CONFIDENTIAL [UNDISCLOSED LOCATION] 005762
DEPARTMENT FOR NEA/I
SUBJECT: CORRECTED COPY: ASSET INTERVIEW
REF: A. [UNDISCLOSED LOCATION] 8921
Classified By: CDA Officer L. Petrović for reasons: 2.1 (a) and 2.2 (a)–(b).
ASSET ID: “CATERING” [Legal name Kathy Borschke]
March 7, 2022 — 19:09 EST
Day of Operation Fear and Trembling
[Preliminary comments redacted.]
—I’ve never been on time for anything. Seriously, my entire life. I have no idea why this is. It’s like, the most intense effort just to get even remotely close to the appointed time or whatever. If I’m forty minutes late, I consider myself early. My friend Shannon? Says it’s because I’m a Scorpio. She’s big into organic foods, gluten-free toothpaste, you know the type. Never uses deodorant, rubs a volcanic rock under her armpits. I love her. First Friday of every month we hold a meeting of the Attitude Adjustment Club, which is basically just, this is hilarious, two middle-aged chicks, messed up on weed food, getting our dance on. Whatever. I don’t care. My name’s Kathy, by the way.
—[Redacted.]
—A pleasure to meet you, [Redacted]. Enchanté. Oh man, you wouldn’t believe the day I’ve had. I could tell you about my day? But you wouldn’t believe it. My alarm didn’t go off. That’s how it started. I’d set it to p.m. instead of a.m. So right about now, what time is it? Around seven? Right about now it’s annoying the shit out of my cat.
[Extended pause. Respondent appears visibly distressed.]
My cat. His name is Courtney. I named him after Love.
[Respondent picks up purse, stands.]
I’m sorry, can you just, excuse me a second, I …
[Respondent leaves booth. Confirmed entry into establishment’s restrooms. Returns approximately seven minutes later.]
◆◆◆
[Respondent resumes seat.]
—I’m so sorry.
—Is there anything I can, uh …
—No, no, thank you. I’m fine, really. I just bumped into a sad thought. I’m much better now. Where was I.
—Um, Courtney Love.
—Right, right.
[Extended pause. Respondent blows nose.]
Courtney Love, I love her, I do. Talk about attitude adjustment. In the nineties, you won’t believe this, the way I’m dressed now, but I was in a band. We were good! In London, Ontario. We used to open for all the big touring acts that came through. We opened for fIREHOSE, for Radiohead when they played Centennial Hall, who else? Hole, of course, when they were at the Electric Banana. Amazing show, extremely loud. Our thing was we wore Catholic schoolgirl kilts and ripped fishnets. So original, I know. But we were good! A friend of mine from high school slept with one of the merch guys for Tears for Fears. That’s a claim to fame in London, Ontario, seriously. Anyway, what I was saying: this morning, I overslept, woke up wondering why it was light out, saw I had fifteen minutes to get to work. So that’s how my day started. I splashed some water on my face, remembered to feed Courtney, sweet Courtney, then threw on my least dirty work clothes. The hotel makes you buy them, the bastards. These fugly navy pantsuits. I hope you know I would never wear something like this voluntarily. I’m more of a plaid shirt kind of gal. You have to pay me to wear this shit. Not that I’m a whore, but aren’t we all whores when it comes to making rent? So I scarf a banana and head to the subway. And it’s while I’m in the station, waiting for a train that isn’t packed wall-to-wall with grumpy bipeds, that my day really gets weird. It’s sort of hard to explain. But I work for this, this organization I would call it? It’s kind of a side hustle. And there was this thing I was supposed to look out for. It’s like, every day I have to check Twitter on my phone. This account I follow, they do these tweets once a morning. I know it doesn’t make any sense. But anyway, I’m supposed to watch out for it, this tweet, a series of words in a row, and when I see it I’m supposed to do something for the organization. And so this morning I see it, this clue, after five maybe? Years? Of not seeing it. And of course I’m like, whoa, and I …
—[Inaudible.]
—Sure, I’ll have another.
—[Inaudible.]
—Yeah, it’s a Stella.
—[Inaudible.]
—And you? All right, okay, he nods. He doesn’t speak, he just nods. That’s all right, I like them strong and silent. Okay, another round, please. And could I get, do you do nachos here? I’d like some veggie nachos, please. I used to eat meat, but I couldn’t handle it anymore, the hypocrisy, factory farming, the nonstop genocide. Where was I?
