HYPOTHERMIA
-
John
Tavares (Canada)
Ross
Moorhead of Maclean Manbridge Moorhead wanted Robert to fire their only
African-Canadian employee. “Find a reason, any reason to let him go, and you’re
not hiring that other black guy,” Moorhead said.
“That’s
prejudice, job discrimination on the basis of race!”Robert’s voice boomed as he
shouted his complaint towards the waspish, angular man, essentially his boss.
With a pinched expression, and wire-rimmed bifocals, Moorhead wore a tailored
suit and polished shoes worth a few months mortgage. “It’s illegal and could
get us sued and publicly shamed.”
“I
told you and I warned you, Robert. We’re becoming a family office, an exclusive
family office, with practices and policies geared towards the retention and the
prosperity of our long-term high net worth family clients.”
Robert
didn’t want to express dissent, since his attitude might be construed as
disrespectful, but he felt strongly most issues of social justice. “Sir, you’re
asking me to fire our best options trader and analyst. And you’re also asking
me to turn away the candidate I hired—the candidate I consider best for the new
advisor position.”
“Robert,
we’re becoming a family office, and the Zhang family is our largest account.
The family has assets of over two hundred million, and it’s old money, earned
from cash cows, radio stations, community newspapers, motels, video arcades,
and convenience stores in Northern Ontario. It’s real money, legal money—”
“Video
arcades? You mean peepshows and porn theatres?”
“No,
I mean pinball machines and video games.”
“I
don’t think so. When was the last time you saw someone playing a pinball
machine in an arcade?”
“In
a Zhang owned pool hall downtown.”
“The
one below the porn shop and peep shows, but above the head shop.”
“Robert,
they own that strip of buildings along Yonge Street downtown, extremely
valuable commercial real estate—”
“Which
is rundown and decrepit.”
“Those
buildings are being torn down for the development of condo towers in which the
Zhang family will have an interest.”
Beyond
the range of Moorhead’s vision, Robert navigated the internet to Ontario Human
Rights Commission website and read the introduction on the main page.
“Robert,
it’s not drug money. The Zhangs, as you guessed, are Old World, Middle
Kingdom—”
“No
kidding, I’m married to one.”
“I’m
sorry, I forgot about Lina, but she’s a second cousin and estranged from the
family, isn’t she? And I thought she converted, became a Jew.”
“You’re
absolutely right on all counts. She converted for a boyfriend she was supposed
to marry. But I doubt she’ll be happy to hear what you say, I’m relieved to
say.”
“Regardless,
it’s not her money—she’s the poor country cousin—”
“I
can’t believe you said that, but you’re bang on again; that’s exactly how she
likes to describe herself—the backwoods girl from a remote provincial area in
China—the black sheep of the family. And she even went through a Falun Gong
phase, to boot.”
“Regardless,
the patriarch doesn’t want colored people managing any of his accounts. He says
his daughter was raped by a black man, while she did an acting gig in Los
Angeles, and his son was mugged during a vacation in Jamaica.”
“How
is that relevant to investing money?”
“It’s
what he wants! And I’m not going to argue about it. He doesn’t want a black
man, any black man, or women, for that matter, managing his money.”
“How
can you justify this blatant…racial discrimination?”
“Robert!
The Zhang account is our largest by far. I’m trying to explain this to you.
We’re now a family office, a family office. We have a legal opinion indicating
we’re exempt from current human rights legislation, as a result, based on
client cultural preferences.”
“I
don’t believe you,” Robert said. “My understanding is human rights law takes
precedent.”
“You’re
not aneffing lawyer,” Moorhead said. “That’s above your pay grade.”
Robert
closed the interactive stock charts and graphs and analysts reports he viewed
across dual computer screens and automatically scrutinized the website of the
human rights commission for information that might support his position.
“Robert,
are you questioning my integrity?”
Outraged,
with his face and particularly his cheeks suffused with redness, Robert kept
his face concealed, hiding behind the two computer monitors at his desk, since
he didn’t want Moorhead to see his expression of anger, ready to blow up into a
rage.
“Robert,
you have me worried. I’ve never had you question my judgement in the past.”
“Because
you’ve never asked me to do something so unethical and inhumane, to say nothing
or illegal.”
“Robert,
think about your future with the firm.”
So,
Ross Moorhead summoned and sent Lina to do his bidding, Lina the wife from whom
Robert was estranged. She called him from her smart phone, while she was
listening to Shania Twain, in between psychiatrist visits and doctor
appointments. Hear the Shania Twain music on her speaker phone, he remembered
how she had fallen in love over his karaoke versions of David Bowie’s “China
Girl.” Now the couple slept in separate beds and hardly spoke with each other.
