Journey, page 11
The erudite GM bends over; he seeks the ear of the frowning coach. The GM straightens, walks to talk with the worried head scout, then puts glasses on the end of his nose, peers over some papers. A weird delay of some kind, a plot complication at the meat market. Just past the media tables I can see the cackling old owner who was jailed for fraud and mob connections, for taking the Fifth, for taking the assets, for chortling. Well, no-one figured he was a choirboy.
They’ll take ad-man, says one customer.
No, they need a centre. Definitely a centre, says another.
The GM at the mike finally mouths the name of the anointed, the chosen. A goalie! Takes a goalie! They have goalies in the system. They have goalies coming out the yin yang. Trade bait, but who? Trade the young guy? The backup goalie? Trade the older goalie, the former cokehead?
They screwed up, someone in the bar says. They screwed up. He says this four times in a row.
They’ve been tricked. They traded up to get the franchise bruiser they wanted; they made a deal, and all parties agreed to square dance, to give and take. They agreed what bodies would be available when they got to the microphone but at the last second another team, a team without scruples, traded draft choices and future considerations, snatching the franchise bruiser out from under their red noses. Stole from them. Their property.
We’ve been snookered, states the GM, we’ve been submarined. The GM’s Byzantine manoeuvres and agreements are useless. I traded up for nothing, he thinks, all that trouble for another goalie. The troubled scout tears the bruiser’s name off their jersey, his sweater waiting at their table. How sure they were. They don’t have my name on a jersey. They have different tables for each team, like it’s the United Nations, like it’s the fate of the free world. Then there are prickly-pear and sea lions, sooty terns and albatrosses and California sea lions dripping in the sun on the colour TV. Another highly illogical car commercial that seems to be flogging some product other than cars. What exactly is it they are hawking? Vermilion and sienna sunsets? Oceanfront? Does it work? Do these ads actually move their lipstick-colour cars to the tire-kickers and lot lizards and lay downs and strokers?
* * *
—
Insects crash at the screen, hearkening tragically into their multi-hued harbour. They want to eat the TV light, the only game in town. I keep studying the draft but Laszlo studies two women who seat themselves at the bar. The first woman keeps her sunglasses on inside. She is taller than me. I see her and think stature, presence. Her friend is shorter, with lighter hair and the small peaceful face of a follower.
The woman in the dark glasses inhales hugely, exhales: Well, we broke up. Went pretty well considering.
Woman #2: No sobbing?
Woman #1: A little. (She pauses.) Him. Not me.
Woman #2: Let’s go prowling!
Woman #1: No thanks.
Woman #2: Oh yeah. You’re in THAT phase. Wait two weeks and you’ll be crawling the walls.
Woman #1: No. I don’t think so.
I realize she has someone lusty waiting, someone already drafted, but she hasn’t told her friend. She broke it off with one guy to move to another. She possesses a five-year plan.
Woman #2 complains. My roommates are doing it all the time and I have to sit and listen. I mean I can’t help but hear it. I can’t afford my own place. And he has to end up with her. I had such a crush on him. It was supposed to be me. I had hopes. Now I’m going nuts. Why do I have such bad luck with guys I like?
They sip their drink specials.
Woman #1 says, This older guy took me to an Icelandic film festival. The movies were like, what the fuck!?
AHA! I think. An older guy is chosen.
* * *
—
For me the charm of hockey was always its lack of charm. It wasn’t hip. My agent says he’ll call me back. He’s busy with his “real” clients. I walk to the washroom and see a nickel gleaming at the bottom of the porcelain urinal. I do not pick it up. I look out at my nation. I have no nation. Okay—I have a wormwood nation.
* * *
—
Laszlo is talking to the two women: We’ll take my dad’s speedboat across. If you don’t have tackle we can get you some. Waterfront. On the water. Everyone said we paid too much. Local yokels laughing. Day later, $20,000 more. Who’s laughing now? Very rare find. Very rare. Nice beach. Arbutus and oak. Beautiful property. We’ll get some people. We’ll go up there. Road trip! Road trip!
Well now, isn’t waterfront always on the water? Woman #2 wonders.
What’s the catch? I wonder. Why does Laszlo have to cajole people to go to this Shangri-La?
