?”

  Jill makes a face. “It stinks.”

  Mrs G. appears on the porch. Star waves, shoos the kids out, then heads off to pick up her mother, who goes with her to the Arete meetings. As Star drives, she checks the rearview mirror, then takes a sniff of her armpit, quickly exhaling the mousey must of sweat and salt and deodorant. She stopped shaving her armpits three months ago.

  When Star’s mother, June, gets into the car, she touches Star’s thigh and says, “Guess!”

  “What?”

  “Guess!”
>
  Star exhales impatiently. This second childhood business is pissing her off. “How should I know!”

  “He’s a baker.” She means Dunc, a man she met through an ad.

  “A baker?”

  “He made me a dozen almond croissants.”

  “So, like, you’ve been seeing him?”

  “Of course!”

  Star’s mother’s face is covered in a fine fuzz, like an over-ripe apricot. Star tries finding the right phrase: had sex, made love, done it. “And, so, you’ve …”

  June nods quickly. She lifts her chin, remembering. “It was lovely.”

  Star stares straight ahead.

  Arete is Greek for virtue.

  The Arete meetings take place in The Iron Workers’ Hall.

  Glen is at the door hugging everyone as they come in. Glen is tall, has b.o. and a beard. Star hates beards, especially stringy ones like Glen’s. She notices he’s wearing that ugly brown sweater again. Star cringes when Glen hugs her, and keeps her hips well back from his. She knows this means she hasn’t “got it” and still has work to do on “her shit.” But fuck Glen. Star comes to Arete because Ruth’s here, and Jerry, who has only one leg. Funny how Star doesn’t mind hugging him. Jerry’s cancer’s in remission and he’s just happy to be here setting up chairs. He also does a great imitation of Adolph Hitler singing “My Way.”

  Ruth strides over and wraps her arms around Star, who feels like sobbing. Ruth is forty-five, solid, and getting fuzzy about the chin, something Star watches with admiration and horror. Admiration because Ruth’s not doing anything about those hairs. She doesn’t even bleach them. Horror because this is exactly what is happening to Star herself. Hair, the acne of middle age.

  Ruth hugs Star, then leans back, scrutinizing her. “Bunce?”

  Star nods, relieved that Ruth has spotted how upset she is. Her mother hadn’t noticed a thing. Ruth strokes Star’s back, then, one arm around her shoulders, hugs her again, the way Star’s father used to. Ruth smells of soap and self-confidence. Star loves Ruth.

  Glen stands up in front and spreads his arms, signalling for attention. Everyone sits on the folding metal chairs and prepares to listen. Star and Ruth and June sit in a row. Star and Ruth exchange glances as Glen describes his trip to California, where he attended a Senior Facilitator’s Seminar with Dale Rice, the man who designed Arete. Star and Ruth think Glen is a prize noodle.

  “All I can tell you is this,” says Glen in his most profound voice. “Dale Rice burns natural gas. He burns clear and he burns clean. And when you look into Dale’s eyes!” Glen nods as if there can be no mistake. “You know he’s been all the way.” Glen paces. “Dale taught us something. But he didn’t do it with words. No!” Glen flings his arms apart in a gesture Star finds embarrassingly theatrical. Glen the Guru. She hears Ruth clear her throat to cover a laugh. “What Mr Dale R. taught us he did without one sound. How? I’ll tell you how. He was himself.” Glen pauses dramatically, desperate to be taken seriously. “He told us how it had taken him a PhD in Clinical Psychology, two trips to India, a hundred trips on LSD, divorce, a hernia, and prostate surgery to finally be … himself.”

  June emits a long murmur of admiration at such a struggle.

  Star smiles politely.

  Glen is relieved. “Now. I want each of you to step up here and tell us all how you’ve been doing since our last Three-Day Intensive.”

  June stands right up, walks to the front, turns, and faces the group. Star’s mother is a small, tidy woman, who, for decades, lived in a housecoat. Yet since leaving her husband, Star’s father, she is no longer Star’s mother, she’s June. And what June does, to Star’s horror, though everyone else’s absolute absorption, is describe her first orgasm. Her very first, which occurred two nights ago with a baker named Dunc.

  “After thirty-seven years of marriage I had my first satisfying sexual experience,” she says, blinking at them all in tearful defiance. She cries as she describes her ex-husband. “Each Saturday night before our weekly sex, he had an enema. I could smell the rubber on his fingers.”

  When June sits down, to applause, escorted by Glen who never misses a chance to put his arms around someone, Star stands. She’s horrified. She’s getting the fuck out of here. Yet she stands at the same time as Jerry, who wants to go up and speak next, so there’s confusion. Jerry thinks Star wants to go up too, and, being a polite guy, he insists she go ahead.

  Others immediately join in. “Yes! Come on! We haven’t heard from you in ages!”

