The Book of Stanley Read online

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  Maha asked Stanley a series of questions he could not answer: Why did you create human beings this way, with their taste for war and consumerism and beheading? Why do you allow class to exist, and poverty, and poisoned water sources? What happens, exactly, when we die? Do you know the devil? Are we alone in the universe? The Holocaust, for one: what were you thinking? Earthquakes, drinking and driving, volcanoes, nuclear weapons, pornography, cancer?

  All of Stanley’s answers frustrated Alok. Especially this one: “I don’t think much of anything happens when we die, save decomposition.”

  At this, Alok laughed, bellowed, “He doesn’t mean that!” and pulled Stanley to the bar.

  Someone had spilled sake and Stanley smelled it and saw it. But he didn’t warn Alok, who placed his bare arm in the puddle. Alok wiped his arm with the Rush shirt and prepared to engage in a lecture.

  “I know what you’re going to say,” said Stanley.

  “Well, then?”

  “Do you want me to lie to them?”

  “Stan. How do you think you got here? Why do you think they’re here? This has all been preordained.”

  “By whom, Alok?”

  As he considered this, Alok put his arm in the spilled sake on the bar again. “Pissing hell.”

  “I’m not an actor. I can’t pretend. That girl thinks I’m some sort of god.”

  “Not some sort of god.”

  “All right, God.”

  “So?”

  “So she’s deluded.”

  “How did Maha recognize you in the hotel lobby? Please, Mr. Rational Explanations, enlighten me.”

  “That is curious, but it doesn’t mean I’m–”

  “Please tell me what it means, Stan.” Alok finished wiping his arm again, and glanced back at the table. Maha was now questioning Frieda. Tanya, the television executive, looked as though she had been slapped a number of times. The young man with the bandage on his face stared longingly at Maha. “You have to admit there is more than coincidence to this. Somehow, for some reason, you have been plucked from the herd to accomplish certain goals. Spiritual goals, Stan, for a spiritually bankrupt time. I can’t tell you what to say to those people, but I hope you think before you speak. Decomposition? Where’s the hope in that?”

  “I think a world without the rewards of Heaven would be much improved. Like a world without video games and machine guns.”

  “Well, keep that opinion under wraps for a while, what say? Until we figure this thing out.”

  “This thing.” Stanley looked toward the windows at the entrance of Far East Square, and the busy sidewalk beyond them. “Maybe Frieda’s right. I could do these people much more harm than good.”

  “Snap out of it, Stan. You’re it. You’re him.”

  “I don’t know what I’m doing.”

  “All the great prophets made it up as they went along.”

  The child from the Volkswagen appeared at the door. Stanley could see, now, that it was a girl. She wore the same black hooded sweatshirt, and watched Stanley with crossed arms. “Excuse me,” said Stanley, and he hurried across the polished floor toward the exit.

  As he passed the table, Frieda called out.

  Stanley opened the door and the child ran off. It was a warm night and the streets were full of boisterous tourists moving from restaurants to bars. Stanley pursued the girl, but not so quickly as to frighten her. The girl ran backwards, facing Stanley with a smile. Yet, somehow, she weaved expertly through the crowd.

  Not once did he take his eyes off her. But in front of the chocolatier, she vanished. Stanley stood in front of the shop and looked around. Gone.

  Since he was there anyway, he stepped into the shop and purchased a dark bear claw for Frieda. He bought one for himself, too, and back on the street he tried to eat it. Bear claws were his favourite, but he could not summon an appetite for chocolate. Instead of hurrying back to Far East Square, Stanley leaned against a brick wall in front of a café.

  Stanley watched the people pass and listened to them. Their hopes for the evening, their enthusiasms. Their children and the amount of credit remaining on their VISA cards. What would God, if there were such a thing, make of tourism? What was Stanley supposed to do, really do, now that he was here? What was expected of him? Even as his memory of the strange little girl faded, Stanley was afraid. He looked down at the sidewalk and wished, briefly, that he were dying after all.

