Читать книгу Notice - Dustin Cole - Страница 7
ОглавлениеThey unloaded the excavator off a scissor neck on Watson. People walking by missed the first raking motion of the articulated arm, cinder blocks crunching like booted steps, cedar beams snapping like bushfire. Through the buckled quadrangle of a sash in the last wall—the broken tombstones of its foundation, the nests of wire and shredded tarpaper, the severed curlicues of rebar.
From his unit in Bellevue Heights he watched the developer commandeer the parking lot next to Barney’s to erect a showroom out of plywood and expansive glass panes. Inside, the simulacra of two dwellings. When the last condo was sold they pulled the showroom down with an excavator and redid the asphalt. The form carpenters parked here. Later on this was where the subtrades would park too. He watched them pump out the subterranean creek and divert it with PVC piping and shore it over, watched them tack mesh to the pit wall and watched the nozzlemen spray on the shotcrete.
A trio of excavators continued. Dump trucks queued up on Watson to haul the material away. The mast and jib of a tower crane arrived on highboys in sections and another truck-mounted crane was brought in to install, reducing the thoroughfare to a bleating column of single-lane traffic. They came in and out of Tim’s at coffee time and lunch, muddy, mouths full of good-natured obscenities, returning to the pit, to pneumatic hammers and two-by-sixes, heavy sheets of form panel, ten hours a day plus overtime, Saturdays.
With the dogged certainty of automatons they described the involute parkade, building hollow irregular shapes and injecting them with liquid concrete. When the concrete cured they peeled the panels off and used them again. Spires of rebar were hung and their bases secured with twine, poking from the mass, each another promise, a foretaste of the tower to be. The side street was routinely closed to motorists as the workers poured slab after slab. Rolling drums of the cement trucks. Telescopic pump hoses reaching ever higher.
The slab-a-week routine was known as On Typical. The serrated edge canted outward as it rose, each week cutting out more of the dead-looking sky, every week the clangour of it getting farther away up there, every week the form justifying itself with more of itself.
The worker stood on a stepladder. He had a scar the shape of a bass clef on the right side of his head where the hair did not grow. Wires dangled by his face and a beige collar with a black dome was attached to the wires. You never knew where the lens was pointing. Say cheese.
Levett walked down Tenth, phone to ear. A synthetic ring warbled. Twice, three, some of four.
“Hello.”
“Is this Tom?”
The general contractor in charge of the Bellevue’s renovations was quiet for a few seconds as he quick-changed into his building manager role. “Yeah.”
“It’s Dylan Levett, from the Bellevue—”
“I know.”
“I need to organize a different time to pay my rent.”
“I don’t deal with the money,” said the voice. It wasn’t trying to be nice.
“Can I get the landlords’ contact to arrange a different time?”
“I don’t deal with the money.”
“But you’re the building manager.”
“Yeah.”
“Well.”
“Well what?”
“I need a couple days.”
“Rent’s due on the first.”
“I won’t have it on the first.”
“Then you’ll get a notice.”
“I need some more time.”
“That’s not my problem.”
“So you’re the building manager, but you can’t give me the landlord’s contact information and you don’t deal with the money.”
“Don’t start raising your voice with me. You haven’t got rent on the first, you get a notice. It’s not my problem.”
“I know who you are,” Levett said.
“Who am I?”
“You’re the contractor who doesn’t finish any of his projects.”
Along the dappled sidewalk of Tenth Avenue below arching boughs of oak and chestnut, virid moss scaling the knotted trunks, antic squirrels darting into the grass. Overhead two crows squawked in esoteric dialogue.
He could tell the voice smiled when it said, “Now you’ll get a different notice.”
Faint hiss of a dead line.
Hammering filled the room, filled his head. He threw off the sheet, rolled off the bed and stumbled to the bathroom. He switched on the light. The light did not come on. More hammering. Talking somewhere in the building. Deep distorted voices like on a slow-motion tape. They weren’t trying to be quiet.
Below his windows a large blue tarp angled down across the courtyard to the second-storey windows. It bellied loudly, whipping and popping in the wind. Rainwater from an overflowing gutter smacked on the windowsill.
Long yowling siren.
He thought the bulb was burnt-out. There were no spares. He unscrewed the closet bulb, replaced it in the bathroom and flicked the switch. Nothing.
He got up onto the toilet rim, looked down into it. Shit ring the size of Texas.
There was a lot of language going on in his head, all of it foul.
He unscrewed the bulb, standing on the pube-encrusted toilet rim in bare feet, got down off the toilet with the bulb and went to the walk-in closet where his bed was, stood on the concave mattress and screwed the bulb into the closet socket. Flicked the switch and no.
The refrigerator was silent. He felt the warm cellophane on some breasts. He peeked through the blinds. Lamplit venetians sliced the light of one window, muslin drapery diffused the glow of another. He leaned on the sideboard with his hand on a stack of envelopes, many unopened, some with the BC Hydro letterhead in the top left corner. One of the province’s most robust corporations.
It was not the regular stubby shape. It was long. It didn’t have the little window that showed his name and address. He tore it open and tore the letter. At the top a boldfaced heading: Final Disconnection Notice for Total Amount Owing: $101.55. And below, in case the heading lacked clarity, We haven’t received payment for the amount you owe. Please pay your balance immediately, or your service will be disconnected.