Doesn’t it come stocked with beautiful people? The way they stock a fish farm? A fat farm?
I realize Laszlo is talking to a different bartender. Bartender #2.
Bob Hope, Laszlo exclaims. Bob Hope’s been there. We’d just fumigated so he wasn’t too happy. Log cabin, some bugs. Ants I guess. Cedar. Wouldn’t think so. Puzzling.
That loser shirt, Laszlo says, laughing at the bartender.
Hey sport. Hey pal. This is my brother’s shirt. My brother who died in an accident. A fatal accident.
Oh. Sorry.
Laszlo lights another smoke, looks around. On TV a GM slides right by a team’s table, a team he used to coach. He jumped ship. He doesn’t look and they don’t look at him. He found the loophole he needed to break his contract, to dance with another party, a party other than the one that “brung” him.
Bob Hope’s a card. Bob Hope says, Any chance of anything here? Something other than pinochle and Ovaltine? Nyuck. Know what I mean? Country girls, nice country girls.
He wanted some action. Horny old bugger. We caught a cod. Engine broke down, going slow, get a blueback, keeper, three-pounder, eat salmon that night. But I’d rather catch one big one. One big Chinook, a tyee, a king. Bob Hope bitching at me all day in that irritating voice. I’m looking for this ledge, I’m looking for this ledge with a depth finder. Jigged, buzz-bombed, mooched, nothing. Tried a new lure, a silver one I found in Dad’s tacklebox.
Now it’s Bartender #3 half-listening, a guy in a muscle shirt. I think the bartenders must take shifts with Laszlo, then go hide back in the cooler.
ZING! GOT IT! Laszlo mimics a fishing-rod and a sudden strike on the line. ZING!
He doesn’t finish the fishing story. He smokes non-stop. I have another Greyhound. Maybe they don’t draft players who punch their coaches. Maybe there’s a secret agreement, rules they don’t tell you about. I’m bitter (wormwood, wormwood). I’m starting to feel like saussurite, like schist, like stone.
A stoned voice bellows in the direction of the jukebox: “PLAY SOMETHING BY SOMEBODY…WHO KILLED THEMSELVES!”
This desire to be fucked up, and think it something special, or something to be attained. That’s rich. Ask my friend Ryan about dead guys. Ask a dead guy about getting fucked up. Ask if they’re really happy.
All my friends are lawyers, Laszlo says. And the women are incredible! They work so hard they don’t have time to meet anyone else. You want to meet great women hang out with lawyers.
Yeah. Like I really want to hang out with lawyers, Bartender #3 growls.
On TV the GM in the suit is helping the young hockey player pull on his new team sweater. It’s too intimate. There is some awkward tugging at clothes, then embarrassed smiles and camera flashes for the sports cards.
Who’s this clown they pick? Who’s this sack of hammers?
Some Swede faggot. A foreigner.
You on a team? Laszlo asks the muscled bartender.
Used to be. Same old used to be.
Now I recognize Bartender #3: a fantastically shifty forward with Tri-Cities. He had moves like a humpback salmon, and Pittsburgh was after him until he was submarined, blew out both knees big time. Good old Tom what’s-his-name. They said he’d never walk again. Huge writhing scars each side of his knees. Twins. A suicide pass. Skate into the middle and CRANG!, you flip over with a quicksilver crunching, then they carry you off, a sudden screeching pauper. Wheelbarrows of cash will alter anyone, but he’s been changed by the cash he never got, by what could have been that draft year. He could have been the one under the blinding television lights, the one getting offered a million seven. Instead. Well, instead he watches with me. Now Tom what’s-his-name is a major drunk with rehab muscles. I’m not as shifty, but at least my knees are okay. My knees are not too shabby. I cast a shadow, I get my back up, show up for every game. Buffalo could take me. The Jets. There’s that windy corner. The Sharks. This sounds like West Side Story.
* * *
—
I’m going to drive up there to the property tomorrow. Come on along. Pick up my cousin and bullshit. Deli grub, some Heineken. Greenies. You like Heineken? No? The airport and take the speedboat across.
Laszlo has told three different bartenders about the speedboat.
