The Great Man

The lockoff suite is on a leafy Kitsalano street. PJ laughed when he copied his half-sister’s new address into his GPS. Years ago he spoke in favour of this townhouse complex at a council meeting.

“I’ll be ready in five minutes,” Addy says.

“You better be,” PJ says. “I’m double-parked with flashers on.”

Addy returns to her bedroom to pack. PJ stands in the living room in his raincoat and wingtips. Taking them off might suggest her lack of preparation is permissible.

“Do you want a juice shot?” she says through the open door.

“I said I’d be here at three,” PJ says.

“Well it’s two-fifty-eight, so just chill.”

Her white cat sits on the windowsill. PJ responds to work emails on his phone, grimly tap-tapping. The cat watches with baleful eyes. His presence is unwelcome.

“You can ride in a Range Rover or the bus,” PJ says, pocketing his phone. “Your choice.”

“You sound so much like Dad.”

He walks to the bookshelf and pulls out a Nan Goldin photo book, flips through. He pauses on a gold-tinged picture of a gaunt man and woman on a bed. They glance away from each other. PJ wonders if they’re dead now in real time. They must be, or at least close, shrunken down to bony blades.

The possibility of death fills the foreground of his mind. He can’t receive any information from the image. If he asks Addy how to really see a photo, her answer will be a cryptic smile. Her favourite response since childhood has been It depends. He tucks the mystifying book back between her lit journals.

“Holidays should be every four years,” PJ says. “Like the fucking Olympics. They’re a waste of everyone’s time, effort, and intelligence, so let’s just try to get through this.”

“Maybe we’ll make cherished memories,” Addy says.

He laughs, a sound like Velcro ripping. Addy double-checks her toiletries bag and nestles it in her suitcase. Her brother can be raw, the kind of guy who doesn’t stop to put a lid on his coffee.

A few years ago he drove her to Christmas in a sharklike BMW. He did a hundred-fifty on the Coquihalla. Every fifteen minutes he told her to dump some cocaine onto his hand between the thumb and forefinger. She was tempted to try it just so they would have something in common, vibrating on the same tweaked wavelength.

“I’m jealous of Ernie,” PJ says. “See, I’m trying to be good, but he’s just like nah, I’d rather be at a casino. Later, dummies.”

“He’s not just playing slots,” she says. “You know he does well in these tournaments. There’s real money at stake.”

“Ah, silly me. I wouldn’t know anything about money being at stake.”

“He wishes he could have been here. He likes you.”

“That makes sense, I’m very likeable.”

Addy pops out and places her sticker-encrusted suitcase on the floor. She’s wearing an oversized burgundy rugby shirt and black parachute pants. She ties her hair back into a bun then pulls a camo hat low over her eyes, as if it will offer protection.

“You never gave him a fair chance,” she says. “He still talks about how fun it was when you guys played baccarat at Parq.”

“He’s a chucklefuck,” PJ says. “Your roster has always been trash. No offence, of course. I’m sure a psychoanalyst from Vienna might have a theory on who’s to blame.”

Addy picks up her cat, cradles it. She kisses its sweet-scented forehead before she notices the temperature of her brother’s gaze.

“Oh my God, yes,” she says. “I’m ready. Relax.”

PJ watches the cat wriggle from her arms and scamper away. It dawns on him that it’s been at least six months since he saw Addy. The last time barely counted, an accidental encounter at a bar with their disparate and unmixable friend groups. They smile at each other.

“Why are you dressed like a fucking private eye?” she says. “What’s this coat?”

“It’s Balenciaga,” he says.

“You should run these things by me,” she says. “Here. Let me hug you. People need three hugs a day.

“Sure,” PJ says, laughing as they embrace. “And you’re dressed like a fucking Fortnite skin. Get in the car.”

---

PJ enjoys the holy pursuit of making good time. His suit jacket is folded on the backseat and his shirt sleeves are rolled back. Addy’s back is still tender from the massive cybersigil piece she had done the previous week. She adjusts her seat to get comfortable and listens to the stuttering, vapoury sounds of a Burial song.

He stifles a yawn. Last night he fell asleep on his couch to a YouTube video about a prolific and reformed counterfeitter. Rain lashed his windows, and curtains of rain still swished in the sky when his alarm went off. He was at Levi Charters by seven. It was his turn to lead the Acceleration Team meeting. He regarded a dozen junior brokers from behind his Cartier glasses, then wrote The man saw the woman with a telescope on a whiteboard in chickenscratch. This was a provocation. He waited to see who would find fault with the grammatically correct but indecipherable phrase.

