Mr. Millennium

By Morgan Nyberg

"He wants money? GIVE HIM MONEY!
He wants sex? GIVE HIM SEX!
He wants to be happy? MAKE HIM HAPPY!
Because this guy’s genealogy is PURE GOLD!”

For a certain secret society Gabor Esterhazy is a dream come true.
Gabor is a miserable, self-loathing depressive.
Then the Sanctuary of the Blood gets hold of him.
They trumpet his astonishing bloodline.
They drown him with pleasure! Wealth! Power!
Soon he’s an international religious star!
But what happened to the happiness he was promised? Why is he still depressed?
Don’t tell me he was just a PAWN!
Come along on Gabor’s strange and comic descent into lust, deceit and danger!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Morgan Nyberg
• Release date: Aug 21, 2011
• ISBN: 9781465739216

Morgan Nyberg

Reviewers have said of Morgan Nyberg’s Raincoast novels:"One of the best series in the post-apocalyptic genre, hands down.""An exquisitely formed vision of a broken world.""On a par with McCarthy's The Road.""The best I've read in a post-apocalyptic setting.""This book (Since Tomorrow) stunned me with its power and richness."“Far and away the best of its genre.”Before writing the Raincoast series Nyberg had been a poet (The Crazy Horse Suite), an award-winning children’s author (Galahad Schwartz and the Cockroach Army; Bad Day in Gladland) and a literary novelist (El Dorado Shuffle; Mr. Millennium). He had worked and lived in Canada, Ecuador and Portugal. He was teaching English in the Sultanate of Oman when he felt the need to confront in fictional form the ecological crisis facing Planet Earth. The Raincoast Saga, many years in the making, is the magnificent result.

Book preview

Mr. MILLENNIUM

MORGAN NYBERG

Who remembers Gabor Esterhazy now, the global outrage, the tabloid scandals? There has been no shortage of new wickedness since then, so perhaps Gabor’s adventure has been largely forgotten. But the story of the melancholy labourer from Vancouver who learned that he was descended from Jesus Christ should be recorded in detail at least this one time.

For those in charge of the affair, Gabor’s transformation began well before the fracas in the food court of the Fraserworld Mall. But for Gabor himself, that is the moment his life broke loose from its tenuous mooring and was gathered to the bosom of the storm.

As he exited the food court’s public washroom Gabor detected in the corridor the smell of food and of cleaning agent. There was a sound too, like ocean surf, through which, faintly, came music. God rest ye merry gentlemen. Let nothing you dismay. He stepped out of the corridor and into the area he chose to call Fast Food Hell, a term he used almost affectionately, for in his daily life there were several Hells.

When Gabor got back to his table Jerome Mendelsohn had added two more napkins to the three he had already darkened with dirty drawings. Jerome called Fast Food Hell his office. At the moment he was sketching a cathedral whose bell tower was a stiff penis.

Fir, spruce, hemlock, said Gabor. Softwoods, am I right?

Jerome grunted.

So with all this soft wood around, how do they manage to produce such hard toilet paper. Give me the pulp-and-paper mysteries, Mendelsohn. Enlighten me.

Jerome grunted again and drew a pair of bells swinging in the penis.

Gabor said, Fine. Leave me in the dark.

Jerome printed bing bong beside the bells.

Gabor said, The dark is fine with me. There was no use talking to Jerome when he was concentrating on a drawing. Gabor studied the denizens of the food court, the immigrants, the refugees and the few native Canadians scraping up international pseudofood with plastic forks. Was the Fraserworld Mall for them a kind of heaven on earth? Verily, they rejoiced not.

The Filipina woman who cleared the tables was having a break. She sat near a garbage slot, looking defeated. No tropical sun here, ma’am. Instead, up above somewhere, the winter rain of Vancouver. Below that, concrete, lots of concrete, with escalators down to this Fraserworld Mall, this Underworld with its nerve centre of Fast Food Hell, where once Gabor in a fleeting delusion thought he saw infernal flames leaking out around the Bangkok Kitchen sign.

He could not at the moment see Jerome’s face, only the top of the black Mao cap he wore to hide his bald patch. Jerome drew three bats flying out from the penis. Then he looked up and said, You’re lucky you don’t live in some desert, like Morocco.