He ran a bath in the dark. The tub’s cool enamel shut his eyes. He imagined scourging Tom Ford with a cat-o’-nine-tails.
Later he ran into Magnus in the foyer. The building caretaker’s lank white hair hung from a straw Bermuda hat. He wore a sports coat and golf shirt and tucked his sagging paunch into brown slacks. He stood with broom and dustpan watching traffic on Main Street through the glass doors. Eyes a pale, watery blue and the cars swimming through them.
“Hey Magnus.”
The caretaker studied the young bespectacled man, bookish and broad-shouldered, in black jeans, black hoodie and a long black coat. To the caretaker he looked like a bardic assassin who had some growing up to do.
“There’s the man, Dylan, Dylan the man. What’s going, what’s coming?”
“Something happened to my electricity.”
“I bet it’s those fuses, always going, blowing.”
His eyes swivelled as he tilted a mendacious nod at Magnus.
“Are you going to be in your place? Say twenty minutes?”
“I can be.”
“Okay, give me twenty. I’ll come knock on your door.”
The elevator doors shut on the old man.
Levett held the couch down for fifteen minutes or so. Then there was a rap on the door. Magnus stood in the corridor tapping an iPhone. “I’m going to call you from the fuse box, see if we can’t get it back on.”
The tarp outside his window flapped like a giant plastic wing.
Levett took up his phone. There was a new voice mail from Freedom. A chipper female voice said, “Hey there! Sorry, we hate to be the bad guy, but your balance is overdue. Pay up soon to keep your service active.”
“Go fuck yourself,” he said to himself. The phone vibrated in his palm.
“Hello.”
“I’ll tell you when to check your lights. We’ll get you sorted out.”
“Alright.”
“You ready?”
“Yes.”
Snap of a breaker through the earhole.
“Try now.”
Levett tried the bathroom light.
“Nope.”
“Really? Just a second.”
Levett waited.
“They on?”
“Nothing.”
“How’s that?”
“No.”
“That doesn’t make sense. I’ve tried every fuse.”
Magnus turned up at the door again with the smartphone still to his ear.
“I can’t see what the problem would be.”
“I owe Hydro a hundred dollars…”
Magnus shook his head consolingly. “If they cut it off there’s nothing I can do about it. They control that. They know exactly what appliances you have and everything, what make, the year, all with those clever boxes.”
Blade Girl stood at the baked goods counter. Haggard man face, Levett thought, next in line. She had a guttural voice self-taught to go high. Neon-pink spandex, pencilled-on eyebrows, hair pulled up in a lavender scrunchy.
“Hot water,” she barked. “Why won’t you serve me? Why do you discriminate me? I’m Blade Girl. I’m here to stay.” She had a lisp. Hard to tell if it was real.
She rolled back, tracing two opposing crescents on the dusty laminate.
“We’ll get your water,” said the Australian barista. She was strabismic and pudgy.
“We have nothing against you,” said one of the Chinese Christian sisters who ran the cafe.
He looked at all the regulars pretending not to hear. None of them ever speak up, Levett thought. She’s been berating the staff for a month. Then he said something—he wasn’t trying to be a hero.
Blade Girl stared at him stunned, childlike. Then she disengaged. She coasted away and stood by the espresso machine, rollerblades shoulder-width apart. No one could fault her on technique. A pair of headphones clung to her thick neck. The kind with the foam coverings. She put them on, capped her travel mug with a strangler’s hand.
The door was shimmed open. She tucked low off a single, perfect stride, arcing out of there, out of sight.
In the foyer, a neon page had been tacked to the new corkboard management installed. Someone had already slashed it. You could see right through to the cardboard backing. The neon page was a memo. The entrance lock would be replaced. There’d be a key exchange.
In the foyer the following day two middle-aged men wearing matching white collared shirts stood behind two plastic fold-out tables. The taller, more garrulous man with the lumpy, outsized nose was Vaughn. The other man was laconic, short, and much portlier than Vaughn. The word “rotunda” came to Levett’s mind. He was not introduced by Vaughn and did not introduce himself.
Vaughn compared the name on the rental agreement with Levett’s ID. Vaughn’s partner collected Levett’s signature and gave him a new key.
“No definite day. Sometime next week. You’ll be notified twenty-four hours in advance. Lost keys cost two hundred dollars.”
Levett found it odd that this was billed as a key exchange but they weren’t exchanging keys. “Steep price for a key,” Levett said.
Vaughn’s colleague replied by clicking a retractable pen and pocketing it, squaring off the papers, looking outside at traffic.
“We need to make another appointment. The landlords need your suite measured,” Vaughn told Levett.
“How about tomorrow?”
“Perfect,” Vaughn said. “How’s about noon sound?”
“That works.”
“I’m gonna text that to myself as a reminder.”
Vaughn thumbed the letters and numbers into his phone, blocking the elevator. Levett took the stairs.
The next day Vaughn texted, I’m here. When Levett got back from coffee Vaughn was not “here,” which he expected to mean outside the building.
