Consulate

From Everyone Remain Calm now available from Joyland and ECW Press.

How it ended was, I got drunk. Like falling off the bar stool. Like lying on the floor and laughing at nothing. Like getting pulled to my feet by some random guy and falling over again, so he had to wrap his arms around my waist to keep me up. “Thanks,” I slurred. And, “You’re really ssstrong!” And, “You’re cute, too. You got a ssshaved head, and a sssweater, and that’s a lot of sssss’s.”

Tensing had said little during the drive and just navigated the potholes—gaping cavities now because of the rains—while muttering frustrated phrases in his language, which I assumed to be the equivalent of swearing. He spoke no French or Kreyol and a little English, which made our conversations somewhat forced. We were easing our way slowly out of the Artibonite valley in an unmarked Land Rover, free of the Agency insignia because of the riots and resentment which persisted in some of the smaller peyizan villages. A glance would inform any passers-by that Tensing was not from the island, not so much from his Asiatic looks but from his gruff gestures and habit of spitting out the window with a great deal more hacking and coughing than a Haitian. Agency drivers had a reputation for disliking us locals, but so far he hadn't said anything condescending. A cigarillo dangled from his lips, and he'd been chewing the end of it so that thin strands of tobacco fell into his lap.

David Bishop was driving to his mother’s house for dinner when he checked his cell phone and found ninety-eight messages. Every one was from his mother. After listening to the first seventeen, he discovered that the wording in every message was exactly the same. Only her inflection changed with each message, and this only slightly. Pressing some other buttons, he learned that all ninety-eight messages were sent at exactly the same time. He found this strange.

The bus accelerates up the gentle slope leading from the wide street on to the small brightly lit bridge that takes it over a branch of the Oker, and no sooner have you caught a glimpse of the murky water, the houses and fences which line the riverbank, than the bus jerks to a halt in the shadow of a building at the Oker Bridge stop. The door hisses open with a sigh, and from here it’s not much further to his street, Spinnerstrasse. As if things weren’t bad enough already, he has to live on Kook Street.

His apartment, a so-called studio, is awkwardly shaped, sort of like a trapezoid, but also curved on one side. A desk, a chest of drawers, a mattress on the floor, raffia mats on top of the linoleum. Hardly any room to move around. But then why would he want to move around?