The Answer to Everything (4 page)

“Really? That’s out there?”

“Don’t pretend you don’t know,” said Amy.

“OK. Busted. It’s my homepage.”

“Uh-huh. Right. So highly unlikely that buddy over there is going to leave his home and go to all that trouble just to see a skinny chick in her underwear.”

“Not just any skinny chick,” I said, inching closer.

Sirens could be heard in the distance as Amy and I, still looking down upon the scene, slid toward each other along the balcony railing, pressing first our arms together, then our heads and finally—as the fire trucks screamed into view—our lips. Very rom-com except for the nauseating racket.

It was a strange sensation having sex with Amy. She was so much bonier than any woman I’d ever been with. Usually I am aware only of the pressure of flesh. Now there seemed to be rib cage and elbow and kneecap involved. It was different. But I liked it. I liked it a lot, not least because of Amy’s incredible responsiveness—a rousing thing to behold.

The alarm ended almost immediately after we did, which, in our giddy state, caused much hilarity. We got up, ate cold chicken and Fudgeos, and then fucked again. After, she tickled my back. I remember that very clearly. It was the first time she did it—trailing her long cold fingers up and around my spine. It felt sublime and struck me as more intimate than anything Julianne had done in the three years we had been together. I conked while she was at it, just before dawn. I woke up at noon, alone under Amy’s floral duvet, which smelled faintly and pleasantly of lemons.

It was three weeks to the day after I’d moved in.

There are only two mistakes you can make on the road to Truth. Not going all the way, and not starting.

John Aarons was my friend. Together we embarked upon the road to Truth, but John did not go all the way. His passion became misdirected. He let Shakespeare’s green-eyed monster into his heart, and in this darkness he lost his way.

John Aarons left the Institute in January 2013.

John Aarons is not to blame.

I think he got the idea early on.

In the first weeks that we lived together, and even after we slept together, I guess a couple of months after he moved in, John was hanging out more with Eldrich than he was with me. I thought it was bizarre. I mean, back then I had pegged Eldrich as some pot-addled mental deficient who happened to live across the hall. I would see him all the time around the building and also in the park, where he played his weirdo instruments, but we weren’t friendly. In fact, the only time I ever spoke to him was when I was kicking him off my private rooftop terrace, accessible, unfortunately, from the stairwell beside my apartment and not directly from inside my apartment. I would ask him to leave and please never return. He would grin and agree, and then two days later I’d find him out there again. I didn’t even get angry because I thought he was retarded. I really did. I figured head injury or something. He had that slow, ponderous way of speaking, and that perpetual almost-smile that made him look like a tipsy golden retriever. The way he dressed was ridiculous, everything mismatched and tattered, and his mother—I assumed it was his mother—came around every few days with CorningWare casseroles or
plates of food covered in foil. I figured he was a simp, beating his congas for spare change in the park and surviving on some kind of government disability fund while Mommy kept him fed and very occasionally bathed.

I couldn’t have been more wrong. And the fact that he continued to appear on my terrace, even though I’d had the locks changed on the giant steel entrance door, should have been my first clue.

It didn’t take long to insinuate myself into the ambit of Eldrich. I expected to encounter him mainly in the building, but our first real exchange occurred out of doors about a week and a half after I’d moved in. To get from our apartment to the better stores and subway you had to first pass through a park. A winding concrete walkway bisected it. On one side was a playground bubbling with toddlers and their Filipino nannies, a non-functioning splash pad and two weedy tennis courts. The other side was just grass and trees and benches on which lovers lolled and derelicts loafed. This is where Eldrich set up shop, so to speak, on a bench beside a prodigious willow in the crook of the path.

Eldrich, I discovered, was a busker. He played (I use the term casually, as none of his musical meanderings were evidently melodious) a variety of instruments, all of them unusual. He slapped happy on a Peruvian box drum, hammered a Chinese dulcimer with bamboo sticks, and bowed something called a nyckelharpa that looked like a violin with a set of wooden keys grafted onto it. But the strangest contraption, and the one I liked best, was a tripod with a chunk of wood at the top, and a thin, flat wooden tongue clamped
horizontally atop that. There was a long overhang (think of a ruler held over the edge of a desk), and the tongue was made to vibrate by striking or bowing it. A wedge of fretted wood pressed against it controlled the pitch. The wooden tongue was interchangeable for different sounds, and these objects were very beautiful—smoothed into curvy shapes that reminded me of faux-African sculptures from a 1950s rec room. The thing sounded like nothing I’d heard before. It was unearthly, kooky, like the background music to a crazed parade of Dr. Seuss characters, and it provided the perfect opening to conversation in the park on a sunny day.