Levett heard Sadie’s piano from the stairwell. She practised a descending chromatic run. A few solitary notes were struck, hung in the stale atmosphere, decayed, and she attempted the run again.
Upstairs Vaughn milled about in the corridor.
Vaughn offered Levett a cordial greeting, hand extended.
“I thought you’d be waiting out front,” Levett said, passing Vaughn in the corridor.
“I’ve got the keys,” the consultant said. “I let myself in.”
“Come in, I guess.”
Levett set out a chair for Vaughn and sat on the couch.
Vaughn stood in the middle of the bachelor suite, looking around, quite relaxed. He sat facing Levett, who expected a small-talk intro.
“Look man, I’m not gonna waste your time, I’m gonna be straightforward with you. You’re living above a rotten beam.” Vaughn leaned in and knocked on his thigh. “It ain’t safe. The landlords got permits, they’re gonna start replacing it. Everyone above it’s gonna get a notice. You, guy upstairs, guy below,” Vaughn said, twitchy eyes counterposed with earnest palm-out hand gestures.
Levett waited to talk.
“What would you be willing to take to move on?” Vaughn said to him as he looked around the suite again. Not move out, Levett thought, move on. “End your tenancy and leave clean, no hassle on either side. Because they’re willing to negotiate with you, you three, the guy above you, the guy below.” He pointed at the ceiling and at the floor with his retractable pen. Levett saw it was a custom pen, Mac Bundy Consultation printed down it. “The other two’ve already signed agreements, they’re out.” He pointed over his shoulder with the pen. “I mean, this could be a windfall for you. I’m not bullshitting you guys. Pardon my French. But also it just ain’t safe.” He wagged his glossy head. His large hand encompassed the pen. “If I come into somebody’s home without a point to make, without a serious reason,” Vaughn said, “you know, without a leg to stand on, guy’s gonna tell me, ‘Hey MacDunn, pound sand.’”
Levett had never heard “pound sand” before, but he thought about the proposition. He owed seventy thousand dollars in student loans, had defaulted on six thousand dollars of Visa debt on one card, five hundred on a second card. Add on myriad personal cash debts.
“Four thousand,” he said, to test Vaughn’s sympathies.
“I’m gonna do what I can to get that for you.”
Vaughn’s pendulous throat shook with each syllable, with each slap of his polyester pant leg. He slid out a yellow legal pad from what looked like a giveaway canvas valise, embroidered with a serifed Mac Bundy: Solving Landlord-Tenant Problems. He scratched out some figures on the yellow paper.
Vaughn looked around a bit more. In profile his nose was a mean-spirited caricature of a nose.
Levett managed to say very little. Instead of asking Vaughn to leave, he allowed him to natter on for informational and entertainment purposes.
“Hey man, I work for the landlords and the tenants. We can help you with relocation. You’d be eligible for this place again when and if it becomes available—but I can’t tell you when that’d be, could be as long as three years, I don’t know. Most people wanna move on with their lives.” He spoke to Levett like an old confidant.
“It’d have to be no less than four thousand.”
Vaughn visibly changed tack.
“I’m gonna try and get that for you. I want this for you,” Vaughn said. His hand was slightly damp as he shook Levett’s. Once he exited, Vaughn turned back not saying anything. He walked away down the corridor, never having produced a tape measure to record the dimensions of the unit.
Blade Girl cut Levett off as he was walking into the cafe, zipped right in front of him on her skates. He tried to edge by her anyway and as he did, she knocked the laptop bag off his shoulder. He looked back. It lay there on the sidewalk. She gave him a challenging look when he picked it up.
As she passed the threshold, he pinned her in the door, one rollerblade inside the cafe, one rollerblade outside. He pinched her body there. She couldn’t move. He realized he was clenching his teeth and putting quite a bit of weight into it and let her go. A couple sitting at the window looked on in horror.
He followed her in.
“Waah! Waaaaaah! My ribs! He broke my ribs!” She hopped up and down on her wheels, flicking her loose wrists.
In the corner some tourists in neon rain jackets observed the local colour.
“My ribs are broken,” she whinged.
He sat down.
“Are you alright dear?” one of the tourists said.
“He assaulted me!”
“You’re an asshole.” Levett didn’t see who said it.
He thought he probably shouldn’t’ve done that.
She stood to the right, haughty and serene now. He glanced at that window couple going out, the word “monster” sharing their faces.
A cumulonimbus towered far up in the bright blue air. It was the shape of a toadstool. Long tall sunlit windows braced the corner suite in Airport Square, with a view to a tangle of roads, a bridge curving over the river’s north arm, aglitter with automotive traffic. The waterway was coloured steel. Passenger jets tilting skyward marked the quarter hour. Barges and couriers and long-haul power diesels were to the four identical eyes just so much digital currency in perpetual motion. Their desk made a horseshoe around the large office. Caden sat with his back to Terry on the opposing inner side of the desk, mirror image of his brother. He was a southpaw, his twin a righty. Caden manipulated a trackball with his left hand, Terry did so with his right. That morning they had, by accident, or through some kind of congenital telepathy, each put on cobalt and plum striped dress shirts. They did not care.