  Back in Far East Square, the members of his dining party welcomed him back. No one asked where he had gone. The television producer, Tanya Gervais, announced that her lawyer friend in Calgary would certainly help Kal negotiate compensation for his injury that evening. “We can’t be too Canadian about this sort of thing. We have to go for the carotid artery.”

  No one, not even Kal, responded.

  So she continued. “How much is your rent?”

  “Including utilities, $850. But I don’t want to inconvenience anyone, and I think they’re probably nice people, deep down. Besides, I had way worse, back when I was playing hockey. My teeth are all messed up.” Kal opened his mouth, to show everyone. Some of the deep-fried prawn batter was visible in there.

  Frieda was watching Stanley. “Not hungry?” she said.

  “No. But I got you a treat for later.”

  “That’s nice of you.”

  He turned to face the others. They stared at him again, expecting something. Something wise. “Please,” he said, with a sweeping gesture. “This food isn’t going to eat itself.”

  Maha cleared her throat. “Stanley. One quick question. Are the Sunnis right, or the Shiites? The Wahhabis are way off, I feel that. I’m not sure about Ismailis. But my personal feeling, and tell me if I am wrong, please, is that the Sufis are the soul of Islam.”

  “I don’t know anything about that.”

  “Yes, you do. You must. You are Islam.”

  Alok nodded. “That is a superb question, Maha, about where Stanley fits among the ancient religions. But I don’t think it’s relevant any more, really. Stanley is here to clear the board and create an altogether new game. Something fairer, cleaner, more reasonable, more peaceful, closer to our hearts and our minds.”

  “You guys are making up a religion?” said Kal.

  Maha shook her head. “No. It’s already–”

  “Yes.” Alok slammed his chopsticks on the table. “That is exactly what we’re doing. Stan can perform miracles, wonderful miracles. I’m sure most of you feel, in some secret corner of your heart, that we’re all in big trouble–humanity-wise. Well, Stan’s here to basically save the land from dying. Right, Stan?”

  Stanley decided to present Frieda with her gift of chocolate now. He passed the bear claw under the table into her lap and she sat motionless, stunned. It was clear she did not want to be in Far East Square, with Alok and these strangers, talking about her husband as though he had become…Allah? She looked down at her lap. “That’s why you hurried out, to get bear claws?”

  “Yes.”

  “Really?”

  Stanley was incapable. “No.”

  TWENTY-NINE

  In her hotel room that evening, after dinner, Maha searched the Koran for references to Stanley or a man like Stanley. There was, as she expected, nothing. So she watched television until it bored her, and then lay in bed. When she could not sleep, Maha drew a bath and lowered herself into it.

  The Lord did not operate according to human reason. Yet he was married to Frieda, a quiet woman with sad eyes and a lovely black pendant on her silver chain. It was all so normal, boring even. Banal. There was a musty smell around them, like an old car that has been sitting too long in the sun.

  It was her holy duty to bear witness to the unity of God and Mohammed–peace and blessings be upon Him–as His messenger. Unless the Lord was an angel, or a prophet. A new Mohammed, with an Oldsmobile.

  Maha turned on the hot water, as her bath had gone cool. Soon, she would be out of money. The hotel cost $91 per nig
ht, plus taxes. She had already spent the bulk of what she had saved working for three years at Torino on Décarie Boulevard. Now, in the bathtub, a part of Maha wished she had stayed home. Perhaps, in time, the Lord would have made the trip to Montreal.

  Maha wanted to phone her mother. But she knew how it would go if she heard the voice of Sara Rasad. They would argue, and apologize, and cry. Surely, the imam had been consulted, not to mention every man and woman Sara Rasad knew in Montreal and London and Beirut. Woe to the mother of the lost daughter! Guilt would gush through the fibre optic cables and Maha’s bones would vibrate with it, like a plucked bass string, for hours. They would have her coordinates, finally, and her father would arrive the following morning–sleepy and annoyed. He would pretend not to have noticed the Rocky Mountains on the shuttle bus ride from Calgary to Banff. When pressed, he would shrug and say they were not nearly as beautiful as the mountains of Lebanon. Zaki Rasad would pay Maha’s bill at the hotel and, shortly afterward, feign a heart-related illness. They would eat at McDonald’s and they would take the next shuttle bus to the airport.

