Chapter 5 Miz
5
MIZ
I am wrapping up my shift at the clinic on Monday, completing charts and updating my patients’ treatment plans, when Omar, the RMT, pops his head into my treatment room. “Your boyfriend is here,” he says to me, his eyes twinkling with glee.
I freeze, my pen in mid-air, panic washing over me. Daniel’s been trying to get in touch with me since he bounced on Friday night, calling and messaging me so much I almost thought about blocking him. I wouldn’t put it past him to show up at my work unannounced—he’s done that before. Two years ago, one fall afternoon, he popped up here out of the blue, months after our hookup at the soccer games that July, when he had told me he was born and raised in Calgary. What he’d failed to mention was that he was planning to move to Toronto in a few months.
But the light in Omar’s eyes now tells me he means Kal. Of course. All weekend, while ignoring Daniel, I had been hounding Kal until he finally agreed to meet me today after work. I place a hand over my pounding heart. Phew. I return to my paperwork. Every time Kal swings by the clinic, we get teased. I can only imagine what Eve, the receptionist, is putting him through. “Omar, you know perfectly well that Kal is not my boyfriend.”
But Omar’s not one to miss a tense muscle, whether he has his hands on it or not. “So why the freaked-out face?”
“What freaked-out face?” I flatten my expression. He knows damn well I’ve known Kal since I was in grade nine. “For the last time, Kal is my boy. Period. Friend. Period. Huge difference between that and boyfriend . Language matters.”
Omar whips me a talk-to-the-hand gesture and unleashes a torrent of salty Moroccan French laced with Arabic as he retreats. I only catch fausse immigrante , but I get the gist. “Who you calling fake!” I clap back, even though by then he’s gone. Show-off. So what if I only know English and barely any Amharic? So what if I came here when I was two for a surgery, and so what if Mom and I never went back home? I still consider myself an immigrant.
“I’ll be right there,” I call out loudly enough to be heard in the lobby.
“Got it,” Kal yells all the way from the waiting room.
Good thing the boss isn’t here. We’re yelling as if we’re in my apartment. I hear subdued murmurs as he and Eve make small talk. When I see her heading for the bathroom, I hurriedly stuff my lunch container into my backpack and rush to reception so that Kal and I can make our exit without any more innuendoes.
When I round the corner, Kal glances up from his phone and does a very unsubtle double take. I hold out my pointer finger in warning. “Shut up. Not a word. I know.”
I look like crap today, and I know it, dressed in my first blue scrubs as if I graduated from physio school yesterday. My go-to hairstyle for work is moisturized curls pushed back by a colourful scarf, but today I’m wearing my hair in a lazy ponytail that still shows the lines from my overnight plaits. The halo of frizz around my hairline makes me look like a stranger to edging gel. Earrings? Brow liner? What are those? Luckily, my clients have bigger concerns, like trying to regain their lost mobility and functionality, and don’t care what I look like.
Kal raises his hands in surrender, biting back a smile. “No word from me,” he says. “I do love to see our women taking care of themselves, but once in a while, everyone just needs to, you know, let their hair down.” He, on the other hand, looks as if he’s on his way to a first date. Pressed long shorts and polo shirt, freshly shaven, the nails of all ten fingers and toes perfectly trimmed, elbows lotioned. His leather sandals are even polished. I go in for a hug, taking in the scent of shoe polish, more quintessentially Kal than any cologne. Only his bald head still catches me off guard.
I scowl at him. “I had a rough weekend, okay? No thanks to you abandoning me.” I begin walking toward the door. Kal being unavailable all weekend had seriously thrown me for another loop.
“Well, I’m here now,” he says, following me out.
As we step out onto the sidewalk, a city bus pulls over to unload passengers. “I needed you on Saturday morning. Not Monday afternoon, but whatever.” Eyes closed, I tilt my face up to the sun that I haven’t felt in hours. I open my eyes to see Kal backing away from me, the condo towers in the background looming over him.
“Should I leave?” he says, his head cocked to the side, pointing his thumb back at the bus stop down the street.
I roll my eyes and continue down the block while Kal backtracks to get his bike. He catches up to me, coasting on his bike, standing with both his feet on only one pedal. I roll my eyes again. The only reason this guy who can easily afford a car doesn’t buy one is just so he can show off on a bike. He’s lucky he looks good on it.
He hops off and walks the bike between us. “Something came up at the theatre.”
I stop, my Daniel drama vanishing from my mind fast. “Is it about your papers?”
“No update on that yet, but any day now. How was your weekend?” He gives me a sly smile as if he knows what went down. Impossible, of course. We turn onto a wide grassy promenade between two clusters of condo buildings, walking smack into a gust of soupy heat coming off the lake. I’ve barely been outside five minutes, and I’m already sweating. Or it could be that guilt again.
