The Dilettantes (12 page)

Once Alex ran into Dave at a party and brought up this phase of his life, as well as his pet theory that it was the low-caffeine teas that truly wired you awake. Dave had gotten a very serious look on his face, clasped Alex by both shoulders, and promised to look into it right away.

In 2nd-year, however, Alex’s methods stopped working. His parents had grown concerned about the toll these on-again, off-again study habits were taking on their only son—all because one time, in his nocturnal wisdom, he’d blockaded his bedroom door with a sofa and then, on his way out the next morning, accidentally stepped in some soup left for him on the floor in the hallway, and shattered the bowl. Then, to his growing horror, Alex found his trusty study aids failing him for no apparent reason: green tea started to taste flat and metallic, and the neighbours’ dog somehow ate his Philip Glass mix
CD
. He was suddenly rudderless, and his grades and self-esteem started to waver accordingly.

It was around this time that he got hired at
The Peak
after a few semesters of volunteering, and on his first production night, a knowing senior editor had wordlessly slid him a steaming plastic cup from Higher Grounds. At first the coffee kept Alex alert but jittery, and he’d had to keep moving as a survival tactic, just to focus on the screen in front of him. Now his restlessness was a ritual that verged on superstition, unconnected to the caffeine but just as essential to his success.

Alex looked up from his work-induced trance to see a mop sliding across the floor and the café’s stone-faced cashier pointing to an imaginary wristwatch. He checked the time on his laptop. Nearly an hour had passed—an hour in which he’d had a rare stint of pure productivity. No emails, no flashing updates to his
RSS
feeds. A glorious, all-too-brief period spent off the grid. Ignoring the cashier, he wrote a self-congratulatory Facebook status update to this effect. When nobody liked it in the first five minutes, and with the mop jabbing at his feet, he deleted it and left.

Trying to keep the productive streak alive, and with the time now fast approaching midnight, Alex took the SkyTrain back to Main Street before hopping on another bus, just as the rain started splattering like paintballs. A few minutes later he ducked back into the twenty-four-hour shop, which was now readying itself for the graveyard shift. It was busier than before—mostly
UBC
students, Alex decided, with an instinctive sneer—and he looked around for a place to sit.

Before he could move he saw Claude, who was standing by himself in the lineup. A stack of newspapers was pinned unsteadily under his arm; on closer inspection Alex saw that they were all
Peak
s—at least a semester’s worth.

“Hey,” Claude said. He was still oppressively nervous, even now that they were outside the office. “Alex. It’s me—Claude. How are you?”

Alex took his best shot at a jovial smile. “Hello, Claude. I’m good.” He pointed to the newspapers. “What’ve you got there?”

Claude’s face bloomed a dark red, and he grew even twitchier. “Oh, these. I don’t know if Suze told you, but I’m, um, working on a story? A
CD
review.” Alex nodded tentatively. “So I wanted to go through the old issues. You know, to see how you guys do them. I just don’t want to get it wrong—it’s my first article, after all.”

Impressive
, Alex thought. Rare was the volunteer these days who didn’t kick down the front door, looking not so much to learn as to brazenly vomit up all the things they thought they already knew. “Hey, that’s great,” he said. “I’m sure you’ll knock it out of the park.” As Claude’s eyes widened to process the compliment, Alex was already gesturing toward the mass of people beyond. “But I’ve got to finish off this essay, so—”

“Oh, totally. Totally. Sorry to have rambled on like this. My bad.”

Just relax, dude
, Alex wanted to tell him.
Nobody at our paper is worth tripping over yourself like this, I promise you
.

He didn’t get more than few steps away before seeing that the girl from his old tutorial was still there, and now joined by a group of her friends. Alex froze in place, but it was too late: she’d spotted him, and was in fact calling his name and waving. He took a quick look over his shoulder—even Claude would be more fun to sit with than these people—but the kid had vanished. Sighing in defeat, Alex shuffled over to her table, where some kind of card game was under way. There was a stack of dog-eared textbooks to the side, their yellow secondhand labels from the
SFU
Bookstore half-heartedly picked at.

She said, “Sup?”

“Hey,” Alex said, nodding like an idiot to the rest of the table. “What are you guys up to?”

