“I am having this fantasy about a new life, Al. It happens somewhere by a warm ocean, somewhere where the locals speak Spanish or Portuguese.”
She gasps, grasps a central truth about life that had, until that moment, eluded her—living well is simply a matter of confidence. Those with confidence can do anything. Barriers do not exist. Dream and life are one and the same to them.
She is going to learn Spanish. She will take lessons. She is going to master the language in record time. She has an ear for foreign languages. When she and Al make their escape down south, she is going to immerse herself in the local culture. She will be the beautiful and mysterious foreigner who lives in the hills. In the cool of the evening, she and her lover will stroll down from their villa, stopping to watch long-horned cattle drink from a muddy pond. In the village they will buy mangos and she will not be afraid of the mangy dogs, that all look like they came from the same bitch. She will not be afraid of the begging children either. She will dismiss them in Spanish, and they will go away. Or, if she is in a good mood, she will give them a few pesos and they will wrap their tanned and sand-flecked arms around her.
Why is her heart beating so fast? It is because she is fearless and because she knows what is coming next. They will walk together along the white sandy beach, stepping around clumps of seaweed. The beach is not groomed because tourists do not use it. Tourists are afraid to venture away from the safety of the resorts. Confidence—she is reminded—is the key to freedom. Without it, all life is just one big prison. All she has to do is reach out her hand and take what she wants.
She walks to where Al is reclining on the bed, his feet still on the floor. There is a white-capped prescription bottle on the bedspread next to where his pants pocket gapes open. She is going to ask him what’s in it, but decides not to. There is a force gathering in her now and she does not want to be distracted. She notices his left arm trembling and his left knee twitching like he is sending out some kind of Morse code. He’s either impatient or nervous. Could he possibly be nervous, she wonders. It’s a thought that reinforces her backbone with rebar and knocks to one side the next incoming notion, which is that he is just super high: that his twitching is the result of adrenaline flooding his veins.
In one confident move, Lila pulls the drawstring on Al’s linen pants and slips her hand inside. He is wearing satin boxer shorts with lemons and limes on them. She holds his penis, feels its heat, feels it growing in her hand. “Penis,” she says, “penis.” She likes the sound of Latin words. Al puts his hands on her breasts.
“You are not allowed to touch me,” she tells him, “not yet. Just look.”
But Al is outside her fantasy and ignores her. He moves his palms on her breasts as though rolling balls of dough. His right hand drops down and he pushes two, then three fingers inside her. She feels powerful, desired, though not that turned on. His fingers hurt her. Her body lags somewhere behind her mind. Her body will catch up. Fake it ’til you make it, she tells herself. She works his swelling cock in her small hand. “Please,” he says, “please,” and just as suddenly—almost as soon as he had gotten completely hard—he jackknifes forward. She feels his erection contract, semen wetting his satin boxers. The play, cut short, takes her by surprise. She was expecting coke dick, expecting Al to go at her the way Freddy used to when he was all hopped up, like she was the Congo and he was drilling for diamonds. Freddy could go on a bit too long when he was high. He could also get a bit pervy; it was one of the reasons he stopped doing the stuff. Freddy liked to think of himself as a moral man.
But Lila does not have time to react to Al’s premature ejaculation. In an instant, her mood turns inside out. They are in a shabby motel room on a January afternoon. She feels cold to her core. Shivering, she turns to look for a hiding place, catches her reflection in the dark mirror—you fat, disgusting bitch. She throws herself on the bed, gathering the threadbare comforter around her. Al is half lying on the bed beside her. There are dark stains on the front of his shorts, and a hairy belly pokes out from under his shirt.
“Why you poor dear,” he says, “you’re trembling.”
“I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I feel terrible.”
“It’s a hard come down with this old stuff sometimes, a real roller coaster.”
“I don’t think I like it.”
This is a crossroads moment for Al. He knows this is his chance to put away the drugs and take Lila home. He can tell Lila is having an allergic reaction. He can spin a story about it affecting one in a thousand first-time users that way. He can spice up the narrative with horrific details about gum abscesses, septum cankers, brain lesions, formication, and heart attacks. He can scare her away from birdie powder forever. But he doesn’t want to. Lila’s loss of self-control is like a green flag. She is the one-in-a-thousand he has been looking for. He sees much that he wants to exploit in her. He fully intends to have all of it.
“Ah hell, don’t be like that,” he says. “You got to take the good with the bad. All you need is another little bump. You’ll see. Trust me.” He pulls up his pants and walks over to the coffee table where he chops up and separates four more lines.
Two minutes later, Lila is lying on her back on the concave double bed while Al makes figure eights and exclamation points with his tongue between her legs. But she isn’t really there. She is lying on a deserted beach in Punta Cana, half-in-half-out of the surf, waves of pleasure crashing over her, the taste of salt and pennies in her mouth.
