“GOOD GAME THE other night, hey Jim?”
“What?” My head cracks the inside edge of the photocopier door and the birds scream out and claw at my eyes, instead of the cute tweets and stars you always see in cartoons. “Fuck!”
Benoit slowly comes into focus as I pull my head out of the copier’s ass, ears still ringing.
“Shit. Sorry, dude.”
“No. My fault.” I smell blood and feel something hot and sticky on my fingertips as I reach back and touch my thundering head.
“Jesus. You’re bleeding!”
I smile and wave off his attempt to poke the wound, or lead me to help, or whatever he’s trying to do.
“I’m fine. Thanks. It’s okay. Really.”
I’m hunched over and creeping down the hallway toward the bathrooms, hoping not to run into anyone else. Benoit’s smoked meat poutine and three-beer lunch breath follows me all the way down. My stomach starts to growl at the thought of shredded beef, despite the pain in my head and the cacophony of all of my senses going off at once.
“Jimmy? Jimmy, what happened?”
Chanel No. 5, and the sweet cocoa scent of mochaccino.
“Jimmy?” Margaret hustles down the carpeted hallway on her heels, wrapping a silk-covered arm around my waist. The taste of blood and meat are replaced by something else. I can feel her pulse through three layers of clothing. I feel the heat of her skin and I can smell her panic. It fills my nostrils and crowds out the cocoa and perfume. I breathe deep and feel a surge of energy well up from my chest.
We hit the door to the men’s room just in time for me to fall through the door and onto my knees, panting and vibrating.
The door swings shut behind me and dulls the smell of her as she repeats my name and raps lightly on the door.
I retch and unleash my own meagre lunch of crackers and V-8, a lousy red slop that tastes more or less the same coming up as it did going down.
Twenty minutes later the crowd outside the men’s room has dispersed, and I’m mostly recovered. I leave with a sheepish nod to the janitor who’s come in to mop up my remains.
Margaret is waiting at my desk.
“Are you okay? I think you should go down to three and see one of the doctors in the clinic. Do you feel well enough to get home?”
The look of concern on her face is like some weird hieroglyphic that I can’t decipher. It’s beautiful, and it makes my heart ache. I suddenly want to talk to my mother, to apologize for everything I may have ever done wrong. I want Margaret to hold me, to run her fingers through my hair and tell me that I’m going to be just fine.
“I’m fine. I’m sorry. I . . .”
“Sorry? Don’t be silly, Jimmy. You had us all worried sick. Ben said you cracked your head on the copier. Must have done a real number too.”
She reaches out towards the bandage on the back of my head. I want to turn and meet her, guide her hand to that place, feel her pulse against my skin again, and let it heal me.
“Really. I’m fine. Maybe I should go home though.”
I’m already clawing my stuff into my bag as the words tumble out of my open mouth.
“Okay. Take the rest of the day. And get that looked at. You may need stitches.” She touches my shoulder lightly as she passes, and I feel a crackle of electricity pass from her fingers.
I’m in the elevator and down two floors before her scent has faded enough for me to breathe.
I STOP AT the convenience store in the lobby of my building for some aspirin and a bottle of club soda.
Outside I get that whiff of sulfur again as something black and enormous swirls into and out of my periphery. It’s gone before my eyes can find it, some lousy concussion symptom. Unlike the wave of hobo musk that suddenly fills my entire sinus cavity. It almost knocks me to my knees. I look for the homeless man I’m sure must be standing right behind me. There’s no one on my side of the street. The other side of the road is filled with trees and concrete. Oddly quiet until a sudden gust of wind blows the stench past me and brings the campfire smoke back down from the mountains, and something else. Perfume. Not Margaret’s, something light and French. I look up and see her across the street, at the end of the block. The redhead from the 30th floor. Long gazelle legs stretching and curving on top of six-inch heels, her scarlet summer dress flowing behind her, and her long auburn hair blazing in the sun. She was a slow-motion vision, the smell of smoke driving her forward like a phoenix rising out of the ashes and across the city sidewalks.
The swooping tail of her dress disappears behind the glass of her own front door, and the spell is broken. I realize that I’m staring like a goon, and hard as a marble pillar.
I SIT AT my kitchen table, the bottle an arm’s length away, the phone slightly further, and stare out across the empty space between us. I can still smell her, all the way across the street. I can see her when she passes in front of the window, a gauzy daydream of thin linen blowing in the wind the only thing keeping her safe. What the hell is wrong with me?
My hands stretch out across the table, in the slowest race in human history. Who loses? Sobriety or sanity?
Every night. Same story. I sit here and brood and wait to go over the edge. Then I smoke a lot of weed.
A lot of weed.
And then I stare at the bottle some more.
Tonight I let my hand creep to the right. The look of worry on Margaret’s face still haunting me.
“Hello?”
As soon as I hear her voice, I regret the decision.
“Hello? Who is this?” The vague brogue and forty years of cigarettes and whiskey painted over with a fresh coat of schoolgirl giggle. “Marvin? Is that you?”
“It’s me, Ma.”
“James?” Here it comes. “Ohhhh, Jimmy! I’ve been sooo worried about you, son.” So much sickly-sweet syrup hiding the arsenic in the words.
“I’m fine, Ma. How are you?”
“Oh, I’m just fine, Jimmy. Your Uncle Marvin is taking me out dancing, so I can’t talk long.” Like I’m still seven years old and believe every skeezy married car salesman who bends her bedsprings is some mysterious “uncle”.
“I don’t have an Uncle Marvin, Ma.”
Pause. Disappointed glare telegraphed straight across the continent via the utmost in telecom technology. Wearied sigh.
“Fine. My friend, Marvin. Did you call me just to spread your misery, James? I don’t have time for your attitude.”
“Nice to hear your voice, Ma.”
Click. Thanks, Ma.
I can hear through the walls, everything around me like I’m inside some glass bowl with everything reverberating. The couple fighting next door; the people on the opposite side having a quickie in the bedroom closet, while their friends are watching Friends in the living room. The old man at the end of the hall with his ugly, groaning, slapping, and screaming pornos constantly playing. Every few hours he grunts something in German, opens a new bottle of vodka.
At least it’s Friday. I get to spend two more days and nights sitting here with my swollen brain and my slow right hand.