Later now, back home, and you and Henry are walking familiar sidewalks that will lead to the park where you so often gather. You pass a building you used to rent in. You lived there for a while in a basement apartment you shared with a bunch of different people, something like eleven roommates in three years. What a place. Long, like a submarine, and dark like one too. A window at the front, a window at the back. That was it. You used to come outside and sit on the steps all the time, just to get some daylight. Try to talk to chicks. Say hello to people you knew. With stores nearby, there was often a steady stream of pedestrian traffic. A lot of females. And if you counted the number of girls you managed to lure down those steps into that apartment over the years, if you counted them all, including the girls that happened to walk by and the ones that already lived in the building, if you counted every chick, daytime and nighttime, and then rounded it off to the nearest five, you’d get, um, zero.
“Remember that place?” you ask Henry, gesture over.
He picks his head up, looks over. Thinks. “Oh, sure,” he says.
“That place had rats,” you say. “Big rats that used to run through the apartment at night.”
“I know.”
“I know you know. Whenever I walk here I think of them.”
Henry drops his head back down, staring at the sidewalk going by beneath his feet. “It’s a good thing you moved.”
“They used to scare the cat to death, those rats. I mean, which you can understand, but still. He was so useless. He used to sleep on top of the fridge. Eventually we made a bed for him up there. What a nervous cat.”
“You needed a dog.”
“I don’t think a dog would’ve helped.”
“Well, they’re bigger.”
“Rats are vicious, my friend.”
“Dogs are vicious.”
“Dogs are big. Rats are vicious.”
“Oh, no. Dogs can be very vicious.”
“Sorry, but I believe you’re confusing them with rats.”
Henry says, “I got bit once by a dog.”
“I remember,” you say. You think, So what?
“I’ve got a big scar.”
“I’ve seen your scar.”
“It’s a good scar,” he says, worried you’ve never been impressed with his scar.
“It’s a terrific scar.”
“Fuck you. It hurts when you get bit. More than you think.”
“No dog’s going to kill a rat. A dog runs away every time.”
“You can’t be sure.”
“We had rats tough enough to rip any dog to shreds.”
“I don’t see how you can be so sure.”
You’re watching him now. Closely. The funny pattern of his steps. The uneven gait. You realize that he’s concentrating, measuring his strides. He’s trying not to step on a crack. Henry doesn’t want to break his mother’s back.
Yeesh.
“Anyways, that’s not why I moved,” you say. “It was a good place.
I don’t know why I moved. I just moved. I wanted to change. There were all these arguments after a while.”
“What you wanted,” Henry says, “was a snake. You have a snake, you don’t have a rat problem.”
“No, you have a snake problem.”
“A pet snake.”
You’re trying not to pay attention to the way he’s walking. It’s not working. You feel like yelling at him. Or hurling him forward so that his whole face steps on a crack.
“Who’s going to keep a snake for a pet?” you say. “Besides you, I mean.”
This pre-empts him. He can’t say “I would,” which is what he wants to say. That he’d gladly have one. Because he’s such a wild man. So unpredictable, so living on the edge. He’s into cultivating this If Everyone Thinks I’m A Bit Crazy, Maybe I Am sort of aura around himself lately. Going with the flow, trying to milk it for something. Danger Boy.
“Well, if you’ve already got rats running through the place,” he says, “I don’t see what you have to lose.”
“What does that mean? So you let a snake loose at night? Think for two seconds.”
“I’ve been bitten by a snake too. A bunch of times. Paul Berubé had snakes. In a cage that took up half his bedroom.”
You sigh. What kind of answer is that? What kind of conversation is this?
“We called exterminators,” you inform him. “Professionals. That’s what normal people do.”
“I see.”
You walk in silence again. His gaze settles back down on the ground. The sidewalk rolls by. You suddenly realize now you’re trying not to step on the cracks. Goddamned Henry. You stop. See that you’re in front of the Korean place. You go inside and buy cigarettes.
When you come out, you continue along with Henry. There’s an intersection with lights up ahead. You walk towards it.
“Did it work?” Henry wants to know.
“What?” you say. But you know what he’s talking about. You’ve been waiting for him to ask, the suck.
“The exterminators.”
“Oh,” you say. “No.”
“No?”
“No, it was worse. After they left we could’ve sworn there were more rats.”
“Really?”
“Oh yeah.”
“Well, what did the exterminator say?”
The light changes, you cross.
“He told us to get a snake.”
You give him a shove, laughing. He pushes your arm away angrily. You don’t care. Man, you’re funny.
You’ve known Henry a lot of years. Johnny too. Honey, a few less. Henry’s father was a prison guard at Bordeaux who was strangled to death during a riot when Henry was fourteen. Strangled to death. Which inmate actually did it, they never even found out. Henry says that one day he went home for supper and the phone rang and his mother answered and just like that his father was dead. He says the phone rang many more times that night but his mother wouldn’t let them pick it up. He says they ate in front of the TV watching the same news again and again and that he remembers his mother letting him drink beer in the living room with her, and that he’d never had more than one beer at once before that night. He says he caught a huge buzz. He says that he liked the feeling, and it was secretly thrilling to drink one beer then another, waiting for his mother to tell him to stop. He says that he remembers thinking the whole time about how everyone at school must be seeing his father’s picture on the news and that his father dying on TV seemed very humiliating. He says he got giggly after a while and had to go into the bathroom and laugh into the towels. He says that it’s a shameful way to remember your first drunk. He says they fell asleep on the couches.