—Right. I saw you looking at her, by the way. Our server. It’s okay, she’s cute. And you’re a young, strapping boy. Not a boy, sorry. I don’t know why you’re hanging out with an old broad like me, but I’ll take it. Old or not, I still have talent. Just saying. Don’t mind me, I’m ridiculous at the best of times, and I’m super ridiculous after I’ve dropped shrooms. Where was I?
—Your morning.
—Right, right. So now because of this agreement I have with this … organization, I’ll call it, I have to rush back home and check something on the computer, which is a stupid extra step, actually there are a couple extra steps, but whatever. What do I know? I’m just an old second-generation punk with a nothing job and a gift for fellatio. Seriously, it’s what I do. I’m a caterer, I cater. I provide what is desired, I comfort and amuse. Sorry, I’ll stop, I’m a buffoon, I know. So anyway, whatever, now I’m super late and I have to call my kitchen supervisor, Toni, who is one righteous a-hole, and explain why I’m coming in late, and it doesn’t occur to me until later — who cares? I’m not even coming in again after this. This is officially my last day of work. You can’t fire me, I quit. And Toni’s like, “Well, this makes for an extremely awkward situation for me. We have a breakfast banquet this morning and Emiko will have to cover for you, which is not fair to Emiko or to me.” And of course I’d love at this juncture to tell her to go fuck herself, but I have to come in and deal with her, you know? Goddamn, I’m rambling. It’s pent-up energy. The day I’ve had. I like your T-shirt. Is that a, what is that? On the front. It’s like a Greek letter, except not. Modal logic, possible worlds. You’ll be shocked to hear I did my undergrad in philosophy. I couldn’t be bothered to finish. The most useless degree. But it kept me from gainful employment for three years, so it wasn’t really all that useless, right? Anyway. Where was I?
Just kidding. I’m on the subway maybe fifteen minutes later, I can’t even remember, wedged between a pissed-off-looking woman and a pissed-off-looking man, someone’s coughing, it sounds like there’s a wet plastic bag in her lungs, and I’m staring at these banners they place just above eye level, these advertisements, and I’m looking around and I realize they’re almost all for these cheeseball community colleges. Get a better job, do a diploma with us. Change your life. You’re on a subway with ten thousand other humanoids at eight in the fucking morning on a Monday, of course you want to change your life. Learn to be a video game designer. Get your degree in chinchilla ranching. Realize your dream of owning a car so you don’t have to be trapped on the subway with all these other pitiful specimens. An entire industry built on exploiting your low-level desolation. How sick is that? How diseased is that?
Toni didn’t acknowledge me when I finally made it in. She was standing at the prep area, back turned, but she knew it was me, you could tell. I was a mess, sweating from the mad rush to the hotel, my hair all wacky and askew. I immediately started doing stuff, like somehow this would compensate. After a while, she said, “Kathy, you’re an hour and ten minutes late for work. I had to pull Emiko from the floor so she could work suites.”
“I’m so sorry,” I said.
“You knew we had a banquet this morning,” she said.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“I don’t need your sorrow,” she said, “I need you to do your job. You haven’t just let me down, you’ve let down your entire team. One more incident and I’ll have to elevate this to HR.”
Eat my ass, I said, you officious little power-hungry fascist.
I didn’t actually say it. I wanted to say it. Some people, you know? It doesn’t matter how tiny the patch of dirt, how shit-strewn the principality, they have to plant their flag. Little dictators on their little anthills. And these are just supervisors. These are just banquet captains. Imagine what they’d do if they had an army. Imagine what they’d do if they had a bureau of investigations. It’s terrifying. No wonder the world is so fucked. We act like Kim Jong-Un is an isolated nutjob, but he’s not, really, is he? All the hotels in the world, all the bars and banks and universities and insurance companies, they’re all staffed by little Kim Jong-Uns just biding their time, waiting to be activated. Screw that, I say. I opt out. The only thing worth pursuing in life is pleasure, my friend. Epicurus was right, there’s no point in a so-called higher calling. Move to Peru, teach ESL, spend your evenings smoking weed with all the other first-world dropouts.
So yeah, that’s how I spent my morning, running around like a maniac, floor to kitchen, kitchen to floor, no time to think or reflect, then up to suites where I should’ve been in the first place.
