Threads of Life

Chapter 2-2

Then one morning, on his way to work, his whole life seemed backwards to him. He stopped his car on Bathurst Street, blocking the right lane, oblivious to the honking horns and angry drivers who had to pull around him. He realized he was spending almost no time with his wife and three sons, all of whom he loved deeply, and almost all his time with people he didn’t really like. I guess you could call what he had an epiphany; he decided at that moment that he was going to take his family on a vacation, somewhere warm, and for a long time.

* * *

When he returned a month later, he met with his store managers, informing them that he was selling his business and leaving the country. None of them could believe, or wanted to believe, his decision. When each of them asked him why he was selling a business that seemed to be part of his very essence and into which he had poured every ounce of his lifeblood, the only thing he said was, “the ocean”, which certainly wasn’t a satisfying explanation to someone about to lose his job.

* * *

Harry closed his stores just as quickly as he’d opened them. He sold all but one to a new chain trying to establish itself in Canada. Back in the nineteen sixties, when he was more determined than any of his competitors to expand his business, no one could have foreseen the swift decline of his empire, or that his story would be such a brief chapter in Toronto’s retail history, but that was exactly what happened. By the time Simon and I started working at the Bond Men’s Shop on Dufferin Street in the west end of Toronto during the Christmas holidays, it was the only store left. It was also the very first store Harry had opened and, despite numerous attractive offers, the only one he couldn’t bring himself to sell.

And the reason he hung on to it was because it was managed by his cousin, John, the first employee Harry had hired. John wasn’t very bright, and he tended to be lazy, but he loved and respected Harry, and he was trustworthy. And while none of these attributes were enough to save his job, the fact that he didn’t have a family of his own or anything else going on in his life was reason enough for Harry to hold onto the store long after it had stopped being profitable.

Harry never visited the last Bond Men’s Shop. And he never cashed the small cheques that John sent him, and instead mailed them back to him with a note that said he should keep the money or split it between himself and the staff, whatever he wanted, until John simply stopped mailing them.

Harry and his family moved to Florida. They lived in a big Spanish colonial-style home close to the ocean and on a private golf course. He began purchasing new properties on speculation from developers and reselling them at a substantial profit. Before long, he had exponentially increased his personal wealth to the size of twelve lifetimes, or at least enough for his kids and their kids to never have to worry about money.

* * *

The job Simon and I had at the last Bond Men’s Shop was a charity gig. Even though we were well off, my mother thought we should have some work experience and asked John if he could give us a job. And while John may have felt he couldn’t refuse any request from Harry’s sister, in case news got back to Harry, he never showed any animosity toward us while we were there and instead made us feel like we were doing him a favour.

The salesmen at the last Bond Men’s Shop were old men who looked like relics from a prehistoric time, with tape-measures dangling from their necks as they moved slowly between the racks like tired grey mice in a maze, chasing the few customers who bothered to come in. We were sixteen years old and because we were hopeless at sizing up men and selling anything—and because anything we did manage to sell was like stealing money from the full-time salesmen who worked on commission—no one in the store had any interest in showing us what to do. But the real reason we didn’t sell anything was because our uncle John, who rarely left his small office and the television set that sat on his desk, was happy to have us spend all our time with him.

After only a couple days at the store, it was pretty obvious to me that one of the salesmen, Abe, who referred to himself as the assistant manager, did all the work John was supposed to do: all the scheduling, all the organizing of the racks and shelves, all the meetings with wholesalers and the bookkeeping. The only time John was seen on the showroom floor was when he walked through the store on his way to lunch or when he decided to redecorate the store window, which he had no real talent for, but which seemed to be the only thing that still interested him.

With no children of his own, John loved our company. Or at least he loved Simon’s company and tolerated me as part of an unbreakable arrangement.

At sixteen years old, Simon was already over six feet tall. He was lean and athletic with thick black hair, symmetrical movie star features, and perfect skin. He attracted the attention of teenage girls and older women wherever he went. My uncle John, a classic social misfit, overweight and with flakes of dandruff forever falling on, and sticking to, his shoulders, loved being in Simon’s presence, like the geeky friend of the most popular kid in school.

As for me at sixteen, while I was approaching six feet in height, I was far too skinny and looked like I was going to fall asleep most of the time. And I was covered in pimples.

