Some Great Thing (35 page)

And he got scared, because: who wouldn’t? She falls down and knocks herself out, he gets scared and runs away But it’s more than fear now, isn’t it? You don’t stay away so long because you’re afraid.

“Is she OK?” he asks in that letter. He must have known something was wrong with her. He obviously saw her fall. Maybe he pushed her. Maybe he was feeling guilty.

(Look over here now, though, in my mind’s eye, I’ll get back in a minute, I’m on a bit of a binge, see, there, Look, look, I’m back there, Kath’s left, Jerry’s gone, early days yet, and I’m missing him, actually, but I’m mad, pissed, pissed, angry drunk mad, at everyone, and there I am, see, at Edgar’s site office and, watch this, I stumble in there grumbling something dizzy, and I head straight for Edgar, “Whereshmyshun!” or something and I swing at poor skinny Edgar and miss and trip over my swing and pass out, yep, yes, drooling there, dribbling. Heh heh.)

I drove around that block a lot and I never saw him.

“I’
M KEEPING MY EYES
peeled, Jer, seriously. Why would I … You OK?”

“Yeah.”

“Why would I know where Jerry is? You know, look, shit, buddy, I was interested in Kath, you know, sorry, but not, you know, not your son. I don’t know where he is. I’ve been looking. What about the cops?”

“They know. They’re looking.”

“I’ve been looking out. I’ve asked my guys to keep a lookout too. What about Cooper?”

“What about him?”

“They were chummy, weren’t they?”

“Yeah.”

“Yeah. Chums. Maybe he knows.”

“Have you seen Kath?”

A
S I SAID, IT
must have been more than fear at this point. If he was afraid of what he saw, Kathleen falling, he wouldn’t have been gone for six months.

Dead?

No chance.

So what was wrong?

It was the Government. They had him scared. He noticed how much the Government was pissing me off, making me unhappy, so he was afraid. You know, he was entering the building trade: maybe he was afraid of them doing the same to him. The Government sent someone around to scare him—to scare me, but I wasn’t home so they scared him. That’s what I thought. The Government was up to something, certainly. First, there were those men I saw on the land, then there were months of no response at all, not a peep. And then Schutz—Jesus, Schutz. I tried to talk to him about what was going on, and he looked worse than Kathleen did. Miserable!

I said to him, “Schutz!” I said, “Jesus, Schutz, what is going on?”

He just grumbled.

“Are you guys going to sell me that land or not?”

He grumbled, stared into space, mumbled something about a colleague, couldn’t look at me. He looked like he was drugged. Someone had him scared.

“My wife,” he said (miserable! mopey!). “It is not a good time, Mr. McGuinty.”

“You’re right. You’re goddamn right.”

“Could we meet some other time? I’m a bit … I am a bit preoccupied.”

“Preoccupied! Jesus, Schutz, ‘preoccupied’ makes the world go round. Who isn’t preoccupied? You people, you want to stop the world going round. That’s your problem.”

He was shuffling forward. I was at his house, standing at the front door and he was shuffling forward, trying to keep me out.

“Can we please meet some other time?”

“Who got to you, Schutz?”

“What?”

“Someone’s got to you.”

He just wasn’t talking. I thought for a minute that he was hiding Jerry. “Who’s in there, Schutz?”

“My wife.”

“Who’s she?”

“What?”

“Stupid question, sure, but things are not as they seem, Schutz, you know, Jesus, if someone’s got to you, if you’re hiding Jerry, if you guys are trying to scare Jerry to get to me, you know, pick on someone your own size. Where’s my son, Schutz?”

I
T WAS TIME TO
force their hand, get an answer, because I couldn’t concentrate on things, I couldn’t focus, I could not, quite honestly, muster the right clear-headedness you need to build a plaster city, to build your necessary dreams, and the angel demons were asking questions about the man they invested in, me, and questions are no replacement for scaffolding.

Never threaten a bureaucrat, my friend; their skin is as thin as yours.

