The Antagonist

26


08/13/09, 11:22 p.m.


HEREWITH BEGINS OUR HERO'S life of crime, which is not really much of a crime-life at all since it consists basically of driving around with Ivor in a mud-coloured Dodge Aries making “drop-offs” and “pick-ups.” Ivor, on Richard’s instructions, doesn’t even let Rank drive. Richard is perhaps the most cautious son of a bitch Rank has ever encountered. Rank is asked to do nothing but accompany Ivor — to climb into Ivor’s barn-smelling K-car on departure, and out of it on arrival, at which point Rank follows Ivor into the abysmal apartment block or dilapidated household where business is being done. Glamour! Intrigue! Once inside, Rank stands there so that everyone present can get a good look at him before Ivor suggests to the host or hostess that they adjourn to another room to do business. Rank is not invited to come along at this point. Rank is instructed to stand by the door and wait. As he stands there — smelling stale cigarette smoke, or stale toast, or stale sweat, or stale macaroni and cheese — he wonders if this is yet another stage in the process of being brought up through the ranks of Goldfinger’s — another tier on the hierarchical ladder.

During their time together on the highway, Ivor regales Rank with stories of his life (mostly to do with avoiding the rabidly obsessive efforts of the U.S. government to infect him with HIV) and attempts to impart to his younger cohort the occasional snippet of wisdom courtesy of Hard-Knocks High.

And, yes, more often than not the wisdom amounts to: Don’t trust the U.S. government because it wants to give everyone AIDS. But every once in a while, when they’ve been driving a bit longer than usual and the road has become a hypnotically undulating grey ribbon, Ivor’s one-track mind slows down a little and even wanders far enough afield to allow him to talk about his life. A time before the Nixon administration’s diabolical plan to eradicate the black, gay and scummy had begun to take hold; a more innocent time.

Ivor grew up only a few miles down the river and even though his entire family are alive and live nearby, the only one he sometimes talks to on the phone is his sister Dini. He isn’t able to go visit Dini because Dini’s husband is an a*shole who has never forgiven Ivor for breaking into their basement eight years ago to sleep off a binge and not paying to replace the window. Ivor argued that he had no memory of doing it, so the husband couldn’t even prove he had. And the husband said he’d walked into the basement and Ivor had been sprawled beside the furnace in his long-johns and what more evidence did anybody need?

“But my point, Rank,” explains Ivor, “the point I tried to make at the time was this. I am a man with a substance abuse problem. I will always have that hanging over me. There’s nothing I can do about it — it’s my cross to bear is what I’m saying. What I need is the compassion and understanding of my family. And I have never had that, Rank.”

“That sucks, man,” commiserates Rank.

“I never got that from anyone in my family except Dini.”

“She sounds nice,” says Rank. “I don’t have any brothers or sisters myself.”

“Well they can be a blessing,” says Ivor. “My family isn’t scummy like me, you know. I’m what you call the black sheep. My dad did a pretty good business selling Kawasaki bikes and ATVs and whathaveyou and he had this idea all his kids would go to college — first crop a scholars in his family history. But I kept f*cking up at school. I had my own bike, so, you know, I was the king. I was Captain Motorcycle. Just wanted to f*ck off and get high. Figured I was untouchable. Didn’t graduate.”

Rank tries to glance over and take account of Ivor without being too obvious about it. He has no idea how old the guy is. Ivor is balding, and greying, with a ponytail, but his face is as smooth as a baby’s.

“You could always go back,” suggests Rank.

“No, I can’t go back to school Rank. I’m not a school guy.”

“Hey, I never thought I was a school guy,” says Rank. “And look at me.”

“Yeah, but you are, Rank, whether you think it or not. Whereas I got a few years on you and I know. I know what I’m not. I know what you are. You keep doing what you’re doing — I’ve known a lotta good kids like you who have done the same. Make your money offa Rich. Rich won’t screw you over and he won’t get all pissy when you tell him it’s time for you to go find a real job. He’s used to it. Meanwhile, you and he got a mutually beneficial relationship going. Pay for school and then get the f*ck out of here.”

