Seven Good Reasons Not to Be Good (29 page)

Why not? Matt started tapping out an answer but found he wasn’t buying it. There were, actually, a couple of things he was inclined to tell her.
She-She,
for a start, wouldn’t that be better? Why just one
She
when the tale was about two-ness, about togetherness? Or
He-She,
let some tension back in? Give the Matt figure a little more heft, even if he stays stupid? Or what about letting him clue in a bit, connect with things again, learn to let them go?

Before he could get down these half-assed thoughts, though, another message from kuul@materialized.

Matt formulated a few responses, trashed them all. He packed up his stuff, pilfered some Starlight paraphernalia and pronounced himself ready to roll.

The phone rang—Zane from the lobby.

“Yep,” said Matt. “Be down in two.”

“This is the front desk calling. Am I speaking to Matt?”

“Um, yeah.”

“Room 1209?”

“No, 807. Hang on, why—”

“Okay, here’s the thing, you little fairy fuck.”

Matt extended the receiver to arm’s length, gave it a grimace. He cautiously returned it to his ear. “Hello?”

“There are two ways we could do this. You could fuck right off and leave my woman alone.”

Ah, River. Physicist humour, a nerdy prank. “River, buddy, you gave me a start there.”

“Or I could come up and beat the freaking shit out of you. Your call.”

Come up? “Okay, River, first of all.” First of all what?

“I can’t live without her,
buddy.
Can you?”

A jolt of something crackled up the back of Matt’s legs, set his torso flickering like a faulty bulb. “River, hey. For one thing, Kate’s pretty much her own woman, wouldn’t you say? River?” But River was gone. Matt stood hearkening to the dead line for a moment, then hung up.

The phone rang again. He let it ring three times, four, and then snatched it up. Adrenalin. When’s the last time he’d taken this much of it all at one hit? “Look,” he said, “let’s get this straight.”

“You all set?”

Zane. “Zane?”

“You were expecting who?”

Matt switched hands, then switched back. Tough call, they were both shaking like a jonesing junkie’s. “Jesus. Can you do me a favour, can you look around the lobby, do you see a young guy? Look over by the elevators. About my height but big. Black hair, spiky, with—”

“I don’t know about black. Dark brown maybe.”

“Fine. Is he there?”

“He’s getting into the elevator. You know this guy?”

“Christ.”

“How can you possibly know this guy?”

“I’m bonking … He’s Kate’s boyfriend.”

“Kate has a boyfriend?”

“Ex, but he wants her back. I think I better …”

“What?”

“Can you go get your car?”

“Why?”

“Can you just?”

“Okay. Bye now.”

Theme song from
Mission: Impossible,
that breathy counterpoint of brass and flute. Matt jammed his feet into his sneakers, snatched his wallet and whatnot off the bureau, tucked Erin under his arm and skedaddled out the door.

He almost made it. He almost made it to the stairwell before River stormed out of the elevator. As it was he earned himself a one-flight head start. They set up quite the racket, he and River, pounding down in complex syncopations. Eight flights, Christ.

Matt must have gained a little time on the descent—he was most of the way across the lobby before he heard the emergency door straight-armed open behind him. He lost much of that advantage in the revolving door, though, which he shared with a pleasant mauve-haired lady in a shimmering sari. Outside, no sign of the car. Matt charged down the driveway, turned around and charged back.

River was just emerging. He looked thoroughly befuddled as he took Matt’s shoulder to the chest, heart height. He went down hard. Matt stood over him a moment, bouncing on the balls of his feet. Then he turned and trotted down the driveway. Zane rolled up in his funky wheels, scooched over to the passenger side. He was pointing at Matt out the window. No, he was pointing a
gun
at Matt out the window.

“Mind driving?” he called as Matt jogged towards him.

“Don’t shoot!” Finally. How many years has he been waiting to deliver that line?

So here they are, a couple of giddy guys going down the road.
Goin’ Down the Road
only in reverse, heading out of Toronto instead of into it. Departure, arrival, the great engines of story. Death, birth.

Every time Matt quits laughing, Zane starts up again. Every time Zane quits laughing, Matt starts up again. Until finally, “By the way,” says Matt, “a gun?” Zane’s tucked it away now, reached over and slid it back under the driver’s seat. Matt got only a glance but the thing looked serious, the sort of unit you could pull out on
Law and Order
and not get razzed.

“Gift from Mercedes. She wanted me to have it after that thing.”

