The Man Game (57 page)

Evening's descent was swift. Cold stars above Vancouver. Furry and Daggett were seated at their corner table at the Sunnyside Hotel pounding back the beers and hollering to Fortes for another round. Fortes tapped out four more pints and brought them over on a tray. The tray looked like a saucer in his hand and a shield on anyone else. There you go, sirs, said Fortes.

Fortes, said Daggett, I swear I never met a finer man than yourself. He called for a toast to Joe Fortes, their bartender. Let's hear it for the best goddamn man in the world.

All the men in the bar raised their glasses, cheered mightily, and swigged. They all chimed in with lines from popular songs in choirs of two and three. He's a jolly good fellow. May he ride the golden chariot to Heaven.

Joe Fortes blinked to express his appreciation.

Next round for the house is on me, said Daggett. The bar toasted Daggett with much the same enthusiasm as before.

The round after that, said Moe Dee, is on me.

Wa, cried all. When the bravado quieted, it was Moe Dee who spoke up again. Too bad we couldn't get to see your moves back in January, eh? I bet you would a showed them what's what. Am I right?

Who the fuck are you anyway? said Daggett.

Getting right to the point, I never seen either a you at a single other game, said Moe Dee.

What aboot it?

All this goddamn chit-chatter is distracting us from an evil right in front a our mugs, said RD Pitt, from his same seat at the back. His arm was hugged around the old greenbronze bust of the Queen of England. After successfully shipping off twenty Chinamen and before that narrowly avoiding a fight with Hoss, Pitt was well beyond drunk at this point. He was almost done speechifying for the night. In his corner, surrounded by cronies, he looked as crumpled as a document's unframed first draft. His colleagues in the Knights of Labour were all just as pasted. Their anti-Chinee party was over, and Furry had toasted their success at least twice, Daggett more than that, and what began as something diplomatic had ended in a loud buzz. I say it again in case you forget it, said Pitt. The Chinamen are why we got to look so far and wide to get a decent wage, decent hours. And not got to slave twelve hours seven days a week like one a these Chinamen here. The solution for a capitalist is a problem for a labourman, eh.

Furry looked at Moe Dee. He put his glass back on the table and said with almost unbearable steadiness: Only someone born and raised in Regina goes to a man game that he ain't planning to compete at.

That right? said Moe Dee, not a man easily intimidated, for he was an orphan born and raised in Regina. He said: You mean if I got down to it right here—

I'd a got five points on you before you had time to shrink your dink, said Furry. Are you ready for that?

Moe Dee was seen to contemplate the challenge.

We sharpened our skills, and now we're ready, said Daggett. We're going to turn this game around. You think you seen something with Litz and Pisk? They're weak dick-biters compared to us. If they aren't dead already, we're going to run those fuckers out a this city for good.

That's your plan? said Moe Dee.

I hate them more than the Chinamen, said Furry.

Bah, said Pitt.

I like your man Boyd, said Moe Dee. I think you might a got something there with him. He can be fast and footloose. I liked him on his legs. There's cat-blood in him. I'll tell you one thing, though, said Moe Dee, undeterred under the influence. He almost lost track of his thought. He said: That little walleyed boy you keep with who always sticks his neck out like to-day. Campbell is it? That boy can't play a lick a the man game. To-day versus Hoss? Hell, I never seen anything so funny as Campbell. What a treat. Oh, he beat him. And who's so impressed aboot that? Hoss never played before. Once Hoss has spent another month practising … man, Campbell blew it completely. Kid's got no good instincts.

Furry took a drink. Another month, eh? he said, but left it at that.

Daggett rocked on his chair, said: You thought that was funny, eh? Think you could do better?

Hell's bells, yeah, didn't I just fucking tell you that, you dumb fuck, said Moe Dee. Hell, I think a plucked chicken might beat Campbell. Besides, I'd rather call you out.

That's not how it works. You don't call on me. You call on my crew. You play our first man out, and if you beat him, you play our second man. Campbell's our first man. You think you could beat him?

I could take the man game to him fast and easy. I'd put him in knots. I'd fuck his cherry. I'll teach him to talk with no jaw.

That right? said Furry.

That's sure as fuck right, said Moe Dee, blushing hard.

Hearing the door in the front entrance whine open on its colicky hinges and shut with its familiar stained-glass rattle, Sammy Erwagen waited to hear the steps of his wife on her leather heels before he relaxed his jaw again. He sat in his wheeled chair next to the sofa. He explained roughly what ailed Toronto, and what had been prescribed.

Medicine is medicine, she said.

Nevertheless, said her husband, there he is.

I was going to tell you all aboot my day, Molly said.

I don't really want to hear aboot your day at all, dear. I've had plenty enough day on my own.

Are you upset at me?

No, he said.

You still love me?

Yes, yes, a course I do.

You do? Are you mad at me?

You've been gone all day, while I had to take care a—and look at me. Yes, I suppose I'm mad at you.

