Blood Sports
A Novel
Hate is everything they said it would be and it waits for you like an airbag.
– Mark Anthony Jarman,
from 19 Knives
Hi Mel,
If you’re not eighteen yet, I want you to put this letter down right now. Okay? There’s a whole bunch of shit you don’t need to deal with until you’re ready. Your mom (I call her Paulie, even though she hates it. Try it, and you’ll get her Popeye squint) and I talked it over. We agreed not to put the heavy on you because we’re trying not to fuck your head up too bad.
You probably won’t be Melody when you read this. I’m wondering what Paulie will change your name to. Paulie was stuck on Anastasia, after the princess, but I thought no one would be able to spell it and you’d get tagged with Stacy or Staz or anything but your real name. My top choice was Sarah, but Paulie thought that was going to bite you in the ass in school when you met up with the hundred other Sarahs in your class. We went through a whole bunch of baby-name books, and couldn’t agree on a single name. Paulie’s picks were too fancy and she thought mine were dull. Her words in the operating room: “If you fucking stick my girl with Jennifer while I’m under, I will rip your nuts off.”
Paulie wanted an all-natural birth at home. Her friends here are into hippie shit like giving birth in wading pools and eating the placenta. Besides, she hates hospitals, doesn’t think they’re clean enough and hated the thought of you in a germ-factory. I’m not a big fan of hospitals myself, so we were all set to have you enter the world at home (no pool or placenta though). But things got hairy, and Ella, the midwife, called an ambulance. Paulie kept saying she’d spent enough of her life wasted and didn’t want any shit, but she ended up having every drug in the book. I’m sure when she’s mad she tells you what a pain you were to deliver.
Paulie exploded when they put the tent around her belly because she wanted to watch you coming, even if they were going to cut you out. Is your mom all ladylike now? Ha. I bet she is. You wouldn’t believe the things that came out of her mouth, but they put the tent up anyway and she asked me to videotape everything so she could watch it later. I saw the first incision and said, “Can’t do it, Paulie.”
The midwife wouldn’t videotape, but she said she’d describe everything to Paulie. Ella is this tiny fireball, a Filipina in her mid-forties, and she had to hop to peek over. I went and found her a stool and then waited in the hallway because there was no way I could listen to that. I walked down to the vending machine and got a coffee. So I missed your grand entrance. But we have a tape of everything up to that point, even the ambulance ride. I’m sure Paulie’s made you watch it by now. I stapled Ella’s business card to the back of this page, so you can look her up if you want.
I could hear you crying. You were loud as an opera singer. I could hear you all the way down the hall. Sad fact: Your dad is a big old weenie. I got a head rush and had to sit down. When I finally got my rear in gear, the nurse and midwife were checking you out, cleaning you up and swaddling you in the corner. The surgeon was finishing up your mom. She was pretty wiped. We’d been awake for three days by then.
When Paulie asked Ella if she should nurse, Ella laid you on her and you latched just like that. No problemo. All the shit going down and you took it in stride. Your mom’s smile, all proud of you.
“Come around here, you’ve got to see this,” Paulie said. “It’s like she’s mainlining.”
The nurse beside her stiffened. We’d had to disclose about Paulie being in Narcotics Anonymous. I think we freaked some of the staff. The whole week we were in the hospital, they acted like we were going to break out the rigs and turn our room into a shooting gallery.
I never got the deal with newborns. You were bald but hairy, red and wrinkled like any other newborn, and I’m sorry, Mel, but man, that is not a good look on you. You were sucking at Paulina’s boob like there was no tomorrow, your eyes screwed tight in ecstasy.
Before she left, Ella made sure we had a six-pack of supplement. She showed me how to pour it into this plastic cup about the size of those ketchup cups they have at McDonald’s. You were sleeping, and Ella said I was going to have to feed you and change your diapers because Paulie was against the wall.
When you have kids, you’ll know what that first night is like. You were intense, babe. Jonesing for the boob-juice, as Paulie would say. I tried to tilt the cup slowly into your mouth but it got all over your face and down your neck. A nurse came running when you started freaking out. Once you were screaming, I dumped the formula down your throat and you choked it back. Oh boy, were you mad. You had this “Fuck you, you cunt” look that your mom gets when she’s in a pissy mood. I guess I was pretty punchy, because I started laughing. You were just too cute. You and your fuck-you look. Only a couple hours in the world, and you were already giving it attitude.
Paulie phoned her family to ask them to come check you out, but they were like, yeah, whatever. When Paulie was eight months pregnant, we realized we didn’t have enough money for all the shit we needed. She dressed up all careful, and I dressed up all careful and we tried to go to them, and they were like, give it up. Let some nice couple adopt your kid. Junkies shouldn’t raise kids. A whole bunch of shit like that, but with swearing and screaming. Paulie thought that once they saw we were serious, once they saw how cute you were, they’d come around.
Your mom’s parents hated my guts from the get-go, so I can’t say I was surprised or disappointed. If you go and talk to them, they’re going to bad-mouth your mom. I know it. I’ve listened to enough of their crap. Let me tell you something: there’s no one more sanctimonious than a dry drunk. It wasn’t like they were saints, you know? But Paulie was their first addict, and they thought she was lower than them because they were just alcoholics.
The first time Paulie relapsed, her dad was like: “I knew you wouldn’t last, you slutty piece of shit.”
That’s when your mom and I got together, after she got out of rehab. She wanted to make amends, admit to another human being.
How much has Paulie told you? I wish I knew. It’s hard to write it down because it’s all grown-up shit. You’ve been gone a few days now. Your mom and I decided that this was the best way to deal with things. Maybe it isn’t, you know? We can’t think of anything else to do, Mel.
I respect your mom. Yeah, she’d relapsed a couple of times, but that’s the way it goes, you know? In the movies, everyone who goes straight stays straight. It’s all “Oh, I will never touch that evil stuff again” and then whatever actor is playing a junkie will look all soppy and pleased, and end credits, happily ever after. But it takes time to realize how deep the hooks go. You never believe how hard they’ve sunk in until you try pulling them out. The first time you clean up, you feel immortal, untouchable. You get cocky. You want to test it out, ride that dragon one last time. Or you realize that your life is still in the crapper anyway and cleaning up hasn’t done fuck all. You hate yourself and everyone agrees that you are worth hating.
I don’t know where your other Gran and Granpa are these days. Eugene and Chrissy Bauer, if you want to look them up. Eugene went MIA when I was two. Chrissy phones it in. You’re going to have to do the heavy lifting to keep a relationship with her going. I’m not trying to discourage you from meeting them, but be warned they’re big talkers. Their promises are sugar-covered shit.
I don’t want you to think I’m not around because I don’t care, Mel. Okay? Lots of things happened that had nothing to do with you. Daddy’s knee-deep in a mess and has to dig himself out. Paulie and I agreed that it would be safer if you guys went away. Wherever you are, I’m thinking of you.
Bad news on the genetic front: my side of the family has never swum in the cool gene pool. I don’t think they’ve even dipped their toes in it. Have you ever seen that televangelist who wears silver lamé muumuus on late-night TV? You know, the one who believes that God is an alien who will ride a comet to earth to kick-start the Apocalypse? He’s a great-uncle of yours, sweetie, and our only claim to fame.
Your eczema is from our side of the family. Two of your aunts and a couple of your cousins have adult onset diabetes. The uncles mostly get Alzheimer’s in their late sixties. I’m the only one with epilepsy, so the doctors don’t think it’s genetic, but that’s their best guess.
