The Book of Stanley (6 page)

 

ELEVEN

T
he following night, in Saskatoon, Kal wondered about Hell. He was back in his apartment on Tenth Street at Dufferin, playing Halo 2, destroying the Covenant one by one in order to save mankind. Gordon Yang was over, and they were drinking beer and eating Old Dutch salt-and-vinegar.

“There's no Hell,” said Gordon, as he wasted a small pack of aliens near what appeared to be a pile of burning tires. “It was invented to stop people from being bad.”

Kal nodded, but he wasn't sure he agreed with Gordon. Usually, in these sorts of conversations, he would nod and hope it would be over soon so they could talk about hockey or maybe video games or women. Tonight he actually considered Hell, and decided he believed in it. Not the exotic one he'd learned about at Sacred Heart School, but a different sort of place, smelling of white toast and shoulder pads. Hell was playing hockey all your life, skating for seven years on the verge of the show, only to wake up one morning and realize you were slow, drunk, angry, and uneducated. To have a wife who divorced you because she thinks you have no future and a daughter who's forgetting you more and more every day.

“You barely touched your beer.”

Not only was Kal suddenly bored with beer, he was bored with Halo 2. It was as though he had eaten a bad hot dog, only the rot was in his head instead of his stomach. In twenty years of video games, from the old Pong console
hooked up to the black-and-white
TV
in his bedroom to the new Xbox, Kal had never been bored. Yet here he was, in his dark and smelly apartment off Broadway, stricken by the meaninglessness of what was possibly the greatest video game ever created.

Earlier that evening, before Gordon Yang showed up with the beer and potato chips, Kal had staved off panic by fetching the small canvas bag of pornography from his bedroom closet. Even his favourite flick,
Indiana Joan and the Black Hole of Mammoo
, couldn't cheer him up. It struck him, for the first time, that the girls of
Indiana Joan and the Black Hole of Mammoo
couldn't possibly be having any real fun. Kal removed the disk from his
DVD
player, tossed it into his canvas bag of pornography, and dropped it all into the garbage chute. After listening to an Otis Redding disc, an emergency tactic, he began to weep. Then he dialed Candace's number in Kelowna.

Elias Shymanski answered in that phony high-class voice of his, and Kal paused. “Hello?” the man said again, as though he were auditioning for the role of James Bond. Since Kal had not remembered to block his number before dialing, the Ford-Mercury dealer who was having sex with the love of his life already knew who was on the phone. There was no point trying to prank the man. There was no point asking for Candace, as she would not speak to him. It was past Layla's bedtime. “You must change your life,” said Kal.

“What?” said Elias Shymanski, and Kal ended the call.

Gordon Yang sensed Kal's lack of interest in Halo 2 and dropped his controller on the chipped coffee table before them. “Let's go to Vangelis, shoot some pool.”

“I don't want to.”

“Let's smoke a bowl.”

“I don't want to do that either, Gordon.”

“What the fuck? So you got jumped in Kelowna, get over it.”

“It's not them.” Kal bit his top lip and turned his video game avatar in circles until the Covenant swarmed and destroyed him. “I've decided to change my life, that's all, and once you decide a thing like that you can't take it back. It's a venom.”

Gordon Yang turned from the television. For a moment or two longer than usual, he stared at Kal. He chewed at his thumbnail quizzically. Then he winked. “Change your life tomorrow, man. Tonight, we get retarded.”

With some rhetorical flourishes, Gordon convinced Kal that only a night at the strippers would cheer him up. So they phoned a taxi.

The driver, whose name was Abdelahi according to his tag, did not speak. He listened to soft drum music. Gordon made lewd invitations to groups of university girls out his open window. When the car arrived at Showgirls, Gordon paid the fare and slid out. As Kal followed him, Abdelahi turned and said, deeply and slowly, “Prepare yourself.”

“What?”

Abdelahi seemed confused. In a different voice, an accented voice, he said, “I said nothing, sir.”

“Prepare myself for what?”

After a pause, Abdelahi smiled. His teeth were wonderfully white. “I do not understand, sir. Enjoy!”

For an hour, Kal and Gordon sat at a table drinking very expensive Coke. Stringent liquor-control laws meant Showgirls could serve beer only in the adjacent bar, so most of the men shuffled in and out of the strip club. Gordon gave a standing ovation to Lana the Bulgarian Bombshell, the
most beautiful woman ever seen in Plovdiv. “I want to go home now,” said Kal.

“Absolutely not. I heard the next chick's only got one leg.”

“Gord, I can't. Something weird's happening to me and I can't concentrate properly on strippers.”

“Okay, wait. I got just the thing to cheer you up.” Gordon jogged over to the manager.

It was clear what was happening here. Five minutes later, Kal was alone in what appeared to be a former accountant's office. The fluorescent lights had been removed but there were two stand-up lamps, fitted with orange bulbs, one on either side of a red, faux-Persian rug. On the wall, framed photographs of nude and almost-nude women leaning artfully over motorcycles and Trans-Ams. The room smelled of cigarettes and perfume and cleaning solution. The small sign on the wall instructed Kal, in both of Canada's official languages, to sit and stay in the padded lounge chair. If he stood up at any time during the performance, he would be forcibly removed and fined. Kal sat, inspected his fingernails and the cigarette burns in the chair arm, and wished, briefly, that he would fall asleep and not wake up for several years.

With a quick knock, a tall Indian-seeming woman entered. Kal recognized her earlier, from the Kama Sutra and 1001 Arabian Nights performances.

“Kal, I presume?” she said.

“Yep. Hey, nice job earlier.”

The woman wore tight black yoga sweatpants and a thin satin shirt. “Should we get started? Clock's ticking.”

“We might as well.”

The woman unbuttoned her shirt. “You're a professional hockey player?”

“I am.”

“The
NHL
?”

“The
AHL
.”

“You like it?”

Kal answered the way he always answered. “It's what I wanted ever since I was a kid.”

“That's terrific.” The woman dropped her shirt on the Persian rug–her stage. “This was my childhood dream too, to dance naked in front of slouching strangers.”

“We're damn lucky people.”

“God should strike us down for our happiness.” The woman pulled her sweatpants down. Underneath, she wore a pair of pink thong panties. “You want me to take these off now or slowly, as part of the show?”

“Slowly.”

“Good choice. High heels on or off?”

“Definitely off.”

“Another good choice, and a rare one.” The woman pressed play on a small
CD
player that was also an alarm clock, and began to sway. It was contemporary
R&B
: a bass line, a drum machine, and a woman singing about someone's baby. As the music was not very loud, Kal could hear the dancer breathing. Her exhalations were slightly raspy, due to an apparent cold or lung disorder. Kal could also hear the cartilage in her knees as she placed her hands on the arms of his chair and bent low. Her hair was so black in the dim light that it shone blue.

“You believe in God?” he said.

The woman stood up and slipped her thumbs under the waist string of her thong as she moved her hips. “What do you mean?”

“It isn't a trick question.”

“I guess I do.”

“What do you think of him?”

The woman turned around, so her bare behind faced Kal. She bent over and looked up at him between her legs. “I think he feels sorry for us. He can see we're suffering.”

“Us?”

“You and me, everyone. Us. We're pathetic, don't you think?” The woman stood up and gestured with her arms as part of her dance, indicating
here and now
. “Exhibit A.”

“Right.”

The woman lowered herself backwards, limbo-like, until her palms hit the rug. Then she extended her pelvis upward. A yoga move, Kal figured. The woman's hair brushed the floor. “For an extra fifty I'll let you touch me.”

“I know.”

“Do you want to?”

“You betcha, especially right now. But…”

“But what, hockey boy?”

“I'm trying to change my life here. Paying to touch strippers doesn't fit into my new plan.”

The woman shifted so she was on her hands and knees, a classic. Even in the dim light Kal noticed her shaving rash. Her rash and her scratchy voice, her cavalier use of the phrase
strike us down
, it was all endearing. She moved with the song for a while, which had given way to a “guest performance” by a rapper. The dancer went flat on her front and shifted, with a small grunt, to her back. She opened her legs, signalling that the performance was nearly over. “So what are you doing at Showgirls?”

“My friend Gordon figured it would cheer me up.”

“Gordon Yang?”

“Yeah.”

“He's a sweet guy. He understands tuition costs these days. Gordon always pays the fifty bucks.”

“I'm sorry.”

The woman closed her legs and the song ended. It was silent in the room but for the distant thump of the sound system and the poppy consonants of the
DJ
. Kal stood up and extended a hand to help her up, and she took it. “You aren't supposed to stand.”

“Again, sorry. I don't know what I'm doing.”

“Who does?” The woman coughed and extended her hands toward the ceiling for a moment, turned her head from side to side. More yoga.

