Night in the World, page 4
“I didn’t realize those aspects would come into the work at this stage,” Gabe says carefully, wondering if she even understands what “spatial dynamics” means. She’s proposed a straightforward species count in two distinct bioregions where little is known about the state of moth populations. The same could be said for the rest of the country, in fact.
“Oh, it’s not too soon to be thinking about them,” says Hegyi, who hasn’t told Gabe what to call her yet. “It will add value and complexity.” Gabe nods. “Now the catches, I wasn’t clear what you were planning to do. Are you going to collect the moths for study?”
“Trap, count and release,” Gabe says. “That I’m pretty used to from all the Moth Nights in the park, though we didn’t count them. Plus I’ve been doing it on my own for ages.”
Hegyi smiles. “Fantastic. I’m so happy that the park you worked at offered such a program. So you will not be collecting at all?”
The question is unexpected. She’s never “collected” moths, for the simple reason that when you collect them, they die. She’s never understood why anyone would want to do that.
“Uh, no, I didn’t see a need to,” she says.
“Well, the committee may disagree.”
Gabe opens her mouth, closes it. Still tripping over her surprise. “Can we work around that, then?”
“Maybe. If you present good reasons. I mean, persuade them.”
“Moth populations are in decline, species are dying out . . .” And it’s just, like, wrong?
“That’s a start, yes.”
“So, correct me here, but I didn’t think collecting was going to be necessary. I’ve been reading studies, and some do kill moths, but not all.”
“The kinds of studies you’re hoping to conduct do collect,” Hegyi says. Her sweetness has gone; was saying “kill” too blunt? “How can one be accurate otherwise? See,” she continues, “that is the challenge in our field. Obtaining accurate data, assuring that what you contribute has integrity, can stand up to scrutiny, because you are building important knowledge.”
“Of course.”
“So, we will work on this together!” Her smile returns, eyes shining with enthusiasm.
The meeting ends shortly after, and Gabe wanders down the hallway but cannot find the stairwell door; she must have gone the wrong direction. There’s an exit sign up ahead, so she takes that and emerges into a crowded common area. Gabe watches hundreds of students funnel slowly through two open doors. A light has been activated above them, signaling that the lecture is about to begin. As the doors swing closed Gabe glimpses students settling into padded theater-style chairs, opening laptops and notebooks, chatting to friends, texting. Then the sound from within the room muffles.
The light traps she uses for moths lure them down into a bin that is lined with paper eggshell cartons, snug places for moths to stay until released. In the traps used by collectors, moths fly in just the same but land in a jar of alcohol solution. From the outside the traps look identical; the moths trust the light, either way.
• THE RIVER •
4
THE THEATRE WHERE The Black Rider will be performed occupies an old factory off Dupont Street. Warehouses, lumber yards and light manufacturing still intersperse houses that once would have been owned by employees before gentrification ignited the market. Justin pulls into a parking lot pooled around the feet of two hydro towers gripping wires. The headlights sweep across a fence gnarled with leafless vines, railway tracks visible through the mesh.
Gwynn puts her hand in his as they walk up the street, talking excitedly. Father and daughter out together, it’s a treat for them both. They turn a corner and there’s the bright entrance. The show’s sold out! In the crowded lobby where they wait to be let into the house, Gwynn is the only child. People notice. Gwynn likes this. Justin stands tall with his arm around her, unabashed, and the patrons who curiously regard them seem to decide they’re cute, not weird, and smile at the little girl with her dad.
The doors open; everyone enters and gets settled. The mood is jittery. Oh, how he misses the stage at Ace! Nothing compares to live — nothing. Whether it was managing bands or hosting shows, he used to love it all: how from the chaotic, dubious and rough beginnings — the rehearsals in shitty spaces, the bickering, the fuck-ups and endless feuds — would rise something unprecedented: like a shimmering animal gained life and took charge and then, when it at last faced the audience, roared.
The house lights fade to a blackout. Justin takes Gwynn’s hand as they sit in total darkness, waiting.
