The Big Dream Read online

  Suyin’s back stiffens, and her breasts point higher. “Not pointless. Many times, I think you’ll find if you take a bit more time to find out exactly what the issue is – ”

  “I am a good listener, is not a problem. I am caring to hear. I am a good guy.”

  Suyin breathes out sharply, as if some dust had gone up her nose. “I know that, Grigori. But you need to concentrate on being useful to customers. Your goodness is no good if they can’t get what they want.”

  Suyin has sped up talking again, but he catches that she has called him Grigori, which no one says in English. So prissy. Aren’t they friends? He threw her a party.

  After a while, she picks up a new page and says, “Ok? Ring!”

  He should have listened. He could have understood, if he really focused. The problem is that focusing takes a lot of energy, and he can shut it off too easily. In Cherkessk, he woke a hundred times a year to hear his parents yelling at each other, or drunken talk and songs in the street. In Russian, he couldn’t not listen. The eyes close but the ears don’t – words always got in and he always understood them, angry, pointless, incoherent, anything, pouring into his ears and brain unstoppably. English requires effort, which means when he relaxes, leans back, lets a stray thought lead his mind, he often drifts so far from the conversation there might be no way back.

  “Ring?”

  “Yes!” Grig is so fucked.

  “Ok . . .” She points her small finger at her ear like a gun, and says, “Ring-ring!” and he gets that she’s pretending to be a phone – it’s a practice phone call. He hates these bullshit games, and yet Suyin’s breasts are perfect, even in the dumb sweater.

  He beams at her, points his own small finger at his ear, and says, “Ring!”

  Suyin does not smile back. She whispers, as if they had an audience she is protecting him from, “No, you answer.”

  He chuckles, then thinks, then flushes. “Hello?”

  Still she is silent, as if the invisible audience prevents her explaining what is wrong. “Hello?” she says to her finger. “Who is this?”

  “Oh! I never make that mistake on live line. No, never.” He shakes his head.

  Suyin just nods and this time he understands that she will not stop this pretend phone call for anything. He feels suddenly that she is just processing him like a month-end report, not treating him as her office-friend Grig. He wonders if there are cameras in the ceiling or some other reason beyond her being a silly bitch.

  “Thanks for calling Dream Magazines today. How may I help you dream?”

  “I am so angry! The mail carrier informed me that yet again my copy of Dream Retirement is not in his sack! This is outrageous! That was the November issue . . . .”

  Her voice has gone shrill as a cat, though her face is blank and her eyes focused on her page. Her soft sweetness is all gone – she is completely unfuckable now.

  “Well? Are you going to do anything about it? Well?”

  He will answer her, polite, professional, Canadian, in a moment. For that moment, he just sits there, hating her.

  A lot of the guys he went to grade 12 with – he was only in Canada for grade 12, his father had thought that was enough – are still around Scarborough and they sometimes hang out. But this weekend no one calls with any invitations for clubs, any cheap weed or pills, any video-game nights in someone’s basement apartment.

  So he is awake and sober on a Sunday morning for the first time in ages. Mariska has figured out how to password-protect her wireless, so he can’t look at porn on the internet. Which is fine, actually – he jerks off imagining Suyin’s pretty little breasts, her pretty mouth all tight and prissy, imagining holding her head back and shoving inside, pumping into her throat. It is wonderful when he shoots off, and then terrible when he’s just lying there in his old Vanier T-shirt with a slimy sock in his hand.

  He gets up and thinks about showering but just gets dressed. He puts the sock in Mariska’s laundry. She won’t notice until after she’s washed it, and by then she won’t be able to tell what was on it.

  His friend Tomas works at a jerk chicken place downtown. Grig can get free plantains and shoot the shit for a while, guaranteed, which gives the day a point, a bit.

  Tomas is a big Brazilian guy with a tattoo of a spiderweb creeping out the collar of his shirt. They had autoshop together in school. “Grig, que pasa?” he yells when the door jingles. Grig just waves – he’s tired of faking any language shit.

  The gospel reggae is too crackling loud and the floor is sticky and all the customers are stupid. A little white paper bag of plantains slides across the table. “What’s shakin’?” Tomas flops into a plastic chair, making it rock back and almost dump him.