“I was hungover earlier,” Addy says. “Now it’s back, somehow.”

“You know about The Method, right?” PJ says.

“I have no idea,” Addy says.

“It’s a hangover cure. The Method, proper noun. Ice water, jerk off, cigarette. That’s the order of operations.”

Addy puts her head in her hands, shudders.

“Dad taught me that one,” he says. “This is some real life shit, Addy.”

“I don’t smoke.”

“Neither do I, anymore. That’s the least vital step.”

“I think I got a bit of a different side of him,” she says.

“Yeah, because he saw how his first family turned out and he was like shit, I should apply myself now.”

PJ turns right from Main onto Terminal, spinning the wheel with a single flat palm.

“Oh, by the way,” she says. “I brought a bunch of weed gummies.”

“Sick, I didn’t have time to get any. I brought rye, though. Between the booze and the pot I’ll manage to sleep tonight.”

“I’m not sure why you need to be sedated,” Addy says. “You’re clearly the favourite.”

PJ fumbles open the center console, roots around for a tin of Zyn. He finds it and crams a pouch into his upper lip. He gives Addy a quick sideeye. Aside from their perfect noses they don’t really look alike. The sun fissures through the cloud canopy and the rain has let up.

“You’re the one he’s actually interested in,” PJ says. “Sure, he’ll talk about the time I hit a homer in Little League and got in trouble for flipping the bat, because he loves that story. The problem is I’m a fucking thirty-three year-old adult. He has no interest in my interior life. None. We can sit around naming old hockey players but it’s at the level of a random bar conversation.”

The dash screen lights up with a phone call from The Big Slime, no contact picture. PJ lets it ring twice then presses mute.

“That’s one of my minions,” PJ says. “That can wait, though.”

Addy knows her brother is a commercial real estate broker. It seems to entail a lot of driving around and taking calls from . She knows he aced something called the Predictive Learning Index, a test Levi Charters gives to all propestcive hires. Then there’s a lot about his job and his life she doesn’t understand.

“Dad made it sound really important we come up,” Addy says.

“I’m guessing it’s not a great sign.”

“What makes you say that? You think he’s dying, or sick?”

PJ is tempted to get stern. The old dog in question smoked two packs a day for most of his adult life, fluctuated between two-hundred-seventy and three-hundred-twenty pounds.

“Well, if I had to set the over/under on how many holidays he has left, I’d put it at four point five.”

“All the men on his side live to ninety, so he says.”

PJ drives past a procession of Vancouver Specials then accelerates through a yellow light. The Range Rover is nimble and quiet. Addy traces the stitching on her seat.

“I remember this one time, maybe I was sixteen,” PJ says. “We were at some restaurant. He was really going to town on his plate and I was like, slow down big fella, nobody’s going to take it from you. He turned so red I thought he was gonna have a fucking jammer in the booth.”

“Oh my God,” she says. “I wish I was that sharp. I always look back and I’m like, argh, that’s what I should’ve said.”

Got his ass so good,” PJ says. “He looked like he wanted to put me through a window. I was the same height as him by then. Plus I was beefed up from lifting weights all the time. He couldn’t really do anything after I chirped him.”

They ride in silence for a moment.

“Did I ever tell you that when my mom was dying, she was very specific about not forgiving Dad?” PJ says.

“No. You didn’t mention that.”

“I thought she was going to have this cathartic deathbed moment, but it turns out she was an unmovable object. I kinda respect it. That’s the problem with your generation. Everything is about healing eras or whatever.”

“There’s a limit to how much resentment the body can hold,” Addy says. “Wait, sorry. I’m not trying to imply that’s why she died. You know what I mean.”

PJ can’t remember much from the weeks leading to his mom’s death. That whole period is smudged out. He mostly showed up drunk to the hospital visits. He kept looking down at the the doctor’s Skechers. The one clear image he retained was those stupid shoes.

“She died because she wasn’t getting three hugs a day, right?” PJ says, eager to deflect and make Addy giggle.

“My mom doesn’t love that I’m here,” Addy says. “Of course, she would never say that outright. She just said my weekend sounded very interesting, with the high inflection.”

“How’s she doing?” PJ says.

Addy’s last visit to Edmonton was an ordeal. Her mom’s house was cluttered with broken typewriters and novelty snowglobes, porcelain figures of Disney characters. The kitchen counter was dominated by a massive piece of tracing paper, so big it furled on itself. Her mom had penciled a grid detailing the expirations and profits of various investments. Addy couldn’t wait to board the return Flair flight, vent to Ernie.

