BEAVER AT HIS PARENTS’: EPISODE 3

“Filosofem”

by Norman Crane

About the Author, i.e. me

I live in Canada. I write books. I’m also a historian, a wise guy and a cinephile. When I’m not writing, I’m probably reading or trying to cook. Philip Dick, Haruki Murakami and Graham Greene are some of my favourite authors. I enjoy fiction that makes me curious because curiosity makes me creative. I peer under mossy rocks, knock on hollow trees and believe in hidden passageways—not because I have proof of their existence, but because imagining them is itself the reward. I like non-fiction for the same reason. I also like computers, text editors and mechanical keyboards.

For more info and links to my writing, please visit my website: normancrane.ca

“Filosofem”

Dahlia bids me inside. I step into the living room as Aspen, flashing a smile not at me but my black eye, closes the front door, shutting out the outside world. “You’ve been shutting a lot of doors on me,” I say.

“At least you’re on the proper side of one this time,” she replies.

Dahlia tries smoothing the wrinkles out of her robe with her hands. “So how do you two know each other?” I imagine lesbians must do a lot of fingering.

“Don’t blush,” Aspen says. “Do tell.”

I smooth my own clothes, which are unwrinkled because I just ironed them, a habit best ascribed to a lawyer’s vanity. “I had business with Ms. Loomis’ father,” I say.

“God, Charlie. If you’re going to be formal and awkward, I swear…”

“It seems Charlie’s parents had a disagreement with the municipal planners over a deck they’d built in their backyard, and Charlie, being the good son he is, was trying to straighten it out for them.” She takes extra pleasure in straighten.

Dahlia hands me a cup of tea.

I drink.

“And?” she asks.

I lower the cup and wipe my lips. The tea tastes bitter. “And everything is now in order.”

“It was all a misunderstanding,” Aspen adds.

The way Dahlia’s eyes bounce between us, I feel like I’ve been pulled inadvertently into a Mexican standoff. Or maybe a love triangle. The question in both situations is the same: who’s in control? I try my best to be, reaching into my pocket to pull out the USB stick on which I’ve saved a bdrip of The King of Comedy. I hold it out to Dahlia. “In exchange for tea.” She hesitates before taking it. “It’s the movie I told you about,” I say. “The one that’s a comedy without being especially funny.”

“Thanks.”

I start to ask a question. “How long have you two been–”

“Fucking?” Aspen finishes it.

Dahlia coughs.

“Together,” I say.

“For several years,” Dahlia says. It’s a vague answer, and I can see the question makes her uncomfortable.

Aspen says, “On and off.”

Dahlia again: “But more on than off.”

I don’t pursue the topic, thinking instead about Kirk Loomis Jr. waiting for Dahlia in his pickup truck outside the 24-hour grocery store; and Kirk Loomis Jr. in Benson’s General Hardware, the store his father bought for him, ready to raise fists to defend his claim to a woman he wrongfully believes is his; and Kirk Loomis Jr. trembling in the dark, with his hands cupped, receiving his father’s gold watch like Christians receive Communion. God the father, God the son, but where is God the holy spirit?

Dahlia gently touches the side of my face with her fingertips.

I wince despite not feeling much pain; her fingertips pull back. I’ve not been touched like that since Rosie, and it’s the memory, more than the light pressure of flesh on gelatinous flesh, that hurts.

“How’d you get that shiner?” Dahlia asks.

I open my mouth to lie–

But the sudden ringing of a distant phone saves me from committing a sin, and I grin. Maybe God the holy spirit exists after all.

“Excuse me,” Dahlia says and disappears into her bedroom. Their bedroom: hers and Aspen’s.

I hear the manhandling of sheets, comforters and pillows.

“On the floor under my skirt,” Aspen shouts.

The manhandling stops. Followed by the ringing. Then the bedroom door becomes yet another closed door in my life. Faintly, I hear Dahlia’s voice but not the words she speaks. “I know how you got that shiner,” Aspen says to me.

“I walked into a cupboard,” I say.

“You met my brother.”

“And your father, briefly.”

“In which case, I’d say you’re lucky to have walked away with only one black eye.”

Looking at her face, “Yet you have none,” I say.

She shrugs before lowering herself to the sofa. Sitting is a position of submission. Standing, I loom over her. How illusory such concepts are. “I’m just a girl in the world,” she says.

I replay the timeline of my confrontation with Kirk Loomis Jr. in my head. I went to the municipal office, then I went to see Aspen. Kirk Loomis Sr. was in Cuba, though I should make that conditional on an adverb: supposedly. I lack direct evidence unless you count his last night’s clothes. I also met Dahlia, but I don’t remember saying anything to her about my parents’ deck. “Why’d you tell me the signature on the letter was forged?” I ask Aspen.

“The letter?”

I can’t tell the difference between Aspen being genuine and Aspen playing. “From the town to my parents. The one I showed you from the steps of your father’s house. You said your brother forged the signature on it.”

“Oh, that letter,” she says.

I wait for her to say more, a wait she seems to enjoy. In the silence, I hear Dahlia still talking on the phone.

Finally, Aspen says simply, “I recognize his forgeries.”

“And why’d you tell me about this one?”

She crosses her arms under her breasts. She sighs. “You’re disappointing. You already asked that question. I expected a lawyer like you to keep better notes. As I said then, maybe it was in my interest to tell you, or maybe I was lying.”

“You weren’t lying.”

“If you’re sure, try the method of elimination.”

I am sure. I’m also sure it was in her interest to tell me, but I want to know why. I don’t like being made a pawn.

“Anyway, you got what you wanted.”

I nod.

“Assume I did, too.”

“Now you’re asking for a thank you.”

She bursts out laughing, a laugh much deeper than her voice; one akin to her eyes. “No way. All I’m saying is that both of us benefited from your black eye and sore jaw. Possibly.”

“Possibly.”

The bedroom door opens and Dahlia marches out. I’m glad to be three again, but there’s a concerned look on her face and I know it’ll soon fall on either me or Aspen. It’s like watching a slot machine, which eventually comes up: Charlie-Charlie-Charlie.

“Charlie,” Dahlia says, “I hate to do this to you, but you’re a lawyer and I need to ask you for a favour.”

When people ask for legal help, I usually want to slip quietly away.

“Who was that on the phone?” Aspen asks.

“Isha.”

Aspen smirks and turns her attention to me. Both their attentions are on me. “What’s the problem?” I ask.

“My friend Isha has a son, Banjo,” Aspen tells me. “He’s a teenager, and he seems to have gotten himself suspended or expelled from high school. They’re holding him there now.”

Aspen rolls her eyes.

“Holding him?” I ask. “What did he do?”

I can’t help it as the Constitution of Canada–proper noun–flashes before my eyes, piecemeal and ill-defined as it is, a collection of acts enumerated in 1982 to include laws as old as from 1867, and later expanded by the Supreme Court to include sources older than the country itself. But, popularly, “the constitution” means only one part of the Constitution: the “Charter of Rights and Freedoms” that applies to the government and guarantees all Canadians certain rights and civil liberties. And it’s that part of which I’m thinking, bristling under the collar, because Section 9 plainly states that everyone has the right not to be arbitrarily detained or imprisoned.

“I’m not sure. Isha wasn’t sure, either. She said it was something he wrote.”

Say what? Forget Section 9. Now it’s Section 2 I’m foaming over. Section 2 guarantees what are called the fundamental freedoms, including freedom of conscience, freedom of thought, freedom of belief, freedom of expression…

But high school in July? “Hang on. It’s summer vacation,” I say.

“So you’ll do it?”

“Do what?”

“Oh, do it,” Aspen says from her seated vantage point, reclining and crossing her legs.

“Do me a favour by helping Isha by helping Banjo,” Dahlia says.

“High school’s out,” I say.

Judging by Aspen’s smirk, this is all a big joke of which I’m the butt. But Dahlia gives the distinctly opposite impression. “High school is out. Banjo’s in summer school,” she explains.

I state a question. “He got suspended from summer school.”

“Or expelled. That’s what Isha said.”

“Over something he wrote.”

“You got it. Now go protect his rights,” Aspen says.

I take it Aspen and Isha don’t see eye-to-eye, but that’s no business of mine. “And this friend of yours, Isha, she can’t take care of it herself?” Fixing a problem for my parents is one thing, especially if I’m partly responsible for causing it. Fixing one for a stranger, that’s something I spent three years learning I should charge for. As if reading my mind, Dahlia says, “I’d be forever grateful if you did this for me.”

“You’re not already?”

That’s my way of saying yes, and Dahlia understands immediately. She hugs me, then starts flicking through contacts on her phone. “Give me your email. I’ll send you Isha’s address and phone number.”

“I feel like you’re setting me up,” I admit.

Dahlia looks up from her phone. “Charlie, I swear it’s nothing like that.”

“But you better be prepared anyway,” Aspen cuts in. “Isha’s a s–”

“Aspen!”

“She’s very hetero,” Aspen says, scratching her lower lip with her pinky finger.

“Yes, Isha’s got a reputation, but the situation’s complicated and, at any rate, you’d be helping Banjo, and Banjo’s a good, intelligent kid. Sometimes a little too intelligent for his own good. I’m sure you can relate to that, Charlie.”

“He’s a weirdo,” Aspen says.

I’m not sure if she means me or Banjo.

“He is not.”

Ditto.

“The kid paints his nails and he’s not even gay,” Aspen says. “That’s weird.”

I dictate my email to Dahlia and she forwards me the information.

“Thanks so much.”

I respond by sliding my heels together and saluting. Duty-bound to serve, with boyish pretensions to heroism. “Will you give her a call to tell her I’m coming?” I ask.

“I already did,” Dahlia says sheepishly.

Starting my car, I wonder whether I’m exceptionally easy for women to predict–and manipulate–or if every man is. Because the answer doesn’t matter and reminds me of Rosie, I decide the only course of action is to roll down the windows and enjoy the rush of warm air against my cheeks. No wonder all the old male lawyers I know are tactful but stubborn sexists: let a woman among them and she’d soon run out of fingers around which to keep them wrapped. Their days of cigars, leather armchairs and bourbon are numbered. Like the classical empires of which their liberal arts educations have so enamoured them, their empire too will fall, infiltrated not by a Trojan Horse but by a crumpled box of ribbed Trojans. Because in the battle for influence and power, no holds are ever barred, and you can tell the losers from the winners by their incessant talk about honour, duty and being eternally wronged.

I arrive at Isha’s house, a bungalow in a part of town decorated by rusted cars and weedy front lawns. Walking to the front door, I know I’m a loser too, because I also played the game and lost to those who played it better: more ruthlessly. But, having lost, I’ve gained a manner of peace. Cast to the sidelines, I am free to live as I choose, with the lone condition I never reach for power again. Keep that condition and the powerful will leave me alone. I will pay my taxes, do my duties, and, amongst the losers–the poor souls who are unwilling to plunder their friends, exploit the weak, and stab with poisoned daggers in the back anyone who opposes them–I can make my life anew. I knock on the door with my forehead instead of my fist, because why not? and in that moment accept that I’m a useless fucking nobody. Thank you, Rosie. Thank you, Winterson & Partners. As falls go, mine wasn’t so bad. I bang on the door harder with my forehead. Bang, thud, silence. “What?”

I regain my balance and the woman in front of me repeats the question.

“Isha?”

“Charlie?”

“That’s me,” I say.

She’s a lot younger than I imagined, not more than thirty-five, with black hair, brown skin and navy blue jeans. “That’s me too,” she says. And look at the two of us standing there, two nobodies–together. It’s almost beautiful. “Thanks for doing this, for helping us out. Come on in. Let me get you something to drink. Maybe some frozen meat for your face?”

I decline the meat but ask for a glass of water because I want to wash away the bitterness of Dahlia’s tea.

Isha leads me with a kind of tired feminine swagger to the kitchen, where I remove a handbag from the seat of one of her cheap aluminium chairs, and sit down. She sticks a filtered water jug under the faucet and speaks over the running water. “So, Dee tells me you’re a lawyer.”

“Kind of.”

But she doesn’t hear me. “Where’s Banjo?” I ask more loudly.

“Banjeet,” she corrects.

I apologize.

“It’s fine. Everyone calls him that.” She shuts off the faucet and pours my glass of water, but places it on the table only after getting a beer from the fridge for herself. It’s an American light beer, practically water too. “Everyone but me, that is.” She sits across from me. “When he’s done something wrong.”

“Is he still at the high school?” I ask.

“Oh, yes.”

