One Good Hustle

TWENTY-FIVE




DREW HAS LISTENED to the whole story without saying a word. When I finish, it’s so quiet I feel like I’m suffocating.

Finally his hand reaches for mine and I let him take it. He squeezes softly and I squeeze back, a little scared—scared of what he must be thinking and scared that I might be struck by lightning for shooting off my mouth. When Sam and Marlene and I were all together, Marlene would call me Benedict Arnold if I told Sam something she believed was our secret. Maybe she was right. You don’t go around knocking your crew or your family—even if it’s just a little thing.

The two of us are staring down the slope toward the field where that big black-and-white bull munches the grass.

Finally Drew says, “I wish I could meet Sam in person. I’d like to punch him in the face.”

I laugh nervously. He’s holding my hand with both of his now as though it’s a hurt bird.

“It’s wrong what he did to you. You get that, don’t you? You were a little girl.”

“No, he—” I want to say something good about Sam but I can’t think of anything at the moment.

“Yes,” Drew says. “You were. He was supposed to look after you and be a dad. I don’t know why you’re such a good person after all that stuff, but you are. You’re really good, Sammie.” His voice breaks a little.

I can feel him looking at me and it takes all my guts to meet his gaze. He brings my fingers to his lips and kisses them. Then he reaches for my face and I am melting through the grass at his touch. He leans toward me and then he brings his mouth close to mine. Our foreheads knocks softy.

My heart starts to slam.

“I love you, Sammie, so much,” he whispers.

He lets my hand go so that he can hold me with both arms. I hug back and it’s as if I haven’t been hugged for a thousand years.

“Me too,” I whisper back.

He lifts his hands to my hair, then kisses my cheek, softly, and then again, and suddenly his mouth is on mine and he is kissing me for real, the way couples kiss. The way people kiss when they’re in love.

We kiss and kiss and I’m shaking. Drew’s whole self is shaking too and he’s breathing as if he’s in a panic. Except I think it’s me who’s panicked.

We lie back on the grass. He keeps kissing me, his hand moving on my back, kissing and kissing. Then his hand slides under my top. I don’t wear a bra. His hand is on my back, right on my bare skin.

“Don’t,” I whisper.

I reach to push his hand off my back but he fumbles it around to my side and runs it over my ribs. I tuck my elbows in close.

“Drew,” I whisper.

His hand comes round onto my stomach, though, and then higher. He’s kissing and kissing me, kissing my neck. Then he’s touching my breast.

“Don’t!” I push him hard. “What are you doing?”

He sits up. “What? I’m sorry. I didn’t mean—I just.”

“I thought you said you loved me.” I yank my top back down over my stomach.

“I do. I—”

“Then, why are you trying to—?”

“I wasn’t!” His knees are up and his arms are wrapped around them now. “Sammie, I didn’t mean to. I just—I was touching you because I thought—”

“You thought what?” My knees are up too now. “You thought I was like her?”

“Who?”

“I’m not. I’m nothing like her. And I’m nothing like him.”

He looks at me, then looks away. “I know,” he says.

I hold my knees crushed to my chest. His hand was right there. The sensation won’t stop and I try to rub it off against my legs.

We sit that way for a while not saying a thing. Drew and I are sitting six inches apart and it’s the loneliest I’ve ever felt. The night Drew took me to pick up Marlene in jail flashes to mind—me alone in the hall when it was all over. This feels worse than that.

“I have to go,” I say.

He looks at me, his eyes red and watery. He nods.



We walk back to the bus stop. Drew keeps his hands in his pockets. I walk with my arms crossed and my head down as if it’s the middle of winter.

On the bus, we don’t speak all the way into town. I stare out the window and Drew looks at his lap.

When we get to the bus loop in Vancouver, his bus is already there. He’s going to head back to his family’s snazzy hilltop house in North Burnaby and I’m going back to Jill’s place.

“I’ll wait with you,” he says quietly.

“You don’t have to.”

“I want to.”

It’s only a few minutes until my bus rolls into the loop and pulls up in front of us. Drew meets my eyes and then stares down at the pavement.

“Please don’t disappear,” he says. “I’m sorry. I’ll never do anything like that again.”

Marlene’s voice echoes in my mind: He’s a doll. You should marry him.

I’m ready to start bawling all over. I can’t uncross my arms. At the same time, I almost wish Drew could hide me inside his coat and sneak me home with him, hold my two hands and look into my eyes the way he did before everything went haywire back there in Langley.

He puts a hand on my arm and I manage to open my arms up and we give each other a stiff sort of hug.

“Sammie? Aren’t we okay? Please?”

“Okay,” I say. “Yeah. Yes.”

