The Adjustment League

by Mike Barnes

  The daughter who shows up now at unexpected times, journeying from the remote places where she lives, to be the other child that visits.

  Sleepwalker 20 August

  You should write a book on caregiving. I’ve been thinking a lot about it. You’re the one to do it, I’m sure of it… etc. L says it many different ways.

  The tickle of flattery—smart start-up publisher asking you to write a book!—soon swamped by preposterousness.

  Write about it while I’m still living it? If I’m riding the train to burnout, that sounds like the Express.

  Yet something in the idea, far-fetched as it is, sticks to me, won’t quite let me go. It comes back to me at intervals. I question it to make it go away.

  Does L not know what this is like? (No, think of the losses in her early life. Her grinding struggles still.) Is she trying to buck me up, keep me in the game? (No, she brings it up too often—suggesting angles, frames of reference… real help. She really is thinking about it.)

  Finally, around the summer solstice—feeling a half year out of sync with the dazzling early dawn, the long humid sunset—I give it a whirl. Whirl exactly the wrong word. I just relapse into what everyday life has become—caregiving from any and all directions—and take notes on whatever occurs.

  At first I do it to put the idea to rest. To be able to tell L honestly, well I tried, and get her—and me—off the subject.

  And then the first surprise: not only do I have things to say on the subject and the energy to say them with, but saying them makes me feel better, lighter somehow.

  Two months later, I’m still going. Feeling a little stronger, a little lighter—though nothing else has changed, just this new job added. But my job. Really? Is that it?

  Feeling skeptical. Grateful. Cautiously amazed.

  Spending cash I didn’t know I had. Waiting for notice of the overdraft.

  I turned 52 five days ago, but I feel like a boy trying to wake up to the truth of his life.

  Is that my brand of insomnia? A sleepwalker caught wandering between bed and waking?

  Anything can happen to such a person. (Anything except rest.)

  §

  A help or hindrance? Am I deluding myself to think that reading these entries brings me somehow closer to the secrets of the Wyvern freezer? And does it matter either way? Deluded or not, helped or hindered—Take them down.

  Though who to take down (besides the obvious), and how…

  The Sandor I meet in these pages. Like the self-confessing, sparring guzzler I met in the Queen’s Arms—yet different. Spruced up, cleaned up—chaos laid bare, but given a shave and a haircut, a new suit of clothes. Like people in wedding pictures—presented almost beyond themselves. You recognize them, but…

  And the L he keeps mentioning. His publisher, from the last entry. But also the one who framed the butterfly wing. A counsellor, an advisor. An all-purpose person in his life.

  Dangerous to know too well someone you might have to adjust. There’s that too. Like a surgeon chatting up the patient in pre-op, getting his life story. Not done on principle.

  Hard and sharp—what a knife needs to be. Firm—the hand guiding it.

  §

  Outside Ukiyo-e, Nicholas and Simone, looking and behaving pretty much as they were last Saturday on the construction site. Senseless irate voices, pushing and shoving. Oblivious of any audience and yet at the same time theatrical—the drama that moves inside and never closes. Same weird impression of a gender swap. Tall, leathery, toothless Simone in her greasy black suit, shoving with real malice. Meek and pudgy Nicholas, a head shorter, hunching inside his plaid jacket, pushing back half-heartedly, an open palm at her chest for every two or three hard, well-timed cuffs. Pedestrians scoot to the curb around them, like they did with Birdy’s birds.

  They give no sign of recognizing me. Step aside to let me through, then resume their hassling. Do they know or care they’ve just been bounced? A young Japanese guy standing by the door, looking uncomfortable. The chest and shoulders for bouncing, but not the appetite for trouble the job requires. Ukiyo-e for high-end, intimate dining—two-hundred-dollar sushi sequences, with the parking ticket on the Benz just another item on the bill. A waiter probably. Or a sous-chef, from his apron.

  Two young men, Malaysian or Filipino perhaps, leaning against the glass of Obsession next door, playing with their cellphones. Too engrossed to take notice of this minor ruckus. They look like gym and fashion nuts. Silk shirts in pastel colours clinging to sculpted torsos, crisply pleated dark pants tight in the crotch. A purple-gowned mannequin behind glass between them.

