The Cube People (16 page)

On the suggestion of Zoe's parents, we booked a little B&B in Old Montreal down by the port close to the church where the ceremony will be held. It's a three-storey climb in an extremely narrow stairwell to our room and I lug an unwieldy stroller, a portable crib, my suit and two suitcases – though we're only staying one night. I make four trips and by the last one, I'm sweating up a storm. I tell Sarah I need to have a shower. The room has its own bathroom, but it's the s
mallest bathroom I've ever seen. After I get out, Sarah gets in (only room for one at a time) and sets off on an elaborate makeup ritual that she reserves just for special occasions. I get Sammy changed into her fancy dress. She's going to be two next week. Here's my little baby now walking and talking and I know it will soon be, “Dad, can I borrow the keys to the car?” My life seems to be accelerating. I thought publishing my book was somehow going to change my life. However, I'm still a nobody author who works for the government. I just don't know how I can fill in 822 forms and make banal pleasantries in the office coffee room for the next twenty years.

Normally on Saturday mornings I take Sammy to a parent and child sing-and-dance music program that's supposed to be good for developing minds. I do it to give Sarah a break, let her sleep in. There are twelve kids in the class, each with an accompanying parent. Eighty percent are dads. The reason for so many dads I believe is Katia, the former Russian ballet dancer turned dance instructor. Usually she prances around in a black unitard, often stretching before class. Most of the dads seem to arrive early to watch. Although I'm missing Katia's flexibility show this week, I'm very happy to have the day off from class. Dancing around with a scarf like a magic fairy for forty-five minutes is enough to make you right mental.

Sammy and I are playing with her stuffed bear, Mr. Honey, who's on a treacherous spelunking expedition in the closet after a harrowing trip to the top of Pillow Mountain, when Sarah finally emerges eons later from the bathroom, her makeup looking rather clownish. I've never understood why she applies so much lacquer and goo to her beautiful face on these festive occasions. “How do I look?” Sarah asks.

“You look beautiful, Mommy,” Sammy says.

Sarah and I look at each other and share this moment which is heartbreakingly sweet because it is the first time Sammy has ever said that. “Oh, thank you, baby,” says Sarah, picking up Sammy and swinging her around. “Don't you look just adorable?”

I marvel at them.

“And what do you think?” Sarah asks me.

“Like Sammy said, you look beautiful,” I lie. She looks like a Tammy Faye Baker cross-dresser. Her eyelashes appear to have been dipped in motor oil.

We make our way to the church where we find Phil and his groomsmen, Roy and Ross. Phil looks fantastic, beaming. We go about doing the multiple introductions to Phil and Zoe's respective families. Zoe's mother is French-Canadian and her father is Mexican, so the bride's side of the church is not big enough to hold them all.

Halfway through the ceremony, Sammy throws a fit and comes running up to me saying she needs her daddy. I hold her in my arms for the duration and by the time it's done, I'm sweating something fierce. I could use a drink. Sarah takes Sammy for a walk while I do the obligatory wedding photos. The reception and dinner are at Zoe's uncle's restaurant, a Mexican place. On arriving, we're greeted by a waiter carrying a tray of tall glasses of cold sangria. I snag one and greedily choke it down. The food and drink come at us, tidal wave after tidal wave. Polishing off my third drink to a mariachi serenade of “La Cucaracha,” Sarah tells me to ease off the drink because tonight is an important night in our fertility schedule.

“But baby, this is Phil's wedding and I'm the best man,” I plead with her.

“I still need you to function.”

“Don't worry baby, I'll be a rock.”

At 10 p.m., after much drink, food, speeches and dancing, Sarah takes Sammy, who is very overdue for sleep, back to the B&B. I stay and have a cigar and a gold tequila with Zoe's father. At 11:00, I realize I'd better get going. I make the rounds of the place, hugging strangers goodbye, many of them telling me how funny my speech was. Both Phil and Zoe give me a big warm hug. I'm lightheaded, giddy. Drunk, but not too drunk. And the thought of sex right now sends a wave of heat to my groin. Sarah baby, here I come.

To my surprise, the door of the B&B is locked. I ring the buzzer and wait. Nothing. I ring it again. Nothing. I have to take a piss. I knock and yell, “Helloooo!” Then through the glass square of the door, I see the little old man who runs the place coming down the hall. He lets me in and mumbles something in French that I don't understand, but assume to be that I don't need to yell, that people are sleeping.

“Yestankyougoodnigh,” slurs from my mouth as I march up the stairs, thoughts of intercourse filling my mind. On the third set of steps leading to my door, I trip, falling up the stairs. Sarah emerges in the stairwell shushing me. “For God's sakes, be quiet, I just got her down twenty minutes ago. She was a nightmare. I had to rub her back to sleep. She's in our bed.”

