Ghosted (6 page)
Authors: Shaughnessy Bishop-Stall
And so he’d learned to write in order to document his own coolness, his guts—his good-looking, good-lighting, good-karma hair days—the stuff that would sell a man to pretty girls and a fickle god, so they’d take him as a hero.
But Mason didn’t care what people thought of him any more. Wash your clothes in enough gas station bathrooms, break enough of your own vows and eventually you don’t give a shit—which is too bad, because the desire to impress people at least keeps you connected to the world somehow. And it’s hard to write a book when you don’t give a damn about the reader. Warren had been right: it was time to put the novel aside—to write something for a man who loved the reader madly. But how to make her love him back—to
show
him to her?
Try it in the third person?
And why not present tense?
Warren in Love—Take Five
He is on a train. The air outside is burning with brush fires, pulsing and crackling in the twilight. People are stuffing the broken windows of the railway car with blankets and shirts to keep out the smoke. There are goats in the aisle. The smoke swirls in, a chicken flaps out, aflame as it shakes to the ground.
He is on a dark beach. It has been storming for days—huts collapsing, people huddled in fear. The ocean is bleeding, rusted red and frothing, yet somehow he is pulling fish from the shallow, churning waves. He cooks them up, sparks rising in the air. He is carrying medicine through a desert. He is going mad from the heat and nobody ever speaking his language. He is jumping from a cliff into aqua-blue waters. An ugly dog follows him, won’t leave him alone, so that he can’t even get on a plane and go home—because of the dog; it’s the closest he’s come so far to love.
And would you believe that
he
is this same man, hunched over this desk—bad hair, unsure eyes, trying to write a love
letter—a big man with vague dreams and desires stuffed into a suit? He knows no one can see him. No one could possibly see, by looking at him, the things he’s done. The thoughts he’s had. All that bravery and fear. It’s like it’s not even him. Like you wake up a new person every day—no credit at all for the life you’ve lived. He feels huge and invisible, as if the universe itself finds him cumbersome, irksome, baffling, boring—like every time he tries to do something strong, his big hands and thudding brain mess it up….
Who’s that? It feels like there’s someone out there, in the fog. For a moment his heart jumps, not in fear but hope. He straightens his back, narrows his eyes, stabs at the keyboard with confidence—trying to look like there is magic in his head.
The next morning Mason printed the letters, spread them on the table in the middle of his apartment, and read them again. Nothing looks good with a cocaine hangover. For the most part it is a horrible ghost of emptiness. But then there are those rare moments of
all right
—those random, leftover bursts of energy, fortitude, drive. And suddenly you’re out the door.
Mason rounded the block three times. He could have headed for the hills, but instead he stayed close—thinking, sick and energized. So when he was ready he was already there, up the stairs, back to the desk, all right and ready to focus. He pushed the letters together and looked at them anew.
One thing he’d learned over the years: trying to mythologize yourself rarely had the desired effect. Why had he thought doing it for somebody else would be any different? It was time to write the truth.
So Mason sat down for one more letter: “Warren in Love—Take Six.” It began like this:
I’ve got a lot of fears. I am scared of heights and tunnels.
Twenty days after first they’d met, two weeks after Warren had paid $1,005 for a hotdog and a Sprite, he gave Mason another $4,000 for ten pieces of paper.
“Aren’t you going to read them?”
“Later.”
“But …”
“Six letters, Mason. At least one of them’s
got
to be good. Don’t you think?”
It was a grey day, with a heavy warmth in the air.
“You want a hotdog at least?”
But the big man, nodding a sort of thanks, was already lumbering off down the street.
Mason put the envelope of money behind the counter, picked up a scraper and started on the grill.
Warren walks west on Bloor Street. The low clouds swirl overhead, rumbling, and then it starts to rain. Light at first, but within minutes it becomes a downpour, streaming across his sunglasses. He holds the envelope inside his jacket, his heart beating against it, and walks on—the clean water cascading over him. He loves the rain. The only thing better: thick night fog.
They were sitting at the table in his open concept loft.
“I sold a story,” said Mason.
Chaz put his finger on top of the money. “You’re flapjacking me, shore-leave.”
“What happened to popstand?”
