Authors: Todd Babiak
“No, thanks.”
“Your dad and I were saving it for a special occasion.”
“No, thanks.”
“You went shopping.” She nodded at his Boutique Jean-François bag. “How festive.”
She was in her white satin pyjamas with a character from the Japanese alphabet on the breast pocket. On the table, next to the bottle of wine, lay a book called
Chicken Soup for the Grieving Soul.
“Be careful with that stuff, Mom.”
“The book?”
“The book too.”
She looked down at the glass, swished the wine around, smelled it. Her eyes were gluey.
“I have to go to New York tomorrow morning.”
Karen slowly leaned back in her chair.
“Someone wants to interview me.”
The room was lit by one faint lamp, loaded with an energy-saving fluorescent bulb that gave the room a pale yellow tint. She stared at Toby for a long time, as though she struggled to recognize him. The old grandfather clock struck six. It was 9:52. She finished her glass of wine quickly, picked up the bottle, and walked out. The sound of the refrigerator door opening and closing. Blowing her nose. Running water to take her sleeping pill. Her feet swooshing across the shag.
Downstairs, Toby washed and ironed his three new shirts and prepared himself for the interviews. He put extra-strength whitening strips on his teeth, clipped imperfections out of his hair, and researched William Kingston on the Internet; the man enjoyed sailing, Tintin books, small Greek islands, and Nina Simone’s covers of the hit songs of the 1960s.
Toby practised spontaneity. Pompousness had to be scraped out of his ideas and philosophies, so he repeated them aloud in front of a decorative mirror. Teenagers today are
expected
to cuss on public transit, Mr. Kingston, to spit on sidewalks, to litter, to modify their mufflers, to wear clothes that reveal the colour and style of their underpants. Even the smart ones. Their role models are celebrities who did not finish high school, who speak in artificial British accents, drink and drive, and upload videotapes of themselves
performing doggie-style. Books have become irrelevant, and not just for teenagers. Their parents have abandoned newspapers, suits and dresses, symphonies, pleases and thank yous, the library and the voting booth, in favour of Pilates and poker and plasma screens. Media companies are the most cynical of all, and television the most potent force for the erosion of order, but all that can change.
Men have reacted to the challenge of gender equality by elevating their lizard brains—dressing like cartoon characters, carrying handguns. The popularity of no-rules cage-match fist fighting, a weekly festival of televised vulgarity, is the visual culture equivalent of tearing off one’s clothes and running into the bush, eating raw meat, and howling at the moon. It is a sign of desperation, the far end of the social pendulum. We have gone as far as we can go. Soon, very soon, gentlemen will be back. And they will want to know whether or not they should remove their suit jackets during dinner.
Never.
Toby would accomplish for his generation what Emily Post had for hers. She had written
Etiquette
for women like herself, well born and wealthy members of Best Society who had a genuine need for guidance about the treatment of household servants. The majority of her readers, though, were regular people, the newly literate yet poor citizens of the twentieth century, desperate for a dream that would lead them from the horrors of the war through technological, social, and cultural transformation, the hopelessness of the Depression. A book that would teach them the rules of the ruling class, that would give them permission to pretend.
Etiquette
was the book most requested by American soldiers fighting in World War Two;
Toby a Gentleman
could be the most-watched video segment on YouTube.
He recited all of this aloud, several times, sitting and standing. For the first time in ten years, it took some effort to back it up with feeling. This, he determined, was not so much a crisis of faith as the comforts and consolations of suburban mediocrity seeping into him. He crept up into Hugo’s room and gave him a kiss on the forehead. “Tomorrow,” he whispered.
The sun came up. Toby paced with his shoes on. He wanted to say goodbye to Hugo before Mr. Demsky arrived, so he faked some coughs and stomped outside the bedroom door. The boy was still sleeping when a silver Town Car parked in front of the house at exactly 7:45. Karen did not speak; she did not even nod when Toby asked her to say goodbye for him and to kiss the boy and to make sure he sat on the potty at least once each day.
The tinted rear window rolled down, and Mr. Demsky’s mad scientist hair was revealed. “Hurry your ass!”
Karen stood at the door as Toby hurried down the front stairs with his folding garment bag and small suitcase.
“Good morning, Madame Ménard,” said Mr. Demsky.
