Ghosted Read Free

had started playing a reel of the night before.
    Clicks, flashes:
faces. He knows some of them, but barely, from shelters, soup kitchens, alleyways, the shantytown down by the lake—others he doesn’t recognize.
    A pile of cocaine. Someone laughs. It billows up in a cloud.
    Mason beheading champagne bottles with his dog-dragon sword—running the blade up the seam in the glass—the tops, cork intact, shooting across the room, the neck cut cleanly, champagne everywhere, golden and bubbling.
    “And now … the Five Gallon Bottle Dance!” Mason grabs a hat off someone’s head. People gasp, but Mason has already begun—mixing five kinds of booze in the stranger’s hat. He begins to glug it down.
    The stranger grabs the hat. His face contorts. Booze spilling over both of them.
    Mason hits Play on the ghetto blaster. He steadies a wine bottle on his head, his arms stretched out for poise and glory, then bends his legs and begins to kick in time to the music, dropping to his knees for the finale.
    The bottle exploding on the floor, his legs still circling through red wine and glass. Bright streaks of blood …
    Click:
someone throws a punch.
    Flash:
chaos.
    And now it was morning. Mason on his knees again—sunrays streaming through the skylight, everything dry: the stains on the floor, the tongue in his mouth.
    Water, you asshole!
    This was no ordinary hangover. He made it to the sink, but every sip came up again. And then he just kept heaving—nothing in him but blood and bile and breath. He was at the point of accepting defeat, maybe even death, then decided to seek professional help. There was a clinic on Yonge Street that took youeven without a health card. Mason had gone there for an infected dog bite his first day in town.
    He crawled across the floor and found his jacket. It was stuffed under the couch—the cellphone and the last of the money still in the pocket: enough for a cab there and back.
    In the hall, atop the long straight flight of stairs, he wavered for a moment trying to balance between gravity and the banister. He reached for the rail and began the descent.
    Once outside he clung to a lamppost, waving for a cab. Then he noticed something in the gutter, surrounded by a shimmering circle of broken glass. It looked like a coffee maker would, had it been thrown from a three-storey window.
    A taxicab was honking. Mason lurched towards it.
    The clinic was in a mall. The woman at reception looked bored.
    “I need help,” Mason gasped.
    “What exactly is the problem, sir?”
    “I think I turned thirty.”
    “Take a seat,” she said.
    When the doctor saw him, she put her hands on his throat. “I’m Dr. Francis,” she said, then slipped a stethoscope beneath his shirt. “Breathe deeply.”
    He inhaled, the cold metal on his chest, and started to giggle. “Are you really a doctor? You look so young.”
    She pushed her chair back.
    “You’re about to vomit,” she said. And then his guts were in his throat. “There’s a bathroom across the hall.”
    Five minutes later he was back.
    “Sorry about that.” Mason took a seat.
    She looked at his eyes without looking in. His head was clearfrom the purging, and now he could see how smart she was—a disturbing kind of intelligence.
    “Really,” he said.
    “Really what?”
    “I’m really sorry.”
    “You’ve got tonsillitis.”
    “Really?”
    “You say that a lot.” She turned to some papers on her desk. “Probably it’s been there for a while and you haven’t noticed. We’ll get you some antibiotics.” She wrote a prescription and handed it to him. “There’s a pharmacy past the food court.”
    “Okay,” said Mason. “Thanks.”
    “Take this, too.” She put a pamphlet in his hand. It was blue, with a chimpanzee on it.
    Through the food court, past the Source, the Royal Bank, then the Yarn Barn, Mason finally reached the entrance to the Pharmasave—but things were starting to shake and swirl again. A sign hanging from the ceiling