  Inside, my helpful reservation bird is taking a scolding from a suited man on the far side of the restaurant. Hair half-hiding her lowered face, his cheeks flushed. A busboy, also blushing, is filling in at reception. He greets me with a blank stare. Beyond him, two boys busy cleaning a booth, an assistant manager with his jacket off supervising, hands on hips. Third guy down on his knees, sweeping up with a dustpan and little brush. Obviously, Nicholas and Simone made the most of their half hour. Over on the right, in the raised section, Max and Vivian have been moved to a table for two next to the wall. While the busboy peers confusedly at the reservation book, I head on up.

  White shirt and tie materializes instantly. Mess after mess, Christ what a night. “Sir?” he says to Max. While I’m pulling up a chair from the next table.

  “It’s all right, Takeshi,” Max says. “He’s only staying a minute. Could you bring us another cup, though?”

  Max has decided to play it cool, at least to start that way. Vivian doesn’t have to play. Her charcoal eyes disconcerting in their almond settings. Cinders surrounded by the flames of striking beauty. Neither is surprised to see me. Judy’s friend—the Face in the chair—Wednesday’s underclass barrage—now Nicholas and Simone… it doesn’t take a Holmes.

  Two ceramic saké flasks on the table, patterned with cranes and leaves. One on the house probably for the debacle in the booth. A waiter brings my cup. When Max reaches to pour, I reach across his arm for his water glass. Take a deep gulp, set it down beside me.

  Brief flares behind his porthole lenses, but a weary smile beneath. Has coached himself, or been coached, to except some crap along established lines.

  Max wearing a Clash T-shirt, earring back in his right lobe. Forest Hill Peter Pan. Grubbing out in ripped jeans and Nevermind on the weekends, telling himself he’s still hip, still a rebel. Vivian far less confused. Soft cream sweater with lozenge peephole below her throat, silver band necklace, matching bangles on one wrist. Knows who she is, where she is, what she is. Rare in these parts.

  “Nice place,” I say, looking around the half-filled room. Diners focused a little too resolutely on their plates. “Classy. Though myself, I’d ditch the dinner jazz and put on some Christmas music.”

  No future in poker for Max. None at all. He maintains basic composure, but little tells flicker randomly over his face, like pings on a radar screen. Vivian, though, she’d take every hand. Turning her saké cup slowly between sips, pearl nails light on the rim, cocking a polite bored ear at the men’s conversation. In it all the way. Player and producer.

  “It’s a little early for ‘Jingle Bells’,” Max says. “We haven’t even made it to Hallowe’en.”

  “Never too early for old standards, Doctor. No timetable at all for some pleasures. Fortunes built on the fact.”

  “Are you a carols tycoon?” Max manages it lightly, cocking an eyebrow. Feeling his way onto familiar ground. Nothing these people imagine unbuyable. How they’ll come down. “And here I thought you were just a poor man with crumbling teeth.”

  A mental case like my sister, he hardly needs to add.

  “Tycoon? You underestimate the religious impulse, Doctor. I’m a man of conviction. Hymns to the Almighty are not for sale. Even if I had a catalogue of them, I’d still be forced
to give them away.”

  “Charitable impulses. Admirable.”

  I shrug. “Like they say, it begins at home. These old tunes, they go from hand to hand naturally. Always have. Me, I’d just be giving them a larger push. Widening the circle, so to speak.”

  Vivian’s stopped turning her tumbler. Looks up at me. Then, longer, at Max. Who’s sitting with his spine pulled tighter, sipping too rapidly at his saké. Crumbles in the crunch, she should know. Why be with him otherwise?

  “You know what it means, don’t you? Ukiyo-e?”

  Max raises a palm. “Good food? High prices? You got me.”

  “Close. It means ‘Floating World.’ It’s what you live in. What you’ve always lived in. And it’s time you came down to Earth.”

  Now I pour myself a cup of saké. Raise and hold it in my hands, warming it, but take care not to bring it to my lips. Level time, just now. No stairs. No sights beyond this room.

  Max drains his cup, sets it down with a little clunk. “Disregarding this preamble about Christmas carols—”

  “Christmas music.”