“Mushinsky,” she said.
The driver, a tall man in a black suit and a Siberian fur hat, stood at attention before the open trunk. Toby did not know whether to put his own things inside or to hand them over. So he asked.
“Is your choice, sir. But I take.”
Another potential segment. It was endless. He told Mr. Demsky as much, as the driver navigated his way out of the mysteries of Dollard.
Mr. Demsky shifted on the black leather, his own suit at least twenty years old and tailored for a larger man. “What was up with your mom?”
“It’s early.”
“Here I am, going out of my way to help her son move out of the house, and what do I get?
Mushinsky?
”
“It was a controversial moment in our little house when I became a Ménard.”
“Still.”
It was the last thing Toby wanted to talk about. “She didn’t want me to go.”
“Why not?”
“Just…family stuff.”
“Everything’s okay?”
“Beast of ambition.”
“And one day, beast, you can have all this.” Mr. Demsky gestured at the back seat of the Town Car, at his suit, and began to laugh. A three-minute coughing fit ensued, and Mr. Demsky spat into his handkerchief several times. It occurred to Toby that he had not eaten breakfast. An empty stomach always made him prone to nausea. He retched as daintily as he could manage at the sight and sound of Mr. Demsky’s spitting, and opened the window for a blast of exhaust and river.
“How did you hatch from that little house?”
Inside the airport, Mr. Demsky initiated Toby into the wonders of the Maple Leaf Lounge. An emergency phone call from the national sales director freed Toby to read the New York press and take a complimentary breakfast of yogurt, fruit, and granola. For the first time, Toby knew the pleasure of boarding the airplane early, sitting in business class, and making eye contact with the unfortunate as they filed into
economy. He suppressed an urge, as the airplane taxied away from the gate, to kiss Mr. Demsky.
A black man in a polyester suit, walking shoes, and a demeaning
chapeau de chauffeur
waited for them in the arrivals area of LaGuardia with a printed sign that said
MISTERS DEMSKY AND MENROD
. Toby did not allow him to take his bags. He did not allow him to open the limousine door.
“Sir,” said the chauffeur, quietly, as he closed the door, “this is my job, all right? I applied for it. Don’t let it torment you.”
The driver navigated the wide and clogged streets, thick now with rain. The tips of the towers were hidden by fog. In Manhattan, the transition from the symbolic to the actual was noticeably smooth. Arrival came with mild disappointment, like spotting the tour guides of a great museum smoking at the loading dock.
Mr. Demsky slapped Toby on the knee. “What’s your problem, Tobias?”
“Nothing.”
“What’s your key message?”
“My—”
“Don’t hesitate.”
“The gentleman must return. Etiquette, to the video game people, is more exotic than Burma.”
“Rangoon. Say ‘Rangoon.’ I love that word, and I know I’m not alone.”
“They only need a spiritual guide, a Moses.”
“Moses isn’t sexy.”
“I’m completely uninterested in street drugs and hookers, so no one who hires me has to worry about scandals.”
“Completely uninterested? I don’t think you should say that aloud.”
“I’d never hire a hooker.”
“Never say never.”
“Have you?”
“They never bother you for attention, or ask you to be nice to their mothers. If you want them to sing an Edith Piaf song and dance while they defrock, no problem. It’s an extra twenty.”
Toby wondered, briefly, if Mr. Demsky was quite the best mentor for a man in his position. The car stopped in front of an industrial brick building with a glass-walled restaurant cut into the first two floors. Silver letters spelled
NEW GOTHAM
above the entrance. Toby opened his door. Mr. Demsky did not.
“You’re not coming?”
“I’m not.”
“Oh.”
“I’m off to a meeting of my own.”
“Oh.”
“You nervous, Tobias?”
“Absolutely not.”
“Terrific.”
“Are you sure about this, Mr. Demsky?”
“I’ll meet you back at the hotel.”
The driver held a large umbrella for Toby and opened the restaurant door for him. Toby had prepared a five-dollar bill.
“Obliged,” said the driver.
The darkness of the autumn rain added an air of noontime romance to the restaurant, designed with a loft aesthetic that seemed a bit tired. Toby had thought New York would know better. Huge windows, white pillars, bamboo floors, exposed brick, an open kitchen hidden behind glass like an exhibit.
