One Good Hustle

THIRTY-ONE




A FEW BLOCKS past Boundary Road, I turn down Patterson Avenue and then putter slowly along Sardis until I come to our apartment building. There aren’t enough trees to keep me hidden but I suppose there’s no point in trying to hide a monstrosity like Lou’s truck.

Doesn’t matter anyhow. No way in a million years would Marlene expect to see me pull up in a big black pickup.

I ease in along the curb, turn the volume down on the radio and let the engine idle. The curtains are open today and they flutter a little in the breeze.

Leaning forward, I peer at the apartment window. I can just make her out, moving like a shadow from the hall into the living room. She sits down on the couch and disappears from view.

I turn off the ignition, climb out of the truck and lean on the front fender, watching. My head feels blank, as if I could lean here all afternoon trying to put a thought together. What would I say to her if I did go to the door?

I hear Sam’s old words in my head: “That’s the difference between us and them—the professional works out everything that the amateur has to sweat out. If you got to sweat every move, that’s what you call a rough hustle.” If he was telling the truth, if he really wanted to teach me something, he would have hauled off and admitted that the whole thing is a rough hustle, this whole damn life.

I rest my face on my purse: one less safety pin and three hundred more dollars. I could get my own car with this if I wanted. I could get a plane ticket.

Two floors up and one balcony over, that unemployed loser with the moustache is out on his patio lounger with a beer, tanning his leathery skin. I wonder if Marlene remembers the night she knocked on his door with a plan to jump off his balcony. I wonder what they said to each other. He doesn’t notice me out here leaning on the truck. He’s too busy staring into his apartment. Must be watching television because he suddenly sits up and hoots and claps as if he’s got a game on.

After another minute or so, I shove myself up off the truck and kick my way through the low shrubs at the back of the building, toward our suite.

The sliding glass door of the patio is wide open. Marlene is leaned over the coffee table again, playing solitaire. The TV is on too, only this time it’s an old episode of The Rockford Files. She loves Rockford. After Vegas, I used to wish I could find James Rockford and get him to take my mother out on the town, get him to fall in love with her and make her right again. Rockford seemed like the sort of guy who could do that. Except that there’s no such guy. Just some actor named Garner, that’s all. The really great stuff always turns out to be phony.

I stand to the side of the balcony and watch Marlene as she picks the crossword book off the couch. She stares at the puzzle on the page and bites the end of a pencil. Her fingernails catch the light. They’re shiny, as if she gave herself a manicure this morning. My eyes follow them like fishing lures. Seems like ages since I saw shiny fingernails on my mother. It gives me a little flicker in my throat.

Inside my purse, three hundred bucks are breathing heavy. I put my hands down on the balcony railing and face east, the direction those crows fly home to bed every night.

“It’s you!”

I turn around, startled, to see that Marlene has spotted me. She’s standing up now, between the coffee table and the couch, hands dangling at her sides.

Inside me there’s a rush, like roller-coaster nerves—like hustling nerves—through my arms and down through my guts. My legs get a Gumby feel to them, rubbery and boneless. I keep hold of the balcony for fear I’ll fall flat on my face and start bawling.

She comes out from behind the coffee table and moves slowly toward the open door. It feels as if there’s a bird thrashing around in my chest, something with a small voice screaming go go go—but I keep still.

Marlene reaches the sliding glass door and peers out at me, her eyes big and brimming.

I hold tight to the railing and it’s everything I can do to hold her gaze.



ACKNOWLEDGMENTS


I would like to express my sincere gratitude to the BC Arts Council and The Canada Council for the Arts. Their support helped make this book possible.

Big fat squeezes go to Karen DeVito and John Turnbull for their home and hearts and frat room. When the going got hairy, the hairy got going.

And as always, teary gratitude goes to my editor, Anne Collins, for her steely belief that the story is in there. Even if the pot needs to simmer for a while, the story is in there.





BILLIE LIVINGSTON published her critically acclaimed first novel, Going Down Swinging, in 2000. Her first book of poetry, The Chick at the Back of the Church was a finalist for the Pat Lowther Award. Her second novel, Cease to Blush, was a Globe and Mail Best Book and her story collection, Greedy Little Eyes, was the winner of the Danuta Gleed Literary Award as well the CBC’s inaugural Bookie Award for short fiction.