by Shilo Jones
In answer, I gag on my napkin.
Star saves the day by swishing over, leaning low, gently pulling the napkin from my throat. I keep my gaze fixed on the ceiling, make a point of showing her I’m not ogling. Michael doesn’t miss a beat of the pitch. The b-word is used, sacramentally. That’s billion. Nice word. Inspiring ring to it. How you feeling today? I’m feeling danged billiony!
Mumble a potent incantation to silence Michael, inadvertantly make the walls bleed monarch butterflies, giggle like a hyena. Am I a microscopic organism residing inside the beating heart of a famous person…or no wait, more like a symbiotic parasite swimming in a famous person’s blood, feeding on and being fed upon, and what famous person would it be? Star would know. Anyways…feeling experimental, which reminds me I need to create some performance art, something with me running through the woods naked, or me at Naam naked, or maybe just Star naked. Do I need a stronger online presence? Star seems to think so. Maybe me naked online? Make a mental note to ask her what the hot new site is, promptly forget, inhale deeply, take a moment to wade through Naam’s full-bodied scents of incense, patchouli, weed, something yeasty and febrile I’m fairly certain isn’t Star. I order a lemon cut in half, craving citrus and clarity.
“A billion-dollar development,” Michael says, as if to settle it. “Vincent Peele’s offer is garbage, of course. But we’ll get it hammered out.”
Loud enough so the entire restaurant can hear, “Property development? Sounds moneyed, but boring. You bourgeois imposter.”
A few hoots and hollers from the crowd. Blitzo—dude’s been around, still keepin’ it real for the kidlings—
“It’s my job to keep us grounded, Carl. Remember? Cash flow?”
Tuneful: “Bor-ing!”
“It will make us money.”
“Money’s bor-ing!”
Star smiles her approval, shakes something juicy in my direction.
Michael drags his teacup across the table, makes me suspicious he’s signalling a spook. Night raid? Truth serum? So fucking yesterday they might be back in fashion. I’m finally outliving time.
“ ‘Money’s boring.’ Says the obscenely rich guy.”
“What about movies? Hollywood? Nah…too many assholes. Or the Dark Web? Bitcoin? Hey—cybernetic pirate ships! Pretenders walk the plank! It’s a big world, is what I’m saying. We shouldn’t have to settle. Remember my vision!” My voice rises to an inspiring crescendo. “Or how about parkour? Leaping from building to building…or that move where they run toward a wall and kick off and spin? Seems cool. Parkour clothing. With urban dystopian accessory pockets? To store a rusty switchblade, water purification tablets, a hennaed pet cockroach? Consider yoga pants. That Chip Wilson motherfucker is really pissing me off. Let’s money the revolution.”
Michael shakes his head. “We’re signing on with Vincent Peele and Marigold. It’s precisely the kind of diversification Green Lead requires. There’s a slight complication…but forget it. Let me handle it.”
“I got something you can handle. Coo, coo.” Try and work up the energy to get upset at Michael making unilateral decisions, fail.
Star’s wearing a burgundy hemp skirt and a tasselled flowy blouse. Nice outfit entirely. Easy on the eyes. The clothing line’s called EcoDefenz. We backed them. Maybe a bit strident in name and branding? And what the fuck is up with that z? Take an unsatisfying bite of brown rice and wakame, consider talking to the EcoDefenz marketing people tomorrow…which is when I remember my daughter’s coming home from Appleby College. When? Today? Next week? In a light year squared? I want to live life like a laser through space. An unerring line. Instantaneous, nothing but nothing around me, unhindered and undeterred for evaaar.
But Hannah. My child makes me feel stagnant. Brackish.
Star sets a dish of sliced lemon on the table, asks if my heart’s in the right place. Or she would, if we were honest with one another. Instead she’s silent. I’m uncomfortable with the relationship between server and patron. A fundamental power imbalance I try to subvert with ostentatious tips that have the unschemed side effect of getting me laid once in a while.
Michael’s blabbing about the solstice.
“The celebration?” I ask, hopeful, thinking about shifting energy vortexes and how international capital flow is a lot like them and there’s a ninety-nine-cent ebook in there somewhere, title: Financial Wellness through the Ancient Energy of—
Michael shakes his head. Disappointed in something I can’t intuit. “Dammit, Carl. At least try to appear like you give a shit. The Solstice property development?” He snaps his fingers twice, inches from my nose.