“What thing?”

“You know, that thing. Didn’t I tell you?”

Zane, as it turns out, has not so long ago had the freaking shit beaten out of him. Two guys, fists and then feet. “I took off but one of them tripped me up with, get this, a Swiffer. One of those broom things? He must have grabbed it out of a Dumpster. The whole time they were waling on me I had the ad running through my head.
Stop cleaning, start Swiffering!
Dying thought.”

“Were you … I mean was stuff broken?”

“A couple of cracked ribs. They left my face alone, they were worried about blood I guess. It was after this big AIDS fundraiser, it might as well have been right there on the poster.
Wanna Beat Up on a Fruitcake? Tonight’s Your Night!”

“You invited me to that.”

“Could be. You should have come. I did an animated video, this Norman McLarenesque deal of a virus breakdancing. Plus we could have got punched out together.”

They cruise quietly for a while, watch the city start to slip away, the country recover. A gun, what’s gotten into the guy?

“But maybe we shouldn’t run,” says Matt.

“What?”

“River. Maybe I shouldn’t have run.” That moment standing over the man, what was Matt ready to do? Little reason to be angry (you had to feel for the guy) and yet this rage rose up in him. “I don’t know. I have a feeling I’d be good at violence if I ever got started.”

“Sure,” says Zane. “All that waspero indignation stored up in there. But if you’re looking for a hobby … paragliding, maybe?”

“Pottery.”

“Stamps.”

“Birds.”

Yeah, birds. Matt’s definitely going to get his checklist under way. Swallows are they, those swoopy ones? Look how they bunch up on a power line—beads on an abacus, halfway through some tricky calculation. Whereas the hawks go it alone, rugged individualists. Each one perches on top of its own power pole, tips its head as you whistle past.

Matt digs out his cellphone (pleased with himself for thinking to grab it in the scramble) and gets Zane to ring the front desk. Would they mind storing his gear for the day?

“Uh-huh,” says Zane into the phone. “Uh-huh … Well that’s odd, there should be plenty of credit left on that card.” He throws a what-a-loser look over Matt’s way. “Uh-huh … Uh-huh … Okay, let me check into that and I’ll get back to you … Will do. B-bye.”

“Fricking hell,” says Matt.

“That’s sad, man,” says Zane, clicking shut the phone. “That’s incredibly sad.”

“Yeah, well.”

“Think Mariko will bail you out?”

“No. Yes, if I ask her.” He shakes his head. “Hey, will you ring back, leave a message for Kate? Just, you know, to be careful. Tell her River’s gone off his nut. And tell her I’ll give her a shout tomorrow or something.”

Zane makes the call. “Off his nut,” is how he finishes, and then he hangs up and says to Matt, “Off his nut?”

“I don’t know. Or
post,
what does that mean?”

“Post?”

“Yeah. Like if I said to you, ‘Dude, that’s so post,’ what would I mean? DennyD used it in his message today.”

“Denny …?”

“My fan.”

“Oh. Postmodern?”

“Yeah, okay, but what does that mean? I keep thinking I’ve got it, but then I don’t.”

“It means everything’s broken, everything’s in pieces.” Zane hacks at his thigh with the blade of his hand. “It means you have to do what you do without knowing why anymore.”

“Really?”

“I don’t know. Nobody knows what postmodern means, that’s what it means.”

“Whoa,” says Matt. “You’re deep.”

“Damn straight.” With the air of a man abandoning the frivolous, then, in favour of the sublime, Zane shifts his attention to the radio. News, music, news. “Also dead is Santa Claus.” Ho ho ho. But apparently it’s a real guy, a guy who played Santa at malls and stuff for so long he eventually changed his name. Kids tried not to believe in him, he’d flash his ID.

“Oh, great,” says Zane. “Now I suppose I’ll never get my G.I. Joe.”

“And I’ll never get my Barbie.”

Back to music. Here’s a ‘70s station, ‘80s, their era. Big riffy guitars, girly hair on testosterone-crazed guys. Zane cranks it up. Matt cranks it up. Zane cranks it up. The cruddy car stereo starts to distort, evoking the acoustics of certain fetid gymnasia. They’re both howling out the lyrics, Zane solo-ing on the moulded plastic drum-skin of the dash. Matt cranks it up. Zane cranks it up. Matt cranks it up. It occurs to him that this,
this
is as good as it gets, cruising with a buddy to too-loud tunes.

“Hey, you know what?” he hollers. “Life? It isn’t so bad.”

