The Garneau Block

by Todd Babiak

  “Why don’t you all just shut up?”

  His fellow cast members did shut up. Skilled improvisers, they scanned his face quickly for clues. Was he serious? The woman who played his daughter, the warrior princess, slammed the table with her fist. “Why don’t you shut up?”

  Manitou, the god of all that is good, along with two braves and a whisky trader, started into a pretend-angry dialogue about someone and everyone shutting up. Sick of actors, Jonas stood up out of his booth.

  “Some things are real. The pain in my heart, for instance.”

  Another bout of creative silence, followed by a new round of dialogue about the nature of reality. Isn’t it all just dependent on the evolutionary quirks of human perception? Bundles of atoms and quarks, if a heart breaks in the forest? Jonas sighed, grabbed his jacket, and started out of the pub.

  “Can I finish your beer?” Manitou, the god of all that is good, called after him.

  Jonas insulted the young man’s genitalia and continued to the door, where he ran into Carlos.

  “Wow, you sure did scalp some folks tonight.” Carlos lifted his Tim Hortons coffee. “It was something.”

  “How can you drink Tim Hortons? You probably put milk in it too, don’t you?”

  “Double double.”

  “God.” The entrance to the Next Act was barely large enough for two people to stand in. “Why are you here, Carlos? To spy on me?”

  “No.”

  “Do you want to go somewhere?”

  “Uh.”

  “Let’s go somewhere. Let’s go bowling or to a late movie or–I know–Leduc. Let’s go to Leduc.”

  “That’s where I live.”

  “Yes, I know, Carlos. Where’s your Mustang?”

  “How do you know I got a ’stang?”

  “How do you think I know?”

  Carlos swallowed and reached up to scratch the back of his neck. “Uh.”

  “I witnessed your Mustang in action not long ago. My friend Madison and I followed you home one night in her dad’s SUV.”

  “No, you didn’t.”

  “I figured since you could stalk me I could stalk you.”

  Carlos looked up at the posters and handbills on the wall. He took a sip of his coffee and stuck his free left hand into the front pocket of his hoodie. “I wasn’t stalking you.”

  “What were you doing?”

  “Looking.”

  “Oh, looking.” Jonas pushed and held the door open. “Less talk more walk.”

  Jonas followed Carlos out of the Next Act and north on Calgary Trail. It was cool in the wind so he pulled his peacoat closed and tied his scarf. Ahead of him, Carlos slouched in his hoodie and black football jacket–CARLOS on one leather sleeve and RECEIVER on the other–as though he were on his way to prison.

  “Hey, Carlos.”

  He stopped and turned around. “Yeah?”

  “You’d make a crap spy.”

  “I don’t know any foreign languages either, and I hate getting dressed up and fistfighting, so.”

  “So a career in CSIS wasn’t in your future anyway.”

  “I can’t stay out late.” Carlos handed his coffee to Jonas, pulled a Kleenex out of his pocket and blew his nose. He started crossing the avenue. “I’m hunting pronghorns tomorrow.”

  “Hunting pronghorns?” Jonas sniffed the creamy coffee, which was its own sort of horror. “What kind of a gayboy are you?”

  Carlos stopped walking again. “I’m not gay.”

  “What do you mean you’re not gay?”

  “I mean I’m not gay. What, I look gay to you?”

  Jonas laughed. “No, actually. You look painfully not gay, with those running shoes and Levi’s Superslims and no belt. Oh, and that appalling jacket. But you’re gay.”

  “No, I’m not.”

  “Then why are you picking me up?”

  Carlos took the coffee from Jonas and continued into the parking lot. “Can’t two guys be friends without being gay? I just want to be your friend.”

  At the Mustang, Carlos disarmed the security system and it beeped. Jonas paused to look up at the stars, obscured by the city lights, but they offered neither guidance nor sarcastic comments. He opened the passenger door and got inside. On the console, between the two seats, sat two Red Hot Chili Peppers compact discs. Carlos turned the key and the music blasted. Jonas lowered his head into his hands.