“And do you know what it is they think he’s done wrong?”

She downs half her beer. “I don’t care what they think he did wrong. Or if he actually did it. I care that he put himself in danger of being expelled.”

“Dahlia said it’s something he wrote. If that’s the case, we have a constitutionally protected–”

She interrupts. “Please, may I?”

“Of course.”

“I’ll be honest with you, Charlie.” She picks up her bottle of beer and stares into it while absentmindedly sloshing the liquid around. “I wouldn’t care if Banjeet ran through the halls slapping his classmates on the face and pissing on his teachers, I’d still stand by him, not because what he did was right but because he’s my son and I’ll stand by him no matter what. I don’t give a shit about the law or the rules. But, by the same token, if what he does puts our livelihood at risk, no matter how legal or within the rules, that’s something I can’t stand. It’s a stupid risk and a slap to my face. Why do you think he’s even in summer school?”

“I assume he failed some of his classes.”

Another swig of beer. “We both know that’s difficult to do.”

“It takes planning,” I say.

“Or cutting class and arguing with your teachers on the days you do go. But that’s Banjeet. Sometimes I swear I wish he was an idiot. That way he’d quietly get the class average and pass.”

I’m about to ask if he’s rebellious, but stay my tongue and drink my water instead. I would say that smart kids can be a handful, but what do I know about parenting? I was a smart kid, skipped my rebellion and never caused my parents any headaches. I didn’t smoke, didn’t drink, and didn’t lose my virginity until my first year of university, when I was safely out of their sight.

“Has Banjeet been disciplined by the school before?” I ask.

She answers by raising her eyes.

“Was he in the right?”

“According to who? Obviously not in the eyes of the school, or they wouldn’t have disciplined him. I assume nobody else’s opinion matters.”

“Has he been suspended before?”

“Yes, twice.”

“For?”

“I’ll be damned. You really are a lawyer.” She sits up straight. “Once for swearing at his Civics teacher, and once for borrowing school property.”

“Stealing…”

“A trombone and a French horn,” she says.

I keep a straight face. “And this is the first time you’ve heard anything about an expulsion?”

“Yes. Suspensions I can stomach, and Banjeet thinks they’re paid vacations, but getting expelled is a different story. If he gets expelled, we’ll have to move, which means I’ll have to quit my job and find a new one. As you may have guessed by the state of this place, we’re not exactly rich, and I’m not exactly overqualified for anything. I’m lucky to have the job I have here in Quarterville.”

“I don’t like to guess,” I say.

I say nothing about Isha’s house, which has the same dusty atmosphere of accumulations that many of my childhood friend’s houses had, where everything was clean but nothing was in its right place, and the things without places were thrown on top of each other until the house itself disappeared beneath the weight of a dank and sentimental uselessness. I thought then of rich houses as porcelain dishes, scrubbed clean every night; and of poor houses as a collection of paper plates and plastic spoons. Disposable homes for people with disposable futures. It was a despicable metaphor and a horrid way of judging the people I went to school with. And on every weekend my mom would scrub our own floors clean, making them shine, and I would lie down to sleep happy, in a house where my own future was permanent and safe. I would attend university, I would go to law school, I would be a lawyer. I would be a somebody. Not once did I doubt this. Why? Because my house smelled like chemicals and our toilet bowl shone every time I sat down on it to take a crap.

Isha glances at her wristwatch.

“What’s the plan?” I ask.

“I don’t have one. That’s why I called Dee, and why Dee called you.”

“You don’t want Banjeet expelled,” I say.

“Plainly not.”

“So you should probably go and pick him up. Dahlia said the school is holding him.”

“That’s right. They want me drive over and sign him out.”

“Then we can get his side of the story.”

“Good plan,” Isha says, “except I have to be back at work in twenty minutes.” She finishes her beer, savouring it for a few seconds before swallowing. I watch her throat work. “And, because he takes after his mother, I want the little bastard to stew a little.”

Rule One: if you’re ever held by the police, remain silent. Rule two: the longer you spend with the police, the greater the possibility you will violate Rule One. “That may not be in his best interest. The longer he stays there, the more chances he’ll have to say something that makes the situation worse.”

But a school is a not a police station, I remind myself.

I finish my water.

“It’s like you know him already,” Isha says, taking my glass to the sink.

“Want me to pick him up?”

Over the running water, “Would you?” she asks.

She tosses her empty beer bottle into a box of empty beer bottles.

“I can,” I say, “but they might not let me without some kind of authorization. Do you have a pen and paper?”

She brings them to me and I draft a messily handwritten document designating myself as Isha’s (“Ms. Ishkirat Kaur Gill”) agent for the purposes of making decisions concerning her son (“Banjeet Singh Gill”) and the school board, which Isha signs. “Smack him on the side of the head for me when you see him please,” she says after putting down the pen.

I fold the paper in half and pocket it.

“Thanks again,” she says.

“Not a problem. Dahlia’s a friend of mine and I’m in town with nothing to do.”

“So you’re gonna bail out a bad single mother. Makes sense.”

“Plainly not,” I say, standing. “Except that I’m going to go bail out a good kid.”

I hold out my hand and she awkwardly shakes it. “I haven’t shaken anyone’s hand in half a decade. I feel like I’ve stepped straight out of my life into an episode of The Good Wife.”

She doesn’t seem like a slut, I think. She seems nice. “Hopefully the next time you see your son, he’ll be a free man,” I say.

And after confirming Banjo’s high school–my old high school–I’m off, with thoughts of women’s thighs in navy jeans and Section 2 of the Charter of Human Rights and Freedoms rushing through my head.

Am I still a part of the old boy’s club too?

If so, a failed part.

The high school parking lot is mostly empty. Only a few cars and old, crushed fast food containers spoil the purity of the faded pavement. This very scene used to be one of the glorious signs of summer for me, but this afternoon the scene is one of decay. The building itself looms as empty as a dinosaur skull. It’s hard to believe how much hatred, bullying, brilliant inspiration, disappointment, romance and brainwashing go on within its walls from September to June, year after year. How I used to loathe and love these windows, these doors, the inner chaos and possibilities of social life between calculus and visual arts. If the school had an ass I’d gladly slap it. As is, I merely slap the doors open and behold the unexpected: three sets of metal detectors and a bored security guard. “Yes, sir?”

Perhaps Banjo actually is being held here. I’m shocked like by nothing else in Quarterville. “Sir, please state your business,” the security guard says.

“I’m here to see a student. Banjeet Singh Gill.”

The guard motions for me to step through the middle metal detector, then points in the direction of the school administration office. “Thanks,” I say. He is threateningly overweight.

The office is desolate. There’s no secretary and nary a stray scrap of paper on the front desk, but there is a bell, and I tap to ring it.

“Un moment s’il vous plait,” a nasally male voice intones in reply.

I wait that moment by walking past where I should, down the short hall leading away from the reception desk, toward the administration’s vital innards. All three of the hall’s doors are closed: the treasurer’s, the vice-principal’s and the principal’s. A nameplate hangs on each, but I recognize only one of the names. Principal John Fritz. He was principal when I went here. Like the other students, I hated his guts. But maybe he wasn’t such a bad guy, I think now.

“May I help you?”

The same nasally voice startles me and, turning, I realize I’ve let my nostalgia cloud my perceptiveness. I’ve been caught daydreaming. If this were a jungle and I prey, I’d be dead, a pretty green lizard bashed in the back of the head by a chimpanzee wielding a rock. However, because I am a human living in a civilized world, I smile my smile of lawyers and other salesmen, and say, “Good afternoon. I’m here to see a student, Banjeet Singh Gill.” The blood drains from the vice-principal’s face. I peek over his shoulder to check the nameplate on his door. “If you have no objections, Mr. Crevecoeur.”

“Where is the boy’s mother?” he asks.

I hand him the handwritten authorization that Isha signed. “Where is principal Fritz?” I ask.

“In a coma,” he says while reading the document. “This does not appear official.”

“It’s signed by Ms. Gill.”

He hands the document back. “Yes, the handwriting is exceedingly sloppy.”

“Why is principal Fritz in a coma?” I ask.

“He was struck, quite tragically, by a school bus three years ago. I, vice-principal Steven Crevecoeur, am the acting principal.”

I glance at the nameplate on principal Fritz’ office door.

“A memorial of sorts,” he notes, glancing next and with obvious displeasure at a portrait of Queen Elizabeth II hanging in the hall. “Tradition and history must be valued. In truth, it was a superfluous position. I find one person satisfies the role of vice-principal and principal well.”

I’m reminded of history’s lessons about the danger of concentrating power. “About Banjeet Singh Gill…”

“So you are the boyfriend?” he asks.

“Mr. Gill’s?”

He betrays no inkling of humour. “No, of the mother.”

“It’s an agency relationship.”

“I see.” He rubs his hands together and sighs. “The boy would benefit from a stable authority figure in his life. I am afraid that, without one, he is unfortunately lost.”

“I will be sure to convey that advice to Ms. Gill,” I say humourlessly.

“Banjeet threatened to kill,” Crevecoeur says.

The words shock me the same way the security guards and metal detectors shocked me: they are of my world but not of my youth. “These were definite threats?” I ask.

“Oh yes, carefully considered and neatly laid out in writing. Typed, in fact,” he says.

“And the target?”

“Also explicitly defined. So, as you see, we had no choice but to confine Mr. Gill to his classroom until he could be questioned and then retrieved by his mother. At this school, our policy for violence is zero tolerance.”

“And the punishment for violating the policy?”

“Expulsion.”

“What about suspension?”

Crevecoeur intertwines the fingers of both hands and places his palms on his stomach. “Suspension was indeed considered at one point. Unfortunately, other revelations were made, and a suspension is now impossible. Expulsion is unavoidable on principle. One must take into account the safety of the other students.”

“Revelations?”

“A second troubling document.”

“May I see them both?”

“I am afraid, sir, that you cannot. The school is bound by strict privacy laws.”

This intrigues me. I’ve used imaginary privacy laws myself. “But whose privacy are you protecting? It seems to me Banjeet is the author of these documents, and as an authorized agent of his mother’s, I am entitled–”

“Banjeet’s privacy.”

Keeping a straight face is hard, but I manage. “It seems you take his well being very seriously.”

“At this school, we pride ourselves on protecting the rights of all.”

“I see that.”

Whether Crevecoeur is oblivious to sarcasm or an expert at ignoring it, I can’t tell. Either way, it’s unnerving. He says politely, “It’s an unfortunate circumstance and I wish it were otherwise. Expelling a student gives me no joy, but, as acting principal, I must perform my duties even when they are joyless.”

If I can’t get anything about Banjeet out of him, I decide to go after the policy. “You’ve expelled a student before?”

“Yes,” he sighs. “Once.”

“Under this same zero tolerance policy?”

“The same.”

“Can you tell me about it?” I ask, then add hastily: “Without naming names, of course.”

Crevecoeur launches into a rehearsed monologue. “An ugly situation, to be sure. The student in question was caught defacing the property of another student, a Jewish student, with hate symbols. The behaviour was crude and ongoing. A third student was witness to one of the acts of defacement, and she reported it to a teacher, who reported it to me. I confronted the guilty student and he admitted to the acts. I then had no choice, under the policy, but to expel him.”

“Yes,” I admit, “you had no choice. Who introduced the policy?”

Crevecoeur cannot hide his pride. “I did.”

“And the metal detectors?”

He frowns. “An eyesore but a necessary evil these days, even in a town as small and quiet as Quarterville. Once a month we invite the police to sweep the lockers for contraband. As I said, we take the safety and well being of our students very seriously.”

“Drugs?”

“They do not find much, thankfully.”

“And you’ve never expelled a student for stashing drugs on school property?”

“Addiction is a disease.”

I stick my hands in my pockets, crumpling Isha’s authorization letter. Not only am I an old boy who’s been thrown out of his own club, but I’m apparently also blossoming into a conservative curmudgeon.

I focus on Banjo. “Did Banjeet offer any explanation for his alleged death threat and other ‘troubling document’?”

“Sadly, there is nothing alleged about it,” Crevecoeur says. “And he offered none because I gave him no opportunity. As for the other document, he told me only that I am ‘also invited.’”

Invited? “To what?”

He places his palms on his stomach once more. “Again, privacy laws.” His voice drops to a whisper. “But, sir, I can tell you that it’s horrible.”

The more he says that, the less I believe it. “Can I speak to Banjeet now?”

“Certainly. He is not a prisoner here.”

