Before Volker Gruber arrived in North America, he had imagined a never-ending party: women who were easy and sophisticated, men who would share their drugs, their musical equipment, their couches. Instead, he had to work all week just to afford going to one of the few meager parties. The women never said hello and the beer was weak. He quickly learned that in Canada anything before 1979 was irrelevant; in a way, it was one of the things that had attracted him, the newness. But since his arrival, he found himself missing Germany more and more. He felt it most under the fluorescent glare of grocery aisles, trying unsuccessfully to find words he knew.
Volker watched the stock boy strain upward for a bottle of oil, jerkily deliver it to the woman with the dark hair and even darker halos around her eyes. The movements of the people accompanied a strange rhythm in Volker’s ears, pumped from headphones. He left his sweatshirt hood up, the headphones like a secret antenna connecting him to the outside world though a constant pulse. Volker pushed his cart up aisle three to Kruder and Dorfmeister, scooped out several bags of oatmeal and sugar, visited the meat counter, lifted potatoes and onions from produce. The cheeses were atrocious, he wouldn’t even go near them. That required a special trip to Kensington Market.
On the streetcar, a young blonde sat in the single scoop seat across from him. She was wearing a dark-blue hoodie, the cuffs punctured with holes through which her thumbs looped. Her silver fingernails keyed a rhythm on her knees. She had good pants, good shoes. A short choppy haircut framed her head and she wore purplish-pearl lipstick. She looked like the girl in the Internet service advertisement overhead. He smiled through the music at her pale sleepy eyes. She didn’t look at him. Blondes never did. For some reason he got the brunettes, the tall leggy ones who hid in baggy pants and hunched over to surprise him with their height and grace. Not unattractive, but brunette nonetheless, they loved him. It was because he was dark too.
It was different with guys, easier to make friends with them. They stood together and nodded their heads, watched whoever was playing or spinning. They shuffled alongside one another, faces saying everything: It’s good, it’s good. He could do that. Volker spoke in a different dialect with this group — one of drum machines, sequencers, oscillators, filters, brands. E-MU Emulator, Roland TR-909, Korg MS-20, ARP 2600. Women required more language. Sometimes Volker knew he could get by with a head nod, a smile, could hook up if it were a friend of a friend, if there were someone who knew him to introduce him, vouch for him. But in the morning, the drugs were gone and the girls always seemed to hang around, uncertain, their movements — with the headphones off — composed of snapping, Volker’s words stilted and loud, saying not much of anything.
Toronto was very sluggish when it wasn’t dancing. During the day it was an ugly smear of fried foods and snow, people with their hands out, the buildings only a few heads taller than the people. During the day he bussed dishes in a restaurant on Queen Street West. At night he changed his clothes and went clubbing. It was the one thing the city was good for. Six months of this. He played the first Thursday of every month. Familiar and unfamiliar faces in front of him, a flurry of cute girls with pierced tongues bopped under his hands. He moved over his gear like a magician, the sound in his head finding its exit. Between each set, thirty days of penned ricocheting, lifting dishes and glasses in and out of the machine.
The streetcar rattled up an incline on its tracks like an automatic hospital bed. He felt it but didn’t hear it.
The amount Cynthia Staines ate diminished in direct relation to the things she bought. These days, she ate almost nothing at all. She skipped lunch because she was working; it was an excellent excuse, no one could argue with it. Anyway, she did not have time to chew the fat with a bunch of do-nothings at The Muddy Duck.
Today she was savoring a tuna wrap one of her coworkers had brought back for her. Cynthia had already made up her mind: She would eat half and that was all. The other woman had already gnawed her way through a southwestern chicken sub, all tomatoes and orange sauce, balled up the napkin in her little fist, her pin-striped lap littered with crumbs, a plump polyester pair of Old Navy’s passing for office wear. It had smelled like heaven, and disappeared like it was a mirage.
“Listen,” Cynthia said into the black slots in the mouth-piece. The telephone was the most efficient way of both delaying and prolonging the devine glut of mayonnaise crucial to the supposed low-fat wrap. “I know you can help me. I want you to wave your magic wand and find me a driver by Friday.”
The coworker gingerly deposited her lunch things in the garbage and reached for her Day-Timer. Cynthia turned away from her, leaned back in the swivel chair, propped a square-toed black shoe dangerously close to the sandwich, and eyed it with contempt.
“Friday,” Cynthia said again, louder, “I know it’s close, but you’d be such a dear... I would definitely owe you lunch.”
She hung up.
“Idiot.” Cynthia ground the word between her teeth and the woman looked up with surprise. “He wouldn’t lift his finger; take his wife’s pulse if she were dying.” Cynthia laughed loudly, the chords of it straining through the office wall out into the village of cubicles. She shook her head in feigned affection. “He’s going to do me this favor; he doesn’t even know he’s getting the boot. You didn’t know? Well, it’s not like I’m asking for anything out of the ordinary, nothing that isn’t in his job description. You have to cut the dead wood. Really, nice enough guy, that Jackson, but rocks for brains. Andy came in here the one night, laid it all on me, told me about Jackson at the last conference. He did this performance you wouldn’t believe — you just don’t talk out of line like that, ever. I can’t believe I didn’t tell you this. Andy came in one night, said, ‘We’ve got to lose senior staff. If not Jackson, then who? I hate to do it to him, I just need one reason to keep him on, something solid, help me think of it, one thing I can take to the board.’ ” She held out her arms emptily.
The smell of the sandwich crept into Cynthia’s nostrils. She grabbed it off the desk, took six small bites, the medicinal fish taste oozing through her wisdoms. She chewed until the pita slid down her palate without struggle.
“But that’s business, it’s all balance.” She stared down at the nub of sandwich. “In the long run it’s better for the company. Jackson will do me this last favor and then we’ll be even.”
A few rings of green onion lay on the wax paper, an inside-out company logo showing through from the other side. Out of the bottom, a thin milky trail leaked. Cynthia balled the half-sandwich inside the paper and let it fall into the wastepaper basket. Her coworker offered her a piece of chewing gum, the silver foil crackling. She chewed it hard and fast, pushed it with her tongue against the roof of her mouth where it would stick without looking unprofessional. It deposited a burning twiggy taste of mint.
Bonnie Brown-Switzel stood outside the pharmacy beside battered newspaper boxes that had been ransacked, neon flyers for burlesque shows and ESL tutors rubbing paper shoulders. She fumbled through the white plastic bag, searching for her purchase. Her fingers clamped around the tube and she experienced a youthful thrill. She rummaged in her black leather shoulder bag for her compact. The oval of her mouth was powdered, her lips slightly chapped from walking all day.
This was her prize. The classic vixen’s tool. The tip of its perfect red tongue met her bottom lip where she let it linger before climbing up to accentuate the peaks. It was, if not the same color that the woman on the actor’s street had worn, very similar. Bonnie usually steered clear of bold colors. She was feeling reckless. She peered into the handheld mirror, very pleased.