A Loafer's Guide To Living

2-1

2Every Saturday morning around ten, I met some of my cohorts at the local coffee bistro, BoBo's where we would commiserate over the dilemma each of us faced. Nook, a Burmese national, married with a child and toiled as a software engineer. His daughter just turned seven. His wife was a lawyer and had a steel trap mind to go with it. Ramon hailed from Peru and spent his days in social work. He had no children but his wife, Luisa, was a nurse who worked shifts. She wanted to have children but Ramon kept hedging, knowing he'd have to give in eventually. I liked BoBo's and loved to inhale the smell of the different blends of coffee. It's just too bad that I gave up drinking coffee. I sacrificed myself because coffee gave me heart palpitations. We all managed to sneak out on the pretext of picking up the paper and bagels and cream cheese, in my case, at least. When I left the house, everyone remained fast asleep. By the time I got back, the boys would likely still be asleep and Sharon would have gone to the gym. I saved myself that humiliation on the weekends knowing I could barely take the psychological beating during the week. It just went with everything else. Hugo wanted to show me how to use the various weight machines. It seemed like there were hundreds of them, all very complicated looking. More ineptitude awaited me.

“What's your excuse?” asked Nook, sipping a mochaccino.

I dropped the paper and bagels onto the empty seat beside him. “Same as always. You?”

Nook lifted his paper and a sack of milk, smiling ruefully. Ramon looked up from his extra large, black Colombian. Misery itself would have looked more pleased.

“Luisa's pregnant.” There reverberated a stunned silence. Neither Nook or I knew what to say. We avoided each other's eyes until finally, I couldn't stand it.

“Think of it this way,” I said. “There's always things to be running out for. Diapers. Formula. Wipes. Not to mention the cravings. When Sharon was pregnant, I had to buy her double double chocolate fudge or a Fatso's superburger with the works. Mind you, that was almost always after midnight.”

“Thanks,” Ramon replied, glumly dropping his wide chin to his narrow chest.

Nook polished his glasses on a paper napkin. “How far along is she?”

“Eight weeks.”

“You never know, things can happen in the first trimester. It's a delicate time. The data is pretty clear, according to a bunch of research studies.”

Ramon's face clouded. “I don't want her to lose the baby.”

“No, of course not,” I interjected and shot Nook an angry look. He shrugged in that Buddha-like way. He should never have shaved his head. He looked like the Dalai Lama… or his younger brother.

“It's just that I know it's going to be a lot of work. Babies are a lot of work, right?”

Nook and I exchanged glances, we knew how much work it was.

“Right,” I said. Nook didn't answer, just took another sip from the mochaccino that left a white moustache on his upper lip. Nook drove a new Saab and was considering switching to a Volvo, more space he thought and better for travelling with the family when they visited his mother-in-law who lived out of town. He glanced down at the paper and took in the headlines.

“We'll help you,” I said.

“That's right,” Nook chimed in.

“We'll call you up and ask you out, make up things.”

“It's her shifts that worry me the most,” Ramon said. “If she's working nights or weekends, then I'm stuck.”

“Bring the baby with you,” said Nook. “We've all done it. I used to strap Liliana to my chest. When she started to cry, I gave her a bottle or walked around a little bit to quiet her down. It wasn't a problem.”

“I used to bring the kids in the stroller. Same thing,” I said.

Ramon looked at us skeptically. One thing about loafers, much went on below the surface. We had an intuitive understanding of each other. There wasn't a great deal of overt conversation or anything mildly active. We'd sip whatever we ordered, chat about whatever, glance at the newspaper and be on our way. Simple, easy and no stress. That's what we wanted. Ramon's interjection had been the most meaningful thing we'd heard in months. It put us right on the edge, actually. That was another implied rule. Stick to the trivial and even, the inane when possible. But it was all right to muse on things as long as the others weren't required to respond in any meaningful way.

For instance, whenever I wrote the Editor's Notes for Bookology or even conducted an interview, I often fell asleep. Nodded off right at the computer. Something about expending mental energy that drained me like a leaky battery. I could barely keep my eyes open and it was a bit embarrassing when it happened in front of the staff, even if it only lasted a few seconds. Jessica would politely tap me on the shoulder and quietly smile. I didn't fall asleep during phone conversations but if it were a particularly long or tedious call, then no guarantees. Phone interviews were the worst of the lot as writers tended to drone on and on about their work and really, if the truth be known, who cared what they thought? Certainly, I didn't but it was all a sort of continuum, you see. I had to keep the writers happy to keep the book publishers happy so they would continue to advertise with us so I could continue to pay my bills and even that was dicey at best. I had to admit that some of my suppliers were very good about it.

“If you don't cut me a cheque and send it by courier today, I won't print your magazine, Mr. Goldman,” shouted John Hawthorne, owner of Vantone Press, our printer of the moment.

“But I've got a lot of money tied up in that issue,” I protested.

“I know. That's why you'll need to get it printed, won't you?” Hawthorne growled.

“But I can't pay you until I send out all the invoices and I can't do that until the damn thing is printed.”

“So you're asking me to add to your bill by printing the magazine so you can do your billing?”

“That's right.”

