The Garneau Block

by Todd Babiak

  Then, for a minute or so, David had a pretend conversation with the premier’s chief of staff. “What?” he said, into the silent phone. “An emergency involving cattle? Well, yes, we understand completely. Godspeed, godspeed.”

  18

  jonas has a stalker

  Friday afternoon, only two customers came into Sparkle Vacations. They were first-year university students, girls, wondering about flying home to Kingston and Montreal during the Christmas break. Madison saw them every year, the shy kids in residence who haven’t made any pals by the end of the second week of classes. Missing the smell of their own beds, their parents’ cooking, and boyfriends who had stayed behind.

  Then, by December, all that is forgotten. They don’t want to leave their new beds or their new boyfriends.

  Madison browsed a few local classified Internet sites–men looking for women–but it only discouraged her. So she clicked around looking for “Perlitz” in white page listings across Mexico and flipped through the new winter travel brochures. As soon as the days turned as cold as the nights, business would increase dramatically at Sparkle Vacations and Madison would have to know her southern destinations as though she had actually been somewhere more exotic than Knott’s Berry Farm.

  Most travel agents go on free trips paid for by a variety of resort and hotel chains to introduce them to their properties. However, Tammy “Sparkle” Davidson didn’t allow it. At a Chamber of Commerce luncheon, just before Madison was hired, Tammy had a long conversation with the then-editor of the newspaper. The conversation touched on various subjects not limited to their mutual love of sailboats as ideas more than actual things, what with all the waves and ropes and dependency on wind. The then-editor told her that his journalists were regularly invited on free trips, junkets, organized and bank-rolled by Hollywood studios and the tourism departments of cities around the world. Of course, it was immoral to take such trips; one’s objectivity would be compromised.

  Tammy found the then-editor of the newspaper quite charming. They went out on a couple of theatre dates together and spent a sunny afternoon at the Folk Festival before they both realized, over a plate of chicken bhoona in Gallagher Park, that a relationship between them was more interesting as an idea than an actual thing. But she bought and retained the compromised objectivity argument, even if it made very little sense in the context of travel agencies.

  When the door beeped a third time, just before six, Madison exited the Guadalajara white pages directory. She had made a list of seven possible Perlitzes in the state of Jalisco, and even though she didn’t have anything more productive to do, Madison didn’t want to argue with Tammy about wasting company time and resources.

  It wasn’t Tammy but Jonas, in one of his blue rehearsal sweatsuits, looking as though he were on the verge of an asthma attack. He sat across from her with his eyes open wide.

  “What?”

  Jonas raised one eyebrow. “Do you really want to know or are you just humouring me? I know I talk too much.”

  “Shut up and tell me.”

  “I have a stalker! Finally, after all these years being astonishing, I have a stalker. Is there any coffee?” He hopped up and sprinted to the customer service counter. There was coffee but it was several hours old, and he seemed to sense it. “When did you make this stuff?”

  “Ten.”

  “Gross, Madison.” Jonas turned to her and shook his head. “That is so disgusting.” Then he poured himself a cup and dropped in six lumps of sugar.

  “Who is this stalker?”

  “It’s Carlos. Our friend Carlos.”

  “I don’t have a friend Carlos.” The acrid smell of the old coffee stirred up with half a cup of sugar brought forth a familiar trickle of nausea. Madison pushed back her chair and prepared to pick up the nearby garbage can, in case the trickle became a wave. “Is that your Spanish teacher?”

  “Carlos! Carlos!” Jonas took a long drink of his coffee. “Yum, it’s like iced coffee, but hot. From the Next Act that night? The nervous guy.”

  “The frat boy?”

  “My stalker is a frat boy. What do you think I should do?”

  Madison picked up the garbage can and walked to the door. She opened it and smelled the exhaust of late-rush-hour Whyte Avenue. It was much better than the syrup Jonas was drinking. Once, in high school, to impress a hockey player, she had guzzled a mickey of Kahlua. It was best not to remember this incident, so Madison thought of bears riding bicycles.

