Page 12 of The Match Faker
We never turnthe heat on in the cramped manager’s office. No one spends enough time in here to justify the cost. Over the decades, it’s become a storage space for tax documents and lost and found items, as well as a closet for our winter coats. In the summer, it’s sweltering back here, but now in winter, I’m surprised I can’t see my breath. Despite the frigid temperature in here, I’m sweating. Bernie and Rocco don’t look much better.
Ed’s rattling breaths are the only sound. He’s had a cough for a while now. At first, we thought he’d caught a bad bug and just couldn’t shake it. Then, he started losing weight, and he stopped coming in as much as he used to. When he did, he looked more and more haggard. He’d try to hide the pain he was in, wincing through a cough or stopping a fit of laughter short with a grimace. More than once, we’ve caught him hiding in the back hallway, his hand splayed out on the wall to hold himself up, unable to catch his breath.
The stubborn man refused to go to the doctor until Rocco went on strike a few months ago. They even made a picket sign and marched back and forth in the snow outside of Ed’s Cabbagetown row house, chanting, “What do we want? For my uncle to go to the doctor. When do we want it? Yesterday.”
Ed went the next day.
He practically raised Rocco after their dad—Ed’s brother—died. From the tears brimming in their eyes, I think this is the first time they’re hearing Ed’s news.
“So, that’s about the long and the short of it,” Ed says in a wheezy voice that can likely be as attributed to emotion as it can the cancer the doctor found in his lung.
Rocco squeaks and Bernie reaches for their hand, squeezing tightly. I shut my spiral notebook. My scrawled notes about reminding everyone—cough, Rocco—about closing duties and preparing for St. Patrick’s Day are insignificant in the face of this news.
If Rocco is the embodiment of flight and I’m freeze, Bernie is all fight. “I’ll start prepping frozen meals so you and Rocco don’t have to worry about cooking during treatment. Roc will take you to your appointments and Nick will start the hiring process so we can fill the gap when Rocco can’t be here.”
Ed holds up his hand, and Bernie presses her lips together, like she has to physically restrain herself from more planning.
“That’s very sweet of you, Berns.” He sounds tired.Sotired. Was he this tired last week? Has he been this tired for a while now and I just didn’t notice? He stands slowly, obviously sore, joints making a snap, crackle, pop sound that is all the louder in this stiff, scared silence. “But I can’t do both at once.”
“Can’t do both…of what?” Rocco asks.
Ed dips his chin and focuses on the desk calendar eternally stuck on May 16, 1999. “I have to sell.”
Rocco gasps.
Bernie blinks like Ed just slapped her.
I want to fucking roar. What I’ve longed for, literally dreamed of, asleep and awake, is to buy this bar, to keep it here, a small piece of Toronto history, a constant on an ever-changing street. To covet all the best parts of Ed’s haven andbuild new traditions. That one day, I’d be the Ed, giving the next generation more and more responsibility until they could practically run it themselves, letting them learn and adapt and grow with my increasingly unnecessary guidance.
I almost do roarI’ll buy Moonbarat him. The words are a hurricane force battering at my ribs so violently they’d blow this old man over if they escaped.
Until I remember that buying Moonbar is less a realistic goal and more the answer to the job interview question, where do you see yourself in ten years?
Ed outlines the process. Hiring an appraiser, then a broker. He says that these things usually move slowly. He doesn’t bother to say what we’re all thinking.Usuallydoesn’t take into account the many developers in this city who wouldn’t turn down the opportunity to commit horrific crimes in order to build condos on our footprint.
I’d rather slather my balls in fish guts and dip them directly into the Amazon River than let that happen.
Rocco hovers around Ed, adjusting the hat on his head, gathering his things and stuffing them into his old canvas backpack, offering him the faded green army jacket that’s way too thin for us to let him go outside in. “Do you want my coat, too? What about a scarf? Mittens on or off?”
Ed’s mouth works but he says nothing about their meddling. Instead of responding, he turns to me, like he can hear my thoughts. “You don’t know anyone who wants to buy this old dump, do you?” His laugh rattles in his chest.
Bernie and Rocco still and zero in on me, their expressions etched with hope. It’s no secret, my dream, but I thought I’d have more time. I fucking hate that I can’t keep it here for all of them.
“I’ll do my best,” I say, my voice a harsh rasp. If I have to go into debt up to my hair follicles, I will, to keep Moonbar in the family.
Ed nods, patting my shoulder in a paternal way that makes me feel like a kid, even as he has to reach up to me.
“We’ll have the staff meetings in my apartment from now on,” I say as he shuffles out of the office, Rocco trailing behind. “It’s warmer up there. More comfortable.”
He waves me away. “I don’t want to fuck with the stairs. Don’t worry about it, kid.”
Bernie follows them, squeezing my forearm as she passes, her mouth still pressed into a grim line. When it comes down to it, I really only have two options. I could apply for a loan, though it’s unlikely I’ll be approved. Maybe if I was a restauranteur or corporate entity, I’d have a chance. But just me? A bartender guy with pretty good credit, an abundance of band T-shirts, and no MBA? Fat chance.
Or I could get a personal loan. Like the kind my father has doled out to almost every one of my siblings, used to build an addition to a house or to start a side business. The kind he’s never offered to me for obvious reasons. Why would he lend any of his hard-earned generational wealth to the family disappointment?
I have a better shot with the bank.
From the doorway, I watch Bernie and Rocco fuss over Ed as he snoops around behind the bar, grumbling and growling at the way they hover as he goes.