Three Guys

The reservations had required a lot of research -- Yusef had never gone camping before, and he had felt foolish about asking Kev and Leroy to plan something he had suggested. He had also had to ask his father for the use of his credit card, because it was the only way he could rent a car without a $10,000 deposit. Yusef's savings were considerably less. Reluctant to broach the subject with his sunken-cheeked father, he offered the woman on the phone $4500. There had been a few seconds of silence before the woman realized that he wasn't joking, and firmly refused the offer.

And that was only the car business -- the cabin had also been reserved. The whole humiliating process had been pointless. In his mind (for he would never speak about it with them) he tried to blame Leroy. Yet the part he had played -- calling up and cancelling, before he had asked Kev himself -- was something he couldn't ignore.

He waited for one of them to call. The day they were supposed to leave, Friday May 22 (Yusef had repeated it many times) came and went. He hated Canada.

A few days after that Kev called to ask him to go to a movie. Yusef turned him down, saying that he was stressed out from work. It was the first time he had ever used that idiom, and he used it because Kev was unemployed and a little self-conscious about it.

He felt a little better, so when Leroy called on Friday he went with them and ended up getting drunk and having a great time. He even got a girl's number, but he must have written it down wrong. It never occurred to him that she would have given him a fake number because she was Russian and had told him how wonderful it was to have someone to speak with in her native tongue.

Three months later, Leroy made fun of Yusef's accent and Yusef punched him in the face.

###

Ray

Ray first noticed it when he was on the way to the funeral downtown. He wasn't often in a suit, and for kicks he had really spiffed himself up -- used gel in his hair and even trimmed his nails. He didn't need to shave, yet. For the final touch, his mom used the instashine thing she got from a hotel on his shoes. She had been saving it for years and nearly burst with the pleasure of getting to use it.

People were really looking at him. He was standing there, over six feet of broad shouldered, well-groomed man-child, and he noticed women staring at him. At first, he was sure he was overdressed and ridiculous, and their glances felt like flies crawling on his face. Yet, the fat man beside him was as overdressed, but relatively ignored.

He tilted his head to look at the advertisements, astonished that a strikingly beautiful woman who was at least 25 -- maybe 30 -- found him more interesting than her paperback. He almost grinned, but then he remembered where he was going.

Mrs. Pinato had died of bowel cancer, supposedly after a long bout with it, but Ray hadn't heard a word until her death. He felt a little cheated -- he was only one of hundreds of students whom she had had, so it was silly, but the feeling made him grimly determined to attend her funeral. He gripped the pole, unconsciously.

A student got on, her backpack bulging, waving goodbye to her friends as the door closed. She looked one way, then the other, then looked up at Ray. She asked him politely if this was the southbound train.

Ray would have presumed she was talking to someone else except that she was looking directly at him. He steeled himself, and told her it was. His voice was smooth and authoritative.

She thanked him and turned away, showing a university crest on her backpack. Ray blinked. A university girl -- woman -- had called him sir! He straightened his tie, smoothing it down gently, thankfully.

She turned around again, this time asking him the time. He raised his wristwatch to his gaze, and told her the time in the same modulated version of his voice he had used a moment ago. He knew then that this firm, smooth voice would never, could never, stutter. When he arrived at the casket of his grade seven teacher, he thanked her for this, her final gift.

The following years were a little difficult, but then high school would have been difficult anyway. Luckily, his first years had been spent in a monk-like silence, and so when the dapper, clear-spoken Raymond stepped deftly out of the skin of Ruh-Ruh-Ruh-Ray, no one noticed.

Ray was amazed when his classmates listened to Raymond offer his opinion on the economic slump. Ray watched, delighted, as a pretty girl removed her clothes at Raymond's request. Ray smiled with pride as Raymond pulled out his starched cuffs and negotiated a ridiculously high salary.

Which is not to say that he had a split personality, just that he never failed to wonder at it. He was a bit apprehensive at first that someone would uncover his real self, but that changed into a secret hope that someone would, for once, see him for the fraud he was. She did, and he married her, and they laughed a lot about his graft and other things.

At the birth of their daughter he watched, amazed, as his wife appeared to split open. He said holy sh-sh-shit and his wife cracked up in hysterical laughter. Which shot the baby right out.

