What is Going to Happen Next

by Karen Hofmann

  Then Andrew: Andrew had been in a real band, a rock band that people had heard of, a band that was being played on radio stations several times a day, that toured. Andrew, though he screamed into the mic and thrashed his guitar with the best of them, had had a classical music education, and knew Clive from his music school, and had been obsessively jealous of him, though Andrew was more successful. He had deliberately, she thought later, set out to appropriate her from Clive. She’d gone on the road with the band, which had been a lot of fun and then hadn’t. Andrew had worked very hard, and when he wasn’t working, he practiced being an asshole. He’d been mean to everyone — critical, sarcastic, manipulative — but it had been worse for her: She had cared about him. (She can still, if she imagines his face, the way his hair fell in one sweep over his violet eyes, the way he pouted, feel pangs of sexual longing for him.) She’d also liked staying in nice hotels, in being backstage, in swaggering from the bus to the hotel or venue with the band, in a vintage leather coat she’d found, in very high heels — swaggering past the crowds of girls her age, girls who wanted to be her.

  And then one day Andrew’s manager, who was also his dad, had taken her for coffee, given her a plane ticket back to Vancouver — they’d been somewhere in Ontario — Hamilton? Kingston? — and a check for five hundred dollars, which was a month’s rent, and told her to make herself a better life.

  She’d been pissed off, mortally offended: had assumed she was being bought off. It had taken her years and years to realize that the gesture had been motivated, at least in part, by kindness. Someone looking out for her. Then there had been Tomas, and then Horst.

  Horst she thought of as a grown-up. Her first grown-up man. He was not actually that much older than Clive or Andrew, but he behaved like a grown-up. He was a chef at a good restaurant, where she had got a new job. He talked about when they would marry. He made her go to school, to improve herself. He would not have an uneducated wife. He was bossy to a degree of bossiness that didn’t have a name in Mandalay’s vocabulary until she took sociology and psychology courses. He’d hated her body-fitting dresses, wanted her to wear printed cotton dirndls, to plait her hair and wrap it around her head. She’d thought about introducing him to Cleo. Cleo was the girl he wanted, she thought. She still thinks they’d have been a good match. But Cleo had gone east by then, to grad school.

  The more she had learned, the less Horst had liked her. And the more he had clung, tried to control her every move, her every thought.

  Christopher was a fellow-student, smart and ironic in the classroom, quick to pick things up and use them to make the other students, and even the prof, feel less smart. But he was only alive in company: Alone with her, he had nothing to say. He made banal comments about shows, books. He seemed then blank, shallow. She could have done more with him, she thinks now. He had a sweetness, he was smart. He had become a prof. But back then she hadn’t known how to fire him up. Christopher was almost it. She had wanted so badly for him to be it, to feel any passion for him, but he gave her almost nothing, only a sort of hopeless longing. She had started seeing him to dislodge Horst, to prove to Horst her lack of viability — he wouldn’t take her word for it that she didn’t want him — and had had silent, not very good sex with him. Then he’d asked her to marry him, actually proposed, and she’d almost accepted, because she could have had the life she wanted then, or most of it. But she had been appalled on two accounts: one, that she was even considering marrying someone she couldn’t orgasm with, and two, that he knew her so little that he thought they were at the point when a proposal would not seem bizarre. (She imagines, sometimes, that Trent was Cleo’s Christopher, only that Cleo had succumbed to her longing for an SUV and a house in the suburbs.)

  She’d been so appalled — and maybe so in danger of succumbing — that she’d turned on Christopher with undeserved meanness, calling up shades of Andrew. She’d almost killed him, she’d heard later. He’d had a nervous breakdown, had almost not finished his degree. But how had he not ever shown her that depth of feeling?

  Then Benedict, her Swiss doctor. She’d met him at a bar in Thailand: She’d saved up and gone to Thailand. He’d been intense, a piece of burning phosphorus: an adept, focussed, full-on lover, fiercely committed to his work or play, whatever he was doing at any given moment. She’d watched him stitch together torn-up teenaged guerrilla soldiers, then, half an hour later, lounge in the bar laughing uproariously at some story. He rode his motorcycle as if he didn’t care about living, went across borders, into the jungle, to treat patients, as if it were just some huge adventure. He would eat or drink anything. When he got dysentery — they all got dysentery — he’d laughed.

