by Paul Slatter
Smiling and holding out his hand with the gentlest of touches, Sebastian held it to the young girl’s arm, stopping her in her tracks and said, “Megan love, we’ll get to your thoughts soon enough, please let Patrick have his turn.”
And he turned to Patrick, waiting.
Patrick shifted in his seat, his ass still burning inside, wishing he’d looked at the script at some stage or known a character’s name at least. But then he remembered he did, there was Dan’s character’s name the one Dan was on about when Dan had humiliated that guy with the ego who’d written the script in the first place. Dan had told him about the binoculars and how it was impossible for them to work the way it was scripted. He said, “The binoculars, they’ve got to go, maybe use a laser system—you know get ahead of technology same as Star Trek used to do. Let’s make incredible gadgets up that scientists can latch onto after the movie’s been released. Same goes for the ray guns as Megan just mentioned, I’m all for that 100%. Trust me, it’s what this script needs. It’ll make all the difference. Oh, and I was also thinking maybe we introduce a pet for the kids to love, you know like a little dog that can save the planet. Maybe even a really cute one like your little Fluffy. Trust me, kids’ll go crazy. How is he by the way?”
*************
Sebastian watched from his window as the producer and new writer of the film he was indulging Patrick with left the building and hailed a cab out front. The man obviously had no idea what was going on, but he’d seen worse—at least the guy could sell. Once the thing was finished that’s where he’d be coming into his own, and truth was he liked the idea about having little Fluffy in the movie. Even if Patrick had used it as a deflection like he had.
Fluffy would like that as well, and he’d be able to get him all shampooed for the film and double up the glam for the premier, bring him there in his own limo—give his little dog the red-carpet star treatment. This would be amusing.
But for the moment, the little dog had other issues. The biggest one being the fact he was leaving tiny skid marks on the rug. He picked up the phone and called Charles Chuck Chendrill, “Chuck! It’s Sebastian, what are you doing? I’ve got an emergency.”
*************
They drove slowly across the Granville Street Bridge, Chendrill at the wheel of the Aston, Sebastian in the back discreetly blowing on his dog’s backside to keep it cool as they went.
Two emergencies in a day was a record for Chendrill. Sebastian waking him again happily—this time in the middle of the afternoon—pulling him from a dream where his mouth was taped up and he was drowning while he was sprawled out on his oversized sofa back at his condo.
As they took the right exit towards 4th Street, Sebastian said, “I know when he’s not well Chuck, I always have."
Chendrill looked in the mirror, just nodding on the way over and doing the same on the way back as Sebastian said exactly the same thing but in reverse, “I always know when he’s feeling better Chuck, I always have.”
Feigning interest, but not wanting to know about what had been going on behind closed doors at the vet’s, Chendrill kept quiet. Sebastian nonetheless telling him how Fluffy hasn’t liked it there at the vet ever since he and Alan had the dog shaved after they’d found a flea. Keeping it up, Sebastian carried on and said, “You wouldn’t believe it Chuck, it was an infestation!”
“Really?”
“Alan was beside himself, kept scratching all day at work, thinking he had them also. We had bites on both our ankles.”
Telling him it comes with the territory if you have a pet, Chendrill joked, “They can lie dormant in the carpet for years you know.”
They parked out front of Sebastian’s building as the sun was making its way towards the west, Chendrill picked up Fluffy, carrying him to the door—the dog making the most of the fuss, seemingly half asleep in his arms.
As they rode the public elevator up to his penthouse suite, Sebastian said, “Patrick’s saying Fluffy should be in the movie, Chuck.”
Chendrill looked to the dog lying almost comatose in his arms. The dog had star quality, that was for sure. It spent enough time at the doggy spa to qualify. They reached the top floor and the doors opened. Seeing a man standing in the corridor looking to them both, before then getting into the elevator himself and closing the door behind them, they stepped into Sebastian’s suite as Chendrill said, “What’s Patrick’s after?—Besides, how do you know Fluffy can act?”
