The Adjustment League (23 page)

And with a whirling sensation behind my forehead, a kind of cosmic cashier turns to me and looks up, I can almost see her face, her startled eyes—

Was there something else?

§

It is the Empress who gives me an answer to Max, lets me finish what I've started saying. She doesn't speak a word herself. Her thin lips have never once moved on my visits—she won't do anything that lessens her struggle even for an instant. But I find myself beside her on the dim stairs. Pinned in her raised niche, she is at eye level as I stand on the step. I don't lose the sensation of my hands flat against the cool glass of Vivian's table, or the sight, a background I can easily bring into sharper focus, of Max's impatiently waiting face. She has wrested herself further around. There is blood flowing from the far side of her face, which shows, beyond a curve of plump cheek, chewed-up skin flecked with grit. Like the cheek of a motorcyclist after a spill on gravel. Some of the blood flows down her neck into the shadows, becomes a dark line before it disappears. A thinner, brighter thread trickles out under her chin and down her thin neck, staining the high collar of her white shift. It is a bright, fresh red despite the grainy light.

Seeing it, seeing her, puts words in my throat. I think them as I hear them.

“I want,” I say, “Judy taken care of. Taken care of for life. You'll set up a trust fund of two hundred thousand dollars. We both know that isn't much to live on, for however long she lives. But she's used to making do, and it will be enough. You'll invest it with a man I'll put you in contact with. He'll see that it returns at least five percent annually, maybe a bit more on average. That will give her eight hundred dollars a month. Together with her disability benefits, plus old age security in a few years, she'll have enough for what she needs. A small apartment, even. Maybe shared. We'll see. There's a lot to work out, including a reliable POA. But your part is the two hundred thousand, set up in a legal trust fund with all the necessary papers.”

Max shaking his head slowly back and forth, starting from the first mention of Judy.

“You don't know what you're asking,” he says. “It's not possible.”

“I know exactly what I'm asking, and it's dead easy.”

“Now, if you were to ask what I assumed you were going to ask,” he goes on, as if I haven't said anything, “I could make out a cheque directly to you. Not for that amount, obviously, but for whatever figure we arrive at.”

“Nothing's coming to me. And I've just told you what's coming to Judy.”

The bathroom door opens. Vivian, dressed again, drying her hair with a towel, crosses the short distance to the bedroom, closes the door behind her. Max doesn't turn. Again I expect her to emerge pointing something at me. Instead, I hear the thunks of drawers opening and closing, the chings of hangers on rods. Sounds of a woman changing her clothes.

“You don't know anything,” Max says.

That sentence again. Old Faithful. “I know that two hundred grand is chump change to you. A rock bottom rate for Christmas Music. It wouldn't even add up to Judy's share of the estate, though I'm sure there's nothing coming to her there. The family's done too good a job at keeping her from money all her life to mess up now. So consider it a piece of her share, which went to you instead. Or take it out of your own petty cash. Streams from dentistry, from real estate, from other investments, from God know's what—and now, some huge chunk from your mother. C'mon, Max. It's coins under seat cushions to you. You won't even miss it.”

Shaking his head again. His lips set. “That's off the table. We'll have to come to another arrangement.”

“You're out of arrangements,” I say, getting up. “That's the thing you people can never believe. That there isn't another option to click. If that's off the table, I'm off the table. And out the door.”

I scoop the gear into the Shoppers bag. “I did what you asked,” Max says. “Crazy as it—”

“You didn't do shit. I said your home, not your fuckpad.”

Silence for a moment from the bedroom, then the dressing noises resume.

“What is this
obsession
with where I live?”

“I don't trust what I see anywhere else. With anyone that's true, but especially with you. I have to see home base, or else I don't see anything. What are you out here anyway? Credit card trails, fine dining experiences. Your
professional life
. Parking garages, ready-to-flips, fuckpads. Put it all together and it's nothing but smokescreen, squid's ink. I need to see the rock you flatten under at night, the crack you peer out from, before I can even believe in you.”

“That doesn't make any sense. It sounds—”

“Insane. I know.”

“All right. We'll do it at my place, if that's what it takes.” Saying it in a tired voice, but sitting up straighter, as if energized by the thought of another round. In some ways I've underestimated him. He's like a slim reed. Easy to bend over, bend double. Hard to break.

“No, Max. We already did it—you did it—right here. The package is on its way.”

“You lied to me.”

“And you lied to the girls in your chair. They thought they were getting their teeth cleaned, not starring in your wank gallery.”

“But… but…”

“You do a pretty good stalled engine. Keep practising it while you wait for the knock on your door.”