All right. Here goes. “It’s over between Daniel and me.” Even as I say it, I know that sentence doesn’t make sense, and it shows on Kal’s creased forehead too. Devastated he definitely will not be. There isn’t much love lost between Kal and Daniel. If Kal hadn’t been in rehearsal that summer day two years ago when Toronto hosted the annual Ethio diaspora soccer games, I wouldn’t have gone any further than just locking eyes with hubbahubba come to mama Daniel in his non–Toronto team jersey in the vendors’ area. Usually, I’d go to the games in other cities to specifically get my freak on with my people—or wegen , as Mom says—because “what happens at the games stays at the games.” But that year I had vowed to Kal to only look, not touch, these kinsmen of mine, since the tournament was being held on home turf. Had Kal been there to keep this front of mind, at the closing night concert, I wouldn’t have sniffed Daniel out in a crowd of hundreds and waded through all that humanity just to fall into rhythm back to front, totally blowing my don’t fuck with habesha guys in Toronto rule, steering clear of any guy who looks even remotely like he could be from back home, recently or not.
“That’s it?” Kal says.
“ Really over this time.” No need to go into the rest of it.
“Remind me, when did it get un-over again between you two?” Kal says, as we continue to stroll down the grass, past dog walkers and toddler chasers, toward the waterfront.
“Ugh who cares?” I say, annoyed that both my best friends should have the same follow-up questions. I need to diversify my friend pool. Too bad all the girls I grew up with have disappeared into the marriage black hole. “That’s not the point. The point is this time, it’s permanent. He did something I cannot get past. Ever.” I rush to add, “I don’t want to talk about it.”
Kal’s face hardens, a look I do not like on him unless he is in character. “Are you okay?”
“Oh, I’m fine. Nothing like that .”
“Okay,” Kal says, sounding unconvinced. “Ice cream to…celebrate?” He points to a convenience store.
I nod, grinning. Given the choice, he’d pick one of the three places that sell fresh gelato around here, but today he’s going to slum it and buy packaged convenience store ice cream for my sake.
“Lead the way,” he says, smiling.
“He just keeps contacting me,” I blurt out when we’re in the store, digging through the freezer. I find his H?agen-Dazs strawberries and cream bar at the same time he finds my triple chocolate Drumstick. “Wanting to come over. I’m just not into it. And I said so. But he’s not getting the message.” Are you going to mention the ring, Miz?
We move to the register. “Stop responding,” Kal says, paying for the ice creams. “He’ll go away eventually. He was probably more attached to you than you realized. But that doesn’t matter. He’s not right for you.”
Exactly! I think, and then remember that he must’ve also thought so because he wasn’t planning on proposing to me . We step outside. Without so much as an exchanged glance, we reflexively cross the road and head for the giant boulders that line the water’s edge. Kal props his bike on the grass behind us while I climb onto a rock and get situated.
He joins me on the rocks. “I know what’ll cheer you up,” he says, smiling mischievously as he unpeels his ice cream.
I stop peeling my ice cream wrapping. “Oh no. Not the sad old people music.”
He grips his ice cream bar in his teeth and takes out his phone. “You still owe me your opinion on ‘Ende Iyerusalem,’?” he reminds me, scrolling through Spotify. Asni’s version is one of the tracks Kal is considering adding to his parents’ anniversary party playlist of love ballads from their era, something he’s been compiling since last summer. Even though I find those kinds of songs bittersweet as fuck (heavy on the bitter), and despite my understanding 10 percent of what they’re even saying, he’s made me his unwilling co-producer.
“Let’s start with a strong candidate on the Maybe list: an Alemayehu,” he says, before playing the track.
I close my eyes in a show of listening attentively, but I’m lost in the goodness of melted caramel. “Mmm, it’s how an ice-cold Orange Crush would sound,” I say over the tune.
Kal laughs. I’ve been texting him similar comments every time he sends me a link to a song from his Maybe list by Muluken, Kassa, and Bizunesh, among others.
“That’s why you’re putting me through this, isn’t it? To get a laugh.”
“I need all the laughter I can get,” he says, with a tinge of sadness in his eyes, and I know he means it. Going through love songs that remind you of your parents, one of whom is dead…I can’t even imagine. “For your info,” he says, “this one is about a lover trying to tempt his beloved to elope with him because her parents are too snobby to permit their marriage.”
I nod. “Ah, makes perfect sense. It’s literally your parents’ story.” The celebration this January will also act as the wedding his parents never had since they eloped when they were young. “Move that to the Definite Yes list then.”
He gives me a thumbs-up and plays a couple more Maybes . Happy to be his comic relief, I indulge him by listening and offering my kooky, totally unhelpful takes on “Ambassel” and “Yekereme Fikir”—technically about the agony of apartness and the sweetness of old love, respectively, although I say they make me feel as if I’m alone on a cloudy mountaintop and evoke my mother’s Paris perfume, respectively. Anyway, those too get bumped to the Strong Maybe list.