  “Christmas whatever. Which I confess is going right over my head. But I’d have to be an absolute idiot not to recognize that ever since you popped up in my sister’s life—the day my mother died, no less—you’ve dedicated yourself to pulling weird stunts in mine. Only once in person, acting the fool in my chair, but it’s pretty obvious which petty disturbances you’ve been behind, right up to half an hour ago. You have—I’m sure I’m not the first to say it—a certain signature. The thing I’m still fuzzy on is why. What you want.”

  “I’ve noticed you never call Judy by her name. It’s always ‘my sister.’ Why is that?”

  “What is it you need exactly? Or think you’ve got coming to you, perhaps?”

  Thinking he already knows the answer. One of my sister’s people—broke, crack-brained, desperate. Exhaling it on a pillow beside Vivian. Though she wouldn’t be so sure.

  “It’s very simple, Doctor. I don’t like people who hurt other people. It makes me want to hurt them.”

  A pause. Max is cold, but doesn’t do cold convincingly. “Maybe they’ll hurt you too.”

  “Maybe they will. They’ve had lots of practice. But here’s the thing about pain. The pain I cause them will be fresh pain. Pain they’re not accustomed to. With me it will just be scar tissue.”

  “Who would you be showing your Christmas music to?” Vivian says.

  “I could show it to your wife,” I say to Max. “She might be interested.”

  “I’m not married. I’m divorced.”

  “Even better. I don’t imagine your alimony cheques have improved relations.”

  “Gwen? It’ll just mean she can skip her Metamucil that day.” From anyone else it would come out as a cruel joke, punctuated with a dismissive snort. But Vivian just stops her saké cup mid-turn and delivers it flatly, fingers poised on the rim.

  Gwen? Really, Gwen? I’m thinking busily, while trying to keep all signs of it behind my face. Max’s old lady that old lady. Cast off but still working his desk—in lieu of alimony? Sent down to the street to chase off sign carriers, get her picture tweeted. Chase off Snag and Sammy, spray Glade in their wake. Reserve a table for his current squeeze?

  “It’s an amicable arrangement, whatever you may be thinking. Not everyone is as bad at moving on as you seem to be,” Max says, obviously twigging to some of the face behind the Face. Good at faces. Spends his days an inch from them. And has to be, to know which ones to make into Christmas Music.

  “Maybe not. But I wonder if she knows about all her ex’s hobbies.”

  “Spoken like a lifelong bachelor,” Max says, a little too lightly. “After almost twenty years, a husband doesn’t have any secrets.”

  “Well, we’ll see I guess. If she’s not interested, I’m sure someone else will be. Just look at the grief they’re giving our mayor for his private life.”

  “Cut the shit,” Vivian says. Ignoring a sharp look from Max. “How much do you want?”

  Gotcha! A hard thought to think while returning her dead eye for dead eye. A lack of normal motivations—pound for pound, my best tool as an adjuster. Guaranteed to wrong-foot the target, stick him from an angle he least expects. I’m so elated I tell them the simple truth, sure that they’ll mistake it for a bargaining manoeuver.

  “I just want to take you down. There’s nothing else I want to see happen.”

  “Yeah, right,” says Vivian. How many men have mistaken the disdainful curl to her lip as a seduction tool, unable to believe she honestly despises them? Max just looks blank, a little deflated, the nonchalance he’s put across all used up, waiting for new lines.

  “Thanks for the drink,” I say, draining his water glass.

  At the door I look back and see Max with his saké cup suctioned to his face, Vivian busy on her cellphone.

  §

  Ten minutes later, I’m ready when the buzz comes from the lobby. A mumbled “…delivery for…,” garble fore and aft. Amateurs. “Come see me first, Apartment 501,” I call down gruffly, handing them a chuckle over a conscientious old clown.

  Through the peephole thirty seconds later, the bovine young faces of the two cellphone loiterers outside Obsession. Called in by Vivian at the Nicholas-and-Simone show, standing by until she found out more. The taller one in a pale peach shirt. His partner in pale lemon.

  I open the door a crack—“What’s this about?” Let them shove it wide and me with it, backing me against the little shelf I use for mail and keys. Lemon shuts the door behind him.

