Heroes

by Ray Robertson

  Jimmy raises his empty beer bottle from two tables over in homage to Bayle’s choice of juke box song. Politely inquires if another jumpy tune like that last one is coming up and if, seeing as Bayle is, like himself, sitting all alone, might he, Jimmy, join Bayle for a glass from his pitcher of beer.

  Another song, another round. Ad infinitum.

  42

  UTTERLY SOUSED, it’s simple, really: lacking a reason to get up off the barstool, invent one.

  Something like: Who got my stuff? My stuff my stuff. I want my stuff back. My stuff belongs to me. That ballbreaking, two-timing, lawyer-hiring germalist of an ex-girlfriend, she’ll know where my stuff is. Because my stuff my stuff. Wait a minute, already said that. Okay, then. Just one more pint and off to get my stuff. Because my stuff my stuff. Wait a minute, already said that.

  “Cancel that pint, Stan,” Bayle said. “People to go and places to meet.”

  “You mean you don’t want your beer?” Knott said, pint glass already poured out and sitting there beading on the bar top waiting.

  “Already said that,” Bayle said.

  Pockets weighted with what was left of Smith’s money, a quick cab ride deposited Bayle in front of 1118 The Esplanade, an eighteen-floor ode to yuppie fashion and cultivated consumer convenience. The building itself couldn’t be said to be of any particular architectural period or style, but it was very clean and very tidy in appearance — even the potted plants in the lobby were spotless — with a wine store, dry cleaner, and frozen yogurt shop all within easy walking distance. Throw in free cable and a good Thai restaurant nearby that delivers until four a.m., and what is the meaning of life but that movie by Monty Python where that fat guy eats so much supper he explodes all over the place. Hilarious, that. Just fucking hilarious.

  Bayle lurched around for a bit on the sidewalk in front of the building straining his neck and trying not to fall down while attempting to locate through the driving cold rain Jane’s fifteenth floor apartment. Beginning to feel slightly dizzy, he moved closer to the wall, managing to get only slightly less out of the rain. But the effort had paid off. He’d found her apartment and the lights were on. She was home.

  He waited for someone to come along and open the code-accessed front door while trying not to look like he was waiting for someone to come along and open the code-accessed front door. It was after nine now — he’d spent the better part of six hours at Knott’s Place — and between the booze, lingering dizziness, and the icy November rain that hadn’t let up the entire time he’d been inside the bar, Bayle didn’t know how long he could wait it out. The steady downpour drumming against the green canopy hanging over the entrance to the building wasn’t helping matters either, the pounding rain lulling his eyelids, gently thawing his resolve. Equal parts alcohol- and adrenaline-fuelled visions of making a dramatic entrance and just-as-dramatic claim for his belongings were soon replaced by altogether soothing thoughts of simply falling asleep under three layers of blankets in Smith’s overheated study. Bayle leaned against the wall of the apartment building. Closed his eyes. Leaned ....

  Until a beautiful blond woman in her early twenties — tall and then taller still in four-hundred-dollar heels, face all cheekbones and perfect, elevated nose, exactly the sort of beautiful that getting caught in the rain can only succeed in making even more dripping beautiful — weighted down with an armful of delicately string-tied packages and lovely cream-coloured shopping bags swiped her plastic identification card through the slot and made it through the door and into the white marble lobby.

  Bayle slipped inside.

  He pushed the UP button on the elevator and waited; ran his hands through his soaked hair a couple of times and coughed. The elevator finally arrived and he was inside, pressing 15 and thinking that maybe now was a good time to figure out just what he wanted to say when he got to where he was going. But the elevator door too-soon dinged and Bayle coughed and sneezed himself into the lovely, hardwood floor hallway, finding himself staring at #1503, Jane’s apartment door.

  Which, lucky him, opened up without Bayle having to even bother knocking. Opened up just as Bayle was trying to decide how to best deal with a long, dangling green string of freshly sneezed snot. And with Jane and what could only be boy-toy August at her side looking on — boy-toy August himself blond, buffed, and looking just like the better men’s magazines told him to — Bayle decided it best to go right to the root of the problem, a sharp pinch of the nostrils and quick flip of his wrist flinging said trail of onerous mucus directly onto Untitled, Number 37, the apartment-building-supplied contribution of tastefully framed culture to the strip of wall beside Jane’s door.

