Idea in Stone

by Hamish Macdonald

  Stefan blanched, but he had to go through with this, and not just to save face. “Do you take credit cards?”

  “We certainly do,” said the cleric, pulling out a device from his robes. Stefan handed his card to the man and he zipped it through. A moment later, he said, “Good, it’s been approved. Thank you.” He closed the top of the pillar, and a strong light leaked from under the lid. Stefan could feel the heat, and heard his paper crackling.

  The cleric opened the top and the sheet was gone. “All finished,” he said. Stefan smiled and nodded, feeling quite stupid, having fallen for this magic trick. He quietly followed as the cleric led him back to the front entrance of the church.

  ~

  Stefan turned the corner to his street and walked under the canopy of trees. He saw a rental truck parked and knew it was for his house. Closer now, he watched men in blue jumpsuits moving large objects from the open rear of the truck to his front door—boxes, gnarled antique furniture, and a procession of cello cases. Stefan stepped around the workers and boxes to get through the door.

  “Stefan,” he heard Delonia saying from somewhere in the mess. He kept moving, wanting nothing more than to reach his room, the place his friends jokingly referred to as The Fortress of Solitude. However, the notion of Superman living in his mother’s basement had loserish implications he didn’t like to think about.

  “Stefan,” repeated Delonia. She’d spotted him and closed in. He tried to dodge around a cello case, but his foot made contact with something disturbingly soft, and the thing made a hiss of feline protest. “There you are,” said Delonia. “I wanted to ask you to stay home for supper tonight. It’s the first night Cerise will be with us, and I thought it would be nice for us all to eat together.”

  “Mom, can you understand how galactically weird this is for me? You’re asking me to have supper with my mother and her goddamned—”

  “Hello Stefan,” said Cerise, suddenly at his side.

  “Hello,” he replied. “How are you?”

  “Frankly, I’m a bit nervous about the move. I was in my other house for a long time, and I’m not sure how the cats will adjust. Also… I don’t want to come between you and your mother.”

  Feel free, he thought. “Well, thanks for being so honest.”

  The phone rang. It stood on a table next to Stefan, but he made no move to answer it. Stefan watched as Delonia rushed awkwardly through the slalom course of detritus, then he picked up the phone and handed it to her. Offended on his mother’s behalf, Cerise asked in a tone far too parental for his liking, “Why didn’t you answer that for her?”

  “I can’t use the telephone.”

  Delonia covered the mouthpiece, aware of the exchange. “He hears things on it, voices,” she said, wiggling a hand next to her ear.

  Cerise looked at Stefan blankly.

  “She exaggerates,” he said. “It’s just one voice.”

  “Oh.” Not sure what to do with the information, Cerise picked up a cat.

  ~

  Stefan took off the respectable-looking sweater he’d worn to the supper table, folded it up, and stuffed it in a drawer. He put on his cordless headphones and put a CD in the flat stereo on the wall. The upbeat music made him feel happy, and he danced around as he pulled off his trousers. He stood in front of the mirror in his T-shirt and Y-fronts. You’re kinda short, he thought, and skinny, except for that. He lifted his shirt and poked his small tummy. And you might lose your hair. He lifted his drooping bangs to inspect the tide-line with its V-shaped peak. His eyes were big and brown, set into a long face that tapered (maybe a little too much) into a small chin. His long nose led to a wide smile bracketed by long dimples. I think you’re cute, he thought. But cartoonishly, friendly-cute. The aquarium guy was smoulderingly cute. I want to smoulder. People like smoulder. Smoulder, smoulder, smoulder. The word lost its meaning and sounded funny, foreign.

  He hit the Stop button on the stereo, hung up his headphones, and dropped into bed, the rhythm of the song still in his head, carrying him away.

  He drifted backwards, flashes of the day’s sights before him, giving way gradually to a soft darkness. A familiar voice spoke words he couldn’t quite hear, then faded out, replaced by the sound of his father’s voice singing a simple tune. Then that, too, became a faint echo in a large space.