A five-tier relaxation fountain accented the low-noise dehumidifier. Terry flipped to the Bellevue feed. An empty grid appeared on the monitor. Views from in and around the building filled each cell, another one, another one, the building laid out like a mosaic of one-way mirrors, like an unfolded prism. In the first cell, Main Street, the labourers sit four wide on the front steps smoking cigarettes, drinking their Tim’s. In another, Magnus sorts out the recycling, the paper from the plastic, appears in another cell emptying the garbage cans into the back-alley dumpster, locking the dumpster with a padlock. A gang of secondary school students rampaging along the side of the building down Tenth underneath the fire escape in one cell, their front view in another, having so much fun doing nothing, around the corner, filling the next cell, going to Tim’s. A disembodied set of legs walks down the staircase, the elevator opens, somebody exits with a mountain bike. The labourers part in the first cell to let her by.
“Anything unusual?” Caden said.
“The workers took their second smoke break before their first coffee break, so, no.”
“They’re not expensive.”
“We’re paying them to be inconvenient.”
Neither smiled.
A sparrow crumpled into the window. Thump of hollow bone and riffling plumage and the click of its smashed beak. The broken bird tumbled down along the face of the high-rise, a drop imperfectly helical. The brothers both leaned forward to watch it fall, observing without any particular feeling. In one of the cells Levett stared up at the camera, middle fingers extended, then stepped outside the frame. A red circle blinked in the monitor’s corner.
Hakim had his arm half in a checked shirt when the knock came. He knew who it was. He stabbed his other arm in the other sleeve, slack skin drawn over old bones. “Moment.”
“It’s Vaughn.”
“Moment.”
Vaughn stood square in the threshold beaming kindly. “How are ya?” Vaughn pumped out his hand, encompassed Hakim’s. Not shaking, but squeezing.
“I just awoke,” Hakim said, finally getting his hand back.
They faced each other. A reveille ringtone broke the silence.
Vaughn held his mobile up, whispered, “You don’t mind do you?”
“Please,” Hakim insisted, propped the door open with a sneaker. He sat at a small hexagonal table in the centre of the room, a lamp turned on beside it, nipped at a cup of mint tea.
“Certainly,” Vaughn said. “Have them pick up the paperwork—that’s right, and we’ve got a cheque written—exactly—and it’s a done—” He rapidly clicked his pen. Hakim poured a second cup of tea. “They don’t need that—it’s not necessary—we’ve got it taken care of—just the keys—right—right on—well thank you—absolutely—it’s become necessary—it’s putting one foot in front of the other—right—great—okay—mmbye now—yep, bye.”
Hakim looked out into the corridor. Vaughn smiled and rolled his eyes like the whole conversation was their in-joke.
“May I come in?”
“Yes, come, there’s tea.”
Vaughn stepped into the dim unit, the air redolent with incense, cooking spices and disinfectant. “Ah, thanks, that’s very kind of you.”
He sat down and made a covert visual assessment of the rental unit. Clean, tidy, some odd paraphernalia. He glanced outside the window. The tarp blocked any view outdoors. He was aware of it by hearsay. It was worse than he thought, for the tenant, which was good. Weak light filtered in through it that you could not read by. He slid out a legal pad from his promotional valise and scrawled in the middle of a clean page. Hakim’s prayer rug with its built-in compass lay by the middle window. Man of faith, he thought, also a good thing. The compass pointed east. No need to pray to Mecca, Hakim, we’ve got you. Old green plush sofa with carved armrests along the south wall, a long silk scarf printed with three-dimensional mocárabe designs hanging above. Upon a walnut tripod at one end of the sofa threads of smoke curled through the vents of a tarnished mabkhara.
“So, my friend,” Vaughn said, cautiously, tweaking the small cup between his thumb and forefinger. He sipped the tea. “Mm, mint.”
Hakim smiled white and toothy. High cheekbones made two sickles of his eyes.
“Have you given any thought to the landlords’ offer? I mean, thirty-five hundred’s really—”
“I’ll take it.”
Vaughn stabilized the legal pad on his lap. At the head of the page he wrote, $3500 ✓. He still felt the need to explain. “See, Hakim, we’re getting you the maximum amount as a courtesy. There’s no need for the landlords to compensate you on this, I mean, on a condemned suite.” Vaughn looked outside at the lean-to structure blocking the windows. He pointed down at the floor. “And not to mention this rotten beam directly below where you and I are sitting.”
“I understand. But still, I wasn’t allowed back to my old suite after the Christmas flood. I was put here. I have no choice but to take the money.”
“And that’s neither here nor there.”
Hakim wasn’t smiling anymore.
“What we’re talking about now is you making a choice, which you’ve made. You’ve made the right choice.”
“You didn’t give me a choice. It’s leave without money, or leave with money.” His shoulder twitched. His face turned into a smile again.
“That’s exactly it. You can’t fight this.”
“I could, but it’s too risky.”
Vaughn uncrossed his legs and leaned in, knocking out a botched pentameter on the legal pad with the edge of his hand, in time with his words. “Let me be honest. This beam underneath you is like a soggy paper-towel roll. It ain’t safe. You would never win. And I’d hate to see you walk away empty-handed. I’m bein’ straight with you. I ain’t lyin’ to you. I wanna help you. Lotta people don’t get what you’re gettin’. They don’t get squat. They get a notice of eviction.”