“You got a stack like this, standing on dry land? You’re a sailor on shore leave.”
“And I’m flapjacking you?”
“Damn straight.”
“Are we playing or what?”
“Deal ’em up.”
They traded about a thousand back and forth for a while then went out on the town with it, hit a few bars. Mason made out with a girl in a bathroom, Chaz dropped some jerk’s cellphone into his pint of beer and they watched the sun come up from the roof of a pool hall.
It was a beautiful day.
Notes on the Novel in Progress
The story is the thing. Without the story you got nothing, chump. Look out the window. Spadina is ginger root salesmen on the steps of a synagogue. It is lingerie for a dollar, fake trees in real earth, giant chickens made out of chicken wire on storey-high pedestals in the middle of the avenue. It is a Gothic castle, right there, in the middle of the avenue. It is a mad man with an invisible kite, fighting the winds in the middle of the avenue. It is screeching tires, growling outpatients. It is a dead pig, slipped off a truck in the middle of the avenue. It is not the middle of the road. It is a drastic, aching, red-brick surprise.
Possible title:
A Drastic Aching Red-brick Surprise
It was a new world—a debt-free one. And other things had changed, too. Since watching the sunrise with Chaz, Mason had done his damnedest to get his act together. He hadn’t done drugs in four days. And so he was barely hung over when two policemen—one in uniform, one not—walked up to the Dogmobile.
“What can I get for you?” said Mason, his head down, fiddling with a bag of buns.
“Mason,” said one of them.
“Dubisee,” said the other.
He looked up, a bun in each hand.
They were definitely familiar: a blurry, irksome memory, seen through metal diamonds—chain-link, then the back of a cruiser. “I’m Detective Sergeant Flores,” said the plainclothes one with the mahogany skin.
“Are you kidding?”
“About what, exactly?”
“I don’t know. I’m trying to run a business here.”
“Okay.”
“I’ve sobered up a lot since … since last time.”
“We’re not here about that, Mason.”
In retrospect, Mason preferred
sir
.
“Do you know a man named Warren Shanter?”
“Captain Kirk?” said Mason.
“Not Shatner. And not William! Warren Sha …”
“You mean Warren?”
“Yes, that’s what I said.”
“I didn’t know his last name was Shatner.”
“It’s not.”
“Sorry,” said Mason. “You guys make me nervous.”
“That’s fine. We just want to know how you knew Mr. Shanter.”
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t know how you knew him?”
“Knew?”
“What?”
“You said
knew.”
“Warren’s deceased.”
Mason’s hands felt awful with the stupid plastic gloves on. He took them off and dropped them.
“Are you okay, Mr. Dubisee?”
The stench of burning plastic filled the air.
“What happened?”
“There was an incident …,” said the detective.
“Your gloves are melting,” said the officer, scribbling in his notepad.
Mason scraped at the toxic, bubbling mess on the grill.
“Why’d you come here?”
“We saw your name on some papers in his apartment—figured we should talk to you.” The officer scribbled.
“Papers?”
“Some articles off the Internet.”
“Oh yeah.” Mason scraped. “Warren wanted to read some of what I wrote.”
“Why would he do that?”
Scribble
.
“I don’t know … we were friends.”
Scrape, scrape
.
“You said you didn’t know how you knew him.”
Scribble. Scrape
.
There was a gentle pop, then a sizzle, as water fell from Mason’s eyes onto the red-hot grill. “I sold him hotdogs.”
“Are you all right, Mason?”
Mason watched himself open a bottle of water and pour it onto the grill. “What about the funeral?” he said, the steam billowing upwards, a large impatient spirit.
When the cops were gone, Fishy came over. He’d been watching from across the street. “What was that about?” he said, looking off down the sidewalk.
Mason looked at Fishy’s profile—bulgy eyes and flappy lips, a flat, stubbly chin. He didn’t answer.
Fishy turned his head. “I asked you a question. What was the fuzz doing here?”
“You actually call them the fuzz?”
Fishy lowered his gaze, and Mason glimpsed some hatred there—back behind the stupidity. “It was nothing,” Mason said.
“What kind of nothing?”
“The kind that isn’t something.”
“You think you’re smart, don’t you?”
