Free The Adjustment League by Mike Barnes Page B

when the manager says into the phone, “Another thing you need to know, it’s in our contract, is that all units are for storage purposes only. No business can be conducted from them.” Chuckles at something the caller says. “No, that’s right, you’ll need a proper office for that. And of course”—he waits until he’s got the girl’s eye—“no living in one either.” Gets a skimpy smile and raised eyebrow for the hundredth time.
    I fish-hook us over to Laird via the faux-fronted shops of a new Village. The usual suspects: Home Depot, Best Buy, Starbucks, LCBO. A “retail community” that went from hoardings to gala opening inside six months, thrown up like a Hollywood wild west set, minus the wildness and the west. Immense yawning asphalt instead of a muddy street between the town’s opposing storefronts, so huge it makes even Home Depot look dinky. Everything looking like the first November blow will knock it down.
    â€œWho is your mother’s Power of Attorney?” I say, waiting for the light. A slump-shouldered man wearing an ad board doing a faint shuffle in front of Five Guys Burgers and Fries, moving his arms back and forth in slow passes that obscure the words on his chest. Either from the chill or from some profounder misunderstanding of his role.
    â€œMax,” Judy says.
    â€œAnd Max pays you to look after your mom.” Chancing it a bit, following it as it arranges itself out ahead of me like the strip lights in the storage vessel.
    â€œYes. I look after her.”
    She lapses back into silence. Hasn’t said much since leaving Vivera, when I asked her for a basic rundown on her brothers.
    â€œI hope Sandor mentions that in her obituary. Probably no one will think of it,” she says just before we reach Selkirk.
    The comment reminds me why, for all we went through together, living across the hall through months of siege, I haven’t looked her up in twenty years or ever felt inclined to. No one else can ever really be real to her. And such a person is an active danger to one aspiring to escape the ghost world and put on solid flesh again. Who prayer-folds actions like a thousand paper cranes to that end.

4
    What have you got?
    Sitting in the armchair overlooking Eglinton, I consider it. Money-man Max, his chequebook grieving. The place to start, but no dentist reachable on a Sunday. Playing golf or watching it. Sandor, a retired English teacher and “a kind of writer”—a sly jab in another mouth, but Judy’s flattens it to a ledger entry. Sandor the youngest, fifty or thereabouts—retired? Can be found, according to Judy, most nights at the Queen’s Arms. Show her arms, hide her charms. Which, unless she’s got it wrong, is only a few blocks away, a five-minute walk to just past Avenue. Max, when I get to him, pulling teeth at Yonge-Eg. What started way up in Markham shaping up as a local job after all.
    The last thought pulls me up like a pinch. You’re not considering an adjustment, you’re in one already. Well in. I could feel it watching the grainy floating scenes on the storage monitors. The two goons pushing piled dollies behind their ethereal little captain. Wanting to pull what I was seeing apart. Rearrange it.
    At dusk I head out, after leaving messages on four machines. I like setting them out like bait after business hours, plug in my own phone in the morning and see what’s in the net. I’ve never felt the need to be more closely connected. Hours already seem a fast turnaround, I don’t need seconds. And there are enough people camped out inside my skin.
    The Owner: 305’s rented. They dropped off the lease and first and last. You’re going to love these two. They’ll never bounce a cheque or make a peep. Maybe the occasional muffled scream when the markets fall. But only during business hours.
    Nicole, the Move-in Coordinator from Vivera’s menu: