One Good Hustle

TEN




I GUESS THIS is Jill’s idea of a good time—what the cool kids do, the ones who aren’t “total suckholes.” So far it seems like a drag.

It’s midnight and I’m sitting on a log somewhere in the uncharted brush of deepest darkest Burnaby. Sparks from the bonfire pop now and then. The Byrne Road bush parties are a semi-regular event for Jill and her pals. The straight kids refer to them as Byrne Road Burnouts. This is the first time I’ve come out to one of these things.

Probably about twenty people down here. Maybe more. Kids wander in and out of the trees. Gabbing, necking, singing. On a log directly across the fire from me some dude who looks a little old for the crowd is playing guitar and singing “Let It Be” in a strained voice that would make any self-respecting dog howl his guts out. Three girls I recognize from school are gulping orange coolers from the bottle and singing along. Outside the ring of logs, a few guys pass a joint.

One of the orange cooler chicks falls off her log and the rest of them squeal and crack up and drag her back up off the ground.

Jesus. All these jerks want to do is get drunk and stoned. Like Marlene. What they don’t get is, if you act like Marlene, you end up like Marlene. F*cked up and lonely and broke.

I’ve got a cherry Slurpee, nearly melted, that I’ve been nursing for the last couple hours. Nobody says a word to me. I’m just the little defective sitting on a log. The ultimate suckhole. Meanwhile, I know loan sharks, for chrissake! Fences! I’ve seen a gun! Not that I’m all superior about it, but they’re the suckholes, not me. These people are clueless.

Jill and Crystal Norris are sitting on the dirt beside me, leaning back on the log, smoking and talking. Each of them holds a 7-Eleven Big Gulp cup. Lemonade and gin.

“Technically he broke up with me,” Jill is saying. “But I was about to do it anyway.”

“Why would you break up with Roman, man? He’s a fox.”

“Because all he wanted was one thing and I don’t put out.”

“You’re a virgin?” Crystal says.

“Yes.” Jill looks proud about it.

“You are such a lying hosebag!” Crystal laughs.

“I’m a virgin,” Jill says emphatically.

“Where? In your left ear?” Crystal laughs even harder.

Crystal drove us here tonight. Her face had pinched up like a big anus the second we—I mean I—got into her car.

“Nobody told me it was Suckhole Night.” She laughed, then said, “Just kidding.”

We turned off Marine Drive and headed down another industrial road. I sat in the back and stared out the window, wondering why I’d agreed to come: nothing but gangly trees and scrubby weeds down here. No houses or apartments nearby. No phone booths. I don’t think there’s even a close bus stop. It’s the kind of place where horror stories happen.

We parked on the side of the road behind a few other cars.

Crystal got out and tugged at the tight jeans climbing up her crotch. “These f*ckin’ Gloria Vanderbilts always give me camel-toe,” she said.

“No kidding.” Jill grimaced, and tugged at her jeans too.

Crystal walked ahead of us across the grass. At the top of the dirt path she stopped and pulled a bottle from her purse. “Let’s just spike it now. Away from the moochers.”

“Why’d you get gin?” Jill moaned. “Gin makes me wanna boke.”

“It’s all we got, so get over it,” Crystal said. “Hold this.” She shoved her lemonade cup into my hand while she twisted the cap off the gin. She stuffed the cap in the pocket of her purse and I held the cup while she popped the plastic lid and poured. She turned to Jill’s.

I debated what to do if she wanted to spike mine. I wished I’d stayed home.

“Nobody’ll mess with you,” Jill had said. “You’re with me.”

Crystal turned back to me. “You going to take your lid off or what?”

I looked down at my two full hands.

Jill put her hand over my cup. “Sammie’s on the wagon.”

Crystal gave us one of her snide-twat snickers. Same laugh she laughed after she shoulder-checked me in the hall.

Jill switched her weight to the other hip and straightened to her full height. Bangles jangled down her wrist as she shoved one hand into her back pocket. “Listen, baby: She. Can’t. Drink. You dig?”

Oh god. Full-on Foxy mode.

Screwing the cap back on the gin, Crystal sputtered with laughter. “F*ck off.”

“What?” Jill stood a full head taller than Crystal. Her tight leather jacket opened to a scoop-neck T-shirt.

Crystal glanced at Jill’s chest. Those big boobs of Jill’s must seem like muscles to some girls.

“A.A.,” Jill said, “do I have to spell it? Tuesday- and Thursday-night meetings. And now she’s got A.M.A. meetings every Friday morning through the whole f*cking summer.”

“What the hell’s A.M.A.?”

“Anger Management Anonymous?” Jill enunciated as if Crystal was a massive retard.

Crystal stared at me. “Seriously?” She stuffed the gin bottle back in her purse and said, “That’s f*cked up.” She took her drink from my hand as she shot me another look. “You’re seriously in anger management?”

“F*ckin’ A,” Jill said. “It’s part of her probation. She broke some chick’s clavicle last year.” She took hold of Crystal’s arm. “And by the way, Twelve Step groups are seriously anonymous. So don’t go shooting off your mouth. If I hear it from someone else, I’ll know who it came from.”

“Totally.” Crystal tugged her arm back. “I’m not saying anything.” She sucked on her straw, looking at me. Then she stopped drinking and said, “Well, I’ll be dipped in shit!” Her mouth opened into a grin.

Jill gave me a quick wink and I looked away, embarrassingly teary with gratitude.

Now the two of them are sitting on the dirt, chain-smoking and talking their faces off, and I’m staring into the bonfire, my butt going numb on this log.