I follow Crevecoeur out of the administration office, across the lobby, where the security guard nods to him, and down a wide hallway against whose lockers I pressed my first girlfriend to kiss her neck. Now that was exhilaration. “He’s in room one hundred twelve,” Crevecoeur says.

“I had grade twelve English in that room.”

“You attended here?” he asks without much surprise.

“Five year sentence,” I say.

“Ah, yes. The curriculum has changed much since that time. For example, there is no longer a thirteenth grade.”

I know that. “I think I had art there too.”

“We no longer offer a visual arts option,” he says, turning a corner. “Lack of demand.”

We arrive at the door to room one hundred twelve, where another security guard snaps to attention, pulling a pair of headphones off his ears. “Sir!”

Crevecoeur dismisses him with a regal wave of the hand.

“Banjeet is inside.”

I reach for the door handle. “You will please let him know the police will be contacting him shortly,” Crevecoeur says.

“You reported him to the police?”

“I report all threats,” he says. “I believe it is not only my professional duty, as vice-principal and acting principal, but also my civic duty as a citizen, just as I hope it is yours.”

“It’s not.” I pull the door open. “So tell him your–”

The room is empty.

A warm summer wind blows through an open window.

Crevecoeur stiffens, turns on his heel and exits the room. His footsteps echo down the hallway.

The security guard looks inside.

He shoves his headphones back into his ears, shrugs, and bounces to his music.

I step forward, toward one of the room’s many wooden desks, but the only one on which several stapled sheets of paper flutter gently in the breeze. I pick them up and read the first page. It’s an essay:

Pessimism, a Theory of Self Destruction
by Banjo Gill

“I think the honorable thing for our species to do is deny our programming. Stop reproducing. Walk hand in hand into extinction, one last midnight. Brothers and sisters opting out of a raw deal.”–Rust Cohle, True Detective

I scan the other dozen pages. Some parts are underlined in red pen:

“…according to many pessimists, destroying ourselves is the only real answer.”

“Self consciousness is a curse and evolutionary mistake…”

“…a planned gradual extinction or an explosion of violence […] equally valid solutions.”

“We should stop being.”

“…death is the solution to life and it’s no more rational to wait for death than to wait for food when you’re hungry or medicine when you’re sick.”

And, on the second-to-last page, two sentences are circled:

“You will all die. Why wait?”

Underneath them is a scrawled comment: “See me immediately. This is unacceptable!”

The last page is a bibliography, and as I look up from references to Thomas Ligotti’s The Conspiracy Against the Human Race and an essay by Albert Camus, to stare through the open classroom window–only then do I realize that what I’m holding is, in Crevecoeur’s interpretation, a credible and specific death threat.

I exit the high school via a back door, gripping Banjo’s essay in one hand while using the fingers of the other to swipe-dial Isha. She answers on the seventh ring. Passing by the little nook in the high school’s rear wall where I used to go to escape from people, to listen to music and read scifi novels, I hear the sounds of her workplace. “Charlie?” she asks.

“Banjeet’s gone,” I say.

“Where?”

“I thought you might tell me that. He’s not at the school.”

“He’s not here.”

“But has he called you?”

She hesitates. I hear the clanging of metal. “We’re not exactly on speaking terms right now, so it wouldn’t surprise me if I don’t see him for a few days. I laid into him pretty bad.”

“When?”

“Earlier today, before I called Dee,” she says. I realize she lied to me. “Before Dee called you. After I got the call from the school, and they told me to come pick him up, I got on the phone and said some things I probably shouldn’t have said. He did too, but I’m the adult, right?” The background noise on her end cuts off abruptly, and I imagine she’s ducked into a nook of her own: a bathroom, a utility closet. I’ve no clue where she works. “Like I said, I’m a bad mom. But all I want is the best for us, I swear.” Her voice trembles, proving her point.

That’s why she wanted someone else–anyone else–to pick Banjo up. The thing is, I can actually defend this kid. I want to defend him.

“Banjo’s going to get expelled, isn’t he?” Isha whispers.

Time to state the facts. “According to the vice-principal, Banjeet made a death threat. The school has a zero tolerance policy for violence, and they’re planning to use it against him.”

“Vice-principal?”

I wasn’t expecting that particular detail to be the one that shocks her. “Yes, Crevecoeur.”

“Steven,” Isha says in dragonbreath.

“Does that make a difference?”

Ignoring my question, she asks her own. “Who was the death threat against?”

I reach the parking lot and then for my car door. “There’s the rub. It’s not a death threat. It’s lines in an essay about the philosophy of pessimism. And even if it is a threat, it’s not directed specifically at anyone–because it’s directed at everyone. Plus, if it is a death threat, it’s the first one I’ve seen that comes with footnotes.”

“So he’s not going to get expelled?”

I climb inside my Mazda. “I don’t know, but whatever Crevecoeur’s doing, it’s weird. If he truly considered Banjeet dangerous, he would have notified the police and Banjeet would be in custody by now. Because he didn’t do that suggests he knows he’s reaching. That said, he did also say there were two documents, and I’ve only seen one.” I start the engine. “So I need to find Banjeet.”

I roll onto the street. “Where are you driving?” Isha asks.

“Ahead, unless you give me a better idea. Are you sure you don’t know where he could be? I suspect your guess would be better than mine.”

“Try the field off old Highway Two,” she says, swallowing what sounds like a gumball of pride. “It’s right next to an old farm building. Big place, porch at the front, twin towers rising past the roof. Would be swanky if it wasn’t so creepy. You can’t miss it. If you’ve just pulled out of the high school lot, follow–”

“The Maxwell building. I know where it is.” My best friend’s grandparents used to own the place. In the summer they’d rent out the field as pasture for cows. It was a great spot for batting practice, smacking golf balls and screaming at the top of your lungs. “Does anyone still live there?”

“I doubt it. It looks abandoned. Some company may own it, but I’m not sure.”

“And you think that’s where Banjeet is?”

“In the field, not the building. Yes, you asked for a guess and that’s my best one. Him and his friend built a little shanty there.”

“Why there?”

“You want more guesses? Deserted, no cell phone reception, out of the way enough so they can play their metal music as loud as they want.”

Heavy metal. “Kill ‘Em All.”

“What?”

“It’s a death threat,” I say, “and the title of an album by a band that sold out.”

“If only Banjo would do the same. For my sake.”

“Boy’s got principles.”

“And I’ve got a throbbing headache, which means I’ve got to get back to work before I get fired,” Isha says. “The politeness in me wants to thank you for all you’ve done, but the mother doesn’t give a shit. Do more, Charlie. Please.”

Points awarded for honesty. Modifier applied because I’ve spent so time with lawyers I’ve forgotten what honesty sounds like. “I’ll do my best. On the face of it, we’ve got a decent shot. Thank me again if that shot hits.”

“Till then.”

Isha hangs up, and I’m left to the misshapen thoughts of fundamental rights and natural justice that grind between the spinning gears in my head. I mash the concepts until they’re an incomprehensible, unhelpful goo. I wish I could clear my mind by tilting my head and letting the goo drip out. My car seats wouldn’t mind. They still smell faintly of avocado and thawed shrimp.

When the Maxwell building comes into view, more decrepit than I expected, I pull into its long gravel driveway, park, and walk the rest of the way to the field. At least the cows are still here. Impassive, they lift their heads to stare at me as I pass. I hear the music emanating from Banjo’s shanty even before seeing the shanty itself, harsh guitars, robotic drumming and a low, guttural growl that are the signatures of black metal. It claws at my eardrums; it’s no wonder the cows stay away, chewing their cud at a safe distance. By the time I’m close enough to make out the shape of the shanty, a ramshackle cube of wood and scrap metal, I cover my ears with my hands, dulling the edge of the vocalist’s screams. The guitar shreds the air and the drums increase the pace of their already relentless hammering. Standing beside the shanty, propped up at an angle of about forty-five degrees, are six solar panels. They catch the sun. I close my eyes to avoid the glare. I remove my hands from my ears and push on forward. How can anyone stand this noise? Through my eyelids, the music looks like a pulsing red horizon. It feels like a physical barrier, like the sound waves are pushing me back. I reach the slab of sheet metal which constitutes the shanty’s door and pound on it. Nothing happens. I pound again. Finally, mercifully, the growling stops, guitar fades away and drums go to sleep, and the door gets pulled away. It’s too dark inside for me to see. Just black. The shanty lacks windows, or they’re covered up, and a few candles provide the only illumination, turning that black to patches of grey. The greyness flickers. “I’m looking for Banjo Gill,” I say as my eyes accustom to the gloom. Silence massages my numb brain.

Two figures exist inside the shanty, one seated behind a drum set and the other, after putting down an electric guitar, comes toward me. When his face catches enough sunlight, I make out brown skin, long black hair and blue eyes. “I’m Banjo,” he says.

“My name’s Charlie, and I’m here as a favour to your mom–to help you avoid getting expelled from high school.”

“So you must be the new guy she’s seeing,” Banjo says.

“I’m not. I’m a lawyer.”

“Anyway, it’s too late. I’m already expelled.”

“May I come in?”

Banjo hesitates. The second figure in the shanty stirs behind its drum set and rises. “What’s my mom’s name?” Banjo asks.

“Ishkirat.”

I hand him his mom’s letter of authorization.

“Wait outside,” he says, and retreats to the glow of one of the candles to read it.

“Hey, man,” the other figure says.

“Hey.”

“Didn’t I see you the other night with Miss E?” he asks.

It takes a moment for it to register, but then I recognize his lazy delivery even before recognizing his face. “How are you, Sven?”

“Good, good. And yourself?”

“Not bad.”

Banjo returns the authorization letter. “You know this guy?” he asks Sven.

“Kinda. I’ve seen him before, and I’m pretty sure he’s alright.” Sven flashes me a smile. He has long hair too but blonde. “He’s a Scorsese fan.”

Banjo puts his hands on his hips. “So what’s your favourite Martin Scorsese movie?”

That’s a tough question. “Mean Streets.”

“Fucking classic.” Sven claps.

Banjo steps aside, unblocking the shanty’s entrance and inviting me to enter, which I do. “The name’s Charlie, by the way,” I say, as Sven pulls the sheet metal back across the entrance, submerging us in darkness dabbed by candlelight. “I grew up in Quarterville. My best friend lived next door, and we used to drive golf balls across this entire field.”

“You’re from here?”

“I am.”

“That’s depressing,” Banjo says.

“Speaking of depressing, what’s with the land of darkness in here?”

“Atmosphere.”

Sven passes me an unlit joint. “Want one?”

I politely decline. He lights up his own and takes a toke.

“Atmosphere for what?”

“Music.”

“We got a gig Wednesday night.”

“Out in the woods.”

I note that Banjo doesn’t take the joint from Sven. “What, like you didn’t hear us playing?” he says.

I did, but somehow I assumed they were playing music in the sense of playing someone else’s music. Clearly, that assumption’s been refuted by the drum set, the guitar lying against its amp, and the cables snaking across the beaten dirt floor of the shanty.

“Whatcha think?” Sven asks.

Loud, I want to answer. “Certainly atmospheric. But I’m more interested in the essay you wrote,” I say to Banjo. “That’s why I’m here.”

“My death threat.”

Sven sniggers. “Fucking Crevecoeur. What a bitch.”

“One with authority to expel you,” I say.

“Man, that school’s so ridiculous, I’m sick of it,” Banjo says. “If he didn’t get me now he’d do it later.”

“Why?”

“Because he hates my guts.”

I repeat my question.

Sven exhales a cloud of smoke, and Banjo laughs and says, “I’m guessing my mom didn’t tell you. Crevecoeur used to have a thing for her. Probably still does. That was back when he was taking an extra special interest in me, trying to be my dad. Except my mom thought he was an asshole and I guess she told him that to his face, and ever since he’s been making my life hell.”

“You’re not making it difficult for him,” I say.

“And I bet my mom gave you the speech about how I’m a selfish kid, she’s the hardworking single parent, and–”

“You’re provoking someone who has the power to negatively affect your life.”

“But I didn’t do anything wrong by writing that paper. I followed the instructions. I was the only one in that class to write anything.”

“That’s naive,” I say.

“So I should just lie down and let him walk all over me?”

“You should be diplomatic when it’s in your interest to be diplomatic, and it’s in your interest to stay in Quarterville to finish high school.” Because I feel unnatural and old giving life advice, I switch to legal advice instead. “But that’s all redundant if you are expelled, so let’s talk about preventing that from happening.”