Gabor waited.

If you lived in the Moroccan desert you wouldn’t even have toilet paper. You know what you’d have?

Tell me.

Stones, man.

Ow.

You asked.

Gabor turned Jerome’s napkin to get a better look at the drawing. A willy with bells. Well, ring my chimes!

Jerome opened his mouth wide and rocked back and forth and made a creaking noise, his version of laughing. He slapped the table. Faces swung toward them. Then Jerome turned serious. He leaned forward, grunted. The Church was deeply into erections.

He had shaved off a recently sprouted beard, and for facial hair wore now only sideburns shaped like hockey sticks. Although Gabor saw him every day at work, there was almost always something different about his face, the only constants being the Mao cap and those distracted brown eyes.

Gabor said, Man, how much weirdo confetti is there blowing around under that hat?

A cloud slid over Jerome’s face. He shrugged.

Don’t get steamed, said Gabor.

Jerome went on with his drawing.

OK, for Christ’s sake, spill the church beans for me. Please. Give me the erection mysteries. I’m all ears.

So negative, man. You should see a shrink.

In his chest Gabor felt a sensation of collapse. His shoulders drooped. The light in the food court seemed to dim somewhat. He looked away into the foreign horde and saw that he had been wrong a minute before. That Latin-American face with its lipstick, that Chinese man with his granddaughter on his lap, those two black boys: smiling, all smiling through their mouthfuls of pseudofood. The surf sound was the collective joyful murmur of their voices. Happy, these people were, happier than Gabor Esterhazy who, it was true, was so negative.

He risked another glance at Jerome, who said, The Mother Church herself. France. He was tapping the penis-tower with his uni∙ball, studying it. Before the Revolution, OK? If a guy was impotent, see, his wife had the right to claim her dowry back and get another husband. She could make him go to ecclesiastical court, where he’d have to produce an erection for the priests. God’s truth, man. If he got it up but the priests still weren’t convinced, they would make the guy put the blocks to his old lady right there. In fucking court!

Jerry.

What? You think I’m kidding?

Do you ever feel like a loser?

Jerome studied Gabor with an aggressive and mirthless smile. Has that got something to do with French justice? You’re not listening. Are you listening? I’m giving you a living, not to mention pulsating, piece of history.

You never feel that your life doesn’t amount to shit?

Ah, I see. OK Gabe, tell me this. Just what is it that it’s supposed to amount to? I’ve always wondered.

Jerome too, of course, was happy here in hell. It was only inside Gabor Esterhazy that the Vancouver winter went on forever.

Hey, said Jerome, check this out. This is what got me going on the Church. Weirdest thing. He found what he wanted in his shirt pocket. It looked like a religious tract. He opened it on top of his napkin art, smoothed out the wrinkles. A guy handed it to me on Granville Street. Tweed overcoat, hat. Goatee. Italian shoes with the thin soles. Just handed it to me and kept walking. Listen. It’s called The Children of the King. Jerry cleared his throat. ’His name was Jesus, of the House of David. He was the legitimate King of the Jews, and it was for leading a rebellion in order to claim his rightful throne that he was crucified. He was no more divine than you or I. He performed no miracles. He did not rise from the dead. Like many of those crucified by the Romans he did not die on the cross but survived. Thus the myth of resurrection.’

Well, just look at those assholes. Gabor produced a bitter snort.

Jerome paused for a few seconds but did not look up. ‘He married. He had children. The descendants of Jesus settled in Europe. The bloodline continues to this day.’ Isn’t that cool? Jesus’ grandchildren could be here as well as anywhere. Scoffing up souvlaki in my office. I think I’ll show this to my rabbi.

They’re scaring that poor old woman. Look - she’s shaking.

Jerome reached, pinched Gabor’s sleeve, shook it. Listen to this. The second paragraph is even better. The people who did this are no religious nuts.

Gabor crushed his paper cup into a wad. He did not feel the Coke running over his hand.

Jerry finally looked up blinking from his tract and lifted it away from the flood. He was disappointed and resigned. What are you doing, man? Are you going into meltdown again?

