“The device that is sucking my soul is in the wall,” he tells me, not seeming to notice that he is talking to a slice of pizza, just before he swings and BOOM! puts another hole in the wall above Barry’s head. Barry whimpers, his lip quivering.
“I know it’s in here,” says Crazy Larry, swinging again. BOOM! I reach my hand out and Barry grabs hold. I pull at him, but he seems frozen. Crazy Larry doesn’t seem to care about us; he just seems to be concerned about the device in the wall that he has manufactured in his warped mind.
“Come on Barry,” I yell at him, pulling, “it’s time to go!” Finally he moves, following me out the door. BOOM! Crazy Larry screams, “I know it’s in here!”
We make our way to the fire-escape door and bolt down the stairs. As we near the bottom flight, two firefighters wearing masks and oxygen tanks on their backs greet us going up. I stop one. “There’s no fire, but there’s a crazy man putting holes in the wall with a sledgehammer. You need the cops!” I yell over the deafening sounds of the alarm bell.
“Say again?” says one of the firemen.
“No fire, but a crazy man. I wouldn’t go up there without a gun!”
The firemen look at each other and the one thumbs back over his shoulder. We all leave the stairwell and head into the ground-floor lobby. Barry’s trembling hard. A fireman comes and wraps him in a blanket. When we get outside, hundreds of employees are huddled in groups of three or four, looking up at the building for traces of smoke or flame. Maybe Crazy Larry will burn the place down yet, give them something to watch. I tell my story to the chief fireman, and then I tell it again when the cops show up.
“Why are you dressed as a pizza slice?”
“Marketing gimmick to raise money.”
“Nice. So, one naked guy with a sledgehammer. Any guns?”
“Not that I’m aware of, but the guy scares the shit out of me. I wouldn’t put it past him.” It’s freezing out, about minus-fifteen Celsius with the wind chill. A lot of my co-workers are crossing the street to Sunshine Valley. I would, too, but apparently they want me to stick around. I end up sitting in the back of a cruiser for a while to warm up. They call in the SWAT team to take down Crazy Larry. They show up within ten minutes, and two media vans pull up, too. A reporter with a camera taps on the window of the car I’m sitting in and asks if I would talk with her. I leave the warmth of the cruiser to carry out an interview about all the exciting commotion that has transpired. I repeat exactly what I’d recited to the cops moments earlier.
Fifteen minutes after the SWAT team goes in, they march back out with Crazy Larry, a bug-eyed zombie, presumably handcuffed underneath the brown blanket his naked form is wrapped in. A couple of photographers are snapping pictures as he’s escorted into a police van. I see a bewildered Barry sitting in the back of an ambulance. He seems to have calmed down. I walk over to him. “Colin,” he says surprised, as if he hasn’t seen me in years, “I don’t know what to say. You saved my life.”
“I want off the Refrigerator Committee, Barry,” I tell him.
“Ah yeah, sure thing,” he says.
“Thanks.” I walk away and approach a cop to inquire about getting my clothes back. She tells me that the whole area is currently a crime scene, but she’ll look into getting them back for me after they finish taking photos. “Shouldn’t be more than an hour.”
I walk over to the mall and run into Phil outside First Choice Hair Cutters and he nearly pees his pants laughing at my costume. We kill an hour strolling the mall before I head back to get my clothes. I humour a zillion questions from customers asking whether there is a new pizza place opening in the mall, and parents encouraging their kids to have photos taken with me. I do it because I imagine I, too, would want a photo of my Sammy with a slice of pizza.
I head back over to the office building. I’m not allowed to go back into the building because the fire marshal discovered, while inspecting the damage caused by Crazy Larry’s hole-punching antics, asbestos in the walls of the men’s washroom. They tell me I won’t be able to come in for the rest of the week until all the asbestos has been removed and the damage fixed.
I ride the bus home wearing my pizza costume.
At home with Sarah, who can’t stop laughing after seeing me on the six o’clock news, the phone rings. It’s Barry. He confirms that we will indeed be off for the rest of the week, but should hopefully be returning on Monday.