They were only a few feet apart now. Kal had spent fifty dollars on dumber things. There was a sheen on the woman's stomach, from oil, perhaps, or sweat. Or moisturizer–this was Saskatchewan, after all. She smiled and nodded, and turned to collect her clothes.

To Kal's disappointment, she did not take her time getting dressed. She pulled on her yoga pants and her shirt, and dished him a queenly wave.

Kal sighed. “I want to thank you for everything you did for me here.”

The entertainer cleared the phlegm from her throat. “Say hi to God for me, when you find him.”

 

TWELVE

“P
repare yourself,” as uttered by Abdelahi the cab driver, gurgled and echoed in the bedroom as Kal tried to sleep. Since his return from Kelowna, he had been waiting for an agent of change to appear. It would be a woman, he thought. One of those new tough-lady
NHL
scouts in a grey skirt and blazer, chewing gum and making fierce eye contact. Or someone from the broadcasting industry looking for an honest and handsome, but not fancy, colour man. But the agent had not come.

Now Kal suspected she would never come, that he had prepared himself defectively for the coming change in his life. The bedroom window was open and the night was cool. Kal was too lazy, or stunned by anxiety, to get up and close it. As dawn broke, Kal reflected on Abdelahi's words and realized there was a fair chance he was going crazy. One of his team-mate's older brothers, a completely normal young man apart from a compulsion to masturbate in public, had apparently turned into a schizophrenic overnight. Now he was on drugs, a drooler, living in some halfway house in New Brunswick.

Or,
or
, maybe Kal had a brain tumour. Maybe he was turning homosexual. That certainly would have explained his new and shocking lack of interest in pornography and video games.

Kal did not wait for his alarm to sound. Shortly after six he showered and
prepared himself
: he filled a large backpack with clothing and zipped up his jacket. It was cold and
bright outside, a typical spring morning in the prairies. The city felt as though it had hardened overnight. A sort of shellac had been brushed over the stout buildings and thirsty old trees. Dogs barked. An airplane ascended for the trip west to Alberta. Kal walked toward the river, past the playground and park benches to Gabriel Dumont Park with its fake Métis village. Long before Kal had arrived in Saskatoon, this had been the site of a dump. Now it was a collection of short trees and shrubs along the twinkling South Saskatchewan, with a canoe launch and play village. Once, before Kal had met Candace, he'd pretended to be Métis in order to impress and have sex with a Blackfoot girl he'd met at a hockey camp in Lethbridge. Unfortunately, his ruse failed. The Blackfoot girl had been saving herself for men of greater means and potential.

Birds were out in great numbers. Kal was one of the few people on the paths that morning. He passed a homeless man and a couple of veiny joggers and ventured over the shrubbery to the muddy bank of the river. Standing by the gurgling water, he closed his eyes, shut out all his thoughts, and listened. Sparrows. Water. Wind in tall grass. The distant freeway.

Kal walked back to Broadway, found a cab, and rode to Credit Union Centre with the back windows open. He had hoped Abdelahi might still be working, so together they could explore the true meaning of “Prepare yourself.” But this morning, the cab driver was an obese white fellow who smelled of feta cheese that had been left on the counter too long.

At the vibrating bus parked in front of the arena, coach Dale Loont stood with his arms crossed. “Where you been?”

“I took a walk along the river.”

“You took a walk along the river.”

“I took a walk along the river.”

Dale Loont looked up at the blue blue sky. There were plenty of strong chins out there but Dale Loont had a weak one, which had always disturbed Kal in a way he knew was unfair. It was a miserable instinct, to dislike a man according to the strength of his chin. Now he saw the sorrow and wretchedness at the core of Dale Loont.

“You're hungover I expect?”

“No, actually.”

“You're supposed to be a model for these kids, Mack.”

Kal was twenty-four, which made him only five or six years older than the average player. How much wisdom was expected of him, really? “Sorry, Dale.”

“What are you sorry for, exactly? For being a slob and a boozer? For throwing away your talent? For being a goddamn
zombie
out there when I need you on fire?”

Around the lips of Dale Loont, the remnants of toothpaste. Kal looked away. “That's exactly what I'm sorry for, Dale. All of that.”

“Good. Now, what are you gonna do about it?”

Kal knew what Dale Loont wanted to hear. Bons mots about passion, sacrifice, one hundred and ten percent. Instead, he gripped Dale Loont's fleshy arm and pulled him away from the rattling bus. The weak chin was getting to him. Kal was careful not to raise his voice or squint as he spoke. “You don't have to tell me what's not important, Dale, because I'm an expert in that field. So let's just get on the bus and avoid each other for the next, I don't know,” Kal looked down at his watch, “three hours. Okay?”