There at that other table was orange hair, hair like a ruined paintbrush. Under the hair there was a toadlike face. There was magenta acne and fleshy lips. Stubby fingers inserted shreds of paper plate into the flame of a cigarette lighter. The head of the other person at the table, who held that lighter for the toadface, had been shaved, but not recently, so that it looked to Gabor, in that hell, at that moment, like a grimy amoeba. There was a slit mouth. There were slit eyes in a skull-like face tilted back to study each smouldering shred. From the lobe of one ear an inverted cross hung down and caught in the collar of a green plaid logger’s shirt. A stud pierced an inflamed-looking eyebrow.

Toadface dropped a half-burnt shred. A flake of ash bobbed between the two of them, then snagged on the stubbled pate of Skullface like a beauty spot. Toadface tore loose more shreds. A cord of smoke slithered up toward the ventilators.

The Chinese man stopped dandling his granddaughter, who pointed at the smoke and said, Ga! The red lips of the Latin girl closed over her teeth, and she stared down into her sweet and sour. But that old woman who sat next to the delinquent pair was too afraid to get up and leave, too afraid even to look away from their performance. In her wisp of white hair, her homemade knitted sweater with its picture of a leaping salmon, and her baggy blue-jeans she seemed a mouse hypnotized by a cobra’s display of fangs. She shook. She trembled even more than the flame of Skullface’s lighter.

And so Gabor stood.

Jerome sighed and tucked his tract back into his shirt pocket and slid his jacket off the back of the chair. He said, I’m sorry what I said about seeing a shrink, OK? Forget this, man. They’ll kill you.

Gabor shrugged. Fine with me. And away he went once more into depressive conflagration, into release. He crashed into the table of the two black boys. They dodged away as the table and their lunch hit the floor. There was a shout. Security! The girl crouched low over her sweet and sour, whining something in Spanish. A fat man leapt up and jumped aside, jerking his chair with him. Gabor felt electric.

Stand up. You’re going to get punched. Skullface blinked up at Gabor. Closer, the face was more like a doll than a skull. A lipless mouth fell open. The tip of a tongue protruded.

I said stand up. Fucking do it!

The brow wrinkled. The cross swung free of the flannel collar. Skullface shifted to sit up in his chair. But before he could, Gabor snatched the lighter from his hand, dropped it to the floor, leapt high and came down it with the heel of a Nike. The lighter disintegrated. Gabor said, I am destroying your personal property. Get mad. Get steamed like me. It feels cool as hell. I recommend it. Look, I’m going to hurt you whether you’re standing up or not, so why not defend yourself? Gabor picked up the book of matches, struck one and dropped it on the lap of Skullface, who gasped and slid his chair back as he batted the match away.

Oh yes. Now there would be blows. There would be pain. And maybe this time the overdue hand of Death would reach down with pity and yank the plug of Gabor Esterhazy.

Skullface started to stand. Gabor wrapped his right hand around the doll cheeks and pushed. Skullface flailed for balance and sat again. Gabor turned to Toadface.

Short was Toadface, but sturdy. He faced Gabor in a half-crouch and gave a girlish shout. Spittle sprayed from the corners of his lips. Then his left hand darted into a pocket of his leather jacket. When the hand came out it was holding some kind of spray canister. Gabor stepped forward with a straight-arm to the chest. Toadface crashed backward into his chair. Spray hissed toward Skullface, who screamed, a sound like a power saw chewing through a knot. He thudded to his knees. His hands clawed his face. Huddled there, he cried. He wailed. And in Gabor’s chest the blast furnace of rage dwindled to a flame smaller than that of the shred of cardboard still flickering on the floor.

The bawling of Skullface was thin and soprano. It was rich, salty and real. And when Gabor had pushed Toadface, was there something about that chest?

Toadface caught her balance. She stood there with the colour drained even from the blemishes. She pointed the spray-can at Gabor. Don’t come near me! I’ll spray you! Someone call the police! Are you all right, Terry? Holy shit, what have I done? The voice piped on like a hysterical songbird.

Gabor stepped away. And the eyes of all the denizens were upon him, hating him of course, for attacking women.