§

Stupid
.
Stupid
, as I'm going down in the elevator. You surrender any leverage you had without getting anything in return. Vivian your best hope now. Vivian and Max together. Unwilling to believe they've really run out of rope. It'll take a flash argument, followed by meandery seeping debates, but they'll get to where it's just my latest move, my starkest-seeming yet, the supposed last straw that announces the start of the endgame of real negotiation.
They have to, they have no choice
.

And have just about convinced myself when the elevator reaches the lobby.

A huge pale guy is filling the small couch opposite the security desk, a cellphone to his ear. He's enormous—
the biggest brother
. Somewhere between lineman and sumo-in-training. The phone a canapé in his palm. I sit down in the armchair kitty-corner to him.

“Uh huh,” he says, after listening for a minute. Then says it a few times in succession, with pauses in between, as if confirming a series of instructions. “Uh huh… uh huh… okay… uh huh…” Midway through, he becomes aware that I'm just sitting here looking at him, and he stares back at me, his expression darkening.

After another long silence, he begins repeating things for the person on the other end, speaking slowly and louder than normal, as if to someone elderly.

“Red peppers… zucchini… kale… no, the other kind, I got it… mixed beans… brown sugar… Dad, hang on a second, will you?” Holds the phone out from his head, like a rock he's going to throw. “Excuse me,” he says to me. “Do you have a problem I can help you with?”

“No, I don't. I thought I did, but it's gone. Have a nice evening.”

15

Sitting in the
graveyard with my back to a headstone, waiting for them to stop breaking things. The air strangely mild for the end of October, almost sultry, as if summer has forgotten its window closed five weeks ago and we're halfway to winter. Still. The closed-down way things get during scrambled interludes, when animals large and small stay hunkered in the nest, wary of pleasant conditions that make no sense. No stars at all, though the clouds are sparse and thin. Just thick layers of whitish mist that the streetlights turn in places to glowing cotton.

The heavy dew brings a chill. Quickly soaking my jeans and coat, releasing mould and caramel apple smells from the fallen leaves. Forming little clear beads on polished marble.

How long to wait? Till dawn would be prudent, let night's predators sign off—but my bones and joints are aching, muscles stiffening and cramping around the old injury sites. Shifting about, I can't get comfortable in any position for more than a few minutes at a time.

Upgrades to Peach and Lemon will wait a while, maybe quite a while, for me to return. But not as long as they should—which is as long as it takes. ADHD endemic to the breed.

It's the sluggard and the fool who counts the enemy's failings and calls that strategy.

Still, it's far from daylight, the slide and swing set just gloomy shapes beyond the gate, when I get up stiffly and start limping along Roselawn and down Latimer home.

Halfway down the first floor hallway, Mrs. Xue is standing outside 103, washing her door. Her door and the frame and a precise-looking foot of wall around the frame. She's fully dressed, although it's dark outside, her kerchief knotted under her chin. Bending to rinse her wash rag in a bucket of soapy water, standing much closer to the door than most people would.

Lucius is standing behind her, at the correct distance to indicate support without crowding her beyond endurance. He gives me a helpless shrug, drops his eyes. Behind him, Lucy's sticking her head out of the far stairwell. At the sight of me, she disappears.

Mrs. Xue and her husband are the most profoundly withdrawn people I know. I don't know how they could have met and married. Schizophrenic, or autistic, or some other combination of syllables that closes like a shell far above them. In their fifties—though, like all extreme introverts, they can look ancient or almost babyish at times—they live in absolute silence behind an embossed metal plaque whose meaning has always eluded me. It shows, in reds and golds, what look like two toddlers, a boy and a girl, but dressed in ceremonial adult robes, smiling as they embrace each other playfully. Mr. Xue will be as far behind that door as he can get, if not in a closet or in bed with the sheets pulled over him. I've rarely seen him. On the rare occasions when communication is unavoidable, Mrs. Xue handles it, usually in writing: propping an envelope with twelve post-dated cheques against my door once a year, waiting just long enough to make sure I answer her mouse-like tap. Sliding a request for a repair under the door, vacating the apartment while I complete it. When speech is unavoidable, her voice is quiet but clear and precise, to avoid the need for repetition or elaboration, and she flinches visibly from the effect of my voice in her ears. They shop at night, at one of the 24-hour groceries, and return by bus laden with bags. If anyone else is entering or leaving, they shrink against the wall until they pass, becoming slender silhouettes of negligible dimension.