Laszlo asks, How does that bear joke go again? Let’s see. Bartender tells the bear he can’t serve him because he’s on drugs. This part. I can never remember. Drugs. What drugs. You help me, yeah. Oh, the barbiturate. The bar-bitch-you-ate! Ya ya. Ha ha. That’s a good one.
The two women do not share Laszlo’s love of the bear joke.
We’re lucky, you know, Laszlo says to the women, that place up island. Played our cards right. Cheap locals can go jump in a lake. If they knew anything they’d be somewhere else, right? Road goes around pretty little bay. Speedboat. No waiting. Catch a big one. No tackle, we’ll take care of you. Little general store not far. Good beef jerky. If we don’t have it, you don’t need it. That’s what they say on their sign. They don’t have it, you don’t need it. That’s their hick philosophy, their London School of Economics approach to local yokel marketing. Road goes around a nice little bay. See the smooth golden stones at the bottom. A beautiful place. We own it. It’s ours.
* * *
—
Lizard King Jim Morrison says hello. Jim Morrison says he loves me. Jim Morrison says he wants to know my name. The jukebox decides what to play. And the big screen shows the famous footage: Big surly Eric Lindros refuses the sweater. He stares off, dark mad eyes and curly hair. A thick neck, a bull. He’ll never sign with this team. Maybe they called his name but that doesn’t mean they own him, that doesn’t mean he’s their property. He refuses their blue uniform, their lovely stone city, their scheming owner. In this hexed process, this amateur hour crapshoot, here’s what I wish to know, to divine: who has the real power and who is the victim? That’s what I have to learn, even though I already know the truth.
Wait until Lindros is on the ice, the young man says to Bartender #4. He’ll pay. Someone’ll stick him good. Get his bad knee.
I say nothing. They shouldn’t talk like that. I’ve seen too many tom-up knees. Hurt!? Are you fucking kidding? Un-fucking-believable. Anterior cruciate; that’s the worst. It digs into my stomach just thinking of ruined knees.
Just how many bartenders are back there? Do they have a bartender pool? There are more bartenders than customers.
Everyone thinks Lindros is a greedy arrogant asshole, but meanwhile the team’s owner is mulling over juicy offers of $75 million U.S. for the franchise. The Quebec owner will sell in the night; the owner will hustle the team out of Canada with a tearful press conference. The owner will cry all the way to the bank. Who’s the greedy asshole then? What did our pal Peter Pocklington get for selling Gretzky to Los Angeles, for selling a person, a human being? $20 million? (For he is an honourable man.) Thanks for destroying the Oilers, Peter. And how much money does the crooked meat-packer owe the Alberta government right now? He’s in so deep they can’t touch his house of cards, his dead pigs and stuffed sausages and offal, his slit-throat palace over the river valley. So the players are greedy? The players are arrogant? Give me a break. Get real.
* * *
—
No one gives me a break. No one gets real. Instead they draft a dead guy. In fact, they draft Ryan, my friend from Salmon Arm. His last night on earth we were riding in what journalists would later refer to as the death car. I was passed out in the back seat. Ryan was in the passenger seat. Then I woke up in the ditch, in the rhubarb where the world was utterly different. Green water was pouring out of the upside-down radiator, burning me. The power pole was in three pieces, its line sparking. Ryan’s head rolled across the gravel road, his brain still sending messages, questions, trying to find out what’s wrong. I took off my wet shirt and hid my friend’s head. I was afraid to pick it up so I just covered it with my shirt. What would you do? The car looked like modern sculpture, the driver still curled inside it like a foetus. Not a scratch on me, though my teeth were chattering and my hair was steaming. My friend’s head: pebbles and dust stuck on it. And this brain of mine. Then some kind of gleaming milk truck came by and the driver said Jesus.
And the big club must not know he’s dead. If Ryan was alive he’d laugh. Here they are throwing away a pick on him before they’ll draft me.
I have watched the drunken screen for hours, eating the past, wrapping my head in it, and my eyes complain at the images, at the labour; my eyes are shifting right out of focus. Can’t they make a big screen that doesn’t kill you?