The girl—Alex struggled to remember her name, which he’d barely registered the first time around—stared down at the cards on the table. She was deathly pale, so white it was almost a medical concern: the kind of girl who’d describe herself to strangers as “kinda bipolar?”

“Well, we
were
playing Asshole, up to a few minutes ago.” She looked to the guy next to her, who took over the explanation, his shoulders still lightly bouncing. “Then we started pitching reality
shows to each other.” The whole table burst out laughing, clearly not for the first time.

Great
, Alex thought.
A goddamn snake pit
. Suddenly he remembered a similar conversation he’d been lured into before their shared tutorial, where he’d been forced to consider which was his favourite
Ace Ventura
movie for an agonizing fifteen minutes.
Just what I need right now
.

But he had no choice. Alex reluctantly pulled out a chair and sat down, keeping his feet tensed and ready to jump up again as soon as he could move somewhere else—anywhere else—and get back to work.

“So you wanna play?” the girl asked, her eyes shining mischievously.

Even worse
, Alex thought.
She thinks we’re actually friends, torn apart by cruel circumstance and conflicting class schedules. She doesn’t remember that I
hate
her
.

“Sure.”

“Awesome. It’s like this,” said her friend, the one who seemed to have thought the whole thing up. “You know how there’s all these shows now where they, like,
transform
someone from one thing to another? Like a makeover show, or where people switch jobs with each other?”

Alex nodded again, though he was distracted by the sheer number of wristbands the guy had on. They were stacked up well past each wrist, like a game of leather Jenga.

“But now,” he went on, “it’s like they just greenlight these shows based on the words in the title sounding alike. So we’re pitching our own shows. Show him, Paul.”

A lean guy with long sideburns and a horizontally striped sweater said,
“From Crook to Cook
. A story of second chances and following your dreams.”

Alex felt a smile cross his face without his consent.
Yeah, it’s kind of funny
, he thought.
But don’t encourage these assholes
.

Now the girl chimed in.
“From Busy to Busty
. Re-prioritize your life with a set of double-Ds.”

Ugh
, Alex thought.
That sucked
. Just like that, he felt comfortable again—it was the familiarity of condescension, of having his low expectations met. This was a role he knew he could play.

The faces around the table froze, and Alex realized he’d grunted his disapproval out loud. The girl was frowning with embarrassment. There was a long pause.

But then the group’s fourth, a chubby dude in an artificially vintage Nintendo T-shirt, piped up: “More like
From Busey to Busty
. Check this out. Can extreme plastic surgery bring this man’s career back from the dead? It’ll take thirteen pulse-pounding episodes to find out the answer: no.”

Uh-oh. Alex found himself actively holding back real laughter. A wave of warmth hit him, as if he had on one too many layers, which he did not.

“There you go,” said Paul. “What’ve you got, Alex?” “Um …
From
CEO
to
C
-
3PO.”

The others looked around the table, as if they weren’t sure who should break the news. Eventually the girl chuckled politely. “Not bad,” she said. “Though it doesn’t really make sense, if you think about it. Don’t worry. It takes a while to figure out. You’ll get better.”

Now Alex’s own brow furrowed in humiliation.
It was
supposed
to not make sense
, he growled to himself, snapping back once again.
I was making a comment on the
idea
of—rather than taking the easy route and simply adding to the—

Oh, who was he kidding? Alex had to face it: he was simply not willing to actually try, even at a game as dumb as this one. Because trying might lead to failure. This strategy might get him somewhere
back at
The Peak
, where the entire culture, which he’d helped build, centred on condescending to an imaginary reader. But now? Now he was just ruining other people’s fun. He was spewing venom in every direction, for no reason at all, and the worst part was that they all knew it.

There was no denying it: the only real asshole at the table was him.

Alex decided to make amends, and quickly. “Wait. I’ve got another one.”
Just go. Do it. Nobody’s watching you
. He said,
“From Barista to Barrister
. A parable for our upwardly mobile times.”

This time the entire table erupted. “Now that’s awesome!” cried Paul, slapping Alex on the shoulder, to his secret delight. “Keep it going.”

“From Minor to Miner,”
someone said.

“Gold. Literal gold.”

“That’d have to be a period piece. ‘Charles Dickens presents.’ For some reason you can’t throw toddlers into a pit of coal the way you used to.”

