Gastown

It’s nearly midnight, and he’s still there, the old man with the ugly pit bull. I noticed he’d set up camp under the awning by the corner store a few weeks ago, pushing a rickety Costco trolley filled to the brim with plastic bags and a flat, yellow-stained mattress. The dog was leashed to the handlebar. He’s lucky, I thought. That’s a good spot, normally occupied by the large woman who was always slumped over like a pile of dirty laundry. Once, I offered her my green juice from the organic food store across the street. She said she didn’t like how bitter it was and next time can she please have a straw. I appreciated the honesty, which I think there is not enough of. I wonder where she’s gone and if she’ll be back to reclaim her post. 

There are a few people I don’t recognise tonight. There’s a topless man by the pedestrian crossing, his face illuminated by the fluorescent glow of the neon sign flashing ‘OPEN’ in front of the new cannabis store. He lifts his arms up in the air, all God-like, and spins around slowly. He looks like he’s shouting, like he’s asking for help, but no one stops to listen. I watch him through the sound-proof window, like the TV is on mute. 

We’d only moved into our apartment a year ago when Jack was relocated to the city office. 

A friend of a friend had told me over FaceTime that Gastown was where we wanted to be. ‘It used to be pretty sketch, but they’ve basically cleared everyone out so it’s all like gentrified and everything,’ she’d said. ‘Cute cafes everywhere, little boutiques... I think it’s even been named the fourth trendiest neighbourhood in the world or something crazy like that.’

That sounded promising, so after weeks of staying at an Airbnb, we were thrilled to find this two-story loft on the edge of the neighbourhood. It checked all the boxes: cathedral-high ceilings; minimally furnished with matching, inoffensive Ikea furniture; tall rectangular swathes of windows framed a lively intersection against a backdrop of snow-capped mountains peeking out from behind gritty blocks of industrial buildings.

Our landlord said we’d love the place, using words like ‘colourful,’ ‘interesting,’ and ‘so much character’. He’d gone on and on about how he took special care to install sound-proof windows, but that we should certainly ‘call the police if anything.’ In hindsight, that was probably a red flag, but we liked the apartment so much we must have pretended not to have heard him. 

The enthusiastic friend-of-a-friend was right about a few things: there were cute cafes, and there were little boutiques, and the area was slowly being ‘refreshed.' I did, however, find the coffee mostly bland in an expensive kind of way, the boutiques unwelcoming with girls wearing transparent pink-framed glasses and bangs, hiding behind their laptops and not speaking a single word to you, and the blatant flushing out of the homeless ― for whom these streets are, indeed, ‘home’ ― unpalatable. 

I feel a film of sweat on my back, Jack’s white t-shirt clinging to my skin. I crack the balcony door open to let in some air. It’s an immediate assault of the senses; wafting through the door is what else but the distinctive smell of marijuana and warm, old urine, buoyed by the muggy July air. Sounds of drunken laughter echo between the sharp click-clack of high heels hitting the asphalt and the roars of an attention-seeking motorcycle engine. A woman screams. The kind of sound someone makes when something special is taken away from her, the kind of sound they make in horror films and no one can pretend not to hear. Then come the deafening wails of police sirens.

Warm, yellow blocks of light flick on one by one in the buildings around us. Slowly, figures emerge from the light onto their balconies, leaning over the railing to observe the action below, like they’re watching a theatre production from their box seats. Even the old woman on the seventh floor who smokes cigarettes at eight in the morning is there, donning a frumpy nightgown. I’m surprised she is awake at all. 

I feel something wrap around me from behind, pressing the damp t-shirt deeper into my back. 

‘It’s too hot,’ I say, plucking his pale arms from my body. He’d just taken a shower, and smelled strongly of fresh soap. 

‘What’s going on,’ Jack says, rubbing the plush white towel into his wet hair. He steps in front of me to get closer to the window, resting his forehead against it. His breath fogs up the cold glass. 

‘Hey, it’s the crazy guy with the pit bull,’ he says, thumping his finger on the glass like a boy at a candy store. ‘What’s he doing now? Oh, no wa-ay’. 

‘Is he crazy?’ I ask. ‘How do you know?’

He ignores my question or doesn’t hear it. He reports that more and more police cars are coming in, and they’re waving all the pedestrians away. 

‘How do you know he’s crazy?’ I say again, a little louder this time. 

‘He just is. You can tell,' he says, as if that is the answer to every question in the world.

‘Well, what’s happening?’ I say. ‘Is everyone going to be OK?’

Jack thinks there’s going to be a fight between the topless man and the screaming woman, but he can’t hear what they’re saying. 

‘Man, sometimes I want to take a giant hose and just clear them out,’ he says, shaking his head.

‘I’m not sure if that’s a thing that people say.’

He doesn’t turn back to look at me. ’Well you know what I mean.’

‘Not really, no.’

‘It’s just, I’m so sick of it. Like, they’re the scum of the earth, right? They chose this, drugs or whatever it is. It’s hard on the mind when you have to see it every day.’