Vaughn produced a single sheet of paper. “This here’s an agreement to end your tenancy. Why don’t you read it over, we’ll get on the same page about a date for you to move out, I’m thinking the end of July, and I can get you a cheque for two and a half grand as early as Friday. You’ll get the remainder when you turn in your keys. And don’t forget, your last month here is free.”
Hakim read the typed page. It specified in one sentence that he agreed to end his tenancy at Bellevue Heights, 210-2551 Main Street, and vacate the residence on the forthcoming date agreed upon with the landlords. The name of the occupant and the date were gap-fills. There was an X________ below the sentence. He signed with his own pen.
Vaughn dragged it back, pivoted the page around and dated it, slid a foxed manila folder from his promotional valise, opened the folder from the top with a clawing motion, set the agreement on some other loose leaves and tucked away the folder along with the legal pad. He stood, taking another prolonged, and this time unveiled, look at the tarpaulin. A black distention where rainwater had pooled in the tarp bulged like a tumour, small frantic shadows orbiting there. Pigeons bathing in it.
“I’m not gonna linger here, Hakim. You did the right thing. For you.” He leaned over and smothered Hakim’s hand with both of his.
“What else could I do?”
“That’s exactly it. What intelligent person wouldn’t do what you did.”
“Thank you.”
“Thank you. I’m gonna let myself out, gotta be in the Tri-Cities by one this afternoon, not sure how I’ll do it. Expect news of that cheque Friday at the latest,” Vaughn said, standing in the threshold.
Hakim nodded as Vaughn softly closed the door. It was that easy. He poured himself another cup of tea and suspired, steam coiling off the brimming cup. He knew it was the right decision. For him.
At nine in the morning four sharp knocks sounded on Levett’s door. He plucked the earplugs out and lay there, fell back asleep. An hour later there were two more firm double knocks. He shot up again.
“Who is it.”
“It’s Vaughn MacDunn.”
“I can’t see you right now.”
“Okay Dylan,” the dismayed voice said. Steps receded in the corridor.
When he got up and checked his phone there was a text from Vaughn. The landlords had made an offer. They agreed to meet the following day at Kafka’s, of all places.
“What are you having?” Vaughn said, buddy-buddy. Levett looked for an expensive drink on the menu board.
They’re tiny and costly, he thought, and said, “A macchiato.”
Vaughn fisted his trouser pockets at the cash register. Levett sat at a deuce along the wall. Vaughn’s back was to traffic. He sipped a black coffee, puckering his mouth at the hot brew, never really drinking it, a pleading look in his too-blue eyes, the colour of antifreeze. Skull like a polished knob.
“They’ve made an offer,” Vaughn said, an officious snap to his voice. “Nearly what you asked for.”
“Alright.”
Vaughn slid out the legal pad, a few jagged lines of arithmetic scrawled in the middle of a page. “Now, remember, everyone has their price.”
Levett downed the macchiato and stared at the consultant.
“They’re putting twenty-five hundred on the table, plus your last month’s rent free, so pretty darn good I’d say.”
“I said four thousand.”
“It’s pretty close.”
“Not close enough to end my eight-year tenancy.”
“You’re on a month-to-month lease.”
The riposte caught him off guard. It took him a second to regain composure. “That’s to my advantage. It’s not a fixed-term lease.”
“Look, I ain’t bullshitting you guys. They gotta tear up all those suites. You’re living over a rotten beam. This is better for you. I sure would appreciate a two and a half thousand–dollar windfall.”
“I can’t accept the offer.”
“I can get a cheque made out to you as early as tomorrow. Not the full amount, mind you. You’d get the rest when you sign the agreement and hand over your keys.”
“I’m going to arbitrate.”
Vaughn leaned back and studied the cocky youth, prematurely grey it seemed. “You might not win. And then where will you be? No apartment, no compensation.”
“I’ll take my chances.”
“I look forward to seeing your evidence package,” Vaughn said. He took an actual sip of coffee, winced. “People don’t always succeed.”
“We’ll see.”
Levett went to Our Town after that and, by happenstance, bumped into Lane Roth, an acquaintance and recent law school graduate. Lane had made it known to Levett that he was interested in tenant advocacy. Lane and Levett had already talked about the landlords trying to bribe him out of his place. Lane thought he had a high chance of success if he arbitrated through the Residential Tenancy Branch.
Levett saw him along the banquette. Lane looked up from his laptop screen, two white rectangles in his glasses. He was pale with a pencil-pusher physique. His hair was a light ginger colour, as was his short beard.
“I was at City Hall again,” he told Levett. “Last time I was there the clerk didn’t give me everything on file. Today I accessed another one of the Lams’ permits. The work permit was issued late last year. It might include your unit.”
“It might.”
“The wording’s a little vague.” Lane paused for a second. “Did they make you an offer?”
“I just refused it.”
“You should consider accepting it. The permit I just looked at weakens your position to arbitrate.”
Levett’s face fell. He turned and left without saying bye, redialling Vaughn as he walked down Broadway, pressing the phone hard to his ear against the traffic noise. There was a long scream coming through him as the phone rang. It stopped ringing. He waited, finally asked, “Hello?”
