The Delusionist (7 page)

Cyril didn't remember his father ever singing and had a hard time even imagining it. “What about ma?”

Paul blew air and shrugged. “She believed because he believed. Because it was exciting. Because it was big. Because it was history. They figured believe hard enough they could make it real. That if you didn't believe there was something wrong with you. And if you didn't you ended up in a camp or against a wall. So they believed. Except Koba wasn't much of a god. Not even much of an uncle. He stole the harvests. Let the Ukrainians starve, better to feed the people in Moscow, the people who count. The winter of frozen corpses. Ma told me about it. Every morning the streets and the river bank thick with bodies frozen as hard as marble. The rats couldn't even chew them. The ears. They could chew the ears. Went on all through the '30s and then the war. The thing is if they'd have stayed in Lvov we'd have been able to eat. And maybe my bones wouldn't be like balsa wood.” He shut his eyes and slumped back, exhausted. “You, you're lucky. Did you know there's a town in Ukraine called Luck?”

Cyril walked past Darrel's place, a two-storey, stucco-sided apartment building with junipers and bark mulch. It was early evening. Cyril walked past twice. On the third pass he plunged on up the walk to the intercom and ran his finger down the list of names and discovered that where Stavrik had been there was now a strip of masking tape with ‘Occupant' written in red ink. He stepped back to see the front of the building, thinking he might spot some clue. Nothing. He returned to the intercom, took a breath and pressed the buzzer. It ticked and buzzed, ticked and buzzed. He was relieved until he knew he'd have to return and try again later, so he buzzed again and counted ten ticks. As he was turning to leave, a female voice broke through the static.

Had Darrel already hooked up with another woman? He felt betrayed on his mother's behalf. How long had it been, six months? He leaned towards the grille and asked if Darrel was there.

“Who?” The woman sounded young, his age.

The bastard was playing around with one of his students! “Darrel Stavrik,” he repeated.

“Oh, him. I don't know. I heard he moved back to Edmonton. To his wife.”

Gilbert often dropped by after driving cab. They'd drink Luckys and stare out the window speculating on their futures, Gilbert in no doubt that his future was bright and full of money, that he was destined to make a million before he was thirty.

“Driving hack?”

Smiling at such simplicity, Gilbert said, “It's research, my friend. Making contact with people who count.”

“Like who?”

Gilbert became enigmatic—one of his favourite roles—and said he was meeting big wheels, high-fliers, movers and shakers, entrepreneurs, managers and
CEO
s, people who were going places, and he was taking notes. “Don't worry about me, my friend, worry about yourself.”

Entering the desolation of the
IGA
one afternoon Cyril heard the muzak—Acker Bilk doing
Stranger on the Shore
. He cringed under the bleached light of the fluorescent tubes, felt the skin-constricting chill of the refrigerated air, sensed the tins of Chef Boyardee watching him, endured the mockery of the Jolly Green Giant, saw Norm spritzing the iceberg lettuce. Cyril stood as if in a coma. He couldn't muster a thought, he could feel though, and what he felt was despair. Was this his Fraser Mills, his green chain? Water splattered his face.

“Start stacking.” Norm's crewcut resembled the bristles of a scrub brush and his eyes were pebbles, hard and small and dark.

Cyril started to speak but didn't know what to say so turned and walked out.

He began looking for jobs. He considered Hotel/Motel Management, Small Arms Repair, Power Engineering, careers he'd seen advertised on the inside cover of a matchbook. He investigated the possibility of becoming a dental mechanic, thinking that making false teeth involved an element of sculpting. He pondered and rejected taxidermy, just as he rejected Mortuary Arts, both of which had a certain aesthetic component. He got hired on as an apprentice upholsterer but quit after six days because the formaldehyde in the fabric gave him headaches. He began training to be a bus driver but quit realizing the scores of rude, violent, weirdos he'd have to deal with. He got on at a pallet mill, a shingle mill, a paper mill, a foundry, the brewery, a distillery, an office that did phone sales, a hospital. An earnest pursuit of employment evolved into a game, the highlight of which was finding and quitting two jobs in one day; in the morning getting hired on at an automotive parts warehouse and in the afternoon a rope factory. He worked as a swamper, a garbage man, a night janitor, a mail sorter. He installed windows, laid carpet, assembled lawn chairs, filled out the paperwork for training as a fireman. He enjoyed this whirlwind of possible careers. Quitting jobs was exhilarating. Everyone was hiring. He even sold, for an afternoon, the Encyclopaedia Britannica door to door. One thing he never did, however, was wash dishes. It was only when Gilbert urged him to try getting into the
Guinness Book of World Records
for the most jobs ever that Cyril decided he was spiralling out of control and enough was enough.