  “If you throw up, preggy, then I’ll throw up. We’ll both be throwing up for hours, in an endless cycle of convulsions. So please, please try not to.”

  “That’s why I opened the door.”

  “You don’t even care about my stalker.”

  “Just let me be nauseous for a minute here.”

  Jonas got up and examined the travel wallets and passport carriers for sale on the spinning trolley. “He isn’t much of a covert operative, our Carlos. My rehearsals are at the Roxy, and he was loitering across the street in front of a quick cash place. The first thing I do, whenever I walk on to 124th Street, is dish an evil eye to those quick cash places. Usurers. Dirty usurers! And there was Carlos, crouched next to a Sunfire. At first I didn’t know who it was. I recognized him, but from where? The gym?”

  It was past six and the nausea had faded, so Madison closed and locked the door. “Then you remembered him.”

  “Then I remembered.”

  “Are you sure it wasn’t a coincidence? Maybe he needed some quick cash. Maybe that was his Sunfire.”

  “Would you please let me tell the story?”

  “Sorry.” Madison turned off her computer and leaned against the poster of Athens.

  “I walked to the bus stop and waited for a long time before I turned around. I knew Carlos was still there because my intuition is extraordinarily strong.”

  “Of course it is.”

  “Was that sarcastic?”

  Madison felt another trickle of nausea. “I don’t even know.”

  “I waited and waited and then I sprung. I turned and there he was, by that little fence around Albert’s Pancakes.”

  “Wow.”

  “Jim howdy wow. So I yelled at him. ‘Carlos!’ I said.”

  “What did he do?”

  Jonas demonstrated. “He made eye contact with me for a sec, did a little stutter step, and ran across the street. He just kept running and running, until I couldn’t see him.”

  “Maybe he’s touched. In the head, like.”

  “Maybe, but he’s my stalker. You can’t deny that. So are you ready?”

  “For what?”

  “Ethiopian cuisine, home to change into something tight and shiny, then boom boom boom. We’re going to the Roost.”

  “I’m not going to the Roost.”

  “Oh, yes, you are.” Jonas jumped up on Madison’s desk. “Boom boom boom.”

  19

  the young indian man from across the street

  Jonas had read about the Ethiopian place in the newspaper, but obviously he hadn’t read carefully. Instead of utensils, you pick up and eat Ethiopian food with sour, rolled-up bread. To Madison’s delight, Jonas treated this like a practical joke. He folded his arms and pouted while Madison sopped up a lamb and spinach dish with the tasty bread.

  “Just eat, Jonas. No one has to know.”

  “Listen, I saw you lick your fingers and put them right back in the platter. If I wanted to share your nasty hormone-laced saliva, I’d just French kiss you. No, don’t worry about me. I’ll just get something at the A&W on the walk home.”

  It was impossible to ignore Jonas in this state. The server came by. “Is everything good?”

  “Fine,” said Jonas.

  Madison laughed. “Could you bring Mr. Poopypants a fork, please?”

  The server explained the tradition of eating this sort of food with your hands, and mentioned that it is perfectly hygienic as long as all hands are clean. After the speech, Madison thanked her and asked, a
gain, if Mr. Poopypants could have a fork.

  “No, don’t even bother, thanks.” Jonas sat up straight in his chair and lifted his chin like a new member of the royal family. “Mrs. Door Handle Toucher, Mrs. Didn’t Wash Her Hands Before She Started Eating has already contaminated the whole bit.”

  “Um,” said the server.

  On the way home, Jonas stopped at A&W to purchase a bag of Chubby Chicken and fries. They didn’t talk much as they walked, and Madison hoped the Ethiopian cuisine debacle had weakened his interest in dancing at the Roost. Jonas finished his dinner-in-a-bag as they reached the parking lot behind the Garneau Theatre. He rubbed his now-greasy hands together and began to cackle.

  “What?”

  “I have a scheme.”

  “What sort?”

  Jonas remained silent and menacing, so Madison took him by the arms and shook him. “What? What?”

