The Adjustment League (13 page)

I open the book. “What kind of dungeon would it be?”

I perk up, we both perk up, an energy has entered the room, as the phrases come, slowly at first, born in funk but veering from it, making something of it. There's a “hollow tube,” some kind of entrance below the roots of a “giant tree… so high it has leaves in space.”

Something has definitely entered the room. Something real, something genuine. You know it because you do—there's no mistaking it—and because it speaks haltingly. It gulps, gasps, belches—testing its lungs (if it has any), trying to find a way to breathe. I feel a tingling in my stomach as something comes into being that didn't exist five seconds ago.

And then—poof! like that!—it's gone. The dungeon that was forming degenerates into borrowed trash, game-fed stuff about aliens, zombies, mutants, lasers, hit points, nuclears. It spools out of him so fast he doesn't even notice I've stopped writing and have closed the book over my thumb.

I feel sick. And pissed. In a split second, Jared's fantasy has left the room. Jared has left the room, leaving me to watch this jizzfest by a kid in Tokyo or Seattle.

“Jared, that's not your dungeon.”

“Yes it is.”

“It's from a game you played. Or watched. Or maybe a TV show.”

“No, it isn't. I made it up.”

Stalemate.

I give it some time, then say, “Jared, the tree with its top in space was interesting. And I'd like to know where the hollow tube goes.”

“That was stupid.”

“Well, I liked it. And you could always start another.”

For a nervous little elf, he can sulk like a trucker at closing time. I have no idea whether I'm being a responsible teacher or a sadist. He could learn better sentence structure by punctuating his first-person-shooter scenario. But I'm simply unwilling to transcribe something so zillionthhand lame.

Looking away, chin pushed out sullenly—behind us, Lucy has stopped cooking, there's no sound from the kitchen. After a time, he starts. Tonelessly, letting me know that what he's describing might be a dungeon meant for me. But at least it's his own.

There's a shack in the desert. Nothing else around. Sign on the front: For Bullies. It's a little thin shack with a pointed roof. “Like a poop shack.” A single chair inside. I think of school when he says that. When the bully sits down, the chair flips over instantly, sending him down a chute. Then rights itself as if nothing has happened. If you blink you miss it.

“What's down the chute?”

But that's it. All I'm getting today. As we wrap up, I encourage him to bring more ideas Wednesday. What awaits the bully at the bottom of the chute? Is there any way out? How?

I might be advising myself, I think as I shut the door. But that is what teaching is, or what I take it to be: helping someone to go where you've gone, should go, will soon go, are still going…

§

After they leave, I do a drive-about. But know, before the garage door has quite rolled up to the ceiling, that it's hopeless. Not only do I know there'll be no sign of her, but I'm lacking any sense she even
could
appear. Not fear of failure: certainty of it. And on top of that: a confusion about whether I'm looking for Megan, or Lois, or someone else entirely. When there's no someone to find, you can only find everyone.

Down Avenue to St. Clair. East to Mt. Pleasant and down the hill. Turning east again above Branksome Hall, then up and down streets in the Rosedale maze. Lois's home turf.

Confusions spill from the first one, miniature spiders scattering from a split egg sac.

Why have you always assumed they'd still be in Toronto? That she was never more than a lucky car ride away?

The family would try to keep them close, no question. And would have succeeded in the short run, the safe nest needed. But Lois restless, strong-willed. And would meet someone, not right away, but before very long—that was easy, strangely comforting, to accept. And all the things that could take the new trio anywhere. Jobs. Exhibitions. Medical procedures. Christ, university by now. It's not 1813. The odds are powerfully against anyone staying where they begin.

Dandelion world. Filaments hanging by a thread, the winds gusty.

You just couldn't bear to think of them scattered by sheer chance. Blown beyond even the unlikeliest stroke of luck.

Not only can I not hear if the engine's sludgy, even the wheel beneath my hands feels like test pattern dots. The lawns beyond my headlights a mirage seen through binoculars.

Nothing. Nothing out here
.

I stop beneath a shade tree, a big one still with its leaves, and turn everything off.

Silence. And then the something always there, behind it. A kind of whispering.