“I wish…you wouldn’t…do that,” I whisper, looking at the lemon seeds. Three have been cut. One escaped. A big part of my mind’s still on the solstice. Vortexes. Sweaty naked people. Capital flow. Collusion.
“Someone has to.”
“You’re being confrontational. Almost unpleasant.” Take out my phone. Acting like I’m acting normal puts me somewhere near normal, still spiritually uncertain but buoyed by lemony smell. Scroll for my calendar. Seeking big data. Algorithmic answers. Wrinkling my brow, studious, engaged, sweet techno-glitz don’t let me down—
“Are you talking at your phone?”
“Quiet. Researching.”
Put off by how fleshy my fingers look holding the sexy-sleek phone. How soft and pudgy and of the grave. We’re born to rot, not riot. Forty-nine years old. Mid-century modern. There’s toxic material lurking in my bones, harmless until disturbed. “I’m fucking disturbed,” I mutter.
“Keep it together, Blitz,” Michael whispers, using my alias as a term of endearment, making me feel like a cored fruit. “Let’s get you out of here.”
Phew. “Star? The cheque, dear? Holdout’s getting cold.”
Where’s the goddamned calendar in this thing? An ad pops up, tries to sell me cryo-something. Dull body in a titanium tank. Suspended in aloe vera goop. Absorbing nutrients through my skin, osmotic? Wake me up when things make less sense…but right now still entranced by the phone. Subtly rounded corners smooth to the touch. It’s true Steve Jobs was a genius. Not a single right angle in the natural world. An evil collision of lines. So why design right angles into our tech? The point is to make the tech appear organic, like it sprouted from seed, like alfalfa in my bowl, like Star in my bed. Seamlessness is perfection. Technology should predate us, or at least appear to. But where’s the fucking calendar? My confidence fades, leaves me deflated, left out of something I can’t name but know exists.
“Michael, I think I remember…what it’s about?” I can’t tell if my oldest friend and business partner has stopped talking. Did the spider plants just inch themselves closer? Is that a maw? Twenty-two years since the Berlin Wall came down and the universe gifted me the Nugget. A decade since I got out of prison and Green Lead began investing ethically. Pioneers in our field. Well, at least we started strong. I wonder about the fuzzy spot where you stop calling someone a friend, the even fuzzier spot where ethical investing becomes something else entirely.
There are lawyers involved. Roving packs of them. Maybe it’s not so fuzzy.
Michael leans close, tries to snatch my phone, tells me I’ve lost my knack for holistic thought.
I ask him if we’re having a run-of-the-mill domestic, and if so, can I leave?
“Consider how much commitment it would take to walk out on me.”
He’s right. I can’t seem to spot the door.
Discouraged, I squint at the phone, fully aware doing so makes me look poor, old, and/or stupid. Star sighs. There’s a pat answer out there somewhere. Aha, the calendar! Very similar to the old ones! Why did I need the calendar again? I pretend to tap something in, glare at Michael, feeling self-dissatisfied, certain the problem must be me, wanting the phone to reveal more than it does, collect private data, personal numerology, truth gleaned by an AI tarot reader, an algorithm coined by a lanky hooker in São Paulo who’s secretly a crypto-freedom fighter working to
liberate the Arctic or destroy the SPCA, her sassy algorithm introduced via Tumblr to another algorithm developed by the NSA to intercept creepily unrandom messages from the core of the earth, the two algorithms mated to produce something less than their sum, said the bespectacled guru on the rooftop in Varanasi. And a neophyte transhumanist with a dangerous idea. All hipster-smart mashed together to put a message in my inbox on my beautiful, smooth-edged, techno-organic phone, about which I will admit jealousy from a design perspective. The message will state: You and Michael Zenski are no longer friends, never mind lovers.
There. Settled.
That’s what I want from my tech. Absolute certainty.
Am I asking too much or too little?
I could still get out of Green Lead, if not guilt-free then free. Michael’s right. The world’s nothing if not potential. Belief is a conscious choice. The word free makes my crotch tingle. Does that make me an American? “Look at my Tesla. Can you see Holdout? What’s he doing? Shivering? Does his snout look dry? I’m fretting.”