And finally, there were blows. Little fists, fisties, beat into his back. You stop that! You bully! You hooligan! You leave those women alone! Turn around! I’m not scared of you! I’ll tear your eyes out! You drug maniac! You pervert! Turn around and look me in the eye if you’ve got the guts! Why, I’ll kick you where it hurts!

The old woman’s knuckles dug his ribs. He winced. He did not look her in the eye as she demanded, but chanced a quick glance. She was still trembling, a medical condition apparently, and not caused by fear. As her rebuke blended with Toadface’s hysterical chirps and with Skullface’s sobs, Gabor turned to slide away. But his way was blocked by a chubby man in a grey uniform. The old woman stopped punching his back. Now you’re going to get what you deserve. Kick him where it hurts, young man!

The security guard and Gabor looked at each other for a few seconds. Except for Toadface and Skullface and Little Town of Bethlehem it was quiet. Toward the guard Gabor lifted a finger, meaning, Don’t try it. The guard stepped aside.

Jerome was gone. The Filipina woman who cleared the tables stood at their table. She was examining a napkin. She seemed not even to have noticed the disturbance. As Gabor lifted his jacket from his chair he heard her mumble something.

Bing, she muttered. Bong.

Gabor deeply inhaled air tainted with car exhaust, low tide mud, sawdust from the mills along the Fraser River, and the bad breath of some brewery. The rain plastered his hair against his neck. He glanced toward the mountains of the North Shore. Nature there. Come forth into the light of things, said Wordsworth, Let Nature be your teacher. OK, mountains, give me light. Illuminate me. Teach me some goddamn thing. But the mountains were invisible, hidden in cloud, in rain. And Gabor thought of the nations of people who had lived along that coast for millennia. The Salish, the Haida, The Nootka, Kwakiutl, Tsimshian, one with Nature. Sure, depressives, all of them. Just look at their art.

He gave up. There was no beauty anywhere, no rescue. Merely one more hell. Best just head home for a therapeutic measure of Moss’s rye whisky.

But first a person would have to endure the deadly bus-ride-in-the-rain. And soon enough a bus pulled up. A few people boarded behind him. As he found a window seat the warm and heavy atmosphere of the bus seemed to settle in his forehead. It felt like cotton wool that had been kicked along a sidewalk.

Got to buy a car. Got to, he muttered, probably too loudly. But buying a car would mean getting a licence, which would mean learning to drive. Moss did say he would teach Gabor, but there was no way he could get that together. Gabe Esterhazy will drive you in the mouth without much provocation. And he will certainly drive himself the rest of the way crazy any day now. But drive a car? He slouched down, hoping to sleep.

When he closed his eyes they were there waiting: two neurotic and helpless women. Toadface’s panicked eyes. Skullface’s nose against the palm of his hand. Gabor squirmed. There was a feeling like steel straps, the straps they employed at work to bind stacks of doors for shipment, squeezing his heart. And Jerome, having seen him in action on other occasions, had not waited around. There was no pleasure for him in watching a friend self-destruct. Gabor stared out into the drizzle. Store windows and umbrellas slid past. He tried not to think.

The hum of the bus motor, the creaks and rattles of the vehicle itself, began to lull him. But then there were voices. Somewhere behind him, in syllables as clear as the drops of rain sliding down the glass beside his face, a man and a woman had begun to talk.

It does the heart good, the woman was saying.

It sure does, said the man.

To see a young person with principles.

When there are so many who have no idea what is right and what is wrong.

A generation of bystanders.

That’s right. Bystanders.

But he did not hesitate.

No way. Not for a second!

Waded right in.

Right in. With no thought for his own safety.

They were middle-aged voices, the woman’s harsh and brassy, the man’s crisp but low, almost losing itself in the sounds of the bus and the passing traffic, two anonymous voices. He listened reluctantly.

Did you see his face? said the woman.

I sure did.

Anger.

Righteous anger.

And determination.

Oh yes. Nothing was going to stop him. I bet that even if there had been twenty of them and not just the two he would still have waded right on in.

I’m certain of it. With no thought for his own safety, either.

No, no, of course not. Never a thought.