Wealth has locked its doors and turned off its lights but I seem to hear it all around me, a barely audible rustling like the quiet munching of silkworms in the dark.

7

Prologue: The Stairs

The dreams come on schedule.

(The dreams are the schedule.)

The dreams lead down.

(The dreams lead to Stone.)

First, the Ugly Dreams. Lurid loops of filth and savagery. Burst sewers in a human abbatoir. Severed heads and limbs in watery sludge bobbing with turds. Not snapshots of carnage but endless coiling chases
through
it. Through corridors and up and down stairs in a house riddled with grimed passageways clogged with smashed belongings. A sense hanging in the fetid air of endless years of neglect, endless abandonment. Isolate decay.

Yet—something is moving. In the stillness of the ruined architecture, something moves without pause, wrecking all it finds. You sense it, always. Pursue it, flee it. It is just ahead and just behind. It needs no rest, so you can take none.

Finally, in a room fogged and reeking, you meet. The putrid chase ends abruptly. You see his back, hunched over his work, and feel the weight of steel in your hand.
You've always known this
.
He won't pause to turn, now. Neither will you.

This is the bottom
.

And yet—it isn't.

Incredibly, all the panting pursuit and stomach-churning finds, all the grinding repetitions of terror—they amount to a barrier you must cross. A shell, a membrane, you must tear through to reach a threshold. It is there, on the other side of the Ugly Dreams, that the stairs start.

They are—the Ugly Dreams—a passage through to the landing.

And a message, too. Stone's reminder that hyper-black is far along and won't hold much longer. Descend the stairs to learn what must be done. Descend the stairs to find Stone.

The job is on the stairs, and Stone waits at the bottom.

The dreams come on schedule.

(The dreams are the schedule.)

The dreams lead down.

(The dreams lead to Stone.)

§

Amazing how little has changed
. Twenty-three years since the page was typed on Lois's Smith-Corona, yet it captures perfectly what just jolted me awake on the couch. Bolt upright, shaking with terror and disgust. 3 a.m.? 4? Sooty gray through the uncurtained window, but the street dead silent.

The dream already scuttling backwards into the black it came from. Even this dim too bright for it. Just traces, disappearing. A leg torn off below the hip, flesh oozing red around the splintered femur. Brown swipes on the wall. Sludge ankle-deep already. And the sense, hovering: whoever did this, is doing it, is close. Close by.
Just ahead and just behind
.

All here. On a page buried among other papers from that time, a box of them in a corner of the bedroom closet. What you set down, then. What just tore you out of sleep, now.

There is no now and then. You're in a loop. Round and round
.

Aging. Not changing.

Out on the balcony, suck in air that's taken a wintry turn. Dark bricks ahead. Fenced slabs of concrete one way, blinking tower the other. Hizzoner underneath it with his pals, plotting and partying in his black-velvet cellar.

City Hall not the tower, nowhere near it. But geography broke for fantasy long ago. Where else for the Big Man's bunker but sunk deep below the pseudo-building? Flunkies bringing stacks of takeout 24/7 as, drunk and high, he screams and schemes how to keep his base, his Nation. Sucked wings and bottles smash against the walls, bellows of outrage stab the ears. How? HOW??!! Such pointless pain, when a tranked-out monkey could tell him his base is firmly in his sweaty palms, it always has been, he hit on the formula from the start.
No new taxes
. Save the guy with the three-car garage and the heated driveway two hundred bucks a year and he's yours. Whisper at the same time that what little he does pay won't find its way into the paws of the lazy breeding maggots in the roach towers, pregnant teen sluts sucking strangers for smokes—
not a fuckin' nickel, y'hear, I'm workin' on it
—and he's yours for life.

Him and all his mall-trawling, frappa-slurping, Bluetooth-bawling brood.

The Nation safe.

Night's done, no question. Sleep anyway. Back on the couch, I read again the piece from years ago. Calmer now. Hizzoner does that for me, I'll give him that. His dream plug-ugly, but mundane.
Fuck you I got mine
a credo old as office.

The description holds. So does its meaning. Stone putting me on notice. The window closing, our meeting can't be postponed much longer. As vile as the Ugly Dreams are, slayfests of gore and shit, what waits beyond them will be far more eerie and unsettling. Crushings of the birth canal nothing to the light and chill of Delivery.