Rank bounces along the highway beside Ivor feeling surprised. Let me talk to Rich. It never occurred to Rank before that Ivor might be concerned with anybody’s well-being other than Richard’s.

It is almost sweet.

“Hey,” says Rank after a couple of minutes. “I just wanna say thanks for setting this up for me and everything, man.”

“Pay for school,” repeats Ivor, “and get out of here.”

Before dropping Rank off back at the dorm, Ivor hands him a ten and two twenties.

“For the pleasure of your company,” he says.

Fifty dollars was about what Rank got paid after a five-hour shift bouncing at Goldfinger’s. Sometimes the rides in the Dodge with Ivor take no longer than fifteen minutes.

It is a good deal, no matter how you slice it. In the first week of his new position, he has already worked three such shifts with Ivor on top of the Thursday and Friday evening shifts he’ll put in at the bar. All of a sudden, he’s not making bad money.

All of a sudden, Rank begins to wonder if he shouldn’t study for exams after all. What he should do is, he should call Adam, with whom he takes two courses, and set up an all-night grilling session. Do what he can to yank at least those two grades up by the bootstraps and then spend next semester doing his best Adam-imitation, pulling down A’s across the board to make up for the shitshow that is sure to be his mid-term results.

All of a sudden, he’s thinking about next semester.

The problem is he doesn’t really call Adam anymore. They just sort of bump into each other, and not even very often. But Kyle has booked their boys’ night out for the coming Saturday, the Saturday Rank has off, so he and Adam will see each other then. He plans to apologize for being such an a*shole all semester. Maybe not outright apologize, as that would be kind of gay and over-earnest, but do or say something to sort of imply contrition. Mutter about how stressed out he’s been lately. Buy his buddy an entire tray of shooters, tell him he likes his cardigan, slap him — ever-so-lightly — on the back.

And just before they get too shitfaced, ask his friend for help.

Wade has a girlfriend and it is ridiculous and sad. He won’t shut up about her, goes around shamelessly burbling, I am so freaking in love, man! and is busy writing a series of guitar ballads to elucidate this point. It pains and embarrasses them. Wade and his girlfriend spend entire moony afternoons nuzzling each other on the grimy couch, so when Rank arrives to hang, he finds he can only sit so long watching them gaze and fondle before needing to be elsewhere. Worse, Wade insists that everyone must get to know and love his girl as he does. Kyle had to place him in an arm-lock to keep him from inviting her along on their Saturday blowout.

“I don’t go anywhere without Emily now,” Wade insisted. “It just can’t happen, man. She’s a part of me.” So Kyle pinned him to the couch and wrenched his arm behind his back.

“Yoko Ono!” said Kyle, astride Wade who was busy suffocating among the cushions. “Say it. Say Yoko Ono.”

“I will never say that about her,” Wade protested from the depths of the couch. “She isn’t even Asian.”

Emily was one of those awful neo-hippie girls who never wore anything tight. It was all enormous, cable-knit sweaters pulled down over ankle-length skirts, chunky boots and hair going everywhere. Little House on the Prairie meets Janis Joplin. And she smiled at you whether she liked you or not, no matter what you said — one of those secretive I-exist-on-a-higher-plane kind of smiles — just to prove how laid-back she was.

“Just kill him,” pleaded Rank. “Suffocate him now and get it over with.”

“Yoko. Ono.”

Wade’s reply was lost inside the couch, but his tone was all defiance. Kyle rolled off him onto the floor and Wade sat up, red-faced, victorious.

“Okay but she’s not coming Saturday,” panted Kyle.

“We’ll see,” said Wade.

The plan was to lock up the Temple for the night, because if they hung out there for any length of time on a Saturday, people inevitably would start dropping in, looking for a party. Kyle, needless to say, had dictated the agenda for the night. First stop was the Italian restaurant to treat themselves to dinner. Rank, who was just getting used to having cash in his pocket, thought this was a lame and needless expense — they could easily pad their stomachs at a sub shop for a quarter of the price then hit the bars — but since none of the other guys balked, neither did he. Gordon Sr. sounded in his head throughout the meal however, saying things meant to accompany a flitting hand gesture like: My, my! And, La di da! Also the occasional slur against Italians, whose traditions apparently involved pouring a greenish puddle of olive oil onto your side plate, meant to be soaked up by bread.

