The Adjustment League

by Mike Barnes

  The dream already scuttling backwards into the black it came from. Even this dim too bright for it. Just traces, disappearing. A leg torn off below the hip, flesh oozing red around the splintered femur. Brown swipes on the wall. Sludge ankle-deep already. And the sense, hovering: whoever did this, is doing it, is close. Close by. Just ahead and just behind.

  All here. On a page buried among other papers from that time, a box of them in a corner of the bedroom closet. What you set down, then. What just tore you out of sleep, now.

  There is no now and then. You’re in a loop. Round and round.

  Aging. Not changing.

  Out on the balcony, suck in air that’s taken a wintry turn. Dark bricks ahead. Fenced slabs of concrete one way, blinking tower the other. Hizzoner underneath it with his pals, plotting and partying in his black-velvet cellar.

  City Hall not the tower, nowhere near it. But geography broke for fantasy long ago. Where else for the Big Man’s bunker but sunk deep below the pseudo-building? Flunkies bringing stacks of takeout 24/7 as, drunk and high, he screams and schemes how to keep his base, his Nation. Sucked wings and bottles smash against the walls, bellows of outrage stab the ears. How? HOW??!! Such pointless pain, when a tranked-out monkey could tell him his base is firmly in his sweaty palms, it always has been, he hit on the formula from the start. No new taxes. Save the guy with the three-car garage and the heated driveway two hundred bucks a year and he’s yours. Whisper at the same time that what little he does pay won’t find its way into the paws of the lazy breeding maggots in the roach towers, pregnant teen sluts sucking strangers for smokes—not a fuckin’ nickel, y’hear, I’m workin’ on it—and he’s yours for life.

  Him and all his mall-trawling, frappa-slurping, Bluetooth-bawling brood.

  The Nation safe.

  Night’s done, no question. Sleep anyway. Back on the couch, I read again the piece from years ago. Calmer now. Hizzoner does that for me, I’ll give him that. His dream plug-ugly, but mundane. Fuck you I got mine a credo old as office.

  The description holds. So does its meaning. Stone putting me on notice. The window closing, our meeting can’t be postponed much longer. As vile as the Ugly Dreams are, slayfests of gore and shit, what waits beyond them will be far more eerie and unsettling. Crushings of the birth canal nothing to the light and chill of Delivery.

  With steps to a secret cellar, put the nastiest-looking guy you can find outside the unmarked door. Members Only says his hideous mug.

  §

  Lois’s idea—

  Remembering that as I unplug the toilet for the girls in 201. A monthly job at least, which I’m just as glad to have today. Morning shredded by that start. Odd-job some hours at No Name Towers, hope things gel by evening. Embarrassed, Alyssa’s gone to make tea. Usually it’s a toothbrush or make-up applier or disposable razor I fish out—things they always pop cute eyes at “how that got there.” Though the real mystery to me is how you can brush your teeth or curl your lashes over a bowl of shit, yet be too dainty to dip a hand in to retrieve the fallen thing.

  Try writing it down. Quick, before you forget it. Lois sounding sleepy, looking for a way to salvage some shut-eye herself. Said I thrashed and groaned, then whimpered before shouting myself awake. But believed in writing too. Kept various journals, one just for dreams. No recovery pimp—I couldn’t have loved that—but believed in digging channels to connect above and below. A miner at heart. Psychically, artistically. And tough and brave enough for that work.

  “This is good,” she said next morning over coffee. “Creepy. Maybe a little too abstract, but it catches something. And makes me want to keep reading.” And suggested—the thriller reader—that I add the title: Prologue: The Stairs. Got right away that it had to lead much further down.

  “Well, it could hardly lead up.”

  We laughed. We laughed a lot. Even that last fall—though worry weighed on her—we could still crack each other up… right up to the moment past which we’d never laugh or even smile in each other’s presence again.

  A little tussle—Lois puzzled and put out somehow—when I didn’t want to repeat the experience. Neither by extending this writing or trying another one. Someone not just talented but managing her talent, wringing every drop from it, parsing all its promptings—she couldn’t fathom not following up on a win. But writing held no allure for me. I liked reading, was all. That, to her, was wasteful. Or self-deceiving.