“Wow. That’s nutty. What is that thing?”

“It’s a daxophone.”

“
Dax
ophone?”

“Yup. Wanna try it?”

As I was coaxing out a few
galunks
and
gazoings
, two extraordinarily braless hippie chicks bounced over and presented Eldrich with a Tim Hortons iced cappuccino, an apparently homemade sandwich wrapped in paper towel, and an envelope, which he quickly stuffed into the side pocket of his cargo shorts.

“Mindy, Alexa, this is my neighbour from across the hall …?”

“John,” I said, a little surprised that Eldrich knew I had moved in, given that I had passed him only once in the lobby since I’d lived there, and he hadn’t acknowledged me at all.

“Hi,” said Mindy and Alexa, glancing quickly at me and then turning their eyes and nipples back toward Eldrich, who was transferring busker coins from his daxophone case into a leather pouch.

“Anyone want to smoke a joint?” he said.

Ten minutes later I was seated on an orange vinyl sofa (very mod except for the duct-taped cracks), gobbling half an avocado, red pepper and alfalfa sprout sandwich on pumpernickel. Delicious. Healthy too. Eldrich was busy rolling up the contents of the mystery envelope, while Mindy and Alexa assaulted us with an insipid story about being on all-night bear patrol during a tree-planting excursion in the wilds of British Columbia. I smiled at the ostensibly amusing parts, and kept myself awake by sneaking peeks at their chests and other overexposed, predictably tattooed parts. Alexa had the superior rack, but she also had white-girl dreadlocks—inexcusable, if you ask me. Mindy had regular, conceivably shampooed hair but sported a dirty nose ring, which I had to not look at or think about while I was eating. I decided that I wouldn’t sleep with either of them and turned my attention to a hangnail that required a delicate chewing away.

“The bear was pissed off ‘cause Roman and Daryl had laughed at him earlier in the day,” said Mindy, explaining why a feral animal in the middle of the wilderness had bitten through a tree planter’s presumably food-containing tent.

Her idiot confederate nodded vigorously. “It’s true!” she said, giggling.

I remained unconvinced but smiled mildly as Mindy launched into another tedious tale, this one about her travels in Thailand. As she jawed, I noted that Eldrich’s apartment was the mirror opposite of Amy’s minus my bedroom. He had the same parquet flooring (vestibule four squares by six squares), the same galley kitchen with shrimp-o appliances, the same pink toilet, sink and tub dating from 1950-something in the
bathroom. Things were set up differently, though. Instead of having a dining table in the small nook outside the kitchen, he had placed his table and chairs by the living-room window, the natural place for a sofa. His dining-room nook was filled with musical instruments, and his couch had been plonked nonsensically in the middle of the living room on a diagonal. There was no coffee table, and only one chair—a wicker thing,
circa
1972, with a giant rounded back that had a peacock-tail design woven through it. Between the couch and chair was an ottoman strewn with ugly-covered small-press poetry books and a muffin tin that served as an ashtray (or twelve little Siamese ashtrays). There was a milk-carton shelving unit against one wall, holding books, a stereo and CDs. The world’s largest didgeridoo leaned against the opposite wall. There were a lot of outrageously healthy-looking house plants and many candles in all shapes and sizes. No TV though. No TV in the bedroom either—I peeked on my way back from taking a piss.

“Should we smoke these on the roof?” Eldrich held up two skilfully prepared spliffs.

“Sure,” said Mindy.

“Cool,” said Alexa.

Amy hadn’t yet made me my own key for the patio, and I told Eldrich as much.

“No problem,” he said, grinning and straightening. “C’mon.” He grabbed an empty milk crate from the side of the Sealtest bookcase and we followed him into the stairwell leading to the outdoor space. Eldrich slid open the tiny window next to the locked steel door, placed the milk carton on the floor and stood on it. He poked one arm and his
head through the opening and then, with a sharp shrug, proceeded to dislocate his left shoulder before slithering through like a snake.

“Ew,” squealed Mindy. “Freaky.”

“Awesome,” breathed Alexa.

Eldrich let us onto the patio, retrieved the milk carton, closed and relocked the door.