It’s not that scary, though. I don’t even think about it most days. I’ll run you through it. Put your palms on your temples. Okay? Cover the tops of your ears with your thumbs and your index fingers. Cup your head with your fingers. Your temporal lobes are patches of squiggly grey matter underneath your hands. Daddy has what they used to call temporal-lobe epilepsy, but now they call my type of epilepsy partial seizures secondarily generalized. They’ll probably call it something else by the time you read this. They change the name every time they find out something new.
When Daddy freezes up, that first seizure is called an aura. Not the New-Age you-must-be-angry-because-you-have-a-lot-of-red-in-your-halo aura, but a sensory seizure. When it starts, I feel it in my stomach, like I’m seasick. Then it changes. You know that feeling you get after you’ve watched a scary movie late at night, alone, and you know no one’s in the house with you. It’s just your imagination but you can’t stop being scared anyway. That’s how that seizure feels.
The second seizure starts right after the first one, but I’m not awake for it. When you think of an epileptic attack, I’m sure you think of people falling down and convulsing. It’s over in a few minutes, and Daddy wakes up tired, sore, and confused.
For a while, Daddy was self-medicating with pot. All those NA meetings rub off on you though, and Daddy realized he’d been over-medicating, and got himself down to two hoots, twice a day. Don’t go overboard when you’re trying pot, Mel. It’s right up there with watching too much TV: a whole whack of your life passes you by, and you don’t realize it until you stop. You get stuck in this zone not quite in the real world.
Your mom and I were always careful. Condoms and spermicide. Condoms every single time. You must have really wanted to be born, Mel. Paulie almost had a heart attack when she learned she was pregnant, and we started going to every NA meeting East Van had to offer. That was our life for two weeks: eat, shit, NA, eat, shit, NA, sleep. Wake up, eat, shit, NA. If there wasn’t a NA meeting open, we went to AA. Paulie wasn’t using when you were conceived, but she was shaky. She was at that point when she could have slipped over. And by then we both knew how easy it was to slip.
Jazz was Paulie’s sponsor. They talked long and hard. Paulie just didn’t say, fuck it, I’ll have this kid. She thought about you. Everyone on The Drive who ever went to NA knew about you when you were the size of a cocktail shrimp because she’d fucking talk to everyone.
When Paulie makes up her mind, then it is game over. She took out every book in the library that said anything about being a mom. She badgered her way into parenting courses with waiting lists the length of your arm. She’d corner these new parents and quiz them until they got this glazed look, filled with the fear of God because this woman would not let go.
We were both scared shitless because we didn’t think we were good enough for you, Mel. But we wanted you. You were the biggest risk we ever took. You were the only good thing to come out of a lot of bad.
1st BLOOD
22 JUNE 1998
The waiting room of Wal-Mart’s photography studio had all the charm of a bus depot. Tom held Melody in his lap. The other parents were uniformly grubby, but their children sported starched name brands as they tore through the sticky selection of toys. Melody squirmed as she watched the children, lifting the hem of her dress to gum the lace. Tom brushed her hair to the side. Soft and white blond, it sprouted from her head like dandelion fluff.
Paulina wandered back with the promised McDonald’s fries and, alas, the dreaded paint swatches.
Mel bounced excitedly at the sight of the fries. “Uh! Uh! Uh!”
“Just one,” Paulie said, handing her a crisp, dark one, Mel’s favourite kind of fry.
Paulie sat in the orange plastic chair one over from Tom, spreading the swatches out on the chair between them. Today’s Sesame Street will be brought to you by the colour yellow, Tom thought, and every frigging shade of it imaginable. Mel slouched against him, her hair tickling his stubble. She gnawed contentedly.
“I’m leaning toward Lemon Zing,” Paulie said. “With a Washday White trim. What do you think?”
“Which one’s Lemon Zing?”
Paulie set it apart from the others. “I know it’s a little darker than,” shuffle, shuffle, “Prairie Snow, but the living room is so bright, maybe we should go with,” shuffle, shuffle, “Summer Wheat.”
“Uh! Uh! Uh!”
