The Garneau Block

by Todd Babiak

  Death’s hand was warm and calloused and strong. Climbing up the slope, a layer of wet snow over icy grass, Raymond slipped twice. But Death did not let him go. Death dragged him up. When he reached the sidewalk, on his hands and knees, Raymond said, “Thank you.”

  “I saw you from up there, Dr. Terletsky.”

  Raymond looked up at Death, but it wasn’t Death. The young man from Jonas’s backyard was pointing to the top of the Chateau Lacombe. “We better get you to a hospital.”

  Carlos led Raymond into the hotel, and the parking elevator. The heat made his ears and fingers and nose burn and itch, and he called out in the elevator and laughed some more. In all his years at the university, when it might have been handy to meet Death, nothing. What an interview subject. What a guest lecturer. What a contact.

  “I never imagined he’d have a buffalo head.” Raymond sat in the low passenger seat of the Mustang. Melting snow clung to the tweed of his overcoat. He shrugged as Carlos backed out of his parking spot. “I never thought he was a he. Or an it, even. What’s your name again?”

  “Carlos.”

  “Why aren’t you out trick-or-treating, Carlos?”

  They rose out of the parking lot and turned down into the valley. “Me and Jonas went out dancing. Then we went up to the spinning restaurant for drinks.”

  “That’s nice. Did you see Death down there, before you saved me?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Carlos ran his finger under his nose a few times, and sniffed. “Dr. Terletsky, when I was a kid, my dog Champ got hit by a truck.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that.”

  “The vet said he was too busted up to live, and brain damaged, but my mom refused to put Champ down. For six months Champ’d lay there twitching and crapping himself. One day he died natural. You know why my mom wanted him alive?”

  Raymond shook his head. The heater was blowing hot air in the Mustang now, and his cheeks hurt. As the snow on his jacket turned to water, Raymond realized he was thawing out. The clouds cleared. With the pain in his ears came clarity.

  “Because she was waiting for a miracle. She figured Jesus had nothing better to do with his time than fix Champ.”

  Carlos turned on to the High Level Bridge. Raymond touched the tips of his ears with his sore fingers, and wiggled his toes. “Thanks for coming down for me, Carlos. I think I would have died if you hadn’t. I doubt Jesus would have had much time for me either.”

  “Did you grow up going to church, Dr. Terletsky?”

  “I’m not of the Christian persuasion. Which explains certain things. Fear of an unpleasant afterlife might have come in handy as I made some of my more memorable decisions.”

  “If I’m gay, Dr. Terletsky, I don’t have a mom. Or a dad. Basically life is over. The life I know.”

  Raymond lifted a finger to stall for time. He waited for the perfect words. They didn’t arrive, so he improvised. “Carlos, a lot of people thrive without parents. Mine died when I was quite young, right around your age I guess, and I miss them. I think about my parents. I talk to them in dreams. There are times, especially recent times, when I might have profited from some guidance. But it’s best to think of ourselves as free beings, rooted yet free. You’re free to be your mother’s son and a gay man both, an Edmontonian and a person of the greater world, a–”

  “I’m from Leduc, actually.”

  “Do you want to be a gay man?”

  “No, Dr. Terletsky, I don’t.”

  “Are you a gay man?”

  Carlos nodded. “Jonas says I can’t be a homo and a homophobe at the same time.”

  “Are you a homophobe?”

  “No. But my mom, and Champ, remember? I’m an oil-and-gas guy. I can’t be a Creamsicle, everything to everyone. I can’t be this gay guy and a straight guy, a Roost guy and a–”

  “You can be a Creamsicle, if that’s what you want. This is the best time in human history to have identity problems. Even a profitable time, if you know how to write grant applications. I’m sure it looks bad but you’re lucky as hell, Carlos.” In an instant, Raymond was overwhelmed with fatigue. “I have frostbite.”

  “You sure do, Dr. Terletsky, on your ears. How long were you out there, slippin’ around?”

  Raymond closed his eyes and Death stood there, huffing, with that buffalo head. “Jesus!”

  “Exactly.”