  “What about someone who visits art galleries? Buys art books. Buys pictures even. But never once sits down in front of an easel, or has any desire to.”

  That helped a little. She knew lots of those people, after all. Had sold pictures to a few.

  Though she wouldn’t quite surrender her sense that something—someone—was being squandered.

  How do you not love that?

  §

  A toilet, a leaky faucet, some loose bathroom tiles. I head out at 3:45, catch the bank just before closing. No funds yet. “Tomorrow for sure.” But my people don’t work for tomorrow—not for me, they don’t. “I’ll be back first thing.”

  Pigeon Man sitting by an alley just east of Yonge. Back against the wall, legs straight out in front of him. The birds march up and down the narrow alley, mill around him, walk circles on his lap and up and down his outstretched legs. Shitting randomly, as birds do. Splotches of white coat his crotch and legs, wrists, hands. It looks like an act he’s worked up, dedicated himself to. And the wide berth people give him, arcing to the curb as they pass, clears a neat semicircular stage. But he’s relaxed, smiling, murmuring to his companions. In his own world, no hint of performance. He calls them by name as they peck at his half bagel. A stink comes off him—picked up where the detour to curbside starts, the pedestrians as choreographed as the birds. He’s tall, bony, with a movie prophet’s mane of graying hair. St. Jerome, devils by CGI. Face and hands a deep, leathery brown—he hasn’t been inside since winter.

  It’s obvious the scene will have to be transplanted to Max’s office, where it will just about fit. Plenty of room for traipsing and for short, shit-spilling flights. And no shortage in this crew of toothless bills needing fittings. Massively receded gums.

  I just need the funds, Ken. Insta-everything the promise these days. And a lot does come that way. But then there are these pockets, way-stations. Info-bit spots an old pal on the circuit and holes up for a few hours over bad coffee, bitching and laughing about the binary grind.

  Tomorrow for sure. I can’t see any reason why it…

  Presto-World. Everything guaranteed—in foam, not iron.

  BMV is pleased to buy back the Alzheimer’s book. Overnight read-and-sells nothing new to them—obsession is the bedrock of their business. The clerk, same guy as yesterday, skips the flip-through. Another virtue of the word freak: he’s not on a page long enough to soil it.

  On a parkette bench down the hill from the Queen’s Arms, I empty my pockets and count coins. Besides the eight bucks from BMV, I’ve got another toonie, and the loonie and two quarters I found in a dryer drum in the third-floor laundry room. Just over eleven bucks. Reluctantly, I open one of the rolls in my jacket pocket and add another four loonies, crimp it shut again. They’re supposed to be for emergency use only, but I need enough to stake me to the first round at least.

  In my early days as a super, I thought the laundry room might serve as another bank for short-term loans. Along with the rent cheques at the first of the month, I deposit the rolls of coins I collect from the boxes on the Owner’s two washers and two dryers. A source, I thought, of small tide-me-overs at lean month-ends. If I had to siphon too much, I could bump up next month’s deposit. He could hardly miss such relatively small and random discrepancies.

  Not so fast. The first time I shorted him by ten bucks—from a two-hundred-dollar take from the four machines—the Owner was on the phone before the end of the business day. Not accusing me—not
directly—but wondering if a tenant had found a way to wash or dry without paying. Did I know if that was possible? It seems he’d actually had someone graph the receipts over years, factoring in the regular rises in fees for which I changed the coin slots accordingly, and he knew to a remarkable degree of accuracy what an average month of use should bring in. Even knew which months were heavy and lighter. Did I know that people washed their clothes much more often in the summer? Outside more, of course. Sweating. And seeing others and being seen. Much easier to let a wash go late in the winter, shiver in the comfy same a couple more days. Did I know that? I did now. It was January when we were speaking.