The organization I work for, the other one, not the hotel, every month they give me a manila envelope. It has various things in it month to month, usually not much. A few stapled papers, a thumb drive, a burner. For five years, I’ve had no need for any of it. I just pick up the package, ignore it, hand it back next time I see Mona. She’s my case manager. Today, of course, was different. Do you mind if I Juul? It’s asinine, I know. I quit smoking, fuck, like years ago, and then I saw this YouTube thing on vaping and something went sproing in my head and I thought, Man, oh man, do I need me one of those. It’s just nostalgic; I associate smoking with all the best times in my life, all the best sex I ever had — I was young and fit and played bass in a band. I know all these people on Facebook, friends from London. A few of them never left, a few moved back, a few will never kiss that hallowed ground again. And there’s so much sentiment for that time in their lives, the punk scene in London, hanging out at the Embassy Hotel, watching bands, no cares, no need ever to accomplish anything. The past is a tentacle that’s wrapped itself around their ankles. Their greatest accomplishment was some photocopied zine they made back when they were seventeen. All this angst in my newsfeed. This one chick I used to know, her status updates consist of how her kids will eat nothing but unheated Alphagetti and how she doesn’t recognize herself when she looks in the mirror. I recognize her, though, she looks like herself, only old and gaunt and over-exercised. It’s so strange to see your friends age. Previous generations were spared this fate; you’d graduate high school, move away, and never have to see anyone again. You could disappear. But no, not us. Now we find ourselves suddenly thrust together via the Facebook device only to realize that the cute boy with the mohawk you banged when you were sixteen has been replaced by a fifty-three-year-old Country Style franchisee with advanced rosacea. Das unheimliche, Freud said, the familiar made foreign. It’s stranger, although less existentially terrifying, than watching yourself get old, seeing your own hair go grey, watching yourself slowly die. You’ll see. It’ll happen to you one day, if you’re lucky.
But anyway, today. I shouldn’t be telling you any of this. Today I had this thing I had to do for the organization I work for. At 1 p.m. exactly, my burner started vibrating. I was in the kitchen talking to Toni about hiccups in the service queue. “At our next team meeting,” she was saying, “we need to revisit our prep-line workflow” and blah blah blah and I plucked out my phone and held up a finger and cut Toni off. “I’m so sorry,” I said, pointing to the burner, “I think this is my oncologist.” And rushed out to the hallway.
“Yes?” I said.
A female voice on the line. “Greetings from Copenhagen,” she said.
“The grasses are green,” I said.
“At two forty-five,” she said, “you are to be —”
“Wait, wait,” I said, “I can’t, I’m not in a position to speak right now.”
A pause.
“Ten minutes,” she said.
Per my training, I was to ensure that I was in a private location so I could speak freely and not arouse suspicion. I know, sounds like a spy movie. But it’s not like that. This organization, these people are super uptight. Never say anything to anyone, always be on time. They’re neurotic about this stuff. They have these brutal weekend-long training sessions where they drill it into you. You tell your friends you’ve Airbnb’d a cottage on the piney shores of Georgian Bay, then spend two days, stone cold sober, in an office park off the 401, learning the grave importance of punctuality and secrecy. So I knew I had to be somewhere private in exactly ten minutes or there’d be, you know. Consequences. I had decided on the subway ride that probably the best place for privacy would be cold storage in the subbasement, next to the Physical Plant offices. It’s where we keep the freezers full of dead animals. The industrial-size cans of stewed tomatoes. At that time of day it would be empty.
I poked my head around the door and said, “I just have to run to the washroom for a second.” And took off before I could see the look that Toni gave me. I ran down the hallway to the stairwell. The stairwell door was locked. It’s never locked. I booked it down the hallway, my mind melting with the stress, toward the laundry, where there’s a service elevator. It took forever to arrive. I got on, pressed L2. The doors closed. Such relief! Until I realized it was going up, not down. Up it went to mezzanine, where who of all people should embark but the Security Ghost. That’s what I call her, anyway. Her real name is Rhonda. Who names their kid Rhonda? She spends her days in the Security grotto; I can only guess what it is that she does in there. As if my morning weren’t bad enough. She’s this weird little humanoid, positively wraithlike, frizzy black hair, pale as a line of coke. “Going down?” she said, in a way you might describe as coquettish. “Yes, Rhonda, going down,” I said, and she smiled at me the way she always smiles, like she knows something. I stared at the floor and waited till she was gone, which thankfully was about sixty seconds later, when the elevator disgorged her into the lobby. “Good seeing you,” she said, and flashed her little knowing smile, all gums, with these unnaturally tiny doll teeth. Fuck me, was I glad to see her go. I travelled downward. My whole life has been one big trip downward, so why stop now? The house I grew up in was this big suburban house in London, Ontario, wanting for nothing. Now I live above a weed dispensary. I made it to cold storage at 1:09, one minute to spare. I swiped my passcard and opened the door.