Paulie absently handed Mel another fry before Mel went ballistic.
“Lemon Zing reminds me of those Easter egg–shaped cookies my mom used to get half price.”
Paulie stopped playing with the swatches to eyeball him, making sure he wasn’t poking fun.
“You know,” Tom said. “The ones with the crunchy icing. You only get them at Easter.”
“Do you like the colour or don’t you?”
“I like it.”
“Hmm.” Paulie scowled. “If we go with Lemon Zing in the living room and the hallway –” And she was off. He watched her mouth moving, her lips chapped and red. She used to wear cotton-candy-pink lipstick, or, when she was feeling dangerous, dark, dark red.
Looking around the room, Tom realized they looked as time-warped as the other parents. His plaid shirt with the grey thermal underwear poking through the holes, his shaggy hair, and ragged sneakers all screamed grunge, a look that had died four years ago with Kurt Cobain. Paulie dressed like she did in high school. Biker chick. Tight black jeans tucked into knee-high shit kickers and a low-cut Metallica tank top. She hadn’t dyed her hair since she got pregnant, so from her ears down, her hair was frazzled strawberry blond. Her roots were light brown.
“Look at Paulina’s real hair,” his mother had said before their big blow out. “Yours is just as dark. Now look at Mel’s. Tell me who she took after.”
Mute with frustration, he hadn’t said anything, hadn’t been able to drag out Paulie’s baby pictures in defence.
“And then look at her last boyfriend’s hair. You can’t tell me you’ve never wondered.”
“Tom?” Paulie said. “I’d appreciate it if you actually fucking listened to me.” When Paulie was seriously mad, her blue eyes went so dark they looked black. They narrowed, beady.
“Sorry,” Tom mumbled.
“This is important to me.”
“You’re just hot, Paulie. Sometimes I get floored looking at you. You’re so hot sometimes I can’t think.”
“You asshole,” Paulie said, but her eyes lightened.
“Sorry.”
Mel yawned.
Paulie gathered up the swatches and jammed them in her purse.
“Seventy-six,” the assistant called out. “Number seventy-six.”
“That’s us,” Paulie said, picking up Mel.
Tom reached beside the chair for the diaper bag. The middle-aged couple across from him grinned. The man touched the rim of his baseball cap. Nice save, he mouthed.
Paulie dozed on the floor, letting Mel crawl over her. The phone rang and Tom picked up, expecting Jazz to ask for Paulie for their nightly catch-up. The line hummed in silence.
“Hello?” Tom said. He waited, and then sighed and hung up. He marked the time on the calendar. His mom was averaging three calls a week. They’d traced the numbers back to pay phones in the skids.
“She’s still trying, which is more than my parents are doing,” Paulie said. “Cut her some slack.”
“I’m detaching,” Tom said.
“Detach with love,” Paulie said.
“If she keeps this up,” Tom said. “I’m detaching with a restraining order.”
“Tom,” Paulie said.
“You know what gets me? She doesn’t say anything. She’s just waiting for me to break and pretend –” Tom shut his mouth. He didn’t want to spend the rest of the night analyzing what was probably a drunken grand gesture on his mother’s part.
Tom scooped up Mel and took a whiff of her diaper. He stood her in front of him. She reached for his hands, ready to be finger-walked around the room.
“You’re choosing to hold this grudge,” Paulie said. “And the only one it’s hurting is you.”
“Write that down,” Tom said. “I’ll read it back to you after Thanksgiving dinner at your parents’ place.”
Paulie threw her pillow at him. “You can be such a dink.”
“You are the son of a gambler and a whore,” his Aunt Faith had told him when he was almost five. She’d reached down to stroke his hair as if this was a reassurance. The Greyhound had pulled into the station. VANCOUVER spelled in dull white letters on the bus’s chrome forehead. His mother was inside buying their tickets, last minute. Her love of drama precluded planning. Aunt Faith guarded him and their luggage as they waited.
