“I’ve been fired.”
Anastasia’s eyes widened with surprise, not expecting such openness, to say nothing of the down-to-earth revelation. He did not know if you could classify it as a letdown, or a disappointment, but she certainly seemed surprised. Maybe she did not want to come down to the hard knocks and details of reality so soon.
“Yes, I’ve led an honest and incorruptible career as a parking enforcement officer. I’ve ticketed Rolls Royces, I’ve ticketed Lamborghinis. Mind you, the owners of these superfast and luxury cars probably didn’t give a damn. They probably were glad somebody noticed their cars were accumulating piles of tickets beneath the windshield wiper or on the dash. Anyway, I’ve ticketed scooters and motorcycles, trucks, electric cars, lawn tractors, and just about everything in between. I’ve unwittingly ticketed city councillors, public works supervisors, my own bosses, mobsters, police officers, but they’re were all the same to me. I didn’t care who they were, if they were famous, wealthy, or how important or distinguished their job titles were. Nobody was left unscathed by his ticket pad. That may have been why he went down—why he got caught in a sting. One Monday, on a Monday when I had a case of the Mondays, an attractive woman, who looked like a porn star, asked me to take care of her ticket. She offered me money to fix or junk her parking ticket. For some reason, I still don’t know why, I wasn’t outraged, as would have been my usual reaction. I guess I found her so attractive I’d say she had a certain roguish charm—I offered to purge her ticket for free. Next thing you know I’m caught up in the dragnet of this anti-corruption task force.”
“You were set up, entrapped by the gross fucking capitalists and bourgeois,” Donatella interjected.
Anastasia was surprised with the vociferous language Donatella had used; it wasn’t as if she was a raving communist, or a devoted socialist. The zeal surprised Anastasia and she thought her stance was uncharacteristic. “Since when have you become a socialist?”
“Anyhow, the union and his lawyer are fighting to get his job back, but I’m not sure I want it anymore.”
Donatella remembered Sergey as a figure she had admired years ago, when he had supervised his niece and her best friend as children. He caught Donatella’s eyes and her plump lips broke into a smile. Even Anastasia sensed the sudden spark in the emotional chemistry and the excitation roused between them. Donatella was still stunned by his lack of censoriousness, his forthrightness, straightforwardness, and blunt honesty. Then, as he explained, as he learned firsthand, losing one’s job sometimes had a certain radicalizing and potentially liberating effect.
“When I think about it, think twice, three times, maybe more, I don’t know that I really care about parking enforcement anymore.”
“But you lost your job, Uncle,” Anastasia said. “It pays good money from what I hear. Mom says you earn more in parking enforcement than most people with university degrees at other jobs.”
“But it’s the work of a zombie. You’re running around the streets, tucking parking tickets under windshield wipers, handing out fines that make car drivers go ballistic. I think it’s time for a career change, to switch jobs, if I can find another. I’ll miss the benefits, the dental plan, and the pension no doubt, but—”
Having already invited the young women into the house, this time he took each young woman by the shoulders from behind and gently joked and mocked as he pushed them inside. Since it was late and their eyes were showing signs of tiredness, he escorted them upstairs to their bedroom. He showed them the thick down-filled sleeping bag on the floor where one could nap, then the single bed where the other could sleep.
“You can toss a coin to see who gets the sleeping bag.”
The two girls looked at each other knowingly and laughed. Not quite knowing what to say, not privy to any secret or not-so-secret life the duo shared, he shrugged. Still, he could not help mentally drifting along the stream of memories and remember the time his niece had made Donatella blubber and cry. Over a decade ago, he graduated from journalism school at college, with no trade towards which he could apply his diploma: He didn’t see how anyone could earn a living in journalism in Canada, even though he had spent the last three years attempting to make a career out of news coverage and reporting. He thought he was educated to an almost excessive degree, indeed to a college degree, with nothing productive towards which he could direct his training, without being able to find a job and he felt lost. Meanwhile, his sister, desperately needing somebody to look after her kid, invited him to live with her young burgeoning family, her and her daughter. He decided to fill the role as au pair for his sister. He remembered his niece Anastasia had insisted that her little friend play in the guest room in the basement where he slept at night. Looking after the two youngsters for his sister, he had been helping them put together a huge jigsaw puzzle of the CN Tower, in the living room, when Anastasia encouraged Donatella to help her wreck the puzzle and fled the scene of the vandalism. Hearing Donatella cry, he had gone back downstairs where he collected the scattered pieces of the jigsaw puzzle, while the music television the girls had left on blared in the background, and he attempted to calm her down and figure out what was wrong. He had even ended up calling Donatella’s mother because her daughter was so upset and could not stop crying. Donatella’s mother, who heard her daughter’s shrieks over the telephone, remained unconcerned. Having gone so far as to seize the telephone from his hand, Donatella sobbed, cried, and shrieked into the receiver, to his horror. Perturbed, Donatella’s mother finally decided to take some action and hurried over to the house. The incident had surprised and almost panicked him, since he had never expected his usually sweet and compliant niece to bully anybody, particularly at such a tender age. But that was the past, when they were children, and now they were young adults.