The darkness continues. It starts to become an ache, a breath held for too long.
What’s happening? Is this intentional?
Whispering, coughing, and agitated shifting begin. The audience struggles like swimmers needing to surface. In his midrow seat, centre of the action, Justin likes the play already. Of course he’s on Xanax, with two Tylenol 3s as a buffer — just in case.
Lights snap on. Half a dozen actors form a line across the stage, their faces blank, eyes on the audience. They’re in white face, like puppets or dolls, with red cheeks and lips. There’s something eerily familiar about them but he can’t place it.
Beside the stage a band comes suddenly to life and the grinning, bandit-faced Devil enters in black suit and white gloves, his dark hair slicked. He moves down the line of actors with a mechanically smooth motion, like a figure on a conveyor belt. Like he’s tireless, Justin thinks. The Devil starts to sing, a cheerful invitation for the audience to join him, and the doll-faced people twitch to life, assuming expressions of confusion, wonder, hilarity, desire. Action begins with a white-collar hero in a suit, a bureaucrat or banker stupefied by obedience, unmanned by office slouchery. He’s desperate to win the hand of his Beloved. Sleek Satan appears, and the hero wagers his soul for a real man’s sure fire. Gaily the hero sets off, happy to have found the easy way out and believing in the power of purchase. His soul had been like an old key he carried in his pocket. Where is the lock? Who knows or cares? That’s an ancient house. His future in-laws are more terrifying, his fiancé a girl-woman with a body that won’t settle: in one scene she’s a giantess absorbing her man between her legs, in another a shriveled, mewling baby mouthing gibberish. The Devil’s allure lies in shortcuts. The piano keys trill. The band charges. You can only sell your soul, not buy it. The Devil chases down the hero and rides him like a horse. The Devil flog-fucks the hero like a horse. His bride screams and swoons and looks ready to gulp blood. The titular magic bullets find their tragic mark, and all things wind to their dreadful, dreadful end.
The lights go out. No one stirs. In the darkness Justin remembers: his mother’s body in the coffin, lipstick and face powder. A fake figure he didn’t know and wanted to forget.
Outside, he and Gwynn return to the car in silence. He feels like he’s on much stronger drugs — mushrooms or acid. He’s not even sure he can drive. Everything looms weirdly and with hidden significance: a tattered bag on a branch, a cone of light over a shed — each radiates its Something-ness. The wind hisses over a lip of snow and electricity follows them from above, humming. Justin grasps Gwynn’s mittened hand, that little key the one stable thing left.
He promised her ice cream at a local place that stays open year-round. Somehow he gets them there and they sit at a window table. Cars fume by the curb, waiting for people to return with their treats. Gwynn doesn’t use her spoon. She holds the tulip sundae glass by the stem and approaches it with her tongue. He rubs his eyes. They’re itchy, like they have hairs growing on them. The Tylenol 3s. He wishes he’d brought more, though.
“How’d you like the show, honey?”
She continues licking. Her eyes look flat. She seems obsessed with the ice cream. Maybe she’s been traumatized, just like Naomi feared. When he told her about his plans earlier — cheerful and thinking she’d approve of his creative initiative with Gwynn — Naomi fretted about the effects of “too mature content.” That micro-managing, protective-hen reaction — it’s a fucking vice! He’d stayed calm and reassured, then gone down to his office. His chest hurt. Maybe his heart would give out next.
“Sweetheart?” He taps Gwynn’s hand.
She strains forward to lick the top of the sundae then sits back suddenly, her lips rimmed with chocolate sauce. “It was tremendous!”
Justin nods, passes her a paper napkin and asks what parts she liked.
“I liked the music. I liked the piano player. He was goofy. But I liked the devil the best. He was so funny! And handsome.”
She picks up the neglected spoon and digs in.
Back home, he kicks off his boots and heads for the cellar, knowing exactly what he’s in the mood for: a bottle of Amarone. He opens it and turns off the living room lamps, lights candles on the mantle and coffee table, then puts on Tom Waits’s Rain Dogs, forwarding to the title song and cranking it.