The next morning I awake to Sarah screaming. Or at least I think it’s screaming. Something must have happened to the baby. I yank the covers off and run toward her. She’s in the kitchen, laughing, crying, pointing at the newspaper on the kitchen table. I look down. It’s the cover of the Ottawa Sun, with a picture of Crazy Larry being hauled out in his brown blanket, and me, in costume, standing behind. The headline reads, “A Crazy Slice of Life.”
“Beautiful, just fucking beautiful,” I say.
Sarah is holding her belly, still laughing.
When I return to work, there is an email informing us that a grief counsellor, Dr. Barnum, has been hired to talk to us about our feelings, about what happened with Crazy Larry. Attendance is highly encouraged. I guess because I was directly involved, I’ve automatically been scheduled to see Dr. Barnum first thing at 10 a.m. in Boardroom B down the hall.
Dr. Barnum is a large man with thick curly hair and glasses, wearing a well-ironed shirt and purple bowtie. He shakes my hand and asks me to take a seat. So I do. He asks me a series of non-threatening get-to-know-you questions about my job and a little about my personal life: whether I’m married, do I have kids, where did I grow up. This chit-chat goes on for fifteen minutes, then he asks me if I’ve ever heard of a Rorschach test? I tell him yes and he tells me we should try it. He shows me inkblots and asks me what I see in them.
“Well here and here,” I say pointing, “there are clearly two men hiding behind bushes with guns.”
“How about this one?”
“In this one a man is stabbing a sheep, that’s all the blood pouring out there.”
“Okay, and this one?”
“That’s a man pushing someone down a hole.”
“Interesting,” says Dr. Barnum, pushing his glasses up his nose.
“Yes, and look here, the hole has teeth.”
Urban Folk Dancers
Sarah and I have been attending prenatal classes in the evenings. This is where a group of pregnant women sit around with their life partners or spouses, and some nurse tells them what’s going to happen, what it’s like to have a baby. The only reason I agreed to attend is to show Sarah that I’m a dedicated father. The woman who teaches the class is a real hardcore granola. She favours ethnic clothing, usually brightly coloured ponchos or East Indian patterned shirts with wooden beaded necklaces. Apparently she has four children, but she is unattractive with a personality to match, not even a sense of humour to save her.
Last week Sarah and I were joking around on the birthing ball. We were supposed to be practising different positions, all the while performing the appropriate breathing techniques while we worked through pretend contractions. Sarah was on her knees hugging the ball, as were all the women in the class, and the men were behind rubbing the ladies’ backs. I made some remark about how I thought this position is how we got into this class in the first place. The couple beside us, with whom we’ve made friends, laughed. Miss whole-grain loaf came over and said, “Humour will only get you so far in the delivery room.” What a delightful woman.
This week’s class is going to be on episiotomies and circumcision. Since we know we’re having a girl, and since it’s Phil’s birthday, I begged Sarah to give this class a skip. She said she wanted to go anyway, just in case we had a boy for our second child, but I was free to take the night off. I was going to suggest that we see how the first child goes before we consider having a second. But then I thought better of it
and kept my mouth shut.
I meet Phil and a couple of buddies he went to school with, Roy and Ross, at The Keg for dinner down in the market. His friends appear to be good guys and we get along just fine. Phil tells the story of Crazy Larry and the pizza costume and has them in stitches. We drink a lot of beer and each of us buys Phil a shot. After, we go to a dance club so Phil can check out the ladies. I ask him where the hell Zoe is. He says that he told her he needed a guy’s night out. She’s apparently giving him something very special for his birthday tomorrow, he tells me with a big drunken smile plastered across his face. I refrain from inquiring. The club is dead because we are too early. So we head over to the Chateau Lafayette for a couple pints. I’m getting pretty drunk and I keep calling Ross, Roy and Roy, Ross. One of them suggests that we should hit the urban folk dancers.
