Robert Wilson - The Affinities

“That’s why you like it here?”

“One reason.” She unzipped a pocket on her vest and took out a glass pipe, unzipped another pocket, and extracted a tiny plastic bag. “Do you smoke?”

“Not often.”

“But you have smoked.”

“Sure.” In high school, in the back of a friend’s beat-up Ford Taurus, out at the quarry, and occasionally with Dex, my erstwhile roommate—more than occasionally if you count secondhand smoke.

She used her fingernails to pick apart a nugget of weed and fill the bowl. “So do you want to smoke now ?”

“Lisa and, um, Loretta don’t mind?”

“They don’t like people smoking anything indoors, but if they weren’t so busy they might have joined us out here.”

I didn’t want to disappoint her. And how many chances would I have to smoke weed on the roof of a Rosedale mansion? So I took the pipe and the lighter and even managed to hold down a toke without coughing. At which point, in the ordinary course of things, I would have succumbed to my usual cannabis-induced self-consciousness; but for whatever reason I remained reasonably coherent—though the night seemed to inflate like a party balloon and the chorus of crickets became operatic in its complexity.

“So,” she said, “you want to talk about what’s bothering you?”

“Why does everyone say that? How do you know something’s bothering me?”

“You spent a half-hour watching TV with Tonya, for one thing.”

“I like Tonya.”

“Of course you do. She’s a sweetie. But she’s not a Tau.”

“You’re reading a lot into—”

“It’s also your body language, how you react when you shake hands with somebody, things like that.”

“You must have been watching me pretty closely.”

“It’s just tranche telepathy. I mean, that’s what people call it. It isn’t really telepathy, obviously. We read each other better than ordinary people. So we can tell you’re worried about something. You don’t have to tell me about it, but we’re tranchemates. Maybe I can help.”

I felt a little tingle when she called me her tranchemate, though it was the first time I had heard the word. Did she know that about me, too? Something in her smile suggested she did. We had quite a complex little silent conversation going on, in fact.

So I gave her a quick summary of the family curse. I told her about Grammy Fisk’s stroke, my awkward relationship with my father, the tuition money. I told her I had dropped out of my Sheridan courses and given notice at my apartment—I had to be out by the end of the month. No money and nowhere to go but back home. I had been curious about tonight’s meeting but I was embarrassed to admit that I’d never be back.

“Not worth worrying about, Adam. You’re a Tau, you’re welcome even for one night. But the thing about going back home—I gather you’d prefer to stay in Toronto?”

Before I came here for school I hadn’t given the city a second thought. I had wanted to study in New York City, but my father was convinced that even a brief exposure to Manhattan would turn me into a gay-marrying Democrat-voting liberal, and not even Grammy Fisk could overcome his objections. He had agreed to Toronto because he imagined Canada to be a well-mannered country, suspiciously socialistic but hardly radical. I had agreed because Sheridan offered world-class graphics and media curricula. Did I want to stay here? Sure. But no job, no work permit, no crib. She said, “You’re studying graphic design?”

“Was, before I dropped out.”

“So you should talk to Walter.”

“Who?”

“Walter Kohler. Lisa must have introduced you. Big guy? Six foot, two hundred fifty pounds, in his forties, wears a suit?”

I vaguely recalled such a person. He had smiled and shaken my hand, that was all.

Amanda tucked away her pipe and baggie. “Really, you need to talk to him.”

“Do I?”

“Walter used to work for one of the big ad agencies in town, but he’s starting his own business—come on, we’ll go see him.”

“What, now ?”

“Of course now. Come on!” She practically vaulted back inside the dormer window. I was a little reluctant to leave the roof—it was a good place to be stoned: safe, scenic, undemanding—but I staggered after her.

Kohler was in the game room in the basement, knocking balls around a pool table for his own amusement. He was big enough that the cue looked small in his hands. Amanda re-introduced me and, mortifyingly, told him I was looking for a job.

“Actually I’m not,” I said. “I mean, I can’t . I have a student work permit, but I’m not a student anymore. I don’t even have a visa.” I explained again about my family situation.

“Finished three years at Sheridan?” Kohler asked.

“Yeah, but—”

“Tell me what courses you took.”

I listed them.

“Okay,” he said. “Promising. What kind of grades were you pulling down?”

I told him.

“Sounds like someone you could use,” suggested Amanda.

Kohler said, “What I’m setting up is basically a media-access and marketing business. People come to us, we give them what they want at whatever price point they can afford—TV, Internet, direct mail, anything from a full-court integrated ad campaign to a guy handing out leaflets on a street corner. So yeah, Amanda’s right, I’m looking to hire folks with the appropriate skills. If you’re up to speed on CSS and JavaScript, I can start you next week.”

“That’s amazingly generous, and it’s tempting, but like I said, I don’t have a valid work permit—”

“I have a legal guy who can expedite the paperwork. And I’m willing to advance you your salary until you’re authorized. Do you want to talk about salary?”

He cited numbers that seemed ridiculously generous. I nodded and said, “But, wait—I would love to do this but I’m kind of—”

“He’s new,” Amanda said, as if this explained something.

“I’d have to find a place to stay—”

“Lisa!” Kohler roared. He was a big man. Big chest cavity. He could roar pretty impressively. I tried not to flinch. “ Loretta! Amanda, are the Sob Sisters upstairs?”

Lisa Wei came into the room before she could answer. “Keep your voice down, Walter; I’m sure they can hear you in Vancouver. What is it?”

“Homeless waif. A loose Tau.”

“Really?” Lisa took my hand and gave me a motherly look. Or what I imagined was a motherly look. I didn’t remember my own mother very clearly. “Well, then, you have to stay with us! There are a couple of rooms you can choose from. Tonight isn’t too soon, you know, if you don’t have anywhere to go.”

“My lease is good to the end of the month, but—”

“Then you can move in anytime. Welcome home, Adam! I’ll tell Loretta we have a new roomer.”

The next sound I heard was Amanda, laughing at the expression on my face.

“We call them the Sob Sisters,” Amanda said, “because they don’t mind if you cry on their shoulders. You don’t need to worry about imposing. Lisa and Loretta love having company. Tau company, anyway. So maybe I’ll see you next time, Adam.”

“Are you leaving?”

“Soon. It’s pretty late. I need to say my good-byes.” She hugged me and walked away.

But that was fine. A small miracle had taken place: somehow, over the course of a few hours, I had internalized the idea that I was among family —not the messy modus vivendi my Schuyler relations had arrived at, but family in a better and truer sense of the word. And for another forty-five minutes I drifted through the thinning crowd with a sheepish and slightly stoned grin on my face, striking up conversations that inevitably seemed to begin and end in mid-sentence. “Newbie euphoria,” someone called it. Fine. Yes. Exactly.