“It already happened,” Banjo says, “and if you want to talk about diplomacy, why don’t you talk to my mom about it? She says I’m selfish for wanting to stand by my beliefs. How’s that different from her refusing to sleep with Crevecoeur? It’s someone selling something either way, so why is my mind worth less than her body? She could make all my problems, which she says are her problems, go away, and yet she doesn’t want to do that. She sleeps with men all the time, so why not him too? It doesn’t have to mean anything to her, just like she tells me I can believe whatever I want while telling the school whatever they want to hear.”

“That’s different,” I say.

“Why?”

You’ll understand when you’re older. Because sex is special. I don’t know why. “That’s something you’ll have to talk about with her,” I say.

“Bullshit,” Banjo says. “You can’t explain it either.”

“It’s not my place. I’m here as a favour, and the favour extends to keeping you enrolled in high school. You say you’ve already been expelled, but a first decision is never the final one, so describe to me how Crevecoeur made you aware you’d been expelled.”

“I handed in my essay yesterday to my Civics teacher,” Banjo says. “Like I said, no one else had written anything, so she must have marked it in the evening and handed it back to me this morning. There was a comment on the essay to see her about it.”

“She handed the essay to you in person?”

“No, it was just on my desk.”

“Then?”

“I waited for her to come in for the day, then grabbed the paper and went to see her about it, just like she apparently wanted.”

“Do you remember what the instructions for the essay were?”

“They were literally: ‘Write twenty-five hundred words or more on whatever you want.’”

“And you wrote about Pessimism.”

“Yes.”

“And what happened when you saw your Civics teacher in the morning?”

“She told me to sit down, so I sat down, and she called Crevecoeur, and he came in and shut the door. He sat in the chair beside me, and asked me if I’d written the essay. I said yes. Then he asked why I’d written it. I said I wrote it because I thought it made sense to write about something ethical in a Civics class. Then he asked if I believed what I’d written, and I said I believed it was accurate. Then he gave me a copy of the school’s zero tolerance policy on violence and told me to read it out. When I was done doing that, he asked if I thought I’d violated the policy. I said I didn’t know. He then asked what my reaction would be if I found out another student had written my paper. I said I didn’t care what other students wrote their essays about. He then asked what I would do if I was him.” Banjo pauses, grinning. “And I said that if I was him I would definitely commit suicide as soon as possible.”

“That was it?”

“Pretty much. My Civics teacher gasped, and Crevecoeur called for two security guards and the three of them walked me to an empty classroom. Crevecoeur told me that I was expelled for violating the zero tolerance policy on violence, that he would be contacting my mom, and that I wasn’t allowed to leave the classroom until he told me to leave. I sat there for half an hour, then my mom called, gave me a bullshit lecture on what it means to be an adult, and how I deserved to stay in that classroom until I learned as much. After she hung up, I sat around for another half hour, then opened a window and came here.”

“Because Crevecoeur told me there was a second threat, in addition to your essay. He said it was something horrible.”

Banjo’s face lights up. “Oh, right. When he brought me into the classroom, I thought I’d be a nice guy and invite him to our Wednesday night gig, so I gave him this.” He pulls out a legal-size sheet of paper and hands it to me. Sven gives me one of the shanty’s flickering candles, with which I illuminate: a hand-drawn, photocopied poster depicting a procession of men, women and children walking hand-in-hand down a path that transmogrifies into the unfurled tongue of a monster with decomposing flesh whose crazed eyes and jagged, pus-dripping teeth are proclaimed as the one true entrance to serenity. Above, bold lettering announces MAINLANDER! invites you to a concert in the woods, there’s a map of the location, followed by the words, the consensual slaughter begins sometime after dark. “Pretty cool, right? Drew it myself,” Sven says.

I want to hand the poster back. “Keep it,” Banjo says.

The gears in my head have started spinning again, processing a mass almost as gooey as the dripping meat constituting Sven’s monster, but this time I’ve added a pinch more legal process to the mix. “Did Crevecoeur, at any point after telling you you were expelled, give you an opportunity to defend yourself?”

“There was nothing to defend. I did what he accused me of going. I wrote the essay.”

“And you gave him a copy of this poster.”

Banjo nods. “I’m fucked.”

My thoughts coalesce into a somewhat stable solid. “Not necessarily,” I say, and I mean it. “Audi alteram partem.”

“What’s that?”

“Sounds like a car,” Sven says.

“It’s Latin for ‘hear the other side’ and it essentially means that for there to be procedural fairness in an administrative proceeding, the accused must be given the chance to speak. Procedural fairness is the bedrock of administrative law.” The last bit is quotation I remember from law school.

“But I’m not being sued.”

“That’s right, you’ve being expelled.” The covers of my administrative law textbook open before my mind’s eye. “And the amount of procedural fairness due in any proceeding depends on five factors: the nature of the decision, the nature of the scheme under which the decision is made, the importance of the decision to the person affected, whether that person had legitimate expectations of procedural fairness, and–” I can’t remember the fifth. “The point is, were your rights, privileges or interests affected by the school’s decision to expel you?”

“Crevecoeur made the decision, not the school.”

Even better for us. “Is that a yes?”

“Obviously Banjo’s affected. Doesn’t everybody have like a right to go to school and get educated?” Sven volunteers.

“Yes,” Banjo says.

“Excellent. That’s all you need for procedural fairness to exist. Now, how much procedural fairness exists depends on the factors I mentioned. Would you say being expelled is a decision of some importance to you?”

“Hell yeah!” Sven declares, handing me the joint I didn’t want earlier and whose smoke I now inhale into my lungs without thinking about what I’m doing.

“And did you have an expectation that such a decision would be made in a procedurally fair way?”

“I didn’t think about it,” Banjo says.

“Think about it now.”

“I guess so.”

“In which case you were not provided the procedural fairness you expected and which was owed to you, given the importance of the school’s decision in affecting your rights, privileges or interests.”

I take a second toke before Sven takes the joint back. “The law is so fucked up.”

“Why’s it fucked up?” I ask.

“Because it’s like you don’t really care what somebody did, only about how someone else decided that it was good or bad, like, to me, what Banjo did is OK and it would’ve been OK even if Creve-fucking-coeur gave Banjo an hour to explain himself, but from what you’re saying it’s like what Banjo did doesn’t matter as long as they let him talk about it. I don’t get that at all. I mean, what if someone does something really bad, like murder somebody, and there’s nothing he could ever say to make it right, and if the school board decides to expel him and don’t listen to his crazy talk, their decision is wrong?”

“Kind of,” I say, “but that’s a hypothetical.”

Sven leans over to me. “The whole world is a hypothetical, man.” Then he breaks out into a fit of coughs and giggles, before saying, serious again, “How’d you get that black eye?”

“I was wondering that too,” Banjo adds. “You don’t seem the type.”

I grab a quick toke and slap the swollen side of my face. “This isn’t from any one thing. It’s from an accumulation of bad days, one after another.”

“But you obviously got clocked.”

“Yeah, but the day I got clocked wasn’t actually so bad.” A gust of wind shakes the shanty, reminding me there’s a world outside, a warm, summer-day world filled with light and hope. “But back to Banjo’s case. Do either of you remember another student getting expelled from your high school?”

“Omar, man,” Sven says.

“Two years ago. We didn’t know him though.”

“Why did he get expelled?” I ask.

“He drew a bunch of swastikas all over a guy’s locker and carved one into his iPhone.”

“Why’d he do that?”

“Beats me,” Banjo says. “From what we heard he had issues at home.”

“Do you know if he tried appealing the expulsion?”

“I seriously doubt that.”

Sven says, “Dude hanged himself about three weeks later. Posted a bunch of weird shit to Facebook.”

“Nazi shit?”

“Nah, Palestinian Muslim shit. Intifada.”

A dead teenager. So much for caring about the well being of your students. “Are you going to appeal my expulsion?” Banjo asks.

“If it comes to that. I doubt it will. The death threat is ridiculous on the face of it, and you didn’t offend anything more sacred than the vague moral sensibilities of your Civics teacher.” I stand, almost hitting my heat on the shanty’s two-by-four and sheet metal ceiling. “But I’ll go talk to Crevecoeur and try to convince him he trampled all over your procedural fairness in a way unbecoming an acting principal.”

“I still don’t get why you’re doing this,” Banjo says.

“Atoning for my sins,” I say, pointing at my black eye, knowing that in the age of internet memes, unfocussed wit often serves as an easy stand-in for truth. Really, I don’t know why I’m doing it. Because Dahlia asked me to? Who’s Dahlia to me? Because I feel useless and want to feel better about myself? That’s closer to the truth. Because I’ve spent too much time losing and want to taste victory again? Bingo.

Sven moves toward the shanty’s entrance. “You know, you’re a pretty good guy, Mister C.”

I retain my doubts. “Thanks.”

He slides the entrance open, blinding me with afternoon sunlight.

Squinting, I walk into it.

“And you should come to our gig Wednesday night,” he calls after me. “It’s the one true entrance to serenity!”

What’s more serene, I wonder, the absence of light or its overwhelming brightness. There’s depth and mystery to darkness: we sleep with our eyes closed and curtains drawn. We fall in love under the sun but make it with the lights off. And if light requires energy, night is its glorious absence. Or are these stupid thoughts–interrupted rightly by the sight of a defecating cow? Another, somewhere, moos. What happened to the chirping of birds? In the driveway of the Maxwell house, I kick at loose gravel until my foot has dug its own hole. It’s time to assault Crevecoeur with threats of administrative tribunals.

In the high school, I smile at the same security guard as before, who leads me through the same metal detector. “I’m here to see the acting principal,” I say.

He points at the administration office.

“You have returned,” Crevecoeur says after I ring the bell on the front counter.

“I’d like to see a copy of each of the following: the school’s zero tolerance policy on violence, the school’s policy on student discipline, and the public school district’s appeal procedures.”

“I will gladly provide them to you.” He sniffs at the air.

I hope to God he smells pot.

“Today.”

“Of course, sir. It is this school’s policy to go paperless. Do you perhaps have an email address to which I–”

“I’m afraid not. Do you have a photocopier?”

He nods and struts into his office with arrogantly mock servitude. I hear the photocopier whir. They also serve who only stand and wait. A few minutes later he reemerges holding three bundles of paper. “I understand you successfully located Mr. Gill,” he says.

Ignoring his statement, I flip through the pages until my thumb finds the heading on disciplinary decisions. “Are you maintaining your decision to expel Banjeet Singh Gill for an alleged violation of the school’s zero tolerance on violence?”

“It is not Mr. Gill’s first transgression.”

It appears we are both adept at pretending we can’t hear. “According to this policy,” I say, switching to my reading voice, “Mr. Singh has seven days from the date of the decision in which to submit a formal written request for reconsideration.” I turn the page. “To be heard by the Board within forty-five days.” If I wore glasses, I’d let them slide down the bridge of my nose and peer up at Crevecoeur as I finish with a flourish, “A Committee of the Board consisting of three persons will hear the appeal and make the decision.”

“I am confident the proper procedures will be followed,” he says.

“And records updated.”

Crevecoeur stiffens. “You will find not one allegation in Mr. Gill’s student disciplinary file that is unjustified. The documents are in exquisite order.”

“What about your file, acting principal?”

“You choose to threaten me, sir.”

I’m confident choose is a synonym of dare. “I choose to warn you that, as an acting principal whose decision has already contributed to the death of one student, a wrongful decision about another may not be looked upon favourably by your superiors.” Crevecoeur’s eyelid twitches. One day, principal Fritz will open his own, arise and take back his high school. I imagine it as a zombie movie. “You’ve denied Banjeet his natural right of procedural fairness. The Committee of the Board will agree. Your decision will be overturned and your file will be updated accordingly.”

“I did not contribute to that boy’s taking his life,” Crevecoeur hisses. “My decision was correct.”

“Dead boys don’t appeal.”

“You, sir, are without honour or decency.”

Law school graduate, bitch. Because I’ve finally managed to crooken his mask of composure, I make my move. “Of course, Mr. Gill’s objection to your decision is not directly on its merits but rather on procedure. You failed to let him argue his case. If you were to–”

“I have let that boy speak his mind for the past three years. I know what is in his heart.”

Yes, darkness. The horror! The horror! The marijuana’s just now getting to me. I would die for a bag of potato chips. “By which I take it you wouldn’t be opposed to listening for another half hour.”

His facial expression says you’re brewing something.

“On Monday afternoon,” I continue, “in front of a panel of three independent arbiters. If, after that half hour, the arbiters agree with your decision, Mr. Gill will faithfully withdraw his request for reconsideration and accept his punishment. You have his word.”