  He’ll be alone tonight. But not before 6:30. Most drinkers have braking devices in place, and start time is a common one. No wonder how I know these things, no guessing required. Prophecy common window coin. Five weeks ago, it might’ve been a shooting star sparking in black, a fizz of lime-white announcing a window opening… but not now. Cross the river in the dark and the next stone will be right where your foot needs it to be, shining in a spot of helpful moonlight.

  No less natural than the squirrel tugging the Burger Shack bag out from under the juniper.

  §

  He’s sitting at the very back this time, alone, at one of the round tables pushed against the wall around the pool table. He’s on the side that catches some of the light over the baize and the racked balls. Facing me but hunched over, reading something intently.

  The front room’s boisterous already, though it’s all coming from one long row of tables. A strange party. A bunch of boys, young men—one, two, three… seven of them—looking barely old enough to shave, directing overlapping stories and jokes at a massive, suet-faced woman sitting at one end of the table. They’re dressed identically, in gray jackets and blue ties. She’s wearing voluminous cloth, striped diagonally in primary colours. Marlon Brando in his muumuu in The Island of Dr. Moreau. The scene is hard to figure. Private school boys taking their teacher or headmistress for a pint? But these boys, though they look young enough to card, must be beyond high school. They’ve all got glasses of beer in front of them, including her, three pitchers on the table. Grad students, then, with their curmudgeonly advisor? But why the matching, prep school rigs?

  “What’s he drinking? Whatever it is, I’d like two of them.”

  The daughter puts her hands on her hips. She’s very pretty, a different shade of hot pants tonight. Turns to her mother, who’s already clocking me. Father nowhere in sight.

  Mother approaches with a kindly expression. Puts a hand briefly on mine. Cool, soft—I wish she’d leave it there. The trouble with some people touching you. “No trouble please,” she says.

  “None. Word of honour.” With my hands up like she’s got a gun. “It’ll end with a friendly handshake. Just watch. You’ll see.”

  She shakes her head slowly, but nods at the daughter, who pulls the two half-pints. Sets them on the bar and reaches overhead for a tray. When I tell her I’ll carry them over myself, she picks at my toonies and loonies like they’re turds, leaves the extras, my tip, lying on the counter. My charms at work.

  Now Mother, hands folded below her waist, is staring at me with a blank face in which I can’t read even the hint of an emotion. People are strangers to me. I know nothing of them.

  Absolutely the wrong thought to carry into an encounter.

  I bring the glasses up towards my nose and inhale deeply. Toasted malt, strongly nutty, cradled by sweetly vegetal vapours with tangy strikes—rain-washed grass beside a pine tree. The trick, for me—which, with some close calls, has worked so far—is to experience the full allure of the travel brochure and decide not to embark. Avert your eyes and you may find yourself on board by mistake.

  When I open my eyes, after a second that feels like a long time away, the scene of the cavorting boys and the unsmiling dowager reveals itself, tidepool-clear after my deep sniff. They all live together in a hut deep in the forest. Which is also the center of the city, disguised as a small apartment building. They serve her sexually, one per night, and at the end of a long, elaborate copulation she eats that night’s partner. Not with a chomp, like a praying mantis, but delicately, savouringly, starting with his feet, leaving blue eyes in a pale white face, bangs of love-damp hair, till the end. Next morning, she gives birth to his replacement. Once a week they gather here, the eternal den mother and seven mates who didn’t exist a week ago.

  Above them, men in shorts and long underwear tear with raised sticks around an ice rink, unwatched by anyone.

  Time to meet Sandor.

  “Peace offering?” I say, setting down the beers. “We didn’t exactly get off to a raging start the other night.”

  He comes up slowly out of his reading, emerging from a pool of deep absorption. A notebook, he closes it now over his pen. A well-worn paperback—George R.R. Martin’s A Dance With Dragons, the last of the series so far—on the table also. He doesn’t seem at all surprised to see me. Might have come expressly for that purpose, been waiting at our table.

  “I’d say we got off to the start you planned. And, yes, rage was a big part of it.” He says this as I’m settling into my seat, the dark side of the table. No meanness in his voice, just a rueful kind of levelling—a let’s at least be honest that’s a reasonable request. “No tea tonight?”