“Oh hey,” Colin said. Colin is a junior sous chef. He was bending over a freezer, pulling little dead quails out of the mist. “Today’s been a shitshow,” he said, “a cocksucking dogan-faced whore of a day.” I love Colin, but I could’ve done without him right at that very moment. “The banquet has been a disaster,” he said. “Apparently multiple people were late for work or something? Ah well,” he said, “who cares? Whatever makes life harder for Toni.” He laughed, I laughed. The burner went off in my hand. “Shit,” I said, “I have to take this.” And made to leave, but he stopped me. “Let me give you some privacy,” he said, “I have to go upstairs anyway.”
“Hello?” I said, when he’d left. It was the same woman as before, a soft, serious voice. “Greetings from Copenhagen,” she said, and I said — um, sure, another round?
—[Inaudible.]
—I’d like another. Another round, please. This bar, good god. This bar is absurd. I love the flocked wallpaper, nice touch. Fakey-fake ceiling, pressed tin, a dartboard nobody uses. It’s like the Rovers Return. I keep expecting Ken Barlow to walk in. I don’t usually come to places like this, I want you to know, but there’s like nothing else remotely close. If I’m being honest, I’m vaguely embarrassed even to be here, and I have an irrational fear that someone I know might walk in and see me. I don’t mean to be insulting, obviously you come here, maybe you’re a regular, that’s okay. I’m not a snob, really, it’s just, this bar, you know? The low-cut titty tops that all the servers wear. And the crazy part is, people come here on any given Saturday night, and this is their fun thing, their little bit of debauchery after an afternoon hitting HomeSense and Sport Chek and the Golf Town discount outlet, and it makes me dream a little, wondering what their lives are like, what it is to be a normal living in a suburb off the 401. The cars they drive, the food they eat, the sex they have in their king-size Pottery Barn beds. How do they feel at night, after watching fucking Jimmy Fallon? Do they feel the roaring void open above their heads, the pointlessness of everything, the meaninglessness of existence? Do they wonder whether there’s an infinitude of possible worlds but a finite amount of matter, such that their lives will keep repeating over and over in an endless number of variations, large and small? Do they think about whether the next iteration of their being will have brown eyes instead of blue? Large breasts instead of small? Whether their husband will be named Conner instead of Tanner and he’ll prefer baseball over football or not exist at all, but rather be a Great Dane because in this version of existence women marry only Great Danes? Are they unnerved at this thought? At the quantum physicist’s understanding of identity, which is that there is no identity as we conceive it, but only energy that combines and recombines in formulations to which identity accrues? My feet feel like they’re made of talcum powder. Fuck, man, I’m flying. Which is probably why I feel comfortable telling you now that I’d like to take you to bed. Ha ha! Bet you didn’t see that one coming. But I mean it. You haven’t lived till you’ve slept with an older woman. We’re warm and soft, at least I am, and we know what we’re doing, and you can tell your friends that you slept with someone who slept with Courtney Love’s roadie. Plus intergenerational hookups are cool, everyone’s doing it. Plus you’ll never have to worry about commitment. I’m one and done, son. I have a deep, deep ache, and I’d like to apply a hot compress, that’s it. Then you can go back to your girlfriend, assuming you have one. I’m sure you have one. That server you’ve been making eyes with, I guarantee she’s more work than she’s worth. Look at the shine in that hair, all the foundation covering that one tiny acne scar. You’d never pry her from the bathroom mirror long enough to copulate. Unless you’re quick to shoot, which, whatever, I’m fine with that, too. I realize I’m making a fool of myself, but I’m too old to care anymore. And honestly, it’s the least of my worries at this moment in history. I have to pee, be right back.
