Steve Toltz - Quicksand

I did not tell her that I’d also stumbled upon one man dead in a bath, another hanging off a tree, and a father asphyxiated in a garage. That is to say I was paid my standard flat rate to stumble upon the bodies of recent suicides, meaning I’d inadvertently found a horrific niche market of people who wanted to die in the privacy of their own homes but didn’t wish to burden their loved ones, something I knew a little too much about.

The deceased shifted her feet and gazed at me uncertainly.

— Will you tell me the job, or would you like me to guess?

— It’s mortifying.

— I don’t mind.

Then she told me the job and, Your Honour, she wasn’t joking; it was mortifying.

I was to spend the day removing naked pictures of her that a disgruntled lover had plastered on lampposts and phone boxes all over the city. She boldly presented me with one such poster; I gasped. The bastard had enlarged photos of the deceased’s face with, it’s hard to find another way to say it, a mouthful of cock — there, I said it — in a collage that also featured images of her dark, saucer-sized nipples and splotchy birthmark above the belly button. I didn’t need to ask why he chose these particular images. Her boyfriend clearly knew how to hurt women — who doesn’t? — and he knew how to hurt her in a specific way. I guessed, and was later proved right, that she’d never had an intimate moment without first giving the unnecessary but heartfelt self-loathing preface that these — her nipples, her birthmark — were the things she hated most about her body. On the bottom half of the posters was a phone number and address and her name: Mimi Underwood.

That was the first time I’d heard it. Yet it was so familiar. As my eyes flew over the images once again, I asked her if I could’ve met her before.

— Or, I asked, have I seen your name somewhere? On a billboard or bathroom wall maybe?

— Jesus Christ, man. I’m having the worst week of my life. Will you help me or not?

In truth, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I wasn’t sure I felt like it. After being so frequently suckered into gruesome bargains with the suicidal inhabitants of this morose city, not to mention the hostility and aggression from their families and my other clients, and the unsavoury and amoral and vexing nature of the work itself, I had decided to abandon this ludicrous non-job that very morning. As you well know, it’s only when you quit and then change your mind that you can regret the harm that befalls you.

— Sure. Let’s do it.

It’s not every day you tear down pornographic posters with an attractive stranger.

So off we went, ripping posters off the fig trees in Hyde Park, off the brand-new apartment buildings made ugly at great expense, off the graffitied War Memorial, off the Hungarian restaurant where they serve Wiener schnitzels as big as toilet seats, off the Central Station overpass, off the glass wall of the taxi stand where the drivers leer salaciously out of habit before they’ve even determined your sex. We veered off into the suburban streets where, to our weary disgust, he had plastered front doors, letterboxes and children’s tree houses. This is how it went: Mimi feebly indicated a sign with a nod or else pointed accusingly to a poster and said, Another one! or simply, Oh God, and I’d go after it like a golden retriever while men called her name or applauded, children waiting for buses made sucking noises, mismatched couples stared judgementally, and outside the hair salon a woman with tinfoil on her head flicked her cigarette at Mimi as she passed. Clearly, the stupid hag thought we were putting the posters up, not taking them down. In fact, the number of people who believed that Mimi had put the posters there herself was incredible. It was some strange business we were engaged in. And the glares Mimi was getting from men! I submit, Your Honour, that it’s disastrous for the species what looks men think are seductive. Mimi tried to maintain eye contact with them all, to paper over the humiliation that was constant and unbearable. As we walked side by side in silence, I felt her mounting anger acquiring a certain rhythm and I was growing increasingly uneasy, more and more convinced I’d be attacked before this job was over. All in all, a thoroughly stressful day.

— Holy fuck, we’ve already been on this street, Mimi said, pointing to a new poster of her that appeared to have sprung up on its own on the slick tiles of a pharmacy wall.

As fast as we could tear down the vile posters, Mimi’s boyfriend must have been putting them up. I scanned the street, heard crazy laughter. I thought: He’s enjoying it, the bastard. I thought: We seem inert and ghostly while our pursuer seems full of energy and life. I thought: It’s been ages since I enjoyed frightening somebody.

— Is he violent?

Mimi’s face darkened.

— He hit me once. I had to defend myself with a car antenna.

A car antenna? What had I got myself involved in? From somewhere behind me I heard the words, You’re dead. I thought: Calm down, it’s only a paranoiac who takes all his city’s death threats as directed solely at him. However, all this fear made me tired.

— You look tired, I said to Mimi. We should sit a minute. Do you want to sit a minute? Let’s sit a minute.

Mimi collapsed next to me on a bus-stop bench like a travelling salesman at the end of a long life. The heat rising from her angry frustration was intense and she ignored my commiserative smile as she was busy staring with concentrated force at a hygiene-masked man on a bicycle leading a Great Dane who nearly collided with a businessman on a skateboard.

— What kind of epoch is this anyway? Mimi asked in a small, annoyed voice.

— What do you mean?

— I don’t know. When was the last time you saw a milkman?

A milkman?

— Beats me.

Here it comes, I thought, the story that is about to drop like a ripe apple from a tree. I imagined it would involve an abusive relationship with a vindictive, emotionally immature and dangerous individual, the kind of paternal figure who beats his kids to death. Frankly, I was eager to hear it. But it didn’t come. Why didn’t it come? Usually it’s no problem. Usually I have the opposite problem, making people shut up.

Sidebar: When I was a young man, Your Honour, I grew expert at disengaging, otherwise people trap you in dusty corners or up against wet-paint signs or in between washing machines and talk and talk and talk. It used to drive me crazy until the day I found it profitable that people have an inexhaustible supply of anecdotes and ceaseless energy to tell them, and endless time to tell them in, and no consideration whatsoever for the listener. So between jobs and after bankruptcies and before unemployment cheques, I found a way to survive. Some people read fortunes for money, some strum and sing, some suck and fuck, some beg; I listened like a fanatic — crouching on a milk crate, leaning on a terrace, resting on a park bench, with a smile and open ears — I endured the arduous task of hearing people’s worries, or as I used to call it, peeling the skin off the unripe secrets of the mostly damned.

Yes, Your Honour, the cozy aches and liberating creaks of the pleasantly broken spirits of this city’s inhabitants was, for a time, my daily bread. People paid with a coffee here, a drink there, or a sandwich — sometimes actual currency — and unloaded their problems in record numbers. When I was angry or in a bad mood I threatened to misunderstand them, but I never followed through. My ears grew used to the hidden meaning behind their words, like eyes that grow accustomed to darkness. Don’t get me wrong. Or do get me wrong. I don’t care. The thing is, I was no doctor or healer or shaman. I didn’t even have any real advice! Only an impulse to put a pillow between the head and the brick wall it smashed up against, or nudge people discreetly towards their epiphanies, or boot them down the narrow staircase of truth into the coal cellar of their darkest hearts.