With steps to a secret cellar, put the nastiest-looking guy you can find outside the unmarked door. Members Only says his hideous mug.

§

Lois's idea
—

Remembering that as I unplug the toilet for the girls in 201. A monthly job at least, which I'm just as glad to have today. Morning shredded by that start. Odd-job some hours at No Name Towers, hope things gel by evening. Embarrassed, Alyssa's gone to make tea. Usually it's a toothbrush or make-up applier or disposable razor I fish out—things they always pop cute eyes at “how that got there.” Though the real mystery to me is how you can brush your teeth or curl your lashes over a bowl of shit, yet be too dainty to dip a hand in to retrieve the fallen thing.

Try writing it down. Quick, before you forget it
. Lois sounding sleepy, looking for a way to salvage some shut-eye herself. Said I thrashed and groaned, then whimpered before shouting myself awake. But believed in writing too. Kept various journals, one just for dreams. No recovery pimp—I couldn't have loved that—but believed in digging channels to connect above and below. A miner at heart. Psychically, artistically. And tough and brave enough for that work.

“This is good,” she said next morning over coffee. “Creepy. Maybe a little too abstract, but it catches something. And makes me want to keep reading.” And suggested—the thriller reader—that I add the title:
Prologue: The Stairs
. Got right away that it had to lead much further down.

“Well, it could hardly lead up.”

We laughed. We laughed a lot. Even that last fall—though worry weighed on her—we could still crack each other up… right up to the moment past which we'd never laugh or even smile in each other's presence again.

A little tussle—Lois puzzled and put out somehow—when I didn't want to repeat the experience. Neither by extending this writing or trying another one. Someone not just talented but managing her talent, wringing every drop from it, parsing all its promptings—she couldn't fathom not following up on a win. But writing held no allure for me. I liked reading, was all. That, to her, was wasteful. Or self-deceiving.

“What about someone who visits art galleries? Buys art books. Buys pictures even. But never once sits down in front of an easel, or has any desire to.”

That helped a little. She knew lots of those people, after all. Had sold pictures to a few.

Though she wouldn't quite surrender her sense that something—someone—was being squandered.

How do you not love that?

§

A toilet, a leaky faucet, some loose bathroom tiles. I head out at 3:45, catch the bank just before closing. No funds yet. “Tomorrow for sure.” But my people don't work for tomorrow—not for me, they don't. “I'll be back first thing.”

Pigeon Man sitting by an alley just east of Yonge. Back against the wall, legs straight out in front of him. The birds march up and down the narrow alley, mill around him, walk circles on his lap and up and down his outstretched legs. Shitting randomly, as birds do. Splotches of white coat his crotch and legs, wrists, hands. It looks like an act he's worked up, dedicated himself to. And the wide berth people give him, arcing to the curb as they pass, clears a neat semicircular stage. But he's relaxed, smiling, murmuring to his companions. In his own world, no hint of performance. He calls them by name as they peck at his half bagel. A stink comes off him—picked up where the detour to curbside starts, the pedestrians as choreographed as the birds. He's tall, bony, with a movie prophet's mane of graying hair. St. Jerome, devils by CGI. Face and hands a deep, leathery brown—he hasn't been inside since winter.

It's obvious the scene will have to be transplanted to Max's office, where it will just about fit. Plenty of room for traipsing and for short, shit-spilling flights. And no shortage in this crew of toothless bills needing fittings. Massively receded gums.

I just need the funds, Ken
. Insta-everything the promise these days. And a lot does come that way. But then there are these pockets, way-stations. Info-bit spots an old pal on the circuit and holes up for a few hours over bad coffee, bitching and laughing about the binary grind.

Tomorrow for sure. I can't see any reason why it…

Presto-World. Everything guaranteed—in foam, not iron.

BMV is pleased to buy back the Alzheimer's book. Overnight read-and-sells nothing new to them—obsession is the bedrock of their business. The clerk, same guy as yesterday, skips the flip-through. Another virtue of the word freak: he's not on a page long enough to soil it.