A stranger seeing Mrs. Xue now might see a woman working so intently that she's oblivious of the two men in the hallway with her. Yet our presence is so intolerable, even at the distances we're observing, that she's quivering all over with the strain of keeping at her task. She's somewhere deep inside herself, atom-sized, cowering in a safe black space preserved beneath her rattling paper skin.

To relieve her, Lucius comes up by the entrance to talk to me. “They went up and down every floor, banged on everyone's door. Don't say anything, just banging a couple of times. Loud. A few people sleep right through. But most people wake up. Come out into the hall, see who's banging, maybe a fire or something. Some people got scared when they don't see anyone. We knocked on your door but there's no answer.”

“I was out.”

Lucius nods. He's speaking softly, barely looking at me. An honest man's mild rebuke. “Lucy and I get them settled down, tell them it's just kids, no problem. But Mrs. Xue…”

“Trying to wash them off her door.” Now I'm the one nodding. Lucius is just looking at the floor. “What did they look like?”

“Big guys. Two of them. They were at the end of the hall.” Flicks a glance up at me. “Your door,” he says. “You want me to come up with you?”

“Thanks, but no. Go to bed. I've got it.”

My guys. My problem.

I brought them here to soil Mrs. Xue's door. Brought them to where people were sleeping.

Time to put this adjustment to bed.

§

Upstairs, the door hangs crookedly, the jamb splintered above and below the knob.

Piss stains on the wall by the balcony door. Side by side, yellowish-gray, almost dry. Puddle beneath them. Reassuring somehow—hardly the seal of craftsmen.

Fridge and freezer doors standing open. The contents scattered in a circle, some dumped or smashed. Two veggie bags ripped open, bok choy and gai lan flung about. But not
the
bag. It's with some others in a puddle of milk and coffee grounds, the stick inside dry and intact.

Two blocks of chicken broth dumped out and thawing. Just two again. Two out of perhaps a dozen. These wall-pissers didn't want to get their hands too dirty. But no point in tossing a place unless you toss it all.

Wyvern hiring—Wyvern outsourcing—to the rescue again.

A shambles, all the same. The bedroom first up, and hardest hit. Bed and bedding thrown around, mattress and box spring knifed open. Curtains yanked down. Closet box of keepsakes and papers dumped and flung about. I close the door on it.

The Ikea sofa—lumpy and stained for twenty years—finally done. Lying on its back with short legs in the air, the frame and cushions sliced open wildly. Half-empty cushions thrown around, gobbets of stuffing like gray sponge cake. Coffee table upended, a leg kicked skew. Only the armchair strangely intact, lying on its side by the window.

Big Empty's talismans sent skidding around the floor. Too much space, and not enough things, for them to do much with. They found the USB when they tore the lid off “Precious Things.” Before the kitchen, probably—it helped make them lazy. The original
and
any copies would have been stressed—but see their faces: stupidly pleased, leering at snagging the prize.

The butterfly wing frame smashed against the window ledge. Glass pieces and twisted wood beneath it, square of matboard. And—what's this?

Over in the corner, lying on its side, the single wing. A faded orange and black—it seemed brighter under glass. But whole. Not of interest to them.

Just as she found it
. Northern rock. Scarred parquet floor. Still voyaging.

I stare at it a while, lost below thought. Then retrieve a sheet of paper from the bedroom mess and make a crude envelope, slide it in gently. Fold over the top.

One last place.

The empty inside Big Empty. Its empty heart.

Nothing for them to do in there. Yet fearful just the same. Knowing they swung hands with knives, kicked apish feet.
Knowing
—

I switch off the light before approaching the open closet. Sky brightening now. No light normally reaches it, not beyond what leaks under the door.

Move my hand through timidly. A pass across. Up and down. The nothing they found. It couldn't have detained them long. Moments, no more.

It's the one place air has substance to my hands. A solid shape it takes under my fingers, just for an instant, before vanishing. Like thinnest ice—melting at the first touch.

Close the door quietly.

§

It takes a couple hours just to put things in basic order. Decide what can be salvaged—not much. Start taking the rest in loads down to the garbage room. Bags of the smaller stuff for the bins, which are almost full. Tonight the garbage goes out to the curb for morning pickup. Their timing was perfect, that way. The wrecked furniture leaned in the niche for odd items and exchanges, an alcove of leftover space beside the garbage room at the bottom of the stairs.

Someone has left a mattress there. Not too old or stained, still fairly firm. I take it back upstairs and set it down on the bedroom floor, once I've swept and mopped it and let it dry again. I don't need it at the moment. The bag in Big Empty's fine for whatever sleeping's left in this window. But once the window closes I could be spending a lot of time on it.
Time you may not remember. But it'll go by all the same
.