Rank watched as Kyle dumped some kind of brown syrup onto the plate to mingle with his olive oil. The two formed a greasy yin-yang.

“That’s disgusting,” said Rank.

Kyle glanced up, smiling at him indulgently like a kindergarten teacher. “It’s balsamic, man. Try some.”

I’d rather try my own toe jam, Gordon Sr. opined in Rank’s head. So Rank made himself lean over and wipe his bread on Kyle’s plate.

“It’s good, right?” said Kyle.

“You know what else is good on bread?” grunted Rank. “Like, butter.”

Kyle was about to crack a joke at Rank’s ill-bred expense, when Adam, who had been silently hoovering his minestrone this whole time, remarked, “Why don’t you just f*cking order some?”

Kyle and Rank both turned to stare at him, but Adam hadn’t bothered looking up from his soup. A couple of moments of silence went by, not at all in keeping with a celebratory evening among four raucous pals. Kyle dabbed a chunk of bread into his yin-yang, frowning, as Wade sat gazing obliviously out the window as if hoping for a glimpse of his neo-hippie beloved. Adam finished off his soup, not bringing it up to his face and slurping the dregs as Rank would have done, but tilting the bowl this way and that and fiddling with the spoon forever to catch every drop and morsel. Rank watched Adam until finally Adam noticed he was being watched.

“What?” said Adam.

“What,” repeated Rank. “You know what.”

Adam stared at him through his glasses. “What?” he said again, scarcely moving his lips.

“You’ve got a bug up your ass is what,” said Kyle.

There was something about Kyle’s rejoinder that broke the spell of hostility bouncing between Adam and Rank. It had taken shape abruptly, for no fathomable reason, and Rank was relieved to feel it dissipate. It was the opposite of what he wanted to happen that night, but he’d felt helpless against its weird surge.

Adam turned to Kyle. “I do not.”

“Yeah, you do,” said Rank, settling comfortably into the familiar ganging-up-on-Adam group dynamic. “It’s up there so high you probably can’t even feel it anymore.”

“It’s way up there,” agreed Kyle. “Impacted-colon up there. Way, way up.”

“Like the Friendly Giant,” exclaimed Wade, as if waking out of sleep. This was so left field, they all cracked up.

“I have been locked in my room studying for the last three days,” admitted Adam. “I’m ready to kill someone.”

“You wanna punch me?” said Rank. “I’ll let you punch me in the face.”

“Maybe later,” said Adam, smiling at his empty bowl.

Press pause. Zoom out. Look at the four of them giggling, pouring wine for one another, sitting around the table in their jeans-and-sweater nice guy uniforms, the occasional, innocuous swipe of hair gel and heavy whiff of Drakkar cologne. Fresh-shaved faces and napkins in their laps.

They’re just kids — let’s remember this, okay? That’s the thing to keep in mind as this particular evening spreads itself against the sky.

Two bottles of wine at the Italian restaurant and Rank’s lasagne ended up being basically a trough of mozzarella and therefore one of the most wonderful things he’d ever consumed — so the mood has improved by the time they hit the student pub. It’s early and there are not a lot of people there but that’s okay because the boys don’t want to be tempted to stay for more than a couple of hours anyway. They have promised one another to conduct a pub crawl this night, as half-decent a crawl as is achievable in a town of only three pubs. They will start at the U, then hit the Leeside across from the strip mall to try out the karaoke machine, and finally polish the evening off at Goldfinger’s nice and late when the action tends to be at its plastered, orgiastic apex. This, of course, another Kyle directive. Rank, personally, has experienced the aforementioned apex night after night — could frankly do without the apex. The apex often involves middle-aged women in various stages of undress laid out completely insensible on the dance floor, if not perilously animated, trying to climb up onto the bar and lead the crowd in a confused singalong/striptease. Or else some guy trying to break into one of the VLTs using the cranium of anyone he happens not to like the look of. Or vomiting. The apex often entails a great deal of human throwup.