“Y
OU SEEN
K
ATHLEEN
, E
DGAR
? You can be honest.”

“In the hospital?”

“She’s in the hospital?”

“That’s what you told me.”

“She’s not in the hospital. You can be honest with me.”

“I haven’t seen her, Jer. Seriously. I wouldn’t do that. I thought she was in the hospital.”

“We had a little fight.”

“Do you want to talk about anything, Jer?”

“I’m not a fag, Edgar. Don’t talk to me like I’m a fag.”

“No, man, it’s just, you come in swinging at me, and you’re asking where your son is, where your wife is, and you know, I hear things, you know.”

“What?”

“I hear things, you know, some of your projects, some of your men. You know, if you need help, if you need time off, I’m your friend, Jerry, shit. You’ve got a lot on.”

“That’s real sweet, Edgar.”

“Augh, you know … up yours, Jerry I’m trying to help.”

“Y
OU SEEN
J
ERRY
, C
OOPER
?”

“You see this blowtorch, McGuinty?”

“Yes.”

“Suck it.”

“Do you want your job, Cooper?”

“No.”

“You’re fired.”

I
THREATENED A BUREAUCRAT
. I got what I deserved: no response. I gathered my strength. I gathered a group of angel demons. We bought golf clubs, we rented a bus, we drove downtown to Parliament, I stood in front of the angel demons in their matching suits and we took our clubs and we smashed all the ground-floor windows of Parliament House.

Also in that dream I bench-pressed a cow and Kathleen worshipped me on her knees. I felt good waking up, strong, and then the day progressed with no news from anyone and night came again like an emptying glass.

T
HE PEOPLE NEED A
king. They need a leader. The ladies in the office, the boys on the sites, Mario, Tony, more than a hundred people, they need their figurehead, Jerry.

“I have 114 messages for you here, Jerry,” said a Lady of the Office to the King. “What do you want me to do with them?”

“Any from the Government, Schutz, Struthers?”

“No.”

“File them, leave them, toss them.”

And when they think their leader is not himself, is not there for them, is not his best, they will betray him. Mario Calzone, the filthy fighting pig, went to work with Edgar.

“It looks like he’s got more work,” he said.

I had to lay off a couple of crews and I forgot to do it civilly. One of the laid-off guys was married to one of the office ladies. She says to me in tears one day, “I have to go, Jerry, it’s just not the same here
any more,” as though her leaving was going to help it stay the same. “You should see someone,” she said.

“You’re goddamn right,” I said.

“You can’t just let it all fall to pieces,” she said. She straightened her skirt like it was all that easy, like all I had to do was straighten my skirt. “Everyone needs you, Jerry They need some, like, guidance around here.”

“You just straighten your skirt there.”

They say they need you and they leave you. Most of them don’t even say they need you. I’m their bread and filling butter, trousers on their legs, payer of their rent, braces and dentures, booze on a Friday, but they never say thanks and all of them leave.

I forget to order materials. A whole block of phase five has stood still for four months because I’ve forgotten to order things. Pro
cure
ment. Pro
cure
ment.

“You’ve forgotten basic procurement,” says a hard hat to me.

“That’s a big word for a man in a hard hat,” I says.

“I’m an engineer,” says he.

But it’s still a big word, with cure in the middle like it will help me somehow: gathering things, ordering tiles, getting enough nails is going to cure me. Even words are betraying me.

“You’ve got to sign off on this,” the hard hat says. “Basic infrastructure, Jerry, we’re falling seriously behind. We need you to sign off on this.”

They need me. They need a king.

I am not a king.

T
HERE ARE CERTAIN BEAUTIES
about it, quite aside from proving him powerful: a fiery wind in the heart of calm, the sky on land, flight without movement, an epitome of chaos in a clean white tube. Certain beauties don’t appear to people immediately, but the city will cherish his work.