“And yours?”

“I am but a simple conduit, sir.”

“I hazard to suggest the bruising on your face is well deserved. Tell me, who will select these arbiters?”

By now I’m cruising on improvisation. “I believe I’ve already spotted two, both experts in the field of student safety. If you could round up a third security guard, that would make a perfect trio.”

“Security guards,” Crevecoeur repeats with distaste.

“Who better?” I counter, although it hardly matters. The panel could be made up of a two boneless chickens and a paranoid turkey. And, now, for the coup de grace. I’m almost ashamed of myself as I try to remember at what time I was at Isha’s house today–at what time she had her lunch. 12:30? That sounds right. “Let’s say a quarter after noon in room one hundred twelve?”

“You’ve a flair for the dramatic.”

“Theatre arts,” I say.

“Sadly, we no longer offer that course either.”

I salute for the second time today and turn to leave, already fantasizing about the look on Crevecoeur’s unsuspecting face, when his voice stops me in my tracks: “Not so quickly. I’ve yet to agree to your blackmail.”

“Blackmail? Mr. Gill is merely exercising his administrative rights.”

“My honest mistake. However, earlier you showed me a messily written, supposedly legally binding agreement between yourself and Mr. Gill’s mother,” Crevecoeur says. “Designating you as her so-called agent.”

I produce the agreement.

Crevecoeur rips the back page off one of the bundles of paper he photocopied for me, turns it over and softly places a pen on it. “Perhaps you will do me the same honour. Given as I lack all faith in your word or the word of Mr. Gill, there is nothing to prevent Mr. Gill from proceeding with his appeal even if I maintain my decision on Monday afternoon.” His mask of composure fits snuggly on his face again. “So, please, go ahead and make something from nothing, sir. Write me an agreement.”

Under the gaze of his mud brown eyes, I scribble something to his desired effect.

I sign, as agent for Ms. Ishkirat Kaur Gill.

He signs too.

“Thank you and I will see you and Mr. Gill after the weekend. Have a joyful one,” he says, snatching up the agreement, “and a safe and happy Friday.”

I call Isha as soon as I’m out the high school doors, exiting this time by the front, past the overweight security guard, the metal detectors and all the other innocence that’s been lost in that soulless place. “Isha? It’s Charlie. How’s your headache?”

“Did you find him?” she asks.

“I did. He was exactly where you guessed he’d be.”

I hear her relief. “Thank the Tylenols, my headache’s gone.” And a restrained thirst to know. “So how’d it go with Banjo, did he say anything to give us hope?”

Apparently we’re in this boat together now. I pardon the cliche. “We have a second hearing at the school on Monday afternoon.”

“Charlie! I don’t even know what to–”

“It’s very important that you come. Preferably at half past noon sharp.”

“Wait. Is Steven Crevecoeur…”

“No,” I lie. “The hearing will be before a panel of three independent arbiters.”

“I’ll take my lunch.”

“Great.”

I make sure she remembers the time and tell her I’ll see her there, well aware I have on my hands what my legal ethics professor would term a quandary and lawyers call a headache. I don’t know who my client is: Isha, Banjo, Dahlia? My gut says Dahlia recommended me to Isha, who enlisted my services, pro bono, to help Banjo; but if that’s true, I’m now deliberately misleading my client to help her son. I almost expect the Law Society to give me a call. They don’t, and I decide to enjoy the rest of my Friday evening by going to the bar, which fills up with truckers, construction workers and off-duty cops as night falls, before heading home only a little drunk and a lot dateless, to sit at my bedroom desk, gaze out the window at a darkness nowhere near as black as in Banjo’s shanty, and reread the same lifeless, jargon-filled lines of school board and school district policies that in the end mean zip because it’s going to be Crevecoeur himself who admits defeat on Monday afternoon to try to win the heart of the woman he desires by ignoring her son he hates. In some of my dreams, he does win her heart. They live happily ever after. Or Banjo kills them in their sleep and they die in each other’s terrified arms. I should write a romantic comedy. I should write horror. I sweat through the night in violent tonal shifts and half-sleep until morning, when my parents shuffle quietly around the house, preparing for a working Saturday, believing me snoring. Crevecoeur’s photocopied pages stick to my sticky face no differently than Sven’s grotesque poster. The t-shirt doubling as my pajama top feels like skin I should shed. How many people has my tongue led, is leading, and will lead–always cruelly–to my own hideous jaws? Pearly, straight teeth; a murderous smile. My bed could be a tub of perspiration, water, blood. I would drown in them all. Even at university, a lingering high mixed with alcohol made me paranoid. I must have had more to drink than I thought.

Shirtless, toweled off and three glasses of water later, I feel better.

I send out resumes.

On Sunday I mow the grass and watch Mean Streets.

I tell my parents that on Monday I’m going to help defend a high school student falsely accused of uttering death threats, and they happily tell me they’re so happy I’m home.

I also drop by Banjo and Sven’s shanty, but the shanty’s empty. Keeping in mind their black metal, I pray they’re not out burning churches. I surprise them at Isha’s house. Isha’s absent, at Dahlia’s, but I tell Banjo to be ready for tomorrow at noon. “And you’re only telling me now?”

“I forgot.”

He calls my bullshit, but he’s also nervous. Good, because I want him to be on edge. I’m not the only one who’ll spend a night sweating.

“But really why didn’t you tell me?” he asks.

“Really, I didn’t want to ruin your weekend,” I bullshit again. “Crevecoeur wished you a joyful one.”

“You know what I think?” Sven says. “I think that guy’s living his dream, getting revenge on all the teenagers who fucked with him in high school. Now he gets paid to make teenage lives suck big ass fucking balls.”

I nod.

“Got a suit?” I ask Banjo.

“No.”

“Then wear something–” I look him over. “–less ominously black.”

“Can it have a skull on it?”

“Preferably not. Do you have a ride to the school?”

“I bike.”

“That’s good, healthy. Just remember to be there on time.”

My black eye, reflected by the bathroom mirror, has begun to turn purple. I floss, piss and flush the toilet.

On Monday, I feel sharp.

Strap a camera to my chest and watch me strut, clad in suit and tie, into the high school, down the hall and toward room one hundred twelve. Sure, I feel foolish, but it’s my first case as a nobody and I’m excited. For once, I get to argue for the rebel. I’m carrying an empty briefcase because it’s a decent prop, and my tablet, loaded up with album cover art I spent way too much time finding. The room’s door is open and three security guards are moving desks and chairs out of the way–all but five: three for themselves, as arbiters of justice, one for Crevecoeur, as prosecutor, and one for Banjo, as defendant. There’s no desk or chair for me, which I’m sure is a deliberate instruction, but nothing better suits my mood. I won’t just stand up for the underdog; I’ll keep standing. The guards nod their greetings at me. I nod back, cool as a cucumber, which I pull out of my pocket and bite into. Only healthy snacks for me from now on. “Do you know if we’re getting paid extra for this?” one of the guards asks.

I crunch on my cuke. “Afraid I don’t.”

“Justice is its own reward,” another guard says.

We share a laugh.

Fifteen minutes before time, Banjo slinks into the classroom, unexpectedly early. “My mom made me,” he explains. I absolve him of his sin. Then I stand up straight, realizing nothing’s been won yet and I’m already leaning against the wall. Standing up for something is harder than it seems. “Just answer truthfully,” I instruct him.

“That’s what got me here.” He spies my briefcase. “What’s in there?”

“Nothing.”

“Nothing as in a surprise?”

I shake the briefcase. “Literally nothing.”

“So why bring it?”

Crevecoeur’s incoming footsteps save me from having to explain, although he’s actually a great example of what I would have said: the older you get, the more important appearances become, and adults only pretend to stop playing make-believe. Crevecoeur reaches the head of the classroom, turns to face us and smiles, expertly making-believe he is happy to see us and will hear Banjo’s case with an open mind. On the day he dies, I am certain Crevecoeur will be nothing more than the appearance of wisdom. Today, he says, “Gentlemen,” with a politeness that would make a politician blush.

“Vice-principal,” I say.

He turns his attention to the accused. “I almost didn’t recognize you, Banjeet. White becomes you,” he says, referring to Banjo’s white t-shirt and beige, slightly dusty, pants. Banjo wiggles his fingers in response; the nails are freshly painted black. Unfazed, Crevecoeur takes his seat behind the desk nearest the door. He snaps his fingers, and the three security guards hurry to assume their arbitral positions at their three desks of honour. Not quite a jury of Banjo’s peers, but it’s not meant to be. Administrative law is all about the powerful making decisions to affect the powerless.

Banjo sits too. I crouch. Our desk has the words “Koka Kola” carved into it, which is either good luck or evidence the school’s not bought new desks since 1979. “Do you like the Clash?” I ask Banjo.

“The what?”

“The band the Clash.”

“I don’t like either of those,” he says.

“What?”

“The Band or the Clash. Do you like Darkthrone?”

“I like the Clash,” I say.

The clock on the wall behind the three security guards ticks to a quarter past noon. “Hey,” the fat one says. It takes me a few seconds to realize he’s talking to me. “You got another one of those cucumbers?”

“Sorry.”

The two other guards glare at him. “What? I’m hungry and my wife says I can only have healthy snacks.”

“The time bids us to begin,” Crevecoeur says, rising out of his chair. “I presume we all know why we’re gathered here this afternoon, so don’t let’s be delayed by formalities, and let us instead cut straight to the heart of the matter.” He produces four file folders, hands one each to the three security guards and me. “The student, Banjeet Singh Gill, faces discipline for making death threats in writing on two separate occasions, contrary to this school’s zero tolerance policy on violence. You will find both threats and the policy itself in the manila folder.” I imagine he practised that speech in front of the the mirror all weekend.

I open my folder as the guards open theirs. “And we gotta read his?” one asks.

Another, with a pair of black and green headphones draped around his neck, asks, “Can I listen to music while I’m reading? It’s less distracting.”

“I object to the vice-principal’s description of these materials,” I say. “I see no death threats here, merely a high school Civics essay and a poster advertising a free rock concert to be performed by Banjeet’s band, Mainlander.”

“The offending–threatening–passages of which I have highlighted. Those you do have to read,” Crevecoeur continues.

The guard with the headphones holds out Banjo and Sven’s poster. “This is pretty freakin’ sweet, if you don’t mind me saying. Did you draw this, kid?”

Banjo looks over at me.

I nod.

“My friend Sven did the drawing,” he answers.

“Gentlemen,” Crevecoeur interjects. “While I appreciate your time, this line of questioning is highly irrelevant. If you would be so kind as to direct your attentions to the text on the document.”

“Actually, it’s not up to the vice-principal to choose the tribunal’s questions for it,” I say.

Crevecoeur clears his throat and grins. “Of course. My apologies.” He turns to the guards. “Please continue.”

“So you and your buddy are in this band?” the guard asks Banjo.

“Yeah, I play guitar and do vocals and he plays drums. Sometimes we use a drum machine, and on some tracks we use horns, samples or whatever else we can find.”

“That’s pretty sweet too.”

“Stolen French horns,” Crevecoeur mumbles.

The guard ignores him completely. “So you do mostly original stuff or covers too?”

“Both,” Banjo says.

“Nice. I might just have to drop by to have a listen. I used to play a little bit myself, back in the day.”

“The text on the poster,” Crevecoeur says, pronouncing each word like its own highly punctuated sentence. “The consensual slaughter begins after dark. It’s–”

I stand too. “Clearly artistic expression. An act of imagination. Surely, it’s not to be taken literally, given that the monster drawn on the poster is itself not literal. Nothing like it truly exists.”

“I don’t know about that,” the fat guard says. “Add a few pounds, and it looks just like my old lady.”

All three guards snigger.

“It’s vile, that’s what it is,” Crevecoeur says. “An open call for violence.”

“An invitation to a suicide?” I suggest.

“Precisely,” Crevecoeur agrees, before realizing–

That I’ve already got my tablet out and opened to a YouTube video. I press play, and we hear the first notes of: “John Zorn’s Filmworks XII: Invitation to a Suicide.” I continue over the sounds of vibraphone and accordion. “It’s the score to an independent film. Unless, as the vice-principal would appear to want you to believe, it’s also an open call for violence and a death threat.” And I have more. Metallica’s Kill ‘Em All, Medeski Martin & Wood’s End of the World Party. “Gentlemen,” I say, “is jazz funk a danger to society as we know it? Does listening to John Medeski’s organ threaten our lives? Are Metallica’s James Hetfield and Lars Ulrich genuinely calling on us to murder or destroy anyone or anything?”