[Respondent leaves booth, taking purse. Confirmed entry into establishment’s restrooms. Returns approximately seven minutes later.]
◆◆◆
—Anyway, Greetings from Copenhagen. I was telling you about my day. The woman on the phone. At 2:45 exactly, she tells me, I’m to be waiting by the elevators on the seventh floor. I will have in my possession a service trolley that I will discreetly procure from a source within the food prep area. I will wait until the appropriate moment, I will execute my duty, then I will flee like a terrified rabbit. She didn’t say that last bit, I said that. I’m embellishing for your amusement. I want you to think I’m funny and smart. And honest, also, because of what I’ve just confessed to you. In the vain hope that these excellent qualities might compensate for my age and general state of dishevelment. You have gorgeous eyes, you must know that. You’re so quiet. I love that, a man who listens.
[Respondent takes drag off of vaping device, waves away vapour residue.]
So now, for the second time in one day, I have to be somewhere on time. You can imagine the pressure, 2:45 exactly, with the service trolley. Fine, one more time I’ll be on time, and then I can go back to being forty-five minutes late for everything, stumbling through doors like the Looney Tunes witch, a cyclone of hairpins and apologies. I go back to work, blah blah blah, I can’t even remember what I did. My lunch was stuff I stole off the food prep counter. Colin, I mentioned him, our junior sous chef, mock-frowned at me and waggled his finger. He didn’t give a shit. It was a strangely busy day today. I don’t know why. Maybe the banquet, or maybe the security trolls, who seemed to be everywhere. Seriously, these guys, you’ve never seen such a bunch of humourless dicks. Or maybe it was just because it’s Monday, and everyone spent the weekend drinking and fucking. Whatever. Some of the things I’ve seen, I should write a book. King William Confidential. I once walked into a suite, the woman had just gotten plastic surgery. Her face was swathed in bandages, there were bruises down her neck. She came to the door in her satin robe, open at the front, her boobs hanging out, her bush. She was old and saggy and sun-damaged, and she wanted me to stay and give her a massage. Umm, not bloody likely, ma’am, but if you’d like I’d be happy to call Toni for you. Another time I come in, room service, and I hear a strange sound coming from the bathroom. The guest, he’s an overweight bald guy. He looks nervous, he wants me to leave. No problem, but clearly something is up. I leave, I alert Security, who tell me later they found a dozen ducklings in his bathtub. How he got them up there, no one can say. What he was planning to do with them, no one can say.
Most of the stories, though, they involve shit and dildos. Talk to Housekeeping, those are the stories you get. Shit and dildos, day after day after day. People are so weird. The little manias that gain purchase on their brain cells and fizz and multiply and swallow up their entire lives — one day they’re normal functioning humans, the next they’re taking a shit into a salver in a five-star hotel and putting it back onto the trolley so that some underpaid middle-aged caterer can discover it later when she’s cleaning up the service. And feeling like that’s normal, feeling like that’s okay. And here, in this particular hotel, there’s always that other dimension, too, the exercise of power. The rich believe they’re rich because they are superior beings, smarter, more determined, harder working, and they love to remind you of this. Who knows, maybe they’re right. My capacity to fuck around and accomplish absolutely nothing is unparalleled. It’s a Gen X trait, purely demographic. You are so cute when you smile. So yeah, it was a busy day. But despite this thing I had to do for this other organization, I still had to do my own job, lest I arouse suspicion. Around a quarter to two, I couldn’t take it anymore, I had to take a smoke break. While Toni was bitching out someone else, I took advantage and made for the Pit out back, near the loading docks, the place where everyone lights up. It was the usual suspects out there, a couple of guys from Receiving, and Edwin, this dude from Engineering, and of course my buddy Ramen. Ramen’s a cool guy, young guy, nice looking, wavy black hair, he’s a bellman, he works in Courtesy, which is ironic given that he’s the least courteous guy I’ve ever known. He has a tattoo on his arm that says ils mangeront les riches, I saw it once at drinks after work. So I hang out with Ramen, he lights my cigarette, but I’m too agitated to engage, you know? Not that he’s engaging with me, either, but still. We just sort of stand there, drifting out to sea on our little patches of ice, until finally he says, “No animal has more liberty than the cat; but it buries the mess it makes,” which of course I recognize as a line from For Whom the Bell Tolls, so I reply, “The cat is the best anarchist,” this little call and response, for which he gives me this big bright smile and grabs my head and kisses me on the bridge of my nose and says, “You’re the only thing that made this trash job even a little bit bearable,” and then he snatches up his Zippo and leaves. And like a minute later, the Engineering dude, Edwin, he sidles up to me and is like, “Check it out.” And immediately I’m in alert mode thinking, Shit, is this guy going to show me his dick? So I look over, fucking obediently — the things women do to protect ourselves from violence — hoping to dispel whatever situation this is, only to find that he’s holding a bag of coke in his hand. “Are you in the mood?” he says. And I’m like, “Yeah, I’m in the mood, let’s go.” So I take him to cold storage, where I know there will be neither people nor security cams. We do a couple lines, why not? We’re not hurting anyone. Afterward he’s like, “I’ve always really dug you, do you want to mess around?” And I’m like, fuck it, you know, he gave me his coke, nothing is for free. So we mess around a bit. No penetration, if that’s what you’re worried about, it was just the human connection, you know? Anyway, whatever we did or didn’t do, and believe me, we didn’t do anything of any importance, time passed. And at some point I realized this, and I was like, “What time is it?” And Edwin checked his watch, and it turned out it was two-fucking-thirty — I had like fifteen minutes to collect all my shit and make it to the seventh floor.
