The Dilettantes (6 page)

Maybe Tyson is right
, Alex thought.
Maybe I should just go for it. I know I can be charming—if only I had some kind of in
.

As if on cue, Tyson turned to Alex. “Awesome. My buddy here got this one of all these people whispering.”

“Oh,” Maggie said, “do you like Rockwell?”

“Yeah, definitely,” Alex said. “Totally.” He was about to go on, but got hung up on one small point: why
had
he bought the print? The real answer was too long and complicated to say out loud. He hadn’t even really processed it yet. And would anyone else understand? They’d probably just give one of those awful clipped, condescending laughs. No, small talk demanded something concise. Something witty. Equally concise and witty—and also self-deprecating. So he’d need one perfect sentence, split 33-33-33. How was he going to manage that?

Wait, how long had he been
thinking?
Say something!

“I like the, uh, colours,” he said finally. “The … shadows. Plus the whole thing is like a grid? You know? It reminds me of math, or something.”

Maggie nodded slowly, but spared him the eviscerating chuckle. “Right,” she said. Tyson jumped in again, jabbing a thumb toward Alex and making some kind of throwaway joke to keep the conversation going. Alex’s head was throbbing so hard he didn’t hear a word of it.

He tried to draft a joke of his own that would win the girls back—something that would cast him as the affectionate goofball he knew he was, deep down—but gave up. It was all too much, too depressing. Any illusion that flirting was actually going on had already disappeared. He couldn’t tell which of the girls Tyson was pursuing, and he didn’t care. He didn’t want a part in any of it. It was all so creepy and
obvious
.

Still. That Maggie was really something. Her eyes the same green as a Disney lagoon.

Just as Alex made his move to leave, Tyson smacked himself in the forehead, as if he’d just remembered something. “How rude of me,” he said, clapping Christine on the shoulder, who winced. “Alex, this is the girl I was telling you about.

“You remember,” he added, smiling brightly. “From the Pub? The meteor shower.” Tyson leaned in a little toward her. “I fired my astrologer, by the way. Turns out those guys mostly do horoscopes.”

The morning that opened Clubs Days was a standard Vancouver grey, with a sheet of speckled clouds that covered the city like a wetsuit. Rain was implied and assumed. This was layered sweater weather—the beginning of scarf season.

At 10:00 a.m. sharp, Chip showed up to take the first shift manning
The Peak
’s table. Foot traffic was still light this early in the morning, so, armed with pushpins and a roll of duct tape, he took his time laying out a collection of old covers, a dozen or so copies of the current issue, and two blank sheets of paper for any potential new sign-ups. Chip got right down onto his haunches to make sure the latter were exactly parallel. The standalone corkboard behind the table remained empty, because the editors still hadn’t gotten around to making or ordering a proper sign. Satisfied with his efforts, Chip smoothed the edges of his moustache, adjusted his suspenders, and surveyed the territory around him.

Clubs Days took place every autumn in the vast open-air expanse of Convocation Mall, with
SFU’S
many student-run organizations arranged in a grid for maximum interaction potential. And once the students got buoyed by the presence of their fellow club members, it actually, miraculously, seemed to kind of work. The boost to the general on-campus mood was undeniable, at least for these
few days—a small glowing pulse in the heart of a concrete robot. Obviously the members themselves were the most easily swayed, hugging and cackling and generally carrying on like it was ComicCon all over again, but the mood was so earnest, and so rare, that even the most solipsistic passersby were drawn into the public fray. People who usually pretended they didn’t speak English found themselves giving out their email addresses for future updates; many a hot dog was eaten with a prefatory shrug and a “What the heck?”

(This was the mood, by the way, that the administration spent the rest of the year desperately trying to replicate, as everyone returned to their well-defined little routines and a stony silence blanketed the school once more. The advertising campaign had yet to be devised that could rebrand the school as anything but a commuter campus—the term was watermarked into every square foot.
SFU:
Closed Weekends Since 1965.)

As people wandered past his booth, Chip could make out only brief snippets of their conversations.

“I think about the death penalty every day, so—”

“—lobsters wearing lobster bibs—”

“—told that guy to go fuck himself right off.”

Each one drew the same jolly chuckle from him. Chip couldn’t get enough of the swarm of crowds like this—it was why he volunteered for the early slot every year—and manning a booth at Clubs Days also gave him the opportunity to indulge his inner salesman. This despite
The Peak
’s ever-fluctuating reputation on campus, as well as its lack of interest in improving said reputation, which didn’t make them the easiest sell to the student populace. Chip wasn’t the least bit fazed. In another lifetime, he’d have spent his entire working life wandering door to door, cutting tin cans in half with specialty knives and gobbling up slices of homemade pie. But you can’t choose your generation.

“You there,” he called to one passing duo. “Could I interest you in joining your venerable student newspaper?”

“—it all depends on how you define
think
. Ontologically speaking.”

“Excuse me,” he called to another group, “what would you say if I told you—”

“—already Talk Like a Pirate Day? Oh no! I left my hat at home.”