“Doesn’t that hurt?” I asked as I stretched out on one of Amy’s two padded lounge chairs. Oddly, no one chose to make use of the other. Eldrich parked himself on the overturned milk carton. Alexa and Mindy sat cross-legged on the ground beside him.

“Pain is inevitable; suffering’s optional,” said Eldrich on the inhale, smiling through smoke as he sparked both joints and handed one to each bobble-headed maiden at his feet.

Is that so?
I had the urge to pop him one hard in the nose, knock him off his perch. But I had a presentiment that he’d merely right himself, wipe away the blood and cartilage and keep smiling his maddeningly vague, I-know-something-you-don’t-know smile.

Conquer the angry man by love. Conquer the ill-natured man by goodness. Conquer the miser with generosity. Conquer the liar with truth.

People say things. They say a lot of things. Mouths open and close. Things dribble and fly out. But this is the truth. What I was doing before John and Amy came along was exactly what I was doing after John and Amy, and the same thing I’ve been doing my whole life: making music (or more accurately
finding
and
channelling
music), thinking about the best way to live every moment I’ve been granted here on earth, connecting with God in as many ways as possible, sharing what I’ve learned with my friends and allowing my friends to share with me.

I never tried to organize anything. Ever. John and Amy did all that.

After many barren moons, I finally sprouted an idea for my next art project. MAMA. I would construct a humongous mother with a walk-in womb. She would be giant and reclining, big enough to make a large man feel like an infant. She would be built out of lightweight materials, perhaps papier-mâché. Or maybe wire and a not-quite-opaque skin, illuminated from within to give her a slight glow. Her hair would flow out across the floor. Her breasts would swell and hang, and the nipples would protrude rudely. In her pelvis would be an opening, a secret door to a cozy cavity. The viewer would enter and tuck themselves inside. A fetal shape to ensure the correct cashew curl of body. Total darkness with the door shut. And softness all around. Sponge? Chinchilla? Warmth, of course. And a speaker with the gurgle and rush of fluids. A sloshy heartbeat. Also, the suggestion of voice through liquid. I would find an audio whiz to get it right. MAMA’s murmurs would be unrecognizable through the murk, but she’d be saying:
I love you, baby … Mama loves you sooo much
. There’d be a timer to secretly record and chart how long each individual stayed inside.

I was excited by the idea. And also daunted. I would have
to rent a huge studio space in which to build and display my creation. She would be tricky to assemble. A technician would have to design a proper ventilation system for the womb.

It was going to take a lot of moolah to make MAMA.

So, of course, I started hearing about Eldrich from John, who seemed to be growing increasingly fascinated with what I thought was our brain-dead neighbour.
He’s not as daft as he looks, you know
was the line I heard in the early days. Then:
I think he’s actually got it figured out more than most people
. And regularly:
I mean, the guy has never had a job in his life
. That was the part John was most impressed with, the fact that Eldrich had made it well into adulthood and continued to get along quite nicely, thank you, without ever being employed.
Not even a paper route
, he’d say with a mouth full of marvel.
No real jobs ever!
Even John, King Mooch, had a smattering of T4s in his past.

The groupies were what really floored him. John told me that busker Eldrich had people who regularly journeyed to the park to shower him with offerings—food, marijuana, money. One woman would even show up with housewares she’d purchased from garage sales: a never used, still-in-the-box humidifier; an almost complete set of Ikea wineglasses; even one of those über-expensive cast-iron jobbies from Le Creuset that she’d miraculously scooped for ten bucks at a rummage sale. I coveted that thing even though it was stained and the handle
was cracked in half. John couldn’t believe that anyone would go out of their way to ferry gifts to Eldrich, a man who didn’t seem to possess more than an ounce of tuneful talent. But then John realized that the groupies were more interested in Eldrich’s musings than in his music. He would busk for a bit during the morning and afternoon rush hours—the park was a conduit from our residential hub to the subway, so lots of people passed through it each day—but mostly he’d just hang out on his bench beside his instrument of choice, blabbing on subjects philosophical or spiritual, and the groupies would gather to listen.
Not just raptly
, John would tell me,
devotedly
. I remember he initially referred to them as “groupies” but soon came to see Eldrich’s supporters as something other. There was this one night—it must have been near the beginning of September because I had just started back at school—it was stupidly hot and humid, but we’d had sex anyway. John had barely slid his sweaty self off me when I saw the gears in his brain lurch into action and start whirring. His toes were all tap and twitch at the end of the bed, and he couldn’t even wait a respectful twenty seconds before he was on about his favourite subject.