The Book of Stanley (16 page)

 

THIRTY-SIX

“I
love her.”

“You can't love her, Kal.” Sitting on the king-sized bed in her suite, Tanya switched from one news channel to another, looking for news of a dead elderly man in the Bow Valley. She stopped at Leap. “You guys just met. She's hot and emotionally unstable, so of course you'd like to
make
love to her.”

Kal covered his ears. “Don't say that.”

“Look, she's obviously promised herself to this Gamal character. It's a cultural thing. These people come to Canada and marry within their group because they think we're inferior.”

“I am inferior.” Kal growled up some phlegm and, to Tanya's great dismay, swallowed it. “Did you get a load of his watch?”

Tanya looked over at the young man leaning against the headboard of her bed. He wore a tight blue dryweave shirt that highlighted his pectoral muscles. There was a firefighter aspect to him that would appeal to certain women. But he slouched and he was losing his hair. There was a pimple between his nose and his lip that needed attending to. How could Kal not know that snorting up phlegm drew the sexual energy out of a room faster than a tube of Preparation H?

Not that she wouldn't sleep with him, under the right conditions. “You want a glass of red wine, Kal?”

“No, thank you.”

The phone rang. Tanya turned down the television and answered.

A deep and smoky voice said, “You might want to come see me.”

“Is this Alok?”

There was a pause. Then he said, “Who the hell else would it be?”

“I don't know your phone voice.” Tanya hung up. “Let's go down. King Kong has something to show us.”

They took the stairs. Kal slowed as they passed Maha's room. He put his ear to the door and frowned.

“What?” said Tanya.

“I don't hear nothing.”

“Anything.”

“What?”

“Nothing.” Tanya continued to the next room and knocked. “Maybe they went out.”

“Maybe they're
sleeping
.”

Alok opened the door and stepped back with a bow and a flourish. “Presenting, the next great international prophet and man-god, Stanley Moss.”

He sat in a chair by the window, next to a small, round table. Frieda stood across from him, her arms crossed. It took some time for Tanya to adjust. First, she suspected that she was being conned. These people were actors, in stage one of converting her to their cultish religion and taking her money. It was ingenious.

Too ingenious, actually. Kal appeared ready to faint or throw up, and the look on Frieda's face–a mixture of fear and impatience and resentment–could not have been manufactured. “What are you…how?”

Alok distributed champagne glasses and opened the mini-bar bottle with a mini pop. “I want you all to appreciate this moment for what it truly means. We're witnessing the beginning of the new spiritual age. And we've been chosen to be part of it. Please, before you drink, consider that.” He filled the flutes with champagne and lifted his.

“This is impossible,” said Tanya.

“Here's to the great, great glory of the impossible.”

As much as she wanted to exercise proper manners, Tanya finished her champagne in a gulp. She looked down at her feet, to stop herself from crying or shrieking in delight or horror. “Did the trees break your fall?”

“I suppose, but not enough to save me. I slowed myself down.”

“In the air you slowed yourself down?” said Kal.

Alok clapped. “Just think, people. When is the last time something like this happened? The beginning of Islam? Christianity? Think of the parts the early disciples played in these religions. We have a profound responsibility, here, to protect this man. This more-than-a-man.”

“It seems I can float, when I put my mind to it.”

“He can
float
.” Alok opened the mini-bar again and pulled out bottles of red and white wine. “Show them, Stan. Flaunt the laws of gravity again, you wonderful hummingbird of a man.”

Frieda stood up and kissed Stanley. “I'm going to bed early tonight, sweetheart.” Without saying good night to anyone else, she walked out of the room.

“Stan,” said Tanya, unable to keep her voice and hands from shaking, “can you show us?”

“I don't know.” He sighed. “This is fairly new to me, and I want to be sure we aren't making too much of it. Let's not entirely discount a scientific explanation.”

Stanley walked over and lay on the bed. He closed his eyes and his feet shot up in the air, as though sucked from the ceiling. Then the rest of him, chest first, levitated. Stanley allowed his hands and arms to hang below, and then brought them up above him. He seemed to be conducting himself, like a symphony.

“I've been working on this,” he said, his voice perfectly, ludicrously calm. “On staying horizontal. My body naturally wants to go up feet first for some reason.”