One guy wearing headphones eventually stopped long enough to glance at the spread of old covers on the tabletop.

“Welcome!” Chip said, thrashing his hand from side to side in a violent-looking wave. “On behalf of
The Peak
, I’d like to wish you a hello and good morning.”

The guy lifted one headphone up and said, “What the fuck is
The Peak?”
Before Chip had a chance to respond, the headphone snapped back down and he was gone. Chip checked to see that the sign-up sheets were still parallel.

On the whole, the morning was slow. Live music wasn’t set to start until the afternoon, and most of the booths offering free food were still trying to assemble their grills. By the time Alex showed up, in a sour mood, after lunch, Chip had amassed just seven signatures on the first sheet of paper—and “buttz,” “FREE PANCAKES” (twice), and “FREE PARIS HILTON” were not considered valid answers to the question “What Section Are You Interested In Contributing To?” On the other sheet, Chip had drawn an elaborate but wildly out of scale re-enactment of Lawrence of Arabia’s railway raids.

“Good afternoon!” he said to Alex.

“Yeah, we’ll see.”

Alex settled into the other chair and looked at the table next door. It sat ominously empty, with nothing but a placeholder “METRO NEWS” sign on top. Alex placed a bottle of glowing pomegranate soda in front of him, then settled into chewing his lip, arms wrapped around his stomach in an awkward self-hug.

The student society made a point of putting similar groups in clusters, which sounded like a good idea until you spent two minutes in the middle of a shouting match between the B.C. Young Liberals and the various Marxist clubs that lobbed verbal grenade-insults like “Alienation!” and “Carbon tax!” at each other. They also argued over who should be allowed to wear red. And that was nothing compared to the fistfights that broke out between The New Outdoor Club and its bitter offshoot, The Outdoors Club (Not Affiliated in Any Way with the New Outdoor Club).
The Peak
was usually sandwiched between a prim girl with unbearably good posture from
UVoice
and the goofballs at High Altitude Poetry, but this semester
UVoice
had been moved two rows back, nearer to the Canadianized Asian Club and 3K! (Korean Kampus for Khrist).

Replacing her, allegedly, was the
Metro
.

Except so far they hadn’t shown.

For the past few days there’d been whispers around the
Peak
offices about a fleet of trucks about to start smuggling green metal newspaper boxes up Burnaby Mountain in the dead of night. Or a viral text message campaign that was on the verge of launching. Even a confetti cannon, flown in specially for the occasion. But now? Nothing.

Alex’s inner skeptic took little solace in these wild-eyed theories. On the other hand, surely even a junk paper like the
Metro
would have the wherewithal to show up on time to its own unveiling. Lord knew those distribution ghouls rose with the sun. So yeah, maybe the whole thing was a false alarm after all—another of those overly camouflaged performance art pieces by some amateur culture-jammer. Or maybe Keith set it all up, just to be a dick.

A freckled kid walked past
The Peak
’s table, wearing a flannel shirt and jeans so tight that he moved like an action figure. He winked at Alex as he went by, and gave him a thumbs up that he tried
to disguise by cupping his other hand around it like a parenthesis. Poking out of the giant camping bag on his back was the unmistakable head of a boom mic, which he’d awkwardly tried to conceal with the help of an ill-fitting floral lampshade.

“Look at that fucking guy,” Alex muttered, as the kid tottered away into the crowd. “That’s the worst disguise I’ve ever seen.”

Chip looked up from his drawing. “Who?”

“Him.” Alex motioned again. “I forget his name. With the microphone on his bag.”

“I don’t see any microphone. Where is he? Behind the chap with the lamp?”

“Oh, come on, what is his
name?”
Alex irritably drummed his fingers on the table.

Clubs Days was a cornerstone of
The Peak
’s news beat, always reliable for a photo essay and soft cover story, but Rachel considered it far beneath her talents. So it always fell onto the associate news editor’s plate instead. Technically the two positions were supposed to work in tandem, but Rachel always cleared up that misunderstanding right away; news, so long as she was running it, would be a meritocracy. And she was the best. (She was also the sole judge.) This guy with the lampshade-microphone was the latest model in the associate news factory line, and just a few weeks into his first semester on the job.

Currently the associate news rookie was wearing his Average Student disguise, which he probably hoped would lead to getting real, hard quotes without the biases that come with tedious red tape like full disclosure.

Alex watched him approach the High Altitude Poetry table, where three thinly bearded guys sat at typewriters. They took suggestions from the crowd and each wrote one line, in character, before passing it on down the line; this year featured a scruffy Beat poet, a Gold Rush–era prospector, and a talking inukshuk.

“So, fellow students,” the associate news editor announced, lowering his reedy voice a full octave, “how’s the turnout this year? Looks to me like it’s been fairly average thus far.” He pressed his way right up to the front, the lampshade rocking dangerously back and forth above. “And you, poets? Any thoughts regarding the state of poetry in the world today? How’s the decline? Steep as ever, am I right?” He broke out a rehearsed laugh, all shoulders and teeth.

