Saint of Whales - Chapter II
The cold water felt good as Saint splashed a couple of handfuls against his face before turning off the taps and standing up. He looked in the mirror and gave a dejected sigh. Feelings of shame always settled over him when he drank too much on a weeknight. He knew there wasn’t anything inherently wrong with getting drunk every now and then, but it was a very different story when he had to get up and get his ass to work in the morning. With the fingers of his left hand, he tugged at the bags under his eyes. As usual, if asked about the bags, he said he hadn’t been sleeping well recently, and it wasn’t necessarily untrue. Saint didn’t slept well, and he never had. Here he was, a year away from punching through forty years old, and he reckoned he hadn’t slept well on a consistent basis in thirty years. His mother had been a night owl, and his father had been up with the birds, so, in some ways, he figured he came by the sleep problems honestly. Of course, he also knew when he drank, he didn’t sleep right. No one slept right after a night at the bar. So, while he was free to make whatever excuses he pleased in order to satisfy the pangs of guilt in his guts, he knew they were would always just be excuses.
Saint turned his face from left to right, pulling at his cheeks with his left hand like he could smooth out the shallow lines that would one day become deep lines. He performed a similar exercise with the flesh around his mouth and forehead before dropping his hand away and staring straight ahead at muted green eyes sitting under shallow eye sockets and thin eyebrows. Lifting his left hand again, he glanced at his watch and rolled his eyes. He needed to get back to his desk. There would be plenty of time to come back to the bathroom and stare at his dull complexion, ill-growing five o’clock shadow, and rapidly thinning brown hair. He took one more deep breath, and raised his right hand up to brush some loose hair away from his forehead. Another sigh forced its way out between his lips as his eyes, followed by his withered right hand sliding back into his hoodie pocket. Clearing his throat once again, he turned away from the mirror before doing a half-turn back to grab his coffee from the countertop and heading out into the hallway.
One sip of his coffee had Saint regretting the prior night’s choices more than the overindulgence itself. If he hadn’t slept through his alarm, he would have been able to have make a halfway decent cup of coffee to take with him to work. Instead, he’d been forced to get in line at Tim Hortons—the Canadian institution—and order their finest hot water with dirt in it. To many Canadians, simple preference for better coffee—even for similar, fast-food quality coffee—amounted to sedition, if not wholesale treason. Nevermind, of course, that Tim Horton’s coffee held as much character as dishwater, but everyone could hold their opinion. For Saint, his order was simple: coffee with a bit of milk. For many, the double-double—two milks and two sugars—was a way of life and Saint’s steering away from the drink drew significant judgment. He was, however, smart enough to keep his opinion on the quality of coffee to himself. He worked around the regularly ensuing interrogation by highlighting the two old-fashion glazed donuts he ordered along with his coffee as satisfying his sugar fix. Mostly, he told the truth because he really did enjoy the donuts and they truly did satisfy his craving. The piece he held back was he didn’t understand the purpose of ordering a coffee so bland and bitter one needed to add sugar just to make it drinkable. Again, a truth that wasn’t worth the headache to reveal.
The walk from the washroom to his desk wasn’t a long one, and he was glad for that. He just wanted to sit down and get enough work done so as not to provide his manager with any reason to come by his desk. Generally speaking, Saint actually didn’t entirely mind working in the cubicle farm, and didn’t mind the bland data-entry work he did at the insurance company. To be sure, entering document data wasn’t the most exciting work in the world, but it didn’t concern him. Saint had never been someone who cared greatly for excitement anyway. He’d never seen himself as an exciting person or someone to or for whom exciting things happened. In a lot of ways, he was happy with how that had all worked out so far. When he sat in the lunchroom—alone, when he could— he heard talk of whitewater rafting, backwoods camping, hiking and trail running in the foothills, mountain biking in the Rockies, all the things one did when one lived surrounded by so much wide open land. He understood getting outdoors, going to the mountains, and it just wasn’t for him. Similar to Tim Hortons, he’d been forced to defend himself enough times about his preference for quiet pastimes like reading and writing and listening to a good record over what everyone else enjoyed doing.