“Filesharing,” Banjo says.

“Besides filesharing. Because that is precisely what the vice-principal would have you believe.”

The three guards’ gazes switch from me to Crevecoeur, who nods. “A fine argument, except that Misters Hetfield, Ulrich, Medeski and Zorn are not my students. Banjeet is. Do you know who is also not a student of this school? Adolf Hitler.”

“Seriously?” I ask.

“My point,” Crevecoeur answers, “is that the misbehaving of others is outside my sphere of interest and beyond my power to discipline and control.”

“And my point is that your interpretation of ‘death threat’ is patently absurd.”

I flash the Kill ‘Em All album cover at the guards.

They don’t seem threatened.

“Perchance the tribunal would like to question Banjeet about the musical genre his so-called band indulges in.”

“Yeah, what he said,” the fat guard says.

“Black metal with a definite doom influence and some minor stoner and folk metal elements,” Banjo states.

“Black metal.” Crevecoeur spits the phrase out like a wad of flavourless gum. “And is it not the truth that many practitioners of this musical genre are in fact unrepentant and proud Nazis?”

“No,” Banjo says.

“They worship Satan and burn churches,” Crevecoeur counters.

“Which sounds wonderfully in tune with our own Canadian secularism,” I say, “but if you’re suggesting that Banjeet’s poster is a threat because his band plays black metal and some members of some black metal bands hold marginal views, I would ask the tribunal to consider those straws grasped, and move on.”

Banjo’s eyes narrow. “Dead, the lead singer of Mayhem, buried his clothes in the ground so they’d reek of death. One night before a show, he even asked the other guys in the band to bury him.”

As Crevecoeur recoils, I regret slightly instructing Banjo to tell the truth. “Exactly,” I say, raising my voice to cut him off. “Will the vice-principal now insist that death metal is the music of gophers in addition to Nazis?”

“Nazi gophers,” one of the guards whispers.

“Black metal,” Banjo insists. Death metal. Black metal. There’s a difference?

The clock strikes half past noon.

There’s a knock on the door.

“Come in,” I say.

The door opens and Isha walks in holding a bottle of water and a Saran-wrapped sandwich. The instant he sees her, Crevecoeur stops, fixes his hair and, intertwining his fingers, places both palms on his stomach. He licks his dry lips. “Mrs. Gill.”

Upon seeing him, Isha drops her sandwich, glaring at me.

“What are you doing here, mom?” Banjo asks.

“It’s an open hearing. Spectators are welcome and allowed,” I tell no one in particular, only now becoming slowly aware there are indeed spectators–plural: two. Because following Isha into the classroom, her skin perfect and eyes dark, and her body wrapped in a light summer dress, is Rosie. My Rosie. Rosie, my love. Rosie, my betrayer.

“Good afternoon, Charlie,” she says.

She picks Isha’s sandwich off the floor and hands it to her. “Let’s have a seat at the back. The hearing’s seemingly in progress.”

“That’s right,” the guard with the headphones says. “We’re making important decisions.”

I stare at Rosie as she hops lightly onto one of the desks the guards pushed to the back of the classroom, beside Isha. I want to read her face. I want to insert a key into her forehead, open her skull and understand her mind. Why the fuck is she here? My own forehead is sweaty. Crevecoeur wipes his with a yellow handkerchief, his own attention doing its best to focus around but not on Isha, like a fluttering, frantic moth singing its wings on an overheated light bulb.

“So that’s everything about the poster?” the fat guard asks.

“Beg your pardon?” Crevecoeur remains dazed a moment longer. “Oh, yes. Right. Yes, that is all about the poster.”

“Now this.” The guard picks up Banjo’s essay. “I went ahead and read all the highlighted bits and–”

“It was a misunderstanding,” Crevecoeur says, addressing Isha. I’ve managed to turn my back on Rosie but even through my back I feel her presence. I remind myself I have a job to do: an innocent Banjo to defend. “The poster, the essay, both documents,” Crevecoeur continues, “were unfortunate misunderstandings. The teacher was too sensitive and I was ill-informed. We acted hastily. It is true that we did not provide the boy with an opportunity to present his opinion and correct the misunderstanding. However, now that we have done so, I have assured myself that no true death threats were meant. As you see, Ishkirat, I am not a man too proud to admit when he is wrong, and in this circumstance I was wrong.”

“If there was no death threat there can be no expulsion,” I tell the tribunal.

“Yes, yes. I apologize,” Crevecoeur tells Isha.

The guards look at one another. “So what is it we do exactly?”

“I retract all allegations against the student and annul all corresponding disciplinary measures,” Crevecoeur says. “Everyone deserves a closer assessment. Every man should get a second chance.”

I say, “I wish to confirm that the vice-principal is stating that Banjeet will not be expelled, suspended or otherwise disciplined.”

“With all my heart,” Crevecoeur says.

“And then,” I say, slapping Banjo on the back, “you win.”

Now to consolidate that win. I grab my copy of Banjo and Sven’s poster and write a brief paragraph pardoning Banjo of all wrongdoing on it. I give it to Crevecoeur, who signs it, then I sign it, and Banjo signs it, and I even have each of the guards sign it. When the page is full of scribbles, I fold it in half and hand it to Banjo. “Your walking papers.”

“Thanks.”

“You guys can go,” I tell the guards.

As they file out of the classroom, “Try making it to our Wednesday night gig,” Banjo tells them.

I take a deep breath, exhale; turn past Crevecoeur making puppy dog eyes at Isha, uncertain if he can advance, and how much; avoid Isha’s giving me the evil eye between relieved bites of her sandwich; and meet Rosie face-to-face from across the classroom. Holding her knees, she swings her legs playfully. I walk toward her through what seems to me a tunnel obscuring every inch of reality that isn’t the space directly between us. Should I smile? Should I punch her in the face? “Hi,” I say.

“Let’s talk,” she says.

“Outside.”

She slides off the desk, fixes her dress and leads the way.

I attempt to follow, but Isha grabs my shirt sleeve. “We need to talk too.” I pull free without responding and chase after Rosie like a crippled rabbit after its mother. She exits by the back door and I find her sitting in the little nook where I used to escape from people like her. That’s my nook, I want to yell at her.

I fire a barrage of questions instead. “What do you want? How’d you find me? Why are you here?”

“Calm down, Charlie. I’m here because you tried calling me. When I tried returning your call, I couldn’t. I didn’t want to email. Amanda was worried about you. She thought you might be suicidal.”

The word stings. “Because of you?”

“Suicidal because of what happened, yes.”

Because of what you did. “I’m not,” I say. “Thank you for your concern.”

“I’m glad to hear that.”

Her smile makes me want to throw up all over it. “What, you’re not going to ask about my black eye?”

“I’m not.”

“Anyway, how’d you know I was here?”

“I guessed you were in Quarterville. I do know you, Charlie. I knew you’d go home. But before making the trip I got in touch with your parents to make sure. I told your mom I was an old friend, which she initially didn’t believe, until I was able to tell her so much about you she had no other choice. Information is power. You taught me that.”

“That’s right. You still have plenty of my stuff, including my hard drives,” I say.

“I will release it all to you.”

“Great.”

“You know, you never once invited me out here when we were together. You never introduced me to your parents. You never–”

“Bloody fuck! You can’t be serious.”

“I took the video down on Saturday, Charlie,” she says.

“And you want me to be grateful? I swear you’re fucked in the head.”

“Don’t talk to me that way.” I wait for her tears that don’t even threaten to arrive. “Not after I drove all the way out here because I was concerned about you. And I don’t want you to be grateful. I want you to be rational and realistic. I get it, you got hurt and you ran away with your tail between your legs.”

Again with the passive voice. “You hurt me.”

“And now I’ve come to bring you back. Because you’re the one who can’t be serious. Look at yourself.”

“I’m looking.”

“Now take a look around and tell me you belong in this place.”

“High school?”

“Here. Quarterville.”

“I grew up here. I read The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress in the very spot you’re sitting.”

“And you left because nobody else here reads books. You left to get an education, and there was no returning after that. You evolved. Quarterville stayed the same. Stop with the self-pity and come back to the city, Charlie. “

“To what?”

“To where you belong. To your career.”

“You destroyed my career.”

“I got you fired. The only one who can destroy your career is you, which is what you’re doing by wallowing among idiots.”

I chuckle. “And what law firm in their right mind will hire me?”

“Every one but Winterson’s. You’re an effective lawyer, Charlie, and that’s one of the beautiful things about the city. If you’re effective, nothing else matters.”

My chuckle erupts into booming laughter. Last week, when it was in your interest to convince me to quit my job, you told me I was a bad lawyer. Why? Because you felt guilty. Because if I walked away, you wouldn’t have to push me out. Now you feel guilty again and I’m a good lawyer. “Get out of here, Rosie.” You’ve done your due diligence. I’m alive and you can sleep soundly at night. “And, if you want what’s best for me, never come back. Don’t call, don’t email, treat me like the dirt I am.” You’re the effective lawyer. You can spin me around, flip me on my head, and convince me upside down is right side up and always was, from the beginning; because in the beginning was the word: of Rosie. I want to stop believing. I want to stop being lied to. I want don’t want to live in a place where nothing else matters because I don’t even fucking like Metallica!

“What about your things?” The sincerity in her question rings my head like a gong.

“Burn them.”

“Be reasonable, just once. Being so emotional is a mistake.”

“I know,” I say. “I used to love you.”

Still no tears flow from her concrete eyes. “If you ever need a reference, you know how to contact me,” she says standing.

In the city, that’s what friends are for. “Good luck with your legal career.”

“Good luck with your–”

“Life,” I say.

“I know you think I don’t understand that word. But do you know what saddens me the most? It’s that you’re not dirt. You’ve so much potential, and the longer you stay here the more of it you’ll squander, until, finally, you do turn to dirt.”

I’ve nothing more to say. Even if I do become dirt, don’t we all in the end? Isn’t dirt necessary? Not everything can grow hydroponically. But for now it’s Rosie who does the turning–not to dirt but away from me–and as her shape diminishes along the rear wall of the high school to the rhythm of the bottom of her dress hitting the backs of her calves, I only wish I could tell myself the sight doesn’t hurt. But it does. The pain makes a speed bag of my heart. Our relationship was already over, but now it’s over hopelessly. My pulse first pulls, then pounds, me into the nook where Rosie just sat, where I used to sit for hours as a teenager; until from there I am lifted, atomized and dispersed, settling back to the Earth as a human-shaped mound of painful dirt. A few people pass by without noticing me. I remember sitting in a restaurant with Rosie around Christmastime and watching the snowstorm outside make the world static. Today, it’s the middle of summer and I’m static. I take out my tablet, which is still showing Medeski, Martin & Wood’s End of the World Party, download a torrent of the collected works of Robert A. Heinlein, and spend the afternoon reading Stranger in a Strange Land. It helps reform me.

At my parent’s house, I make dinner. We eat after they return from work, and during coffee and crossword time I ask my mom about Rosie. “She said she was a co-worker of yours. I didn’t want to say anything because I thought it might be some sort of scam, but she knew everything about you and she seemed like such a nice girl. Was I wrong to tell her where to find you?”

“You weren’t wrong,” I say.

“Did you manage to meet with her?”

“I did.”

“Good,” my mom says, fixing her glasses and reading the next crossword clue. “You should meet nice girls more often.” My dad has fallen asleep in his chair.

Later, I insist on doing the dishes, leaving my mom free to gather her gardening tools and spend time in the backyard. She lets my dad nap for about forty minutes before waking him up and making him get the wheelbarrow to haul rocks, which they arrange into a border around her favourite pair of evergreens. The sun drops toward the horizon like a luminescent sponge sucking up the remains of the day.

In the evening I knock on Isha’s door, with my knuckles this time.

She opens, grabs me by the shirt and pulls me inside.

She slaps me. “That’s for lying to me.”

I rub my already swollen cheek.

Still glaring, she grabs my shirt again and pulls me close, and kisses me. When we separate, “And that’s for getting Banjo off the hook,” she says.

“I’m sorry,” I say. “And you’re welcome.” In truth, one is inseparable from the other. “But, you know, Creve–”

She silences me with a raised finger. “Don’t you even say his fucking name.”

I raise my hands in defeat.

“The black girl at the hearing today, was she your girlfriend?”

“My ex-girlfriend.” The front door is still open. I make a move to close it.

“Leave it,” Isha says.

“You want me to leave the door open?”