“From Junky to Hunky
. For when heroin chic is the new heroin.”

“From Etymologist to Entomologist.”

“From Racist to Bassist.”

“From Banker to Wanker
…
?”

“What’s the difference, am I right?” They all laughed again.

After a minute of silence, everyone deep in thought, Alex said, “I’ve got it:
From D.A. to DJ.”

“Swish,” said Paul. “That’s some secret identity shit right there.”

“You want the trance? You can’t handle the trance!”

Out of the corner of his eye Alex saw a table open up, but for the next little while he pretended he didn’t.

“So what’s your deal, man?” asked Paul. It was now well past midnight, well past Alex’s self-imposed break from work, and the café’s once-rowdy crowd was now thinning out, separating the amateur crammers from those trying to make a career of it. Paul had discarded his striped sweater, revealing an identically striped V-neck shirt underneath. The girl (Victoria, it turned out) and her other friend (Eddie, or maybe Teddy) were making towers out of individual peanut butter and jam packages. Nintendo guy had been in the bathroom for going on a half-hour.

Before he could answer, Victoria looked up. “He works at the newspaper!” she exclaimed.

“No kidding—
The Peak?
” Paul asked. “What do you do there?”

“I’m the features editor, actually,” Alex said, sitting up straighter in his chair. Finally, someone who appreciated the work he was doing. It didn’t happen nearly as often as he’d like.

He was much more familiar with the reaction he was getting from the rest of the table. Vacant blinking, even a yawn from (T)Edd(y)ie. Alex knew why: they didn’t read his section. Worse, they didn’t even know how to pretend they did. He could practically hear their excuses.
Two thousand words on why comic books aren’t just for kids anymore? An exchange student’s garbled memories of life back home? Who has time for that?

“Cool, man,” Paul said finally. “I used to read your guys’ paper all the time.”

Used to!
Trying to salvage something, Alex asked, “Why did you stop? If you don’t mind my asking.”

Paul thought for a minute, looking sternly toward the front of the store. “The comics were too weird. Like, that week everything was all hand-drawn? It looked like a drunk guy did it in twenty minutes.”
Twenty-five
, Alex thought, remembering Keith lying under his desk with a Sharpie in each hand. “Anyway, I mostly just read the
Metro
now.”

This is how it begins
, Alex thought.
Our slow descent into nothingness. We are officially circling the drain
.

“But don’t you think,” he said out loud, “it’s important to have a place for new writers to gain experience, and develop their voices? Isn’t that valuable?
The Peak
is a training ground, too, you know.”

Victoria wrinkled her nose as her tower of jam toppled over. “Yeah, but why would I want to watch as some stupid poli-sci major learns how to write in complete sentences about stuff nobody cares about? I mean, hello?”

This stung, but deeper down, Alex felt as if he’d stumbled onto a major insight. Who
was
their paper intended for? Readers or writers? It was a question he’d never considered before.

(T)Edd(y)ie looked up sleepily from his peanut butter contraption. “I heard you guys are going to have to shut down.”

“Who told you that?”

“I dunno,” he said, shrugging. “It’s just what people are saying.”

“Who? What people?”

(T)Edd(y)ie looked at Alex blankly for a second, then went back to work. “I don’t know.”

Alex leaned forward, suddenly riled up. This was exactly the kind of shit that was going to sink them—when the students, the people who
ought to know better
, turned their backs on
The Peak
. Loose lips, sunk ships, et cetera. Spineless. Pathetic. “Just give me a name,” he said. “Who is saying all this crap about us? Why would you even say that to me right now? Do you think that’s what I want to hear?”

Victoria laughed nervously. “O-kay,” she said. “I think we all need another cup of tea or something.”

As Paul and (T)Edd(y)ie wandered off to the front counter together, Alex began drastically re-assessing the hangoutability of these people: from giving them the benefit of the doubt to taking it
the fuck back. He started finding faults everywhere he looked. The matching stripes on Paul’s clothes now looked far too manicured, too precious. (T)Edd(y)ie’s T-shirt—which read “I Have a Black Belt in Keeping it Real”—now landed well on the wrong side of clever. Maybe Alex’s first impression, hasty as it had been, was right on the money. Fuck these people.