He got on with a construction crew and vowed to stay one year. He discovered that he handled tools well and liked the logic of the work: you measured, you cut, and if it didn't fit you fixed it, and did a better job the next time. It was solid and tangible and not without beauty. His growing competency made him feel better about himself. He liked the clean smell of fir in the cool of the morning, and the spice of sap beading on the two-by-fours in the heat of the afternoon; he even liked the scent of asphalt shingles and the smell of wet cement. Before long a load of lumber was a house, each house was distinct, and every few months you moved on.

Even on the job he found time to sketch. Whenever he had a moment—and often when he didn't have a moment because he should have been working—he'd sharpen one of his wide flat carpenter's pencils and draw vines climbing the two-by-four uprights of a doorframe, embellishing them with leaves in which lurked naked elf maids with come hither eyes. The rest of the crew would discover them and follow the scenes unscrolling lewdly along window frames and across joists as though watching an animated film that rewarded their diligence with tits here, ass there, occasionally even a bit of bestiality. Drawing on wood presented its own unique challenges, and he was always pleased when he could incorporate the knots and woodgrain into his images: the grain as flowing hair, a knot as an orifice. He became a great favourite with his fellow workers, though they'd howl with disappointment and beat the floor with their hammers if Cyril failed to provide them with a penultimate scene from the
kama sutra
or some satisfying vision of girl-on-girl.

The foreman indulged this behaviour until one afternoon the owner arrived unexpectedly and toured his home-to-be and, baulking at the pornographic graffiti desecrating what would one day be his child's bedroom, demanded it be sanded off.

“You should quit,” said Gilbert.

“And do what?”

“Come to San Francisco with me and get some of that free love. You could do graffiti. Or
T
-shirts. Or body painting. All those hippie chicks want their tits painted.”

While there was a definite allure to painting boobs, Cyril didn't want to go to San Francisco, he wanted to go to Los Angeles, because he'd received a letter from Connie.

Dear C,

First of all, apologies for not writing.

I'm a total s—t. No excuses but lots of

explanations. Like working two jobs

and going to auditions and rehearsals.

Hardly time to breathe. The competition's

fierce. And to be honest there isn't much

call for my type here if you get my drift.

Though did have a role in an episode

of
I Spy.
Got to use a gun. Cosby and

Culp are so cool. It was a taste. Amazing

how long you can live on a taste.

I meant to write sooner. But the thing is

you'd write back, (I hope), then I'd miss

you so much I might come running home,

and I might end up resentful. Not fair to

you or me. It was cold turkey or nothing.

I hope you understand that. (It's a compliment.)

So what're you doing with yourself? Married?

Kids? Teaching art? Doing art? Stealing art?

Let me know. And if you're ever passing

through L.A. drop in on us. If you don't

and I find out you're dead.

Hope this wasn't too out of the blue.

Love,

C

He'd reread the letter so many times he could recite it like a poem. But for all the sweet sentiment it all came down to one troubling word.
Us.
Drop in on
us.
No mention of her being married, no mention of a boyfriend, but there was that word,
us.
He'd have gone to Los Angeles in a minute if not for that one small word, those two tiny letters. He tried reinterpreting the letter, wondering if there was any way us might mean just her? Did it refer to Hollywood in general, to the city as a whole, was she perhaps identifying so completely with the place that she had become plural, or was it the sort of thing that happened to actors who had, he assumed, multiple characters to choose from for their various roles? Or had she inserted that one little word as a caution? It occurred to him to simply write and ask, except he couldn't bear the truth even after four years.
Us
meant
us.
She was a couple.