“It was a hot day. It’s going to be a warm night, and I can’t afford air conditioning.”

“Is Banjo home?” I ask.

“No. Want something to drink?”

She heads to the kitchen without answering. Leaving the front door wide open, I follow her. “I’ve got beer,” she calls out.

“Just water, thanks,” I say. “Where is Banjo?”

“Probably at the shanty, practising for his gig on Wednesday night. I don’t keep him on a leash, you know.”

“I know.”

She pushes a glass of cold water against my chest. “Here.”

Sensing anger, I try to assuage it. “I’m sorry again about Crevecoeur,” I say as politely as possible. But I have an ulterior motive. I want to know what happened between him and Isha. I’m nosy, despite my learned ability to control it, and if people volunteer information without being asked directly…

“That ex of yours is pretty,” she says, popping off a beer bottle cap.

Uncomfortable topic for uncomfortable topic.

“She is.”

Isha drinks. “But she’s way too old for you. She also seemed like an arrogant bitch.”

“You were able to tell?”

“I’ve met plenty of arrogant bitches in my life, Charlie.”

“Do they give off a particular scent?”

“They do,” Isha says. “They smell like money.”

I am sure we both must smell of dirt tonight. I counter with: “Oh, and what does Steven Crevecoeur smell like?”

“Defeat.”

“Not poutine?”

She cracks a wry smile. “Do you want to sleep with me?”

The question catches me off guard. I chug water to buy time as Isha waits patiently, sipping her beer while I try not to let my water run down my cheeks. But even when I place my glass down empty, I’ve no answer to give. “You’re welcome to more,” Isha says. “Now answer my question.”

“That wasn’t a question. It was a solicitation.”

“Do you want to fuck me?”

“I should probably go,” I say, watching her unchanging matter-of-fact demeanour.

“Door’s open.”

She doesn’t appear drunk. She’s calm. Her eyes are clear. “Do you want to sleep with me?” I ask.

“You’re unattached, I’m unattached, we’re both adults and you helped me out today, so it’s an honest question. I’d offer to wash your car but I’m not much good at that.”

“I didn’t help you out,” I mutter. “Crevecoeur decided he was wrong.”

“Sure, Charlie.”

“So, if anything, you should be offering to wash Crevecoeur’s car or asking Crevecoeur if he wants to sleep with you.”

“He does want to fuck me, but I don’t want to fuck him.”

I know the door is open. I know I could leave, but, “You’re scared,” Isha says, and she’s right. I’m also aroused even as my moral compass spins, its needle demagnetized, and the little Jackson Pollock in my head dips his brushes into a bucket of my mixed emotions before dripping and splattering them all over a canvas of my good manners stitched to my free will. “If you don’t want to have sex with me, that’s fine. I won’t be offended. But if you do, I do too.”

“Returning the favour?” I ask.

“Yes, is there something wrong with that?”

There’s a lot wrong with it, my good manners scream. I just can’t articulate it at the moment, my free will murmurs. “I’m not a prostitute, Charlie,” Isha says. “I don’t sleep with people to get things. If I did that, I would have slept with Crevecoeur to solve the problem in the first place, and now that I’ve gotten what I wanted, I wouldn’t sleep with you either.”

That makes sense. However, “If I hadn’t helped you and Banjo, you also wouldn’t be asking if I wanted to sleep with you.”

“Or if you wanted your car washed.”

“That’s different.”

“Of course it’s different,” she says, smiling wryly again. “Washing cars is a lot less fun.”

“Not to mention much more socially acceptable.”

“We are society. Now let’s do something we’ll both enjoy. Maybe this will help: I don’t love you, Charlie, and you don’t love me. See, no strings attached.”

So why do I feel like a puppet? “Are you sure it’s not a guilt thing?”

“Guilt?”

“You feel guilty because I did something for you and now you want to repay the debt to get rid of the guilt.”

“That’s depressing.”

“What is?”

“Thinking the world works that way.”

But, by God, that is what I think: the world is a marketplace and every relationship stems from the possibility of exploitation. When the exploitation is mutual and equal, a relationship becomes stable. Then people get married and have children, which, in the end, are nothing but human parasites. The children are born, find mates, and repeat the process. Guilt is what keeps us from exploiting each other out of existence. It’s the safeguard. “I’m thankful, not guilty,” Isha says.

“I feel guilty,” I say. “I feel like I’m taking advantage of you.”

“Remind me to get my water checked. There’s go to be something crazy in it, because if anyone’s been taken advantage of, it’s you, Charlie.”

“But I didn’t–”

I didn’t expect anything in return for helping Dahlia, Isha or Banjo. And, thus, a marketplace too came crumbling down. I’m surrounded by rubble. My career, my love life and now my worldview. “I don’t get it. In front of that tribunal, you seemed the coolest guy in the room, but now you’re so tense and nervous,” Isha says.

Because you offered to have sex with me! “I’m sorry, it’s been a hectic week.”

“So let’s relax together.”

“How can you say that so casually?”

“Because it is casual, more casual to me than getting up in front of people and arguing for a living.”

I grab Isha’s beer bottle and take a gulp. “I can’t have sex with you.”

“You don’t want to?”

I do want to. “I respect you too much,” I answer.

She picks up the bottle and before I can react pours the rest of the beer on my head. I sit still as it soaks through my hair and drips down my scalp. “Is respect still a problem for you?”

“Now you’re trying to provoke me.”

“Yes, because you’re being stupid and sexist.”

Stupid I can ignore, but sexist? “How am I being sexist?”

“You want something, I want the same thing, and you’ve decided for the both of us we can’t have it because–why? Because my body’s not mine to decide about?”

“I didn’t say that.”

She throws me a kitchen towel. “You didn’t say it but you thought it.”

“Why are you on my case anyway?” I say, wiping my head.

“Because you’ve managed to piss me off.” She pauses, sees me open my mouth, and adds, “And don’t you dare apologize.”

“I wasn’t even thinking of it,” I lie.

“So what do you say, want to sleep with me?”

“Yes,” I say, and I don’t think about it, and we go to her bedroom, and we have sex for half an hour without even closing the front door, and it’s pretty fucking great. When we’re done, Isha rolls over on her back. I do the same and stare at her ceiling fan. Its successive waves of air cool the perspiration on my skin. “I still don’t love you,” she says.

“I don’t love you too.”

I pull on my boxers and shirt and hop away from the bed struggling with a pant leg. At the bedroom door, I stop and look back because it seems the gentlemanly thing to do, but Isha’s lying naked on the sheets, still staring up, in momentary need of absolutely nothing and no one. The covers are a tangled mass on the carpeted floor. Her black bra rests across the foot board. Waving without looking over she says, “It’s OK for you to leave.”

“Are you sure?”

“Just close the door on your way out.”

She sounds happy. I am happy. I shut the front door behind me and pass beneath the night sky from her front steps to my Mazda. I don’t want to, but I feel like a conqueror, a hunter: a primitive man–injected with masculinity. Don Draper, John Wayne, Fred Flintstone. Give me a club and let me bash dinosaurs to death. Ashamed of myself, I nevertheless enjoy everything about it. The engine purrs. I sleep well that night. I don’t think of Rosie until morning.

On Wednesday afternoon, I make my way to the woods where Mainlander plans to unleash a consensual slaughter sometime after dark. I arrive sufficiently early to help set up.

“Awesome you made it,” Sven says, setting down a 25L gas can.

Banjo’s connecting audio equipment to several old generators around what I assume will be the main stage. Sunlight filtering through rustling leaves plays on Sven’s beat-up drum set. Two guitars lie nearby. When Banjo sees me I blush. “Need a hand?”

I crouch beside him. “Thank you,” he says.

“Thank justice, not me.”

He plugs a thick cable into what I’m guessing is an amp. “Justice is a coincidence. You’re not.”

“Is that from True Detective too?”

“Nah,” Banjo says, moving along the cable to one of the generators. Sven opens the gas can and, lifting it together, we use it to fill the generator with gas.

“By the way,” I ask, “aren’t these generators going to be loud?”

“You bet.”

“So we’ll just have to be way louder,” Banjo says.

We fill a second generator, then grab another gas can and fill a third. “I didn’t ask this before because I suppose it doesn’t matter, but do you guys really believe in pessimism?”

“Not really,” Sven says. “Unless I’m like seriously baked and listening to Darkspace on really good headphones.”

“It’s another way to look at the world,” Banjo says. “Muslims and Jews, Christians and atheists, Sikhs, Hindus, Buddhists, even when they hate each other they all agree that life’s pretty good. Existence is a miracle or some wonder of nature that everyone should learn about and glorify. Pessimism and antinatalism are the opposite. Birth is bad, life is a mistake.”

“I’ve read the Wikipedia page too,” I interrupt.

“And my essay.”

“Right, so how much of what I read in those two places is your genuine belief?”

“Is it a problem if I believe a lot of it?”

“Not for me.”

“If you two are going to discuss, I’m going to light one up,” Sven says.

“No, it’s fine,” I say. “I was curious. That’s all.” Banjo has his mother’s smile, and sense of self. “I think you can believe whatever you want as long as you don’t hurt anyone.”

“I believe in metal,” Sven says.

“I believe it’s ridiculous I can bring a dagger to school because I’m Sikh but can’t write an essay without almost getting expelled.”

That’s because ideas are more dangerous than blades. “You’ve a rebellious spirit,” I say. I mean it as a compliment because I regret not having more of that spirit when I was younger, but I’m not sure Banjo takes it as one. I don’t want to explain. “And Philip Mainlander,” Sven says, lighting up a spliff, “believed that in the beginning there was God, and God didn’t want to exist, so he tried offing himself, but it didn’t work out, so instead of ceasing to exist, God died but all his body parts got scattered and that’s why there’s us and there’s the universe, and everything we know is like God’s rotting flesh. How fucked is that, right? Imagine hanging out with that dude.” I imagine it would be much like hanging out with Banjo and Sven.

Once everything’s connected and filled with gasoline, we start the generators and do a sound check. Sven rolls up his sleeves and pounds on the drums, spliff dangling from his lips. Banjo plays a few White Stripes riffs, then growls into the microphone before finishing off by grinding out what resembles a low and disturbed version of “Should I Stay Or Should I Go” that may or may not be aimed ironically at me.

“I thought you didn’t know the Clash,” I say when the world rings quietly again through my ears.

“YouTube,” he answers. “Not my music but not bad.”

It’s not my music either–I’m a decade too young–but the internet’s heterogenized generational tastes in music. And, it seems, philosophy. Silently I applaud. Let every one of us cows chew its preferred cud.

By seven, the trickle of people into the woods begins. They’re mostly young, which makes me feel old, and I drift away as they mingle, drink and socialize, until I’m leaning against the trunk of a tree older than I am, sober as can be and wondering just what the hell I’m doing here in Quarterville. What if Rosie was right? What if I’m no longer one of the mass heading into the jaws of destruction; what if I am that which destroys? As if on cue, my world goes black.

“Guess who?”

Before I can respond, the two hands covering my eyes peel away and Aspen Loomis steps into view. She’s wearing a black dress. “Am I dressed for the part?”

“What part are you playing tonight?”

“Clever.”

“Surprised.”

“To see me here?”

“I didn’t consider death metal to be your taste in music.”

“Blackmetal,” she says. I have to stop making that mistake. “It’s not, but the things we do for love, right?”

“Dahlia made you come.”

“She says we should support our friends and their kids, because kids are the future.”

Aspen’s even younger than I am. “Whatever happened to us? I feel like I was a kid and I was going to be the future and now I’m an adult and everyone’s talking about the future again. I don’t feel like I’m the present.”

“Be the present you want to see.” She smirks. “But, seriously, we got passed over ‘cause we suck.”

“By who?”

“Ancient people in wheelchairs. Freemasons, all-seeing eyes, lizardmen.”

“The Illuminati.”

“Now you’re talking sense, Charlie.”

I point with my chin at the growing group of teenagers sitting on the grass with their phones out, staring at their flickering screens. “And they passed us over for them?”

“Don’t they me,” she says, playing at being offended. “My father is a high-ranking Freemason at the local lodge.”

“Are you serious? There’s a Masonic lodge in Quarterville?”

“Deadly. And no, not in Quarterville.”

A moment of darkening silence passes. “But you won’t tell me where? I bet it’s a big secret.”

“Check the Yellow Pages.”

“Never mind. I’ve got two more important questions for you,” I say. “One, what do you think of the idea that life is a tragic evolutionary mistake and the only moral thing to do is stop procreating to put an end to the human race? Two, what are your thoughts on the Clash?”