“Oh, he can act, Chuck. Look at him now lying there as though he’s dying when all he’s got is a sore backside. I don’t know who was worse today, Fluffy or Patrick with the way he could not sit still.”
Chendrill didn’t want to go there—he’d seen the photos of Patrick being taken by the Russian woman and that had scarred him enough. As he stood by the window looking down to the road below waiting for the man who’d stepped into the elevator when they got out to appear, he asked, “That guy who was just up here, you know him?”
Sebastian stared at him confused. Then answered curiously, “The one up here, who got in the lift?”
“Yeah.”
“No—Why?”
“Because he’s just appeared downstairs and he’s now sitting on a park bench.”
Sebastian walked over to the window and looked down. The park below his place was packed with people laying, sitting, walking, running, riding bikes, each enjoying the last of the afternoon sun as it sneaked through the trees. He said, “There’s got to be a thousand people down there, Chuck.”
“The one on the bench.”
Sebastian stared down trying to see who on earth Chendrill was referring to. He said, “You’ve got better eyes than me Chuck, I can’t see a thing.”
Then Chendrill made it only too clear.
“The guy looking up at this place.”
At first he couldn’t tell and wondered if Chendrill was going crazy, then, looking down to the man, Sebastian said, “You even sure it’s the same person, Chuck?”
“One hundred percent.”
Sebastian moved to another window and, calling out unseen to Chendrill, said, “He might be looking at the other building’s penthouse suite at the back, Chuck.”
“He’s not.”
“Maybe he’s just looking at the birds in the sky.”
“Maybe,” Chuck answered, not wanting to get Sebastian any more alarmed than he already was or he’d be asking him to stay overnight on the couch or in the guest room. The guy was no bird watcher, nor was he looking at the neighbours.
Three minutes later, Chendrill was outside, leaving through the parking garage and nipping across the road to stand in the park as the general public passed him by.
The man was still there, looking up, looking down, scratching his head, rubbing his eyes. The man in his forties with darkish skin, making him look almost Italian, the guy trying to look younger in his turned-up jeans and cowboy boots.
An hour later, he moved on with purpose, his head down, hands in his pockets, stopping for a piss at the public toilets on English Bay, then up the steps and across the road onto Davie Street, then up the hill to the top where the rainbow coloured shops and bars screamed out at him making their own sexuality statements until they faded back into the vanilla yuppiedom of Yaletown and the offices of Slave.
And there he stood as he had at the bench, looking up at nothing from a doorway, this man with thinning hair whose youth had long past, waiting and watching while Chendrill watched him.
It was almost an hour that passed before he checked his phone and moved off again, Chendrill sitting in the bar three doors along watching the man through the reflection of a hat shop window next to Slave.
He kept on heading east, crossing the boundary where rich become poor, and where the poor came home to rest their heads in sheltered housing and the cheap hotels, feeding off welfare and selling their infested beds in cramped damp rooms to these poor, emptied souls stuck in a cycle of poverty.
From what Chendrill could see, this is where h
e was from, this man who’d been waiting up in the corridor outside Sebastian’s home. The man whose up-market clothes didn’t match the people who knew his name.
From the diagonal direction the man was heading, it was odds on that he was on his way to the strip club at the top of Main Street. By the time he’d reached it and paid the cover, Chendrill was already sitting inside watching him through the long thin legs of the girl on the stage as she pranced about, hanging onto the pole that would be hers for the length of five songs.
He knew them and they knew him was all Chendrill could tell as the man sat down at the corner of the stage ordering a beer as he watched the girl’s shoes and felt her pink boa whisk past his face. An hour passed along with five more beers and five other women on the stage dancing and trying to look keen, the man banging the flat of his hand on the stage as his spirit loosened with booze as he watched the legs and tits of the girls on stage and the perky asses of the lap dancers roaming the room seeking their prey.