11
I AM IN my room, at my desk, peering through frost patterns at the blowing snow, trying to capture something in words, while the cat purrs himself to sleep on the futon and the heater flips on and off. It has been this way for many years, my days spent in relative isolation, the world both there and not there, people kept at a distance, as I attempt to tease out the places within the place, the person behind the masks, as I make my bargain with reality. For many years, Lila was an intimate part of this negotiation, a silent partner. I tell myself I wrote best when she was somewhere in the apartment, her presence a marker of some kind—perhaps anchoring me in the real world while I escaped to another. Whether this is true or not or just the kind of nonsense writers use to justify their neglect, I can’t say. What is inescapable is this: since her death, I have mused on Lila obsessively.
To an outside observer I might seem as attentive to Lila now as I was inattentive when she was alive. But an outside observer would be wrong. Al Calhoun is wrong when he says I neglected my matrimonial duties. It’s possible that Lila may have felt resentment towards me for the hours I spent at my desk—time I could have been spending with her—but she never asked me to stop. Lila was implicated in my fictional world just as I was implicated in the world she set out to create. We knew we had to make the world we wanted. No one was going to give it to us. Perhaps some people are born into circumstances they see as needing no improvement. Such people make a perfect fit with their flawed times, creating the illusion of harmony—perfection even. They are the dim-witted, the befogged, people so satiated by material comforts they can’t see beyond their confinement.
If by writing I look to correct the world, I also look to correct myself. Lila was no different. In the years we were together, she changed her politics, her tastes in literature, her body shape, her hair colour, her accent (several times), what she would and would not eat, her musical tastes, not to mention the people she chose to spend time with. Taste for both of us was a constant process of refinement. Driving this process was neither fickleness nor emptiness. It was idealism, an intuitive sense that things could be better, could be improved. Life for both of us was a constant negotiation.
So imagination was not an escape for us because it was not a denial, until it became a denial. Though when exactly we crossed the line is much more difficult to pinpoint. Perhaps it’s as simple as saying there are legitimate and illegitimate ways of remaking oneself and the world. To put it another way, some fantasies prove true, some turn ou
t to be illusions, while others are wholly delusional. Our way was always the middle ground—the illusion—the space where reality is reminded that much of its underpinnings are fictional and full of possibilities for change. But there are certain things that short-circuit the process—drugs, for example—tipping illusion over into a bad place.
“I’m a blue-sky thinker, boys,” Al says, “a half-inside-half-outside the box man and by that I mean I’m not out to reinvent the wheel. I’m just practical, that’s all. What I’m saying is that I have a proposition for you all and that proposition involves the liberation of a major chunk of change—a million dollars—from Freddy and Lila. I’d like to do it on my own—and I would if I could—but the fact is I need your help.”
“You’ve got my attention, sir,” says Snuffy, who has just snorted two lines from the vinyl-covered dealer’s manual making the rounds between the three of them.
Al laughs. “You do a real good impression of Ed McMahon.”
“You are correct, sir.”
“Christ, don’t encourage him, Al.”
“Alrighty then, let’s get serious. Like I was saying, I have a proposition for you. I have it on good authority that Freddy Mechanical has over a million bones sitting in a couple of safety deposit boxes down at the Water Street branch of the Toronto Dominion Bank. All we have to do is help him carry it out of there.”
“Just like that. Help him carry it out,” says Snuffy.
“Scepticism. I like that in a potential partner. If we’re going to pull this thing off, we need critical minds. Making the plan is the easy part; figuring out how it can go wrong? That’s hard.”
“When you say you have it on good authority, Al, whose authority are you talking about?” Gosse wants to know.
“Well none other than Freddy’s better half, and my current sweetheart, the perpetually addled—and since she discovered blow—the perpetually horny—Lila. I swear that girl has me worn out. Chafed, I am.”
“So this was her idea?” Gosse asks.
“Well, you could say that, yes. Lila’s appetite for our product has quickly outpaced her pocketbook. Freddy gives her an allowance and even gives her extras, but she’s already up to a couple of grams a day.”
“I still don’t get it,” Gosse says. “Why is Freddy going to let us walk out of the bank with a million dollars of his money?”
“In a word,” Al says, “leverage.”
“What kind of leverage.”
“Lila.”
“Lila leverage?”
“Exactly.”
“What the fuck are you talking about?”
“She’s our ace in the hole.”
“You’re talking about Lila being some kind of insurance.”
“You’re coming to it.”
“Fuck you. So you’re talking about hostage taking.”
“A home invasion and hostage taking.”
“Jesus fuck,” Snuffy barks, “You guys must think I’m some stupid. The two of you are like a walking infomercial. You have this all figured out already. You’re just feeding each other lines. Fuck.”
Gosse looks uneasily at Al, who slaps his hand on his thigh. “Now we’re talking. You are absolutely right. Gosse and I have indeed talked this over. So let’s cut to the chase.” He twists around in the driver’s seat, motioning with his head for Snuffy to come in close. Both men instantly became aware of the smell of garlic. “Lila is in on this. Our job is to break into their house early one morning when they are both still asleep, terrorize the two of them a little bit, then one of you two holds Lila hostage while the other takes Freddy to the bank where he empties his safety deposit boxes.”