And it could be gloriously large. Paul has the funds. Paul, Simon’s helpful saint, had the zeal of the converted. He was in Damascus when Simon’s earthly form appeared; he met him on a street called Straight.

“It could be bigger than anything the Americans have,” Paul said.

S
ITUATIONS OCCUR TO HIM
. He is walking down a street called Nowhere and he sees Kwyet peering out of a colorless house, burning with ennui. He is her only hope. “Simon!” she cries.

He will save you. He will save you from this world of middling choices. When he finds her in her room she is glad as the spring. He lies down with her and they both grow hungrier the more they eat.

Right now she is in class tapping a pen on her lips. A lecturer speaks of the gigantic past, her pen taps more quickly and she resolves to make her world grow big with Simon. Tomorrow, in her favorite café she sits with her best friend, the one who met him by the pool, and shares some intimate thoughts. They talk about him together. They talk about many things but return to him as their theme,
he, him, Simon, me, he’s
. Think of all the café confidences he has overheard from all the pretty women.

He wanted to be the
he
in someone’s sentence. Then he would be big enough. He wanted Kwyet to speak of him.

N
ATURALLY, NOW THAT THE
four weeks had passed he found himself incapacitated with bronchitis. He had her phone number now but he could barely lift his lungs out of bed to travel to the phone.

He realizes all these things he coughs up are the impurities of his soul, but that is a morbid way of thinking which will not improve his health. What he has to do is rest, swallow the impurities so that perhaps he will be well enough to see her tomorrow. He will have a nap, call her in an hour, tell her he cannot come tonight, but can he please take her to a lovely restaurant in Montreal tomorrow?

He slept for twelve hours.

“K
WYET
, I
AM SO
sorry.”

“What happened?”

“I am hoorwaghff … hwarff!”

“Simon?”

“Hem.”

“Did you not want to visit me?”

“No! Good God! Hwoof, hwoof, hwoof, hwoof, hwoof, hwee! I …”

“You sound terrible.”

“Yes, I cuh, cuh, k!”

“That sounds horrible. I thought you were mad at me or something.”

“No!”

“I thought you were trying to get back at me. It didn’t … you know … Are you all right?”

A
ND NATURALLY THAT WAS
his last chance before her midterm break. Home with Matty and Leonard now, leaving him excluded in his Tomis for several black months.

“As soon as next term ends you should come. You should. When my exams are … after my exams.”

P
ERHAPS IT WAS THE
fever. When he moved from one room to another in his house he felt like the room he left was chasing him, like there was nothing to turn back to. When he entered a new room it was not like he was filling a new space, but like the space he just left was following and trapping him. Loneliness was catching up.

Perhaps it wasn’t the fever.

All these years later, I feel like every room in this house has breathed out, and won’t breathe in again.

Someone fell from a window.

H
IS LUNGS CONJURED NIGHTMARES
every night. Every dol of his pain echoed a pore of Kwyet’s skin. Such an exquisite body of anguish.

She was only twenty-five minutes away. Eleven stop lights. But it would not be right to appear at Leonard’s door at dawn with a cough, and a tear in his eye. For Matty’s sake.

He should have devised some means of communicating with her while she was staying with her parents. He was sure she would like a break. Matty was charming but he doubted that Kwyet wanted to spend her whole holiday with her.

Patience, though, patience. She is pining as much as I am. He got better. He got more work done.

“H
ERE IS THE PLAN
,” says Paul. “A nine-point-one-meter-wide, nine-point-one-meter-high, twenty-two-point-nine-meter-long test section,” he sings, “would make it the largest in the world. The complete structure would be enormous.”

“Go on.”

“Well, it will be huge.”

“Largest in the world, you say.”

“That’s right. And that’s just the beginning. We’ll have other wind tunnels. A vertical one, a Trisonic one. And within these
tubular structures, and surrounding them—look at these plans—we’ll have all the other facilities. Have you got things under way, Simon?”

“End of the week, Paul. I will submit my memo with the approval of my chairman.”