His mother burst through the doors, unmistakable with her mane of big bar-hair. She ran awkwardly in her laced-up granny boots, in the tight skirt with ruffles, pastel blue with matching pantyhose overlaid with ruffled socks, a popular look in the early eighties, ZZ Top–inspired fashion.
“It would have been better if they’d given you up for adoption or not had you.” Aunt Faith so serious and scrubbed, grey sweater set and slacks under a tailored coat, pearls but no makeup, her skin under the fluorescent lights the colour of bread dough. In the winter air, her breath frosted over her head as she spoke. “Some people are not meant to be parents.”
The bus had a sickly sweet smell of cheap strawberry air freshener and stale cigarette smoke. Tom knelt in his seat and rested his forehead against the window. His mother dozed beside him. The window was cold, but the heater beneath it blasted hot air. Tom’s cheeks felt sunburnt if he stayed that way too long.
They’d scored the front seats by the door, overlooking the driver and the road ahead. The lights from passing cars and trucks and semis kept him awake, and now, in the pre-dawn, the view was the same as it had been yesterday: long stretches of highway dusted with blowing snow, rolling hills dotted with the occasional horse or cow herd. They’d had lunch in Calgary, his mother leaving their coats on the seats so no one would steal them.
“Do you want to play a video game?” his mother had asked. “Look, they have Pac Man.”
“No.”
“Do you want a chocolate bar?”
“No.”
“Now I know there’s something wrong,” she said. “My sweet tooth never says no to candy.” She felt his forehead. “How about a comic?”
She bought an Archie & Jughead. She pointed to the pictures and read the bubbles as the bus swayed.
“You’re not laughing,” she said. “What’s wrong?”
Tom shook his head. “Nothing.”
“Are you scared?”
“No.”
“Are you sad about leaving your auntie? We can go out for Christmas once we’re settled.”
“I don’t want to. She’s mean.”
His mother closed the comic. “What happened?”
“Nothing.”
“Oh, Lord,” his mother said. “Oh, honey, come here.”
“No, no, I’m a big boy.”
She pulled Tom into her lap. “She’s not trying to be mean, you know. Do you remember when we talked about her being blunt? That’s what she is. She likes you, Tommy.”
“No, she doesn’t.”
“She does. She wouldn’t have let us stay so long if she didn’t like you.”
“I’m tired.”
“Whatever she said, she meant it in the best way. She thinks she’s just being honest, but she doesn’t know how she hurts people, and she doesn’t understand why they don’t like her any more. She’s very, very lonely – Tommy, look!”
Mountains like crooked teeth glittered in the distance.
“Don’t be sad, Tommy. The sun is shining and the whole world’s opening up for us.”
Paulie’s favourite TV show repeated at 3 a.m. They found this out when Mel started teething. Mel had been sleeping through the night for two months, and they’d been smug because all the other parents in their parenting group were having problems getting their kids down. They’d even got Mel in her crib in her own room. Then her cheeks became red and chapped, her gums swelled, her weaning stopped, and her schedule went to crap. Mel was back in their bed, snuggled into Paulina. They temporarily moved the TV into the bedroom. The pert host of DIY Live! bounced around the set with starched bangs and a ponytail that bobbed with each excited flick of her head.
“I think she’s on speed,” Tom said.
“Who?” Paulie said.
“Ponytail, there.”
“No, she’s not.”
“She’s been fucking going on about curtains for an hour. She’s got to be cranked, man.”
“Window treatments, dummy. Shh. We’re coming up to the blinds.”
“If you know it already, why are we watching it again?”
Paulina reached over to the nightstand and handed him the remote.
“No, that’s okay,” Tom said.
“Watch what you want.”
“I don’t care about the curtains, Paulie. I don’t care about the paint or the furniture. We got a nice place.”
She sighed. “We’ve got a shit hole.”
“Says who?”
“Mom. Dad. Everyone who’s visited.”
