"You worry too much," he said. "Give me your landlord's number and I'll
sort it out with him, all right?"
"All right!" Link said. "That's terrific, Albert, really!"
"All right, Mimi? Natalie?"
Natalie nodded enthusiastically, her shaved head whipping up and down on
her thin neck precariously. Mimi glared at Natalie and Link. "I'll ask
Krishna," she said.
"All right, then!" Alan said. "Let me measure up the wall and I'll start
shopping for supplies." He produced a matte black, egg-shaped digital
tape measure and started shining pinpoints of laser light on the wall,
clicking the egg's buttons when he had the corners tight. The Portuguese
clerks at his favorite store had dissolved into hysterics when he'd
proudly shown them the $300 gadget, but they were consistently impressed
by the exacting CAD drawings of his projects that he generated with its
output. Natalie and Link stared in fascination as he did his thing with
more showmanship than was technically necessary, though Mimi made a
point of rolling her eyes.
"Don't go spending any money yet, cowboy," she said. "I've still got to
talk to Krishna, and *you've* still got to talk with the landlord."
He fished in the breast pocket of his jean jacket and found a stub of
pencil and a little steno pad, scribbled his cell phone number, and tore
off the sheet. He passed the sheet, pad, and pencil to Mimi, who wrote
out the landlord's number and passed it back to him.
"Okay!" Alan said. "There you go. It's been a real pleasure meeting you
folks. I know we're going to get along great. I'll call your landlord
right away and you call me once Krishna's up, and I'll see you tomorrow
at ten a.m. to start construction, God willin' and the crick don't
rise."
Link stood and extended his hand. "Nice to meet you, Albert," he
said. "Really. Thanks for the muds, too." Natalie gave him a bony hug,
and Mimi gave him a limp handshake, and then he was out in the sunshine,
head full of designs and logistics and plans.
#
The sun set at nine p.m. in a long summertime blaze. Alan sat down on
the twig-chair on his front porch, pulled up the matching twig table,
and set down a wine glass and the bottle of Niagara Chardonnay he'd
brought up from the cellar. He poured out a glass and held it up to the
light, admiring the new blister he'd gotten on his pinky finger while
hauling two-by-fours and gyprock from his truck to his neighbors' front
room. Kids rode by on bikes and punks rode by on skateboards. Couples
wandered through the park across the street, their murmurous
conversations clear on the whispering breeze that rattled the leaves.
He hadn't gotten any writing done, but that was all right. He had plenty
of time, and once the soundwall was in, he'd be able to get a good
night's sleep and really focus down on the story.
A Chinese girl and a white boy walked down the sidewalk, talking
intensely. They were all of six, and the boy had a Russian accent. The
Market's diversity always excited Alan. The boy looked a little like
Alan's brother Doug (Dan, David, Dearborne) had looked when he was that
age.
Doug was the one he'd helped murder. All the brothers had helped with
the murder, even Charlie (Clem, Carlos, Cory), the island, who'd opened
a great fissure down his main fault line and closed it up over Doug's
corpse, ensuring that their parents would be none the wiser. Doug was a
stubborn son-of-a-bitch, though, and his corpse had tunneled up over the
next six years, built a raft from the bamboo and vines that grew in
proliferation on Carlos's west coast. He sailed the raft through
treacherous seas for a year and a day, beached it on their father's
gentle slope, and presented himself to their mother. By that time, the
corpse had decayed and frayed and worn away, so that he was little more
than a torso and stumps, his tongue withered and stiff, but he pled his
case to their mother, and she was so upset that her load overbalanced
and they had to restart her. Their father was so angry that he quaked
and caved in Billy (Bob, Brad, Benny)'s room, crushing all his tools and
all his trophies.
But a lot of time had gone by and the brothers weren't kids
anymore. Alan was nineteen, ready to move to Toronto and start scouting
for real estate. Only Doug still looked like a little boy, albeit a
stumpy and desiccated one. He hollered and stamped until his fingerbones
rattled on the floor and his tongue flew across the room and cracked on
the wall. When his anger was spent, he crawled atop their mother and let
her rock him into a long, long slumber.
Alan had left his father and his family the next morning, carrying a
rucksack heavy with gold from under the mountain and walked down to the
town, taking the same trail he'd walked every school day since he was
five. He waved to the people that drove past him on the highway as he
waited at the bus stop. He was the first son to leave home under his own
power, and he'd been full of butterflies, but he had a half-dozen good
books that he'd checked out of the Kapuskasing branch library to keep
him occupied on the 14-hour journey, and before he knew it, the bus was
pulling off the Gardiner Expressway by the SkyDome and into the midnight
streets of Toronto, where the buildings stretched to the sky, where the
blinking lights of the Yonge Street sleaze-strip receded into the
distance like a landing strip for a horny UFO.
His liquid cash was tight, so he spent that night in the Rex Hotel, in
the worst room in the house, right over the cymbal tree that the
jazz-drummer below hammered on until nearly two a.m.. The bed was small
and hard and smelled of bleach and must, the washbasin gurgled
mysteriously and spat out moist sewage odors, and he'd read all his
books, so he sat in the window and watched the drunks and the hipsters
stagger down Queen Street and inhaled the smoky air and before he knew
it, he'd nodded off in the chair with his heavy coat around him like a
blanket.
The Chinese girl abruptly thumped her fist into the Russian boy's
ear. He clutched his head and howled, tears streaming down his face,
while the Chinese girl ran off. Alan shook his head, got up off his
chair, went inside for a cold washcloth and an ice pack, and came back
out.
The Russian boy's face was screwed up and blotchy and streaked with
tears, and it made him look even more like Doug, who'd always been a
crybaby. Alan couldn't understand him, but he took a guess and knelt at
his side and wiped the boy's face, then put the ice pack in his little
hand and pressed it to the side of his little head.
"Come on," he said, taking the boy's other hand. "Where do your parents
live? I'll take you home."
#
Alan met Krishna the next morning at ten a.m., as Alan was running a
table saw on the neighbors' front lawn, sawing studs up to fit the
second wall. Krishna came out of the house in a dirty dressing gown, his
short hair matted with gel from the night before. He was tall and fit
and muscular, his brown calves flashing through the vent of his
housecoat. He was smoking a hand-rolled cigarette and clutching a can of
Coke.
Alan shut down the saw and shifted his goggles up to his forehead. "Good
morning," he said. "I'd stay on the porch if I were you, or maybe put on
some shoes. There're lots of nails and splinters around."
Krishna, about to step off the porch, stepped back. "You must be Alvin,"
he said.
"Yup," Alan said, going up the stairs, sticking out his hand. "And you
must be Krishna. You're pretty good with a guitar, you know that?"
Krishna shook briefly, then snatched his hand back and rubbed at his
stubble. "I know. You're pretty fucking loud with a table saw."
Alan looked sheepish. "Sorry about that. I wanted to get the heavy work
done before it got too hot. Hope I'm not disturbing you too much --
today's the only sawing day. I'll be hammering for the next day or two,
then it's all wet work -- the loudest tool I'll be using is
sandpaper. Won't take more than four days, tops, anyway, and we'll be in
good shape."