The Adjustment League by Mike Barnes

Hello, I’m wondering if I could arrange a tour. I don’t know if you have any vacancies, but I have a family member who needs, uh, placement—it’s my wife actually—and, well, I’m afraid we’ve hobbled along until things have become urgent. If you have no space available, I understand. We’ve got a short list we’re working through. But if by luck I’ve caught you at the right time, is there any chance we could meet tomorrow morning?
    Ken, my advisor at CIBC: Hi, Ken. I’m into something here that’s going to need a few extra funds. Not a lot, I don’t think. And, yes, I do want you to do the drill. Standard operating procedure.
    The office of Dr. Max Wyvern, though I almost give up at the interminable preamble that’s designed to make me do just that. Hello, you’ve reached… and then later, We are located… and Our business hours are… and only then, We are presently closed and will reopen at… and then, with sadistically slow enunciation, an advisory that any emergency situation should be dealt with at a hospital… until finally, after a minute that feels like a day, the voice conceding to any masochist still on the line, If you would like to leave a brief message and your number, please do so after the beep. Um. I don’t know if you’re accepting new patients, but one of my teeth broke apart just now. When I was eating some nuts. Lower tooth, on the left side. I’m not in pain, it just sort of crumbled away around the fillings. There’s a back tooth loose too. Wiggling. Neither is an emergency, but, um, it doesn’t seem like something I should wait on. Could you phone me at this number if you have any openings? Thank you very much.
    Lure of crowns, extractions, likely canal work. Like dangling a square of red rag on a hook in front of a bullfrog. The huge mouth drops open and the great legs uncoil in a coordinated lunge. One foster dad an outdoorsman. Not with them long.
    Â§
    â€œGreen tea or black?”
    A new question. Black, I decide.
    â€œWhat kind?”
    Also new. Previously it was just Red Rose on offer, stale bags in a jar beside the till.
    â€œDo you have Earl Grey?”
    â€œWe have. With milk?”
    â€œJust black, thanks.”
    Other than expanding the tea selection, the new Korean owners haven’t messed with the Queen’s Arms’ modestly winning formula. Same TV screens with sports and news so nobody has to feel they’ve left home. Pool table at the back. Just enough stains on the carpet and faint fumes of draft and puke to keep it real. Our dingy, grotty local.
    Family run, at least this time on a Sunday. Mother behind the bar. Daughter in hot pants handling the three guys in sports jerseys at a table. Kidding with her as they wait for a game, any game. Father’s role at the moment working through a stack of Scratch ’n Win at the end of the bar.
    â€œStraight to the hard stuff, eh?” says the guy two stools over when Mother brings my tea.
    â€œStraight to the source,” I say, weirding him back to his pint.
    But he’s a talker, wants contact, and a couple of minutes later he taps the Star on the bar between us. Hizzoner spread over it in close-up, pig-eyed, ranting at a scrum. The mics black bulrushes he’s peering over.
    â€œThe Big Man’s quite the distraction, isn’t he?” says my neighbour.
    â€œHe is that.”
    â€œDistracting us from the city’s business.”
    â€œDistracting us from himself.”
    â€œHow’s that work? You can’t get away from him. He’s everywhere.”
    â€œExactly. He is. Not his policies. Listen to these stories enough and you might start to believe he’s a civic-minded gent whose outsize appetites led him astray. But he couldn’t be civic-minded if you dried him out and slimmed him down and locked him in a room with Thomas Merton for a year. An alligator doesn’t