One Good Hustle

THIRTY




THE SUN IS smashed open on the blue water like a broken piggy bank. I’m sitting here in Lou’s truck, listening to the radio and staring out at English Bay while I wait for Sam to show up. It’s still a few minutes before two.

Full of people today. Smart-looking people—downtowners, they look like they know what’s doing, who’s on the take, and who’s a square john. Not to mention the fact that they’ve got this awesome ocean, for chrissake! Why would anyone want to live in Burnaby if you could just shove over about seven miles and have this?

When Lou got home from work, I told him that my dad called, that Sam and I were going to meet for lunch down at English Bay. Right away he offered to loan me his pickup to get myself here. It’s ironic when you think about it: a prison guard lending me a truck to meet up with a guy who’s been in and out of jail as many times as Sam has.

When I hung up after making plans with Sam, Jill asked me if I was going to call in to the Pacific Inn to get some hours for next weekend.

“Can’t. I’m meeting my dad later. I might not even be here this weekend.” I told her where we were going.

“Nice.” She looked like she hadn’t slept much.

“Did you talk to Roman this morning?”

“He’s sick,” she said. “F*cker better have malaria is all I can say.”

Her eyes were a bit sad. I tugged at my T-shirt. “I don’t know what to wear,” I said. “Maybe you could … I mean, you always have good ideas about clothes.”

Her face brightened a little. “Um. Sure, I could give you a hand. Come on downstairs and we’ll put an outfit together.”

I wish Jill could get a load of Sam. Sam always looks good. I wanted to wear something sharp like Sam would—something that would make me look like I was used to being downtown by the water. Urban and stylish.

Jill came through like there was no tomorrow. She was nice to me. Nicer than I was to her yesterday, that’s for damn sure. She even offered to do my makeup. I let her do it too, but when I looked in the mirror it was pretty bad. With the summer dress it was like a creepy combination of Whatever Happened to Baby Jane and Lolita. I said thank you and hugged her. Once I had driven a little way from the house, though, I pulled over and wiped most of it off.

The palm trees wave at the twinkling bay as if I’m somewhere exotic. Makes me feel a bit misty, thinking of how nice Jill was and knowing that after this week, I might not see her again for a long time.

I roll up the windows and take the key out of the ignition, and the truck goes quiet. At exactly two o’clock, I open the huge driver’s door, jump down onto the road and slam it shut. How could you not feel like you could take on the world in a righteous black pickup like this?

I snatch a glance at my reflection in the side window and take one more look at the water before I start toward the Bay Café.

I’m wearing a white cotton sundress with eyelet lace on the bodice and at the hem just like you see in Seventeen magazine. Jill went through everything in her closet. I tried on a thousand things. If it was Jill’s it didn’t fit. If it was mine it looked stupid. I was ready to cry, until Jill remembered this dress that her cousin had left in the basement last summer. She crawled to the back of her closet to get it.

Looked awful at first, all mashed up in a plastic bag, but Jill shook it out and pushed me to try it on. It fit pretty well, so she went upstairs and got out the ironing board for me. I was scared I’d wreck it and asked Ruby to do the actual ironing. The next problem was my feet. I didn’t have anything that would go. Jill’s got major clodhoppers and I couldn’t wear anything of hers. A pair of brown suede cowboy boots would have been awesome. That’s what the girls in the magazines wear. Boots would have been so cool—I’d be walking with a swagger if I had boots on right now. Instead, I’m heading up Denman Street in a little pair of leather sandals. Jill calls them water-walkers because of the way they look like something Jesus would wear.

Ice cream shops and tourist joints line the sidewalks. The air is extra clear and everything looks a little too new and bright somehow, the colour of Playmobil toys. I glance around at the high-rent clothes people have on. When I look down at my sundress, I suddenly notice a yellow mark on the skirt the size of a quarter. Stopping, I lift the skirt a little and take a swipe at it, as if it might just be chalk. It’s a stain, though. Something sags in the centre of me. The girl in the stained dress. The girl from Burnaby.

I push myself forward. It doesn’t matter. Don’t be such a baby. Sam and I are blowing this town. We can buy all the white sundresses we want.