“Your parents were here?”
“Resentfully, yeah. Just to shut me up about how they ‘forgot’ to visit us at the hospital.”
“When?”
“First week after Mel was born.”
“Weren’t impressed, huh?”
“Oh, ecstatic. Mom wouldn’t sit on the furniture and Dad counted the condoms and needles in the alley.”
This was the height of irony coming from the people who drank themselves stupid in their basement so they wouldn’t break their antiques when they went haywire on each other. “So? Mel’s happy. That’s all that counts.”
Paulie squeezed her eyes shut. “Go to sleep, Tommy.”
Tom shut the TV off. “Don’t listen to them, Paulie.”
“Maybe they’re right.”
“You’re a good mom,” Tom said.
Paulie went quiet. He thought she’d fallen asleep, was drifting himself when she touched his hair, brushed it from his face.
23 JUNE 1998
The 20 Downtown bus crawled along Commercial Drive. Tom pushed his way to the back, dropping his knapsack to the floor between his legs. The sharp, musty tang of sweat hung in the air. Tom wished he had a car. Any car. Even a bike would do.
At the bottom of Commercial Drive, the waterfront turned industrial, with rundown stores, boxy warehouses, and old factories. The bus turned west on Hastings Street and then picked up speed as the stops came wider apart. The number of boarded-up stores began to outnumber the stores still open. Wrought-iron bars appeared on windows. The old brownstone hotels with their grand names and neon lights took over from the modern buildings. The deeper into the skids the bus travelled, the more churches and detox centres started popping up.
Tom automatically scanned for his mother. He felt bad about not wanting to see her. But he’d spent so much of his life wandering in and out of bars looking for her, waiting for her, worrying about her, that he didn’t want to do it any more. Assuming she was drinking again. Maybe she wasn’t. Maybe she lived down here on one of the more respectable residential streets and she had a good guy in her life and she had the garden she’d always wanted. Even if she was on a tear, she was a big girl. She could handle herself.
He worried, though. You heard so many rumours. People disappeared down here all the time. Besides the obvious OD’S and muggings gone wrong, you could die for the dumbest reasons. Go to the wrong party. Stand under the wrong window. Have the wrong colour hair. He jerked awake, realizing he’d missed his stop.
The Regina still had ornate signs over separate entrances to a now-defunct bar for Ladies and Gentlemen. Tom had lived there for two months when he first moved to Vancouver with his mother, way back before the carpet was ripped up in favour of the original concrete. His mom had hooked up with a bull bucker named Frank who was passing the off-season in Vancouver. When his mom told him Frank was a logger, Tom had been disappointed. In the picture books, loggers were brawny, square-jawed men who wore plaid and big boots, and carried axes. Frank was a heavy-set, balding, and bearded man who looked more like Santa. He would sneak Tom jelly beans and jujubes and chocolates.
The Regina had been respectable then, and the owner, a retired fisherman, had actually lived in the hotel. But then he’d died, and The Regina had been sold to a number of indifferent owners until the current ones took over, overseas investors who’d decided heat and hot water were unnecessary luxuries. The Regina held the record for the most emergency calls in a day.
The lobby door had been kicked in again, so Tom walked into The Regina without having to buzz his friend Willy. The metal door, off-kilter, whined as it scraped shut. The lobby had once boasted a front desk with a uniformed clerk and a bellhop, but now it was abandoned. After the searing afternoon sunshine and the honking sprawl of late-afternoon traffic, the quiet of the dark, close lobby made him uneasy.
Tom took the stairs two at a time. Willy lived on the third floor, in a corner room. A dark-haired man on the second floor blocked his way. They were the same height, but the man was probably the ideal weight of a socialite. He shook like a cold dog. “Weed? Powder? Rock?”
“I’m good,” Tom said.
The man nodded absently and wandered down the hallway, knocking on doors.