“Okay that’s enough, or I’m hurling that phone in the lake,” I say, fake snatching at his phone. “I’m beyond cheered up, thank you. Too bad for Daniel. From now on, I’m being firm and not responding.” I have to, of course. I can’t keep putting the guy off forever. I have his—her—ring. Unfortunately, figuring out a natural way to get my paws on his gym bag isn’t proving as simple as deleting my photo of the ring was. “I mean dudes always pop up when you think they’re gone for good, but…”
“You can’t control dudes,” he says, putting his phone away. “But, maybe, you can take a break from dudes?”
I stare at him. “And do what? Apply for the other team?”
“Just be on Team Miz. Game of one.”
“Yeah, no. Aimé already tried that tack.” When I lied to her Friday night and told her that I had managed to slip the ring back in Daniel’s gym bag and officially ended our not-relationship.
For a few minutes, we’re both silent while we eat our ice creams, watching the water, the skyline of Toronto off in the distance. “You know what they say…” Kal starts slowly, as if not to interfere with the soothing rhythm of the waves lapping against the rocks. “If enough people tell you that you’re drunk, then…”
“Yer, yer,” I say, with melty ice cream mouth.
“It may seem counterintuitive, but that might be how you meet someone good, who doesn’t just drop and pick you up when he feels like it, like you’re a toy.”
I gulp down my bite. “Excuse me, the toy-ness was mutual.”
He crosses his wrists, making an X in front of his body. “TMI!”
I laugh, as I do whenever Kal gets slangy, still using terms that I introduced him to when we were kids. “Besides, neither of you losers knows what you’re talking about. You especially don’t even count as a serial monogamist because that would mean you’ve dated more than one person in your life.” Kal had been in a kind of widowerhood himself since he and Muna ended, his first and only relationship that spanned from when he was fifteen all the way to twenty-six. “I’m not like you, friend. Stuck in the past like a bug in glass.”
A flicker of a shadow passes over Kal’s face, some part of him receding. He checks his watch. “I better get going,” he says a bit stiffly.
I bite my tongue. “Shit, sorry.” Dammit. A swell of tension, like the rolling water before it breaks into a wave, fills my chest. Over the years, Kal has got better with my teasing him about Muna and his tragic attempts to date here in Toronto—at my urging, of course—but sometimes he can still be so sensitive. Or I can be in sensitive.
“You’re good,” he says, smiling. “You’ll be happy to know I’ve retired the Questionnaire.”
“Say what? You mean you won’t ask a woman what her parents’ marriage is like on the first date? I’ll believe it when I see evidence of an actual date where no binding promises have been extracted from the poor woman,” I say dryly, taking a bite of my cone. I get the sense that Kal isn’t truly interested in finding someone right now and has, instead, been using the cover of protecting his family from Addis-style gold-diggers, as if he’s still a target, to scare away women with his intense questions. But I suspect his real focus, understandably, is on work, securing his papers.
“You’ll see,” Kal says, making his meticulous, symmetrical way down his ice cream bar.
A little bloop of alarm sounds in me, to my surprise. I have got so used to single Kal, taken for granted that he would always be around. Sort of, anyway. Please refer to this past weekend, when he was nowhere to be found.
“Right now, I have call time,” he says, taking an extra giant bite of his bar.
I jut out my lower lip. “But it’s only four. Your call times are at seven.”
He inhales the rest of his bar with another bite, dragging the stick out through his teeth. “Oliver wants to go over some notes.”
“ Oliver , huh?” I say suggestively.
“Honest! Call him.”
“Since when do you have notes during the last week of the show? On your one day off? Please. Hold on to her—er, I mean, your secrets— if you want. Meanwhile, here I am, spilling my guts.” Minus one shiny detail. “But really, how’s it going with you?” I say, to delay him at least a little bit. “I totally hogged the convo. How’s the show? What’s the holdup with your papers? We’re not getting any younger here.”
He makes his way carefully down from the rocks, pocketing his wrapper and ice cream stick. I shift to keep him in sight. “Papers will be put in motion soon. Don’t worry about that. You’re coming on Sunday, right?”
“Of course. When have I ever not come?”
“Just confirming.”
“Nothing will keep me from your closing nights. Even when you have, like, two lines.”
“Oof!” He grabs at his chest, pretending I’ve wounded him. “Ten, this time.”
I laugh. “Are you counting the ones that are just one word again?”
“Oh, civilians. In art, it is not about how many words you have but what you do with them.”
“Those be a lot of words.” I emphasize each word with a wag of my now mostly hollow cone.
He mounts his bike. “And by that, I think you mean that nothing will keep you from the afterparty.”
“A girl needs something to survive all that Shakespeare.” I drop my head as if I am nodding off.
“Bringing anyone?” he asks, ignoring my antics.
“Nope. I’m supposed to be a nun now, ’member?”
He rings his bell and starts pedalling. “Uh-oh, someone should warn the convents.”
“Boy, bye!” I fake a lunge as if to push him off, but he slips away.