  He opened his dream-eyes and found himself sitting cross-legged on the moon. The powdery landscape stretched away in every direction, punctuated with the odd rock or crater. Fireworks went off overhead in the dark space-sky. Stefan reached for the can of beer which he knew, by dream logic, was at his side. He took a sip, then placed it back down, noticing as he did that the ground wasn’t dusty anymore, but covered in prickly, purple, almost floral undergrowth. Looking up again, he saw the whole moon was covered in purple.

  ~

  Stefan’s stereo turned itself on, blaring music. He sat upright in bed, but couldn’t see. Blearily panicked, he groped at his face, discovering his T-shirt was up over his head. He pulled it off and looked at the clock beside his bed: seven-thirty. Time to get up for work. He looked down and scratched his stomach. There was something in his belly-button. Lint? He plucked it out and looked at it: a tiny piece of newsprint with the letter E on it. He shook his head and put it on his bedside table, then went upstairs to have a shower.

  Two

  Jacks and Queens

  Stefan waited for the subway, leaning against the glazed, curry-coloured tiles of the platform wall. He let the other passengers crowd along the ledge: he wasn’t in a hurry to get to work, he didn’t like being jostled in a crowd, he was afraid of “pushers”, and he wanted to feel cooler than everybody else. And cool, he knew, was all in the little details.

  For one, his job allowed him to dress however he wanted. Today he wore a T-shirt and a pair of baggy hemp trousers his mother bought him as a birthday present a few months ago. To his surprise, they became his favourite trousers, and they also seemed indestructible. He allowed that some of her wing-nut ideas had merit. Some.

  A subway train, silver and burnished like something from the back of a kitchen drawer, pulled up and its doors opened. The crowd flowed toward them like water to a drain. A voice came over the station’s public address system telling the riders to let the other passengers off first, but it went unheeded. As the voice spoke, Stefan heard something else, as if a second person was speaking close to the announcer. But he knew otherwise. The faint, broken words were a mix of English and perhaps a foreign language, but the voice was as familiar as his own. He’d learned to dismiss it years ago.

  He pictured a film clip he’d seen of a Japanese subway in which men used large aluminium potato-mashers to shove people into the cars. He smiled.

  The pixel-board on the platform showed it was now after 9am. Predictably, the crowd thinned, and Stefan moved away from the wall. Minutes later, the next train arrived, comfortably empty, and Stefan strolled leisurely through the doors as they opened. The subway game was all about getting a seat, and he’d just scored.

  ~

  Stefan waited in a small room that was beige in every way except for the posters on its walls, relics of past children’s shows. Cartoon characters and live entertainers looked down at him, smiling so big and happy they looked about to drool. He moved the overflowing ashtray on the coffee-table aside, put his legs up, and leaned back. His fingers probed and massaged under his jaw, loosening the root of his tongue from below. He hummed with his mouth closed and stretched the soft palate at the back of his throat.

  A woman opened the door, smiled, and said, “We’re ready for you Mr. Mackechnie.” He nodded, picked up his jacket and satchel and followed her. They walked through a maze of halls decorated with similar posters and children’s broadcasting awards.

  The production assistant remained strangely silent as they walked. “You’re new here,” said Stefan. “What’s your name?”

  “I, uh, my name’s Wendy.”

  “Hi,” said Stefan, “nice to meet
you. So did you study broadcasting, or is this just a job?”

  “I’m, uh, I’m sorry, I was told not to speak to you before you go into the studio. The producer got really mad at me the other day after I talked to one of the talent. He fell out of character and had to warm up again.”

  “Who did you talk to?”

  “Ron Emery.”

  “Figures. He does the voice-over for a goddamned lightbulb. There is no character. Certainly not the way he does it. Yeah, don’t worry about all that crap with me.”

  Wendy laughed, relieved. “What do you do to get into character for Bloob?”

  “I do a funny voice.”

  “Yeah,” she said, “but people really respond to him. You must do something. There’s a quality to your performance that’s really special.”

  “I don’t know. I brush my teeth. Have you ever been in the booth at the same time as Ron? Ugh.” He smiled at her. “Okay, seriously, I do some vocal exercises, I suck on a cough drop if I’m sick, and I goof around in front of a microphone. We had a lot of mics around when I was growing up, so I’ve always been comfortable around them.”