Stepping onto the corner where the Bay Café is, I spot my father down the block. He’s wearing one of those tailored dress shirts of his, baby blue and starched to cut. That and a pair of sleek tan slacks.

He’s coming toward me down Denman Street, and we’re an equal number of steps away from the restaurant door now. He matches me stride for stride. When you’ve got a lot riding on a situation, everything starts to seem like an omen. And this seems like a good one: something about balance, as if Sam and I are both on the same see-saw.

A couple of feet apart, we stop. With the sun hitting him in the face, he shields his eyes. Sam and I are nearly eye-to-eye now. I’m five–seven and he’s just a little taller. I flash on Lou ducking as he passes through to the kitchen. Sam ducks cops, questions and ex-wives. But not me. Not now.

I take another step. Stop.

He’s tanned. As if he’s been in Miami. He raises his arms to embrace me.

Like overstuffed Raggedy Ann dolls, we don’t bend in quite the right places. We pat each other’s back.

“Long time,” Sam mumbles.

It’s been almost a year. I wonder if he remembers that shopping trip. I wish I hadn’t thought of that. Marlene’s voice bangs around inside my head: Come on, Momma. Pushing me into the bedroom. Come, on, Momma, come on … Nice guy, eh.

I look down at a crack in the sidewalk, rock on my sandals and then stumble a bit as I go for the restaurant door. I pull the handle. It doesn’t budge.

“Closed,” Sam reads.

“How come?” I stare at the door like someone just told me heaven was shut down.

He cups his eyes as he looks inside. “Looks like they’re doing renovations.”

The both of us search around for a sign to tell us what the hell to do next. Two taxis roll by in traffic.

“You cab it here?” I ask.

“Uh …” He looks back over his shoulder. “We’re in a hotel down the block.”

We meant him and Peggy. At least he didn’t bring her along. That must count for something.

“I could drive us to a restaurant in Stanley Park,” I suggest.

“You got wheels?” He pops his eyebrows a little and smirks and the two of us turn and head for the truck.

As I step off the curb to cross the road, my knees are suddenly stiff. I wonder if Sam might be nervous too. More nervous, like the way people say a spider is more scared of you than you are of it.

He gives Lou’s truck the once-over before he gets in. “This belong to your friend?”

“Her dad.”

He eyes the dashboard and comments on how new it looks. “What’s he do?”

“I think it’s leased,” I tell him. “He works at Oakalla Prison and her mom doesn’t do anything.” They’re none of Sam’s business.

I sit up straight and put the key in the ignition. The engine fires up easy and the full-stomach rumble of it makes me feel better.

“Jill’s dad took me to get a road test a few weeks ago,” I say. “I just got my driver’s licence.”

“Jeez and he’s lettin’ you drive his nice new truck already, huh?” he says.

My father rolls down his window as we drive into the park. “So, how’s your life?”

“S’all right. One more year of school. But I talked to the guidance counsellor about finishing early or even in a different city.” This part isn’t exactly accurate. Crystal Norris said once that she talked to Mr. Walters about finishing early. Sam would like it if it were me who took that initiative, though. “Mr. Walters was saying if I—”

“What’s doin’ with your mother? She outta that place yet?”

I glance at him. “What place?”

“That mental health place. Your mother give ’em my number, I guess. They gave me a buzz to see if I knew where you were. I gave them your friend’s number.”

“I thought they called the Welfare to find me.” I roll my window down too.

“She out?”

“What? Oh. Yeah. Few days ago. Maybe more.”

“You and her are talking, aren’tcha?”

“I went and saw her there.” I steer us toward the aquarium and the zoo and glance sideways to read him. Can’t, though. No one can read Sam. That’s what makes him good. “She liked it there. She said she was scared they were going to send her home and so when she went to group therapy she put green eye shadow all over her face. They acted like it was no big deal. Kept her around another week, though.”

He laughs. I do too. Any hustle that works is a good hustle.

“You’re going back home, then?”

I keep my eyes on the road. “I don’t think she’s—”

“Peggy said you had a number for Freddy. I tried calling him and his number’s not workin.’ ”

“No.”

“How come you told Peggy you did?”

“I don’t have it with me.”

“Why didn’t you just give it to Peggy when you called. Your mother talks to Freddy still, don’t she? I got to get something from him.”