On the bus, Kal sat next to Gordon Yang. “Where'd you go last night?” said Gordon, whose eyes were dark
and puffy. “I waited for you at Showgirls and then I waited for you next door. For a while I was hoping you scored with Rupi.”

“Who's Rupi?”

“The Arabian Nights? The fucking lap dance I spent twenty bucks on, thanks for saying thanks?”

“Sorry, Gord, thanks.”

“But then I saw her later, in the bar, and you know what she said?”

“What?”

“That you're clinically depressed.”

The driver plopped into his bouncy seat. “Winnipeg or bust.”

As the Yellowhead flattened into the sunny east, Gordon Yang fell asleep. It felt wrong to Kal, this direction. A few kilometres out of Saskatoon, he shook Gordon.

“What? What? Please, Kal, I am so, so tired.”

“Remember your uncle, who owns that place in Banff?”

“I remember my uncle, Kal. What do you want?”

“You think he'd give me a job?”

“You got a job.” Gordon sighed and sat up. “You wanna be a dishwasher now or something?”

“Yes. I want to be a dishwasher.”

“Piss off.”

“Gord.” Kal shook his friend's head, and then manoeuvred his face so they looked into each other's eyes. “When we stop for gas in Viscount, I'm getting off this bus.”

“What if we stop in Yorkton? We sometimes stop in Yorkton.”

“Forget Yorkton. Just promise me something. When you get to Winnipeg, I want you to call your uncle and tell him I'm coming. Tell him I'm a good worker.”

“All you've ever done is play hockey.”

“Tell him I'm a
very
good worker.”

“This is stupid.”

“Phone your uncle.”

Gordon closed his eyes. “Fine. I'll phone my uncle and say the finest dishwasher in Saskatchewan is on his way west.”

“Good. Thank you.”

“Idiot.”

Gordon drifted back to sleep and a familiar quiet settled over the bus, broken only by Dale Loont's cellphone conversation with his wife. Kal wondered why Rupi the stripper had diagnosed him with clinical depression. Was it the atmosphere of failure in Showgirls seeping into him? The question of God? Kal couldn't recall why he had asked a stripper about God or what he had expected to learn from her. A number of people would have been better suited to exploring the notion with him. Priests, for instance.

Before his father died of Non-Hodgkin's Lymphoma, when he was in grade three at St. Thomas Aquinas in Thunder Bay and his family was most like a family, Kal attended Sunday school. He had one outfit: a pair of black pants, a beige dress shirt, and a black vest. Each week Kal would wear one of his dad's clip-on ties and stand before the sliding glass mirrors in his parents' bedroom, amidst the musty sleeping smells of his mother and father, and he would be
so handsome
. Every Sunday, so handsome. His father would declare, from time to time, that Kal would grow up to be a lady-killer.

At Kal's father's funeral, the preacher declared that God had taken him. Sunday school was all about the majesty of God and Jesus, who seemed to be the same thing, yet when God and Jesus
took
someone–his father, for instance–it was terrible news. When Kal's mother wasn't around, his
father had called the preacher a Big Gay and mocked the Sunday school teacher, Mrs. Reyes, for her backfat. None of it made sense then, and almost twenty years later, on an eastbound bus, it still didn't make sense.

In Yorkton, Dale Loont and some of the players went inside to use the toilet and buy coffee. Kal took his backpack and left Gordon sleeping. The bus driver, Stu, stood at the pump. “I hate Yorkton,” he said. “You have to stand here and hold the nozzle. It doesn't have that thing on it.”

“Stu, where's the bus station?”

“Downtown on First Avenue. Why?”

“I'm changing my life, Stu.”

The bus driver looked up. “There were a couple times I figured on changing my life but I never did 'er.”

“I lost the magic.”

“You think so?”

Kal nodded.

“You're finished? Really?”

“Really.”

Stu reached up and placed his non-pumping left hand on Kal's shoulder. “That's a damn good thing to learn now, before you get old and mean. What should I tell Loont?”

“Tell him I went off to find my fortune.”

“Is that what you're doing?”

“I don't know. First, I'm gonna be a dishwasher.”

Stu stopped pumping and offered his old, lumpy hand for a shake. Kal took it. “Kid, good luck. I hope you find that fortune.”

“I probably won't.”

“No one ever does.” Stu shook his head. “Except sons of bitches. And, unfortunately, you ain't one of those.”