It does the heart good.

It sure does.

Gabor lost interest. Behind him the dialogue rolled on, human noises as empty as the rest of the day. He saw on the sidewalk a man blowing into a mouth organ, with grey hair to his shoulders and a beard like wet ashes. The woman said, That kind of woman can be tough, you know. A tingle ran up Gabor’s ribs.

Oh yes, said the man. Leather jacket.

Boots.

She had boots?

Steel toes. For kicking people.

But still he waded in.

Didn’t he, though?

And the other one. Shaved head. The man made a sound of disgust. Give me nightmares.

You see what he did to her lighter! The woman laughed, and kept laughing, and the man joined her.

A claw of light snatched at the Gabor’s stomach. A gust of voltage swept over his skin. His heart kicked cold and hard.

And that spray, whatever it was.

Oh, that must have hurt.

They were silent for a moment, but then had to laugh again. They could not have known he was on the bus, so he resisted turning around to look at them but stared instead at an auburn pony tail ahead of him, as everything seemed to float and pulse.

Do you have any idea who he was?

I have seen him before, said the woman. But all I can tell you is that he is someone special.

Oh, well, that is obvious.

Destined for great things, I would say.

Oh yes, I don’t doubt that. Great things. Certainly.

You’ve never seen him? At the mall on weekends?

No, can’t say that I have.

He sits with a friend at a table in the Fraserworld food court. Ready for anything. And sometimes there is a strange smile on his face. It wouldn’t surprise me if he was a poet.

A poet. Now there is a great thing.

Gabor gripped the seat between his legs. Good Christ, a person was being admired, by strangers, was being called special and poet, ready for anything, when all he prayed for was not, in the pathetic spectacle of his sadness and anger, to be noticed at all, when all he hoped for was to ride home on the gloomy bus, to raid Moss’s whisky and try to forget his life. And now these fools were shouting that a person was destined for greatness. Oh, there was some kind of grotesque knothole in reality here, something frightening. He lunged for the signal cord. But yet he did not pull it. He needed to hear more.

In another time, said the woman, in a better time, there would have been a place for him. He would have been respected and honoured, not like here, where they call the security guard.

I suppose some people are blind. Can’t see when a person is destined for great things.

Yes, that must be it. But once upon a time people could see clearly. People knew where to put their respect.

In the past, you mean?

The distant past.

When there were knights and such? Is that what you mean?

Yes. The age of chivalry. He would have been honoured then. A poet and a knight.

They came to a stop. A small dark man in a dirty baseball cap was shouting and pushing people aside to get on the bus first. He stood in the bus door and snarled back at them, Any objections? Then he shouted into the bus itself. Any objections? He sat in an aisle seat. A woman sitting behind him mumbled something. He spun in his seat and threw up a leg, ready to ram his heel into the woman’s face. The woman sat still. He held his foot there for a moment. Then he turned around, yawned loudly, said to everyone, Goodnight, and closed his eyes.

The Chinese woman in the seat beside Gabor gave a yelp as he climbed over her. First he jammed the man’s cap down over his eyes. Then he got a solid grip with both hands behind the man’s head and heaved. The man’s head cracked into a stanchion. He slid off his seat, elbows up for protection.

Passengers leaned aside as Gabor walked to the rear doors. Two, though, did not. The woman was not middle-aged at all, but Gabor’s age, with short black hair and eyes shining up at him, and a contented half-smile. The man beside her was bald, with a tie. His hand rose to brush Gabor’s arm. He said in his crisp low voice as Gabor passed, Well done, Mr. Esterhazy.

From the sidewalk Gabor gaped up at the bus windows. The woman’s face was there, watching him. Behind her there was another face, with a moustache and goatee and tweed hat and a look as satisfied as the woman’s. The bus pulled away. The baseball cap was somehow in Gabor’s hand. He stared at it for a while, then let it fall into the gutter, which was coursing with the rain that falleth on the just and the unjust.