  In a calm, even slightly bored voice, “I’ll call security,” August said, peeling off his brown leather gloves, Bayle having apparently just caught the couple on their way out the door. August turned around and headed for the phone inside the apartment. Seeing that Jane hadn’t immediately closed the door and bolted the hatches, “For goodness sake, Jane,” he said, “shut the door. You don’t want to encourage these sorts of people. Who knows, he could be dangerous.”

  “Only to himself,” Jane said, crossing her arms, looking at Bayle. “It’s all right. I know this one.”

  August hesitated for a confused second; set down the receiver to the phone but didn’t remove his hand. “You don’t want me to call security?”

  “Not yet, anyway.”

  August walked back to the door and crossed his own arms.

  “I think I can handle this,” Jane said.

  “Are you sure?” August said, giving the soaking and now violently coughing Bayle a considered once-over.

  “I’m sure.”

  August only momentarily lingered before nodding and disappearing back inside the apartment, saying over his shoulder as he did so, having apparently already forgotten about the potential menace in the hallway, “Don’t let’s be late for dinner tonight, all right? We told everyone we’d be there for ten sharp.”

  Bayle still hacking away, face flooding red, “The only reason I can possibly think of why you’re here,” Jane said, “is that you’ve managed to come to your senses and have with you, in full, the twenty-five hundred dollars that you stole from Toronto Living. And even then, technically speaking” — she pulled up the arm of her heavy overcoat and checked her watch — “you’re approximately thirty-six hours late. The magazine’s lawyers made it clear, I thought, that all moneys were to be repaid at their offices by cash or certified cheque no later than nine a.m. yesterday morning. It is now” — she consulted her watch again — 9:06 p.m.”

  Bayle finished his coughing spasm and took a couple of deep breaths, hands on his hips like an exhausted runner at the end of his race. Swallowed with difficulty and wondered who had dropped the razor blades down his throat when he wasn’t paying attention. Felt like his knees were about to buckle and the top of his head was ready to blow off. Said, more like he was asking permission to go to the bathroom than demanding his inalienable rights, “I’d like my stuff back. I’d like to know where my stuff is.”

  Jane looked at the sniffling Bayle in his soaked-through suit jacket and squishy black Oxfords. “I’m sorry about that part, Peter. I didn’t want it to come to that. But after you repeatedly refused to respond to any of my numerous faxes and phone calls asking for some kind of explanation, well, that’s when the lawyers needed to be brought in and, well, they ....” She looked up. “Come inside and towel off. I think there might even be one of your old sweaters still here. I’d offer you something to drink to warm you up but by the looks of it you’ve had enough already. Obviously some things haven’t changed. August can put on some coffee. There’s a late dinner party we have to be at directly, but we’ve got a few extra minutes.”

  Obviously-eavesdropping August seriously begged to differ, however, greeting Jane with watch-on-arm extended for an up-close inspection just in case she wasn’t quite aware of the late and getting-later hour. Jane immediately shot him one of her paten
ted fuck-with-me-at-considerable-personal-cost death glares that Bayle well remembered putting an end to the direction of many a late-night discussion she wasn’t prepared to go, saying only, “Coffee, August.”

  August yanked his jacket down over his watch and huffed off into the kitchen. The sound of coffee mugs and spoons being slammed onto the kitchen countertop could be heard clearly in the livingroom.

  “Wow,” Bayle said.

  “What?” Jane said. She was on her knees, searching around on the floor of the hall closet.

  “Nothing,” he said. “It’s just hard to believe that that used to be me in there.”

  Jane pulled out what she was looking for, a small cardboard box, and from it a very large and very expensive wool sweater. She stood up and turned around to see Bayle staring at the doorway to the kitchen. “Meaning?” she said, hard lines tightening around her mouth and eyes, the beginning of the dreaded death glare.