  52

  sick people

  In the waiting room of the University of Alberta Hospital, Madison lifted the pay phone receiver and began dialling her friend Sandra in Vancouver. If Madison left Edmonton now, or soon, and spent her pregnancy on the West Coast, Rajinder would never know. She could give the baby up for adoption, come back to Edmonton and pretend she had been abducted by Al-Gama’a al-Islamiyya.

  Rajinder was not boring. He was not secretly ugly, or foul-smelling, or cruel. Their violent first date only endeared him to her further, and it already seemed too late to tell him she was pregnant. Madison hung up before she hit the final digit. Instead of imagining her confession to Rajinder, or the one-bedroom apartment near an industrial park where she would soon live, Madison flipped through a seven-year-old copy of Details magazine with Michael Jordan on the front cover.

  When she could put it off no longer, Madison took the elevator to the third floor. Everywhere were the smells of creamy protein drinks and steamed spinach, the sound of suction. Rajinder’s door was half-open, so she knocked.

  “Please come in.”

  It was dark outside, and the lights in Rajinder’s room were dim. She could see both his eyes were faintly blackened. He was propped up in bed, wearing a gown, his hands clasped on his lap. As she approached his bed, Madison wondered why she hadn’t bought him something at the gift shop. Anything, a paperback or a granola bar. What sort of black-hearted monstress was she?

  “Oh, look at you.”

  “Madison, this is not my finest moment.” Rajinder pushed back the cuticles on his left hand. “If I try to read or turn my head quickly, I feel nauseous.”

  “Nausea is one of my specialties. I’ll get you some ginger to sniff.” Madison pulled a chair across the floor. “How did you get a private room?”

  “I feel guilty but yes, yes, I paid extra to have it. After the car accident, when I was in this hospital for a long time, I grew to despise sick people. It is a terrible psychological weakness. I recognize that. Excuse me.” Without moving his head, Rajinder reached for a bucket to his left. He held it in front of him for a few seconds and placed it back on the table. “False alarm.”

  Madison slid her chair closer to the bed and touched his arm. He sighed and leaned back.

  “I was thinking about Jack’s Grill and our reservation.”

  “Should I call them?”

  “Not now. I like that you are in here with me, for the moment.”

  The television in Rajinder’s room was off; sounds from the rest of the hospital were limited to footsteps in the hall and faint voices from the nursing station. Madison started speaking, to kill the dread silence, at the same moment as Rajinder. They both insisted the other should go first, so Rajinder went first.

  “I was talking to Jonas the other night, of Jeanne and Katie Perlitz.”

  “You knew them?”

  “Rather foolishly, I lent Benjamin some money at the worst possible time.”

  Madison wondered why Jeanne had never mentioned Rajinder. “Wow.”

  “Part of my interest in fixing the neighbourhood, I must admit, comes out of personal feelings about the Perlitzes. If I had not lent Benjamin the money, which merely sustained his gambling habit, perhaps he could have sought help before he–”

  “You shouldn’t think that way.” Madison thought for a moment. “So you were friends with the Perlitzes?”

  “I was planning to tell you at dinner tonight, Madison, about my role in this. Jeanne and Katie are safe and doing as well as they can, under the circumstances.”

  “You know where they are?
”

  Rajinder reached beside him and positioned the bucket on his lap again. “Summerside.”

  “Summerside the subdivision? The one by the big box stores, with the fake lake?”

  “Jeanne’s sister lives in Summerside. She has a different last name, so the reporters did not know where to find her.”

  “Summerside.”

  Rajinder heaved but didn’t throw up. “I cannot think of a more disastrous or humiliating first date.”

  “This was a date?” Madison slid her hand down Rajinder’s arm, to take his hand. “Really?”

  “I had hoped it would be a date,” he said, with his eyes squeezed shut.

  “Me too. But I wasn’t sure if you thought so.”

  Rajinder gripped the bucket again, and retched a couple of times. Nothing came out. “I want to die, somewhat.”

  “Should I tell the nurses?”

  “Madison, would you be insulted if I asked you to leave me here for the night? They are going to release me in the morning, after observation. When I am throwing up, I must admit, I have a desire to crawl into the bushes and suffer alone. I am pleased you stayed and visited me, and I hope we can try our first date again.”