Kal fell and no one caught him. He smacked into the mahogany chest of drawers, then careened forward onto the bed and bounced onto the floor with a loud thump. Alok reached down and tried to turn Kal over, grunting as he
exerted himself. Eventually Alok gave up and sat on the bed with his head between his knees.

Tanya couldn't hold herself back any longer. She started to cry. Not at the spectacle but at the palpable glow around Stanley. There was such quiet goodness about him, and sincerity, and humility, and grace. Historically, these were not qualities Tanya admired. She had mistaken them for powerlessness. She had mistaken so much that was venerable for powerlessness. Tanya had remained hungry even when she was full. She had been a giant, devouring mouth.

Stanley lowered himself back onto the bed. “I'm getting better at landing,” he said, and went over to check on Kal. Kal's eyes fluttered open and, with an expression of bewilderment, he struggled to his feet. He hugged Stanley and kissed him on the neck. Tanya convulsed with sobs.

“I didn't believe,” she said, wiping the tears away quickly. “I'm sorry.”

Kal clasped his hands. “You
are
the Lord.”

“If we're going to do this, you'll have to think of some other name for me.” Stanley walked to the window in the room and looked out. “That just doesn't seem right.”

“God,” said Kal.

“Director,” said Tanya.

“The Stan,” said Alok.

 

THIRTY-SEVEN

T
he lounge in the basement of the Chalet Du Bois was full of television executives, so Alok led the engineers of The Stan across a busy street to the Rose & Crown. Even in the two-storey pub, there was a thirty-minute wait for a table. A Celtic band presided over the raucous dance floor and teenage men clomped around like zombies drunk on brain, leering and shouting at mountain women in Lycra shirts–shirts that allowed no mystery about the size and shape of the nipple. Stanley waited in the lineup, witnessing this romantic carnage.

“We should continue along. There must be somewhere less sad than this.”

Alok shook his head. “No, no, we've been led here. Remember, Stan, free will isn't possible in a deterministic universe. And you're the determiner.”

“And I think this is the wrong place.”

To Stanley's chagrin, Alok seemed to ignore this last bit. He had his giant arm around a young server in a black rugby shirt. She nodded at Stanley and said, “Whoa, really? Damn.”

Five minutes later, they were sitting at the back of the Rose & Crown, near an underutilized piano. Kal asked what Alok had said to get them in so quickly.

“I told her Stan was Sir Anthony Hopkins.”

While Tanya and Alok fell into a deep discussion of how they ought to proceed, organizationally, Stanley concerned himself with Frieda. He felt his transformation had not
altered the Stanley Moss-ness of Stanley Moss. But if his wife did not recognize him as the man he had been, maybe there was something altogether more sinister at work here than he had previously thought. Maybe he had been inhabited. Possessed. Maybe none of this was happening at all.

“I can't stop thinking about Maha,” said Kal.

Stanley smiled, grateful for a diversion. “Would you prefer to forget her?”

Kal bit his bottom lip as Tanya raised her voice at Alok and placed her hands on the wooden table. “Only the crazies buy religion, the real thing. But we want the crazies
and
the skeptics. Our market watches reality television, shops at Wal-Mart, eats fast food, drives minivans, plays video games, uploads videos to the Internet, dreams of plasma screens. We're attacking the great, numb bulge in the middle of America.”

“I disagree completely.” Alok reached for Stanley and pulled him close. The big man had not showered after his hike up Tunnel Mountain, and a ham-like scent attended him. “The Stan ought to address the essential meaning lessness of contemporary existence. Globalization, and modern religion, have made us into nothing more than clients.”

The server arrived to take their drink orders, and stared at Stanley. “Can I get your autograph later?”

“I'm afraid my friend was dishonest with you. I'm not Sir Anthony Hopkins.”

“Actually, he's better than some puffy actor,” said Alok. “He's God.”

“I'm not God, either.”

“He can read your mind. Think of something.”

The server frowned. “I don't get it.”

Alok took her arm. “Picture your warmest memory.”

It was easy. Stanley concentrated and saw the girl winning a bicycle race, hugging her parents, tears in her eyes. He described, in two sentences, her warmest memory.