Michael’s talking about scalability, various Silicon Valley legacies, and I’m confused, headed down a winding synaptic path, but I think we’re talking Williams Lake tech geeks again. I tell him I want to invest in something I can hold in my hands. Something with actual mass. Michael laughs, says that’s the exact opposite of what I said a few minutes ago, calls me analog, jabs about me being a dinosaur, a Luddite. I misquote John Zerzan, something about ricin and how to bleed a goat. My stock goes up. I see it in the fucker’s eyes. The tablecloth depresses me. I think it’s hemp made to look like plastic. That kind of thing should be illegal. Or at least carefully regulated. People need protecting from themselves. Something about a hemp clothing line allowing me to purchase a twenty-thousand-square-foot ski lodge in Whistler feels, in this particular space-time nexus, like a profoundly fascist intrusion. Suddenly I believe in animism. I feel the seat struggling beneath me, yearning for emancipation. Michael’s had multiple plastic surgeries. His firstborn face sloughed off like reptile skin. Had it replaced with the visage of a Kathakali mask. His third wife eats Cheerios bathed in Sprite for breakfast, has zero cavities, believes the world began an hour before she was born.
Or maybe it’s the streetlight filtering in from Fourth Avenue, Rainbow Road, the constant traffic, suits in Beamers looking both rage-filled and serene, the gas station across the street, an exceptionally fit businesswoman leaning toward her Lexus, inserting a gasoline nozzle with practised ease. Man. Kitsilano. There it went. I rally for a centring breath, stop halfway, steamed broccoli lodged in my throat. A moment ago I exuded confidence. Now I can’t taste my food, my ears are humming, the world appears colourless, strangely rounded. Vibes. Vortexes. Capital infusions. Solstices. Outside, the stars are hidden behind overcast skies, and the conversation continues.
Jasminder Bansal
Stuck in rush-hour gridlock congealed across the Lions Gate Bridge. Pent-up ugly energy lingering from my meeting with Vincent Peele. Suspended in low cloud, losing track of up and down, windshield wipers failing to clear sluices of rain, my car smelling damp and musty, everyone in a hurry to be somewhere else and that vibe seeps into me and I punch the horn because there’s nothing else to do. Why lie about how close I was to Amar? Why betray my brother’s memory to an asshole like Peele?
Because lying comes easy. In high school I lied about being Amar Bansal’s sister. Of course everyone knew. Eventually my friends stopped returning calls and my teachers called more often. Worst of all was Amar. He assumed I was ashamed or afraid of him, like everyone else. But that wasn’t it. I was furious because I couldn’t stop looking up to him.
Breaking the real estate corruption story, bringing a truth to the public, or do I just want to see Clint Ward suffer? So what if my objective journalistic integrity is compromised? Neutrality is a privilege I don’t have. What did Thompson say? You can’t be objective about Nixon. Besides, no one believes that shit anymore. Write a three-hundred-word nut graph, blast it online, and don’t expect to get paid because no one reads more than the lead, which might be why bother?
What if the story isn’t worth the sacrifice? A twenty-six-year-old working part-time as a movie theatre usher while I attended real estate sales and marketing certificate courses. The half-truths and outright lies I’ve told my family. The forced enthusiasm with clients and colleagues at Marigold. And rekindling a relationship with Eric Hull, a guy I dated for a few months at Langara who works in real estate, to get a resumé reference for Marigold. Now that I’m inside I don’t need Eric anymore. Should I end it tonight?
Playing a role, pretending to be someone I’m not. I think it came naturally to Amar. But for me?
My foot slips off the clutch and my Honda jerks forward, shudders as my brakes grind the car to a stop. The grating metal-on-metal sound is so bad that people in surrounding cars glance over, drawn to disaster. The bridge deck is rain-slick and narrow. I squint against oncoming traffic, hope to hell my car doesn’t stall or worse. My defrost is shit, only clears a half-circle directly above the dash, forces me to drive hunched to the side, one hand on the wheel while I swipe at the windshield with a soaked scarf.
I see you, Jasminder. That’s what Peele said. But I think he’s wrong. I don’t think he sees me at all, not yet and hopefully never.
At a standstill. Tail lights vanish as the bridge descends to Stanley Park. Braided-steel cables rise into the honeycombed steel structure overhead. Car horns and pelting rain—or a ship horn. From out in the harbour? Am I imagining it? They don’t blast ship horns out there, do they? At Langara I did a story on women who work the tankers anchored in Burrard Inlet. Picked up on the docks and boated out. Returned to land the next morning. I was six months into my program when Amar died. I couldn’t face sitting in class.
