Chapter 25
for a friday, the bar was much too quiet.
There were too many empty seats between customers, too many clean glasses stacked and unfilled, too little noise as he moved from kitchen to front door to the washrooms. Jas hated the quiet, hated the way his eyes drifted to the front window, where the same homeless man stood, wavering in place, waiting for the next person to walk by and drop a loonie into his upturned hat on the pavement.
For the hundredth time, Jas thought, We aren’t so different, just waiting for someone to arrive, anyone.
He hated the comparison. It was the sort of thing his father would have raged about.
Why compare yourself to a bum , he might have yelled.
Why not compare yourself to a CEO or a doctor? Aim higher, Jas!
His father. Long dead from a heart attack, his anger like an explosion from the inside out.
Boredom was the worst for old memories. Fuck this shit.
Jas had left Surrey when he was eighteen, packing his little Dodge Colt tight, his toolbox in the front passenger seat where he could see it.
He waved at his parents with zero regret as he drove off toward the highway.
He had waited just long enough to finish his exams, not even staying for the grad parties.
He knew what the parties would be like: every white kid getting drunker and drunker until one of them—usually the smallest and angriest—challenged Jas to a fight, as if he were a pit bull chained to a post, trained to bite.
He had always been big, had been a star on the school wrestling team, and could grow a full beard by the time he was sixteen.
Everywhere he went, especially after he stopped wearing a turban, the Seans and Daves and Jeffs puffed out their chests and poked and poked at him, expecting him to act like a gangster when all he ever wanted to do was get the fuck away from them.
As he drove down the Trans-Canada, he could see Surrey rushing past him, the houses with stained siding, the low-rise apartment buildings with bikes and towels hanging off their balconies, the strip mall parking lots where he had, up until recently, sat on the curb and drank beer with whoever was around until the cops came and chased them away.
They always came to ask him questions first. He knew why, but being angry would never do him any good. Not back then anyway.
He had thought Vancouver would be easier.
And it was, a lot of the time. He had no trouble getting jobs, working at a series of restaurants as a server, places downtown where his big smile, long shiny hair, and charm earned him a lot of tips, especially from tables of women who wanted to flirt when their husbands weren’t around.
When he walked down Robson or Fourth Avenue or Main Street, his designer clothes granted him access to any hipster store or club or party.
But the problem was that, in Vancouver, the people with the real money, the people who had inherited mansions on Point Grey Road or the Crescent, still owned everything, were still white and still racist. In his twenties, he had dated a woman whose mother was an heir to a car dealership empire, and when he was introduced to her cousin, a woman who was only ten years older than him, she said, “Oh yes. You’re the Brown boyfriend.
Claire really is on her way to collecting the whole rainbow. ”
On his days off, he scanned the employment websites for a job, any job, in house renovation, something where he could learn design, but those were rare and he always got the feeling he was competing with skinny women in skirt suits, who pronounced their consonants with a crispness that verged on icy.
In interviews, they asked if he wouldn’t rather work with the construction crew.
It didn’t take long for him to stop looking.
Jas turned to wipe the bar counter, though it was already clean.
His phone was in the back pocket of his jeans, and he resisted the urge to pull it out and check his messages.
He knew he had texts from Alice that he hadn’t answered.
This was not something he was proud of. He had always prided himself on being honest with women, communicating what his intentions were, asking for consent, allowing them to walk away if they wanted to, being patient with their anxieties and fears.
But he had never met a woman like Alice, one who promised him everything one night and then claimed to forget it all the next.
It was possible, of course, that she drank so much that there were entire conversations she couldn’t remember, and he, the owner of a bar, knew that better than anyone.
But he didn’t believe Alice was just a victim of a spotty memory.
She wasn’t ready for him, for all the things he wanted to give her, and she thought this was the kindest way to let him down easy.
She couldn’t meet his honesty with her own.
And so, here he was, punishing her for it with silence.
He felt his phone buzz. Instead of fishing it out of his pocket, he rinsed the bar towel in hot, hot water, the scald on his skin a distraction.
The front door opened and in walked five white men, all dressed in polo shirts and trousers, probably from the multinational tech company down the block.
Jas looked around for his server, but Annette was nowhere to be seen, likely having a smoke outside the kitchen door.
The men were loud, laughing at jokes no one else would find funny, standing with their hands on their hips, elbows out, as if the physical space they were taking up was rightfully theirs, no matter if someone else needed to walk past.
Jas thought of Grant, the way his chest had puffed out upon seeing Jas that morning in Alice’s yard, the way he had interrogated him as if he was entitled to answers, how he had threatened to call the police. Fuck that guy.
One of the men at the door snapped his fingers in Jas’s direction. “Buddy, we need a table.”
Jas stood there, motionless. He had a decision to make.
Tell them to get the fuck out of his bar or seat them, like a calm business owner.
He didn’t like either choice, but there were no other options.
He could hear his father: Take their money and you can have the last laugh , but he had enough money now.
When could he stop tolerating this shit?
When could he allow the anger out instead of storing it inside like a dirty secret, where it would grow and accumulate more rage, more ugliness?
That was what his father had done, and he had died, flaming out at fifty-two years old.
Jas threw his bar towel into the sink and took a step forward, his mouth opening, ready with words he had never spoken to a customer before.
But just as he leaned over the counter, Annette came striding from the back, her long legs carrying her to the front like a model, her smile wide and bright and fake, but the tech bros would never know that.
“Hi gentlemen! Table for five? Why don’t I give you this table right here, where the people-watching is best?
” She placed a hand on the finger-snapper’s elbow, and Jas could see the men’s impatience falling away, the aggression puddling around their feet as Annette herded them toward the middle of the bar, her long blond hair swaying side to side as she walked.
Jas unclenched his fists and placed five water glasses on a tray.
In his pocket, his phone buzzed again, and he knew it was Alice.
He could go over after closing and tell her she didn’t need to pretend that she couldn’t remember their wild plan for Mexico and the kids.
He could tell her he understood that it was too much, explain that he could wait; he could be patient and wait for her to be ready for a new life with him in it every day, changing the light bulbs, packing lunch for the kids, changing the oil in her car.
He could do it all; that is, if it wasn’t for Grant.
Grant was a man that Jas instinctively hated, the kind of man who took all the available air in the room just because he could, the kind of man who would snap his fingers at a Brown man, as if Jas’s entire purpose was to jump when commanded, when really all he wanted was for these fuckers to leave him the fuck alone already.
If this was a Hollywood rom-com, Jas would almost certainly be the loser in this love triangle, the intriguing man the woman considers while her ex-husband pines for her.
In the end, of course, she would choose the father of her children, and the Brown man would disappear, fade away into the background as if he had never even existed.
I’m not that guy , he thought. I refuse to be that guy. After the bar closed, he would get into his car and drive to her house, tell her that he could be everything she wanted, on the timeline that she wanted, and she would believe him this time. Finally, he might win.