“How did you do that?”

“Isn't he so much better than Sir Anthony Hopkins?” said Alok.

“That's freaky.”

Alok whispered, “He floats, too. And he could pick up this piano, if he wanted.”

“No, I couldn't.”

The server stared at Stanley for some time, and then took their drink orders. Stanley saw that she was not curious. She did not sense
wonder
at their table. The woman was alarmed, even wounded. It was as if they had asked her to meet them in back for a round of blow jobs–the sort of thing that no doubt happened to people in her position on a regular basis. Orders taken, the woman did not linger.

“Did you learn anything from that exchange?” Stanley said.

Neither Alok nor Tanya answered. Kal raised his hand. “She was spooked.”

Stanley had never excelled in the gardening and floral business, as others around him had, because he always ordered what he thought people
should
have, like native plants and perennials that didn't need much tending. Of course, what his customers wanted were exotics and the fad flowers they saw in glossy magazines. He wondered if there was a way to appeal to both types of customers, to sell native plants as though they were exotics.

“I think we have to take a couple of steps back here. The word
religion
could get us into trouble. In the gardening business–”

“We're not selling flowers here, Stan.” Alok's face began to turn red with frustration. “We're not thinking micro. We're not over-thinking this, or making it into a dose of good medicine. What we're selling is a new world.”

“But you said you're against selling stuff,” said Kal.

Tanya slapped her forehead. “You can't sell a new world, you big fat jackass. You can only sell dreams and the sign-posts of dreams.”

“Jackass? Jackass?”

“Kal, what are your dreams?” Tanya tilted her head, like a television interviewer.

The Celtic bandleader announced, in the next room, that they were going on a break. There was some applause and, then, near silence. Kal said, finally, “I want Maha. I want to play the accordion. I want my daughter. I want to change my life.”

Stanley was pleased to see that neither Tanya nor Alok had an easy answer for this. The fulfillment of dreams, or even the promise of it, was more complex than they imagined. Even for someone they saw as simple. Kal excused himself and wandered over to the old piano. He opened the cover and slid his fingers along the keys. Instead of listening to Alok describe how deeply Tanya had wounded him by calling him a fat jackass, Stanley followed Kal to the piano and stood behind him.

“Play.”

Kal slid his fingers along the keys. “If you can't play the accordion, you can't play the piano.”

“Let's start with the piano and go from there.”

“I can't.”

Stanley focused on Kal's fingers. He concentrated on telling Kal he could play the piano. It wasn't a transfer,
exactly, but to Stanley it was like filling a cup to the brim. When the cup was full, he placed his hand on Kal's shoulder. “Please, try.”

The canned rock music coming out of the sound system was not nearly as loud as the band had been. Kal made sure no one was paying attention to him. He looked up at Stanley in a pleading manner, then shrugged and said, “What the hell.” He straightened his back and lifted his fingers to the keyboard. Confused, he started to ask a question, directed not at Stanley but at himself. When Kal touched the keys, he started with a low note and followed with a high one. He continued along, in a slow rhythm.

Kal played the nocturne Stanley had heard in the rotunda of the Royal Alexandra Hospital. It rose slowly and gained prominence in the room. The song, its gentle power, hushed the drinkers. By the time Kal reached the flourish, four minutes into the song, someone had turned off the rock music. A small crowd had gathered around him. Alok and Tanya were not arguing any more. The “Nocturne in C Minor” ended quietly, as it had begun. Kal lifted his hands from the keys. He turned around, his breath quivering, his smile beatific, as the crowd broke into warm applause. Someone hooted. Someone else called out, “Attafuckinboy!”

The audience began to disperse. Kal grasped Stanley's hand. “I'll do anything. Whatever you want.”

Stanley placed his index finger to his lips.

The server brought two glasses of wine, for Alok and Tanya, a beer for Kal, and a small bottle of fizzy water for Stanley. He wasn't sure he could drink it. In the last few days, his appetite–even for water–had diminished to just about nothing. Kal sat with his head in his hands.

“That was so beautiful,” said the server. “Thank you.”

Kal looked up and smiled at her. “You're welcome.”

“Now
that
we can sell,” said Tanya.