Whenever he tried to initiate a conservation with her, the pair inevitably
found themselves arguing, so, whenever possible, he tried to avoid
communicating with her in person. When he tried to broach the subject of the
most rational approach to their broken relationship, which seemed separation
followed by divorce, she became passionate and broke into tears or she grew
angry. She insisted they didn’t want to separate or divorce. She felt confident
he would be unhappy if he left the relationship and their household. When she
had been drinking, she warned, if he left, she would destroy his career and
leave him penniless. Lina seemed sober when she called him at lunchtime, but
her voice had an ominous edge.
“Ross
tells me you’re not following his instructions, Robert, and you’re endangering
you’re position at the investment firm.”
Robert
felt anxious and agitated when she spoke to him about his work because he knew
as a Zhang, even though she was a niece, or a cousin, or even a second cousin,
she yielded real power at the firm, whose assets were based on the Zhang family
fortune. Still, he asked, “Do you know what he’s asking?”
“You
know I’m not interested in your shop talk. Just do his bidding or else you
might not have a job.”
“You
don’t understand.”
“Robert,
you’re the most pragmatic person I know. You leave me the impression you’ve
nothing to live for but your work, so I’m really surprised you’re being
insubordinate.”
Thus
Robert found a reason to dismiss his favourite employee, his best options and
derivative trader, who had an uncanny intuition for capital markets, and was a
genius with derivatives and hadan incredible knack for mathematically
calculating the theoretical fair market value of these financial instruments,
detecting undervalued calls and puts, for lucrative and sometimes incredible
profits. Johnson uttered not a word of complaint, probably because he realized
he could easily find a better and higher paying position at another firm, a
major chartered bank. His best employee was also a dapper dresser, which left
Robert self-conscious and embarrassed about his own humdrum and plain style.
Robert remembered what one human resources generalist he met during a
conference in the financial district told him: She had so much trouble
differentiating qualified candidates, all of whom had the same credentials, she
just ended up hiring the best dressed and best smelling in the interview and so
far that proved a reliable criterion for her. “Whatever works,” Robert joked.
Tittering nervously, Robert worried he was the worst dressed in the boardroom
and had used the wrong deodorant and body wash, or not enough, and maybe should
have showered longer and doused himself in cologne. Regardless, Johnson also
led in that department by a country mile. Robert also managed to find a
plausible reason to rescind the employment offer to the coloured person he
recruited and wanted to hire. Again, the individual in question said nary a
word of complaint and asked no questions.
Robert’s
wife was indeed a Zhang, but her parents were not from Hong Kong, but a
relatively remote rural area on the mainland. Lina considered herself the poor
country cousin and was estranged from the main Zhang family, which, she
complained, was dysfunctional and inbred. Later, throwing caution to the wind,
he tried to ask Linaif her cousin was sexually assaulted by a black man while
she pursued an acting career in Los Angeles and if indeed another cousin was
mugged during a vacation in Jamaica, but she refused to talk about them.
Afterwards,
Robert’s thoughts became dark and brooding, as he started to feel stressed at
work with muscle aches and pains. The doctor prescribed exercise, which he
believed would be more effective than painkillers or antidepressants, after he
took his patient history.
Then
he started to explore and visit the seedy strip of motels near the airport
strip and along the boulevard near the Lakeshore. Ross, having ordered him to
purge the firm of their only black employee, and to rescind the offer of
employment to the other he hired, also had the seediest mind of any boss he met
at any workplace. As a student, Robert worked at a variety of part-time and
summers jobs, in his hometown in Northwestern Ontario, washing police motor
vehicles, tree planting, brush cutting, cleaning in a high school and hospital,
working in building maintenance and as groundskeeper, clerking in a grocery
store, even working after hours as a radio station console operator and
announcer, until he landed a career in financial services and the investment
industry. Moorhead seemed to have an intimate knowledge of the workers who
plied their trade and wares along the motel strip. He also knew Robert’s
personal and after-hours life with Lina left him sterile and bereft. When they
went for drinks, during which he drank coffee, since he refused to drink,
having observed the chronic effects of alcohol on Lina, he tried to entertain
him with stories of his man whoring and how he schmoozed and carousedhot young
women in Toronto nightspots. To confirm and corroborate the details he
provided, Robert downloaded the Tor browser at home on his company laptop, so
Lina couldn’t review his browsing history and the websites he visited. Still,
she hardly had the energy to take any interest in anything he did these days,
an indifference he attributed to her myriad disorders. He anonymously
researched postings and seedy websites, on the dark web, which led to the
locales of action, frequented by patrons of the underworld and workers plying
their after-hours trade.
