Read Online Monday Night Man by Grant Buday - Free Book Online Page A

tries being at ease, as if — Hey! I’d rather stand, I always stand … And it does give a different perspective. At one table, everyone’s wearing black leather and sunglasses — sunglasses in a dark bar. Pale white guys trying to be blind black jazz men. At another table a big black guy is going on in some loud Caribbean accent, like he thinks he’s Bob Marley. He’s got one of those tea cosies on his head and all his gestures are exaggerated, like he knows he’s being watched. And he is. Half the bar is glancing over and listening in. Wow! A real live rasta man right here in Vancouver. The white girl with him eats it all up. She’s got her hair done in corn-rows and beads, the whole shot.
    Twenty minutes Horst stands, and no one sits in that chair. The kid was lying. So Horst heads over and just takes it.
    â€œHey man!” The kid grabs at it.
    But Horst holds on. The entire bar watches. Even Bob-Marley-the-bullshitter’s shut his yap to watch. Horst yanks — the kid comes lunging toward him. Then Horst plants his feet and gives a good shove, letting the chair go, saying — “Take it!”
    The kid stumbles backward into a table, chair and all, toppling a pitcher of sangria and half a dozen glasses.
    Somebody grabs Horst from behind — the owner — and drives him toward the door, which one of the people waiting obligingly opens.
    Horst stands on the sidewalk. It’s raining and his coat’s inside. Groups of kids in Doc Martens, pig-shaves, and nose rings pass by ignoring him. Gull comes out with Horst’s coat.
    â€œI’ll give you a ride,” says Gull.
    â€œI’ll walk.”
    â€œC’mon!”
    â€œI’m walking,” says Horst, thinking please, don’t be nice to me.
    â€œI got something for you.” Gull opens the door of his ‘66 Falcon.
    Horst shakes his head. A ‘66 Falcon with a white stripe. Who’d of thought that some day a boat like this’d be cool to drive? Horst knows what Gull’s up to here with the car, the clothes, the track. Gull’s playing. He’s having a good time, too. Horst is exhausted. He wants to sleep. Then he thinks of that Toronto guy upstairs, snoring.
    â€œHere.” Gull thrusts something out the passenger-side window.
    Earplugs. Horst stares at them an entire minute before taking them. “I tried earplugs.”
    â€œNot like these.”
    Horst takes them and says thanks.
    â€œI’ll drive you.”
    Suddenly feeling bad for giving Gull shit all night, Horst says, “No. I need a walk.”
    When Horst gets home, he moves through his apartment watering his plants, listening to the soft crackling of the soil soaking up the moisture, and smelling the wet dirt. Every shelf, ledge, and corner has plants. Plants. All you have to do is water them. They’ll even flower! Horst can’t believe it. Sometimes the blind optimism of flowers tortures him.
    Upstairs, the guy is snoring. Horst fits the sponge plugs into his ears. They work. He thinks of Gull; he thinks of himself; then he recalls old man Fraser. Old man Fraser was a crabby neighbour who kept rocks on his window ledge and threw them if you yelled too loud, touched his fence, or simply got too close. Horst stands in the middle. of his room with his watering can. “That’s me.”

BUNCE WAS OBLIVIOUS to Gull and ‘66 Falcons. Bunce did not envy or fear the young. Bunce had one wish — that the races ran seven nights a week, fifty-two weeks a year. Bunce had two daughters. He also had an ex-wife and an MA in Philosophy. Spinoza. But Bunce never talked about Spinoza, or his daughters, or his ex-wife. He talked about horses. He talked about track conditions: slop versus mud, the percentage of sand in the surface, mile tracks versus bullrings. He compared speed handicapping with trip handicapping, the effect of Lasix, front wraps, blinkers. He discussed trainers,