And he says that in the morning the newspapers and radio recounted the story of the riot at the prison that raged six hours until it was brought under control but not before two guards and four prisoners were killed and an inquiry was going to be held and they said how they’re going to get to the bottom of it damn quickly and How did so many inmates have so many weapons anyway? and it raises a number of questions about what’s going on in our prison systems, we may just have to “overhaul the whole damn thing” by the time this thing is over.
And by the time the whole thing was over, and everything began to be just a little less fresh in everyone’s mind and other atrocities began making newer news, and friends and strangers had settled back into their own lives, Henry saw the world return to how it had been before, but of course his didn’t.
And that, he said, was a strange sensation. As though every problem he’d had in his life up until then had been so ridiculously petty and temporary and now here was something that was permanent. And you asked him — like a jerk — if he thought he became a man that day and he said no, he just felt as if he was no longer a boy.
Henry was never the same again, of course. No siree, Bob. Never ever. To be the same, he would tell you later, his father would have to be living. Which he clearly wasn’t, seeing as an animal had choked every last breath out of his fucking lungs. Crushed his windpipe. And whipped him with his own belt. He would recite this at every opportunity. Which pretty much made it clear where Henry stood on the subject.
Henry didn’t want to be the same again and he couldn’t give two shits what any of you thought about it. And then it wasn’t long before none of you were really seeing much of Henry anymore anyway. By the time he was twenty he’d surface only in the most obscene, obnoxious moments, all stupid and dopey, usually with these freaks he got to know, bizarre behaviour that drove everyone crazy. On and on like this for literally years until he sort of blew out all of his brain cells at once, collapsing finally in a taxi outside his mother’s house and getting dragged out and dumped on her porch by the driver, taken in by her and not really let out again for what amounted, incredibly, to two years.
And when he did come back out to play, he came back changed. Once again. This time to the person you meet today, give or take. Twenty-nine years old and sad and apologetic and lost and out of touch with even the simplest of tasks much of the time, another drug casualty left behind to live with his mother. The poor man’s Syd Barrett. Few friends, hardly ever a girlfriend. A nothing job. A beaten man. Shine on you dull diamond.
And the thing is, people forget what happened to you in life. Eventually they just shrug at your hardships and dismiss your bad luck, they’ve had their own. People expect you to move on. They want you to put it behind you. People have their own problems, Henry. It doesn’t matter what was unfair or what could’ve been, you’re the only one counting those chits now. If you act stupidly long enough, people come to think of you as stupid. And if you behave weirdly for long enough, they think of you as weird. And that’s how you end up a stupid fucking weirdo. That’s how it works. People don’t set out to be losers. It happens when you’re not paying close enough attention. Your father’s dying is just a footnote now.
And so that’s Henry’s thing. Everybody has a thing. Henry’s is that he’s the guy whose father got strangled in that prison riot years ago. Or, if you knew him a little better, Henry’s the guy who was never the same after his father died. Or, to others still, Henry’s just the guy who blew his head out on tequila and acid and coke and mushrooms. It’s all pretty much the same.
You glance over at him now. Study the perennially bewildered look on his face. Doe-eyed, defensive. Caught in the headlights, like Honey always says. You, Johnny, Honey, Cuz, Aaron, and Mo. That’s pretty well his whole galaxy right there.
By now you’re almost at the park, about to turn in, but a strange scene has been forming and it seems now to be asking you to watch it. It’s different people — too many people, strange for this time of day — suddenly in the street, spilling out onto the street from out of the park, out of stores, out of cars. Even the traffic has paused, you notice. You pause too. This catches Henry by surprise and he stutters to an awkward stop beside you, stumbling to control his footing, his mother’s spinal column briefly in jeopardy.
You see that a mob has created itself, though it doesn’t seem to know why. Everyone is straining to see, pushing forward to get a better look, a slow-motion surge of curious faces and craned necks, gathered together, slowly pressing forward. There’s a Blockbuster on the next corner and it’s as though that’s where everyone is aiming. Fifty, sixty bodies have collected. Someone, a man’s voice, is shouting.
Beside you, people are walking more quickly now, shouldering themselves past you and up to the next set of dawdlers then thrusting their way through them. You look over at Henry, who’s looking at you.
“What’s happening?” you ask him, wading cautiously in towards the herd.
“I don’t know,” he says, following. He looks around him, his trademark squint appearing. Unlike you, Henry is short and thick and there is nothing for him to see.
You press your toes into the tips of your boots, arch yourself to greater height. This vantage point gives you a fuller sense of the commotion but you can see only that the eye of the storm is agitating, growing.
A freak with blue hair and three rings through his nose abruptly emerges from out of the bodies in front of you, elbowing his way against the flow.