The
woman who became his favorite was of college age. He became attached when he
first met her; she seemed perky, optimistic, and hopeful, full of energy—traits
he admired. He recalled when he was an aspiring journalism student in college,
he was full of dreams and ambition, although then he was abstinent. Indeed, he
believed he never lost his dreams, particularly to succeed in photojournalism,
until he met Lina.
When
Lina was an active member of the workforce, he merely had to show up in
business attire at the board meetings of one of the various companies her uncle
owned, an odd conglomeration of radio stations, motels, conveniences
stores—there had even been pool halls and amusement arcades, with pinball
machines and video games mixed in the blend—dotted across the Canadian Shield
landscape of Northern Ontario. This empire business empire started decades ago
with a small cleaning business, which maintained the post office and Indian
Affairs building, in the Northwestern Ontario town of Sioux Lookout. She
collected several hundred thousand dollars in salary each year, to say nothing
of travels expenses and lucrative stocks options.
Somehow,
he was persuaded to stay by Lina’s side, if only for her own health and
well-being. After all, several months after they married, he again attempted to
initiate relations with Lina. She literally flipped out, started shrieking and
crying, and he was mystified and alarmed.
“Can’t
you just go online and watch porn videos and stroke yourself? Isn’t that what
you do?” Lina said, between tears.
Lina
seemed happy when he never tried to initiate intimate or sexual relations
again. Indeed, Lina seemed to prefer a marriage of passionand arguments, bereft
of touch and earthy, earthly love. Once he realized this was unlikely to change
and once Ross had offered him an entrée into the world, he started to use money
from stock and options trading profits to pay for sex at a seedy rundown motel
on the strip of motels and cheap hotels, which ran along lakeshore strip and
boulevard, along the shoreline of Lake Ontario, a broad inland fresh water sea.
Meanwhile,
Lina talked about her latest medical appointments. Robert tried to ask the
right questions provide helpful feedback. She even wrote down questions he
suggested she ask the doctors and specialists the next time she visited. They
continued to not have marital relations. When she said she didn’t want to adopt
children, he began to wonder if she had been abused as a child.
Robert
thought none of this mattered anymore, as he found solace and comfort in
escorts and exotic dancers in general and in Gaia in particular. He never
imagined he would have paid money to become intimate with a woman; it would
have seemed wildly implausible in earlier times. Gaia – the young woman upon
whom he settled talked about her problems, school, boyfriends, describing them
in intimate detail. He loved to listen to Gaia, but she often turned the tables
around, but then he felt uncomfortable. Robert suspected the motel where he
continued to meet Gaia was owned by the Zhang family, since they owned several
rundown commercial properties and hotels and motels around the lakeshore and
the Queensway in Etobicoke and the address matched that he saw in their annual
report and listing of properties.
When
Gaia asked Robert about his personal life, she couldn’t believe he was locked
in a marriage where he and his wife seemed content not to have sex. The nature
of their relationship left her mystified.
“She’s
your wife—you need to know.”
“We
have a very unusual relationship. I think we’re both comfortable with the
status quo.”
When
Robert discovered Gaia had been a lifeguard, he asked her for advice about
swimming and where he could find the best swimming pool in the city. Gaia
thought he would prefer the outdoor pools; the indoors pools were small and
confining, and friction sometimes developed between fun-loving adolescents and
stodgy mature swimmers, intent on monotonous physical exercise and an uninterrupted
routine. Gaia recommended the outdoor swimming pool at Woodbine Beach, a huge
cement and concrete structure, with a diving tower, across the city on the
lakeshore. The pool became his favorite. After parking his car in the basement
garage of the office tower in the financial district or in the motel parking
lot, he boarded the streetcar along Queen Street to Woodbine beach and the
landmark outdoor pool. He rode the streetcar, relaxing, reading books resting
unread on his bookshelves, viewing the urban and lakeshore boulevard scenery.
