Reza walked towards the owner, bent his large body towards the man’s ear, and apologetically rubbed his hands together, explaining everything with a smile. They talked in Persian, both glancing my way from time to time. Finally, the owner approached me and snapped in a dry voice, So, what would you like to drink?
A Coke, I said.
The owner nodded, agreeing that I had made a good choice — the cheap choice and the respectable choice. But what I really wanted was a good glass of whisky on the rocks. And what I really, really wanted was to sit in the middle of the bar and rotate my liquor in time to the soft music, maybe a big fat golden ring on my finger, my chest gleaming under a black shiny shirt, my car keys dangling from a gadget that could open doors and beep and warm the driver’s seat despite the cold snow. I wanted a gold chain around my neck and a well-dressed woman with kohl under her eyes, and a late-evening blow job that began in a big fancy car and ended on an imported carpet with a motif of peacock tails fanning shades of purple against my hairy Arab ass.
Instead, the owner went behind the bar and got me my drink himself, calling me over with a nod as if signalling to one of his waiters. You stay here, he muttered.
I sat on a bar stool in the corner, close to the kitchen, and twirled the ice in my drink with a plastic straw. The soft music in the background, the dim lighting, the glowing red from the lanterns, and the gold atmospheric ornaments made me think of the story of the virgins who had lost their lives in the king’s castle before Scheherazade distracted him with her tales of jinn and fishermen. I wondered whether, if I had happened to live back then (wearing a different outfit, naturally), I could have saved any of those women. Maybe I could have been the saqi who slipped a few poison drops from my ring into the king’s wine. And as I watched him writhe in agony from the spell in his stomach, right before he fumbled another innocent girl, I could have stuck a dagger through his silky purple robe, opened his poisonous entrails, and watched his eyes flicker in awe and disbelief as he anticipated the next and final episode. The smell of food from the kitchen brought me back to the land of forests and snow. And then all I wished was to crawl under the swinging door and hide under the stove, licking the mildew, the dripping juice from the roast lamb, even the hardened yogurt drops on the side of the garbage bin. With my pointy teeth, I thought, I could scrape the white drips all the way under the floor.
When Reza was done playing, he came and sat with me. We were both silent. He leaned on me and said, they are closing in another half-hour. When I get paid, we leave. We watched the employees folding the tablecloths, sweeping up glass, turning the chairs upside down on the tables, sucking the carpets with electric hoses, and mopping the kitchen floor. All the crumbs, all the loose bits of food that had jumped during the evening from the cook’s knives and tilted plates — all that had flown and landed on the ground, all that had sizzled and escaped the rims of giant pans, all that had been transported by gravity and chased by giant brooms and battered by wet sweeping, all that had been expelled into the hollow of drains in thin, calm waves of grease and water — now fell into underwaged fists and made me sob.
The owner came out from behind the bar and silently took my glass from me, opened the cash register, called over the musicians, and paid them one by one.
When that was done, I approached the owner with humility, my back hunched, my hand below my chin and close to my chest. I said: Excuse me, sir. May I ask you something?
He barely nodded, not looking at me.
Sir, I am looking for a job.
The owner automatically lifted his head at this, and looked me in the eyes. Do you have any experience? he asked, and then bent his head back towards his money.
Yes, I do. I can work as a waiter, I said.
I have waiters, he replied. Do you speak Farsi? Some of my customers want to be served in Farsi here.
No, but I can work as a busboy. I am very good at it. I have the experience. Ask my friend Reza here. I worked in a fancy French restaurant here in Montreal, Le Cafard, on Sherbrooke Street.
Reza was annoyed at me for saying that. I could see his raised eyebrows. He stood up, turned his back, and walked towards the door with his instrument case, zipping through the erect upside-down legs of the chairs on the tables.
Come back on Tuesday, said the owner. We can talk.
Thank you, I said, and retreated by walking backwards, my face to his highness, my turban bowing repeatedly, until I reached the royal gates, and opened them from behind my back with an awkward twist of the wrist of my left hand, in the process fumbling against the glass with its Visa card stickers that reminded me of the world outside and the cruelty of the cold.
Outside, Reza was silent and brooding and nervously smoking, and smoke shot out of him like straight arrows, splitting their exit between his nostrils and his tight lips. Finally he couldn’t hold in his words any longer. As soon as the last of the smoke had left his chest he ground his voice at me: How could you do that? First you come in just like that, to this respectable place, dressed like a bum. And just look at your shoes. And then, and then — he stuttered with anger — and then you ask the man for a job and you tell him to check with me as a reference. Well, if he had asked me, I would have told him what a deranged, psychotic, spaced-out case of a petty, unsuccessful thief you are.
Give me back my money! I shouted at him. You are the only thief here. How many meals did you get from those Canadian women with your sad stories?
Reza took off his gloves, biting them with his teeth, and dug his fingers into his tight pants and pulled a few dollars from his pocket. He counted his money and gave me a twenty-dollar bill.
Forty, I said, and I was ready to kill for it. You owe me forty. And I was about to pull out my curved dagger, poison his drink, make sure he was dead, and then escape towards the sun on a rug woven by flying camels.
Ah, right. Forty. Relax, here is your money, said Reza. Now I am meeting Shohreh in the Crescent Bar. Are you coming? And by the way, I shouldn’t pay you after what you did to that innocent girl.
Who? Who? I said.
You know who. Shohreh! he shouted. You took advantage of her.
Hypocrite! I shouted back. You always wanted her for yourself. Well, too late, musician of doom. She is mine now.
Mine, Reza laughed. No one would keep you, deranged man.
Carpet musician, I retorted.
Fridge thief. Are you coming or not? he asked and walked away.
Yes, I am coming, I said. Because I am sure she wants to see me tonight.
WE ENTERED THE BAR and I saw Shohreh sitting at a table with a man, an older man with a moustache and grey hair. Reza looked around for his drug dealer. When he found him, he bought some “baby powder,” as he put it, and then he came back my way. Do you want a line? Just to show you what a nice guy I am.
I will consider it interest on my money, I said.
Ungrateful bitch, Reza said, and wobbled his way to the bathroom. I followed him. He pulled out his credit card, sprinkled the powder on top of the counter’s white ceramic, and cut it into vertical lines. He pulled out a brand new five-dollar bill, rolled it up tight, and gave it to me. I stuck the money in my nose, and like a rhino I charged and snorted a line before the elephant beside me could change his mind. As I moved to the tip of the second line, Reza leaned his big body over my shoulder, pushed me against the wall, and dove like a kamikaze towards the shiny white counter. He vacuumed up the rest of the white stuff, opened the door, pinched his nostrils, and swayed his way out of the bathroom onto the dance floor.