for a while. He laughed quietly when he remembered these struggles, since they were so futile and unnecessary. He didn’t actually hate eating anything. He had an indifferent palate. Everything was just fine as long as it filled him, but there he was each evening, arms crossed, with his mother standing above him in a similar pose. A contest of patience. He wondered if she had enjoyed the game as well as he had.
He found himself standing, and then walking, his feet pulling him slowly toward home. There was no avoiding it. At some point, he would have to walk through the door and see that she had cleared out. At some point he’d have to admit to being alone. He might as well get on with it. He turned back toward land and crossed through a park to Queen Street. He turned west and walked the long quiet street leading downtown. At Woodbine, he stopped to wait out a light, though there were no cars on the road. He was beginning to feel tired. He was beginning to want his bed, no matter how empty, and suddenly he regretted the distance in front of him. The light turned green, but before he could move, he felt the strong grip of a man’s hand on his arm, stopping him, pulling him backwards.
“Take it,” the man said, his words full of spit and the stink of alcohol, “take it all, I don’t want it any more.”
The man had been slouched in a darkened doorway beside the intersection. Drunk and a little lost, he’d stopped in the doorway to relieve himself and had instead fallen asleep standing with his head against the bricks. Stan’s impatient shuffle at the light had woken him. There was a brick pattern of lines in his forehead.
“I thought it was the perfect deal, you know,” he said, crying a little as he used Stan for support, “but a man has to be a man. He just has to.”
The drunk clung to Stan’s coat, and Stan resisted the urge to push him off, certain they would both fall and not wanting to hear the sound of the man’s head hitting the sidewalk. The drunk was clinging with his left hand, a strong left hand, and pawing at Stan with his right. At first, Stan thought he might be being robbed, the man seemed so intent on Stan’s pocket, but then he realized the drunk was actually trying to give him money. The man’s right hand was tensed to grip a large wad of bills and he struggled with Stan’s coat, trying to get at the pocket so he could shove the cash inside.
“Say, what are you doing there, friend?” Stan said, wrestling the stronger man and knowing he’d surely lose. “I think you want to keep that for yourself. There looks to be an awful lot there.”
The man seemed surprised to hear another voice in the night and he stood up straight. Stan used the opportunity to push him backwards against the wall.
“I don’t need your money,” he said. He couldn’t think of anything else to say. “I’m not a bum. I’m just going for a walk.”
The drunk looked Stan up and down and laughed a loud drunken laugh.
“Did you have a little fight with the beach then?” he said.
Stan saw for the first time the effect of his half-sleep on the beach. The lower half of his black coat was soaking wet and covered in grey sand and pebbles. He wasn’t a bum, but he sure looked like one.
“I fell asleep,” Stan said, flicking tentatively at his coat with his fingers.
“Lucky you,” the man said. “Got a cigarette?”
The two men stood at the corner of Queen and Woodbine, smoking. Stan kept his eyes on his companion, not relishing another dance with him, and wondered what would happen next.
“My wife is rich,” the man said, adding smoke to his spit-filled conversation. “She’s one of the richest women in the city. We live in a fucking mansion up there on the hill. Where the fuck am I?” He looked around to get his bearings. “Up that way.”
“Sounds nice,” Stan said.
“Sounds nice? Yes, it is nice. Nothing like being fucking rich, let me tell you. I did okay myself once. Boxing. I was a boxer—hard to tell, I know, what with my beautiful face and all, but I broke heads up and down the Great Lakes for ten years, and when I stopped boxing, I managed younger boxers. I made a fucking fortune.”
“Sounds like you have it all figured out.” Stan was enjoying his cigarette, enjoying the approach of morning, but getting more and more anxious for bed. He could feel exhaustion creeping up his legs from the cold sidewalk.
“That’s when I met her, my wife. She came to the fights one night on the arm of some other rich stiff, some art-loving prick who thought he knew something about everything. I saw them in the crowd and just hated the guy right away. I said to myself, I’m going to save that girl from herself. So, I went and took her way. We were married six weeks later.”
“You’re a man who knows what he wants,” Stan said.
“She didn’t need me or my money. Her father made millions in steel out of Hamilton. She didn’t need anything I had to offer, but she wanted me, so we got married. Then those pricks fixed one of my boys and that was that. One prick little fighter takes one prick little fucking bribe and suddenly I’m giving all my money to lawyers.”
“Mob?”
Stan had heard all the stories. The mob had even taken a run at hockey. The word was it didn’t pan out for them, but who knew.
“Mob is right. Everyone was mob. The commission was mob, the prick fighter was mob, the fucking press was mob as far as I know. All I know is they emptied me. And she said she didn’t care, she said that’s not why she married me anyway. Now, every night she gives me a handful of cash and sends me out of the house so I won’t get pissed up there and start breaking things. Now, I’m like a big dog she can’t handle any more. I still get the good food, but I’m in the kennel sure as fucking anything.”
“There are worse things,” Stan says.
“What the fuck do you know about it?” The man tried to raise his voice to a shout but lost heart halfway.
“I know about it,” Stan said. “There are worse things than being pitied.”
“Yeah, maybe, but not for me.” The man rubbed his forehead under his hat, his huge right hand still wrapped around a folded brick of cash. “Look, are you going to take this or not? I don’t have all night.”
“Why would I take it?” Stan said.
“It’s up to you,” the man sniffed at him. “Either you take it, or the lake takes it. I know one thing, I’m not going to take it any more.” The ex-boxer clamped his left hand on Stan’s shoulder and, squinting, guided his right hand to Stan’s coat pocket. The money slipped in like a smooth rock. He felt the weight of it immediately.
“Buy yourself something nice,” the man said, tripping backwards a little as he released Stan.
“And if anyone asks you, you never saw me tonight. I don’t want them dragging me out of the lake for her to look at. Just let me go. Maybe I’ll wash up in New York somewhere. Maybe I’ll go over the Falls.”
“The Falls go the other way,” Stan said.
The man stopped walking backwards and looked Stan in the face. He started laughing. They both started laughing.
She typed the note. Stan knew this was her way of being polite, so he didn’t have to look at her handwriting and become morbid about it. In books