Robert even offered to pay Gaia for swimming lessons, but she refused, although
she was tempted when he upped the ante and increased his proposed fee. Still,
Robert became a regular at the pool near Woodbine Beach, visiting the huge pool
complex, the Olympic-sized pool for lane swims in the summer evening. The
swimming pool became a cleansing site, a purification ritual. He always took
showers in the motels, but he still felt dirty and unclean afterwards. He
remembered someone saying dermatologists recommended swimming in well
maintained pools to cure and alleviate certain skin conditions—something to do
with the disinfectant effect of chlorine; of that he wasn’t certain, but the
ritual relieved him, massaged his body, soothed his mind.
Lina
started to notice he seem more muscular, toned, and tanned; most of his
trousers and pants were too large in the waist for him now. His co-workers
started to compliment him on his looks, appearance, and physique. When they
pressed him for his secret, he told them he was swimming lanes at the big
outdoor pool on the lakeshore of the eastern beaches. He didn’t tell them about
the lakeshore motel, or the sex for which he paid, which motivated and drove
his exercise, his need to swim and purge and cleanse and wash himself. He
didn’t tell them about the long conversations he had with Gaia afterwards. He
became a regular client for Gaia, whose long dark hair he liked to stroke and
caress.
Gaia
amused and regaled him with stories about the two summers he worked as a
lifeguard. One cloudy June morning, as part of their exercises, drills, and
training the head lifeguard ordered the crew of lifeguards to swim, escorted by
a speedboat, a half kilometre into Lake Ontario. The water was cold and frigid.
When Gaia waded and stumbled ashore she was confused, disoriented, staggering,
and her lips and nails turned blue. The head guard initially thought she
suffered a mild case of hypothermia. When her face and hands turned blue and
cyanotic, the supervisor feared she might suffer a cardiac arrest. An ambulance
and paramedics were summoned, and he was sent to the emergency department of
the nearest hospital.
After
that hospitalization, the head lifeguard assigned Gaia to the nearby outdoor
pool, a huge concrete structure, with three pools, including a diving pool, a
wading pool, and the Olympic swimming pool, where, following Gaia’s
recommendations, he later swam his laps regularly. As a pool lifeguard, Gaia
would never have to swim in the cold and sometimes frigid water of Lake Ontario
again. Lifeguarding at the outdoor pool was boring, though. Soon, tired of
wolf-whistles and crude talk from adolescent boys, supervising screaming brats,
coping with the demands of amateur athletes, eccentric swimmers, and trying to
be nice to doting seniors, she grew weary and simply quit.
Robert
liked Gaia’s personality and her voice, her formal way of speaking, and her
intelligence, which he believed possessed potential. He also believed she
should be in university, studying a subject like neuroscience or astrophysics.
She laughed when she heard this because when she thought of all the
overqualified, overeducated deadbeats in her family she didn’t believe in the
value of a postsecondary education any longer. She was turned off by his can-do
attitude and his talk of education and personal advancement and progress.
Meanwhile,
he thought about divorcing Lina and fantasized about eloping with her, or at
least sponsoring her college or university education. He even drove her for a
cruise to Humber College and York University, where he had been a student, and
took her on a tour of the campus during the summer. Bored by even the prospect
of community college or university, she thought he needed to be realistic.
He
still loved Lina, but in a different way, without physical intimacy. Lina
continued to remind him of his mother: while his mother was hard working and
devoutly Catholic, Lina preferred reading and meditation; but, like Lina, his
mother shunned all warmth, intimacy, and physical contact.
One
evening Robert showed up early at the motel, after he explored the lakeshore
beyond the parking lot and parkway for a short walk. In high spirits, he took
leaps and bounds up the stairs and through the foyers and hallways to the single
room he booked in advance. He showed up for their liaison and tryst at the
dingy, spare, room, which remained unrenovated since the motel was constructed
in the forties.
He
found Gaia, slumped, bent over from a sitting position on the edge of the motel
bed, with a hypodermic needle stuck in her arm, upon which he never wanted to
any tattoos inked. Gaia’s fingers and face were blue, a bubble of whitish fluid
and salvia oozed around her lips and her skin was purplish and blue in pallor.
She appeared unconscious but he suspected the worst. When he touched her, she
felt cold and lifeless. When he pinched her other arm, the stimulation failed
to evoke a physical or reflexive response. Her breathing was absent and the bed
sheet around her body and bottom was damp with moisture. He walked out of the
motel room, and left the motel through the back doors exits, which led to the
moonlit shore of Lake Ontario, feeling grief but also disappointment, since he
never expected his Gaia would be an intravenous drug user.