I feel my cheeks flush with a temper I didn’t know I had. I turn to the coffee table and pick up the wine glasses by the stems, nestling them between my fingers. ’So you’re saying you think everyone out there deserves this?’

‘Well they could get a job,’ he says. 

‘I don’t think we know enough about anyone to have an opinion,’ I say, running the glasses in tepid, soapy water. 

He raises his voice, but not enough to start a fight. ‘I don’t think you need to make me feel like a bad person here. I’m a good person. Like last year at Katie’s birthday, everyone left without paying and I made everyone e-transfer her’.

‘I honestly don’t know what that has to do with anything.’ 

'It does if you think about it,’ he says. ‘Can you actually put those in the dishwasher?’

‘I’m washing them.’

‘Yeah but they get really dusty on the shelf, you see all the dust particles coated over them during the day when it’s bright.’ he says. ‘I hate dust.’

‘I’ll wash them and put them back in the glass cabinet,’ I say, fantasising about throwing the glasses at the window to see what it might feel like to break something on purpose. 

I remember when I first came to Canada five years ago, then a 25-year-old photographer. I’d met Jack on the plane to Montreal―he for work, and I for fun. And then after months of two a.m. phone calls and rapid-fire texts, we’d met again in Vancouver, he for work, I for him. We seemed to be the best versions of ourselves then: young and fun, ready for anything always, full of ideas about how we wanted to live our lives. Or we presented ourselves to be that way, at least. We were able to have long, meandering conversations, and connected over our love of ketchup over plain rice. That meant something then.

That feels like a long time ago. Even a plate of ketchup over rice tastes unfamiliar these days. Sometimes I wonder what happened and how we got so comfortable so quickly, and when I do, I look at the full-length bodies moving in the yellow rectangular boxes all around us, cooking, eating dinner, watching television, cleaning, having sex, and I’m comforted by the fact that we are, all of us, living the same insipid life. 

‘Hello, are you there,” I hear Jack say. 

‘Hm,’ I say. ‘Sorry, I spaced out a bit there.’

‘I just wanted to see if you wanted to...you know,’ he says, pulling me closer to him. 

I pretend not to understand. ‘What are you talking about?’

‘We haven’t done it in a while, so I thought―’

‘I’m not feeling it right now,’ I say, tucking a loose strand of hair behind my ear. 

‘Fine, OK yeah. I’m going to bed then. Close the window when you’re done?’ 

‘It’s too hot in here,’ I say. ‘Let’s leave it open for tonight?’

He stands at the end of the bed and falls backward onto the mattress, groaning. ‘Ughhh I can’t sleep with all this noise. I have work.’

‘It’s Sunday tomorrow, isn’t it?’

‘Yes, but I would like to be able to sleep in my own apartment. Is that too much to ask?’

‘OK then.’

‘OK. Thank you. Good night.’ He turns the knob by the bed, and the light switches off.

Just then, with little warning, it starts pouring, the rain pelting against the windows with palpable fury. 

‘Oh perfect, they heard me up there,’ Jack mumbles from under the duvet. ‘I love it when it rains like that. It makes me feel so warm, being inside.’ 

Outside, the people on the street scatter away like cockroaches, disappearing into the cracks and crevices of the night. 

‘And I don’t even need the hose,’ Jack says, his voice slowing to a sleepy slur. 

I’m suddenly craving a cigarette, though I haven’t smoked in years. There’s something promising about a cigarette that stays burning in the rain. I slip my feet into boots, grab the keys from the hook by the door and run across the street, feeling the wetness soak through my already damp t-shirt. The bell rings as I swing the door open to the convenience store. I shield my eyes from the fluorescent, unflattering light and ask for a pack of Camel Blues and a lighter. 

Under the awning, I dangle the cigarette between my lips and turn to face the shop window to light it under the safety of my cupped hand. 

‘Hey lady, rough night?’ I hear someone say from behind an open umbrella leaning on the ground. 

‘Pardon?’ 

It’s the man with the pit bull. 

‘Sorry if I’m in your way,’ I say, quickly stepping away from his DIY-fort. 

‘No, no, you’re fine where you are,’ he says, stroking his dog between the ears.

‘Would you like one?’ I say, offering him my own.

He waves his hand at me. ’Oh I don’t smoke, but thank you.’ 

I shift my balance onto one foot, attempting to be casual and conceal my surprise. 

‘You should leave him,’ he says, out of nowhere.

I hear myself gasp.

He turns up to look at me now, his coal-black eyes reflecting the bright light emanating from the street lamp. 

‘You live there, right, on the second floor. Now those are some big windows,’ he continues, raising a knobby finger to point at our window. ‘I see everything,’ he says, giving up a boyish wink. 

I swallow, coughing, unable to conceal a single thought this time. I’m embarrassed, for a reason I can't yet understand. 

‘And when you leave that nice-looking boy, young lady, take that nice-looking chair with you,’ he says, grinning. 

I look up at our apartment, dark now. And standing there, at the good spot under the awning, I can only laugh, mostly at the absurdity of his words, but also at a truth that’s not always quite so plainly observed.