I can’t stop thinking about the supermarket—that jam jar, the red, brainy meat of it lying beside Drew’s foot. If my mother had jumped off the roof the night she promised to, I guess her skull would have busted open just like that.

Maybe I should be in anger management.

I look at Jill, her purple lips dark in the firelight. Cigarette smoke curls around her face. She’s a better hustler than I would have thought. Better one than I am, probably.

Every now and then Crystal glances up. She’s cross-legged and drunk and ever since Jill’s performance at the top of the path, it’s as if Crystal hopes I’ll laugh at her jokes, agree with some remark she’s made.

“… just like with Sammie,” she’s saying to Jill now. “I didn’t used to get Sammie at all but it’s like, you know, man, you see things in people that maybe other people don’t, right.”

Crystal looks so small down there in the dirt now—a blowup monster that’s been popped with a pin.

I’m so deep in thought, I don’t notice anything’s different until a German shepherd pokes his damp black nose in my face.

“Hi,” I say, and touch his fur. He’s excited, shoulders wiggling, sniffing the ground.

I look down, see shoes and realize that a cop’s got hold of him on a leash. My stomach flips at the squeak of the cop’s leather gun-belt. Have to remind myself that I don’t have anything to worry about. I’m not drinking. There’s nothing hot in my purse. No loaded dice, no marked cards. I am not Sam. I’m not Marlene.

The guitar playing stops.

I watch the dog trot from log to log, see the orange glow from the fire lighting up his coat and wish I could grab handfuls, push my face into his thick fur.

“Any open alcohol around here?” the cop calls out.

There’s a second cop on the other side of the fire. He kicks a little sand into the flame.

A kid in a ball cap shoves something under a log with his foot and then sidesteps into a nearby group of guys.

The dog keeps sniffing here and there until he comes to that log, stops, barks and digs and barks some more. The dog-cop leans down and pulls a plastic sandwich bag out from under the log.

“Who does this belong to?” He shakes the baggy in the air. It looks empty but there’s probably a bit of weed. He throws it into what’s left of the fire.

“For f*ck sakes,” the kid in the ball cap hisses.

The second cop now has Crystal Norris’s Big Gulp in his hand.

“Hey, man,” Crystal says. “You got a warrant?”

He opens the cup, puts his nose in. “Whew!” he says. “Bad girl.” He dumps the bit that’s left into the sand.

“F*ckin’ pigs,” she mutters.

“Excuse me?” he says.

Jill has shoved her cup between her back and the log. She holds up empty hands.

“How about you?” the cop asks me.

I take the lid off my cup. “Cherry Slurpee. Straight.”

He sniffs. “Good for you. The designated driver.” He tips the dregs out anyway, looks around and yells, “Up and at ’em. Move it out and take your garbage with you.”

The dog is still prancing, sniffing pant legs and purses.

Everyone is up off the ground now. Jill tries to tuck her cup into her jacket as she stands. The lid pops off and what’s left dumps down the front of her jeans.

“Motherf*cker!” She’s covered in sticky lemonade and gin.

The cop with the dog laughs. “That’s karma, kiddo.”

We all plod back up the path toward the road.

“Holy shit, I’m wasted.” Crystal giggles and grabs hold of my arm.

Jill takes Crystal’s other arm. “Jesus, didn’t you eat before you came out?”

Jill’s a little drunk too, but nobody looks as bad as Crystal.

“Sure I ate. One piece of dry toast and half a grapefruit,” Crystal slurs. “I’m doing this grapefruits diet, man. You should try it.”

“Why,” Jill asks her. “So I can be an assless wonder too?”

Crystal giggles. “You’re just jealous. Do you know what size jeans I wear? Grapefruits, grapefruits, grapefruits.”

The cop with the dog trudges behind us and the other one stands at the top of the path, giving us each the once-over.

As we pass him, Crystal holds up my hand and slaps her car keys into it. “Designated driver!”

When we find the car, Crystal gets into the passenger side. Jill sits in the back and takes out her cigarettes.

On the driver’s side, I buckle my seat belt and stare ahead through the windshield for a couple seconds. “I don’t have my licence,” I say.

“You do so,” Jill bellows from the back. I can hear her lighter flick and a quick inhale before she blows smoke and says, “You started going to those classes, like, the day you turned sixteen.”

“Oh yeah!” Crystal squeals. “I saw you staying after school for driver’s ed. I thought you were such a fag.” She cackles her ass off and then in a booming announcer’s voice says, “Young Drivers of Ca-na-da!”

I took those classes all right. I caught the bus way out to the east burbs—Coquitlam, Port Coquitlam, Port Moody—so I could pull off enough drugstore returns for the fee. They held the in-class stuff in Mr. Walters’ Trades Math room. Then we did another three weeks of actual driving in one of those freaky cars with two steering wheels. I loved it. Driving was like growing wings. I was determined to get my licence. Then things went off the rails with Marlene.

I turn the ignition.

Crystal screams. “F*ckin’ Sammie! You don’t care about anything! You’re so f*ckin’ cool.” She looks over at me with watery eyes and slurs, “Seriously, Sammie. I just didn’t get you before, but you’re …”

Jill pushes her head between the front seats. “She’s the baddest chick in town.”

Peels of laughter from Crystal. “Foxy f*ckin’ Brown!”

I’d like to slap Crystal. I can almost feel the heat of the slap in my palm as I adjust the rear-view mirror.

I’d give anything to have Drew with me now. Drew has his licence. An image of him flashes in my mind, bent over the steering wheel, carefully putting his father’s car into drive.