Cutoff saw, rip saw, band saw, trim saw, tenoner, mortiser, sander, planer. Every machine in the shop was screaming like a stuck pig of steel. Al, the foreman, needed two hundred and fifty doors because a boxcar was going out that night. And all the pieces from all the screaming machines ended up piled within Gabor’s reach. His job today was assembling. There were hemlock styles, hemlock rails, hemlock munts, hemlock heavy as concrete. There were quarter-inch plywood panels ragged at the edges from being rammed through the table saw. There was glue. He slotted the pieces together and with one hand swung a ten-pound club made of circular slabs of conveyor belt pierced by a length of pipe. Tap, tap and wham. And it was good that Al had put him here to assemble, and not on some shrieking machine, because he was having trouble concentrating, and instead of a hemlock rail, might have cut his arm to length.

Well done, Mr. Esterhazy, the guy on the bus had said.

He lined up a style, smashed it down onto the tenons, tilted the assembled door upright and passed it on to be squared and stapled. The next style was warped. He sent it back.

If only he could send yesterday back.

New style. Tenon of the top rail into the mortise. Tap.

Yesterday, when he attacked two women.

First munt. Tap. Slot the first panel. Tap.

Yesterday when he attacked a small bully on a bus.

Second munt. Second panel. Bottom rail.

Yesterday, when a stranger had admired him aloud and had said, Righteous anger.

Top style. Slot the tenon of the top rail. Eyeball the others. And…

Well done, Mr. Esterhazy.

…wham!

He stacked rails and munts in piles ten high on his bench and went around to where the glue bucket was. He had mixed the glue thin. It didn’t stick worth a damn, but it went on easily. With his stub of a paint brush he began slopping the glue onto the tenons and restacking the glued pieces, ready for assembling. And as the watery glue flew from the brush onto his coveralls and boots he looked around the shop.

Through that air soupy with dust he saw nothing pretty: some machines; some men moving their arms to place or remove wood, seeming so silent in that sea of sound, like figures under the ocean. There was Porky, sliding a long piece off the rip saw table, laying it on a pile of other long pieces. There was old Arnold, just visible in a gap between a stack of wood and a machine, cutting pieces to length, his belly wobbling as he twisted to set a piece down. There was the new Greek, snatching at the munts spilling out of the XL at one piece per second, the ones he missed piling up silently at his feet. There was Jack, feeding his double-end tenoner, with his face like a hatchet blade, smiling off into nowhere as he told to himself the new jokes he had ready for the lunchroom, where there would be laughter and swearing and men shouting over cards. Gabor Esterhazy was wrong again, then, about nothing being pretty. But pretty is not what a smile is. A smile is something else.

He looked toward the other end of the shop. He saw Jerome Mendelsohn in his Mao cap pulling a load of fifty doors on a dolly. But at the same time that Jerry pulled he was reading a piece of paper. He crashed into the trim saw. The load tipped. Jerry tried to hold the doors but had to leap clear as they spilled. Nearby, men’s mouths gaped to shout approval. Soon Al arrived, and Al’s mouth seemed to snap at Jerry’s face. In spite of everything, Gabor had to laugh.

The hooter went. It was lunch time. The men shut down their machines and headed for the stairs to the lunchroom. Jerry walked away from the sprawl of doors. From under the bench Gabor picked up his lunchbox. He dug the wax plugs out of his ears and dropped them into his shirt pocket. He looked for a pile of wood the right height for sitting on.

To eat alone in the empty shop: peace, like a battlefield maybe, when the guns fall silent. To hear birds. A bee buzzing. At lunch break in Pacific Door though, there was only the blowing of the heater. No bees. He took a deep breath full of the smell of cut wood.

Young Porky and Neil and Woodpecker sprinted daily across to the Chinese greasy spoon next door and started shouting, Soup! Burger! Fries! as soon as they got in the door, so that they could gobble their lunch and get back in half an hour. As for Gabor, he now closed his eyes to savour silence, and to savour the taste of a cheese and lettuce sandwich and thermos coffee.

But he opened them again.

Because a person’s mind was not as peaceful as Pacific Door. He poured the coffee back into the thermos, slid off the pile of rails, and started with his open lunchbox toward the stairs. Jack’s dumb jokes, please. Quickly. And men’s voices swearing. That would be better than these other voices going, Chivalry, and, It does the heart good. He went around his bench, past the band saw and stopped, because someone was there, standing at the foot of the stairs, smiling with a smile that seemed to crackle.