“She’s—” I was trying to figure how to put it. I didn’t want to knock my mother to Sam. Benedict Arnold.

As far as he’s concerned, the fact that a person would start drinking the way Marlene did in the first place is proof of weakness. If I told him that she was doing AA now, he’d make out like she was the most weak-kneed jerk on the planet. Sam figures if a person’s got backbone, he doesn’t need a crutch like AA.

I don’t like AA either, the way they pour their guts out to one another. But you have to give Marlene credit for making an effort.

“She threw out all her pills and she quit drinking,” I say. Then, so he understands it’s a real medical condition, I add, “That’s how she ended up in the hospital in the first place: grand mal seizure.”

Sam looks at me like I’m an idiot. Like, What’s her health got to do with my Freddy shit?

“I mean she’s—” I lean my elbow on the window frame. Sam doesn’t need every goddamn detail. “She doesn’t talk to Freddy any more. We live in Burnaby.”

He mutters something out the window. Then, for a full minute the only noise is the truck’s rumble and the swish of trees passing us on either side.

Finally, I ask, “Did you ever actually sell houses? I mean in Toronto. Were you into real estate?”

“Sure,” he says. “Cars too. Freddy and I used to fix up these old heaps just enough so’s they’d make it around the block.” He laughs.

Trilogy of Terror floats through my head. Cross-eyed Karen Black chased around her living room by the Zuni doll. Just four more houses to sell. Three more. I blink at the road ahead.

“You got a lot of games lined up while you’re out here?”

“Got a game this afternoon,” he says.

“You do?”

He shoots me a look. “Have you got Freddy’s number where you’re stayin’? Can’t you call those people you live with and—”

“Those people don’t know anything!”

Hard to say if that came out as loud as it did in my head. I swallow and put a hand out the window, let the breeze cool my fingers.

Out of the side of my eye I can see Sam’s mouth purse. He’s staring hard out the windshield as if the way ahead might look like a sun-dappled park road to the untrained eye but he knows something different.

When he speaks again, he says, “Things would’ve been different if I hadn’t’ve gone to jail. I only should’ve got a few months but they made an example out of me. In the end I did nearly two years.”

I watch the road, waiting for him to say something else. My thumbs rub hard on the grooves of Lou’s steering wheel. “Mom said if you’d had a decent lawyer you probably wouldn’t have done any time at all.”

Sam’s face sours as if his ex-wife’s lame ideas continue to disgust him. “They catch you, you do a little time.”

I wonder if he’s thinking of me, falling down John Reynolds’ front steps, not being where I was supposed to be. “I think about that day and I, I just wish I did things better than—”

“You never shoulda been there,” Sam says, and then he starts rambling about Freddy and the truck and I can’t follow the story, all the dodging and weaving. He says he tried to offer John Reynolds a few bucks if he would keep the cops out of it. Sam doesn’t say what Reynolds’ answer was. I guess it’s obvious.

“So I told Freddy,” he fires on, “ ‘make him a better offer.’ What’s he do? He offers him some jewellery. Stuff from his basement.”

“You and Freddy still work together?”

“I know people everywhere I go. There’s practically no city in the country where I don’t know someone. In the States too.”

“But Freddy’s not your … Don’t you have a regular partner any more?” I glance at him. “Don’t you need—?”

He doesn’t look at me. Just the road. “I was working with a guy for a while. We played the Granny Game in Los Angeles mostly. A little in Florida. I don’t see him no more. He’s—” Sam pauses. He swipes at the air as if this guy he used to work with is a lost cause. After a few seconds, he says, “Once we were on our way to a game and he … He seen this little girl at the side of the road when we were driving. Twelve years old maybe and he says, pull over, and I says, we don’t got time for that, but he keeps saying how pretty she is and let’s pull over … I don’t know what was wrong with him. She was a little girl.”

Another rabbit punch. Why did you tell me that? But there’s something about the way that my dad just said little girl, the tone of it, as if maybe he’s using this half-assed story as a way into a real conversation.

Blue water flickers through the thick of the trees and then, just as I’m getting up the guts to ask about us, about him and me and what’s going to happen, he says, “Me and Freddy did some work with the Italians in New York. Those guys—every time they pass a Catholic church, they’re doin’ this—” He crosses himself. “And they’re killin’ guys!” He goes quiet again.