As
the summer nights bled one into another, and grew shorter, he no longer felt
compelled to visit the lakeshore strip of night clubs featuring exotic dancers
and motels with sultry women in tight, revealing form fitting outfits. He
continued to swim lanes at the outdoor swimming pool. As his exercise routines
became longer and more rigorous, Robert grew hard and lean, with raw sharp
chiselled looks and washboard stomach muscles. Later that summer, Moorhead
volun told him to compete a member of the investment company’s triathlon team
in the charitable Ironman competition on the Toronto waterfront. Ross wanted
Robert to compete in the swim portion for the team Maclean ManbridgeMoorheadwas
fielding for the Ironman competition. Robert reluctantly and grudgingly
volunteered.
The
previous evening he had a deeply disturbing dream, which he remembered vividly.
He dreamed that Ross Moorhead had met with Gaia in the motel room before he
arrived and injected her with an overdose, a hotshot. The dream or nightmare he
might have dismissed if it didn’t seem so plausible and realistic. He didn’t
consider himself a conspiracy theorist, and his judgment was sound as his
investment success showed.
During
the start of the race, he took off ahead of the crowd for an early lead from
the harbour beach as he swam through the cold water towards the Toronto
Islands. He managed to provide the triathlon team an early lead in time and
standing during that first portion of the race. As he swam through the cold
dark water, he grew tired and felt lost, distracted, with his brooding thoughts
turning gloomy. As he swam, his thoughts and attitude turned negative. He
thought he was trapped in a terrible life, where people were motivated by greed
and profit and others faced discrimination because of their skin color. He
thought the world cruel, mean, heartless, its people behaving badly towards one
another—colder than the deep lake waters. Earlier, at the start of the race, he
noticed all but two of the swimmers were white, pale, light-skinned, untanned,
wan looking. He had become dark, tan, through prolonged exposure to the sun and
outdoors activities. He thought he could relate to the discrimination faced by
others, after a cyclist called him a spic on the jogging trail which ran along
the lakeshore, but the remaining swimmers looked as if they would become badly
sunburned if they lingered for even a short while in the bright hot summer sun.
Did these people properly represent the diversity of the city, built by
immigrants, populated by every ethnic group in the world.
Then,
as he swam through the choppy waves of chilly Lake Ontario, he saw another
triathlete swimming alongside him. She looked exactly like Gaia. She smiled,
and the gesture struck him as beatific. He felt comforted and reassured by her
presence, swimming alongside her in the frigid water of the inland sea.
Everything would be all right, everything would turn out well in the end. He
felt strong and energetic in her presence, as his swim strokes grew in speed
and intensity. Then she ploughed ahead with faster swim strokes. When she
turned and faced him, her healthy summer tan and enthusiastic glow turned a
purple and blue hue as she glared with bared teeth. Her long red hair beneath
her bathing cap turned to squirming water snakes. Robert’s body felt cold and
numb, and he felt breathless, as he hyperventilated. His body and sensorium was
affected adversely by the cold water. His mind grew cloudy as the storm clouds
approached over the horizon across the broad expanse of Lake Ontario.
Contemplating his distance from the shore and the depth of the water, beneath
his kicking feet, in Lake Ontario, he grew afraid and panicked when he saw no
lifeguard paddling or riding in a motorboat or jet-ski nearby. He no longer
observed the beatific vision of Gaia—or the swimmer who resembled her, since he
couldn’t see her ahead or behind—he had lost sight of her position. His
thoughts jumbled, disoriented, he could not even raise his arm or voice to
summon help. With his sensorium distorted, he thought he wouldn’t be noticed by
potential rescuers; his darkly tanned skin blended with the deep lake water. He
lost control of his pace and swim stroke and his cognition lost
rationality. He swallowed water, coughed, choked, flailed, and struggled as he
sank beneath the lake surface.
Later, police patrol boats failed to
locate his body. Scuba divers and triathlon race volunteers and lifeguards gave
up the search of the harbour and lakeshore after several days. A few co-workers
from Maclean Manbridge Moorhead, in their luxury sportswear and fashionable
rubber boots, rode friends’ yachts, surveilling the lake surface, and combed
the beaches, wading through the mud, driftwood, and sand of the shoreline, but
failed to locate him or his remains. The emergency services boats used dragging
hooks, barbed like stainless steel fish hooks, to try to snag his missing body,
but these police vessels failed to find any human remains or clues. A jogger
along the lakeshore found his bloated, decomposing body in a swimsuit washed
ashore, amidst the rocks, gravel, sand, discarded beer cans and liquor bottles
and cigarette butts near the motel on the lakeshore boulevard where he met Gaia
regularly.
****