  Star stammers. “I was only going to the bathroom …” And she edges off toward it. Yet the bathroom is in the opposite direction from the exit. Fuck! She’ll have to cross in front of the entire group to get out; they’ll see this and make a big deal. She can’t face that. So Star finds herself in the cold clammy bathroom of The Iron Workers’ Hall wondering what to do. It takes a minute before she notices the small window above the toilet tank. Standing on the seat she looks out at a dumpster directly below, glances back at the washroom door, then at the dumpster again. Taking a deep breath, Star begins squirming through the window.

  And gets stuck at the hips.

  “Oh fucking Christ!” She struggles, wedging herself tighter, then, exhausted, lets herself hang down the stucco wall. She feels like weeping. But she doesn’t. The crushed glass of the stucco glints in the evening light and the wall actually smells pleasantly of sun-heated cement, which reminds her for some reason of childhood. Star misses childhood.

  Then it occurs to her that Glen could come into the can and find her like this, giving him every excuse to grope her under the pretence of pulling her free. The thought of Glen feeling her up terrifies Star. Why couldn’t Ruth find her? Star reaches out and grips the edges of the dumpster, gives a pull, and feels her arse getting moulded into a square by the window frame. Jesus … She’s doing a sort of handstand now. She finally hauls herself through and drops with a small cry headfirst into the garbage.

  June finds Star in the alley. Star’s white blouse is stained yellow with something she does not even want to imagine. Her left shoe and shin are brown from stepping in a can of wood stain.

  June says, “I thought honesty was the whole idea.”

  “Is that what that was?”

  “You think I was unfair?”

  “How about getting Dad to give his side?”

  “The same day you invite Bunce to give his.”

  They stare at each other.

  In the car they’re silent. Then June is crying again. She cries but her gaze is steady and her voice strong. “For your information, what I didn’t tell everyone was how he always made me give him that enema!”

  Star says nothing.

  June says, “Don’t be an old woman before you have to.”

  Star glances over. June sits absolutely at ease with herself, hands folded in her lap and eyes on the vermilion sky above Vancouver’s North Shore mountains. After a while, June says, musingly, having passed beyond the argument, “I’d like to go for a midnight swim.”

  “The water’s too polluted,” states Star, as if June should know that.

  When Star drops her off they part in silence. Star gets the kids then wades through the putting-them-to-bed ritual, fending off questions about her brown left leg. When she’s done, she pours herself a glass of white wine, then checks her messages. Nothing from Ruth. Star is hurt. Surely Ruth saw how upset she was. Surely she noticed something was wrong. Jesus! Star went into the bathroom and never came out! She dials Ruth’s number. The machine comes on. Star listens to Ruth’s voice. She hangs up, redials, and listens again.

  Star goes into the bathroom to scrub her leg. The hairs on her shin remind her of Mrs Gurniak’s moustache.

  Later, Star sits on the edge of Karla’s bed stroking the child’s smooth, clear cheek as she sleeps. Karla loves Bunce. Bunce, who likes watching horses ridden into the ground and then shot. Bunce, who’d have a good laugh if he heard Star was going to something like Arete. Star slides her
fingers down over Karla’s neck and feels the flicker of the child’s pulse. Star presses in with a trembling fingertip, trying to capture that elusive twitch of life, but Karla murmurs then rolls away into the blankets, dreaming of horses.

  BUNCE HAD ALREADYbeen before the Law arguing his right to take his daughters to the horse races. He argued well. Bunce was Irish and could call up the accent and raise his diction to aristocratic heights. “Whataya” became “what do you.” “Should” became “shall.” “Gotta” became “must.” “Hey you” became “sir.” When Bunce put on the voice people listened. Cops, waiters, thugs all hesitated and glanced around, unsure what they were dealing with.

  Though sometimes it backfired.

  One night in Boyle Rupp’s Bug they got caught in a roadblock. Bunce took charge.

  “Sir. I’m an MA in Philosophy and a member of the Diamond Club. I assure you this wretch has imbibed no alcoholic products and therefore enjoys full command of his admittedly meagre faculties.”

  The cop had shifted his flashlight from Rupp to Bunce. When Bunce finished, the cop said, “Get outta the car. Alla ya.”

  Bunce, Rupp, and Horst stood spreadeagled in the rain against the Bug while the cop sat in the squad car checking their records.

  “Fuck, Bunce!”

  “Rupp. Compose yourself Cup your hands around the flame of your spirit and it will grow tall even in the most adverse wind.”

  The cop informed Rupp there were three hundred dollars in outstanding traffic violations against his licence. He impounded the car.

  It cost Rupp seventy-five to get the Bug back after paying off the three hundred. He demanded Bunce pay half.

  “Rupp, see a psychiatrist.”

  “It’s your fault!”

  “Did I rack up three hundred in tickets?”

  “They’d of never found out if you hadn’t butted in.”

  “It was only a matter of time.”

  “You cheap bastard.”