“I'm not a bloody banker, Goldman. If you want to see the magazine in print, then you'd better send a cheque.” He hung up. And what happened? I was stuck, of course. I just didn't have $12,000 sitting around in the corporate bank account. It was more like $250. So, the contingency was, I dug into my personal line of credit and coughed it up. I had to be very quiet about this when it happened. If she found out, Sharon would rupture a few ovaries. She was very, very responsible, fiscally. But then she could afford to be, earning a significant six-figure salary as the Chief Financial Officer at Cablestar.

These were the sorts of things I lapsed into when I was ensconced at BoBo's, cradling my bagels and cream cheese. I couldn't blame Hawthorne but he was a bastard all the same.

“He's gone again,” Nook remarked.

“I swear, Bernie, your mind is drifting like a paralyzed tuna,” Ramon said mysteriously.

“I didn't know a tuna could be paralyzed,” I replied.

Ramon pointed a finger at me. “You don't know everything.” And he drained his large, black Colombian and signalled for another.

I picked up my bagels and cream cheese. “Later boys.” Nook nodded, Ramon shrugged, the quintessential loafer's response. Spare the energy.

When I got home, I found Nathan at the computer playing some sort of strategy game that involved a lot of shooting and simulated blood. I made him put the headphones on. The last thing I wanted to hear on a Saturday morning were the agonized cries of the dead and dying, simulated or not.

“Bagels and cream cheese,” I said.

There was no response. Louder. “Bagels and cream cheese.”

“What?”

I held up the bag. “Bernie, you always get bagels and cream cheese. I know that's what you've got. You do that every Saturday after you hang out with your geeky friends.” Nathan paused the game to tell me this.

“My friends are geeky?” I put the bag down on the counter. “You have the nerve tell me my friends are geeky. At least we don't have our faces pressed into a computer screen all day long playing Cosmic Cowboy Blast-Off or something else equally inane.”

Nathan looked at me woefully. “First of all, Bernie, this is a very cool game that demands a higher order of thinking, strategy and hand-eye coordination, the sort of strategy game employed in the top gun fighter ace schools in the United States Air Force, so don't presume to tell me what is inane or not.” With a contemptuous gesture, he returned the headphones to his ears and unpaused the game. I wish I had a comeback to that or simply grounded the little bugger for the rest of his life. Instead, I picked up the newspaper and went into the living room to read.

Just as I was about to nod off, Sharon came bursting in, flushed from her workout, and dropped her gear by the couch with a thump. My heart still fluttered when I saw her and to my familiar eye, she looked and appeared eminently desirable. Wearing form-fitting stretch pants and a tight T-shirt sprayed on her elegant but fulsome figure stirred something in me. It usually did. Her auburn hair had been cut recently and it looked good on her, gave her an air of youth and vitality even though we were the same age. I, on the other hand, felt mummified by comparison.

“Hallo lazy bones,” she called. “Where are the boys, then?” Her Irishness came out subtlely in her speech when she was in a good mood, not so subtlely when she wasn't.

“Nathan's on the computer, destroying western civilization as we know it and Sean is sleeping through it all.”

Sharon glanced at her watch. “He is, is he? Jesus, it's almost eleven-thirty and thirteen hours of sleep is enough, even for a teenager.” She stomped off to wake him. I followed her undulating buttocks as she climbed the stairs. As if picking up my thoughts on radar, she stopped midway.

“What is it?” I shrugged, then grinned sheepishly.

“You dirty-minded bastard. Well perhaps, if you're a good boy.” And she continued on her way.

Somehow, she took the wind out of me. I mean, when put that way. I felt as if I had been scolded by my mother, hardly a lustful thought. I felt myself wilt a little bit and a piece of my soul shrank too. I know it's no good to dwell on the past but it wasn't like it had been before. Even when the kids were small, we'd just enjoy each other for the sake of it. There were no conditions or strings that tagged along. Is this what getting older is all about and naturally, my thoughts went to Charlotte and her invitation for next Friday. I had written my reply but in true layabout form, I hadn't sent it yet, relegating the message to my outbox so I might have the time to ruminate a bit further. I returned to the paper that I read quickly and cursorily as my main objective was to get to the crossword and finish it just after lunch. Then I would scout out any pending leisure moments.

“Dad?” Nathan appeared in front of me, sticking his dark face over the newspaper.

“What?” I was annoyed. He could be a very annoying child.

“I need a lift to the pool. I'm meeting a bunch of guys there.”

“What time?”

“One-thirty.”

“There is such a thing as the bus, you know. It has four wheels and a roof and normally goes in the right direction.”

He looked stricken. “The bus?”

“I'm coming too.” A rumpled Sean appeared, hovering above the bannister. His hair stood up in clumps and his face looked bruised from sleep.

“You're not invited,” Nathan said.

“Who's going?”

“Never mind.”

“I can come if I want to,” Sean said, and began to descend the stairs slowly hanging on to the bannister.

“I don't want you to.”

“Why not?”

“Because you're such an asshole.”

I heard the bang of Sharon's footfalls on the upstairs landing.

“Stop right there,” she said. Sean froze on the stairway. Nathan looked down at the floor.