Some piece of me is winding tighter and tighter, and then, without looking, Sam asks if I still go to church.

“That was ages ago!” I snap. None of your business. I don’t want Sam even knowing about that stuff, or Drew or any of those people. “Welfare paid for that Jesus camp a couple summers ago, that’s all.” I hit the word Welfare extra hard so he won’t miss it.

Sam has no comment. He’s an atheist.

“Whatever,” I mumble. “It’s not my style.”

It’s true, it’s not my style. But just as I say that, it suddenly seems sad that I don’t see those kids any more, Mandy Peterson and the rest of them. Even that dorky youth pastor. A flash of movie night at Tenth Avenue Divine hits me again, Drew and me giggling in the hard wooden pew.

But I’m not one of them. I don’t need them. Doesn’t matter because I am right where I’m supposed to be.

I take the next curve on the smooth park road and suddenly the Teahouse is right in front of us.

“This is it,” I announce to Sam in a peppy kind of voice, and pull into a parking spot that faces the water.

Sam gets out of the truck. I look across Burrard Inlet and pause. My eyes get hooked on the glow of that heap of sulphur way out in the harbour. A massive mound of yellow powder has been in that spot since forever. When I was a kid I used to imagine tobogganing down the slope and making canary-coloured sand castles and just generally romping around the way little kids do.

I look back at Sam as he walks toward the restaurant, stops and rummages in his pockets. His blue shirt radiates. The Teahouse looms fancy behind him. He’ll fit right in here. As long as he doesn’t say too much.

Maybe if we just sit down at one of those milk-white tablecloths, our faces reflecting in one of their shiny silver tea sets, everything will smooth out between us.

Shoving open my door, I steady myself to jump down from the truck, and as I reach out to grab the door frame, my dress strap snaps.

“Shit.” The white bodice droops down on one side. “Shit,” I hiss again.

I grab my purse. Two safety pins hold the ripped lining together. I unhook one of them. In the rear-view mirror, Sam shuffles as he waits. I slam the door shut behind me.

“Dad,” I call, and the word feels like a big marble knocking my teeth. “I broke my …” I walk toward him, hold up the end of the strap and then smooth it back over my shoulder. “Can you pin it for me?”

He takes the safety pin as I turn my back to him.

The feel of his hands as he fumbles at my bare shoulder blade—trying not to stick me, trying not to touch too much—is more weird than anything else today.

“There.” He steps back.

I roll my shoulders to make sure the strap is secure.

Sam looks at his watch. “Jeez, it’s late. I told these guys I’d meet ’em at three. Why don’t I take you for supper instead?”

It’s twenty after two now. I open my mouth: nothing comes out.

“You mind drivin’ me to Bosman’s Motor Inn?” he asks.

I look at him.

“It’s just over on Howe Street.” He looks down the park road.

“Sure thing,” I say.

I wish my sandals were cowboy boots, big mean shit-kickers with pointy toes and square heels. But they’re not, so I spin toward the truck like a dancer instead. I don’t think I ever said sure thing in my life before today.

I stare at the water and the sulphur as we walk back to the truck, that yellow mountain with no kids on it. It looks different to me all of a sudden. An ugly, wrong type of yellow.

We get back into Lou’s pickup and drive out of the park. We don’t say a word.

In front of Bosman’s, Sam says, “I’ll call you later, and we’ll go for a nice Italian supper.” He digs into his pants pocket. “Listen, give this”—he takes out a folded wad of cash and peels off two hundred dollar bills and two fifties—“to those people you’re stayin’ with. Give it to the parents. Say thanks.”

I nod. He nods.

As he walks quickly toward the motel, I can’t get that mountain of yellow sulphur out of my head. Some guy my mother dated when we first moved back to Vancouver explained to me that that stuff was not for playing in, it was for fertilizer and gunpowder and if I were to get close it would stink like rotten eggs.

At Tenth Avenue Divine, the youth pastor said that hell smells like sulphur.

Why would they put that sort of stuff by the water? At the beach. Seems mean to me now. Cruel.

I wipe my eyes, put the truck back in drive and head east.