  He had a fiancée back in Switzerland, whom he said he loved and respected. She believed he did, when he was with her. When he was with Mandalay, he loved Mandalay. He’d got her, had understood her in a way that she knew had more to do with him having known so many people and being so open to every experience than their being especially connected. She had no illusions that they would stay together, but later she heard, from a Canadian doctor whom they’d known in Cambodia, who’d come back to Vancouver, that Benedict, on a layover in Frankfurt, had met a Russian woman, had changed his plans to fly to Moscow with her and had married her there.

  Danny, Clive, Andrew, Tomas, Horst. Christopher, Benedict. She can divide her entire adult life up into sections by the periods of time she spent with each of them. All of those relationships and each had really been a dead end, in a way, though it didn’t seem very compassionate to think of people that way. She had given her life over to them, though: that was it. And when things ended, she had to start a new life; she’d changed where she lived, and jobs, and everything.

  Would any of them see the article? And would it be a good thing if they did?

  She has foresworn men, for a while, since Benedict, who had really shaken her confidence, though that had been karma, maybe for the way she had treated Christopher. After Benedict she had decided not to get involved for a while, to do more yoga and detox her life and make some money.

  It’s still working for her, this plan. She has to stick with it.

  She is thirty-three.

  WHEN SHE GETS TO THE SHOP the next afternoon at four, she goes right to the office in the back, and there’s Parvaneh, smiling, and a little stack of copies of the magazine, still wrapped up in brown paper, on the desk.

  You didn’t open it? She can’t believe that Parvaneh has come back when it’s not her shift, but not touched the package. Parvaneh shakes her head, still smiling.

  I can’t believe you waited, Mandalay says.

  Parvaneh’s daughter, the four-year-old, comes out from under the desk, now. Noushin! Mandalay says. She hardly sees Parvaneh’s kids; she doesn’t bring them often. They’re shy and look at her with shining eyes and small, solemn smiles.

  Noushin means sweet, Parvaneh has told her. And Parvaneh means butterfly. Such unabashedly soft feminine names.

  She is so shy. Is it a cultural thing? Mandalay thinks that other children are not that shy, not that well-behaved.

  And then Parvaneh says something in Persian, and then in English: Go play now, and Noushin folds herself back under the desk, and Mandalay turns to the package of magazines.

  The writer had come to the café a few times before approaching Mandalay at the counter. Mandalay had noticed her, not because of her notebook — the café is populated at any time of day by young women with notebooks — but because of her attentive air, the way she looked at everything closely and long. Mandalay had thought she was a health inspector, or a potential competitor, but Parvaneh had said, food writer, and she had been right, or almost right. A freelance lifestyles writer, she had said, and Mandalay had simultaneously been excited for the café and struck by jealousy: She wanted to be a lifestyles writer. It was exactly what she wanted to be, and would be good at.

  So she had given the writer a lot of time outside her working hours, a lot of attention, a lot of in
formation. Parvaneh had been a little more reserved, but had agreed that publicity was good for the café. It had been a little disappointing that the article was intended not for the Saturday pages of the Sun or Province, or even The Georgia Straight or one of the little Vancouver magazines, but an airline magazine was nothing to look down on. It would reach more people, over a longer period of time. Mandalay had just thought: I won’t see it on newsstands. People I know won’t see it.

  The writer had said she would get some copies for Mandalay and Parvaneh. And here they are: a package of six.

  She passes one to Parvaneh first, and then opens the second one, her hands actually trembling.

  Aloft/Volant, Parvaneh says, reading the cover, smiling.

  Mandalay runs her fingertip down the table of contents, finds the article title: “A Trendy Café in Vancouver’s Kitsilano District Bridges the Old and New.” That’s it. That’s it. Page fifty-four, she says to Parvaneh, who is still admiring the cover.