But that’s not how Kyle sees it, because Kyle hasn’t seen it enough. But whatever; it’s Kyle’s show, Kyle’s pre-holiday hurrah. And what’s a night on the town, in this town, without Goldfinger’s? Rank can only hope he won’t be dragooned into service as a bouncer upon the brothers’ arrival at the bar — at the same time, though, he can’t see how he won’t be. The Goldfinger’s clientele can keep a bouncer pretty busy come one in the morning; Ivor is sure to need help at some point, and Rank won’t have much choice but to pitch in if he wants to keep his lucrative new gig riding shotgun in the Dodge.

So, shit. Only thing for it is to get as drunk as he can before then.

This happens to be the train of Rank’s thoughts when Adam, reading his mind like Kreskin, confides out of the blue, “Seriously, I could do without Goldfinger’s tonight.”

And Rank says, “Oh God I was just thinking the same thing. It’s where I work now, you know? The novelty kind of wears off after a while.”

“You should say that to Kyle.”

“Yeah. I just can’t stand to disappoint the little guy.”

They are huddled together at a table at the Leeside. Kyle has gone off somewhere to schmooze the other tables, as he is always helpless to do, even on an evening that is ostensibly all about “the boys.” Wade, meanwhile, is onstage doing an actually pretty brilliant David Byrne. He makes his face vacant and flails robotically and you can practically see the oversized suit flopping against his limbs. Every once and a while Adam and Rank stop talking to admire him.

“No, really, you should,” says Adam. “People don’t say no to Kyle nearly enough.”

“You could say something too you know,” says Rank.

“He ignores me. He doesn’t ignore you.”

“Yeah,” says Rank, watching Wade.

Better than this, sings Wade.

“You don’t need to tiptoe around Kyle, by the way,” says Adam.

“I don’t f*cking tiptoe around Kyle.”

“Okay. Well if you thought you did.”

Rank realizes what Adam is talking about: how Rank shoved Kyle that time. And he wants to say, It’s not Kyle I feel like I’m on f*cking eggshells around these days. And maybe he will say something like that after a few more drinks.

Somebody calls you, sings Wade, but you cannot hear.

“You know, he’s really good,” says Rank. “We ride him all the time about the rock star stuff, but he could do it.”

“He’s too lazy,” replies Adam. Rank looks over at him.

“You said that with, like, no hesitation whatsoever.”

“It’s true,” says Adam. “He doesn’t want to work at it. He just f*cks around.”

“So he should be like you?”

“What’s like me?”

Rank is still sober enough to know he should back off a little. “I mean like what you said at the restaurant — locking yourself in your room and studying ’til you wanna kill somebody. I don’t know how productive that is either in the long run.”

Adam grimaces up at Wade spinning around onstage in his imaginary big suit and says, “I’m trying to get somewhere. I’m trying to achieve something.” And Rank is looking at him very closely because Adam says this in exactly the same way he once confessed to being afraid of fat people, of getting fat. That is, with real fear behind it and also shame. And Rank feels the same instinct he felt then — a kind of fatherly need to reassure.

“Grix, you’re a born brain. You’re gonna kill on exams, don’t worry.”

“I’m not a born brain,” says Adam. “Everything is actually really hard for me if you want to know the truth.”

“F*ck off,” says Rank kindly.

Adam puts down his drink and his hand, startlingly white, flies out at Wade like a dove. “Guy can sing, play guitar — easy. He doesn’t even have to try. Just get stoned and follow Kyle around for the rest of his life. I don’t have any talents. I have to work and I have to think. I have to force myself to spend a lot of time just thinking, Rank. I’m twenty already. I have to get good.”

Rank doesn’t have any idea what his friend Adam is talking about.

That knowledge won’t come round for almost another twenty years.

All that it takes, sings Wade. All that it takes.

Kyle returns to their table then, arms spread wide.