Mildieux.

Hey, Gabe! How the hell are you! What have they got you on today, dick straightener or asshole punch?

He did not move aside to let Gabor go up the narrow plank staircase, nor did he start up himself. Gabor stood there holding his open lunchbox.

I’m assembling.

Oh yeah, I saw you. Man, you swing that club like you mean it.

Blond Billy Mildieux - an unskilled labourer cutting out knots, who should have been a life-insurance salesman - coming on, as always, nice. Crackly.

You going up? Gabor asked.

Naw, I thought I’d head over to the Chink’s.

Better hurry.

Mildieux shrugged, continued smiling, did not move aside. What you been up to?

Gabor pulled out a sandwich, took a bite. It was his turn to shrug. And his stomach contracted. What had he been up to indeed? He gave his lunchbox a bounce, checking the contents. The Tums were visible under the thermos. There would be indigestion. And hidden in a pocket of his jacket there was an Ativan pill, for emergencies. Billy, he said, I don’t want to spoil your obviously sensational day, so don’t ask.

Billy Mildieux’s laugh. Jesus, that laugh. If they installed Billy in the rafters they would not need any artificial lighting.

Hey, you know what you need, Gabe?

I do, Billy.

Billy’s expression almost faltered.

A lobotomy is what I need.

Gabor shifted to start up the stairs. Billy did not move to prevent him, but he leaned into his path, blocking Gabor with that face bright as a nugget.

What you need, man, is a holiday! He shouted it. His minty breath washed over Gabor’s face like a Mediterranean breeze.

Gabor took another bite of sandwich, would try to get as much of it as possible digested before the stomach packed up. He could not manage the thermos, though, without setting the lunchbox down. He frowned at it thirstily. Billy Mildieux lifted Gabor’s thermos out and poured him a lid full of coffee, and set the thermos back in the lunchbox, and took the lunchbox from Gabor with one hand and handed him the lid of coffee.

Thank you.

Yeah, a vacation. I just got back. Took my holidays late this year.

Ah, yes. The tan.

Ever heard of the Algarve?

Yes. Portugal. I was born there.

No way! You were born in Portugal!

You’re going to be too late for Wing’s.

Not hungry. He swung the rest of his short but sturdy body in under his face. Access to stairs denied. You been back? I mean recently. To Portugal.

Gabor shook his head, chewed, drank, determined to out-race the indigestion. Billy raised up Gabor’s lunchbox as if he were offering him, maybe, Lisbon.

Peasants, man. Fucking oxen. Castles. And these Dutch chicks? On the beach? Topless! Gabe, you gotta go.

Do I? Look, Billy, after work, on the stage of the Riverside Inn a chick called Cherry will perform wearing nothing but a little sweat and a big smile. My kind of sunshine. She may not be the Algarve, but what do you want for the price of a beer?

Take your holidays in January. The boss’ll let you. Gabe, get away from this fucking winter.

The crackle was gone from his smile. Gabor’s stomach gave another squirm. He stuffed the rest of the sandwich into his mouth, sluiced it down with the last of the lid of coffee, dropped the lid into the lunchbox, took the lunchbox from Billy’s hands, twisted past him and started up the stairs.

But Billy followed. Europe, man! Get a whiff of culture! Vancouver is just a rut you’re stuck in! Some Old World therapy, that’s what you need! Old World therapy! He was shrill and desperate, unMildieuxy. What the hell was with him? Gabor took the last steps two at a time. Sunshine! Sidewalk cafés! Tits all over the beach! Get a little strange stuff. Forget the maid.

At the top Gabor glanced back. Maid? But Mildieux was descending the stairs. He seldom went into the lunchroom. The men did not like him.

Nevertheless, as Gabor crossed the room toward an empty chair, he saw in his mind a castle, with blue sky behind it, swipes of cloud, and swifts shrieking around the battlements. In cracks between the stones there were wildflowers, whose blossoms trembled in a breeze. And Gabor heard only dimly the voice of hatchet-face Jack. ...actually, miss, what I asked when I called the tourist office was if someone could show me around Regina. But, hey - Regina, vagina - who’s fussy? Then his slow, gasping laugh.