  And there it is: the article, the photographs of the art wall curated by Mandalay, the counter with Parvaneh an impressionistic blur moving behind it, a close-up of a couple of their specialty dishes, Mandalay and Parvaneh outside against the steel and glass exterior, and, in a really surprising and appealing photo that she doesn’t remember having been taken, Mandalay alone at a table in the soft light of one of the hanging Murano glass flutes, reflected in the darkened window, her head tilted slightly over the journal in which she noted the day’s popular items, her hair loosened and trailing across one cheek, her nose ring, slightly out of focus, gleaming. It’s an amazing picture: She’s never seen such a beautiful image of herself. It’s like a studio photograph of a model or actress. Mandalay stares at the angles of brow and cheekbone and jaw, the sweep of lash, the curve of her lips.

  It has caught Parvaneh’s eye, too. Oh my god, she says. You look like a movie star here, Mandalay.

  Oh, delight. Oh joy. This is the best day of her life, possibly.

  It’s well done, after all. Of course the writer had described to them the angle she’d be taking. New café represents trendy side of Vancouver, and she’s managed to get the details right.

  Hm, hm, Parvaneh says, having taken Mandalay’s invitation to read it to mean read it aloud.

  The Seagull, a trendy new spot in Vancouver’s up-and-coming Kitsilano district showcases the unique flavour of this neighbourhood. Since the early seventies a village of alternative restaurants and artists, Kitsilano is lately blooming with sparkling steel-and-glass highrises. The Seagull shows a happy cohabitation of both. Co-managers Parvaneh Inosh and Mandalay Lund have combined a savvy new take on healthy lunch with the fast pace of the new young urban professional in an exciting international swirl of flavours and artwork.

  Oh, they got our names right, Parvaneh says. She reads precisely in almost unaccented English — she’s been in Canada since the late eighties. But Mandalay is impatient, wants to read ahead, to race through to the end.

  There it all is: the descriptions of the clientele, the food, the art, which is for sale, which Mandalay chooses and sells on consignment for emerging artists.

  You are happy with it? Parvaneh asks.

  It’s good, she says. Better than I expected. It will put us on the map!

  What will happen, Parvaneh says, if so many people read this and want to come here that we run out of food and don’t have enough staff or tables?

  Then we expand, Mandalay says. We hire more staff and lease the space next door.

  And then when we aren’t a trend anymore?

  But you can’t think like that, Mandalay says. You have to seize the moment! Sometimes she feels that Parvaneh is decades older than her instead of the same age.

  Parvaneh smiles. You are right, she says. Worry about getting too much business if that happens!

  We should photocopy this and put it up on the wall, Mandalay says.

  Or just tear it out, Parvaneh says.

  Oh, no! We can’t do that. We want to keep these.

  But there are six copies, Parvaneh says.

  Only three for each of us.

  What will we do with all of those?

  Give them to friends and family! Mandalay says. Three each won’t go very far.

  Oh, you may have all of them, Parvaneh says. I will just keep one to show my husband and my mother-in-law.

  What about the rest of your family?

  I don’t know if they would want to see it. Parvaneh’s smile is a little fixed now, and Mandalay knows she’s pushed too far.

  Is it a cultural thing?

  There’s nothing wrong with feeling proud of what we’ve done, she points out. And the publicity can’t hurt. Business is business. This is free advertising.

  Parvaneh says then: Oh, maybe some handsome and very wealthy businessman reads this article on his flight from Toronto, yes, and he falls in love with your photograph and comes to find you and marry you.

  Mandalay puts her palms together and rolls her eyes upward, playing along. Pray to god, she says, using a Persian phrase that Parvaneh often utters when they’re trying a new recipe.

  But Parvaneh is closing off from her now. She scoops Noushin out from under the desk, speaks a little sharply to her, and within seconds is gone. She takes only one copy, leaving the other five for Mandalay.