Gwynn comes in wearing pajamas and her New York Yankees cap. Justin takes a long swig of the wine, then starts to dance. Back bending, arms rising, his hands becoming claws. He shakes his head and makes a beastly groan.
He’s a troll.
The troll goes stomping around the room, grunting. With a squeal Gwynn crosses his path and teases him to catch her before darting away.
Oh how we danced and we swallowed the night
For it was all ripe for dreaming . . .
Reg barks and worries, jumping up to paw at the troll, who gets down on the carpet and goes eye-to-eye with the dog. He draws back and starts to yip. Gwynn straddles the troll’s back, shouting Mush! He slumps around the room with the rider then bucks her off and rears up bellowing. He takes a thick kindling stick from the wood box and a pewter plate for his drum.
“Me! Me! Me!” shouts Gwynn, trying to grab the plate. He dances away, banging on it and laughing. His drum!
The song ends. Justin troll-walks to the stereo and starts the CD from the beginning this time. Everything changes. The troll vanishes, another creature appears. He spins around cawing and flapping his arms. Gwynn stands on a chair in a military pose, the cap low over her face, and barks orders at him, pointing with a wooden spoon. He caws back. She hops down and takes his hands and they dance circles, falling onto the carpet to throw their legs in the air, flipping onto all fours and wriggling their bums as they butt heads, ram shoulders, back up and rush together to stop at the last second, frozen, staring into each other’s shining eyes.
The music travels out of the house.
* * *
THREE DAYS PASS. It’s calmer in the house with Naomi gone. After Gwynn goes to school Justin sits in the basement office and works for hours, though mostly, he does bullshit.
Phone calls, banking and the ceaseless data-rain of emails — that’s the bullshit. Work, the stuff that earns actual money, has become ever more difficult to reach. Getting to work now first requires this maddening traverse through the tripwire bureaucratic and electronic perimeter ever-thickening around him. He’s spent by it: the hours of tap-tapping on the keyboard or waiting on hold or navigating websites and phone menus. Drained. He needs a break before he actually goes to Ace to work. Breaks he doesn’t have time to take.
He addresses a health code violation given in error to Leverage and still not removed from the system. He follows up the City’s inspection of Ace, which resulted in the need to re-modify its bathrooms (again) to meet accessibility and safety codes. Apparently the last contractor didn’t know or understand the latest codes, and Justin can only be so pissed about this because it’s just not fair: the codes are forever complexifying and he can see a future when every contractor must employ a bylaw official on site, where engineering schools offer adjunct degrees in bylaw law . . . And all this stuff is thinky-dinky detail, it doesn’t approach the tasks required to run his businesses: the ordering and staffing, the menu planning.
And if only the bullshit ended here.
But it’s in his home and family life too. You can’t just send your kid to school anymore; there are parent-teacher meetings to attend, emails and e-newsletters and even texts to absorb, events, interviews, consultations, volunteer time — and this is only grade four, for fuck’s sake, not bilateral diplomacy. There’s also the parenting issues Naomi wants them to keep abreast of, articles and links she forwards so he can thoughtfully weigh these strategies and threats and worry how to protect Gwynn best and plan her future to avoid the many, many pitfalls that lurk, including his own selfish mistakes.
There’s the sunroom building permit, inching through City bureaucracy. And now there’s his mom’s estate, which he’s trying to keep out of probate. There’s the tenants in the bungalow, the Littmans — total island weirdos. It took Oliver all of a day to ask to see inside the bungalow again, could that be arranged? Justin did so by serving the Littmans an eviction notice. Island houses aren’t supposed to be rented, he is not becoming landlord of that dump; one way or another, ejecting the Littmans will simplify life. And they’ve not only asked for time above the two-month period, they want half a bloody year, purportedly so that the move doesn’t affect school for their children. Emotional emails containing too much information have been arriving from Mama Littman. He’s had to seek legal counsel on how to proceed.