  “Not much.” Grig shoves a plaintain chunk in his mouth. When he bites, steam escapes and scalds his tongue. It hurts so bad he has to spit it out but there’s no napkin or anything so he winds up with this hot slimy gob in the palm of his hand. He shouldn’t have gone for it so fast. He should have had breakfast. The music swoops high.

  “Jesus, man.” Tomas goes and gets him a napkin from the counter. With his long legs, the restaurant is barely one stride. He plonks back down and Grig wraps the dead food, smiling weakly.

  His tongue feels raw, tastes like blood.

  “Job all right? Ladies?”

  “It’s the same, right? Ladee and job, same.”

  “Yeah?” Tomas’s heavy black eyebrow is like a cat arching its back.

  “Serious. Because my lady is my boss, see? It’s convenient.”

  Tomas belly-laughs and, because now is the exact right moment, fishes the exact right piece of plantain out of the bag and pops it into his mouth. Grig sighs – Tomas never does anything stupid, gets any pussy he wants. It’s annoying. At least Tomas buys the story about Suyin – it’s more fun to talk about her as if she’s in the bag than to tell the truth. Although Tomas might have had some advice.

  “She hawt?” Tomas crunches his food around his words. “Tell me ass, tell me tits, tell me . . . belly ring? I love those damn belly rings.”

  “Not much ass, tits very nice, belly ring . . .” the details of even a simple lie always trip him up – would she? Her hair is so tidy, her nails so clean “. . . no piercings at all.”

  “Woah, a goodie girl.”

  Grig grins and dares to eat a plantain. “Yeah, but not totally tight, no. Not at all.”

  They grin together, then chew. The plantain is the perfect temperature now, flaking hot and sweet on his tongue.

  “She does yoga.” Mariska is always right about these things; it doesn’t feel even like a lie. “She’s streeeeettttttchy.” He throws his arms back, thrusts out his chest till it’s as broad as Tomas’s, wriggles his eyebrows.

  Tomas smacks his hand on the table. “All right, brother.”

  Vicki strides into the restaurant, to their table, and climbs onto Tomas’s lap. She’s not his girlfriend – Tomas bangs everyone – but she’s around a lot. She’s singing along with the music, “Don’t let nobody come between you and your god . . . .” She sounds good.

  “Grig’s got hisself a woman!” Tomas yells, sliding his palm under Vicki’s baggy-denim thigh. “A yoga woman. Now that’s hot. Why don’t you do some yoga, Vicki?” He slaps her ass gently.

  Vicki gives Grig a big-teeth smile. “Yoga is very healthy, very natural, very love-lee. You should get her to take me.”

  Grig feels his eyelashes snap back, and imagines the two women together in a gym shower, Vicki all long lime-green nails and round brown ass and squealing laughter, while tiny Suyin dances around her, her usually smooth hair soaked and tangled.

  “I – she lives out by the airport, near work, so she’s . . .”

  “Gawd, the suburbs. But you are, too! You can be happy together in the suburbs.”

  Tomas laughs, his stomach bouncing Vicki up and down. “Scarborough and Mississauga are different sides of the city, Vic, and different besides. Right, Griggy?”

  He
nods. Since the arrival of Vicki, Tomas has abandoned the plantains and Grig is ploughing through them, chewing rapidly now that they are cool.

  “You must get this suburban girl a present!” Vicki slaps the table.

  “I gotta go back to work. Break’s over.” Tomas starts to stand and Vicki leans her weight on her forearms on the table, standing on tiptoe, ass in the air, as he slips away.

  She looks into Grig’s eyes. Vicki has dark hair with thick-painted gold highlights, big dark eyes, and an unplaceable accent. In school, everyone wanted her. “I will help you find a present.”

  Grig glances over Vicki’s shoulder at her ass. “You don’t must.”

  “I want to shop and I got nothing to shop for. Let’s go.” It’s a whole subway stop to walk, and Vicki keeps singing about the work God wants them to do the whole way.