Fog on the Lions Gate Bridge drifting like dry ice across a dance floor. My brother was dancing when he was shot. I can’t remember what song was playing. Why is the memory silent except for a single gunshot when I know there must’ve been music playing in the club? The doubt creeps into my memory of that night, makes me question what I saw.
Strobe lights flickering on the dance floor; headlights too bright on the bridge. Remembering Amar dancing when I see them up ahead. Apparitions coming in and out of focus. My hands gripped at ten and two while I tell myself I’m not really seeing this. A troupe or clan of dancers spinning and weaving through stuck vehicles. Towering creatures with hooked beaks and forked antlers, draped in cloaks and hides.
They have to be performers wearing costumes and wooden stilts. Closer now, still shifting and blurry but moving toward me. Soundless. Relentless. Why can’t I remember the song? The animal dancers leap onto hoods, shatter windshields. Claws scrape against doors and a shrill shrieking reaches me. Is that the dancing creatures shrieking? Or only my wrecked brakes? Clint Ward murdered my brother and I’m putting myself near him and I don’t know why, what I expect to accomplish except please tell me there’s a truth taking shape.
* * *
“Must be time for a congrats?” Eric shouts over a roaring circular saw. “Full time with Marigold and Vincent Peele?”
I’m following Eric through a condo display unit being constructed inside a vacant retail space in Gastown, trying not to dwell on what I saw on the bridge. Eric doesn’t sound entirely happy about the news, and neither am I. Eric hops over a pile of two-by-four offcuts while I fight back a sneeze from the sawdust haze. “Must be?”
Eric’s wearing his real-estate-agent-as-construction-supervisor outfit: white hard hat, safety goggles tinted yellow, plaid shirt tucked into pressed khakis. Even in work boots he’s smaller than me, has a habit of standing with his legs locked, chest out and chin up, like an image from a doctor’s brochure on proper posture. Eric’s about to say something when a construction worker reeking of weed and straining under a soaked sheet of plywood trips on an extension cord, staggers, nearly smashes into me. The guy cusses, says sorry, asks Eric where he wants the fuck
ing plywood stacked. Eric frantically scans the work site. “Uh, how much plywood is there?”
The worker shakes the plywood in Eric’s direction to show him it isn’t light, says how should he know. Isn’t Eric the boss? Eric can’t seem to decide if he’s the boss, and if he is, where to pile the plywood. Every inch of space is crammed with lumber, stacked drywall, tile boxes, metal scaffolding. The guy says goddamned fuck, chucks the plywood on the offcuts at Eric’s feet, storms outside.
Eric tips his hard hat, tries to smile. “Twenty-four hours and we open for pre-sales. Hot neighbourhood, this part of Gastown. Finally revitalizing. Jaz? Here—” He hands me a set of blueprints, asks me to help hold them open. “Two thousand square feet to work with. So we’re building—get this, it’s wild—two different display units in here.” Eric points at a half-finished structure looming behind us. “That’s the two-bedroom. Seven hundred square feet.”
The two-bedroom is elevated on a platform built a few feet off the retail floor. It’s partially framed in with regularly spaced two-by-fours. The store lights are on overhead, and the unit is further lit by shop lights on industrial yellow stands. I squint against the glare, realize the shop lights are putting off a lot of heat and I’m beginning to sweat. The thought hits that maybe I wasn’t dressed appropriately for my interview today. What did Vincent say? Hippie college chick. A rush of frustration and self-doubt that I stomp down, remind myself it doesn’t matter, I got the job. Hammers smacking a staccato rhythm are interrupted by a frustrated shout. A carpenter and his crew are trying to finish framing in the walls, but they’re being slowed by the hardwood guys already working beneath them.
“Why are they installing the hardwood so early?”
Eric uses his forearm to mop the sweat off his face. “Yeah. Why? Good question.”
I glance at the blueprints. Apparently the plan is to construct two separate entry tunnels from the front door. Customers will walk down a darkened hallway a lot like the ones leading to a movie theatre and emerge into a perfectly constructed ideal made to be temporary, an illusion or magic show where at the end everyone claps and throws half a million into the magician’s hat. That is if Eric Hull can get his shit together. “Look. The framers are tripping all over the hardwood guys. Hardwood shouldn’t be going in until—”