  “Nothing,” Bayle said, “forget it.” Knowing he was out here and August was in there was enough. Gave him, even, an unexpected return to focus. “Look, to tell you the truth, I don’t feel so hot, and I’ve got a feeling it’s not just the start of the world’s worst hangover, either. Tell your houseboy thanks for the refreshments, but if you could just let me know where and how I can get my stuff back I’ll let you two be on your way. Because my stuff my stuff.”

  “Because your stuff your stuff.”

  “Exactly,” Bayle said.

  “I think you’ve being hanging around that hockey team too long,” Jane said. “Here.” She tossed him the sweater. “At least you always did have good taste in sweaters.”

  “You bought me this,” he said.

  “Oh.”

  She pushed the cardboard box back into the closet with the toe of one of her heels and shut the door. Discovered and proceeded to carefully pluck off an offending piece of lint that had made its way onto her overcoat.

  “So?” Bayle said.

  Lint free, looking up, “So, what, Peter?”

  “So where’s my stuff?”

  “I’m sure I haven’t the foggiest. That’s something you’ll have to discuss with the lawyers. And one word to the wise: I’d be at their offices bright and early tomorrow morning. And you might want to be a little more presentable than you are right now. By then you’ll be almost two days late with the return of the money.”

  “Who said I had the money?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, I’ve got maybe twenty dollars in the world to my name.”

  Very un-Janelike, it looked as if Bayle’s ex-girlfriend and ex-employer was going to either drop a kidney or blow a gasket, whichever was more physiologically possible.

  “Why do you think I avoided your faxes and phone calls in the first place?” Bayle said. “Because I had it?”

  “August!” Jane called out.

  In came August from the kitchen doing his best to hurry up and heed his master’s voice and, at the same time, balance a silver serving tray loaded down with coffee pot, cups, spoons, milk pitcher in the form of a white porcelain cow, sugar dish — in short, everything necessary for a nice hot beverage shared between friends on a cold and rainy night. “Christ, I’m coming,” he said. “It’s not like I could make the pot brew any faster, you know.”

  “Put that tray down,” Jane said. “We’re going.”

  “But I just ....” August looked down at the tray. He had done a lovely job; what with the porcelain cow as the centrepiece of the tray and a handful of gingerbread cookies laid out all around the edge of the platter.

  “Put down that fucking tray and go and get your coat. We’re leaving. And don’t forget Simon’s present to me in the bedroom.”

  Remembering the dinner party seemed to make giving up the tray a little bit easier. August set it down on the coffee table, if with slight regret, and disappeared down the hall.

  Jane turned around, looking stunned that Bayle was still standing there.

  “What? What do you want?” she said.

  “Nothing I can get here, I guess,” Bayle said. He thought about putting on the sweater (he was cold and it was his), but somehow it seemed to make more sense to just leave it behind.

  He tossed the sweater onto the couch. “Give this to your butler, will you? One size fits all.” Bayle headed for the door.

  Jane called out after him. “Do you see what happens when you try to help someone? I go out on a limb and give you an all-expense paid chance to get some distance on your life, to re-establish your priorities, to save your very own career, and what do I get in return but all the ridicule and headache that comes from having an ex-lover of mine steal from my employers.”

  Bayle turned around. “’A chance to re-establish my priorities? Jane, you purposefully flew me out of the country so you could start screwing someone else. If that’s what you really think, if that’s what you really call trying to help somebody out, then you’re even worse off than I thought you were.”

  “I knew the first day that I met you there were a lot of things you weren’t going to do and be in life, Peter, but I never figured you for a common criminal. I thought you had a bit more going for you than that.”

  Bayle opened up the door. “Yeah, well, the more I think about it, there are a lot of things I never figured myself for, either. And you know something? Maybe you did do me a favour, maybe you and that magazine of yours did buy me a chance to get away from it all. Because from where I’m standing right now, common criminal doesn’t even come close to being the worst of them.”

  And when August returned to the livingroom all bundled up and ready to go with a Union Jack folded neatly over his arm, a distinguishing white bleach spot right there in its upper right-hand corner, Bayle suddenly felt ten times as drunk as he’d been all day and more sober than he ever thought possible. Pointing at the flag, “Where did ....?”