“Hello,” Vaughn said.
“I got some more information about the construction permits. I’ll accept the offer.”
Silence on the line.
“If it’s still on the table.”
“That’s fine Dylan, the offer’s still on the table. See. I’m not fibbing. They got the permits. They need you guys outta there pronto. It’s not safe.”
“Can you meet on Monday and bring the cheque?”
“Let me talk to the landlords. We’ll see if we can’t sort it out.”
“Thanks,” he said, icy droplets of sweat falling from his armpits, trickling down his sides into the waist of his pants.
“Thank you Dylan.”
A few days later he received a notice by registered mail. It was issued by the landlords through a third-party agent, Vaughn MacDunn, printed in full-colour ink-jet. On the back a box was checked and next to it, a phrase hard to get lost on: The landlord wishes to demolish the unit.
It’s not something they really have to wish for, he thought. You’d think they could choose a gentler euphemism.
Umbrellas out against a chill, slanting rain. Knots of people under store awnings waiting for the bus. Panhandlers squatting in their own detritus, creased palms held out to the passing crowds. An unbathed trio loitering on the wet pavement outside Guys and Dolls, cigarettes smouldering between their yellow fingers, waiting for the poolroom to open.
Mariana stood behind the cash register. “So you heard, right? The coffee shop is closing.”
“For real?”
“Max only told us a couple days ago. Apparently the landlords don’t want a coffee shop in their building anymore. Today’s the last day.”
“Today is the day.”
“Yeah man,” she said.
They looked at each other in mutual sympathy, she without a job, Levett without a haunt.
“But there’s free coffee,” Mariana chimed. “Sixteen-ounce.”
He nodded.
“You can have a sandwich too.”
“It’s some consolation.”
She torqued the porta-filter into the espresso machine, glanced over her shoulder. “I know, right.”
On one of the benches he saw his neighbour Osman, muffin and coffee to go laid out before him, snapping photographs of the space on a borrowed iPhone.
A morose feeling permeated the rhomboid space. Levett had chipped away at an undergraduate degree in this coffee shop.
Lane walked in, black waterproof beaded with raindrops. He came to the table and took a place in the line of customers snaking around Levett. Lane smiled reluctantly, said, “Did you hear the rumour?”
“About here?”
“I wanted to verify.”
“It’s true.”
“There goes the neighbourhood. I don’t even think I can sit down and work.”
With mute rancour Lane stared through the windows at the tower development. “Have you decided to take your landlords’ offer?”
“Yes.”
“You haven’t signed an agreement, have you?”
“Not yet. I’m supposed to meet Vaughn this coming Monday.”
“I’m about to send the letter I’ve drafted for you to the rest of the Bellevue tenants, so everyone can attach statements. I set up a cloud folder to compile individual accounts of tenant history in the building.”
“I thought you said I should take the offer.”
“Sorry. Afterwards I got to thinking about it. You have a pretty good case because there are empty suites in the building and the landlords haven’t offered to relocate you. If you haven’t signed anything, I would consider fighting it.”
Levett shut his book. “I’ll consider.”
A doomy look settled on Lane’s face as he glanced around and looked again through the south windows at the tower, up at the shadowy recesses marking each floor. “I think I’m gonna get out of here.” Lane turned away and went back out in the rain.
Levett craned his neck. Air ducts ran at oblique angles along the ceiling. They were painted grey and their tops wore a thick fur of black dust. On occasion a piece of fluff would float down and plop into a cup of coffee.
He unzipped his computer case, brought out his laptop, checked his email. Lane’s call for tenant statements sat unopened in his inbox. He clicked on it. The recipients’ names and email addresses ran down the screen like a phalanx. He sat there watching the pissing rain. The foreign cars stopped and started, turning and going straight, a synthetic circulatory system, a poisonous pulmonary system, he thought, streaming music on his computer. He listened to Burning Witch’s Crippled Lucifer, watching the brutal rain-slashed scene through this lens. The mug sat there on the table, tepid and half empty. He packed up his stuff and left the coffee.
People had their hoods on, heads down and collars up. He lowered his face. Rain drummed on the brim of his hat. Beneath the arched vestibule, three dust-covered workmen sat smoking on the marble steps. Double-doubles steamed in their callused hands. A young, stocky helper rocked on one butt cheek as if to fart when Levett stepped by. They eyed each other adversarially. Levett pulled keys from his pocket, a set of two, one larger, one smaller, and slid the large one into the front door. The new lock was tight and finicky. The old lock had been smooth and easy.
When the sirens were very distant, barely audible, they sounded like a pinch. A door slammed somewhere. Two dogs howled in unison, meant to. He cleared a sizeable chunk of phlegm from his throat.
There was a message on his phone. “Hey there! Your payment is way overdue. We hate to be the bad guy, but we might have to disconnect your service—pay now online.” He tossed the phone back onto the ottoman, cursing the entire communications-revolution joke.
It was two. He had to work at five. He swung his feet off the couch and planted them on the dusty floorboards, looked past his knees at the worn lacquer, the century-old hardwood.
While urinating in the dark he glanced in the mirror at his pouched eyes and frazzled curly hair. The toilet bowl was months overdue for a cleaning. The smell made him flinch.