On a parkette bench down the hill from the Queen's Arms, I empty my pockets and count coins. Besides the eight bucks from BMV, I've got another toonie, and the loonie and two quarters I found in a dryer drum in the third-floor laundry room. Just over eleven bucks. Reluctantly, I open one of the rolls in my jacket pocket and add another four loonies, crimp it shut again. They're supposed to be for emergency use only, but I need enough to stake me to the first round at least.

In my early days as a super, I thought the laundry room might serve as another bank for short-term loans. Along with the rent cheques at the first of the month, I deposit the rolls of coins I collect from the boxes on the Owner's two washers and two dryers. A source, I thought, of small tide-me-overs at lean month-ends. If I had to siphon too much, I could bump up next month's deposit. He could hardly miss such relatively small and random discrepancies.

Not so fast. The first time I shorted him by ten bucks—from a two-hundred-dollar take from the four machines—the Owner was on the phone before the end of the business day. Not accusing me—not directly—but wondering if a tenant had found a way to wash or dry without paying. Did I know if that was possible? It seems he'd actually had someone graph the receipts over years, factoring in the regular rises in fees for which I changed the coin slots accordingly, and he knew to a remarkable degree of accuracy what an average month of use should bring in. Even knew which months were heavy and lighter. Did I know that people washed their clothes much more often in the summer? Outside more, of course. Sweating. And seeing others and being seen. Much easier to let a wash go late in the winter, shiver in the comfy same a couple more days. Did I know that? I did now. It was January when we were speaking.

He'll be alone tonight. But not before 6:30. Most drinkers have braking devices in place, and start time is a common one. No wonder how I know these things, no guessing required. Prophecy common window coin. Five weeks ago, it might've been a shooting star sparking in black, a fizz of lime-white announcing a window opening… but not now. Cross the river in the dark and the next stone will be right where your foot needs it to be, shining in a spot of helpful moonlight.

No less natural than the squirrel tugging the Burger Shack bag out from under the juniper.

§

He's sitting at the very back this time, alone, at one of the round tables pushed against the wall around the pool table. He's on the side that catches some of the light over the baize and the racked balls. Facing me but hunched over, reading something intently.

The front room's boisterous already, though it's all coming from one long row of tables. A strange party. A bunch of boys, young men—one, two, three… seven of them—looking barely old enough to shave, directing overlapping stories and jokes at a massive, suet-faced woman sitting at one end of the table. They're dressed identically, in gray jackets and blue ties. She's wearing voluminous cloth, striped diagonally in primary colours. Marlon Brando in his muumuu in
The Island of Dr. Moreau
. The scene is hard to figure. Private school boys taking their teacher or headmistress for a pint? But these boys, though they look young enough to card, must be beyond high school. They've all got glasses of beer in front of them, including her, three pitchers on the table. Grad students, then, with their curmudgeonly advisor? But why the matching, prep school rigs?

“What's he drinking? Whatever it is, I'd like two of them.”

The daughter puts her hands on her hips. She's very pretty, a different shade of hot pants tonight. Turns to her mother, who's already clocking me. Father nowhere in sight.

Mother approaches with a kindly expression. Puts a hand briefly on mine. Cool, soft—I wish she'd leave it there. The trouble with some people touching you. “No trouble please,” she says.

“None. Word of honour.” With my hands up like she's got a gun. “It'll end with a friendly handshake. Just watch. You'll see.”

She shakes her head slowly, but nods at the daughter, who pulls the two half-pints. Sets them on the bar and reaches overhead for a tray. When I tell her I'll carry them over myself, she picks at my toonies and loonies like they're turds, leaves the extras, my tip, lying on the counter. My charms at work.

Now Mother, hands folded below her waist, is staring at me with a blank face in which I can't read even the hint of an emotion.
People are strangers to me. I know nothing of them
.

Absolutely the wrong thought to carry into an encounter.

I bring the glasses up towards my nose and inhale deeply. Toasted malt, strongly nutty, cradled by sweetly vegetal vapours with tangy strikes—rain-washed grass beside a pine tree. The trick, for me—which, with some close calls, has worked so far—is to experience the full allure of the travel brochure and decide not to embark. Avert your eyes and you may find yourself on board by mistake.