I stand in the doorway, taking it in. The padded rectangle the only furnishing in an otherwise clean, bare room with white walls. It looks like a display, a piece of art—some kind of simplified statement in a museum—rather than anything normally meant by the word “bedroom.” And I can't decide if it's beautiful or hideously ugly. A meaning in it hovers just beyond my reach.

The whole apartment's that way. Radically reduced. Aside from the appliances, just two pieces of sizable furniture remain: the mattress, and the armchair by the window. The rest had to be pitched.

What looked like the spare essentials of a management monk seem, in memory, almost cluttered. What would simple actually look like? Where—how—would you find it?

Maybe to answer that—to get closer to the answer—I bag all the keepsakes and old papers and journals from the closet box, even those not ripped up, and take them down to the garbage. The small bookcase in which I kept library books and magazines, and a couple of other small tables for setting things on—these go down to the exchange space, for anyone who wants them.

I wash the wall by the balcony. Then refill the bucket with soapy water and wash any other smudges. Sweep all the floors and mop them afterwards with Mr. Clean and hot water.

An armchair and a mattress. That takes care of sitting or lying. If you're not doing those, you're standing or walking—and plenty of unobstructed space for that.

Sleeping bag in Big Empty, for a guest.

Which is you at the moment
.

I phone the guy I use for doors. A surprising number of them get smashed: thieves occasionally, more often going-away gifts or break-ups. He can't fit me in until next Thursday, he's too busy. For an extra hundred bucks, he offers an expedited service, but Ken's funds are already overstrained. And, obviously, the Owner is nowhere in the picture.

“Just the regular. Thursday's fine.” And, after a trip to the hardware store up the street, I get the door fastened well enough with a staple and hasp and padlock, screwing them in above the splintered section around the knob. A hinge is jiggling loose, but that can wait.

If someone wants to smash through this, they'll have earned a used mattress, a twenty-five-year-old chair, and two weeks' of chicken soup
.

The USB of Christmas Music goes in one of my top coat pockets.
Where it should've been all along?
Can't remember, at the moment, why I decided that was a bad idea.

§

Before heading out, I undertake a few repairs from my list. Partly because I'm in a maintenance groove, and partly to show the tenants I'm back on the job, that their super is no longer AWOL. From their dubious looks and sourly mumbled thanks, they're not buying it. Why should they? Where was I, after all, when assholes were pounding around the premises?

I knock softly on the Xues' door but get no answer. I wasn't expecting one. Putting my ear to the door, I hear—or imagine—glidings, sub-whisperings. Twin absences that graze the threshold of communion, silences rubbing against one another in endless consolation.

After a visit to the No Frills off St. Clair, where I restock what's needed to keep my meal plan going, I drive over to Mount Pleasant, south to Bloor, and then east over the viaduct. The anti-suicide mesh creates an effect of taut, stretched sails—but sails you can see through. The Luminous Veil, it's called—a name which, like my denuded bedroom, is either delicately beautiful or brutally callous, depending on my mood. Sometimes I see it both ways, like a coin spinning above me in a toss. A veil, luminous or otherwise, exists to screen something off from clear view. But what is being screened? Suicide? A life without suicide? Everything about the barrier has been ambiguous from the start. An editorial citing the moral necessity of suicide prevention, especially since most attempters, if stopped, do not make a successful attempt later—but the well-reasoned paragraphs concluded by adding that falling bodies often endangered motorists on the DVP below, traumatizing them if seldom hurting them more directly, and holding up traffic on an already notoriously congested roadway. Before the barrier, the Bloor Viaduct had more fatalities than any other elevated structure in North America after the Golden Gate Bridge. After the Luminous Veil was in place, suicides from that spot all but ceased. Yet the number of suicides by jumping from other structures in Toronto didn't change…

Mrs. Rasmussen is raking the yard on Selkirk Street. There are no trees on the lawn, but the wind has blown a few leaves and paper scraps onto the narrow strips of grass on either side of the walkway. More than necessary landscaping, it looks like an excuse to get out, get some fresh air, a little exercise. One of the residents is also standing with a rake, close to the edge of the property. He's just holding the rake loosely, staring down at the ground.

When she sees me coming, Mrs. Rasmussen comes down the walk. She holds the rake straight up and out from her side, like a soldier in a movie about the old aristocracy might hold a staff. She looks tired—beyond tired, burdened to the end of weariness. Her heavy shoulders slump in her cardigan. Like she's carrying the viaduct on them.
Oh no
, I think.