Ducking around the corner to his workspace, Saint set his mug down on his desk before dropping into his seat. Unsurprisingly, his desk was empty aside from paperwork. There were no photos or words of inspiration tacked up, no keepsakes or quirky novelties on his desk. He preferred to keep his work at work and his life at home. The attitude made it hard for him to connect with others and, again, he wasn’t entirely broken up about it. For many, the notion of being alone or simply being a solitary person seemed to ring weirdly, while for Saint the notion of being surrounded by others, or having a number of social obligations to juggle seemed like a horrific venture.
“Hey! Kinfail! You over at your desk there, boss?”
The bark jarred Saint. He cleared his throat in an attempt to cover a frustrated sigh. His coworker, Dempster Hardy, was nice enough and meant well enough. Most times, Saint was even successful in preventing the man’s annoying idiosyncrasies from getting too deep under his skin, though there certainly were times he wasn’t as successful as he wanted to be. He felt, for sure, this morning could present itself as one of the latter situations, so he would need to be vigilant and diligent in his approach to not snap at the man. After all, it was more likely he found himself frustrated and irritated because of his own actions rather than those of his colleague.
“Kinfa—”
Saint pushed himself to his feet, holding his hands up to interrupt Dempster. “I’m here. I’m here,” he said. “How are you doing today?”
The other man's broad shoulders rose and dropped in a quick shrug. There were times Saint looked at his coworker and wasn’t sure whether it was jealousy or envy he felt, whether he wanted to have what the other man had or whether he wanted the other man to not have what he had. Dempster stood two or three inches past six feet, probably weighed around two hundred pounds, and seemed to be the possessor an ideal body type with wide shoulders tapering down to a narrow waist and hips with long, strong legs extending out. Dempster’s sharp brown eyes twinkled in the light under sharp brows and atop high, broad cheekbones, while his wide jaw cut to a narrow chin. And, of course—because it couldn’t be any other way—the other man dressed sharply, if a bit simply. Saint covered a little chuckle with a faux cough as he looked Dempster wearing a snug, black golf shirt, black skinny jeans, and black creeper shoes, with a gold watch on his right wrist.
“You want to go for a coffee, boss?” Dempster asked, frowning a bit when he saw the cup on the desk. He shrugged and shook his head. His finely coiffed pompadour didn’t move in the slightest. “I mean, you got one already, I know, but if you want to get away from the desk for a minute we can shoot the shit and go for a walk and get the old legs a bit of a stretch. What do you think about that?”
Saint pursed his lips for a moment, picking up his coffee and giving the cup of a swirl to gauge how much he had left. Generally speaking, his approach with coffee was he never had enough left, but Timmy’s always made it a tough call. He sucked his teeth lightly and raised his eyes up to Dempster and gave a nod. “Yeah, what the hell. Let’s go. I can’t be too long though. I’ve got a bunch of invoices to enter in and I need to get it all done today before the end-of-day.”
The response received a scoff and a wave of the hand. “Don’t worry, Kinfail. I’ll get you back here before you bedtime. Dad won’t even notice you snuck out.”
Saint chuckled and sipped his coffee before setting it back down on his desk. He didn’t go out of his way to call his boss, Karlo Bunjac, Dad as Dempster did, but there wasn’t any disagreement on the nickname. Karlo seemed to spend most of his day trolling around the office, peeking over dividers, popping his head around corners, looking over shoulders and trying to find a way to complicate what should have been easy processes and simple tasks. Adding to the joy of reporting to him were Karlo’s expectations that varied from week to work and from individual to individual. Such was life on the hamster wheel of the working world in Calgary, however.
“Here, let’s do this,” Dempster said, starting away from the cubicle. Saint grabbed his jacket and threw it over his shoulders while following after his co-worker. Normally he wouldn’t have grabbed his jacket on a coffee run, but he figured Dempster would want to have a quick cigarette before coming back up.
“So, you’re looking a little rough around the edges today, hey?”
The comment came as they wandered down the aisle way of the cubicle farm, Dempster's own head scanning left to right watching for the badly balding head of their manager. Karlo’s refusal to accept the receding of his hairline was a running joke in the office, especially on days when he seemed to take extra care to comb over the few strands of hair he had left.
Saint fought raising up his hand to touch his own hair that he knew was on its way out. Sometimes he blamed the dry-as-a-bone climate of Calgary for how quickly his hair seemed to be fading to naught. Other times, however, he thought about his haircare routine—or lack thereof—and how it might have contributed to the hair loss he saw. As economical as buying the three-in-one body wash, shampoo, and conditioner might have been, he doubted it did much more than strip his hair of everything it needed to build or even simply retain strength. He fought back a sigh as he thought about how he could extrapolate the damage he did to his hair to the damage he did to the rest of his life through his poor decision-making and inability to plan ahead.