  Doing up the buttons on her coat, “Actually, this might be of some interest to you, Peter,” Jane said. “A very good friend of my father’s, Simon Johnson, got that for me, one of the lawyers who is going to prosecute you to the full extent of the law. I rather offhandedly mentioned to him when visiting my parents ages and ages ago that I’d been invited to a mock-United Nations dinner party where everyone was supposed to bring with them a national flag, and what do you think he presented me with just this last week? A Union Jack. That’s the kind of man you’re going to be dealing with, Peter. A mind like a steel trap. A brilliant man of the law. A mind that never forgets anything.”

  Bayle took back Patty’s flag with little struggle from August and grabbed a bottle of Absolut Vodka off the top of the liquor cabinet as he stalked out the door and down the hall. Just over the noise of his flopping wet shoes, heard:

  “Oh, let him go. The last thing I need is another reason to have to deal with Peter Bayle.”

  “But what about the British flag? Now we don’t have anything for the party. Jane, we need a flag.”

  “That tacky convenience store over by the video shop has got every flag under the sun in their t-shirt section. We’ll just pick up another one on the way. And who said it had to be British? Let’s be a little different, shall we? I’ll bet everybody and his brother will be bringing a British flag with them tonight.”

  43

  HE HIT every bar that would take his money. At those that wouldn’t, he hit whatever he could still manage to see, a list that included a doorman at Grossman’s Tavern who was just doing his job and a beefy waiter at The Rex Hotel who demanded that Bayle either quit waving his Goddamn British flag around in the faces of the other patrons or take his business elsewhere. It was just the sort of invitation Bayle had been waiting for.

  The waiter popped him once hard and square in the nose and led Bayle, nauseous with pain and half-blinded with booze and blood, out into the still-pouring night. He sat on the curb, rain rivering down his face, one hand holding his bloody nose, the other Patty’s flag. The Saturday night Queen Street foot traffic wal
ked right around him.

  Eventually, Etobicoke, his mother’s house, around dawn. His mother put him to bed in his old room and did her best for four days to keep the fever down. But Bayle’s temperature just kept going up. When he started hallucinating, calling out Patty’s name and a bunch of others his mother didn’t recognize — Davidson’s, Gloria’s, Warren’s, Duceeder’s and his son’s — she called for an ambulance.

  For nearly two months Bayle wore a clear plastic wristband that identified him as patient number 387366, Ward Three, Etobicoke General Hospital. At first it was just pneumonia, albeit a severe enough case — tubes to feed him and a succession of nurses to clean him — to cause the doctors to be concerned for awhile and to keep his mother bedside every day during both afternoon and evening visiting hours. Then a lung that filled up with fluid when he started to get better from the pneumonia, and, after that, a reaction to the medication for the problem with the lung. He finally went home with his mother early in the new year, thirteen pounds lighter but walking on his own and without the wristband.

  Mostly he just slept and ate and lay around on the couch watching television. The Maple Leafs were their usual lousy selves again after teasing their fans with respectability for a couple of brief years in the early nineties, but the Wednesday night game on Global and “Hockey Night in Canada” on Saturday were the highlights of Bayle’s week. For the first time since his father had died Bayle knew exactly where he’d be whenever the Leafs were on TV. Bayle had become a fan again.

  And the empty expression stuck to his face since he’d gotten out of the hospital seemed to say that he watched the hockey with no more interest than he did MuchMusic and the black-and-white late-night double feature on CBC. But his mother could see the slow signs of change in her son as the days began to get longer outside and the Leafs briefly flirted with the last Western Conference playoff spot.

  At first, just the occasional comment from his now customary horizontal position on the couch to his mother sitting in her old armchair working away on one of her “Find and Circle the Hidden Word” game books when an especially pretty Leaf goal was scored or, more often, a feverish Toronto comeback late in the game fell short. In time, leaning up on his elbows to get a better view when a replay of a disputed goal or contentious penalty was shown. Eventually — and before a late-February, six-game losing streak all but mathematically eliminated the Leafs from the playoff picture — sitting up on the edge of the couch only a few feet from the set the entire game long, anxiously tapping his feet whenever Toronto would get boxed in their own end while killing a penalty, pumping his fist and shouting “Yes” and smiling his mother’s way when the Leafs managed to put one in the net.