  She imagined herself, with fragrant steam rising out of the bath, as a plant with rotting roots. A strong wind could blow her away, and when she fell to the ground, in some distant land, Maha would not have the energy to get up. The television commercials about mood-enhancing pharmaceuticals echoed in the silence of her room, amid the deep rumble of the climate-control mechanisms and the dripping water.

  Even though he seemed not to believe in an afterlife, seemed not to know why he had created the earth and its murderers, the Lord was supreme. He had to be. The Lord suffered from a strain of amnesia, that was all. The body he inhabited was aged and sick, burdened by marriage and all the ordinary responsibilities and ornaments of a white, middle-class Canadian senior citizen. It would arrive, the rapture, and the Lord would loose himself from these chains.

  A knock. Another knock. “Maha?”

  She stepped out of the water and wrapped the white terry towel hotel robe around herself. “Just a moment.”

  There was a peephole in her hotel door. Tanya Gervais stood on the other side, with a notebook in her hand. “Can I come in?”

  Maha opened the door. Of all the people she had met today, Tanya was most like her friends in Montreal. She dressed like a Montréalaise and spoke just a bit louder than everyone else. There was a frantic air to her, and hints of a fake British accent, and it made Maha feel tired and suspicious. “Is everything okay?”

  “Fine, fine.” Tanya sat on the edge of the bed.

  Maha waited for a moment, for Tanya to explain herself. But the explanation was not forthcoming. Maha stood and Tanya sat. Outside, on Banff Avenue, a bus passed.

  “I can’t sleep.”

  “We have that in common,” said Maha.

  “What do you think of him? Of Stan? Do you buy this? I don’t want to bore you with details of my personal history, but I’m at a very vulnerable point in my life right now. I had what they call a near-death experience in Vancouver last week. This slab. I got here for the festival and all I saw was meaningless, meaningless, meaningless. And then…tonight.”

  “I think he’s–”

  “I go back and forth. Maybe it’s a scam. I’m single and I’ve been careful, Maha. The real estate market’s been very good to me. But maybe, just maybe, this is genuine. Maybe that’s why I came to Banff.”

  “In Montreal, my parents–”

  “What makes it seem authentic is his reticence, don’t you think? It’s like he doesn’t trust what Alok says he is.”

  “Well, in Islam–”

  “If the guy was cocky, if he was going on about making the blind see and that crap, I’d probably run screaming. But he’s so sincere. It’s like he’s frightened, isn’t it? He’s like a baby who wakes up one morning able to walk and talk. There’s something really special about him, isn’t there? I’m not just crazy, am I?”

  “No. But the angel Gabriel–”

  “Let’s just see, right? Alok says the guy can perform miracles. I say we challenge him tomorrow morning. We want to see a miracle. Is it too much to ask? I don’t need anything huge. God damn it, I’m fragile. Really, really fragile. If I were home right now, I’d be all over my therapist. All over him. I got this great guy, on Pender. He just lets me talk, mostly. Anyway, all I mean to say is I’m ready. I’m ready for whatever Stan is about. Aren’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  Tanya started to the door. “Thanks so much for the talk, Maha. Really, it means a lot. Tomorrow morning? Breakfast? Miracle?”

  THIRTY

  In Tony Roma’s, where the breakfast buffet smelled overwhelmingly like a breakfast buffet, Tanya Gervais rested her head on her arms. She had stayed up all night, drawing up plans. All good religions, like all good entertainment products, created and fulfilled mass desires. What the people wanted were granite countertops in their kitchens.

  So what would a religion of granite countertops look like? It would not be demanding. With work and family life and the rigours of a nightly television schedule, the people did not have time to attend church or some facsimile regularly. That said, real estate remained the number-one long-term investment an individual, or organization, could make. So the religion would need a holy place–preferably with shopping and daycare. Thoughtful interior design. Good lighting. Giant-screen televisions and–why not?–a wine bar. Followers could visit whenever they had time, pray, watch a hockey game, and pick up an organic cotton T-shirt.