The bus’s engine rumbles a little louder as the driver gets ready to leave and Drew and I let each other go. He watches as I run to get on board.

Sitting by a window, I mouth goodbye to him as we head out. He waves back, and stuffs his hands back into his pockets. His smile is weak and his eyes are still swollen.

Just before we turn a corner, I glance back, but I can’t see him. Can’t see the bus loop at all. And now that I can’t, there’s an empty dark room in my guts. He’d like to punch Sam in the face, he said.

But I hid in the sofa. I knew what I was there for. It’s true that Sam tried to tell me that it was just a game, but that’s what dads do with little kids. That’s how you make work seem fun.

I shouldn’t have knocked Sam to Drew, but it hurts like hell that Sam doesn’t call me. Maybe all I wanted was for someone else to be the a*shole for a few minutes. But that’s what a phony does: he rats out the other guy and then makes like he’s just an innocent.

I’ve always felt shitty about that sofa story. Sam tried to include me in a sure thing and I made a hash of it, breaking things, stumbling around—I didn’t even have the sense to boost the stuff I was sent for. John Reynolds, the mark, likely had it coming. He probably tried to sneak a cooler into Sam’s poker game and then refused to cop to it. Why blame Sam for wanting to get his money back?

Staring out the window, watching the buildings swipe past, I imagine Drew as he arrives home, walking past his father’s shiny car in the driveway, coming through the front door of that big clean house. Drew’s bedroom is at the very top. It’s almost an attic: wooden beams cut across the ceiling—rich, dark, beat-up wood, like people with money always seem to have—and there’s a big picture window. It’s a real guy’s bedroom: his older brother’s model cars are on the shelves and he has a ship-in-a-bottle that his grandfather made.

I picture him walking through the house now and going straight up to that bedroom of his. I can see him looking out the window at his fresh view of the water and the mountains. Everything around him is sweet and rich and homey. In the midst of all that, if Drew thinks of me, the things I told him about my family, touching me and being touched by my skeevy little world—I bet he’ll want to shower and wash me off.

Sam used to say, “Not much about a rounder squares with a square john.” What he meant was that, most of the time, straight people just don’t get it. Marlene, Sam and me—and Freddy too—we don’t think like regular people. After that sofa hustle, the cops picked up Sam and Freddy and threw them in the can. The two of them did almost two years.

Marlene packed the two of us up and moved back to Vancouver. The fall I started grade 5, though, I heard my mother on the phone in her bedroom, honey-voiced, a little giggly when she said, “Boy oh boy, some friend you are.” The tone of her voice made a little part of me pop like a firecracker, hoping to hell it was Sam at the other end of the line.

I loitered around her bedroom door, trying to hear. The second my mother hung up, I plagued her with questions.

Turned out it was Fat Freddy on the phone. He was out of the joint early: a free man.

“What about dad? Where’s dad?”

“Supposedly they’re not in touch—Freddy’s moved out here now.” She rolled her eyes a little, her mouth flirtatious. “Come on, Leni,” she imitated a whiny, needy Freddy. “Let’s have dinner.”

Two days later, Freddy called again. He had done a little investigating and discovered that Sam was out and shacked up with Peggy in Toronto. My mother’s friend, Peggy. Peggy, the booster. Freddy then proceeded to invite himself over to our place for a drink. Marlene hung up in his ear. She was spitting fire for weeks. You can bet she lit into Sam when he finally got around to calling her.

Regular people wouldn’t even be speaking to each other after all that’s happened with us. But a rounder has got to make a living. It sounds ruthless. And sometimes it is. Actually, most of the time, the life of a hustler is pretty much the same as the one that regular people live. Straight people don’t like to admit it but they work with jerks they don’t like and they sell situations they don’t believe in every day to make a buck. If you step back and squint you realize that most legit businesses are working a hustle too. Go into a supermarket and they’ll sell you a bottle of water for a whole dollar when all you have to do is go home and turn on the tap for free. Stick the word France on the label and the suckers’ll line up and pay double! And what about the banks? They take all your cash and charge you for it every time you ask for a little back. They get you to use their credit cards and then make you pay them twenty percent interest. You pay if it’s your money and you pay if it’s their money. If that’s not crooked, I don’t know what is. That’s as good as loan sharking. Sam doesn’t even have a bank account. Marlene says he’s a dope on that count and that sending cash through the mail is moronic. But I think he’s got a point. Pay cash and keep the rest.

The bus is muggy with the day’s stale heat. The month of August always sounds so warm and dreamy when you’re stuck in February but once you’re actually here, right in the midst of worn, old August heat, all you can think about is the fact that September is coming. In the past, I’ve always dreaded the new school year: classes I didn’t want to sit through, schedules I didn’t want to keep. Sitting here on this overripe bus, September sounds like a foreign word. What does September mean for Marlene? Or me? Or Sam for that matter?