  “Before we change into our club clothes and embark on an emotional and possibly romantic journey, I’m going to invite the young Indian man from across the street to come out with us.”

  “Oh, no, you’re not.”

  “How long have we lived across the street from the young Indian man from across the street?”

  “Just no. Please.”

  “You owe me, after the Ethiopian food thing.”

  Madison pushed him as they entered the Garneau Block. “No, you owe me. You acted like an ass in there, and embarrassed everyone.”

  “It almost sounds like you don’t want to go dancing tonight.”

  “I never did want to go dancing, Jonas.”

  Madison hated the silent treatment but it was preferable to a night of thumping disco. So she decided not to apologize or allow herself to be manipulated by any wounded expressions. But instead of marching through his front door and slamming it behind him, Jonas started across the street to 13 Garneau.

  “What are you doing?”

  Jonas sauntered up the walkway, past a small rock garden with two choke cherry trees, a small paper birch, and a spruce. The house was a white wooden two-storey with red trim and a small terrace. From time to time Madison would watch the young Indian man from across the street through his front picture window, sipping a glass of wine or a single bottle of Dutch beer in the evening while reading a novel. She wondered if he was lonesome or if he just preferred things this way. No one had ever seen another being enter or exit 13 Garneau, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t caring for sick parents or grandparents inside.

  Every morning the young Indian man from across the street left at the same time, 7:15, in one of his fine suits, carrying a black leather briefcase. He walked toward the university, presumably to take the LRT across the river. No one at the university, even in the business faculty, dressed as well as the young Indian man from across the street. Madison guessed he was a lawyer.

  Jonas stood on the young Indian man from across the street’s front terrace. Already he had rung the doorbell twice. He pressed the button a third time, knocked, and waited thirty seconds. Jonas turned and addressed Madison. “You are so lucky.”

  The young Indian man from across the street appeared in the picture window. He watched Jonas walking away from his house, and looked up at Madison. The young Indian man from across the street shrugged. It was a “should I bother with this?” sort of shrug.

  Madison shook her head. No.

  Jonas had not stopped talking. “And you were going to be a freak because I know how you are about new people.”

  The young Indian man from across the street smiled and waved goodnight. At that moment, to her surprise, Madison was stricken by the desire to dance.

  20

  dancing with herself

  Madison hoped they could stand in line on the concrete steps of the Roost for a while, with the people. The two men in front of her were talking about the cleverness of Conservative politics. One, who looked like an accountant, said, “It’s the only way to get poor people in rural Alberta to vote against the welfare state. They make it seem like you and me and the Canadian figure skating team are on our way out there, in our pink Smart Cars, to get married in the Baptist Church and have anal sex in the town hall bathroom.”

  His partner fashioned his cardigan into a veil, and they walked along the step as though down an aisle.

  Madison wanted to hear more but Jonas was already at the top of the stairs, and the front of the line, with one hand on the doorman’s arm and the other waving her up. In certain Edmonton communities, Jonas was famous. The gay community was one of them.

  There were two dance floors at the Roost. That night, the main floor featured thumping college rock anthems from the 1980s. Madison checked her coat and by the time she was finished, Jonas was already under the flashing lights with a gin and soda in his hand. It was wrong to drink and dance at the same time, and Jonas knew how she felt about this. But Madison joined him anyway, to the tired old sissy laser rock of “Tainted Love.”

  Why couldn’t Madison be like Jonas and everyone else on the dance floor? Why couldn’t she stop worrying about everything? She knew there were probably pills she could take; she knew the secret to gaining pleasure from an overplayed song was to shut off her critical faculties, to stop being herself, to stop feeling that someone just like her might see her on the dance floor and think, “Guh. Loser.”

  She wondered if anyone in the club actually liked “Tainted Love.” Surely, it was just a memory trigger. Jonas and everyone else screaming the lyrics, raising their arms and lowering their heads triumphantly, bumping into each other with their eyes closed, were twenty-one again. Young and clever and beautiful again.