“Urban folk dancers, what are they?” I ask.
“Dude,” says Phil, “the peelers, across the street at the Barefax.”
“Jesus, Sarah will have my balls. I’m supposed to be at a prenatal class.”
“Don’t tell her,” says Ross, or is it Roy?
“Yeah, let’s go,” says the other one.
The music is loud and the light is dim and everything seems to be accented in neon trim, pink and blue. A man the size of a vending machine with a bald head and a handlebar moustache reminiscent of the one Sarah’s great-grandfather has in the picture in our hallway watches us expressionlessly as we make our way through the coat check and into the bar. There’s a woman on stage wearing nothing but thigh-high white boots. She’s bent over, palms pressed flat against the stage, showing the men in perverts’ row that no, she has never undergone an episiotomy, all to the musical offerings of Finger Eleven. The place is not that busy so we get a good table with a clear view of the stage. I order a beer and end up paying eight bucks for it, including tip. The next thing I know, we have tequila shots lined up all over the table and Roy and Ross have hired a sassy redhead to table-dance for us. Now, I consider myself a devoted and loyal husband, but as a male still in my prime, I can’t help but imagine what taking this little firecracker to bed would involve: screaming, the clawing of bedsheets, a virtuoso performance. Wow! Having sex with Sarah, now that she is pregnant, is a little odd for me. It’s not that the sex is bad; it’s just that when we’re having it, I keep flashing to an ultrasound image of Sammy being poked in the eye socket by the head of my penis. It’s an awful image. Now here I am, looking at this fine specimen of womanhood, and that’s what I’m thinking about, Sammy getting poked in the womb by her father’s dick.
“Drink up,” says Phil, passing me some sort of purple shooter. I drink it, thinking I probably shouldn’t. I look around the room at the other men. There are a couple of guys at the next table who appear to be bikers. I’m sure they supply these girls with cocaine or whatever they need. Ross stands up and knocks over one of the biker’s beers on a trip to the washroom, but is too drunk to notice. The biker stands up and grabs Ross by the shirt collar and spins him around. Ross sees who he’s dealing with and babbles out a series of apologies. We placate the whole situation by buying the two of them a new round of drinks and a table dance. My heart is still moving faster than it should be. I’m still riding a wave of adrenalin. What if the guy had a knife; what if things had escalated? I think of the headline, “Bar Fight Turns Tragic.” I picture Sarah telling Sammy that her father died in a strip club. “Guys, I’ve got to go home soon,” I tell them.
Outside I bum a smoke off Roy. I’m one of those drunken smokers, the kind real smokers hate. I cough and hack my way through it as we all tumble back to the dance bar. Within twenty minutes, Phil hooks up with some attractive blonde and Ross seems to be doing well with her friend. I yell over the music to Roy that I’m going to take off. He nods his head, not really giving a shit either way. I think about saying goodbye to Phil, but I don’t want to interrupt his gyration on the dance floor.
I stagger to the local poutine stand and get myself a large. I catch a cab and eat it in the backseat on the way home. I ask the cabbie the time and he tells me it’s a quarter to two. Shit, I hope Sarah is in bed. The motion of the cab is making me queasy. I can’t eat anymore. Feeling wonky. Don’t get sick in the cab. Don’t get sick in the cab. I chant this mantra to myself until I arrive safely home.
The light is on when I come in the door. I hope I’m not going to get the why-didn’t-you-call lecture. I told Sarah I was going to be late. I told her not to wait up. She comes barrelling out into the hallway to greet me. “You went to a strip club?!” screams Sarah.
How the hell could she know that? “How the hell do you know that?” I ask.
“You sack of shit, I can’t believe you went to see strippers!”
“Listen, it wasn’t my idea. I was there, but I decided I didn’t want to be knifed in a strip club. I’ve vowed never to go back.”
Sarah comes closer to me, then jerks her head back like she has discovered a mouldy container of food in the refrigerator. “You stink. Were you smoking?”