  Acquisition

  WHEN YOU HAVE SOMETHING, people are hovering over to take it off you. Cliff knows this like he knows not to eat Chinese food from dumpsters or to try to jaywalk Kingsway at five in the afternoon or to reach under the mower to dislodge a stuck cone when the motor is running. Not because the worst has happened to him, but because he can so strongly see it happening that it is a foregone conclusion that it will happen. It feels inevitable, a law of nature. He can see it, a diagram with arrows and equals signs, in his head. He knows that when he takes his money and goes to buy it, the thing, people will smell it on him, will track him down, advance on him, try to snatch one or the other away, either by force or tricking.

  He thinks he has a right to have some money and go into a store and buy the thing and take it home, but he knows that many people will not care about his right — which makes it only a wish — and they will try to get it off him, the money or the item. He knows they will be clever and try some ruse. He can be careful beforehand about the force part: if he goes in daylight and walks straight from the bank with the cash in his wallet which he will keep his hand on, straight to the store. And then he has put two good locks on his room, now: Nobody can get in.

  He won’t let them see what he is bringing back, either. So nobody will think it worth trying. Though some in his building he knows will go in other people’s apartments out of habit, or on spec, just making their rounds in case there’s anything to pick up. He’s lost a couple of small things that way: tapes, library books. His dad’s watch, which Mandalay hasn’t forgiven him for losing. But now he has two good locks, installed himself, to foil the casual scavenging. And if he is careful about bringing the thing in, so nobody knows it’s there, it should be safe.

  He has planned it out. But the issue is still getting it from the store to his building. He won’t be able to carry the thing that far. If he had a cart? For a second he contemplates borrowing a wheelbarrow, to which he has easy access, but he sees an image of himself wheeling a garden wheelbarrow six and a half blocks up Main and discards the idea. Too conspicuous.

  If he knew someone with a car? Well, he does. Guy he works with. But he tried that. He had asked Ray at work, when they were crowded together in the shelter of a glass house, fogging it with their breathing, their sandwiches and coffee, well, Ray’s coffee. Rain drizzling down the panes, the sky grey smears on lighter grey. They weren’t supposed to work in the rain but they did: The rain didn’t let up long enough. They took breaks during the worst downpours.

  Ray had said: What do you want a new one for? Things depreciate soon as you get them out of the store. I’ve got one you can have. It works fine. Like new.

>   Like new?

  Well, one knob’s a bit loose but you don’t need it, anyway. Pair a plyers will do it.

  Does it get all the channels?

  Many as you need.

  How old is it?

  Ah, not that old. Colour picture.

  Why are you getting rid of it?

  Got too many now. Got a new one for Christmas.

  This, Cliff knew to be a falsehood. Ray had told him his family’s gifts. Caution now cramped his lungs. Careful, careful. Ray was tricky.

  Tell you what, Ray said. Give it to you for a hundred.

  A hundred dollars?

  Well, do you think I’m going to give it away? Now Ray sounded hurt, aggrieved. Cliff felt guilt settle on him. His neck grew warm.

  It’s a great deal for a kid like you, Ray said. What are you going to spend on new? Few hundred? And not get anything better. Worse, to tell you the truth. They don’t make goods like they used to. Cheap Chinese junk.

  Cliff said, I’ve saved up for new. Thanks. He heard his voice, small. He was not sure now that he did not owe Ray something. And he might be spending foolishly. He had saved up for six months. Now it would be all spent, and what if he got a lemon?

  Disgust in Ray’s voice now. Yeah, you young kids. Think you can just go around spending big bucks on toys. No thought for how the rest of us are trying to make a bare living.

  Cliff had got up, zipped his coat, still damp, higher at the throat. Even when the rain stopped, the cedar fronds still delivered rivers of cold water under his cap, down his collar, whenever he brushed them. He had picked up the hedge-trimmer, slung its unbalanced weight over his shoulder. He had said in his head: I need to think.

  You got the cash on you now? Ray had asked.

  Then he had seen it, the dark birds circling. That had been his warning, had cleared his mind.

  Nope, he had said. And then forced himself to turn, look Ray in the eye. Haven’t really got it saved yet, anyway, he said.