At the supermarket one day an unpleasant man in greasy jeans said something upsetting to his young daughter involving fruit and her chest. He went right up to that bastard and made like a pugilist but before he could land one punch the unpleasant man pulled a small gun from his pocket and aimed it at Raymond.

Right in the produce section of that grocery store near your house. Yes, you. You've seen Raymond before. Who knows what you thought, I'm not you. But you probably thought something, because Raymond makes a point of people noticing him.

The guy took his gun and showed Raymond it was just a cap gun and ran out of the store, firing it at the cashiers as he went until it clicked empty. He stole the apples he had been holding, too.

###

Weston

The art hung on the battered fence like targets. Weston tapped the corner of his last painting, took a step back, tapped the corner some more until it seemed straight. It was hard to tell because the fence was jagged. Weston went and sat on the picnic table, looking back at his four pieces with a bit of a scowl. He felt the organizers could have at least gone to the trouble of painting the damn fence, he would have been glad to help with that. If they had given him some warning.

One of the artists, a young woman, had seemed positively thrilled by the fence. Oozing some gibberish about the multilayered contrast as she put up her charcoal sketches. Weston hadn't wanted to seem like a complainer so he just kept his mouth shut. He didn't know why he had bothered bringing his best pieces to this 'Art In the Park' kind of thing when other people seemed comfortable with... less, but he told himself that it was on the off chance that a person with taste might happen by and take it off his hands.

That was the same reason he gave himself for sticking around when most of the other artists had wandered off to see other parts of the community festival. There were other reasons, naturally, but Weston felt most relaxed behind his practical face.

A young hair-shorn woman arrived, holding a small pile of postcard sized collages. She looked around, realized there wasn't any space for hers, and started to look at the art. She spent a while at his, taking in the figures which were blurry and sketchy except for their photo-realistic genitalia. He could seeshe was smiling even though her back was to him. He strained to hear if she was saying anything.

She turned around and looked right at him. Weston pretended he hadn't been staring. She asked him for tape, which he didn't have. She left, and it wasn't until she did that he realized he'd been holding his breath a bit.

He often told people he hated showing his work because this was a less embarrassing thing to say than it stripped his nerves to the quick. Kilroy said that he had to get his stuff out more often, and who was Weston to argue with success? He had taken his advice, even though he despised him a little -- Kilroy's contrived eccentricity, his taste in hats and teenaged girls, these were things Weston swore to eschew (once he) if he ever achieved a similar fame. He had invited him to this, although it was so small time he hoped he wouldn't show. It was enough to invite him so that Kilroy knew his advice was being followed.

The bald girl returned and began taping her collages to the ground. It was thick tape, so a lot of the edges were covered, and that would have driven Weston crazy. She noticed him watching and asked if he was one of the artists. He owned up to his work with an attempt at casualness, and she smiled and said they were brilliant. Weston's thanks was hard to get out and he cleared his throat before expressing his worry that her prints would get damaged.

She twisted a smile and said that they were originals but it was okay because they had been made from a lot of masochism and self-destruction. Weston nodded dumbly, wondering why it was only crazy people who liked his paintings. He sat in a kind of stunned silence as she finished and waved goodbye, and watched people stroll by the pictures, old and young, their voices silenced by the art.

Weston knew he was slipping into a dark place by the way he couldn't move his head. He thought: What was he doing, playing at being an artist when he was almost thirty-six? Taking advice from someone ten years his junior... pathetic. He noticed how everyone was carefully walking around the ground-collages, looking at them, and somehow that just made him sadder. He didn't understand anything, not even the small things...

The sound of two young boys pierced his depression. He could tell from where they were standing that they were looking at his paintings. They were saying how fucked up the paintings were, that he must have been a fucking pervert. They were saying it loud.

Weston registered what was really happening: that they were listening to their own voices say tough things, bad things, things they couldn't say at home or even in front of girls. He registered this on one level, but he had already slipped too far down. Weston didn't look at their faces, just at their baggy pants and pristine running shoes. He watched their shoes, snub-nosed and almost cartoon-like, skirt the collages on the ground and walk away.

Hours later, when the organizer returned with his hippy hair and strained gap-toothed smile, Weston was still there. Weston started talking about how he didn't like the fence but the organizer had already taken a lot of crap that day so it just escalated.

By the end of the discussion, Weston had demonstrated his point by kicking the fence hard enough to crack one of the boards. When he walked home, adrenaline running sick in his veins, he deliberately treated his paintings roughly.