And so I gathered myself up, went straight downstairs, waited for Toni to go into the kitchen, and stole a trolley, and there’s one thing I forgot to mention. There was something else I had to pick up, other than the service cart.
—What’s that?
—A giant thing of chutney. You’re shaking your head.
—What’s chutney?
—You’ve never had chutney? It’s like a condiment. You spoon it onto meat, commonly, and for whatever reason, I was supposed to retrieve some. So after stealing the trolley from Toni, I went straight back to the elevator and down to cold storage hoping I could be in and out, no one else would be there, no complications, time was of the essence. And opened the door — and of course, who was there but Emiko, my co-worker. She was standing at one of the shelving units, making ticks on a clipboard. She gave me a cursory look, saw it was just me, turned back to her inventory.
“Hello, Kathy,” she said. Her voice was a monotone.
“Oh hey,” I said, “hello, hello.”
Purposefully misreading her tone, you know? She kept her back turned. She wanted me to know she was annoyed. So I used this to my advantage and made haste for the back shelves, where we keep all the condiments. It’s like a little grocery store in there. Row after row of harissa and sriracha and fucking duck sauce and whole-grain mustard. I went to the farthest corner and rooted around. On the bottom shelf, at the very back by the wall, was a sealed plastic jar labelled chutney. This was weird; there was like half a wall of chutney behind me, but here was this one orphan jar, hidden away, undisturbed, like some pre-Columbian artifact. On its lid was a purple stamp that said Copenhagen. Danish chutney, who knew? I pulled it out. It was dusty. God knows how long it had been there, waiting for me. And how did it get there, I wonder? These people I work for, did they have someone in Receiving? Or did it go further back than that? The delivery guy? Someone in the chutney plant? I picked up the jar, something rattled around inside.
Dude, I couldn’t help myself; I had to find out what it was. So I looked around to make sure Emiko was otherwise engaged, then twisted off the lid, and peered inside, and saw a large glass vial rolling across the bottom of the jar. For a brief moment I considered reaching in, opening it, but time constraints prevented further investigation. I screwed the lid back shut and put it on the trolley, and when I looked up I nearly pissed my pants because there was Emiko, standing at the end of the shelves, watching me. She asked me what I was doing. I told her I was grabbing some chutney. “Might I ask why?” she said. I told her that Colin needed it. “You’re picking up inventory for Colin now?” I mumbled something in response, I forget what. “I’m going to talk to Toni about this,” she said. “This is not part of the workflow.” I said that I was just doing him a favour. “That’s not your job,” she said. “He shouldn’t be asking you to do that.” I looked at my watch. I had seven minutes to get to the seventh floor.
“I think we need to have a conversation,” Emiko said. “What happened this morning, showing up late when you knew there was a breakfast banquet, it was an imposition. I have my own job to do. I shouldn’t have to cover for you.”
“You’re right,” I said, desperate to get rid of her. “I’m so sorry, you’re so right, why don’t I meet you upstairs in, like, ten minutes, and we’ll talk about it?”