He’s here, though. Sam could be in any of these buildings, on any one of these streets.

I wish I could meet Sam in person. I’d like to punch him in the face.

As we turn up Willingdon Avenue, I feel queasy. Maybe just carsick from riding a bus all over hell’s half acre. I don’t think that’s it, though. I’m a creep, that’s what it is. I’m a creep and it’s making me sick.

I’m the one who deserves a punch. I didn’t tell Drew about my drugstore returns, did I. I didn’t tell him about how screaming-good it can be, how when a hustle’s going right it makes your blood sing through your wrists—the way it feels as if your hair is standing straight on end when you walk away scot-free with a pocket full of cash.

And here’s another thing I left out: I want Sam to come and get me. I want Sam to drive up in front of Jill’s place and say, “Forget your bags, we’ll buy you clothes along the way. Just get in, sweetheart!”

The best September I can think of would be sitting in the passenger seat next to my dad, driving south, working every angle we can, taking every sucker, from here straight on down the west coast—Seattle, San Francisco, Los Angeles, San Diego—milking them dry before they know what hit ’em. Then we’d head east, right across to Florida and all the way up to New York City! I’d be there by his side, proving that I really am Sam’s girl.

I am not the loser in the drugstore, the girl who freaks out when some two-bit rent-a-cop says boo.

I am not the sucker in the nurse’s uniform and catering apron, covered in other people’s slop.

Drew’s mother had my number from the second she laid eyes on me. If Drew could read my mind like she can, see my two faces, my itch to be with Sam, he’d know she was right.

Why can’t Sam just call me and tell me the score? Tell me what the hell’s going on?

The bus reaches the top of Willingdon Avenue and the driver is about to head east on Kingsway. But I’m not ready to go back to Jill’s yet. I can’t stand it. All of a sudden, I can’t stand the thought of anybody who isn’t us. I’m not Jill and I’m not Ruby and I’m not Drew either. I am Sam’s girl. I am Marlene’s.

I need air.

I reach and ring the bell.

On the sidewalk, I gulp the warmed-over traffic breeze, catch a green light and race across the street. I start heading the wrong way down Kingsway, west, past Old Orchard Mall, jogging. I’m not sure if I’m running from something or running to it.

When I’m out of breath I turn to walk down Sardis, our little side street. It’s not such a bad street. The breeze is picking up, fluttering the leaves overhead, ruffling my hair as it goes, whispering against my ears. I listen to the rustle in the trees and think about the way it sounds serene and restless all at once.

The geraniums in front of the apartment building are fire bright against the dark earth. Why can’t I just appreciate the things that are good? Fine, it’s not fancy around here, it’s not downtown, but it’s not horrible.

I step off the sidewalk onto the dirt and wood-chips of the building’s back garden and try to see into our apartment in the corner. It’s hard to make out the ordinary dim of the indoors when the hard gold of the setting sun is blasting the window, obliterating everything.

I keep behind the pine trees at the rear of our building. I just want to see if she’s in there. If she came home.

A hand reaches out through the curtain and I tense as it pushes the window farther open. Then the sliding door to the balcony grumbles sideways on its runners. And suddenly there’s Marlene.

Stepping outside, she looks unsteady, as if she’s not used to the outdoors, the bright light. As if she’s on fawn legs.

She cups her hand over her eyes. She’s looking up. I stare up too, at the sky, and see that it’s the crows she’s watching. The sky is teeming with black birds heading east for the night.

Every night around sunset the crows leave Vancouver and head out here to Burnaby. They’ve always done it, ever since I can remember. It gave me the willies when I was little, like something from an Alfred Hitchcock movie. But now I like it. I like the idea of all those birds moving together when it’s time for bed, flying east, away from the setting sun, as if they’ve got to get tucked in before the lights go out.

Looking down again, Marlene takes a step farther onto the balcony, sets both her hands on the metal railing and her sights straight back toward the alley as if she’s studying the bushes. She tips her head back once more, and closes her eyes to the sun for a moment. She looks so pretty that I flash back to that day in Orlando: the prettiest woman in the world. Marlene in her flamingo-pink pantsuit, holding my hand.

She leans on the railing for a few seconds, light shining on her blonde hair. I wish I could touch it, the gold of it, but I stand here like a ghost, shielded by the screaming brilliance of the setting sun.

After a little while, my mother lowers her chin and glances toward the sliding door into the apartment. She looks reluctant, as though a prison guard is calling her back to a cell, but she goes.

I watch her disappear inside and then I turn and go too, back in the direction I came from.