“Uh, you know. She’s gotten pretty quirky.”

“Nobody gets normaler with age, do they?”

“Sure. You’re eight years weirder than I am.”

PJ laughs and touches the Zyn with his tongue to keep it lodged in place. This weekend might be alright.

---

“I wanna sleep,” Addy says.

They’re on the terminally dull stretch of highway between Abbotsford and Hope. Fog crept down the mountains and somehow amplified their boredom.

“Do what you gotta do,” PJ says.

“No, no, I’ll stay awake. I feel guilty napping if you drive.”

“You better make awesome conversation then.”

He knows what she’s about to ask before the words form.

“Do you miss Keira?”

PJ switches into the fast lane to pass an eighteen-wheeler. At the beginning of the year Keira came over to his loft at the Waterfall Building. This was the last time. She retrieved objects he didn’t even realize were hers, small things with no monetary value.

“That’s a dangerous question, Addison,” he says. “I can’t win with you, no matter what I say.”

Keira had looked at him with impersonal concern, as if he were a student failing one of her stats courses.

“Look,” he says. “I like living alone. I don’t want cohabitation. I like freedom and I respected hers, too. She can come and go as she pleases. Apparently this is a controversial lifestyle. It was a perfect relationship before she switched up on me. I think there might have been interference from her trifling friends.”

“Don’t you ever get lonely?” Addy says.

“Never.”

“I couldn’t live that way. Coming home to nobody, just all that concrete. I was thinking about you the other day. It made me sad that it doesn’t bother you, if that make sense.”

PJ smirks. There would be nothing better than spending the weekend alone, enjoying his furniture from Inform, enshrined in silence.

“It’s not like I’m in jail, I can see people whenever,” PJ says. “You could’ve told me you wanted to get a coffee or something. If you really thought I was so tormented by solitude.”

“Would you have said yes?” Addy says.

“Come on. Don’t.”

“It’s just a question.”

“I was busy all week, okay?”

Addy watches his hands tighten on the wheel, then relax.

“Everything is better when you have your own space,” PJ says. “The sex, the conversation. Food. The sun’s brighter, the birds-”

The phone rings to interrupt him. This time the contact is named Lacey B. Her profile picture is a malevolent cartoon Grinch. Addy smiles, bemused.

“Fuck, I should take this,” PJ says.

“Do whatever you gotta do,” Addy says.

He accepts the call.

“You’re on speaker,” PJ says. “Don’t say anything weird. I’m with my Zoomer sister.”

Tinny laughter fills the car. PJ entertains a miniscule fantasy. Lacey’s slicked-back ponytail and shrewd face remind him of Keira on their first date at Kissa Tanto.

“Why would I be weird?” Lacey says.

“I don’t know,” PJ says. “I see the way you look at my body. It’s insane.”

“In your fucking dreams. I know you’re driving, I’ll keep this quick. I spoke with Darryl.”

“It’s always something with him. Whenever he calls me, I expect him to say he went fishing and caught a boot.”

“He’s worried about the TI allowance requests he’s getting for the Kerrisdale unit.”

“Tell him don’t panic,” PJ says. “Don’t budge. Just because people make offers doesn’t mean you’re obligated to dignify them.”

“I toured a group today. They liked how they could demise the space later on. They might write on it.”

“Dope,” PJ says. “Darryl’s been catching falling knives for years, in direct opposition of the good advice I’ve given him. He’s desperate for cash. Also, if he’s starting to bother you, tell him to just call me direct.”

“I think he likes bothering as many people as possible,” Lacey says.

Addy closes her eyes and lolls against the headrest. She likes the jargon of his work calls. PJ rattles off some figures and mental calculations to his coworker. The last thing she hears before she slides into a shallow basin of sleep is her brother chuckling about how he never fucks up the count.

---

They stop in Hope to eat at Triple O’s. PJ takes the pickles from her burger and drops them into his mouth. He fills his car with gas before they drive the Crowsnest. Addy tries to offer her Visa.

“I’ve got it,” PJ says. “If you knew how much I made last year, you’d be appalled.”

“You never let me pay,” Addy says.

“Get your license so you can drive us next year. That’s how you can repay me.”