Tom slung his knapsack forward and searched for the flashlight he carried when he visited Willy. The lights between the second and third floors had been burnt out for years and never replaced. He snapped the flashlight on and started up the stairs. The acrid, sweet reek of piss intensified. On the middle landing, glossy cockroaches swarmed a hardened coil of shit. Tom felt a bump and heard a crisp crunch as he stepped on a roach. He lifted his foot and knocked it off with the flashlight.
Double pinpoints of red light bobbed and weaved ahead of him. Rats slid past, squealing away from the watery yellow light as if it burned. Near the top of the stairs, parts of the wall were sprayed with chunky vomit, other parts with fine arches of blackened blood.
“Penny bets will get you penny wins,” his cousin Jeremy had liked to say. But Tom was not a high roller. Management did not offer him VIP suites with free mini-bars, stretch limos, or accommodating hostesses. Tom was perfectly happy nursing his free drink, diddling with the quarter slots, pull tabs.
“Come on, Big Spender,” Jeremy said, pulling him away from a one-armed bandit. Jeremy pressed a five-thousand-dollar chip into his hand. Tom tucked it into his wallet. He knew he’d need it later.
“No, no, no,” Jeremy said. “Watch and learn, Tommy.”
Jeremy rolled and rolled and his chips were fruitful and multiplied. Maybe it was the free drink, maybe it was the boozy bonhomie of the crowd around the crap table, maybe it was Jeremy blowing smoke up his ass: “Life is a limited-time offer, Bauer. Grab some cajones. Risk something. We were born to take risks. That’s what life is, isn’t it?”
They cheered when he rolled, and the temporary attention made him feel ten feet tall and bulletproof. It was all very exciting until the people around the table booed.
“Snake eyes,” the stickperson said.
“What happened?” Tom said.
“You crapped out,” Jer said. “Don’t worry about it. That was chump change.”
Tom stared at him, finally realizing he’d lost.
“You didn’t know the numbers, that’s all. Once you know the numbers, everything falls into place.”
The third floor had ten rooms on either side of the hallway. The doors were shut, the hallway filled with the tinny echo of classic rock from a slightly out-of-tune radio station. Willy’s room was the first door to the left, distinctive because he’d spray-painted eyes on his door and the surrounding walls. One of his less lucid states, he’d explained when Tom asked about the eyes that stared, shocked wide and dull.
Tom passed Willy’s room. He walked to the end of the hallway. The communal bath was in the room on the left side, and the toilet was separate, on the right. The window was boarded up to prevent frequent flyers. He flicked the switch. A bulb in a cage lit a room overwhelmed by the rusting, claw-foot bathtub. Tom turned and shut the door, locked it behind him. As an extra precaution, he took three plastic wedges from his knapsack and jammed them under the door.
He unrolled a threadbare towel in the yellowed tub. In the towel, he’d stashed a utility knife, a roll of joint tape, a small can of antiquing wash, a sponge brush, a paint scraper, and a mini-tub of putty. He held the knife in one hand. Stepping up, he balanced himself by straddling the wide rims of the tub. Under the dim light, the walls were the colour of old piss. He ran his fingertips along the wall until he felt a raspy line, and he brought the knife up and sank it in, cutting a square. He eased the piece down, leaning it against the tub’s wall. A fat hook gleamed from one of the wooden struts. He pulled on the thin, silver chain attached to the hook until he brought up a black metal briefcase. He shook off the roaches, and sat on the edge of the tub, resting the briefcase in his lap. He spun the combination locks until the snaps cracked open. The case was filled with money and three keys of coke.
He kept a mental tab of the money he’d “borrowed” the last few years. In all the excitement, Tom wondered if his cousin even remembered the briefcase. He’d never mentioned it. Tom could probably blow all the money and it wouldn’t matter, meaning his precautions – keeping it out of their apartment, hiding it in the wall instead of a safety deposit box – were pathetic, like a loser convinced the government was after him, because it made him feel important. Jer used to wad hundred-dollar bills in his pockets and give them out at strip clubs. Tom was rationalizing. Jer didn’t particularly care for skimmers.