  She wanted to know more about Jeanne and Katie, but Madison understood Rajinder’s need to be alone. Besides, it was deeply unpleasant to watch and hear him retch. “Next time, if we decide to stand somewhere and look at one another, we’ll stay clear of heavy doors.”

  “That is a capital idea.”

  Madison paused on her way out. “I could bring back a mini-stereo, some French music. The ginger.”

  “Thank you for the offer but I will just sleep.”

  “Maybe I could see Jeanne and Katie sometime.”

  “I will ask,” said Rajinder, quickly, before squeezing the bucket and retching again. “If you will ask the nurses to please knock me out.”

  53

  hunting

  On the drive to southeastern Alberta, wearing a fluorescent orange pinafore over a multi-pocketed beige jacket, Jonas learned many things. He learned the pronghorn antelope are found nowhere else but the North American prairie. The pronghorn is not a “true” antelope, a fact that took so much explaining that Jonas began to daydream about how weird thumbs are, when you really think about them.

  The fastest North American mammal? The pronghorn. Oh, and if you’re looking for one of the prettiest specimens in the world, look no further than the pronghorn buck: when the great beast poses on a hillock to attract a doe during mating season, it’s enough to bring tears to a hunter’s eyes.

  Jonas learned diesel trucks are loud, bow hunting is one of man’s most resounding challenges, Guns N’ Roses is the greatest band in the history of rock ’n’ roll, and there are few things more satisfying of a Tuesday morning than stuffng a plug of chewing tobacco–or, as Carlos called it, “a dip o’ chew”–into the space between one’s gums and cheek.

  After several hours of driving, and chewing and spitting, they arrived at a roadside turnoff in a remote area of hilly grassland south of the Cypress Hills. Carlos hopped out of the truck and, with a hydraulic mechanism, lowered a ramp behind the bed. Then he climbed up on the big red quad, started it, and reversed down the ramp. The bow and arrows were already loaded into a massive black container on the back of the quad, along with some tuna sandwiches and Pilsner.

  Carlos threw Jonas a helmet. “Are you ready to go kill something?”

  Jonas examined the hard black helmet, decorated with snowmobiling stickers and decided this, right now, was the most surreal drug-free moment of his life. “I’ve come this far based on one of my personal philosophies: say yes to everything.”

  “Uh-huh.” With his helmet on, Carlos looked like a smiling lollipop.

  “But chasing an antelope with bows and arrows? This is a really elaborate joke, yes? A sex thing?”

  Carlos laughed. “You don’t chase a pronghorn. They’re way too fast. What we’ll do is find a good spot, park the quad, and sneak up on a herd. And since you don’t have a licence, you’re just gonna watch.”

  “All I’m saying–”

  “But you’ll still get half the meat, once it’s butchered.”

  “You’re going to eat it?”

  “Of course, Jonas. It’s got a sage taste, ’cause they eat sage. I like to make a nice steak pie out of pronghorn.”

  Confronted with the reality of hunting, the helmet and jumping beasts and the verb to butcher, Jonas suddenly felt weak. A gentle wind blew from the west, and the tall wheatgrass swayed. What sound would the animal make as the bow pierced its neck? Would it roar or whine or wheeze, or would it die silently?

  “I’ll wait in the truck.”

  “Come on, man.”

  “This is wrong.”

  “Wrong? Do you eat meat?”

  “Normal meat, yes. Beef, poultry, pork: the big three.”

  “How do you think those animals die? In pens. Now that’s real suffering. These pronghorns live free and noble lives, and I hunt with a bow out of respect for them. If and when I kill one, I eat it.”

  “What if you shoot one with an arrow and it doesn’t die?”

  “Well, we track him until he falls and then I kill him.” Carlos opened the black compartment on the quad and pulled out a giant knife.

  “Hezbollah!”

  “Come on, Jonas. Say yes to everything.”

  “If I do this, you have to come with me to the Robert Lepage opera in February.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Bartók and Schoenberg. It’s spooky stuff.”