  The mall is well enough lit but it always feels dark. Three guys bump into them. They all wear soft dark hoodies, loose jeans, big white shoes – they look just like Grig and Vicki, and when they pull back apologizing, all three seem to see the resemblance. One boy’s “Sorry” stops at “suh” and sounds a lot like “suck,” but they nod respectfully at the rhinestone V lodged between Vicki’s breasts (even in winter, she keeps her North Face jacket zipped only half), wander off, eyes downward.

  Vicki crosses her arms and adjusts herself. They walk on, and Vicki keeps getting sexy looks. Grig gets envious ones. What is it with all these beautiful useless women that he is always surrounded by but can never fuck?

  “Lululemon is the best for yoga things, someone told me that. It is all very sexy, but quality. Is she seriously into yoga?”

  “Well she is . . . a serious girl,” Grig says carefully. He pictures Suyin’s eyes, big and dark as she slid his performance warning towards him on the table.

  The lights seem a bit brighter in Lululemon, but it could be just because the walls are green, blue, red. On the racks are shirts shaped like breasts, same as at any girl store. Peppy tiny girls flit between them. Vicki blends in, though she is bigger than the other girls and her shoulder bag bonks one of them in the face.

  Another girl dances over to Vicki. “If you have any questions at all, just ask . . . .”

  “Oh, I don’t do yoga.” Vicki glances back at her ass as if she were smiling at a friend. “He’s shopping for his girlfriend.”

  If Suyin were his girlfriend, he would have to drop his elbow almost to his ribcage to put an arm around her. If Suyin were his girlfriend, she would help him at work without being mean, without him needing to ask or even knowing he was being helped – like magic, just by being there, talking to him, all the time in her perfect English.

  “She does a lot of . . . yoga.” He’s picturing Suyin doing the twisty sexy things in the pictures on the wall. This lie has been going on all day. Soon, he knows, he will forget the conversation with Mariska entirely.

  The salesgirl asks him, “Here?”

  “What?” He glances around – bins of pants, halters on mannequins, little women. He doesn’t see anything that helps him. “What?”

  “Does she know about our complimentary yoga on Sunday mornings? It’s a really great treat for the mindbodysoul?” Her unpainted nail points to the calendar on the wall. Every Sunday does read “Complimentary Yoga!!!”

  When the woman drifts away, he asks Vicki what complimentary means.

  “Free!” she whispers, as if the staff and other shoppers were listening.

  “Oh, good.” He is fingering a pink halter top, imagining somehow mentioning complimentary yoga to Suyin and her somehow not knowing where the Eaton’s Centre is, and him somehow going out to Mississauga to get her and take her here. He could hang out with Tomas while the class was on. No fucking way was he doing yoga.

  He glances down at the pink fabric and sees the price label – $52.00CAD.

  For a minute he forgets the whole lie, the fact that Suyin is probably not a yoga-doer, and certainly not his girlfriend. Suyin is suddenly a bratty big-shot, demanding presents he cannot afford. He almost says, That bitch! Actually he sorta does whisper it, but no one hears.

  He puts down the shirt and walks further into the shop. $90 for black stretchy sweatpants like at Zellers. Even the T-shirts are more than twice what he’s got in his wallet. Finally he finds a bin of small things, and small is cheaper. When Vicki gooses him from behind, he is looking for the price tag on a pink lace thong.

  “Oh-ho, she’s that kind. I see. Got yourself a yoga whore, eh, Grig?”

  Then he’s buying it – at the green-and-wood-paneled cashier’s desk buying a lacy strand to go up the tiny ass of a girl he’s never spoken to except about call times and scripts, all because he’s a liar living in a porno fantasy. At least the panties only cost $14.

  Owning them – the panties – makes things way weirder. He’s got them jammed in the bottom drawer of the filing cabinet he uses as a bureau, but all night in his room he thinks about them. Maybe he will take them out to look at, hold, rub against, but he doesn’t. Maybe he’ll return them, because even fourteen bucks plus tax would help with rent. He knows someone would be able to tell if he touches them too much.

  It’s also so weird looking at Suyin at work now, like seeing a girl from a porno site just walking down the street (this has never happened to Grig, but he has imagined it many times). He thinks her hips are probably narrower than the small-size he chose.