By the time his hand was sore and his sixth beer was half done, the lap dancers moved in, sidling up using their sex and the smell of their soft skin to entice him until they lured him away to a room upstairs where they could all take turns rubbing themselves into his crotch as his hands hovered inches from their wiggling tits as they floated in tantalizingly close, touching his lips for the length of one song and another and another until he could take no more and staggered away with the smell and feel of the girls still fresh in his mind, down the stairs to lean his giddy spinning head against the stall wall of a piss stained toilet, pull his erect cock from his pants and stroke it until he came. It was what he liked to do and what did he care what people thought of him as he heard them chatting bullshit as he jerked himself silently, breathing heavy as his hand ran. What did he care if the door was half open? What did he care of their laughter and their taunts? They were nothing in his world—after all, how many people had they killed?
He walked out staring down the young men in the rest room and checked himself in the mirror. He still looked good even if his hair was messed and his cheeks were red. He opened the door and walked out, hearing the music blaring now as he passed through the crowd and back towards the stage towards the big guy in the Hawaiian now sitting on his stool. Reaching him, the man sat down and, leaning in, retrieved his beer.
“Sorry, am I on your stool?” Chendrill asked.
The man answered, telling him it wasn’t a problem and looking at the girl on the stage with half the interest.
“You’re good, you’re good.”
Chendrill got straight to the point, saying, “Now that you’ve jacked off, you can tell me what your interest is in Sebastian String and Slave?”
The man stared at him, the girl on the stage now right there with her snatch out in his face. The man turned his head and looked at it for a moment, her skin shaven all around with a tiny stud in her clit. Looking away and back to Chendrill he said, “Can you imagine doing that to your dick?”
Chendrill stayed quiet, waiting for an answer. The man continued, “You the guy who got out the elevator with him then?”
He was, they both knew that. Then the man said, “How about I just get up and walk away and we leave it at that. Pretend neither of us ever met? Then we can both grow old.”
“How about you answer my question so you can come back in here again without feeling embarrassed,” Chendrill answered.
The man turned away looking back at the stage to the girl, on the other side now, and took a deep breath. Did he need this bullshit right now from a big fuck who couldn’t dress properly? No. He looked at the girl for a second longer and then to one of the lap dancers who’d just ruined his hair and, turning to talk to her, leaned down pulling a gun from his cowboy boot and stuck it quickly in Chendrill’s stomach. Smiling as his other hand dropped a wad of twenty dollar bills next to his unfinished beer, he said, “How about the last thing you see is that girl’s crotch?”
“I could think of worse,” replied Chendrill quick as a flash with a smile as he watched the man get up and slowly back away with the gun tucked up the sleeve of his top.
Calling out as he went, Chendrill said, “Next time, you’d better have two.”
************
The name of the guy who’d pulled the gun after wacking off in the shitter was Mattia, Chendrill discovered from one of the lap dancing girls as she dropped the hundred dollar note into her purse while Chendrill did his best not to look at her breasts.
“Says he’s Italian and from Calgary,” she said, “and he worked as a drover until he fell and found Jesus. But that’s bullshit, because he ain’t no cowboy. And yeah, he does this thing, takes two or three of us upstairs at a time then goes down and wacks one out in the stall, but there’s nothing new there. Oh yeah, he’s got a big dick and he smells.”
“What of, sweat?” Chendrill asked. The girl shook her head and said straight back, “no, more like death,” as she watched the door for prey as it opened. Chendrill looked at the girl’s shoes, wondering what would happen to her ankle if she missed a step. She was a good-looking woman though, despite the shoes, perfect in almost every respect, her hair long, lovely shoulders, face, breasts, flat toned stomach, tapered legs, what the hell was she doing here he thought. But she was there, her and the others who floated about looking sexy. As he pulled out another hundred-dollar bill, he said, “Is he with the Angels?”
