Face/Mask (5 page)

“Richard needs a little help with his homework,” Terry stated as she rose from the sofa and kissed her husband’s proffered cheek.

“Mommm,” Richard whined.

“You know you do. And you also know I was never any good in science, so let your dad help.”

“I can do it myself. I just don’t care about ancient history,” Richard complained
.
    

Janus took a deep breath and sat down in Terry’s vacated spot on the sofa. He looked into his oldest son’s pale blue eyes, and it occurred to him that they were the same colour as Terry’s uncle.

“Richie,” he said, keeping his voice even. “Just because you can’t see something anymore doesn’t mean it isn’t important. Or that it belongs in the past.”

A thin, giggling voice piped up from the armchair in the corner. “Tell him about when you used to gaze at the moon and the stars on Grandpa Eddie’s old farm.”

Janus turned and saw Rollie, whom he hadn’t noticed, curled up in the chair with a cup of hot sim-choc. His son’s words brought back memories of happier times spent on his own parents’ farm, and of his older brother, Frank, with whom he’d shared a bedroom. They’d spent their summer days running through the fields, unaware that such a simple joy would be almost unknown to future generations. Frank had died from emphysema shortly after graduating from college, at a time when the mass-production of air-masks had not yet begun. A picture jumped into Janus’s mind: Frank in a hospital bed, under an oxygen tent, his young eyes showing fear and confusion over his inevitable fate.

He shook the ugly vision out of his head before speaking to the boys.

“You can joke if you want to. But nowadays it’s like we’re all living inside a giant room, surrounded by windowless walls that block our views on all sides. If those walls are knocked down one day we could all see how amazing the universe is.”

Janus got up and walked toward the kitchen as he warmed up to the topic. “I’ll never understand,” he called out to Terry, “why this generation takes so little interest in what’s out there, beyond all the cloud cover. When I was a kid my dad showed me pictures from the Hubble telescope-”

“This generation is interested in a lot more than you think, Dad,” Richard interrupted from the sofa. “Like why the administration’s industrial policies keep destroying fertile land.”

“Richard,” his mother snapped. “I don’t know where you get those kinds of ideas.”

“That kind of talk,” Richard replied in his best news-announcer voice, “let’s the terrorists know they’re winning.”

He and Rollie fell into paroxysms of laughter, while Terry raised her hands in frustration at his sarcasm and turned back to the kitchen. Janus stood there quietly, looking at his eldest son who had grown into a strange man, seemingly overnight, and wondered if he really knew anybody in his family.

Eventually he allowed himself a hesitant smile and nodded as if in answer to an unspoken suggestion.

“You’re right. I’m starved,” he said to nobody in particular, then turned to go up to the bedroom. “If you need help I can always look at it with you after supper.”

“Sure,” Richard managed to stop laughing long enough to reply. “Thanks, Dad.”

Janus trotted up the stairs, closed his bedroom door and began to undress in front of the mirror. He glanced at the reflection of his pasty white skin, skin that would never again be in danger of getting sunburn, then headed for the bathroom. A hot shower to wash off the grime from the street was what he needed.

He closed the bathroom door and pressed the timer over the bath tub, then stepped under the shower for his allotted five minutes of hot water. An administration position and good salary allowed Janus many privileges, but nobody these days was allowed more than a five-minute shower.

With practised efficiency his hands shampooed his thinning hair and washed his thickening body while his mind wandered to his parents’ small farm in southern Ontario. “Grandpa Eddie’s old farm,” as Rollie had called it. Janus had often lain in the middle of the field with his older brother Frank, looking up at the enormous canopy of stars that was draped over their world.

Frank would tell him the names of various constellations, pointing out Mars, Venus or the North Star. Janus could never remember which was which, but Frank never tired of naming them. Janus remembered those times as if they were a dream or a story he’d read, and not a real part of his life. He only had to look out the window at the swirling filth that was the air they breathed to question whether anything he remembered of his youth had actually happened.

The shower water slowed to a trickle and died just as the last suds slid down to his feet. He began drying himself, listening to the voices coming through the bathroom door. His children clearly had no patience for his reminiscences. He supposed he would have felt worse if his children were the only ones. Most adults he knew also didn’t want to talk about the way their lives used to be.

He returned to his bedroom and dressed quickly before heading to the kitchen where Terry was preparing dinner. The dining room table was already set for five. Rollie, the most spoiled, as the youngest children often were, sat on a plastic table and chair in front of the Vid-bot in the living room. Terry kissed her husband on the cheek and he could see a slight nervousness in her expression.

“Uncle Joe fixed the fans.”

“I noticed,” Janus answered with as little emotion as possible. He kissed her back lightly and managed to smile at her, letting her know that he wasn’t going to make this the subject of another fight.

He peeked around the corner into the dining-room and saw that Joe was now seated at the table, along with Richard and Francis. Both boys were looking at their great-uncle with rapt expressions.

“You know I can count all night,” Joe was saying, “and still not count all the stars I see.”

Before Janus could react to the scene Terry stepped into his line of sight.

“Joe’s telling the boys about life in his village,” she explained, looking more than a little bit embarrassed.

When Joe saw Janus in the doorway he jumped to his feet and rushed around the table to greet him. Grasping Janus’s right hand in both of his Joe squeezed it affectionately. “Allen, how was your work today?”