He shouldered his backpack and locked the door behind him. Halfway down the corridor he turned round, walked back and checked he had locked up, turned the doorknob and pushed in on the door, turned round and descended the back staircase. He heard Sadie’s piano filter through the corridor as someone passed from one hemisphere of the building to the other. She practised a phrase of stacked octaves with tritones.
A black Dakota cut him off crossing the street kitty-corner to the Federal Store. It had an unpainted canopy and a rooftop cargo rack with planks and plywood bungeed to it. The driver was Tom Ford.
Probably rendezvousing with the camera guy, he thought. The one with the scar. He had come back a few times and each time installed a few more cameras. Levett crossed Broadway, continued along the steady declination of Quebec Street.
The downtown skyline was like a mechanical implant on the land. Chrome-skinned buildings glinted in the cold light, and behind, scarves of mist wrapped around blue mountains. He faced it all with a frown.
An incident occurred just beyond Mario’s Gelati, between First Avenue and Switchmen Street. Levett encountered a car, or rather confronted a car. It pulled out from the lane between a double row of condominiums. The car rolled calmly forward, blocked the sidewalk, while the driver texted.
Levett stooped over as the man’s lapdog, a Pomeranian, scratched its ear and licked its genitalia. “Excuse me?”
“Seriously?” the driver scoffed in disbelief. “Walk around.”
All the love inside drained away. All the hate rose up. “Look, motherfucker, you’re on your phone, you’re in the way, and you don’t give a shit. Why don’t you step out of your box for two seconds, come outside your pill of a life and consider the world around you? Your lapdog with its peanut brain and blind devotion shows more humanity than you do with your ass behind the wheel of this stock ride.”
The man’s jaw lowered incrementally. No opening in the rush hour traffic, no exit from the situation, no cover from the verbal bombardment. The Pomeranian planted its paws on the dash, panting as its head darted about. The sport coupe jerked ahead in fits and starts, power windows rising too slowly.
“Your windows are already shot. Is the gutless heap still on warranty?”
“Yer a fuckin’ psycho,” said the driver in a hollow, resigned half voice, inching forward, trying to merge with traffic, Levett sidestepping into the cyclist lane along with the car in an offensive stooped position.
“The only thing psychotic about this situation is the way you drive,” Levett said, and in a dry, even iambic, “Get fucked. Drive your thirty-six-thousand-dollar piece of shit into the chrome grill of a Western Star.” The dog huffed, pink tongue throbbing. The driver finally pulled out of the laneway, reaching over to pet the dog.
After passing Keefer, Levett walked through a weft of loitering junkies and pimps. Disoriented commuters stumbled off a rain-streaked bus crouching against the curb, blasting out compressed air and beeping frantically.
“Up, down, rock, rock,” someone intoned.
He caught the urine stench of the alley running parallel to Hastings Street, unzipped the windbreaker and ninja-masked his t-shirt collar. An ambulance waited in the alley, an island in a river of aimless purgatorial figures. Through the bars of a doorway he heard Chinese elders singing karaoke. He looked up at the building as two pigeons emerged from a rotten corbel.
East Hastings. A soggy bazaar of the halt and afflicted. Gaunt putty-coloured people slipping and clapping around in flip-flops. Inundated plush purses, plastic stiletto shoes, scabby bruised thighs, hollow faces from the living crypt. A man in a wheelchair sat at the foot of a curb while a thin man in a black straw fedora and flared women’s jeans worked at pushing his chair up a curb cut. Sidewalk dense with black marketeers and the vice-laden who supported this commerce. Someone huddled behind two open umbrellas arranged as a lean-to. The orange tip of a hypodermic rose above the edge and a dirty hand popped off the neon safety guard, plunged the needle back down below the lip of the shelter. “Can I owe you six bucks?” someone said, a strange inverted offer. Levett passed a dispensary. A man was asking anybody going in the SRO next door to “get Ryan to come down.” He walked by the women’s shelter. Beleaguered female drug users, single mothers, lesbian and transgendered couples all stood with each other, joking, offering moral support and information.
Gastown. A colonial statue glistened black under mild rainfall. The patios were closed all along Water Street. BMWs and Smart cars zipped over the wet cobblestones. Short half blocks opened up onto the marshalling yard. A trundling wall of orange, blue and green shipping containers scrolled along. He edged through sauntering tourists, some walking four abreast, thickening as the days rolled over into summer. A frail couple examined the picturesque and sublime images displayed on a spinning postcard rack. Asian gawkers aimed their smartphones at the steam clock. The clock struck one. Steam shot out the top as it chimed the Westminster Quarters.
It was the first time the Oilers made the playoffs in ten years. The Wild Rose was an avowed Oilers bar. Levett was an avowed Oilers fan. He had to work all the games. Hockey highlights looped on flat screens in the bar’s top corners. A miniature set of aluminum bleachers had been rolled out on casters to the centre of the Rose in front of the projector screen. A few disembarked cruise-line tourists stayed on in the Wild Rose. He noticed the servers carrying around debit machines as a hint. Bella was serving. He checked out her gear: backwards cap, tight white low-cut shirt, distressed denim, fresh Vans.