I am one of God’s creatures but no one is taking me. Not the Lightning in Tampa, not the Panthers. Not the Jets. Not the San Jose Sharks. They’re taking hundreds of snipers, killers, muckers, headcases, piranhas, plumbers, pretenders. They call out polyglot Latvian names at the silver microphone. They don’t care about my plus-minus, they don’t care about my Grade 8 blues records or sensitive feelings or that I move like silt and stick like glue. What about the San Diego Gulls or Las Vegas and that Russian guy named Radek Bonk? This is a great name for a player.
Bonk! Pass me the puck! Hit him, Bonk. Bonk him! Marty McSorley was going to sign with Las Vegas, play in the desert. I’d play in the desert. I can’t go back to the fucking last-place Cougars. I know I’m this close to making it, but the Cougars have dragged me down, they’ve buried me, made me invisible. In a seething minute you are made to pay for your geography, for being in the snake-bit boonies; the centre doesn’t hold for you.
I’ll have to try my luck as a free agent. Some good players aren’t picked, but they make it later as a walk-on. They force the issue, bull their way in the door. Courtnall, Joey Mullen, Dino Ciccarelli, Adam Oates. It happens. Brett Hull wasn’t taken until the 117th pick, and Fleury was 166th his year. Nemchinov didn’t go to New York until the 244th pick overall in 1990. Now he has a Stanley Cup ring. Every Cup team has its free agents, its “difficult” players. They made it, crawled out of the ooze. You hear their names: a mantra repeated. There’s a free-agent camp somewhere in the States; the scouts look you over, look inside your head, see what you’ve got. Courtnall has it made in the shade now, big money, owns restaurants and a spiffy log cabin on a cliff over the crashing ocean. Douglas fir and ferns and fishing boats in the harbour where the whales come in to rub. A view. This is Geoff, not Russ. Russ was drafted first round and he married a movie starlet; Russ Courtnall has no idea what it’s like to be invisible, to wait all day and be slowly made crazy, to want to punch out a guy named Laszlo. I’m so close, so close to treasure. Is it a litmus test, Russ? No. It’s not a litmus test. Just look inside your rolling head, the head and source of all your son’s distemper.
I wish the woman with dark eyes hadn’t left. Why does one person seem different and necessary? I chose to interpret the angle of her neck, slurred messages the speed of blood inside her unknown neck and uncertain smile, her teeth and her lips with the darkest darkest lipstick. I watched the draft while I watched her eyes move, her brain shift into an uncertain smile, and I knew she was leaving just then to become a bus window or a blur in the rain in the raw city of colours, just as I knew I would not be drafted, as I knew they would take a dead man before they would take a player who clocked a coach.
* * *
—
On the Cougars Geoff punched anyone who touched his little brother Russ. I bet now both brothers bomb around in righteous speedboats, ocean their blue and white freeway while a pretty woman from Hollywood naps down in the V-berth. She is waiting for you and you are waiting for her. You are waiting to catch a big one. You stand wide-legged at the wheel and gaze at the sky over arbutus trees and your hair slides back in the salt breeze. You think your head is attached to your shoulders. Expensive sunglasses protect your eyes, zinc your fair skin, for you cast a shadow, you are the paragon of animals, you have connected the dots. Frantic lawyers and children clamour for your signature, your autograph; children and lawyers shout out your name in the sonic echoing arenas, in Inglewood, in Florida, in United Centre, in General Motors Place.
There is money moving out there, green as antifreeze, green as absinthe, and everyone has a chance at it. Take this from this, if this be otherwise.
That’s the system. You think they are going to change it just for you?
Madeleine Thien
Simple Recipes
There is a simple recipe for making rice. My father taught it to me when I was a child. Back then, I used to sit up on the kitchen counter watching him, how he sifted the grains in his hands, sure and quick, removing pieces of dirt or sand, tiny imperfections. He swirled his hands through the water and it turned cloudy. When he scrubbed the grains clean, the sound was as big as a field of insects. Over and over, my father rinsed the rice, drained the water, then filled the pot again.
The instructions are simple. Once the washing is done, you measure the water this way—by resting the tip of your index finger on the surface of the rice. The water should reach the bend of your first knuckle. My father did not need instructions or measuring cups. He closed his eyes and felt for the waterline.