  Wendy gestured him past a thick door with a number four and an unlit ‘Recording’ sign over it. “You’re in this booth today. Thanks very much for the talk. I appreciate it. Sheesh, and they said you were difficult.”

  Stefan’s smile disappeared as she closed the door. What? His concentration left him completely.

  The sound engineer held up a magic-marker sign to the window. “Ready?” Stefan held up a ‘one minute’ finger. Difficult? He pulled his sides—the dialogue he was supposed to record—from his satchel, then reached back in and rummaged around for the little figurine of his character. He found it in a corner of the bag, a blue plastic ox with a ring through its nose, standing upright in a pair of running shoes. He pulled it out, blew it clean, and sat it on the music stand in front of him. Looking at it, he cocked his head, made an adjustment in his throat, and said, “Reduce!” He shook his head, poked fingers at his throat, and tried again. “Reduce, reuse—” He smiled, then turned to the sound booth, giving a thumbs-up and nodding.

  ~

  An hour later, the show’s producer visited the booth. “How’s it going, Stefan?” she asked.

  “I don’t know, I’m a little off today,” he said. “I had this weird conversation with the new PA just bef—”

  “Yeah, sorry about that, we’ve been having some problems with her.”

  “No, it’s not her fault. She just said—nevermind. Look, I have issues with this week’s script.”

  One of the producer’s plucked red eyebrows rose. “Really?”

  “I know you don’t care what I think. I’m just a guy who’s paid ever-so-slightly above scale to do a voice-over. But, you know, I am Bloob’s voice, so I feel a certain responsibility for what this public figure says to children.”

  The producer said nothing.

  “I know, I know. It’s just a stupid kiddie show.”

  The producer’s other eyebrow raised.

  “What I mean is, I realise that it’s an important commercial property for you and it’s become a very popular show. But we are making statements about the environment here, and I think it’s important for them to be accurate.” He flipped through his script. “Like this part: ‘Kids, you are the future of the earth. Only you can save it.’” He looked at the producer. “C’mon.”

  “Stefan, don’t you believe that children are the future?”

  “Don’t get all Whitney on me. The show’s biggest sponsor is Porvental Chemicals. Last year the company paid no Canadian taxes and ‘accidentally’ spilled enough solvents into Lake Ontario to petrify every last zebra mussel.”

  “But the mussels were growing out of control. They were a hazard to the lake’s natural ecology.”

  “Yeah, so the company got an environmental grant for $11.2 million.”

  “Stefan, did you ever think that the company is trying to turn their industry around by investing in projects like our show?”

  “But—”

  “Stefan, it’s not your concern. Don’t make trouble. Just do your day’s lines. Leave the issues to us.” She started to leave, but paused at the door. “Oh, did you happen to make a statement to Greenpeace?”

  “Um, I might have.”

  “Please don’t do things like that,” she said, leaving the room.

  Stefan went back to the music stand and picked up his figurine. “Hey kids,” he said in the character’s voice, “do you know that your mommy’s makeup contains poisonous chemicals called phthalates?” He turned the figurine’s head back and forth. “Hey kids, did you know that my ass is completely for sale?” Stefan tried to make the head nod, but it wouldn’t, so he picked up a pencil and poked it into the ox’s chest repeatedly. He looked up to see the sound technician laughing and holding up a sign that said “Lunch”.

  Stefan left the booth, and Wendy ran up beside him. “Jean said that I upset you this morning. I’m really sorry, I don’t know how I—”

  “It’s okay,” said Stefan, “it’s not your fault. It’s between me and her. Well, me, her, a multinational chemical company, and some zebra mussels.”

  “Oh, good. Here,” she said, handing him a slip of paper, “you got a phone message from someone while you were in the booth. It sounded like he said his name was Ellen.”

  “Do you suppose it might have been ‘Allen’?”

  “No, I don’t think so. Sounded like Ellen.”

  “Right, okay. Thanks.” He left her, banking off down a hallway toward the commissary where he bought his lunch. Although it was November, the weather was still warm, so he ate outside in a concrete park sheltered between skyscrapers, looking at a phone booth all the while. When he finished, he crumpled up the packaging, napkin, and bag from his lunch and threw it into a waste-bin, thinking what an awful amount of garbage it was. I sound like Mom. Then he marched to the phone booth.