“Do you want me to transfer her?” I ask, rising to my feet.

“And risk waking her up? Hell no.”

“What about love-making?”

“We'll do it in the bathroom,” she says with an enthusiastic we-can-conquer-any-tough-problem zeal echoing in her voice.

“Jesus baby, I don't know, it's pretty tight in there.”

Listening to Sammy softly wheezing on the bed, Sarah and I quietly disrobe in the bedroom like giddy high school kids. My cock is suddenly, to my delight and surprise, an iron bar. I follow Sarah into the bathroom and shut the door behind me. The wall is on an angle because we're in the attic of this old building and I can only stand fully upright if I'm in front of the sink or in the single-person shower. My cock is poking Sarah in her lower back. “I don't think this is going to work,” I say.

“How about I sit on the toilet and put my legs up on the wall like this?” she suggests, getting into position.

I furrow my brow. Is this even possible? There's a tiny sink, the toilet next to it, and a shower with a door that only opens inwards because there's no space. In front of the toilet, there's a small window with an accompanying eight-inch ledge. Sarah's feet straddle either side of the window. I pull her one leg up as if it were a drawbridge and scoot in. With my butt resting on the window sill, ass cheeks pressed up against the window so I'm mooning the world, I reach over Sarah and grab hold of the toilet tank for support. She inches forward and we have contact. Despite being in this slightly uncomfortable sex pretzel, I'm loving it. There's something about the angle of penetration that seems to be working for both of us. Good news is I know that I'll be able to cum; bad news is I know it's going to be a while.

Twenty minutes later…

“My back's getting sore, can you hurry up?” Sarah groans.

I've talked about determinism before. What we think about and how we control that thinking is almost random at times for me. For whatever reason, maybe because my brain deems this to be a sexual emergency, I involuntarily flash to the bikini-clad sandy blonde from the cover of the
Sports Illustrated
swimsuit calendar that I stared at for four hours while I did my book signing. But then I think about Brian Mulroney. God almighty. My brain is doing a gestalt switch, back and forth between bikini blonde and Mulroney. I ask myself why but nothing comes, including Marvin.

“Colin, I love it, but my back is killing me. I'm going to have to stop soon,” Sarah says with pain in her voice. I hear hooting and hollering from the street below and suspect that someone has noticed, as we called it in university when we pushed our bare asses against a dormitory window, the pressed ham. I soldier on. Mulroney, bikini, Mulroney, bikini, Mulroney, bikini, Mulroney, bikini… oh God. It's a gusher. I cum to an image of Mulroney's head on the body of one of the most beautiful women in the world.

I look out the window and sure enough there are three young men cheering, clapping, drinking. One of them gives me the thumbs up, while another spins around and drops his pants exposing his white buttocks to me. I smile and wave in acknowledgement of their approval. Moving into the bedroom, I note Sarah lying on the floor with her feet against the door, making sure that all of my drunken sperm stay deep inside her. I gingerly transfer Sammy to her portable crib, managing (thank heavens) not to wake her.

I lie down and I let sleep pull me deep into its loving arms.

From: #The Refrigerator Committee

Date: 2009/04/20 AM 6:47:01 EDT

To: #FLOOR

Subject: The Abuse of “No Expiry”

To All Fifth-floor Empl
oyees:

This is a reminder that the refrigerator on this floor is for everyone to share. As everyone is well aware, every Friday afternoon a member of the Refrigerator Committee cleans out the fridge. Any food items that are not clearly marked with a name and an expiration date are tossed out in the trash. Some people have condiments in the fridge that have been labelled “no expiry.” The “no expiry” tag was intended for such things as mustard and hot sauce. However, since the “no expiry” tag has come into effect, there has been rampant abuse. One Refrigerator Committee member found a container of yogourt that had turned into a mossy green forest because someone had marked “no expiry” across its lid. Clearly this kind of abuse must end. Yogourt does go bad. Even ketchup goes bad.

From this Friday forward, ALL FOOD INCLUDING CONDIMENTS MUST HAVE AN EXPIRY DATE. Failure to comply will result in the aforementioned disposal.

Thank you in advance for your cooperation.

–The Refrigerator Committee

Attached to the email is a
Far Side
cartoon, “When potato salad goes bad.” If this isn't silly enough, Barry has sent out a floor-wide email about mandatory participation in next month's Earth Day campaign: Operation Spring Clean. We're all going to wander around outside the building and pick up garbage. Lovely. I must say, I'd rather collect trash than sit in here and die another day. I wonder how poor Carla's going to handle this. Bruce has sent me an email stating that Wolfgang will be reporting to work today. There had been a problem with his security clearance, so his start date had been delayed for three weeks.