  73

  a rediscovery of hands

  How long had it been since David and Abby walked down the street together, dogless and daughterless and coffeeless, holding hands? Over twenty-five years, David thought. Stacked up against careers, Madison, and a succession of dog leashes, holding hands had slowly become uncomfortable and embarrassing, like the silence after a racial joke.

  They walked along Jasper Avenue, through thin puddles of melted snow. To enjoy the surprising warm air, they had exited the LRT one stop early. There was another Garneau Block meeting on the thirty-eighth floor of Manulife Place. On the way, without politics or Garith between them, David was rediscovering the muscles and veins and soft skin of his wife’s left hand.

  “Do you put moisturizer on these babies?” David stopped his wife in front of the Paramount Theatre and inspected her hands. “This doesn’t just happen, does it?”

  “I wish it did.”

  David took both his wife’s hands and squeezed them. “I’m really, weirdly delighted.”

  “Me too.”

  A couple of men in navy-blue suits, talking on cellular phones, passed with vacant stares. David watched the men as though they were cheerless ghosts of his former self. “Today I skipped the federal election stories in the paper. I didn’t even look.”

  “I’m so proud of you.” Abby kissed her husband on the ear.

  They started out across Jasper Avenue. It would be another half-hour before the sun set, and as it peeked out from a bank of clouds over the west side of the city, Abby’s face went soft orange. David touched her cheek.

  Abby stopped him in the middle of the avenue. “Oh, my God, I want to slap you, I love you so much.”

  “Go ahead. Please.”

  “Really?”

  “If it’ll make you feel good.”

  Abby slapped David below the eye, just hard enough to make a sound. A Mini Cooper waiting at the now-green light honked and so they hurried to the north side of the avenue.

  Inside Commerce Place, on the escalator to the mezzanine level, David was stricken once again with his scheme. That morning, lying in bed, listening to the melting snow drop off the roof of his house, he had devised a plan to save Madison. Busy with the newspaper, making lunch, taking Garith to Canadian Tire to buy a new shovel, and partaking of a mid-afternoon nap, he had forgotten to tell Abby. At the top of the escalator, he turned to her.

  “So, suppose you’re a mother.”

  “I am a mother.”

  “So suppose you’re a new mother and you have friends who are also new mothers.”

  “Am I pretending to be a new mother?”

  “Yes. Shhh.” David held both sets of doors for Abby so she could pass into Manulife Place. “You’re a new mother and you want to stay fit, but you don’t have anyone to look after Baby. Daddy’s working.”

  “Or he’s a maudit franco…”

  “And the grandparents are busy. What are you going to do?”

  “Cry? Get fat? Hire a babysitter?”

  “You’ll go to the affordable gym, spa, and playschool that has an ample parking lot and brain-enhancing Beethoven piped through the public address system.”

  “Is there such a thing?”

  “No. But there ought to be. First in Edmonton and then we’ll expand to Cowtown. You and I will cash in our RRSPs and get a bank loan. We can use the university money as collateral and rent an apartment for a year or two, until the revenue starts coming in. Madison can manage it with us for the first few years and when we want to retire she’ll buy us out.”

  Abby pressed the up button at the Man
ulife elevators. “But we’re retired now, David. Don’t you think we should stay retired?”

  “That’s the only real flaw in the scheme. It means we start a new career together.”

  The elevator doors opened. “But running a business? What sort of a capitalist would I be? If a mom came in and said she really needed to work out but she couldn’t pay, what would I do then?”

  “You’ll be in the back, teaching twenty-two four-year-olds how to count in Italian.”

  “I will?” Abby chewed the tip of her index finger for a moment, then smiled. “That sounds nice, actually. So you’ll tell the poor mom to go away?”

  “You bet, honey.”

  The doors opened to the thirty-eighth floor and French piano music welcomed them instead of Angela, the tall blonde. It sounded to David as though the singer had smoked far too many cigarettes before he recorded the song.

  Rajinder approached, his tie crooked. “Did Madison come with you?”

  Abby stepped forward and placed a hand on Rajinder’s back, walked with him. “No, sweetheart. She didn’t have it in her.”