Meanwhile, a girl in a polka-dot blouse was eyeing
The Peak
’s table from across the aisle. She slowly approached, eyes glued to the sign-up sheets.

“Hello there!” Chip bellowed.

No stranger to the protocol of Clubs Days, the girl didn’t meet his gaze right away. “So this is the newspaper, right?” She ran a finger along a turned-up corner of the latest issue.

“Right you are, m’lady. Right you are.” Chip rested his hands on top of his stomach. His stare was as direct and unnerving as ever, though she didn’t know that yet. “Are you a reader? Dare I say, a
fan?
”

She shrugged. “Sure. I mean, I read it every week.”

“Every week! Ho! Did you hear that? Looks like we’ve got a
fan
on our hands.” Chip slapped Alex on the forearm, but he was busy watching the rookie news editor try to drum up a quote from the talking inukshuk. “Well,” Chip continued, “feel free to peruse our catalogue, as it were. One thing’s for sure: the price is right. Though if you really are a fan, as you claim to be, you’ll no doubt have seen these particular editions already.”

Getting people to sign up for
The Peak
’s mailing list was an intricate courting process. Maybe it was easier for other groups because their demographics were so clearly defined. Religious and ethnic clubs all knew exactly what questions to ask potential members, and their ranks remained as healthy as ever. You stuck to your bases, and you didn’t campaign where you weren’t wanted. Does
Anyone Out There Remember Snap Bracelets? didn’t waste time chatting up those who did not remember snap bracelets.

But what could
The Peak
say to win anyone over? Pardon me, but do you have a strong opinion re: democratic checks and balances? How about the news as written by twenty-year-olds, at a school that doesn’t offer a single journalism course?

Okay, how about irony? How about
lots
of it?

Chip said, “Our latest edition is, naturally, the one on top of our little display here.”

“Yep.”

“You are currently looking at a copy of it.”

The girl sighed. “Got it.”

Chip picked up his own copy and opened it to the table of contents. “A fine issue, if I do say so myself. Featured this week are”—his eyes flitting down the page—“a news story regarding ongoing delays to the construction at the upper bus loop, a feature on popular myths about triceratops, a movie review for some festival … something, and the debut column from a Mr. S. Puzzle.” He looked at Alex. “Is that last one right?”

“Mmhm,” the girl said, doing her best to sound distracted. “Just trying to read this.”

Alex was still scowling at the undercover rookie, so Chip turned back to her and drummed on the table for a few seconds. He whistled something to himself. Then he asked, “What story are you reading right now?”

“Nothing,” she snapped. “I’m having a little trouble focusing, y’know?”

“Of course, of course. My apologies. Browse away.”

Another few seconds passed. The rookie could now be heard trying to covertly interview a group of students at the Muslim Students Association table.

“I’m Chip, by the way. Sports editor comma the. Present and accounted for. Chip.”

“Oh, never mind,” the girl said, as if she’d tried to do someone a favour but just couldn’t see it through. She finally looked up, and when she saw the intensity of Chip’s eye contact she actually stumbled backward before fleeing the scene.

“I’m always in need of volunteers,” Chip called after her. “Do you want to cover the football game tomorrow?” She picked up the pace. “Five hundred words! I can get you in for free! And this here is Alex! He does
features!
” Finally, he gave in. “Shoot. Off the post and wide. Thought I had a sale there.”

“So what you’re saying,” the rookie was repeating in the distance, “is that you’re here to promote the interests of Muslim students on campus.” He gingerly slid a pencil out from his sleeve.

Someone rushed over to
The Peak
’s table, checking and rechecking the time on his cell phone and asking if he was too late for the free pancakes.

Overhead the clouds held their threat, but after an uncertain few hours, it was starting to look more and more like a bluff.

Alex became vaguely aware that Chip was trying to get his attention again.

“What is it?” he asked.

“I say, isn’t the
Metro
meant to be at that table, portside?”

“Indeed they are,” Alex replied. Chip seemed to be eyeing it with even more intensity than usual, and Alex was about to turn around to see for himself when he stopped in disbelief.
Did he just say
portside? In the year they’d worked together, Alex was still no closer to figuring out what made Chip tick. He was a type, no doubt about it, but not one of the usual ones—no Cardigan-Wearing White Kid Who Only Listens To Booty Rap, or Activist Who Wants To Keep Reminding You How Shitty George W. Bush Is, or Belligerent Vegan. Chip’s particular
quirks were as follows: speaking in a jumble of war and sports jargon, and dressing like a younger version of Rich Uncle Pennybags. Today his shirt was already ringed with sweat, despite the temperature, and his hair and the swoops of his moustache were more slicked than usual. Could a person be so completely out of touch? Not anti-fashionable so much as a-fashionable. Chip would get a free ride through university, Alex figured, where eccentricities like these were encouraged, incubated, even subsidized. But if he wasn’t a millionaire within a couple years of graduation, some street toughs would pummel him to bits, looking for where he stashed his time machine.