The thought of being the one left alone with Lila holds serious appeal for Snuffy. Anything could happen. He makes a mental note to bring along a little product.
“Snuffy, you listening?” Gosse asks.
“I’m with you. Just thinking about the logistics. Who stays with Lila and who goes with Freddy? Stuff like that. Or can we keep Freddy back at the house and take Lila with us? Man, that would make this thing so much easier.”
“Sure would,” Al says, “trouble is, no one but Freddy can get access to the safety deposit boxes. Lila was clear about that. She doesn’t have signing authority. Here’s another thing. She’s been feeling a bit unsure about the idea and now she only wants us to take half the money and leave the other half to Freddy.”
“And that’s what she thinks is going to happen?” Gosse asks.
“No use upsetting her. She doesn’t have to know. Or to put it another way, by the time she finds out we took it all, it will be too late for her to do anything about it. So what do you say, Snuffy. You in or what?”
“I have a few questions. First one being that this is a small town. Once Freddy sees our faces he can ID us to the cops. The cops knows us.”
“Caution’s a good thing, my friend. You and Gosse will have to wear disguises. Neither Lila nor Freddy can see your faces. I can’t take part in this at all because Freddy and me have had a lot of dealings in recent months and he’d ID me from the get-go.”
“Disguises—like a stocking over the head or a hood or—wait, some kind of Halloween mask, Frankenstein or Planet of the Apes or something like that.” Snuffy says, coasting on a late rush of coke.
“Be creative. It’s up to you to decide.”
“Hang on. Hold the phone,” Snuffy says, “the one who takes him to the bank can’t be wearing no gorilla mask, can he?”
“No one has to go into the bank with him,” Gosse says.
“So what’s to stop him walking into the bank and telling the rent-a-cops what’s going down? Al just said all we had to do was help him carry out the money. I thought that meant whoever went to the bank with him went inside as well.”
“I was speaking figuratively, Snuffy. Gosse is right. No one has to go into the bank with him. Here’s why. And this is where human nature comes into play; bear with me now, if there’s one thing even more predictable than technology it’s human nature. Ask yourself what kind of a man this Freddy is. He’s a writer. Made more than a million dollars off one book and could have made ten times that if he’d played the game, written a follow-up, gone on the lecture circuit and all the rest of it. He didn’t even invest the money. Point one, he doesn’t care about money. Point two, what does he care about? Outside of whatever he writes in his notebooks, the one thing he cares about is his beautiful wife, Lila. He depends on her for everything. There is no way he is going to jeopardize her in any way. See?”
“Ya,” says Snuffy.
“OK, then, so here’s how it plays. On the morning of the day, you let yourself into their apartment—no breaking down the door necessary, I have a key. Lila will know it’s going to happen, though not when exactly. She needs to be surprised. She needs to come across as scared when she’s dragged out of bed by two guys with shotguns, both of them looking like Jabba the Hutt.”
“Whoa, no one said anything about guns—Gosse?”
“Sawn-offs.” Gosse says. “Both unloaded. Just props.”
Al continues: “So you drag them out of bed and put the fear in them a little. Then you lay it out for old Freddy, tell him you are going to take Lila hostage while your partner takes him to the bank. Tell him what you want him to do at the bank. Then tell him Lila is going to be taken to a third location, that she’ll be held there until your partner returns from the bank with the money. Tell him if your partner doesn’t get there within an hour of the bank’s opening time, bad things are going to happen to Lila. That might be the moment to rough her up a little bit, just to make your point.”
“I was thinking we could use the old cabin out on the Witless Bay Line for the rendezvous point,” says Gosse.
Snuffy vigorously nods in agreement.
“So then,” Al continues, “the one who takes him to the bank only has to sit in the car and wait. There’s no way Freddy is going to do anything other than what he is told to do. I’d stake my life on it.”
/> “Like, call me stupid, but isn’t someone wearing a gorilla mask and sitting in a car on Water Street at nine o’ clock in the morning going to look a bit suspicious?”
“Way ahead of you,” says Gosse. “We get an SUV like Al’s, with reflective glass. No one can see in. I’ve already found one we can borrow the morning of the job—the owner’s a lawyer. Works up in Toronto. Only comes home on the weekend.”
“Sweet,” says Snuffy. “This is starting to sound like a plan.”
“And,” Al continues, “as added insurance, whoever does the bank run will take Freddy out to the woods afterwards, take his phone, if he has one, tie him up and dump him. By the time he gets himself free and to the highway, me and Lila will be long gone and you and Gosse will have had plenty of time to stash your cut and make like nothing has happened. You guys are each other’s alibis.”
“Fucking beautiful,” says Snuffy.
“So I take it you’re in, then?” Al asks.
“Just one more question.”
“Shoot.”
“What’s the split?”
“Well, I was wondering when you were going to get around to that. It’s a fifty-fifty split. Half to you guys and the other half to me and Lila, which means seventy-five percent to me of our half, since Lila thinks we will be taking only half of what’s in old Freddy’s safety deposit boxes, if you follow.”
“I’m in,” says Snuffy.
One Hit Wonders Page 10