  “No anything. But I have to buy my seat.” I slide the glasses over.

  He lifts and settles those big shoulders inside another sweater. “Sure, why not? Besides, how often does a bipolar detective deliver you your beer?”

  No problem hiding my surprise. I’ve lived far behind my skin for longer than I can remember. But a strain to conceal how fast gears are turning in my head, trying to puzzle out who might’ve shown Sandor this funhouse version of me. Sipping the last of his beer placidly, no gotcha gleam winking out at me. I can’t fit detective with any of the people who’ve seen me poking around since Saturday—Judy, Danika, the Vivera staff—or, more to the point, match it with someone who would convey her impressions to Sandor. Though it has been her, every time. And don’t discount the loyalty, often desperate, a ladies’ man inspires. Danika’s secret smile at Sandor’s name. But bipolar? It’s only one of a grab bag of labels thrown at me early on—gaining over time, but seldom on its own. Usually a double or triple string of terms coined for my windows, or episodes as they called them. Along with, always, a double-duty qualifier to complete the picture. Treatment-resistant. Non-compliant. Four or five words to give a gist of me. And anyway it’s been years, decades, since I got close enough to a shrink to get any name. So—a homemade diagnosis? A psychiatric hobbyist?

  When in doubt, plunge in. Take the attack when the opponent succeeds in surprising you, abandoning your gradualist strategies in an instant. The moment itself is familiar, an occupational hazard. No matter the adjustment, there comes a time when someone—sometimes a principal, sometimes a side performer—offers you a glimpse of what you’re doing as a stumble in midway dark, yourself a strobed caricature, Silly Putty strands and bulbs waving in rippled glass. It’s absolutely the wrong time to pause and consider the vision, whose plausibility can only demoralize. And equally wrong to press on in the dark, groping in a labyrinth that has just shown its eagerness to repel you. It’s axe time. Grab the nearest one and swing it at the wall of glass, the painted plywood behind it. Crash and splinter straight ahead to find open air.

  “You’re welcome, I think. But I’m way too crazy to be a real detective. And not nearly crazy enough to ignore things that smell off.”

  Which sounds, even to my ears, nothing like an axe. More like a toy hammer, tapping.

  “What things?”

  “Someone slipping away for no apparent cause.”

  “People do, you know. Especially at eighty-two.” Staring into his glass. “My mother… she tried to end her life once. Maybe you know. It turns out all she had to do was wait.” Drains the
last of it. “Though nobody ever said waiting was easy.”

  “No one surprised, or even curious. Her last check-up clean. No doctor attending, just mortuary goons who arrive in double-time. A cop summoned at the first sign of anyone remotely interested in her death.”

  “Are you done?”

  “Barely started. Sons who don’t pause when their mother falls off the earth, they go on drinking with friends, pulling teeth. Sign-in pages like mayflies, they vanish at the end of the day. A daughter who sometimes sleeps over with her mom. Staff look the other way—but they keep looking that night? After that night? A daughter who always has pocketfuls of pills—any five of which would drop a linebacker into coma.”

  On cue at “sons,” Sandor starts in on the next beer. Half of it goes down his throat before he pauses, glass near his chin. Takes down the rest.

  “And you were on the scene because you know Judy?”

  “Yes.” TAL does a lazy flit through my head and out again. It might as well be me downing the beers, I’m so poor at keeping some things in view.

  “And, knowing her, you know she has a history of violence. Extreme at times.”

  “Violence to herself. I’ve never known her to hurt someone else.” They’d have to become real to her first.

  “If you say so.” Sipping. “Since you’re implying there’s something suspicious about my mother’s death, I assume motive is the next consideration. That’s how these conversations usually go, isn’t it?”

  “Usually, yes. And it’s best to start with the obvious, no matter how far away from it you end up.”

  “Money.”

  “As far as I can see, Maude was the only thing standing between her children and it.”

  “You don’t know anything, do you? Does Judy strike you as money hungry?”

  “Money starved, not money hungry. And her family has certainly pulled together to make sure she never developed a taste for the stuff.”