“What?”

“Life.
It isn’t so
bad.”

Zane’s reply deteriorates into a dilly of a coughing fit, but he seems to be trying to agree.

The last time they were out this way, the two of them, they were three, Mariko along for the ride. It was a few years ago—it must have been March, since Zane was making a major production out of Matt’s birthday. He had them all wearing big game–hunter hats, which kind of blew the surprise.

The big thing about the African Lion Safari was that the creatures weren’t in cages but running “wild.” You inched along the track in your car as though it were a jeep out on the Serengeti. Baby baboons jungle-gymed on the side mirrors, picked bits of bug off the windscreen. Giraffes swung their heads up to the windows and batted their false eyelashes, cheetahs gazed at you from grassy knolls with that worried expression they all seem to wear. Wildebeest (gnus?), baby elephants fuzzy as mouldy fruit …

Matt and Zane were complete idiots the whole time. Zane babbled in Swahili, a little of which he’d picked up in Africa when he dropped down there after his Europe tour with Matt. “
Unasemaje
what
kwa Kiswahili?”

“What?” said Matt.

“How do you say
what
in Swahili?”

“I have no idea.”

“No, I mean that’s what I said, I said how do you say
what
in Swahili.”

“What?”

And so on. Matt contributed a verse or two of the theme song from
Born Free,
the sum total of his safari lore. Both boys hooted and screeched like a cheesy
Tarzan
soundtrack. Mariko did her best, going for a balance between play-along and tolerance, but that night, back at the Dadinator’s condo, she was pretty pissed. It’s the one time she’s ever really lost it over Zane. “You two didn’t even
know
you were leaving me out, that’s how much you were leaving me out” kind of thing.

Fights—maybe they should have had more of them. They’re supposed to be good, you get it all out in the open. What if he picked one with her now?

Zane says, “It’ll still be there.”

“What? Oh right, sorry.” Matt checks his speedometer, slows, slots the car into the right lane behind a school bus. There’s a whole gallery of kids at the back window, a whole gang of umgirls. Summer school, bummer. Or hopefully camp. The kids wave, cross their eyes, stick out their tongues.

“Hey,” says Zane, “did I tell you? Mercedes wants to convert.”

“Convert to what? What are you talking about?”

“Judaism. She’s taking this marriage thing kind of seriously.”

“Oh, for pity’s sake. You aren’t even
married.
Is the marriage consummated? No, so get a grip.”

“Well actually, mister nosy-drawers.” The girls are doing that thing where you suck in your cheeks, make your eyes go big.

“Actually what?”

“If you really want to know.”

“Hang on. You and Mercedes
humped?”

“I plundered her honeyed folds, is how she puts it. Niagara Falls on our wedding night—we took this same route.” He waves at the highway ahead of them. “Bloody sheets, the whole bit. We were both virgins.”

Matt does an incredulous face out the windscreen. The girls are all a-giggle. “The virus?”

“We were safe. A french tickler on top of a double duty. Wedding gift from Nico.”

“Jeezuz aitch. And now she’s converting.” The girls are doing Popeye poses, pushing their biceps up by hand. “Does she know you aren’t Jewish?”

“No. Haven’t found a way to break that to her yet.”

Matt remembers thinking,
what a rip-off.
They were at film school, maybe fourth year, when Zane told him the story. All the guff he’d already taken, all the grief for being a Yid, and then to be tossed out on a technicality. Zane’s dad was genuinely Jewish but his mum was born Leblanc, a Catholic. To keep life simple she’d gone along with the customs, but she’d never officially converted. According to the letter of the law this excluded Zane. Anybody with a putz might be your dad, after all, but you can only push your way out from between your own mum’s legs. If she’s Jewish, you’re Jewish. If not, not.

In a sense, then, Matt’s second fake review was inspired by his friend, just as his first was inspired by his father, his third by his wife.
The Wall.
For his protagonist Matt conjured a Catholic housewife who’s disturbed, but then delighted, to find out she’s Jewish. “So many troubling things suddenly make sense to her,” as Matt explained in his review. “The kink in her hair, the way she craves a bagel, rather than the Eucharist, of a Sunday morning.” Hardy har. “But most of all the deeply personal quality of her grief over the Holocaust. We’ve all been hurt by the Holocaust, but Sara’s been positively haunted by it, as though it’s part of her own personal past—as, indeed, it turns out to be. Those millions who perished are
her
people.”