  Mainly she doesn’t even look at him. They only talk about his call times, logsheets, scripts. She aims her words at the wall behind his head. How serious does she think he takes this stupid job, that telling him he keystroked a credit-card number wrong is worth all her silly drama, her slanting eyes looked down, her cheeks blooming rose, saying it’s going to be a dock in pay if it happens again – because it costs the company, because he needs to take her feedback seriously, because because.

  He has to think about her in his off-hours, whether he wants to or not, because now too many people think they know about her. He made the mistake of asking Mariska if she thought the panties were cute, and now she won’t stop asking why he’s home watching Sex Rehab every night since he has a girlfriend. Finally he tells her that Suyin lives with her parents, and their relationship is a secret because he isn’t – what is she? He momentarily panics, then says, Chinese.

  Tomas says he’s having a house party, which is fucked because Tomas don’t even have a house, just a basement flat like Grig, only at least with no Mariska. On Grig’s Facebook wall he writes, “Bring your girl!” He can’t just write an excuse on Tomas’s wall because that puts the lie in public. If someone from work sees Tomas’s post and says, “I didn’t know you had a girl,” he can say Tomas is wrong, crazy, whatever. But if Grig writes, “Suyin is sick, can’t come” or even, “My girl is sick,” then he can never take it back. The party is in a week. Grig stays up worrying, watching reruns of Sex Rehab.

  At work, at the end of his Thursday shift, he gets a call from a lady whose English is worse than his. It ends with her screaming that the postman never comes, the postman is garbage, GARBAGE. She sounds about one hundred and three but she sure can scream and he yells right back at her, “You don’t fucking yell at me, bitch. I’m helping you.”

  Then it’s creepy because Suyin’s voice breaks in and he knows that the threat to sometimes monitor them is true. Even as Suyin’s smooth anywhere accent is calming the crazy lady down, he is realizing he’s more fucked than he knew because he sometimes very quietly tells a caller that they don’t know what they are talking about, the magazine will come tomorrow, that the order has already been corrected, the problem solved, all things back good. Just to get a moment’s peace, to check Facebook on his phone, to go take a shit, just some peace.

  Nothing happens that afternoon – he somehow gets through the last half-hour with no calls and just goes without even seeing Suyin. The next morning, he has a new date in his Outlook calendar and realizes that Suyin will fire him when she shows up at their eleven o’clock appoin
tment. He doesn’t have anything to do – his station has been shut down or something, no calls are coming in.

  He dicks around on his cellphone for a while. He’s going to have to cut off the internet capability, he can’t afford it. Tomas and Vicki are writing on each other’s Facebook walls every day now, practically – if it gets around that they’re dating, Tomas will totally lose his player status. Suyin is walking around the CSR room, talking to people, picking up timesheets because it’s Friday. She’s going to fucking fire him never even knowing how into her he is, how good a boyfriend he would be.

  Suyin would forgive him for one silly little slip. It’s her boss, he forgets that bitch’s name, but she is a total bitch. Suyin is a sweetheart who likes him. She would never hurt him. She’s probably really sad and upset that she has to do this – because she doesn’t want to hurt him and because she will miss him. She doesn’t even know how he feels, or that in his head, heart, bottom drawer, he’s already her perfect boyfriend.

  She comes up behind him and says, “Grig.” His headset, which he hadn’t even realized he was holding, hits the floor. She scoops it up, says, “Let’s go,” then turns without waiting for an answer.

  He watches her walk away, picturing her striding ahead of him on the bumpy asphalt pathway in front of Tomas’s basement stairs, on the way to the party. Suyin’s hips would be swaying the way they totally aren’t now, and he would know the sway came from the rub of a lace thong in her ass.

  She has disappeared down the hall. He finds her in the CSR conference room, standing at the table, head bent. She looks like a priest, praying on her feet.

  “Hello, Suyin.”

  She makes eye-contact but doesn’t smile as she walks towards him. It seems like she’s walking straight into his arms, but at the last moment she deeks left and taps the door shut behind him. Then she pulls back to arm’s length, still holding eye-contact. It’s very sexy or, at least, it could be.

  “Hello, Grigori. I think you know why I wanted to speak to you alone.”