“Helllloooooooooo. You still with me here, Kinfail?”
A light smack on the shoulder punctuated the question and Saint shook his head, bringing his attention back to reality. He looked at Dempster for a moment as they stopped at the elevator.
“Yeah, sorry. My mind is just… it’s just a hundred miles away,” he said, flashing a faint smile. Saint was never good at smiling. He never knew how much was too much, how much wasn’t enough. He could recall vividly his school photo days where the photographer would give everyone funny names, whether it be Superman or Wonder Woman or the Flash or Hulk Hogan. One look at Saint’s right arm and hand and the photographer would always ask him his name and he would get quick directions—sit down, smile big, but not that big—before being shuffled along. One photographer told him he wasn’t at the circus so he didn’t need to smile so big. Another photographer told him he wasn’t at a funeral and no one had ever died from smiling so it couldn’t hurt to put in a bit of effort.
“Buddy, you must be hung. HELLOOOOOO,” Dempster said again, smacking Saint in the shoulder again.
“Yeah, you’re right on that,” Saint answered, rubbing at his head with his right hand before jamming it back into his hoodie pocket. “Sorry, Dempster. I tied one on last night and my head’s in the clouds today.”
The admission earned another, harder slap on the back. “Alright, my man! Hell yeah. I love it. Getting out there on a school night. Good work, my man!” Dempster barked, pumping his fist at the same time as the elevator door opened. He and Saint both stepped through into the empty car. Saint bumped the button for the ground floor with his wrist and the doors slid shut.
“So, I need the details, man. Where’d you go? What’d you get up to? Come on, man. Let me hear it, you dirty dog,” Dempster prodded.
Saint laughed a little bit at the way the question was framed, like he ever participated in wild nights on the town.
“Come o—”
A quick wave of his left hand stopped the question. “It was pretty tame, Dempster. I don’t really do much or do much with anyone. You know that. I just sat myself down at my usual joints and drank the beer and watched the TV. I don’t have cable at home so I don’t get to watch too much sports or anything so I just wanted to do that and it ended up being a bit of a longer night than I planned,” Saint said. He hoped he didn’t answer with too much of an edge, because sometimes what he meant and how it sounded were two different things.
Dempster cocked his head back a little bit and held his hands up, looking at Saint apologetically. “Sorry, buddy. Didn’t mean to step on your toes there,” he shrugged and looked away, watching the floor numbers of the elevator tick down. “I wanted to watch the Raptors, but couldn’t find a stream. Did you see the game?”
“Yeah, I caught a little of it. It wasn’t very good. Wasn’t our night, you know?” Saint replied, and hoped the suggestion to watch a game together wouldn’t come up.
“Hey, we should watch a game together soon. What do you think about that?”
Saint held back a flinch and instead scratched at his nose with his left hand. “Yeah, let’s try to figure something out sometime.”
“Alright, my man. Let’s talk maybe at the end of the week and see what’s up, right? I mean, you can’t go tying one on every other day on the NBA schedule, but we could get lit up this weekend,” Dempster answered with a laugh, elbowing Saint in the side, one of the mannerisms that got under Saint’s skin just about more than anything else. Generally speaking, he didn’t like being touched and, more specifically, he didn’t like all the locker room physicality that often accompanied male friendship. But, he also didn’t like making other people feel bad for behaviours they didn’t know were harmful, and he didn’t want to pin his own discomfort on Dempster. It wasn’t the other man’s fault Saint had been bullied as a kid, pushed around and shoved to the ground and cussed at and spit on and pissed on and jammed in lockers. In some ways, he was pretty sure Dempster probably went through similar experiences as a kid, and maybe that’s why he wanted to connect with Saint so much. From what Saint could see, it wasn’t like the other man had a bunch of friends at the office, and it wasn’t like he talked a lot about weekend adventures with friends either. Maybe the two of them were meant to connect and were meant to be friends and Saint just needed to give it a chance, even if he really didn’t want to.
A ding sounded in the elevator and the doors split open, leaving Saint to follow Dempster out. Once again, he found himself bound for the lineup at Tim Horton’s and another coffee he’d rather not drink.