I'm sorry. I know, I shouldn't a been gone all day without stopping in to check on you. It was just so busy with—

Sammy felt his hair fall out, a follicle here, a follicle there, a ticklish pluck as each one let go. Surely if nothing else transcends the generations, jealousy does.

With Ken, Silas, and Cedric content to look through rubbish for hours, it was time to make an exit. What did Minna see in them? Seeing them
play
was one thing. But with jumpsuits on, looking through trash, they were like every other. In other words, what did they have that I didn't have in spades? I was feeling less and less threatened and more and more competitive. We were in
search of a history we were sure to mistreat. As if a city would ever store its proudest moments in this dipping cellar. As if we could floss a story from all this mealy worthless scrap. The file cabinets were rusted around the screws. Every shelf was a heavy wedge of information, scarily not organized. When I randomly picked up a letter on paper that fell limp at the hardworn folds, I read the words
Campbell v. Hoss, False Creek
. Did it mean what I thought it did? Was this her handwriting,
the
Molly Erwagen, Ken's kin? Or was this elaborate prank going to end halfway to a three-way, and me in the corner with my pants still on? It was a perverse basement, and according to Ken, most of its floorspace was devoted to paper that predated Mackenzie King. I decided, once again, to conceal rather than share the letter.

While they scavenged, I stared with confused curiosity at a painting on the wall behind the pile of bordello lampshades. The frame had acquired a layer of dust and the wrinkled canvas was in poor condition, but I nearly shook my head with incredulity when I focused on the subject of the work, two men engaged in a Greek position. It was everywhere. This really was a subterranean altar. Even the artwork down here was man game related.

Ken was in a corner between two shelving units where he'd hit a real gold mine of material about the 1887 riot. Not the first, the last, or even the biggest riot related to the man game, according to Ken's research. He looked like a little boy sitting there cross-legged in the corner reading Grampa's yellowing news for information about himself. Silas was still after the picture I'd flicked behind the shelf, and as he thumbed at cardboard and paper his fingertips were growing blacker and blacker. I could easily imagine that behind the floor-to-ceiling stacks of crusted newspapers was a hole in the wall that tunnelled straight to 1887, straight into one of those secret tunnels under Vancouver back then, constructed by its founding fathers as a discreet route from their respectable saloons, offices, government buildings, and, in RH Alexander's case, from the reading room in his own home to bordellos and Chinese gambling dens and opium caves. I preferred to
imagine things like that, the possibility of an irrational portal, because it offered me another viable escape from the ever more confusing present-day.

Litz could tell by the way his wife gripped his arm with both hands and talked incessantly in her language as they tread ever so carefully through the trees that she was possessed by the forest. He was susceptible to these spirits as well, but not as much as she was. He reminded himself that she was still just a girl, hardly fourteen.

All's still the same, she sobbed. All's change.

It's only been what, eight months, said Litz, pleading with her in a voice he was unused to, and so quite poor at delivering.

By the time they arrived at Dupont Street her mood had turned. She'd gone from trembling, babbling reverence for the forest to something less attentive and more intent. Litz read from her silence that he was in trouble.

Careful over the—, he said. Whenever he tried to speak she flinched as if at a snake she'd spotted on the ground, and he wouldn't finish his sentence. She was no longer holding on to his arm either, far from it, and when they took the secret staircase from the coach house to the second floor of Wood's, he knew he was no longer her keeper.

One of the other girls in Wood's, as slim and sweet as a candycane, happened to flit out her bedroom door at the same moment as the Litzes passed by on the way to Peggy's room. The two young women squealed, embraced, shared a tearful moment, touching each other's cheeks as if to confirm their realness, speaking in a hush; and Litz, rubbing his moustache, hanging back, was relieved when he was finally allowed into Peggy's room to wait.

He sat on the softest surface of the room aside from the bed—in this case a red velvet chaise longue with a mahogany back in the shape of a woman in repose. He patted his chest
absently for the stub of a cheroot he carried in his pocket, whiffing the pipesmoke of a previous customer … His wife strode past him coldly and sat on the edge of the window. She was a fierce wind in his life. But now he saw that her expression was entirely different. Nothing icy about her. Gone were the histrionics, panic, and constant demands. Instead she wore the sleepy, tolerant expression he'd first fallen in love with. And that lovely, resilient, nearly invisible smile—he'd almost forgotten it, having laid dormant for the past eight months—returned.

Mrs. Litz got up again, finally choosing to sit in the highback chair at Peggy's vanity, and now he couldn't see her behind the chair, he was way over on the other side of the room in his jackets and thick hair, hamfists and big knees. He didn't look capable of the smoothness and ease required of this chaise longue, though he was. He not only looked like a clumsy peasant, he felt like his former self as well—the man he'd been before the man game, the man who scratched his neck incessantly, hunched his shoulders, and bounced one leg while he sat. These were all the mannerisms that Molly had trained out of him. So …, he said, hopefully.