Pasha Malla - The Withdrawal Method

"Well, after dark you get garbage pickers coming down from Welland or Fort Erie and that. There have been some problems."

"But I'm security, Paul." Her hand brushed mine, sending a ripple of heat up my arm. "If I was working nights these are the people I'd have to deal with, right?"

DOOLEY'S WAS RUN by its namesake, a salmon-coloured, tubby little Newfie who had opened the place back in the days of happy tourism. When asked about keeping it going while everyone else went under, Dooley would shrug and give his standard answer: "Folks gotta drink."

The place was split into two gloomy rooms: one featured a pool table ringed with stools; the other side had the bar and a few booths. The clientele practised a similar division. Guys like me and Dave, locals from way back, stuck together, while anyone else — especially the Americans who'd been stationed up here — went to the side of the bar where we weren't. Every now and then one of our guys would get a few drinks in him and start to feel sore, "accidentally" spill a beer on someone's lap and have to take it outside. Not me, though. I've never been a fighter.

Dave and everyone else were set up in the booths, empty pitchers lined up on the table. Our crowd were folks who went to high school together and had stuck around, most either working public service or jobs with CanAm. Dooley had sold the jukebox since it only caused fights, so there was no music, just the clicks and clacks of pool balls being knocked around in the adjoining room, subdued conversations filtering through wafts of blue smoke from Camels or Marlboros bought at the duty-free.

Kaede and I got chairs and added them to the end of the table. I started going through introductions when Dave slammed his beer down and stood up. His eyes blazed. "I don't know what the fuck you think you're doing, Pauly. I mean, nice of you to honour us with your presence for once, but if anyone was invited here tonight it sure wasn't you, you fucking sellout."

"Dave," I said, my hands raising in defence. "Easy, man, I'm just-"

Then the rage was swept away with a wink. "Shit, man, I'm just pulling your chain. Nice shirt." He turned toward the bar. "Shots for my man Pauly here, Dooley! Line'em up!"

Dooley came around with beakers of Canadian Club for me and Kaede: cheers and down the hatch. And right into the beer, mugs filled and pushed sloppily in our direction, half of it splashing onto the floor.

"To new friends!" screamed Dave, and everyone clinked glasses and drank.

Getting drunk at Dooley's was purposeful, steady. Conversations were two or three lines traded between big swallows of Moosehead or Blue. Dave's cousin Lisa asked me, "How are things at the store, Pauly?" and I said, "Shitty," and everyone took a big gulp of their pints. But then there was Kaede, right beside me. I turned to her while everyone else sat working away at their beers in silence, wondering how she'd fit in.

"So," I said.

Kaede lit a cigarette. "In Japanese 'so' means once, before, ever, never."

"So?„

"So what," she said, blasting smoke out the corner of her mouth. "Let's get wasted."

Within an hour we had managed just that, chatting, trading drinking stories from our school days. We got closer, her leg against mine. "Are you glad you came out?" she asked.

"Sure. It'd be better if the bar wasn't in Niagara Falls, but whatever."

"You've been back here how long?"

"Six years. Since my mom passed away. My dad and I ran the store for a year, and then one day at work about a year later a blood vessel popped in his brain. Right in front of me."

"Oh, Paul," said Kaede. Then, slowly, "Your parents never saw the Falls dry, then."

I shook my head.

"Would they have stayed, do you think?"

I wasn't ready for this question. I picked up my beer, then put it down. Kaede just sat there waiting for a reply as if she'd asked for the time or directions. Finally I just said, "I don't know."

Then we heard a shout. Dave was in the face of some guy at the bar with a full pitcher in either hand. I didn't recognize him, but he had about four inches on Dave, and the guy beside him, whom I'd also never seen before, was even bigger.

"I heard you, asshole," Dave was saying. "You called my buddy a coon."

"Koontz, dickwad. I said Koontz."

"Dude, we've got a friend named Koontz," said the other guy, stepping in. "He's in the other room if you want to meet him."

Dave kept staring at the first guy. "Pauly!" he yelled. "This guy called you a coon."

"A what?" I had to stop myself from laughing.

Kaede grabbed my leg. "Did he just say'coon'? Does that even apply to you?"

Dooley came flapping out from behind the bar. "Outside, lads, outside!" he hollered, and shooed them out the doorthe two bewildered strangers first, and then Dave, already rolling up his sleeves. A bunch of our guys followed. The pool room went silent and then a crowd poured out the door as well.

"Jesus," I said, turning to Kaede. "Sorry you have to see this."

But she was already standing. "Come on, Paul! Fight!"

Out in the parking lot the bigger guy was pointing to a Jeep with New York plates. "Dude, look at the fucking tags." Dave wouldn't, but I did: KOONTZ. "This is his car. Can you see?"

Dave stood face to face with the other guy. "I don't know who the fuck you think you are, coming up here and acting like you own the place."

There was some sort of idiotic retort, something in response from Dave, and then they were swinging at each other. Our buddies circled around to hold the other Americans back, saying, "Let them go, just let them go," while Kaede, a foot shorter than everyone else, was hopping on tiptoes and craning her neck. "I can't see! Paul, what's happening? I can't see!"

Dave got a few shots in, but the other guy was just too big for him. A few seconds later he grabbed one of Dave's punches out of the air, like picking fruit from a tree, and hauled him in. Dave took a solid elbow to the chops and then a big left hook came swinging around, the crack of his jaw releasing an empathetic gasp from the crowd. Then our guys were diving in — although now the Americans were holding them back to let their buddy go for it.

"You didn't miss anything," I told Kaede. "It's over."

Kaeded slumped beside me. "Why didn't you tell me what was going on?"

"Oh, come on. I hate this bullshit. You want to get out of here?"

"I guess so," she said, turning to me. "But where do you want to go?"

IF DURING THE daytime it was a ghost town, N.F. at night was more of a graveyard. We tottered through the empty streets, Kaede clinging to my arm with her nose buried in my shoulder, the world swimming up underneath our feet. Those buildings that weren't boarded up loomed, their windows black and empty, on either side of the street. Drunkenly I tried to focus on the road ahead, one step after the next. Everything was a muddy fuzz. But when something went scuttling by in the shadows, my brain snapped to attention.

"What?" Kaede said. "What was that?"

"Nothing. Just keep moving."

"Paul," she said.

I looked straight ahead and took her hand. "Let's go," I said.

But there was someone following us. I could hear whispering from the shadows: up front, then behind, off to the left, then the right. I thought about Dave, losing it on that picker on the American side, smashing the poor guy's skull in with his nightstick. Over a broken fridge.

We stumbled along a little faster, the clopping of our footsteps echoing all the way to the end of the street. "It's not far," I said. "Maybe you should get your keys out now."

At the door to her housing block, Kaede struggled with the deadbolt while I watched the street and listened. The shadows seemed to shift and ripple. I strained to tell if the wisps of voices I heard were real or imagined. And then I saw something that looked like a child rise up from the ground at the end of street, as though it were getting to its legs from all fours. Kaede's keys clattered on the lock. The shape stood there, facing me, unmoving — a dark blot hovering in the shadows of the next block.