Janus was always taken aback by Joe's effusive greetings, and knew he was being petty for harbouring any ill-feelings over the fans. After-all, if Joe hadn’t fixed them Janus would have had to do it soon before Terry nagged him to death. Still it was one thing to tell himself he should be grateful, but feeling gratitude was something else.

“Hi, Joe. My day was fine. Please don’t let me interrupt whatever you’re doing.”

“
Gratzi
, Allen,” Joe said, turning his attention back to the boys. “You know when the moon is full, it is so big I think I can hold up my hand and grab it.”

“Yes, Joe,” Janus said, feeling some satisfaction at Terry’s obvious discomfort. His eyes flitted from Joe to Richard who wouldn’t return his gaze. “You told us before.”

“Sure, I tell you before,” Joe exclaimed, with no compunction against telling his stories again. “It is sad. So much the boys don’t ever see with their eyes. Maybe Richard becomes a scientist one day. Fixes the air, yes?”

Janus sat down and poured a glass of soy juice. He told himself that it had been years since anybody had tried to “fix” the air. What little energy or money world governments had nowadays was expended on the never-ending war against terror.

Janus listened as Joe continued to regale the boys with stories of childhood in his native Italian village in the early 1970’s. Joe’s youth had been bucolic and unaffected by any momentous world events. Yet, somehow, Janus’s children didn’t complain that his stories were boring or ancient history. He looked again at Terry, who was spooning some rice onto their sons’ plates, and tried to understand why that was.

Chapter three

Canadian Illegal Alien Enforcement Act 79-12-1466 (Definitions):
“Illegal alien” means any person found in Canadian territory who is not a citizen; Notwithstanding the preceding, eligible persons may apply for permission to reside within Canadian territory on a probationary period in view of seeking provisional citizenship; this probationary period shall not be shorter than seven years...; The previously mentioned probationary period may be terminated upon evidence of the commission of any summary or indictable offence, committed under this act or any federal or provincial criminal or penal statute...

September 12, 2038:

It was a year after he’d paid off his gambling debts that Janus met Sahar. After that late night discussion with Joe he never went back to the dogfights, thankful that his gambling had only cost him his self-respect, something he’d never valued highly anyway. And Joe’s money, of course.

But eventually Janus began feeling that familiar restiveness once more, the dissatisfaction that came with living a hopeless life in a world where clean air and open spaces were a fading memory. Sharing his home, and a terrible secret, with the overly-helpful Joe merely added to his irritability.

Sahar engendered passions he’d forgotten about since the early days of dating Terry. In hindsight it was hard to understand how he’d survived a year with nothing but his job and immediate family to look forward to each day. But, eventually, the same gnawing frustration that had led him to the dog-fights became impossible to ignore. He began looking once again for something, anything, to give him a reason to face the world each day.

It was a Sunday afternoon and Terry and Uncle Joe had taken the kids to the movies. The local cinema was holding a retro-festival of 2D films and Joe had convinced the boys that they could find pleasure even on a flat screen.

For a few precious hours Janus no longer had to pretend to be
the responsible father or the respected Department Head.

Terry had barely backed their car out of the driveway when Janus rushed to his small basement office and turned his P-screen on. As a young man he’d never imagined that he’d still be porn-surfing after getting married. But then, as a young man he’d never imagined there would be anything to stop him from making love to his wife twice a night, even twenty years into their marriage.

Janus toggled his favourite site. The P-screens at work were dinosaurs compared to his high-speed home theatre. In no time at all three young women were exploring the orifices of each other’s pneumatic bodies, floating life-size, mere inches above the carpet; a carpet Terry had so conscientiously chosen to match his office furniture. He glided his chair around the roiling scene, making sure to capture his favourite angles. The growing ache in his groin was a pleasantly familiar sensation.

He was soon distracted from his enjoyment of the orgy by a flashing pop-up that cast a shadow over the scene.

Damn firewalls are for shit
, he complained under his breath.

As he leaned over to flick away the ad for a prostitute he was struck by the woman’s Laval address.

“Laval?” he asked out loud, causing one of the nude women to look his way, before turning her attention back to her sex-mates. Laval, at least the eastern half of the island, was where all the Muslims were forced to live and was an unlikely locale for a prostitute to be plying her trade. There was little chance that any members of the legalized Comfort Workers’ Association would be working there.

He expanded the ad to find there was no mistake: the woman was inviting him for “hot, exotic sex” in the Pont-Viau district of Laval, right in the middle of what he referred to as the Forbidden Zone. Her name was Sahar. He had no idea if it meant anything, although he liked how it sounded when he whispered it to himself. He couldn’t deny that the image of the scantily-clad young woman dancing in front of him looked “hot and exotic.”

Although Terry would have found his porn viewing disgusting, Janus had always limited his sexual adventures to the virtual world. He’d never seriously considered visiting an official comfort parlour, what with the strict regulations and his status in the administration. Besides, the three naked women who were moaning in simulated ecstasy just inches away from his eyes had always been enough to satisfy his needs.

He didn’t know why the idea of meeting this strange Arab beauty so captured his imagination. She was inviting him to a part of town he hadn’t visited since before the Enhanced Homeland Security Act had come into force in the twenties. It was a part of town that had been turned into a giant prison for its inhabitants, despite the official euphemisms such as Protectorate and Trusteeship that were used. It wasn’t a place where outsiders could walk around safely. To Janus it was just the thing for a man who wanted to indulge his fantasies without administration assurance of a sanitary environment, or Consumer Protection Bureau approval.