“There’s something going on up there,” he says to the both of you.
“Whoah!” Henry says excitedly.
“What is it?” You raise your voice as he disappears. “What’s going on?”
“I don’t know,” he calls back. “But it’s been like this for like twenty minutes.”
“Twenty minutes!” Henry is impressed.
You survey the scene for several seconds and when you turn back the guy is gone.
Henry says to you, “We have to find out why.”
“What for?”
“Everyone’s wondering.”
You’re inclined to leave. “Forget it.”
“No, we have to.”
“Why, what do you think is happening?”
Henry’s eyes shine. “Something!”
So together you press ahead, mingling, looking for avenues of advancement, until finally you are forced to veer left, away from Henry, then cut between several parked cars to reach the other sidewalk. You continue along the outside for a bit and then begin angling back in towards the front of the flock, squeezing between couples, almost stepping over several kids, feinting past the elderly, manoeuvring yourself through increasingly small openings. For five minutes you’re the skinniest, most devious halfback the NFL has ever produced. Eventually you get up far enough that you can sense whatever everyone’s trying to see is just ahead, but the wall of bodies has become too great and there is nowhere left to move.
“What’s happening?” you say to a guy next to you. He has only two nose rings and bleached blond hair. A conservative.
“There’s a naked chick walking around,” he says. “In front of Blockbuster.”
You lift up on tiptoe once again, peering above the sea of heads. “Really?”
“Totally naked.”
You pan left, right. Notice nothing. Every woman within your field of vision is, sadly, clothed.
“Why?” you ask him.
He turns to you like you’re from outer space. Like this is the strangest question he’s ever been asked. “Why?” he repeats.
“Yeah, why?”
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t mean anything. I just want to know why.”
“Does it matter?”
“I’m not sure.”
“Then why do you want to know?”
“Why not?”
“What do you mean?”
Sweet Jesus. If you needed a conversation like this you could’ve just stuck with Henry.
“I’m just wondering why a chick’s walking around naked, that’s all.”
He stares at you a while more. A bit thick, this one.
“Why is she naked?” he asks finally, eyeing you like maybe you’re a homo. “Or why is she walking around?”
“I don’t know,” you say, losing interest. “You choose.”
Suddenly everyone takes a single, simultaneous step backwards. It catches you by surprise. You teeter helplessly for an instant, rocking back against some poor twit behind you. A voice from up ahead shrieks something unintelligible. The same voice as before. Another massive recoil follows. You’re having trouble keeping your balance. You take two steps sideways, crushing your pal’s feet. He shoves you off him. Not far from you a woman stumbles, bringing several others down around her. Which causes a larger ripple in the crowd as people sway unsteadily.
And at that instant a sudden glimpse of flesh winks at you from an opening more than thirty feet away. Just the slightest wink of pink. But you see it. A tantalizing rosy sliver of what can only be naked female derma. As a guy, you immediately know this. You’re immediately excited. Even though you don’t know what it is you’ve just seen — it could’ve been her arm — that glorious wisp of pink has spoken to you. And eighty other people, apparently. The crowd surges forward now with renewed will. You get tangled up with a pair of teenagers in front of you. You look up, spot her again. Red hair. Short. A bit stocky. Not naked actually, wearing boots. Walking quickly. You see all of this in maybe two seconds.
For some reason the mob suddenly parts. People go left, others go right. Once again you can’t see anything. You choose right. Your group tramples up onto the sidewalk, past Blockbuster, past Pizza Hut, and then around the corner. You keep your arms flexed and away from your body, protecting your ribs from the errant elbows and shoulder blades of shorter people, namely everyone. A pretty girl falls into step with you. There is more shouting now, more than before.
Somehow the notion of a woman walking through a crowded street without a strand of clothing on — except boots — breasts free, maybe gently swaying from side to side, full, heavy breasts, your mind is starting to go a little wacky by now, her pubic hair just out there like that, curled and crawling up against her inner thighs, everybody looking at it, pubic hair, just the words excite you, you’re a bit of a freak that way, you’ll be reading a book or a magazine and if pubic hair or nipple or penis is written on the page your eyes will dart down to find it, seek it out paragraphs early, you wonder sometimes if there’s isn’t something a little wrong with you, how the simple notion of a wandering nymph gets you all frothy like this. But then the girl beside you is pretty intent on getting a glimpse of her too, and so are a bunch of old ladies and kids and other guys too, so what’re you, all sickos?
And then you notice a camera, on top of one of the buildings. And another camera, on top of another building. Cameramen. Recording. You crane your neck up and see a big fat light arcing down from atop yet another building. And you get it. They’re shooting this.
Your group has closed in on the girl now, coming up behind her. The other part of the mob is coming towards her, head-on. She breaks into a run, dashes across Sherbrooke towards the park. Everyone follows. You notice now a third guy with a camera at street level, and another guy with a microphone at the end of a pole. They run after her too, equipment swinging wildly from side to side, cables and cords jangling in time with her chubby, bouncing ass, alternately recording her escape and the crowd’s moronic frenzy.