She shook her head again, looking about, there were a few here in the crowd sitting in groups, feeling special in their VIP booths along the wall. She looked back to Chendrill.
“No, he doesn’t run with that crowd. I’ve heard he lends money though. He comes here and gets it on with us, but I’ve seen him alone with one of the other girls if you get my drift.” He handed her the other hundred.
“What like he’s fucking one of them?”
The girl, not giving a shit, said straight back. “Yeah but not here though, if you know what I mean, people have relationships, even us.”
“If he comes back in here, send me a text before he goes upstairs and I’ll give you another one of these,” Chendrill said.
The girl looked at the cash and took it before saying, “Make it three and you’ve got a deal.”
*************
The first thing Chendrill did when he got back up to Sebastian’s penthouse was to ask Sebastian what was going on. Sebastian sitting there, not wanting to look up at Chendrill, holding little Fluffy in his lap on the verge of tears with his tea shaking in its porcelain cup, Chendrill telling him straight as he looked down upon Sebastian saying, “Sebastian, I can’t help you unless I know everything.”
Sebastian stared back at him with watery eyes, shaking his head and saying in an unsteady tone, “Chuck, I’m telling you I don’t know. Maybe the guy just wanted to rip the place off.”
Shitheads like that don’t carry guns and blow two hundred on three lap dancers at a time, Chendrill thought, they’re opportunists—this guy wasn’t.
“Have you done anything illegal?” Chendrill asked as Sebastian stared back at him with a look of astonishment on his face.
Sebastian simply replied, “You know me Chuck, I don’t even walk in the bike lane in the park.”
It was true, he didn’t, thought Chendrill. He’d seen him struggling through the crowd on the seawall when the bike lane was empty. Then looking about the room to the art and pictures on the wall spanning the man’s life, Chendrill said, “May I ask, Sebastian, what about Alan? Is there anything there that may be an issue?”
And that’s when Sebastian started crying.
“He was a man’s man Chuck—you know, like you are,” Sebastian said once the tears had stopped and he’d been able to breathe again. “He really was, just like you Chuck.”
Like me, Chendrill thought, and wondered how that could be at all possible as Sebastian carried on, his face brightening as the memories came flooding back.
“He loved to go to the races, it was his thing, you know?
I didn’t really care, but I went anyway. Every time one of the big stallions came strutting past and its penis would drop down, you know like they do, Alan would say, ‘Oh if only I could take the weight.’ Oh, he was so funny Chuck, it was like his own little catch phrase—he never missed the opportunity.”
It wasn’t what Chendrill wanted to hear and, rubbing his hands across the top of his brow, he said, “And?”
“And, you know, it’s the way he was.”
What is going on? Chendrill thought, what was this little secret Sebastian wanted to let out but was having such a hard time doing? He stared at him waiting, watching as the bubbles inside Sebastian floated towards the surface.
Then taking a deep breath and suddenly letting go, Sebastian said, “There was this man, Chuck. Alan liked him, see he was really into horses and Alan—bless his soul—wanted to have a stake in one. So, he could feel part of it all instead of just one of the punters watching. This man was selling his stake in a thoroughbred from the Island who’d won this and that cup and they wanted to go the whole hog with the horse, hire jockeys and such.”
“And you paid?” said Chendrill in the softest of voices.
Sebastian nodded, “Yes Chuck, I was doing well then and it wasn’t such a huge amount to put a smile on Alan’s face.”
“How much?” Chendrill asked in a tone so firm Sebastian had no choice other than to answer.
“Just two hundred and fifty thousand.”
Just! Chendrill thought, wondering how much the man actually had made in his life. Then he carried on saying, “And?”
“And Alan bought his share of the horse and it raced and won and…and then it died.”
“How?” Chendrill asked in a similar tone.
“It was strange Chuck, in an around about way it was killed by a mosquito.”
“It caught a disease from one?” Chendrill replied, wondering if he’d ever heard of a disease horses could catch from a mosquito.