The room smelled like frozen blood. All those dead quails lying in state. All the chicken breasts and tenderloins and pork bungs piled like relics in the freezers. All that trichinosis and spongiform encephalopathy. All that death. There is a structure in place, my young dude, here in the West, meant to abstract us from the reality of things. Supply chains, public relations, layer after layer of mediation. Abstract, distract, validate, and comfort. There is weird shit afoot. Lab-grown organoids, humans fused with plants, it’s all out there, man, there are no restraints on the beaker-and-Bunsen-burner goons, the biotech loonies, the agrotechnology overlords. We don’t even think to resist, because the thing we’d be resisting is so overwhelming and seemingly eternal. T’was ever thus, and ever thus shall be. But we don’t have to take this, we can resist in our own little ways, you know? Anyway, my demeanour must have been sufficiently abject, because Emiko gave me a half-hearted smile and agreed to meet later.
“Great,” I said, “ten minutes?”
And booted out of there and into the elevator and pressed the button for seven. Except that I’d only made it to mezzanine level when the elevator stopped. Of course, right? Naturally. Whenever you really need to be somewhere, right? This is my luck. The doors opened. And I found myself staring at this elderly couple. They looked lost, wide-eyed, turning to me for some sort of answer. “Miss,” the man said, “we have been treated shabbily by a member of your staff.” “Oh, I’m so sorry to hear that,” I said, “have you talked to our general manager? He’d be the one to talk to.” The man shook his head as though he were shaking off the whole idea of it. He was wearing a pink pocket square in a yacht club blazer. “She was a short lady,” he said. He levelled his hand mid-chest, indicating height. “She was very rude to us.” “I’m so sorry,” I said, “I’m afraid I can’t help you.” I looked at my watch. I had two minutes to be where I needed to be. The old guy shook his head again and said, “Unacceptable. I demand,” he said, “I demand that someone in this godforsaken hotel acknowledge our concerns.” I just snorted. I’d had enough. “Why don’t you just fuck off,” I said, and hit the button that closes the doors.
“The consoling proximity of millionaires,” Fitzgerald called it. You wouldn’t believe the shit I’ve had to put up with in this job. The entitlement, the disregard. And not to go on about this, but the other day. Not the other day. Like, last month. I was watching this movie by Slavoj Žižek [Note to office: check spelling/source DVD], The Pervert’s Guide to Ideology, it’s called. Žižek is this pop philosopher, and this movie is mostly just him talking about one thing or another over scenes from movies. At one point he’s talking about the London Riots, the other London, the one in England, about how all the British kids, down and out, had spent their lives being taught to desire things — running shoes, high-definition TVs, iPads, and PlayStations — but denied the means with which to satisfy these desires. Jobless or underemployed, on welfare. And how you can’t put that kind of strain on a whole fucking class of people; something’s got to give. They’re going to explode. And how the riots, the arson and the looting and the smashy-smash, was not only predictable, but totally natural. They’ve been fed this steady diet of consumer-ist ideology, although they didn’t actually swallow it, it swallowed them. And it felt like, you know, sitting there, watching this movie, shovelling my face full of genetically modified corn chips, that for just one moment I could think outside the things I’d been taught to think all my life, like that song by the Silver Jews, the meaning, the world. I remember the Wittgenstein: “If something has value or meaning, that value or meaning must lie outside the world.” This crazy liberation, thinking outside the language in which we frame our thoughts, and it occurred to me that night that I really did have it in me. The power to resist. And it reoccurred to me this afternoon, in the elevator, as it stopped on the third floor, and then on the fourth, and then on the fifth, and then on the sixth.
My hands were white-knuckling the service cart handle. Whose effing hands were these? Awful, middle-aged hands, veiny and dry and cross-hatched with little pink claw marks, which of course was Courtney’s work; he hates to be manhandled, but I always do it anyway. He’s such a willful little guy. I’m an overwhelming force, but it’s never stopped him from struggling.
I don’t know. Maybe it was this, the thought of Courtney’s struggles, that lit the fuse for my next thought: I don’t have to do this. My entire life I’ve committed to nothing, I’ve never finished anything, never played a sport, never kept a guy around longer than three months, so why suddenly commit to this? Why do as I’ve been told like some good little girl? I didn’t even know if this thing I was supposed to do, if it was a good thing or a bad thing. I was just doing it because they told me to do it, and it had required little of me until today, and it was a cool thing to roll around in my brain, like, I’m a motherfucking sleeper agent. When Toni treated me like shit, when my sister said something unkind, when some guy at a bar rolled his eyes at my proposition, it’s okay, why should I care? I’m a sleeper agent and they’re not. It was this fun little secret I had, a little shot of morphine to make the pain go away.
