Excerpt from Notice// Dustin Cole
This piece is presented in partnership with moorehype.
It’s summer 2017 in Vancouver, BC, where economic imperatives are making space less and less accessible to low-income residents. The rental crisis is intensifying, ravenous real-estate development is thriving and there is a province-wide forest fire emergency blanketing the city in smoke.
Notice is the Kafkaesque story of a man under threat of renoviction, caught in the gears of bureaucracy in a city where economic inequality runs rampant; displacement and petty frustration abound. Dustin Cole writes with a documentarian sensibility from the unique perspective of Dylan Levett—a cynical dishwasher from Alberta whose greatest fantasy is a post-car world. With the spotlight turned to the down-and-out and the working-class, Notice seemingly holds a funhouse mirror up to the city of Vancouver—but the image reflected there might be as real as it gets.
Dustin Cole was born in Hinton, near Jasper, and raised in the town of High Level, a remote community in northwestern Alberta. He received his BA in history from Simon Fraser University and is the author of the poetry collection Dream Peripheries (General Delivery, 2015). He lives in Vancouver, BC.
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“We need cutlery,” Heather said.
“Okay,” Levett said. The Hobart’s water had to be changed. Delay in the workflow. He got some latex gloves to insulate his hands from the hot water and parts. He pulled out the smoking catch, set it upside down on the removable rails above the sink and sprayed out the debris. He brought out the flat guard and the plug, had to put his hand in the dirty scorching water. He looked at the dish shelf on the line and it was near empty. The cooks were resorting to takeout ramekins. He realized he was grinding his teeth, tried to relax his clenched jaw. As the water drained he shelved dishes and containers, rubber spatulas, wooden spoons. He brought out a flat rack and dumped out the jangling cutlery bucket. Smell of chlorine. He sprayed out the bucket and sprinkled in some disinfectant crystals, let hot water drop in full valve. He smoothed out the cutlery, sprayed off the disinfectant, twisted round and flipped the small lever inside the dishwasher and lowered the door to refill it, then twisted back round and arranged the cutlery by utensil in a compartmentalized basket. He tried to do it fast, sighting butter knives, grabbing as many facing the same way as he could and slotting them, forks, steak knives, teaspoons. He set the basket on the flat rack and slid it inside the purified Hobart. He tried to keep the dishwasher going all the time, to always have something in there, but it was difficult to time properly and all the while he felt more oppressed by the rote actions. He would race to fill a rack, fill it, but the dishwasher was not through its cycle, so he would shelve dishes, clearing room for the newly clean to slide out in a hot fog, spectacles opaque in the maddening jungle-like atmosphere. Wait for those ones to cool, doing something else, and so on, unable to coordinate his actions.
He took a break and emailed Dion. He needed to jam, craved the outlet. Dion had not responded to his last five emails.
The arbitration hearing was in two weeks. He wasn’t looking forward to it.
Jacob set an empty plastic insert on the mess in front of Levett and Levett flung the insert to the far end of the counter at the wall and it bounced and crashed off the piles of other smattered hardware.
“This job sucks shit,” he muttered a bit too loud.
Nearby William set buns in the toaster. He looked up quizzically at Levett, who had taken on a darker cast. The muscle twitched in his clamped jaw. He scowled, plucking up one-litres and stacking them. The strainer and first aid kit tumbled down.
“Fuck me,” he said. The cooks noticed, heard his percussion. I’m trying to get fired, he decided. Five months in and he had lost interest in the position, kept trying to convince himself the gig was easy money. It was only as easy as boring drudgery could be. “I’m gonna quit this fucking job,” Levett said openly.
Heather set another bus bin on the rails above the sink. He pushed it away.
Rough music emanating from his area. He picked up the bus bin with one hand, straight-armed it and the contents clattered out on the steel counter. A couple of plates broke. It felt good doing it.
“Oh and I love my job,” Bobby whimpered. “Everybody’s getting killed Dylan,” she shouted.
“I didn’t say you weren’t,” he snapped.
He was trying to make it through what was there, then another voice called out “Behind!” and another mess appeared. Always voices from behind and arms reaching around and more work in front of him.
It did not end for another five hours. And then it slowed down completely. Only a dozen casual drinkers in the pub. Levett grabbed a one-litre of iced cola and saw workers disassembling the big stage outside, setting pipework on lengths of dunnage parallel to the stone curbs.
All night, an unbroken line of chits staring at the cooks’ faces and the cooks jumping around in the grease and trodden vegetables. Levett back and forth between the cooks to shelve the clean dishes and mixing bowls, the knives, having to say “Behind,” and “Sharp,” with the knives pointing down. He always thought someone might slip and the knife would pierce a throat or a belly, an eye, run across a major vein.
Jacob worked late. He had been there since nine in the morning. In the basement he was taking the first opportunity that day to restock the upstairs freezer. Levett appeared before him.
“That was psycho.”
“Uh, y-yeah. I’ve been here for like two years, and that was, that was, ea-ea-easily the busiest day I’ve ever worked here.”
“My ginch are completely wet.”
“Yeah, I-I c-can imagine. You were in the dish pit for an entire eight hours. That’s crazy. One t-t-time I was s-stuck in there for three hours and it was hell. So good on ya.”
Levett went into the cooler to fetch his beers.
Jacob appeared. “I-I put some smelly steaks and schnitzel in that bucket of yours.”
“Thanks, I appreciate that Jacob,” he said and turned away, taking the steps in threes and coming out the clamorous steel door.
The streets were hazed over. He went across Water, up Cambie toward Cordova. The westing sun was swollen pink like a chafed nipple.