He had meant to tell Paulie about the briefcase, but he was afraid she’d burn the money when she found out it was Jer’s. And they needed a cash cushion. He didn’t dip much. A couple hundred here or there when his paycheque didn’t stretch. Three thousand for Mel’s baby stuff and the apartment. He wouldn’t dip now, but he wanted Paulie to have something nice to celebrate three years of sobriety. A couple of cans of paint, some money for a haircut. Little things that made the grind bearable. Given the choice of crawling to their parents for crumbs, or having Jer break his leg, Tom would go with the broken leg any day. He could also be inviting trouble back into their lives.
That’s your problem, Jeremy had told him, knocking his knuckles against Tom’s forehead. You overthink things. That’s why deer get run over. They aren’t dazzled by the headlights. They’re weighing their options – should I go back, no, I should keep going, shit, is that the right thing to do? And then their time runs out and, WHAM, Bambi burgers for dinner.
“Willy,” Tom said, knocking on the door. “It’s Tom. Willy?”
He wouldn’t be surprised if Willy didn’t answer. Tom could hear him moving around, the squeak of the springs on the bed, the rustle of clothes.
“Are you up for company?”
Shuffling footsteps grew louder. The door cracked open. Willy grimaced, his lips thinning as he scratched his chin, then stepped back and swung the door wide.
Willy’s redecorating had extended to his room. Tom hated being here at night, when the spray-painted eyes on the walls, the ceiling, and the floor seemed to move with the flash of the headlights from passing cars. Willy said they were a comfort.
Makes people think twice before fucking with you, Willy had said. People leave you alone if they think you’re more fucked up than they are.
“Hey,” Willy said. His expression was flat, more from the side effects of his schizophrenia medication than from antisocial tendencies.
“Hey,” Tom said.
Willy shuffled back to his bed, sat down, and picked up a smoke burning in the ashtray. The window was open, but it didn’t make the room less stifling. Tom wiped his forehead with the back of his sleeve.
“Are you up for dinner?” Tom said.
“Already ate,” Willy said.
“Fair enough,” Tom said. He walked over to the window and stared down at the street. Deranged Jesus, a homeless man in blue shorts and red headband, dragged a twelve-foot plywood cross to the corner, and waited for the light to change. Tom turned his back to the window and leaned against the sill.
“Working tonight?” Willy said.
“Yeah.”
“Huh. Did you bring my meds?”
“Yeah.” Tom rummaged around in his knapsack and pulled out a paper bag with the pharmacy’s logo bright and primary.
“Thanks,” Willy said. “TV?”
Tom nodded.
Willy reached over and snapped on the black-and-white TV, tuned permanently to the CBC, the only free channel that had a decent reception in Willy’s room. Tom sat beside him on the bed. Willy chain-smoked through the evening news, the red and green dragon tattoo on his neck rippling when he inhaled or exhaled. Their visits often were nothing more than watching TV together, but Tom usually came once a week. Paulie thought it was guilt.
“You’ve made amends,” Paulie had said many, many times. “Let him go, Tom.”
When the time came to leave, he stood up and Willy followed him to the door and shut it behind him without saying goodbye. Tom started down the stairs, trying not to think about what he’d taken from the almost seventy thousand dollars in small, unmarked bills and the three keys of coke still hidden in the bathroom wall.
He heard strange voices in the apartment, arguing. He realized it wasn’t his mother coming home. She would never bring home two men. He rolled off the bed, crouching down low. They were in the hallway, looking out the peephole at something or someone. They whispered to each other in furious tones: I saw someone, I saw someone – we’re being followed. Fuck, stop being paranoid. No one’s there. Check the apartment. Make sure no one’s home.
“Shh,” Paulie said, “it’s okay. It’s okay, Tom.”