“Yes, I had a cigarette. What’s the big deal? How did you know I was at the strip club?”
“I checked our online banking and you debited forty dollars at the club.”
“Well aren’t you a clever one, Miss CSI.”
“Fuck you Colin, you…”
I take off running to the toilet. I manage to make it just in time. Sarah screams from the doorway, “Are you committed to this baby or are you committed to drinking fucking beer with Phil? I swear to God Colin, if you don’t improve your behaviour, if you don’t lay off the booze, I’ll get a fucking abortion! I’m not living this way.”
“Jesus,” I moan, hugging the toilet, “can you give me a little break here. Besides, isn’t it a bit late for an abortion?”
“Bastard!” she yells, slamming the washroom door. A few seconds later, I hear the bedroom door slam. I manage to clean myself up, rinse my mouth out, and then lurch over to the living room couch, turning out the light on the way. I promptly collapse.
I’m almost asleep when Sarah comes charging back out, snapping the light back on. “I swear to you Colin, if you don’t commit to this baby, I’ll leave you,” she says.
“I’m fucking committed. Jesus, turn out the light will you? Enough already.”
“Turn it out yourself!” she yells, turning around, marching back to bed. SLAM! goes the bedroom door again.
Christ almighty.
The next day, I call in sick to work. I spend the day recovering. I do penance by cleaning our apartment head to toe, and making Sarah a homemade spaghetti and meatball dinner, each meatball hand-rolled with love. I limit myself to one glass of wine with dinner. We drive over after dinner to Elgin Street and go to the Mayflower restaurant for coconut cream pie and decaffeinated coffees.
She hasn’t brought it up since she left for work this morning. “So tell me,” she says, shovelling a big piece of pie into her face, “were the girls attractive? Did you get a boner?”
“Yes they were, and no I did not.”
“Why, are you gay, or you just can’t get it up when you’re drunk?”
“Very funny. Are you done with this?”
“Are you sorry?”
“Very sorry.”
“I’m done.”
Mr. Peaches
Today we celebrated Peter Cann’s retirement luncheon in the big boardroom. There were speeches, gifts, balloons, tons of food and a spectacular slideshow that Phil had put together with pictures of Peter superimposed on various and easily recognizable world monuments, places that Peter said he will travel to when he retired – Peter at the Eiffel Tower, Peter at the Egyptian Pyramids, Peter in lederhosen on the side of a mountain looking at a goat; the next slide Peter is in bed with the goat. This kind of risqué push of the political correctness envelope, in our uptight office seems to go over surprisingly w
ell, even with upper management. Maybe somebody spiked the punch, or maybe people were still a little on edge after Crazy Larry and the asbestos aftermath and really just needed a good cathartic laugh. Whatever the reason, it was actually kind of fun.
I’m disappointed that Peter is leaving. Aside from Phil, Peter was the one beacon of light in a sea of watered-down bean counters. People here are as intellectually appetizing as a bowl of melted vanilla ice cream. Which reminds me, Bruce has now worked up the courage to speak to me directly again. He told me at the luncheon that they’d found a replacement for Brita. Apparently after Crazy Larry did his thing, some manager noticed that we actually had a handicapped washroom, but we had no disabled person to use it. For some reason somebody somewhere thought that the washroom needed justification. We were lagging in some sort of quota, hence we needed to get a cripple, as Bruce put it. So, we are getting Jackie. Jackie is not in a wheelchair. Jackie is blind. Supposedly she is legally blind, but not a hundred percent blind. She does have some very limited tunnel vision. “She’s starting tomorrow,” Bruce tells me. “You can show her the ropes.”
In advance of her arrival, two tech maintenance people come in and replace Brita’s computer and monitor with some interesting-looking equipment. Jackie’s monitor is huge. Attached on its corner is a swivel arm with a giant round magnifying glass. Her keyboard has Braille bumps on the keys. They load interactive speech software to enable Jackie to talk to her PC. They also install a Braille printer on her desk. So much for Paperless Office.
The Cube People Page 9
