Dad’s saying: “To your corners!”
I reach into Dylan’s mouth. Strings of mucousthickened drool snap as I pull the mouthpiece out. Vacant-eyed — belted into that groggy space where nothing’s fully solidified — he blinks as a berry swells under his left eye. His gloved hands reach at his shorts as if he thinks he’s bare-assed and needs to hike them up. I cradle my hands under his bum. Pick him up.
In the changeroom I tug his gloves off. Mulligan comes in to apologize. Genuinely surprised and regretful. He asks is Dylan okay. My son smiles. A sheen of blood on his teeth.
“I’m sorry,” Dylan tells me.
“You didn’t do anything.”
That berry under his eye: you’d think an insect laid eggs. A red ring round his neck where the cape string’s choked him. Dylan looks at his hands with the most pitiable expression. Not a fighter, my boy. But he seems aware of it, too, a failure that pains him. He thinks I give a damn. He opens his arms to me and I sense he’s terrified I won’t hug him back.
“I’m sorry.”
“Dill, please. What is it you think you’ve done?”
On the way home I stop at Mac’s Milk to buy him an ice-cream sandwich. When I get back he’s flipping through a book I’d tossed in the back seat. Over-and-Out Parenting, by Dr. Dave Schneider. “Gobbledegook,” I tell him. He’s eating Nerds.
“Where’d you get those?”
“The stocker.”
“Night stalker?”
“The machine stocker.”
Machine Stalker. Robo-stalker. Presumably bought with the five dollar bills Abby stitches into his trousers. He traces the ice-cream sandwich to his lumpy eye.
“In class we watched this movie about war.”
“What war?”
“The one where everything’s blown up,” he says. “And like, the world gives us everything we need to blow it up. The steel to make planes is dug out of whaddayacall…?”
“Mines.”
“Like, the stuff that’s inside is the stuff blowing it up.” He points to his belly. “What if tiny-tiny aliens landed here—”
“You mean Phantoids?”
“Phantoids are peaceful, Dad… and so they hate each other and so get into a humongous war? Dig mines into my stomach. Make planes out of my bones and so, the gas is my blood? Mix the juices and the, uh, so, other stuff on my skin to make bombs? Everything they need to kill each other is on me.”
He rips the waxed wrapper in neat ribbons. He’s fallen into an obsessive habit of taking things apart. Pocket calculators, stereo remotes: anything with diodes, springs, cogs. He asked for a set of jeweller’s screwdrivers to facilitate his deconstructions. I’d bought him a decent Timex for Christmas: he used the screwdrivers to gut it. Endstage methamphetamine addicts take gadgets apart with no intention of putting them back together. It accelerates or accentuates their grotty highs. I’m scared my son is exhibiting meth-head behaviours.
I say: “There’s a drawing class at the Learning Annex.”
“I like drawing.”
“That’s why I said it, buddy. Maybe that’s a little more your speed than boxing.”
“So… if you want.”
“Not what I want. What you want.”
“Is it?”
“You tell me.”
“Okay, it is.”
The naked girl on stage has jet-black hair fitted precisely to the plates of bone composing her skull. Playmobil hair — clip it on and off.
I hate strip clubs. Truly, they leave me griefstricken. They cater to a pitiful male hopefulness. For the young guys, the hope of sucking tit in the champagne lounge. Older guys, the hope a girl might drop her defences to tell him her real name. Not Puma: Trudy. Not Raven: Paula.
The black card holder’s name is Starling. Wide, lashless eyes set far apart on his head give him the look of a trout. As the girl on stage performs a deadeyed gymnastic manoeuvre, spine bent like the Arc de Triomphe, he tells me he’d recently bought a Japanese dog. While we’re talking, a guy I find familiar walks past. Long hair up in a ponytail. Jacket with Brink Of embroidered on it.
“Colin,” I say. “Colin Hill. Hey!”
He smiles, a celebrity posing for paparazzi. “Man, aren’t you…”
“Nick Saberhagen. From Sarah Court.”
“Riiiiight.”
He’s here with his father, Wesley, and some kid with dreadlocks. Colin tells us he’s going over the Falls tomorrow morning. I recall reading something in the Pennysaver. I tell him I’ll be there. And my son. Starling tells a bizarre story about a shark that plunges a dagger into all further conversation. Next he’s saying we’ve got to leave.
Our cab glides down Bunting to Queenston. Tufford Manor and the cemetery where Conway Finnegan’s father lies, on over the liftlocks. QEW to the Parkway to River Road running along bluffs of the Niagara. In the basin puntboats — smugglers, jacklighters — run the channel with kerosene lamps bolted to their prows. The smell of baked wheat from the Nabisco factory. We pass the hydroelectric plant. Static electricity skates along my teeth to find the iron fillings and touch off fireworks in my gums.
“I imagine,” says Starling, “a fair number drown.”
“In this river? It happens.”
“Most common cause of brain damage is oxygen deprivation, Nicholas.” I hate that he calls me that, but his membership fee entitles him to call me “dickface,” if it so pleases him. “Most common cause of oxygen deprivation is water trauma. A man of average intelligence deprived three and a half minutes — he’ll end up with the brain capacity of a colobus monkey. Up to four minutes, a springer spaniel. Truth is, the humans whose company I enjoy most are those most like animals. I spent time in a brain injury ward. One boy suffered massive cerebral hemorrhages due to his mother’s narrow birth chute. The most beautiful, open smile. He experienced more moments of pure joy in one day than I’ll lay claim to in a lifetime. Most of us would be better off having our heads held underwater a couple minutes. Ever see an unhappy dog, Nicholas?”
“No, sir. Not for very long, anyway.”
The taxi pulls into a warehouse. Security spots throw light at odd angles. Starling leads me down a domed hallway. A man sits on a wooden chair beside a door.
“Donald Kerr, you old scallywag.”
“No names. I said no—”
“What shall he write on the cheque?” Starling asks, indicating me. “Wal-Mart bagman?”
Donald’s got a narrow chicken face. Easy to picture him sitting on a clutch of eggs. A flatteringly tailored suit cannot disguise a physique shapeless as a pile of Goodwill parkas. One hand is cocked high on his second rib: a prissy, girlish posture.
He leads us into the warehouse, which is empty save the object in the centre lit by a suspended bulb. It’s one of those trick boxes stage magicians make water escapes from. Designs carved into base and sides. A softball-shaped something sits inside. Starling leaves Donald and I to examine the box.
“What’s in the box?”
“A demon,” Donald tells me.
“Come on.”
“You asked, chum.”
“So it’s a demon.”
“Another guy, my associate, arranged it with your client. He wants to believe it is, okay, I say let him. It’s whatever he wants it to be. It’s his.”
“I’m asking you. This other guy, associate of yours, was drunk when he said it.”
“When I inherited it he wasn’t in any real position to say.”
“Inherited?”
“Something like that you don’t have to steal.”
“Doesn’t look like a demon.”
“What’s a demon look like?” Donald Kerr’s chin juts at an aggressive angle. “Could be something dredged up from the bottom of the sea nobody’s ever laid eyes on. Not my place to know or not know.”