“I can’t have kids. I’m a Joe Strummer fan,” she says bluntly.

“I’m sorry.”

“Why?”

“That you can’t have kids.”

“I hadn’t the faintest idea it was your fault.”

“Let’s drop the sarcasm for a second. I am truly sorry you can’t have kids. I didn’t mean–”

“Ask me something else, Charlie. Ask me if I want kids.”

“Do you want kids?” I ask after realizing she wants me to literally ask the question she told me to ask.

“I don’t.”

I’m not sure what to say to that. “So, as you see, it makes no difference to me if I can have kids or not,” she says awhile later, as both of us look ahead instead of at each other. “I listen to the Clash sometimes, and I’m doing my part to end the human race if you want to look at it that way. I don’t. You couldn’t sell me on an ideology, because I’m someone who does what she wants because she wants it. I don’t need my selfishness justified or individuality sorted and labelled. I’ve no interest in what happened before I was born or will happen after I’m dead because, as far as I’m concerned, existence starts and stops when I do. How’s that?”

“Itself probably an ideology.”

“If it is, I relinquish all intellectual property rights and you’re free to write it down and make it into a political platform, cult or self-help book.”

“That’s why you don’t care if–” The teenagers and their phones phase in and out of the evening like fireflies. “–the future’s in good hands or not. And here I thought everybody wanted to rule the world.”

“Responsibility is the opiate of the masses.”

“Clever.”

She cranes her neck to look at me. “And what part are you playing tonight?”

“A bit part. I’m a lousy actor.”

“Pessimist,” she says almost amicably.

Near the main stage, between the microphone and drums, Banjo pours gasoline on a massive heap of tangled branches.

“Charlie.”

The crowd cheers as Banjo sets the branches on fire.

“Charlie,” the voice repeats. For a moment I’m convinced the voice belongs to Rosie.

The flames rush upward.

A hand grabs my arm, and I know the hand is one with the voice, and the hand is not Rosie’s.

Aspen smirks, spinning off the tree into what has now become night.

Dahlia takes her place, her eyes reflecting briefly the burning before the stage, before focussing on me. “What on earth is wrong with you?”

Confused, “Nothing’s wrong with me,” I say in my defense.

Sven starts one of the generators. It roars monstrously alive before settling into a loud but monotonous mechanical buzz.

“Banjo’s not getting expelled,” I offer as proof of my innocence, but I doubt Dahlia can hear me as Sven pulls the starter cord on the second and third generators, both of which roar and buzz like the first, until their combined din permeates the woods like a a stew of noise.

Dahlia leans in. Her lips graze my ear.

“Mainlander welcomes you!” Banjo announces through his microphone, his voice, booming, echoing across a network of speakers hidden somewhere in the dark. “Dear depraved and willing victims–”

Sven lays down a beat.

“You slept with Isha,” Dahlia yells into my head.

“–prepare to be annihilated into the sweetest and most violent serenity!”

The crowd seethingly exalts.

“She wanted to,” I yell into Dahlia’s ear.

Sven guns the drums and Banjo’s fingers on the strings of his electric guitar tear open the enveloping noise and shred the last remnants of peace, which his voice swallows, distorts and spews back as unintelligible acid that eats away at my sanity.

“She’s vulnerable, Charlie! And you smoked pot with her son and his best friend. They’re in high school, for God’s sake! What was going through your head?”

A horrible omniscient noise.

“You’re a child.”

“I can’t hear you,” I say. I can hear her. “Let’s talk later, alright?” I don’t want to talk at all. I am a child. I am a man.

“A rebellious, irresponsible boy.”

“Later!” I scream at her.

She waves her hand at me, and I push off the tree trunk and lumber forward into the crowd of teenagers, boys and girls, jumping, pushing, bellowing, recording, elbows, beer, smoke and grinding bodies, illuminated by the flickering of the fire raging between Banjo on vocals and guitar and Sven on drums, but it doesn’t take long for me to know I don’t belong, I never belonged, because I’d feel better alone with a book, that’s why I went to law school, why I left Quarterville, Rosie was right, I shouldn’t have come back, I push through the future, the smartphone generation, toward the exit, but in the woods everywhere is an exit, and I lose my bearings, seeing one of the security guards from the high school, I see what may be the shine of a car hood, I make toward it, Mainlander creeps after me like shadows, but the music weakens, or else I’m going deaf, a few diminished minutes later and the shine is a car hood, and the car is parked on the side of the road, half in a ditch, and the trees have ended, gravel is underfoot and I’m standing in the middle of a county road on an ordinary Wednesday.

Dahlia grabs my hand from behind and I nearly die of fright. “Jesus!”

“Why are you running?” she asks.

I can at least hear her out here, although I’m convinced all of Quarterville is the audience for tonight’s black metal concert. “I’m not running. I’m standing. Listen, I’m sorry. OK? I’ll leave tonight and nobody’ll be worse off.”

“Thank you for what you did for Banjo,” Dahlia says without letting my hand go. “But, Charlie, what possessed you to do drugs and sleep with Isha?”

“Pot’s hardly a drug.”

“How can you say that? You’re a lawyer. You shouldn’t encourage–”

“I was a lawyer and I didn’t encourage anyone. Besides, pot’s infinitely better than smoking cigarettes, and healthier than swallowing whatever it is they teach at that high school.”

“You sound angry,” Dahlia says.

I am angry, which makes me feel foolish. As someone who generally keeps his emotions in check, outbursts are traumatizing. I resist the urge to rip my hand free from Dahlia’s grip and walk sullenly to my car while waves of guilt and shame wash over me. I hate scenes. I hate being the centre of attention, even if it’s one person’s, and I don’t even believe I’ve anything to defend. Defense is simply my natural reaction.

“Does it have to do with the woman who was at the hearing?” Dahlia asks. “Isha saw you two talking outside.”

I forgot how quickly word travels in a small town. “That was my girlfriend.”

“The one you broke up with?”

“For the second time this afternoon, apparently.”

“Is that why you…”

“Maybe. I don’t know. Maybe Isha’s not the one who was vulnerable.” Admitting weakness, or even the potential of weakness, is difficult for me. “But why is it someone has to be vulnerable. Why can’t two people just be willing? Back there in those woods, there’s a hundred victims looking for a few hours of serenity.”

A pair of headlights appear and Dahlia and I get off the road.

“I’m just worried about Banjo,” she says.

“I think you underestimate his level of maturity, and overestimate mine.” Now the shame’s getting to me. I imagine this is what I should have felt when I actually was a teenager and I did something stupid and my parents sat me down to lecture me. Except Dahlia’s not lecturing, and what I’ve done wrong is internal: living an accelerated version of a phase I skipped as a kid. Or maybe it’s not wrong at all. Maybe I’m finally living how I want without letting the expectations of others push me around.

“Maybe you’re still falling.”

Hurtling through a space filled with black metal. “I thought I already smacked my face against the ground,” I say rubbing my black eye.

“So make sure you land on your feet this time.”

“That’s cheesy.”

Dahlia shrugs. “I coach sports.”

“Which means we’re both good at manipulating people.” I wonder if Banjo and Sven picked this night specifically because of its complete lack of moonlight. “That’s a sad talent to have.”

“You left Quarterville,” she says. “I stayed. Did you come back to be the same person who left?”

“I came back because no other place would have me.”

“Non-answer.”

“I didn’t change because I went away.”

Dahlia squeezes my hand. “Just don’t be a dickhead like everyone else.”

“I don’t plan on it. ” Did she just say dickhead? “In fact I’m not planning anything, for maybe the first time in my life, and that freaks me out even more than this music.”

“It’s not so bad.”

“Do you have a plan?”

“A sketch.”

Like of a monster and its tongue, down which Dahlia and I walk toward the shrill guitars and pummeled percussion calling us into the woods. “How long do you think they’ll keep playing?” I ask in a scream once we sit on the ground, beside Aspen and the security guard who nods upon recognizing me. “Until they run out of gas,” Dahlia screams back, resting her head on Aspen’s shoulder. We say no more after that, and the prophecy comes true. Banjo and Sven continue well into the morning, past the fizzling out of their bonfire and past the first rays of the dawn sun. Sometime in between, the security guard disappears and I doze. In the midst of the loudest, most abrasive, sounds I’ve ever heard: I sleep. My mind, reduced to numbness, enjoys its total lack of feeling. Musical anaesthesia. Yawning, I stand and stretch my arms. The crowd is thinner than at night and I’m not the only one who slept. Dahlia and Aspen are gone. I tread softly, careful not to wake the remaining bodies by trampling on empty beer cans and other garbage. Sven doesn’t have that problem. He spears a fast food container with a sharpened stick and deposits it in a half full black garbage bag. “Morning, Mister C,” he says. “What did you think?”

Amazingly he seems fresh. “It was an experience,” I say.

“Right on, right on.”

He gently nudges a girl lying on the ground with his foot. She curls up and grumbles, keeping her eyes shut. “Oddly relaxing,” I add.

“Right?”

“I feel like my head got massaged. With a sledge hammer, but massaged.”

“So you think we have a shot?”

“Shot at what?”

He stabs a beer can and deposits it in his garbage bag. “At making it in the music business.”

“Bringing serenity to God’s rotting flesh?”

“Mainlander, fuckin’ A.”

“I don’t know the first thing about the music business, but this morning I think all plans are a waste of time. Do what you love, for the reasons you love it, and never be a dickhead to anyone.”

“Romantic for sure, but what about stuff like money, security and shelter?” Isha asks, extending her hand. I shake it for the second time in a few days. “You can drink beer but you sure as shit can’t eat dreams.”

“I didn’t know you were here,” I say.

“Finish high school. Go to college,” she tells Sven, who affirms and retreats to give us privacy. “I wasn’t,” she tells me. “I dropped by this morning to check if everyone was still alive. And to thank you yet again for keeping Banjo and me in Quarterville.”

“You thanked me more than enough already.” Despite what happened between us–sex: I force myself to acknowledge it–our interaction is not awkward. “You’re still most welcome.”

We walk toward the stage, where Banjo’s chatting with a man wearing a pinstriped suit. “Looks like a battlefield. What were you like when you were their age?” Isha asks, referring to the teenagers lying, groaning and sitting on the ground. One jumps to his feet, lurches toward a tree and pukes. “Were you wild?”

“I read scifi.”

“I wanted to be wild,” Isha says. “For a while I was.”

“Do you regret it?”

“No.”

“I regret not being a little wilder,” I say.

“It’s better to be wild when you’re old enough to afford the consequences.”

From the stage, Banjo stops talking and points toward us. The man in the pinstriped suit looks our way.

As we approach, Banjo excitedly introduces Isha (“Pleasure to meet you, ma’am. Your son and his friend are quite the talents,” the man in the pinstriped suit replies.) and me (“Pleased to meet you, sir.”) The man in the pinstriped suit shakes Isha’s hand, followed by mine. His handshake is firm and greasy. “My name’s Kalman Hirsch,” he says. “I’m the owner of Withered Wasteland records.”

“He’s been scouting Mainlander online,” Banjo blurts out.

“And the online tracks clearly pale in comparison to the intensity of the live show,” Hirsch says.

“He’s thinking of signing us,” Banjo says.

Hirsch shows his teeth. “The young gentleman isn’t being entirely accurate. I’ve already made up my mind to sign Mainlander. I have a contract right here.” He produces it, uncrumpled, from the inside of his suit like an illusionist, and holds it out. What I don’t realize immediately is that he’s holding it out for me.

“I just wanted our manager to read it over first,” Banjo says, imploring me.

“Of course.” Hirsch blinks.

I take the contract from him and flip through its pages. “Take your time,” Hirsch says. “It’s our standard agreement and I believe you’ll find it more than fair, but if there’s anything you don’t understand, our lawyers will be more than happy to clarify it for you.” Banjo’s eyes are the size of saucers, Isha’s are sizing Hirsch up, and mine stare dumbly at the words on the printed page, which tell me more about myself than about the terms Withered Wasteland records are offering Mainlander. So much for independence. So much for individuality and living my way. Even for nobodies in the middle of the woods–doors open, doors close–at the whims of others, and, because I’m a nice guy, I let myself be pushed down corridors I don’t want to go. “Please let me know your decision by Monday,” Hirsch says, handing me his pure black business card.

Attributions

Thanks to flickr user emilykneeter, whose photo “suburban sunsets” I used to make the book cover. Because she’s an awesome photographer, you should also check out her website.