  “Okay, old man,” Peach, the tall one, says. “It’s really simple, okay? You’ve got something that belongs to our sister and her friend. We’ll take it, plus any copies you’ve made. Then we’re out of here. You see how simple—”

  Crack! The finishing hammer raps him low in the forehead, right between the eyes. The short handle and small head don’t allow for a swing with much power, but you can swing it even with sore fingers and bang exactly where you mean to. In this case, the sweet spot where a calf would catch the bolt. He opens his mouth as if to say something, takes a pinstep towards me, and sits down.

  “Simple enough?” I say, and turn to Lemon.

  Stunned for a moment, his mouth open, as if the blow caught him too, he recovers now and gets his hands up, trying to look fierce. The left in a fist and the right open in front of it, ready to parry or grab the hammer while throwing a punch behind it.

  Except it isn’t a hammer that’s coming. I drop it on the floor, reach behind me for the cutter, and swipe it across his forward hand. He yells and presses the other hand over the wound, hunching over them. Red seeps between the knuckles of his left hand. I slash more deliberately across the cheek that’s turned to me. A dark seam for a moment, and then the blood wells thickly. He howls again, louder this time. Drops to his knees. Puts his left hand up over the new wound, blood dripping from face and hand to the floor.

  “My face… my face… you fucking cut me…,” he moans, rocking back and forth, as if he can’t believe it.

  “Take your hand away and let me see.”

  “No fucking way. You’ll just do it again.”

  A moan from behind us. Peach is trying to get to his feet. I pick up the hammer and rap again on the red spot above his nose. He falls back and lies flat, arms outstretched.

  When I turn back, Lemon has inched into the corner and is cowering there, making whimpering sounds, blood dripping from the palm he’s holding above the floor and from the wrist bone of the hand over his cheek. The side of his face a red smear now. Looking down, I see the tip of the cutter blade has snapped off. I push out more blade with the button on the handle. At the snick his eyes go wide.

  “I think you’re wearing some of my blade. Take away your hand so I can see.”

  Shakes his head. He’s crying
now. Tears rolling down into the blood. But lifts his hand off enough that I see a small gray fin jutting from the red. His eyes rolling down at it to see, but he can’t.

  “Take your hand away.”

  “No… no…”

  “Suit yourself.” A short kick in the hand drives the lodged point down to bone and pierces the hand as well.

  His scream high-pitched this time, frantic. “You’re… you’re…,” he gets out between sobs, but can’t decide what I am. While he’s thinking about it, I duck into the kitchen and grab a bottle of Fantastik and a roll of paper towels from under the sink.

  Get down on my knees beside him, spraying and wiping at the blood. “You filthy thing. You have no idea how the Owner feels about his parquet floors.” I tilt the nozzle up and spray a puff at the cut face and hand, some of it catching his eye. His yowl becomes a string of curses—“FuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckFUCK”—as the chemicals burn. The hit eye closed so tight it’s just wrinkles below his eyebrow. I aim the nozzle at the other eye. Shutting it just as tight, he cranks his head away.

  When I turn to check on his brother, he scrambles up and out the door behind me. Blood smears on the jamb and knob from his fumbling with two sliced hands.

  One down. One to go.

  A few anxious minutes as Peach doesn’t stir. Out cold—I hope. Did they follow me down the street or know the address already? From whom? Finally his eyes roll open. Close again. Then start opening and closing slowly, long long blinks. While he makes small movements with his arms and legs, bending and unbending the ends of them, like a baby in a crib acquainting himself with his limbs.

  An idea comes to me. I see it, like a scene in a movie I’m going to shoot and have already watched. Everything I need is under the kitchen sink, where I got the Fantastik.

  He doesn’t react when I lift his legs and slide the long plastic leaf bag up over them to his hips. I know he’s not paralyzed, but could he be brain damaged? I tried to keep them short, sharp raps on bone—stunners, not stoppers. But the brain more complicated than a finishing nail. That scrawny, rat-faced boy in lock-up who kept beating up on iron pumpers, putting one in a wheelchair. Shrugged when I asked him his secret: Street muscle versus gym muscle. Use beats show ever’ time. Not a helpful reminder.