She watches the numbers at the pump tick up and up and debates inviting him to her upcoming exhibit. She took photos with black and white infrared film so they show the world under the world, ghostly vegetation and clouds. He probably wouldn’t know what to say, but he would understand on some fundamental level that secrets are being exposed.

---

“Do you remember when we swam there?” Addy says as they pass Bromley Rock.

“We didn’t, though.”

“We totally did. A bunch of people went. I was fifteen.”

PJ glances over at the bluff. There are a few dark figures down on the sand. The water is fast-moving and uninviting. He could stop for her benefit, but daylight is diminishing and momentum feels too good to ruin.

“Nuh-uh,” he say. “Must have been somebody else.”

Addy frowns and realizes he’s right. She was with older kids. It was a different fast-talker. They sat on a towel to air-dry in the bed of his pickup. She told him about her worst recurring dream, the one with the giant conjoined faces floating on her ceiling. They were eyeless, crinkled like balloons after a party. She reached into the bag of mushrooms he produced and he replied it could be worse. Two faces were better than three.

---

Their father’s house sits at the top of a subdivision overlooking the Naramata Bench. The onyx-black siding and huge trapezoidal roof make the house look like a lair. Most of the property has a treacherous grade so the yard consists of landscaped gravel, stippled with red and blue ornamental grasses.

It’s around eight p.m. when PJ pulls into the carport beside a Ford Raptor and a Porsche 968 with a whaletail. He parks and makes a guttural noise of exhaustion.

“You should take the big room this time,” Addy says.

“It’s fine,” he says. “I don’t care if I sleep in the bathtub. That’s how violently high I’m going to get.”

As PJ opens the tailgate to collect his luggage Addy pauses.

“I thought of a problem with your plan,” she says.

“Huh?”

“Your holiday plan. You have the three big ones, right. Easter, Thanksgiving, Christmas. They should be staggered, one each year, instead of cramming them all into the fourth year of the cycle. You wouldn’t have the holiday antibodies anymore, it’d be a shock to the system.”

PJ shrugs with his Louis Vuitton Keepall in one hand and his folded suitbag in the other.

“So you admit holidays are an ordeal,” he says.

“I don’t deny that,” she says. “Also, if we didn’t have at least one annual holiday, I might go full calendar years never hearing from you.”

PJ grins and shakes his head. He follows the stepping stones to the door. He’s looking forward to changing into a sweatsuit and he’s memorized the slate of hockey, World Series, and football that will carry him through the weekend. He rings the doorbell. Lake Okanagan gleams deep purple in the moonlight. Before Addy has to cross the threshold of the fortress, she sends a text to Ernie in Toronto. We got here safe, didn’t need you as a buffer but I miss you! Text back when you can <3

---

“Happy Thanksgiving,” their father says.

He shakes PJ’s hand and claps him on the shoulder. Addy is relieved to see he looks like a big statue, familiar and upright. If he were visibly sick it would force her to confront things about the world and she’s not ready for that.

“How was the drive in?” he asks them.

PJ heads for the water cooler in the kitchen. He’s baffled by his father’s insistence on recreating the ambience of a dentist’s office in a three-million-dollar home.

“Long,” PJ says. “It’s always long. I’m parched. Let’s have water in paper cups. You need some too, Addy, families should have waters together.”

Addy tries to nudge him with her elbow and PJ snickers. He fills two cups. Addy hugs their dad and he lifts her off her feet. She forgets her private fear that every man in her life merely tolerates her while searching for an escape.

“You’re still a vegetarian?” their father says to Addy once her soles touch down.

“Yep, only for the past twenty years now.”

“But you still eat meat,” he says to PJ.

“Ha. Yeah. I’ll eat anything that swims, crawls, or flies.”

Their dad seems animated. He’s clean-shaven and combed in a quarter-zip sweater and slacks. PJ smells an unseen candle burning, vanilla and lavender.

“Tomorrow I’m cooking the biggest bird you ever saw,” their dad says. “I really want to make a proper dinner. Um, okay, so. I’m not sure exactly how I should say this. There’s someone here I’d like you two to meet.”

PJ hears a burst of water and whirls towards the bathroom. The door is closed. Nobody moves. The lock clicks. The door slides open and a woman in her early-thirties flashes the family a shy smile. Her makeup and jewelry has been selected to make her look soft and presentable under scrutiny. Their father beams, beckoning for her to join.

“Come here, sweetie,” he says.

“Hey,” the woman says. “I’m Brynn.”

The siblings stare at the swollen curve of her belly. They hold their paper cups of water and the future hurtles towards them.