When we weren’t watching television with John in his office, we accompanied him to lunch or went with him to meetings where very little business, and a lot of reminiscing with men much older than him, took place. Once, we helped him redecorate the store window, where we had to remove our shoes before entering so we wouldn’t dirty the felt on the floor, leaving us trapped in an airless glass enclosure with John’s inhuman foot odour for two hours.

John had been with Bond from the very beginning and, wherever we were, Simon prodded him with questions about the good old days like he was an anthropologist conducting field research on the last of an ancient species.

Every day, we ate lunch at a restaurant called Coleman’s, a dimly lit deli with black-and-white celebrity pictures on the walls and dark red-leather high-backed booths and wet cloudy windows from the gusts of steam that came from opening and closing the metal receptacles where the smoked meat was simmering.

The waiters wore red shirts, black ties, and black pants. Uncle John had a regular booth and a regular waiter, Tony, who was as much of an anachronism as John, and who had a thick brown moustache that was certainly dyed and dark brown hair that was certainly a hairpiece.

Tony brought over a dish of pickles and olives and a basket of sliced bread that had already been buttered.

“And who are these handsome young men?”

My uncle already had a pickle in his mouth and had to chew quickly to answer Tony’s question without appearing rude. “These are my nephews, Simon and Auden.”

We both shook Tony’s hand.

“Your uncle is a very smart man. Very smart. You boys should listen very carefully to what he has to say. You could spend a year in school, and you wouldn’t learn as much as you would if you spent one day with your uncle in his beautiful store.” Tony winked at my uncle, who smiled back at him.

Apparently, Uncle John had developed a relationship with the waiter in daily one-hour increments and had used the time for two purposes: to brag about his shrewd business sense and to lament about the state of the world where people didn’t respect each other anymore. And with his tip hanging in the balance, Tony was more than a sympathetic ear.

“You’re too kind, Tony. These boys aren’t going to sell clothing. They’re going to go to university and become doctors or lawyers.”

“Oh, doctors and lawyers. That’s good. Very good. Doctors and lawyers get the best girls, if you know what I mean.”

My uncle and Tony laughed knowingly and Tony said, “What can I get you?”

Simon and my uncle each ordered a pastrami sandwich and coleslaw, and I ordered a plate of French fries with gravy.

Tony left to get water and cutlery for us.

“You see that man? That’s a real waiter. A professional. Did you boys see how he took our orders without writing anything down? He takes pride in his work. You go to a so-called fancy restaurant today and the waiters look like slobs in t-shirts and jeans, and then they write everything down on a little pad of paper and they still get the orders all mixed up, and they don’t even give a s**t. And God forbid you were to complain; then, for sure, they’re going to spit in your food or something worse.”

still“Things have really changed, Uncle John.”

“And not in a good way, Simon. Let me tell you boys a story. I had the same barber for thirty years. Two weeks ago, I went to the barber shop like I always do every other Monday and it was gone. No red-and-white barber poll. No barber chairs. No Nick, my barber. No sign that said, ‘Nick’s Barber Shop’. No men’s magazines. Just all gone. And you know what I found? Something called the ‘Sagittarius Hair Salon’! Like an i***t, I went in. A twenty-year-old girl came up to me and asked if I wanted to book an appointment with a stylist. A stylist! Then I saw a sign that said, ‘Men’s Hair Shaping – $40.00’. Hair shaping! Have you ever heard of anything more ridiculous? And it cost forty bucks! I told her I just wanted Nick to give me a haircut like he always did, and she said I should go somewhere else. That’s what’s wrong with the world, right there. If you call a barber a hairstylist, you get to charge people thirty dollars more for a haircut.”

Hair shapingI was staring at the black-and-white pictures on the walls. There was one of a former captain of the Toronto Maple Leafs and my favourite player when I was younger, back when I was still watching hockey every Saturday night. It was signed with a blue magic marker, “To Bernie. Best wishes, Dave Keon”.

Simon, however, was fully engaged.

“Where are you going to get your hair cut now?”

“I really don’t know.”

“You should ask Tony. I bet he knows a good barber.”

“You’re a smart boy, Simon. Of course, Tony will know. He takes pride in his appearance. After all, he’s handling food all day and needs to look respectable.”

When Tony returned with our water and cutlery on a tray, my uncle asked him where he got his haircut and although I was certain that Tony’s hair hadn’t been cut in many years because it was synthetic, he pulled a pen out of his pocket and tore a small corner off the red paper on his tray, and wrote out a name and address, and told my uncle to make sure he told the barber that Tony sent him.