  Like marijuana, homosexuality had lost its outlaw reputation. When Madison first danced at the Roost, in the wake of another notorious Edmonton gay club, Flashback, the room still hummed with the naughty energy of the 1980s. No one could be gay at a day job, so everyone had to be extra gay at night. Men dressed up as women, or at least wore makeup and black nail polish. Women took their shirts off and danced until they were shiny with sweat. They kissed with tongue, and more. There were those guys who wore nothing but chaps, and girls in bicycle shorts and pasties.

  Now the Roost was just an older and smarter version of kiddy clubs, without the fistfights. Madison and Jonas were dressed like everyone else, in jeans and the most flattering T-shirts in their closets. As “Tainted Love” ended and “Love Song” by The Cure began with a howl of nostalgic joy, Madison spotted the only real wildcat in the club: a cowboy who looked like he’d just walked off the ranch. Jonas saw him at the same time, and said, “Giddy-up.” He handed his drink to Madison, and approached the cowboy.

  And that was the last Madison would see of Jonas in the Roost.

  She put his drink on the bar and walked upstairs, where there was more room on the dance floor. Up here, the DJ played somewhat dated techno music. Madison found a corner, away from the small hordes of curious straight boys in Molson shirts and baseball caps, and watched herself dance in the mirror. She felt this would be her last night on a nightclub dance floor, ever. She wanted to remember what she looked like before she turned thirty and had a child, before her youth ended officially. The bass went straight to her stomach, and she imagined her baby swimming to the beat.

  Several songs later, with a layer of sweat forming on the back of her neck, Madison left the dance floor to splash some water on her face and buy a glass of cranberry and club soda. Before she hit the washroom door, she saw Jeanne Perlitz pass on the other side of a pillar.

  Madison turned and slammed into a man in an airline pilot’s suit who had apparently taken a bath in Issey Miyake for Men. He spilled some beer on himself and said, “Excuse me!” If she had not been pursuing Jeanne Perlitz, Madison would have helped him sop the beer out of his sleeve. But there was no time.

  “Sorry,” she said, and ran to the top of the stairs. Madison looked down, and saw the top of Jeanne Perlitz’s head in the crowd at the bottom. She pushed her way through heavy streams of people going up a
nd down the stairs.

  Madison weaved around the pool tables, toward the coat check. She ran past the lineup and out on to the street. Two women were hugging and crying, and some people were on the sidewalk across the street, smoking, but there was no Jeanne Perlitz.

  Back inside, she retrieved her jacket and described Jeanne Perlitz to the coat check man.

  “Blonde and pretty and sort of forty? That sounds like just about every woman to me.” The coat check man leaned on the counter between them. “Just get back in there and find yourself another one, sweetie. Put a band-aid on that heart and get right back in the game.”

  Madison waited for a cab and bounced to keep warm. A large white SUV rumbled slowly up the street. The rear passenger window opened and a young man in a baseball cap yelled, “Lezout!” As his friends howled with laughter, he threw a McDonald’s cup out the window and it exploded on the pavement in front of Madison. Strawberry milkshake covered her sneakers and the cuffs of her jeans. She looked down at the pink mess for a few minutes, until a cab appeared.

  21

  louis chopin of armstrong crescent

  Toward the end of the Monday Introductory Philosophy class, Raymond Terletsky questioned his motives. Earlier that morning, he had received an e-mail from Claudia Santino; the department had decided not to cancel his Death in Philosophy seminar. In a gushing fit of animation and fellow-feeling, he sent a message to his five seminar students. If any of them was interested, he wanted to take a class field trip to the World Waterpark at West Edmonton Mall tomorrow. They would meet in the lobby at ten in the morning.

  An hour after sending the message, as his survey students debated whether or not a modified version of Plato’s Republic would be better than Canada’s constitutional monarchy, he stared at the back wall of the classroom and wondered: Did he truly see any philosophical value in sliding down the Sky Screamer? Or had his guilt over the unpleasant episode with Charlene the massage therapist already faded, leaving only an impish desire to see his female seminar students in bikinis?