  A religion also needed a good story. If Stanley were the real thing, he would need something heroic in his past. On the Internet, Tanya had discovered a career-by-career list of the most and least respected professions. Politicians and journalists were near the bottom. Teachers were near the top, along with firefighters. Florists, unfortunately, were not represented.

  Then again, Christians had the Jesus fish. Maybe there was something she could do with a flower. Stanley Moss: the florist of men. No, the florist of people. No. The florist of humans. Watering, weeding, fertilizing, protecting from frosts. In Tony Roma’s she gazed at her notes, and her flower sketches, and the fatigue was like a bomb waiting to go off behind her left eye.

  “More coffee?”

  The young waiter had a goggles tan. He carried a carafe and blinked in slow motion. The name tag on his chest said “ANTON.” Tanya nodded, “Please.” As the thin young man in the white shirt poured, Tanya asked if he was a Christian.

  Anton stepped back from the booth. “Are you giving out pamphlets or something? There’s no soliciting in the restaurant.”

  “Just asking, Anton, that’s all.”

  “Can I get you anything else? Another soy milk?”

  Tanya declined and considered the exchange, made another note. For Anton to become a believer, they would need to shatter his expectations. And it couldn’t be something commonplace or easy, because Anton and his peers had grown up in the digital era; he would have been a toddler when Jurassic Park came out. It wouldn’t be easy, but the risk was worth taking. The overhead, for a nascent religion, was so low. The product was abstract. Shipping costs were nil.

  Her booth was nearest the lobby so she would see Stanley and the others. The first was Kal, who waved and hopped up the stairs into the restaurant when he saw her. “I called your lawyer this morning. He’s awesome.”

  Tanya nodded. She didn’t want to look away from the lobby for long, and worried suddenly that Stanley and his wife had slipped out of the hotel while she was staring at the table or questioning Anton.

  “He called the insurance company already.”

  “Do you know if Stanley was ever a firefighter or a teacher?”

  “I just met him last night.”

  Soon, Kal gave up on socializing and went to the buffet. When Stanley did appear in the lobby, a few minutes later, Kal was drenching his eggs and potatoes with ketchup and talking about the magnificence of the accordion. “I must have heard accordions before, right? But they weren
’t speaking to me like they do now. The accordion is the secret language of the human heart, don’t you figure?”

  Tanya ran toward the lobby and slammed into Anton. He dropped his carafe and briefly watched the coffee leak into the carpet. “Oh sweet,” he said, “sweet cherry fucken pie.”

  Stanley’s white hair was wet, parted on the side, and he wore a distinctly unfashionable blue suit–to match the grey suit he had worn the previous evening. His tie was thin and old, all wrong, and the knot was too tight. This was Tanya’s special gift: instead of seeing this as flawed, she saw it as beautiful. Believers looking for someone uncorrupted, in these cynical times, were growing tired of vain and vigorously coiffed men, riding to their mega-churches in limousines and helicopters.

  “I have an idea,” she said.

  Stanley smiled. “Good morning.”

  “Yes, sorry, hello. Did you sleep well?”

  “I don’t sleep.”

  “Of course not. You’re…what are you again?”

  “I don’t know, to be honest.”

  “We’ll work on that. Your brand.”

  “My brand?”

  “I’ll need to see a miracle, Stan, and tout de suite. If we have something here, we have to get out ahead of it. Web presence, media coverage, press kits, viral marketing. Round two: products.”

  “Frieda and I were talking this morning. I’m not sure if this is something I can do, Tanya. Alok’s enthusiasm is Alok’s enthusiasm. To be honest, I don’t see how we can create a religion here when I don’t believe in God. Never have.”

  “Every problem is an opportunity, Stan. Let’s take that, your doubt, and run with it.”

  “Run where?”

  “The people can relate to doubt. I bet, in our hearts, we’re all a bit doubtful. All but the loons. If there is something inside that doubt, something resonant, we can package and distribute it.”

  “Why would we do that?”

  To make money. To become famous. To spin it off into books and films, get on Oprah. Was he really so naive? “To help people, of course. To, uh, save the land.”