As to why Mom kept the bungalow all these years and said fuck all about it, he’s stumped. She wasn’t sentimental — or so he’s always thought. If the house was a money maker, she would have simply said so. He found nothing in her papers to suggest a reason. Reading about the house in the will for the first time, he’d felt winded. That house! For years he’d barely thought of it; in his mind it was tangled up with losing Dad, a pain like a leg broken and set wrong, but what’s done is done. Yet, did she think her son was incapable of understanding? That he lacks sufficient emotional complexity, as Naomi’s angry silences suggest? Does he?
Around noon he drives to Ace. Xanax stabilizes the ride.
In his office he listens to music and reviews accounts. The kitchen roof gets patched, while Leverage seeps blood.
He comes home, spends time with his daughter, takes the dog out and goes to bed. A few hours later he’s awake and marking fresh snow as he walks the quiet streets of Baby Point with Reg. Mercedes and Lexus, Lexus and Mercedes. You can only sell your soul, not buy it.
FRIDAY, his late night at Ace, Gwynn with their sitter. Justin visits the downstairs bar just before closing.
Kurt, their most recent hire, brings him his beer. “Queens of the Stone Age,” he says with a grin.
“What’s that?”
“I heard you listening to them. When I passed your office.”
“Huh.”
Justin takes a sip. He doesn’t like Kurt very much. Doesn’t trust his golden-haired hipster demi-cool, or his actor’s smile.
“It’s better than gouging my eyes out,” he says, and Kurt laughs. Justin’s not sure he likes that either. The guy’s a player. Why did he hire him? One of his personal rules is to protect the staff from bad influence.
“You’re a fan, then. Got time to listen to something?”
“I’m just ringing out.”
Upstairs in the office Justin puts on his new love: Splinter, Gary Numan’s comeback CD. Kurt hears Nine Inch Nails echoes right away. “Exactly!” Justin says delightedly. “I’ve been going back to Numan’s earlier stuff ever since I heard this. I hadn’t listened to him in ages, I never made the connection, but it’s so —” He opens his hands, overcome by feeling.
We were dust in a world of grim obsession
We were torn from our life of isolation
We were pulled from our path of least resistance
The music stutters, violently backfires, becomes gasping echoes of itself, then surges to life. It’s the music of resurrection wrapped in breakdown and ruin.
We are yours, we’re waiting for you.
They have another round. While the CD continues, Justin throws open the fire escape door so they can smoke. It’s almost like old times, leaning against the cold metal outside. He shares some stories of Ace’s glory days with Kurt. Opening it had been his mother’s idea — yes, he says, nodding, I take no credit, it’s true. Because he’d never have thought of something that farseeing, he thinks; he was just another feckless music-scene crawler hanging out in clubs and trying to “manage” bands. Terra Nita. Juvenile Luck. Wanting to be part of something that mattered — and it did matter, for a time: the scene blazed into greatness, offering more music than the culture could handle, yet where else could it go? Independent releases. Interest and disinterest from Americans. Tours of the prairies and Atlantic Canada, and video rotation on MTV. His mother had co-signed the loan for Ace and persuaded him to offer food as well as live music. The restaurant took off, yet the combination of bands and dining died, over time.
“It was probably inevitable,” he says, “given what’s happened to live music. The scene’s crushed.” And what did he do to help? Closed the stage. Chose the safer path. Image of the grinning white-faced Devil, dancing him into oblivion . . . He stubs out his third cigarette. His throat’s getting raw from them and he likes that.
Kurt smirks. “Death by iPod shuffle. Death by Spotify and Google Play.”
“It’s humiliating, isn’t it. The thousand-cuts death from an opponent without a face,” Justin says. “But hey, I’ve been hogging the conversation long enough. Give me another smoke and tell me about you.”
It turns out that Kurt’s fighting his own battle: scattered family, student debts. No means and nobody coming to his rescue. “That’s what makes me laugh when I hear all this talk of ‘community’ these days,” Kurt says. “Like people actually have it, know it. What a joke. Community is all bricks, no mortar. Soon there’ll be no family either, just people living solo, side by each, with your own personalized AI companion.”