  He dropped a quarter into the phone, dialled the number he’d been given, and braced himself. “Hello, Lewisbus, Traffordwalk, and Lemirefish. How can I help youbuttie?” Stefan struggled to filter out the second voice.

  “Hi, could I please speak to Allen Hoffstand, please?” asked Stefan, realising that he’d said ‘please’ twice. He wasn’t good at business-speak.

  “One moment,” said the receptionist.

  Allen answered a moment later. Aware of Stefan’s trouble with the phone, he communicated the evening’s plans slowly. The guys and he were meeting for coffee, maybe dinner, and wanted Stefan along. Stefan said he was up for an evening away from home, as the connubial bliss between his mother and her girlfriend was still at a toxic level.

  “I have to go,” said Allen. “I’m in discussionsstay this afternoon about a big kipestate in Forest Hill, a bunch of siblings alldoon fighting over this property. Should be funday.”

  “I’m off to explain in a funny voice why not having an atmosphere will be a good thing,” said Stefan. “I’ll see you tonight.” They said their goodbyes. Stefan was suitably convinced Allen had no idea he’d be walking into a surprise party this evening. Allen’s partner of five years hadn’t been invited for a strategic reason: they wanted to have fun.

  Back in the booth, Stefan recorded several minutes of Bloob-speak. The sound engineer gave him the thumbs up. Then he made the “Okay, let’s move on” signal they’d worked out. Stefan had some bit parts to record, characters whose preliminary sketches he’d seen. His job now was to give sensitive, nuanced line readings for a leaky lawn sprinkler and a toaster with a knife stuck in it that was supposed to look surprised but looked more like it had been murdered.

  The technician poked angrily at his sound board and his computer. He shook his head and made a throat-cutting gesture, then held up an open ‘Take five’ hand. Stefan nodded, picked up his sides from the music stand, and left the booth. He went to the producer’s office, knocked on her door, and opened it.

  “Yes?” she asked.


  “Uh,” said Stefan.

  “What?”

  “I’m supposed to record this toaster dialogue this afternoon. Isn’t that a bit outside the show’s scope? I mean, I thought we were supposed to be doing environmental topics, not safety tips.”

  “Stefan,” she said, putting down her pen and turning to face him, “did you know that Ron Emery came in here the other day and did the most perfect impression of Bloob?”

  “Oh,” said Stefan. He nodded and left. Rather than head back to the booth, he went to the sound-stage where they taped the live-action Super Fantastic Window show (in English and French). He made his way across the stage by the illumination of a bare-bulb work light on an iron stand, past the big gold window frame with its green-screen panes, past the bulbous coat-rack with its fun-fur coats, and dropped with a sigh onto the same puffy green couch that he’d seen on the show as a child. He unbuttoned his hemp trousers and masturbated.

  ~

  Wendy opened the door of the beige Green Room. “Oh there you are,” she said. “Chuck fixed the mixer.” Stefan stood and followed her again.

  “What’s BSE?” she asked as she opened the booth’s door for him.

  “Huh? I think it stands for Bovine Spongiform Ecephalo-something. Mad Cow disease. Why?”

  “Oh, nothing,” she said. “I just heard Jean talking about it on the phone with one of the writers, and I didn’t know what it meant.” She shut the door as she left.

  Stefan stared at his little figurine.

  ~

  “Hey guys,” said Stefan, coming up the stairs to the coffee-shop’s second floor. He placed his foamed soy milk spiced tea drink on the table, took off his coat, and plopped down into one of the deep chairs.

  “Hey Stef,” said Allen. Stefan noted that Allen, as could be expected, had already been home, changed out of his business suit, redone his hair (and put on a touch of make-up? or was that fake tan?), and changed into queer gear, since he was going to be seen in the gay ghetto. He was in a relationship, but he still wanted to be wanted. Tonight he wore tight black jeans and a white T-shirt that clung to his gym-enhanced frame. The T-shirt was printed with black letters: “Read my lisp: Equality now!”