Brian
“For Brian, 1 BEEF VINDALOO, 1 WHT CHOC BROWNIE, add ice cream.”
This is the sum total of my knowledge of Brian: his food orders. He is the information contained on receipts stapled to the tops of brown paper bags delivered to our building each day. I know him for his food preferences and the frequency with which he orders and his extravagance, sometimes no more than a coffee and croissant.
The bags sit on the floor either just outside the locked main entrance or inside. If outside I move them in to prevent theft. But this bag’s been here for 24 hours so now it’s time for me to steal it. That’s what I do with abandoned deliveries, I take them. If I don’t the cleaners will and they’ll throw them away without separating the contents. I take the delivery to my place, empty the bag, study the receipt again, beef vindaloo, and wonder if it’s too spicy for the dog.
The dog is the one who started it. That’s how I developed my intimate knowledge of Brian’s food tastes, the dog took a keen personal interest in the bags sitting on the floor. He needed to stop and sniff each one. It became a highlight of his coming and going during the Pandemic, wondering what Brian had ordered this time.
Brian is the record holder for most food deliveries in this building, the majority of which he retrieves. The dog and I see them and when next we pass they’re typically gone. It goes without saying that I’m curious about Brian. Which guy? Which floor? Which unit? Why coffee? But the dog is thrilled. Bagels with cream cheese, wraps, shawarma, falafel, burgers and fries. All this will soon be mine, he thinks to himself, and sometimes he’s right.
The floor on which I live contains mostly long-timers, folks who’ve lived here since the building opened seven years ago, an indoor streetscape with carpeted sidewalk. We know one another. It takes a while to connect a new face in the garbage room or garage or on the elevator with a particular floor and door, it takes a while to accumulate enough chance encounters. But we have a new guy, he lives at the far end of my hall.
Eventually, the new guy and I say Hi, or rather, I say Hi and he offers a nod. Over the course of a year, he loosens up, says Hi somewhat more readily. It’s because of the dog. He likes the dog. He pats him. I know to be restrained. It doesn’t come naturally but I try. He has a fence around himself. I can do fences. It takes everything I have to appear indifferent, uninterested. I lean against the wall of the elevator, chill, as we ride down. One morning clad in no more than a housecoat and slippers he exits the elevator at the main floor, walks over to a waiting brown paper food delivery bag, and picks it up. The new guy down the hall, the food buyer: Brian.
I have so many questions. Do you ever buy groceries? How can you forget you’ve ordered food? I’ve decided for my own purposes that he works in tech, started working remotely during the pandemic, and never went back. He’s bug-eyed like you’d expect those guys to be. Up all hours. Circadian rhythms a mess. He looks wired, you could say stoned. He gives the impression of only ever breathing indoor air and never seeing the light of day. But he eats. The dog and I know he eats.
The one time I have to interact with Brian it’s on behalf of the property management company. I’ve volunteered to stand in the lobby and hand out key cards for a new security system. I collect signatures. All the cards have been claimed except his. I go to his unit and knock. He talks at me through the door: Who is it? he asks. I tell him about the new key card. Slide it under the door, he says. I need a signature, I say. Later, he says.
We’re into new territory now, Brian and I. Our relationship has taken a turn: I’m pissed at a man I don’t even know but with whom I’m on a first name basis in my head and whose food I occasionally steal. It’s complicated. He doesn’t even know.
A load of Police activity on the 3rd floor today, says a text from my neighbour some time later, this one a friend of mine. Brian!, I text back, shouting his name into the keyboard. 306, says my friend identifying the unit in which Brian lives, Planned raid and arrest. That’s my guy, I reply. I’ve been on about Brian with this neighbour for ages. The weird one, Long hair, my friend says. YES!!!, I reply. I’m thrilled. It’s both selfish and inappropriate given Brian’s obvious misfortune but I’ve wanted to know more about him for ages and now it appears I’ll find out. The local media will tell me.
Dark web. Drugs. Homeland Security, the RCMP, and Canadian Border Services. It seems Brian has brought the wrath of no fewer than three agencies down upon him.
An elephant in the room is nothing compared to an elephant in the elevator. Brian is back the next day. Despite the handcuffing and armed escort by five RCMP Brian is free. I’d imagined such a dramatic exit to be joined by an equally dramatic conclusion: gone and stayed gone. Incarcerated. But no, there’s all that stuff in the middle, the innocent until proven guilty part. It takes time. He’ll need a place to live.
There’s an Amazon guy in the elevator with us. I don’t feel comfortable saying what I’d rehearsed. Brian pats the dog, clutches a bag of food he’s actually gone to a nearby provider to retrieve, the dog sneaks a sniff. Rough week, I want to say. A moment of solidarity. We get off the elevator, Amazon guy is behind me; I still can’t say anything, he’s blocking me. But I’m not an Amazon customer so I’ll lose him momentarily. But no. He follows me. I turn and look at him. You can’t be coming to my place, I say, I’m not an Amazon customer. Alice Ruth, he asks. My daughter, I say. Her delivery. Brian is now long gone.
It took a while but finally I came to view Amazon guy as my guardian angel, put in the elevator to protect me from myself. But for him I’d have said my “rough week” to Brian. But for him Brian may have taken exception. As it is when I see Brian now I can still say say things like, How’d you make out in the storm, or, Beautiful day, leaving it to him to wonder whether I know about his current straits, giving away nothing of my outsized interest in him and my disappointment in his no longer ordering food that there’s some chance will become mine, each of us going about our our day, our lives as we deem usual.
As an apartment dweller I thoroughly loved the drama, humour, real life quiks and outright surprises in your story. A great read.
Ah, the Brian! We have one on our road. I talked to him once and he told me he'd lived away - in California - for a few years before coming home. I found out later from the street Gladys (think Bewitched) that California was code for prison.