A great beauty held his menu. He was not good enough for this place. No, he was. He was. “Your name?” she said.
“Tobias Ménard.”
“Mr. Maynard. Welcome.”
Toby had expected William Kingston, his hero. Instead, he met a thin, fierce-eyed woman in a skirt and blazer and an uncommonly ugly man, lumpen and either sick or hungover, a dusting of white on the shoulders of his black corduroy sport jacket.
Astrid Stanhope, East Coast director of entertainment, sat across from Harry Bennett, outgoing senior producer of
Wake Up!
Astrid drank Gerolsteiner, while Harry had already finished most of a carafe of white wine. The Americans stood up to shake hands, a peculiar moment as they boldly assessed him: the colour and sparkle quotient of his eyes, the white of his teeth, the blush of his skin, the way a suit hung on his shoulders.
“How old are you?” Astrid replaced the serviette on her lap.
“In Canada, we always begin conversations with a comment about the weather.”
“It’s a piece of shit out there,” said Harry. “Feel better? How old are you?”
“Thirty-seven.”
“See?” Harry pointed to his temple, and a pinch of dandruff shimmered into the carafe of wine.
“There’s thinking thirty-seven,” said Astrid, “and
seeing
thirty-seven.”
Harry topped up his wine and splashed some into Toby’s empty glass. Two of the dandruff flakes twirled on the surface. “The flight was okay?”
“Lovely. Thank you.”
“I like that, you know?” Astrid waved her jewelled fingers at Toby as though she were watching him on television or visiting his cage. “The way he just tosses the word out there. ‘Lovely.’” She included him, now: “Our worry, when we hit on this concept, was that we’d get some pretty boy who’s spent most of his life rich and silly in Kensington. Or some, sorry, blander-than-maple-syrup Canadian with a stick up his ass.”
“Maple syrup is bland?”
“Lovely,” said Harry. “Some lovely Canadian.”
“Maple syrup may not be bland, but we think it’s bland. You see? The very idea of it bores us. You see?”
“I see.”
“You gay?” Harry took a drink.
“Not necessarily.”
“Smartly put, Harry. You just violated a constitutional amendment. Now if we don’t hire Mr. Maple Syrup on a two-year contract, he’ll sue us.”
Harry stared at Astrid and sighed languidly. On the exhale he whispered, “I’m an unhappy man.” He called the server to the table and ordered another carafe of wine.
Astrid tilted her head winningly, renewed by Harry’s declaration. It was clear she had once been on television herself. “We treat Canadians like that smelly aunt upstate we never visit but
should
visit. And that’s a terrible feeling, knowing she’s up there, alone. But we’re busy, right? We have our own shit to deal with.”
“On behalf of my people, I’m only sort of insulted.”
“You see? You see! That’s what I’m talking about. Could you get any milder? More sweetly inoffensive?”
Toby scanned the room for exits. The server arrived and interrupted an eight-second silence. It was a simple menu, one long sheet of paper, but every item was complex and needlessly employed French phrases. The words steeled him.
“I’ll have the boudin blanc of Saint Pierre,” said Astrid, enunciating every vowel and consonant.
Toby didn’t really know what it was, but he asked for the Rouelle de Thomas farm squab
avec farcie aux cerises,
pronouncing the French with his best imitation of a Parisian, not a Québécois, accent.
“You said you weren’t gay,” said Harry.
After lunch, a different driver, also a large black man, squired them to the headquarters and studio, just off Times Square. It was all quite similar, on the broadcast floor, to what he had known in Montreal, only twenty times larger, busier, cleaner, prettier, newer. No one walked, they scurried, as though the stories of missing babies in Arkansas, schoolyard stabbings in Texas, and polygamous religious cults in South Dakota were the glue that kept the United States united. Every stupid little thing was epic. Toby knew that if he ignored or dismissed this simple fact of American storytelling, he would fade into loveliness and maple syrup.
Astrid disappeared. Toby interrupted the tour and extended his hand. Harry took it, and they shook for a moment. “I want to thank you for a fascinating lunch, and for this mini tour,” Toby said. “But I’m sure I’m wasting your time.”
“You are. You are wasting my time. I could be in my office right now, watching old episodes of
Seinfeld.
”