  Rajinder sighed and slouched. David turned into the boardroom, leaving Abby to comfort Rajinder in the hall. Love can destroy even a rich Indian man.

  Shirley and Jonas were already seated across the table from each other with coffees. At the far end of the long table, cleanly shaven for the first time in a month, Raymond stood in a new suit. His ears were angry pink and almost twice their usual size. On the table before him, a white sheet was draped over what appeared to be a soccer ball. David walked around to lift a corner of the sheet and Shirley slapped his hand.

  “Manners!”

  74

  the future of 10 garneau

  Once everyone was seated, Raymond Terletsky closed the boardroom door. He twitched the sheet so it draped in perfect symmetry. Shirley smiled, recognizing–even missing–his obsessive-compulsive behaviour. He looked up.

  “Is everyone ready?”

  Shirley observed Jonas and Rajinder across the table. They both looked heavily medicated. Neither turned to respond to Raymond, so she waved and gestured at her estranged husband. She was pleased to see he had shaved the beard and that he had acquired a modern black suit, two developments that nearly overwhelmed the cotton-candy pink of his giant ears.

  Raymond wiped a few flakes of dandruff from his lapels. “It’s no coincidence that I chose the Day of the Dead, el Día de los Muertos, to reveal this vision of our collective future. When I was on sabbatical for a semester in the late 1980s, I travelled to Cuilapan in Oaxaca, Mexico, to understand both the Aztec and Christian influences in el Día de los Muertos, this complex interpretation of what it means to be alive, surrounded by death, in a world of multiple–”

  “Enough with the lecture, Dumbo.” Jonas sipped his coffee. “Just pull the sheet.”

  Shirley wanted to crawl over the polished mahogany table and pluck the actor’s eyes out.

  Raymond touched his left ear. “Does everyone just want me to pull it?”

  “Yes,” said Jonas. “Yes and yes.”

  “A show of hands?”

  All but Shirley raised their hands.

  “Thank you, my darling, a thousand times, for your patience. But this is a democracy. I’ll pull the sheet now as long as you will let me explain for a minute before you ask any questions or dismiss my vision. Say, where’s Madison?”

  Rajinder reached out with both hands and scratched the table. Abby made a throat-slitting gesture.

  “Onward then.” Raymond gripped the white sheet with both hands, leaned forward over the conference table so that the lump remained hidden for another few moments, made a drum roll sound with his mouth, and pulled the sheet away with a flourish. Displaced air moved through the room.

  The chipped grey mannequin head, inconsistently pasted with curly black hair and yellow hard-candy eyes, with a couple of children’s birthday-party hats on top, fell over. Raymond stood it up again, but a clump of hair had fallen off.

  “Son of a!” Raymond licked the clump of hair and made a sour face of instant regret. He attempted to stick the hair back on the mannequin cheek, but off it fell again.

  Given the high-thread count of the white sheet, Shirley had expected a more impressive model.

  “Oh, that is shit.” Jonas laughed, and took another sip of coffee. “You’re a real genius, professor. The Garneau Block is saved. Hallelujah.”

  David pointed. “Where did you get all that hair?”

  “A barber’s floor, but that’s not important. The important thing is…”

  Abby raised her hand. “You did a terrific job of it, Raymond, but I can’t tell if it’s a gorilla or a sasquatch. It’s a sasquatch, yes?”

  “Shut up,” said Shirley, “all of you. Please.”

  The French music on the loudspeaker began to skip. Mademoiselle, went the song, je reste à Paris, again and again. After several repetitions, Rajinder stood on his chair, climbed on to the table, and pounded the ceiling.

  The song resumed and Rajinder returned to his seat.

  “All my gratitude, Shirley. Raj.” Raymond recovered his earlier composure. “On Halloween night, on the verge of hypothermia, I received a vision. It was Death, in blue jeans and cowboy boots, with the head of a buffalo.”

  Jonas laughed again and stood up. “I’m going to go get drunk on rye whisky and play the VLTs.”

  “Sit,” said Shirley.

  “Come with me, baby.”

  “Sit.”

  Jonas flopped back in his chair.

  “This is an admittedly crude model of a buffalo head, the future of 10 Garneau.”

  But for the French music and the gentle creaking of David’s chair, as he rocked back and forth, the boardroom was silent.

  Shirley raised her hand.

  “Yes?”

  “Raymond, are you saying you want to turn 10 Garneau into a…buffalo head?”

  “That’s precisely what I’m saying. We will do some renovations to the current house and cover it in a buffalo head shell.”

  “Rye whisky going once,” said Jonas. “Rye whisky going twice.”

  “You see, the buffalo is the great martyred god of Edmonton. Sixty million of them wiped from the plains in ninety years, and for what? For the short-term–”

  David raised his hand. “Won’t the hair rot?”

  “A terrific question, David. I have taken the liberty of contacting the DuPont company in Wilmington, Delaware, and they have just the product. It can freeze in the winter and bake in the summer. Moisture runs right off.”

  Jonas raised his hand. “You’re a knob.”

  “I don’t agree.”

  Despite the crudeness of the buffalo head model, Shirley didn’t agree either. The tone of Raymond’s voice reminded her of the student she had met thirty-five years ago. Back then, he was on his way to Yale and Oxford; he was going to be the leading philosopher of his generation. Marriage, fatherhood, lack of regular exercise, poor eating habits, and a long succession of career failures had erased all of that. Suddenly Raymond was back and she tilted her head at him. “What will go inside?”

  “Another good question, and a difficult one. The new composer-in-residence of the Edmonton Symphony Orchestra was here this afternoon and we discussed that very thing. If we all agree that a buffalo head affords the highest possible degree of mythic power–and I think we can–the sights and smells and sounds inside that buffalo head are of supreme importance. I was thinking–”

  “Will the buffalo head house have a mouth, Raymond?” Abby approached the model. “Because this thing doesn’t really have a mouth.”

  He sighed and raised his arms. “Maybe it would be better if I drew the model.”

  Across from Shirley, Rajinder grunted. “Are there any objections or alternate solutions?”

  “I hate it,” said Jonas. “I’m humiliated for us all.”

  David nodded. “Yes, it’s quite ridiculous. And I must say, Rajinder, a considerable
waste of resources.”

  “Thank you,” said Rajinder, flatly. He sighed. “A show of hands, please. Who would like to proceed with the head-of-a-buffalo house on the site of 10 Garneau? If we agree, I will hire architects and Raymond will organize a publicity campaign to shame the university.”

  Slowly, all but Jonas and David raised their hands. Abby approached her husband and whispered in his ear until he smiled naughtily and raised his right arm.

  “Jonas,” said Shirley. “Raise your hand, you big tit.”

  It took several minutes worth of sarcastic remarks, and Shirley’s promise that she would indeed take a rye whisky with him after the meeting, but Jonas finally lifted a finger in support of the buffalo head.

  75

  the crying men

  Shirley and Jonas took their rye whiskies at Earl’s on Campus, where they also ordered a plate of calamari and some spinach-artichoke dip. For half an hour Jonas mocked the idea of a museum shaped like a buffalo head until, that particular engine of mockery running out of fuel, he concentrated on littering, politics, architecture, and weather.

  “What are you really talking about, Jonas?”

  He sprawled in his chair and finished his whisky. “I hope the university destroys the block with a bomb.”

  “Jonas.”

  “I’m feeling quite hateful, Shirley.”

  “Don’t say that.”

  “I hate everything right now.” Jonas looked out the window at the intersection, where a black sports car rumbled before a red light. “How much you want to bet that guy lets his car idle all the time? When it’s cold and when it’s hot. For hours. Hours! And then he complains about high oil prices, the stupid inbreeding gaybasher. I bet Carlos does that too. The barbarian coward son of a zealot.”

  “Jonas.”

  “I’m a fool for living here and so are you, Shirley Wong.” Jonas turned around and addressed the drinkers and diners. “Only idiots live in Alberta! You’re all redneck idiots and I hate you!”