Mason wanted to hit him. He wanted to yell, “My friend is dead, you fishy fuck!” What he didn’t want to do was help him out, or ease his worries. “They were looking for someone,” he said. “An ugly guy with bulgy eyes. I told them I didn’t know anyone who fit that description.”
“You better watch yourself,” said Fishy.
Mason shrugged. It was a bit too late for that.
On the day of Warren’s funeral, Mason decided not to open the hotdog stand. He drank a bottle of wine in his underwear, washed down two cheese sandwiches with a pot of coffee, then put on the black suit he’d bought in Kensington Market.
There were at most a dozen people in the pews, a closed casket on a platform below the dais. He hadn’t meant to reach the front, but walking down the aisle it was like he’d forgotten where he was going—and now the priest was standing right there.
Mason sat down, the only one in the first row. He barely even knew Warren, for God’s sake, and here he was: best man at the funeral.
It quickly became clear, however, that the priest knew Warren not at all.
“Take solace in God,” he said. “And have faith in his fairness. I cannot give you answers, only this: take stock of your tears, and know the Almighty sheds them with you.” Mason heard no one crying behind him—nor from above. As for him, there’d been that moment with the cops when his eyes had teared up, but mostly
he was confused. He didn’t even know how Warren had died, and Father here wasn’t dropping any hints.
“Please welcome,” said the priest, “Ms. Amanda Shanter—Warren’s sister. She’s come all the way from Florida, folks.” He said it like she was singing at the casino or something, but to no applause. A woman was coming down the aisle. “Also,” said the priest, “following the ceremony there will be a wake at the Sheraton Plaza Hotel, in the Red Room, courtesy of Ms. Amanda Shanter.”
She was big like her brother but looked sensual and openly sad. The priest did an awkward two-step with her, until finally Ms. Shanter was alone on stage.
She unfolded some papers. Both her dress and hair were shiny black, mid-length, curving inward. Her lips were red. She cleared her throat, staring at the mike as if it were a large wasp buzzing at her mouth.
“They found this on my brother’s desk,” she said, then flattened the papers and began to read:
I’ve got a lot of fears.
I am scared of heights and tunnels. I am scared of crowds and being alone, of speed and paralysis, of dawn and dusk and so many lights between.
I am scared of spiders and Janet Jackson, of needles, bonfires and middle initials, of the earth speeding up so that gravity kills us and the birds explode in the trees.
I am scared of drought. I am scared of drowning—of tidal waves, heat waves, electromagnetic radio waves, the signal passing through our bodies; the static, the snow, the wind that blows through your sleep so it feels like you’ve fallen awake in your bed, the terror of hitting the waves.
I am scared of things mixing together. I am scared of them blowing apart: summer leaves off the limbs of trees, arms and legs strewn across a battlefield, the dispersion of words—how they fly from your mouth like swallows, then dust into the atmosphere, never to be heard from again. I am scared of Easter and Easter Cream Eggs, of chickens and omelets and the intifada. I am scared of gummy bears and grizzly bears, of nudity and hand grenades, of waking up faceless and famous, homeless and nameless. I am scared of being thoughtless.
I am scared of my own thoughts.
I am scared of worms and wormholes and black holes and vacuums; of lightning and thunder and bad theatre; of practical jokes and leprosy; of guavas, iguanas and coconut trees. I’m scared there’s nothing out there, not even darkness—beyond the skin of our universe, the sum of our days—not even the absence of something.
I am scared of caves and bridges; of hospital rooms and Gothic castles; of gallows, gambling and public speaking; of basketball and Armageddon; of Judgment Day and Jerry Lewis; of Huey Lewis and horses. I am scared of getting lost—of getting caught and tranquilized, stuffed in a cage and sent to Rikers Island. Or Mozambique. Or The Hague. I am scared of being found out.
I am scared of love and happiness. I am scared of the first kiss—but more than that, I am scared of the second. My body quakes, the earth’s tectonic plates coming together like granite wings.
I am scared of never asking, never knowing, never breathing—a full, knowing breath. I am scared of writing, of never writing this. I am scared of giving it to you.
But also I am brave as hell. I look and then I leap.
I hope to see you when I land.