  “The spookier the better. Put that helmet on.”

  Jonas climbed on the quad behind Carlos and reached around his torso, to hold on. If he was squeezing too hard, Carlos didn’t complain. At the crest of a hill, overlooking a vast field of mixed grassland, they hit a bump. Jonas lost his grip and grabbed Carlos’s left pectoral muscle.

  “Welcome to the jungle,” said Carlos.

  54

  fear and wonder

  By mid-October, the winds gather chill air over the Rockies and carry the fallen yellow and red leaves into gutters and corners. Filtered through vegetation and soil whipped up by those winds, the moon rises fat and deep orange. Looking out his east-facing window on the thirty-eighth floor of Manulife Place one clear evening, Professor Raymond Terletsky determined the colour was end-of-the-world.

  Though he was thrilled to be working full-time for the Save the Garneau Block Foundation, for the equivalent of his professor’s salary, Raymond had not spoken to Shirley in three weeks. He longed for the sound of her voice and the warmth of her legs in bed, her night exhalations.

  He had missed their autumn rituals. Not once did he cover the tomato plants on frost nights. He didn’t help carry the summer clothes and sandals downstairs to the storage room, and he didn’t gather the fall and winter outerwear. When he tried to phone his children in Calgary and Seattle, they didn’t pick up. He left messages to no avail.

  A knock on the office door interrupted his thoughts. It was Rajinder, his employer and saviour. “I’m leaving now, Raymond.”

  “See you in the morning.”

  “How are the plans coming?”

  Raymond waved Rajinder to the desk, covered in library books and printed Web pages about small museums. “This is the Studio Ghibli Museum, just outside Tokyo.” Raymond gathered a few pages of black-and-white photographs, with Japanese characters on the left. “The director, Hayao Miyazaki, opened it to showcase anime and the limitlessness of imagination.”

  Rajinder held up a photograph of the robot on the roof. “What is this?”

  “This is a house of sorts filled with robots, fat cartoon birds, a cat bus, a tiny spiral staircase. It’s a distillation of recent Japanese culture and mass delusion. Fantastic and upsetting preoccupations. Fear and wonder.”

  “I see.”

  “That’s what 10 Garneau should be. If I may be so bold.” Raymond walked to the window again, and looked out in
to the city lights. “Our own anti-museum. I’m talking history, the boomtown culture, gangs and suburbs, oil and immigration, the great river, art and violence, the disturbing nexus of far left and far right politics. Underground energies. Secrets and nightmares and visions. Fear and wonder, Raj. Tomorrow morning I’m having breakfast with a Jungian scholar who’s going to teach me all about the collective unconscious of urban Alberta.”

  One of Rajinder’s newest artists-in-residence, a performance poet, began clucking like a chicken in the adjacent office. The clucking increased and soon the poet was jumping and flapping her wings in the hall. “Eat me don’t! / Don’t eat me! / Me don’t eat!”

  The poet stopped to make notes and return to her studio, and Rajinder placed the photographs for the Ghibli museum on the desk. “Please speak to this Jungian and write up an initial proposal, one or two pages. We shall organize another meeting to discuss the museum idea.”

  For dinner, Raymond took his notepad with the African cave art and walked to his favourite restaurant, Hoang Long in Chinatown, where he sat in a tall bamboo chair next to the window and ordered a half-litre of red wine and a small pot of tea.

  Raymond listened to conversations around him, in English and French and what he took to be Vietnamese, and he jotted some notes about the Taoists, whose views on death were consistent with their analysis of every unsolvable riddle. Do not worry, Edmonton. Accept death and incorporate it into your life, like autumn winds and shrivelled leaves, the icy hint of winter. Without our winter, we would not long for summer. Without our deaths, we would not appreciate green papaya salad and prawns in coconut curry sauce.

  For Tibetans, the transition from life to death allows a distillation of self, a liberation, a rebirth of soul and personality. At the moment of his death, the authentic Raymond Terletsky would be born. This, this was what 10 Garneau had to be: a distillation of Edmonton. An authentic representation of the city, including buffalo and hummingbirds and perhaps green papaya salad.