“How’s it going?” she asked, tapping out an order on the touchscreen.
He tried not to look at her below the horizon.
“Not bad.”
“Not bad? Come on now, why?”
“I don’t know. I tell you what, though—it’s a lot better now that I’ve seen you.” They both knew it was lame, but she was always down for a quick turn of cheap wit and he tried to deliver as he pushed through the swing door into the kitchen’s glare.
“Adding on: goon burger, fries; chicken burger, onion rings; quinoa salad,” Jacob said. Vikram chopped carrot and celery sticks on the other side of the line.
“Okay, moon burger, chicken burger, quinoa salad,” Vik said. “You gonna drop those fries and rings?”
“Yea-y-yeah, I got it,” Jacob stuttered, greeting Levett with a nod, knuckling up his glasses as Levett crossed the line. Battered cod gurgled in the deep fryer. The knock knock of chopping knives punctuated the hearty guffaws and profane exclamations bleeding through the wall.
He cut his eyes at the dish pit. It was a greasy sty. Everything dirty and out of order. The sinks were plugged. Heaping bus bins lay on and underneath the counter. A painterly gesture of hot sauce spanned the wall tiles. He tried to spray it off with the nozzle but the water was cold and the sauce was dried on. He scooped dross from the drain catchers and flung it into the garbage can, let the catchers fill again as he rearranged the dishwasher racks and trays, three pronged, three flat, scooped more slime from the drains, washed his hands, dried them with paper towel and shelved the clean dishes, most of which were not even properly clean. He set them back on a mountain of filth: smattered inserts, caked wooden spoons, encrusted whisks, smeared share plates, hot sauce–stained oval plates, oil-pooled pans, spent sauce tubes, blackened skillets and burnt pots, paprika-dusted measuring spoons and floury measuring cups, furtive knives, stained cutting boards and baked-on-cheese lasagna boats, benign lettuce sieves, soiled mixing bowls, the treacherous mandolins and the tricky ramekins.
“How’s it going Vik?” Levett said.
He walked up close to Levett, scoffed, “This place is a joke.” Vikram was short and brown, of dubious origins. Levett once asked the cook where he was from. “Belgium; then I came to Toronto; after T.O. I went to Calgary; then I came here, Surrey; I was in Coquitlam; Burnaby now. You?”
“Northern Alberta.”
“Alberta sucks. Didn’t like it. Too many gangsters.”
“Northside Edmonton.”
“Calgary,” Vik repeated, chin upturned, eyeing Levett through thick pinkish lenses. To Levett it always seemed like Vik was making an assessment. You were always being judged when you spoke to him.
Jacob stood at the threshold of the dish pit next to the organics bin holding a plastic insert, “This albacore smells a tad funky.” He walked back to one of the coolers, lifted out another insert of boneless chicken breasts, pulled the saran off and sniffed it, shaking his head down the line. Levett heard them smacking the bottom of the organics bin.
“Can you save me any meat you can’t serve?” Levett grabbed a sixteen-litre bucket from the storeroom.
“Sh-sure, I-I-I guess. What for?”
“My friend studies ravens,” he lied. “They eat carrion.”
“I see.”
Jacob regarded the dishwasher with a small elliptical grin.
“Ravens consume several times their body weight every day. He struggles to procure enough meat.” He dropped the slab of tuna in the bucket, fished out the chicken breasts, rinsed them off and set them beside the tuna, drew up a label with a Sharpie and a water-soluble decal saying DYLAN’S MEAT.
“That’s quite an odd field of study,” Jacob said as Levett capped the bucket. They cocked their heads slightly to one side, imagining it. They were imagining different things.
“Ravens are fascinating,” Levett said as he went to the basement with the bucket, where he hid it in the far corner of the deep-freeze partly behind a rack. Upstairs he told Jacob, “The bucket’s in the freezer corner to the left. If you remember, throw in any salmon, tuna, beef steaks, burger patties, chicken breasts or schnitzel you can’t use. Avoid mentioning it to Henry if you can.”
Warily, Jake obliged the request. “I can’t promise Henry won’t throw it out.”
Levett shrugged and levered up the Hobart. A plume of steam scorched his face. He thought about how he basically assaulted Blade Girl. It was shameful, I shouldn’t have done it, especially since she has cobwebs in the attic, he thought. I’m part monster, but everyone casts their shadow, he thought, and flashed a roguish smile at the thought itself. He let a stack of baking trays soak while he shelved clean dishes, still hot to the touch. Large plates on large plates, ovals on ovals, ramekins stacked within other ramekins, tiny columns at eye level.
Caught up, he fixed a coffee and stepped into the alley, its edges scabbed with litter. The sky had cleared, daylight waning. The marshalling yard spread out beyond a tall chain-link fence topped with a musical staff of barbed wire. The rusty rails crossed each other in neat curves or ran straight in tandem vectors, reminding him of bulging veins in a forearm. Neon graffiti emblazoned the CN freight wagons and well cars. Balloon letters and scrambled wild styles. A hooker trotted down the alley in precipitous heels. Beyond the trains, Coral Princess towered beside the cruise ship terminal. In the powdery blue, a flock of seagulls shrieked and scattered like a shredded plastic bag.