Opening Internet Explorer, I navigate to the Stanzas website where I can check to see how many copies of
The Cube People
are sitting at the Sunshine Valley Mall location. Still five. No sales in three weeks. I Google myself hoping to find a review of my book. Nothing new. I check the weather and the CBC headlines. After reading a story about a dog that called 911 to save his owner, I log into the mainframe to start my day's work just as Carla comes in and takes several big glugs of hand sanitizer.

At 10:30, Bruce lightly raps his knuckles on my desk. “Hi, Colin, finally he's here. Let me introduce you to Wolfgang Peters, ta dah!” Bruce says, holding his hands out magician style.

Standing before me is a slightly fatter version of a young Peter Falk wearing a white shirt with a red plaid vest and a thin black tie. He looks as if he should be a bartender in Scotland. When I shake his hand, it's wet and clammy, toadish. Bruce asks me to run him through the log-in procedure and get him set up, make sure he has all the accesses he needs to get going.

Wolfgang and I sit down at his desk, Jackie's old spot, and surprisingly manage to log in on our first attempt. Thirty minutes in, as I'm explaining one of our reporting log procedures, Wolfgang's expression goes blank and he tilts his head up toward the ceiling. I look up to where he's looking and see nothing but office ceiling tiles. I look back at him. He's frozen, a statue.

“Wolfgang?” Nothing. “Wolfgang?” I repeat, waving my hand in front of his face. This seems to slightly arouse him back into a semi-conscious state.

“Hmmm yes,” he says dreamily. I assume here that Wolfgang is having an ADD moment. I'm not sure what I should do. How long will his state (for a lack of a better word) last? I have no idea. Although he's no longer staring at the ceiling, he doesn't seem to be fully back with me as I continue to explain the log. It's only a quarter after eleven, but I suggest we break for an early lunch.

“Okay, that sounds fine,” he drones as if he were under deep hypnosis. I need to get out of the office. I instinctively make my way to Phil's desk before I remember he's still on his month-long honeymoon in Hawaii. I decide to head over to Sunshine Valley. Crossing the street, I ponder some way to sabotage the plumbing in the handicapped washroom to render it permanently inoperable. Barry's need to justify the handicapped washroom has nothing to do with affirmative action, but rather with Barry having a nice private place to take a dump. I foresee myself having to babysit Wolfgang. I'm angry and it's only been thirty minutes.

On autopilot, I've wandered into Stanzas. I skim the titles on the “New and Hot” table. My book is absent, though the manager had put my extra copies there after my signing. I casually saunter over to the Science Fiction section. All five copies sit on the bottom shelf, their spines facing out. A lot of the other books have their covers facing out. I quickly rearrange the books so the cover of mine faces outwards. I grab three of the books and march them back to the “Hot” table and remove six copies of
The Gargoyle 2
, stashing these on the shelf below. Shameful I know. It's reverse shoplifting, but still thrilling and dirty. Pleased with my own handiwork, I continue on to the food court to get myself lunch.

Now seated next to the faux waterfall, I eat my sandwich as I gaze out upon the shoppers of Sunshine Valley. There's Freddy Fruitcake and the scooter lady in her bathrobe passing each other, as I'm quite sure they do several times daily. And here I am observing them, again. I'm the Jane Goodall of Sunshine Valley. When will it change? How many more years will I sit here? I could use a drink.

I envision myself dying, a sudden heart attack perhaps – what else? The headstone reads
Colin MacDonald, Sunshine Valley will never forget you. RIP
. It's softly raining and the staff of The Shawarma Pit are there, as well as Freddy Fruitcake, the old lady (but in a black bathrobe), the ladies from First Choice, the manager from Stanzas, all my MRC coworkers wearing bunny slippers, and a little crying Sammy who's asking her mom why her dad spent so much time at the mall. It's a humorous but horrifying image. I need to write a book that has the words “
New York Times
Bestseller” stamped across its cover. I need stickers: “Hugo Winner,” “Sophie's Choice,” “GG Winner,” “Nebula Winner,” “Oprah's Book Club.”

Crossing back to my building, I dread the thought of having to sit with Wolfgang and coach him. My shoulders relax as I round the corner into my quad and see he hasn't returned from lunch. Then ZAP, as if I'd jabbed my finger into an electrical socket, I hear his voice from behind me: “Oh, Colin, great you're back, do you want to continue?” All my internal strings pull tight. I smile and say, “Whenever you're ready.”

An hour later, Wolfgang freezes up again right in the middle of an explanation of file layouts. I tell him that I'm going to the washroom, not caring if he understands.

Looking at the walls of the handicapped washroom, I wish Crazy Larry were here with his sledgehammer. I stare into the mirror and think about my epitaph:
Here lies Colin MacDonald, dead by attrition.