Toward the end of the day the door-cudgel grew heavy. No more tap and wham. Now just nudge and clump. Here was fatigue at last, the working man’s satori, with no upsetting thoughts, only the trance of lifting, placing and hitting. There was half an hour to go, with the mind pleasantly stalled, the body on automatic pilot.

The last piles of munts, rails and styles were low, almost used up. Gabor let the cudgel hang at his side and had a look around. Jack was setting up his tenoner for tomorrow’s order. Woodpecker was scraping sawdust out from under his mortiser with a snow shovel. Billy Mildieux’s cutoff saw was silent, Billy gone off somewhere. Only old Arnold’s machine, the other cutoff saw, was for some reason still running.

A long load of cedar was being maneuvered in through the door for the next day’s order, toward Arnold’s saw. Jerome Mendelsohn was at the near end, not twenty feet from Arnold, tugging at the load. He held between his teeth what looked like the same piece of paper he had been reading when he dumped the load of doors. Gabor saw Arnold’s back, and saw his belly jiggle as he twisted to slide a long piece of hemlock down his bench.

The cutoff saws hung from pivots, like pendulums. They were connected by a slack chain to the wall, so that if the blade hit a knot and the saw kicked, it would stop before it opened the operator’s chest. But whoever had measured the chain on Arnold’s saw did not have Arnold’s beer-belly. His elbow now pumped smoothly back as he drew the saw toward himself. It was quiet with the other machines off. Gabor heard the blade bite wood. Arnold slid the piece along the bench and pulled the saw toward himself again. But this time his arm jerked, and Arnold gave a hop and tripped backward, out of sight behind machinery.

In seconds one of the salesmen from the front office ran past Gabor’s bench, in his white shirt and tie, with the first-aid kit. When Gabor arrived there was a crowd around Arnold. He was sitting in sawdust on the floor under Mildieux’s saw. His T-shirt was soaked down the front, and his pants gleamed black at the crotch. Jesus, look at this, he kept saying. I cut my fuckin’ belly open. The salesman, who was crouched beside him stood up, wavered and reached out for support. Woodpecker helped the salesman out into the yard, where there was more air. Fuckin’ paper-pushin’ pussy, said Arnold. He squeezed the two halves of his abdomen together. Blood ran over his stubby fingers. Yeah. I got an idea. Gabe, bring me some of that glue of yours. And find me some fuckin’ C-clamps.

After work Gabor drank beer with Jerome Mendelsohn, and was disappointed to see that, although Cherry sweated, she did not smile. Arnold had blown Gabor’s satori. Now, as Cherry jack-hammered her pelvis toward her audience of working men, he waited for the dark sun of lust to shine. Finally he turned away. I need a holiday, he said to the top of Jerry’s Mao cap. From myself. One way ticket. Will you stop reading that thing.

But Jerry only grunted and did not look up from the tract, which was spread out between empty beer glasses. On the back of his right hand was a fake, stick-on tattoo of a heart that had cracked in half.

Gabor leaned down close to the empty glasses, so Jerry could hear him over Cherry’s recorded music. Don’t pretend you don’t want to know what happened after you left Fast Food Hell. Because you know what happened. Don’t you! And you’re just itching to hear what you missed. You’re sorry you left, admit it. Because you know as well as I do that not all fuckups are alike. No way. Fuckups are as different as fingerprints. Well? He waited. Jerry did not even grunt. I beat up two women. I made them cry and everybody hated me.

Jerry sat up, but continued to regard the tract in an unfriendly way, as if it was trying to put one over on him. Gabor observed that Jerry had shaved off his hockey-stick sideburns. Now he seemed to be raising a smudge of whiskers just under his lower lip. He pulled a magnifying glass from his shirt pocket and hunched even lower over the tract.

Then on the bus home. There were two people talking about me. They must have seen me beat up the women. They didn’t hate me, though. In fact... He could not manage to say the rest. He watched Cherry’s performance for a while.

Although he did not raise his head from his inspection of the tract, Jerry