On the sixth floor, I looked at my watch. I had fifteen seconds to get there. I hit the button that closes the doors. Fourteen, thirteen, twelve, eleven, ten, nine, eight, seven … ding ding, doors open. I pushed my service cart into the seventh floor hallway.
A moment later, not even that, the elevator next to it chimed, and the doors slid open. Inside were two people, a bellman I didn’t recognize, and behind him … my god, was it fucking really? It took me a minute to understand what I was seeing. It was! It was my buddy Ramen, the bellman with the anarchy tattoo, I swear to you, except it took a second to register this fact, so weird was the scene. It’s Ramen, but he doesn’t have his uniform on; he’s dressed in a pinstripe suit, looking like a hedgefund manager with perforated earlobes. The expression on his face, I can’t even describe. As if I’ve caught him jerking off. He’s gawking at me, his eyes, my god, it’s like he’s trying to psychically impart something. The bellman I don’t recognize reaches forward and grabs the service cart, which slips from my hands like it’s buttered, and I just stand there, staring at Ramen staring at me, until the doors slide shut and they’re gone. And now I’m just staring at my own reflection in the polished chrome of the doors. I look like an outpatient, my mouth hanging open like I’ve just seen the ghost of David Bowie. My hair has pulled from my bun; it’s hovering over my head like the snakes of Medusa. My armpits are sopping, my ass crack is slick with nervous sweat. I’m telling you, I’m never on time for anything, but I made it, dude, I made it. Against all the forces of my nature, I got there on time. And I realize things didn’t go as the organization planned, somewhere along the line something got screwed up, but it wasn’t me.
I was thinking about this whole scene afterward, on the train to the airport. The organization, they wanted me to get on a plane and fly to some other place, and I almost did exactly that. I even got as far as the terminal. They’d warned us in training, flat out, that a failure to follow instructions would be bad for us, in ways they didn’t specify. But they’re not gods, and they can’t hurt me if they can’t find me. I should be someplace very different right now, someplace warm, I expect. Except that I happened to look down at my hands. Sitting in the Departures area of Terminal One, I looked down at my stupid old cat-scratched hands and thought, You don’t have to do this, Kathy. I’d dropped shrooms on the express train to the airport, and it seemed they were now kicking in. The scratches on my hands squiggled and squirmed and morphed into Courtney’s parting words, his final gift to me. They throbbed his message into my brain. Discover a second face hidden behind the one you see. That was the message he’d written on my hands. It was just like him to quote Kierkegaard. I got up and wandered around the terminal, thinking about what he might have meant. I went to the washroom. I strolled over to the place where you buy chips and magazines. Then I just kept on walking, right on out of Terminal One. I had no plan to speak of, I just knew I had to obey Courtney. Discover a second face hidden behind the one you see. I walked and walked, through all these places you’re not supposed to walk, highway shoulders, the bleakest stretches of this assaultively ugly city, to a space that was once the gently swaying crops of the Mississauga nation and is now this irradiated exclusion zone, this ecstasy of free parking and conspicuous consumption, pockmarked with Costcos and craft supply supercentres and comically awful fake Irish pubs. Fifty metres to your right you can snarf down a five-dollar footlong while shopping for bidet attachments. Discover a second face hidden behind the one you see. I can’t really tell you the details, but something went wrong with the thing that I was involved in. And whatever it was that went wrong? I have a pretty good idea it was because someone inside that chain of events decided to resist. Someone they recruited actually believes in something, I just know it. I wish I could say it was me, but it isn’t. Resistance takes certainty, and I have none. Which makes me, I daresay, an option on a cold Monday night in March. I’m ridiculous, but at least I know it, right? This fake fucking pub, what are we even doing in this place? I want to get out of here. That SUV outside, the big white one, that’s yours? I was watching when you parked. It looks nice and roomy, plenty of space to stretch out. Do you want to get out of here?
You’re smiling, you’re not saying no. Amazing. Let’s settle up. I’m buying. No, no, no, put that away, seriously, this is on me.