by Tyler Keevil
‘Fuck Julian,’ Chris said. ‘Fuck him and his heaven. Even if it existed, I wouldn’t want to go.’
‘Why not?’
‘Think about it. There’s no sex in heaven, or beer, or fighting. There’s no oceans and no rivers and no swimming and no pot. There’s none of the things we like to do.’
‘Yeah. My dad says we’re hedonists.’
‘What are those?’
‘Like we just want to chill out and get high and drunk all the time.’
‘Totally. And you can’t do any of that shit in heaven. In heaven, all you do is stand around trying on different turtlenecks. It’s a rule. Everybody has to wear one.’
‘Even God?’
‘God wears the biggest turtleneck of them all.’
I snickered, imagining it. ‘Then why are people so stoked to go there?’
‘No choice.’ Chris cleared his throat and hawked out the window. ‘It’s like when all the bars close downtown. The only thing left open is this one super expensive club. People will do anything to get in: throw cash at the bouncer, sneak in the back doors, pull a gun, whatever. But once you’re inside, you see how shitty it actually is. Then you wish you’d never come in the first place. All you want to do is go home. But you can’t.’
‘That sounds lame.’
‘It is. But don’t worry – they wouldn’t let us into club heaven. We don’t even believe in God for Christ’s sake.’
‘I’d rather go to hell, anyway,’ I said.
‘Me, too.’ Chris changed lanes to blow past this grey Toyota van – one of those ancient snub-nosed models. Then he said, ‘Tell me what hell would be like, Razor.’
‘The thing about hell,’ I said, ‘is that it’s not even hot. It’s actually super cold. All the walls are frosty, and all the floors are ice. The whole place is tinted sort of blue, too.’
I wasn’t really making it all up. I’d seen a version of hell like that in some movie. I think it was A Christmas Carol – this fairly old-school version of it.
Chris said, ‘That doesn’t sound so bad.’
‘They don’t torture people or poke them with pitchforks, either.’
‘How can it be hell, then?’
‘I don’t know.’ I tried to remember. ‘I guess because there’s nothing to do.’
‘Whatever. We could just bust out some skates and start a pick-up hockey game.’
I grinned. ‘For sure. Me and you would play up front, and we’d hire a couple of real hellbenders to play defence for us.’
‘Yeah. Like Bob Probert and Jack the Ripper.’
We both thought about that. It sounded pretty sweet.
‘Too bad it’s not real,’ he said. ‘Too bad we can’t actually go to hell.’
‘Where are we going, man?’ I asked.
Chris didn’t answer. By then, he knew where he was going, I’m pretty sure. The only thing he didn’t know was whether or not I was coming with him.
45
‘They won’t catch us. Trust me.’
He’d climbed up onto this brick wall – about eight feet high and two feet thick. Lying flat on his stomach, he reached down and offered her his hand. Karen didn’t take risks. She’d never broken a law in her life – except for smoking weed. And that’s not even really illegal any more in Canada. At least in BC, anyways. So obviously this was going to be a bigger deal for her than for either of us. But when he said that, because of what he’d done at the Roxy, and the look on his face, she believed him.
She took his hand.
It was the last thing they did on their date – after the shitty dinner, after the guy with the gun, after chilling with those junkies in Opium Park, after I’d driven down to pick them up. Chris got it in his head that he wanted to break into the Vancouver Aquarium. Don’t ask me why. We went there together, back when we were little, and Chris had hated the place. The killer whale was super sick that day, but the trainers still forced her to come out. She flapped feebly around her tank while they urged her on with this shrill whistle and a bucket of herring. She didn’t want to do any tricks or stunts. She just wanted to be left alone. It was arguably the most depressing thing we’d ever seen. I think she died pretty soon after that.
But basically, it wasn’t like Chris was an aquarium fanatic or anything. The idea just kind of occurred to him while I was driving them back to the North Shore.
‘Do you guys want to check out the aquarium?’
We were cruising through Stanley Park. That’s where the aquarium is – in the park.
‘I’m pretty sure it’s closed, man.’
‘We can break in.’
Karen was looking out the window, nibbling on her nail. ‘I don’t think so, Chris.’
‘Sure. It’ll be easy.’
He was right. It wasn’t hard to break in at all. The hard part was actually finding the aquarium. At night, in the dark, it’s super easy to get lost in Stanley Park. I cruised in circles like a demented goldfish for at least an hour. Maybe longer. But once we finally got there, we saw that the only thing standing in our way was that brick wall. And Karen.
She sort of got cold feet at the last minute.
‘Let’s forget it. We should go pick up my Jeep and go home.’
‘We’ll do that later. This’ll be awesome.’
‘I don’t know, Chris.’
‘They won’t catch us. Trust me.’
And she did. She trusted him more than anybody, and he trusted her just as much. He trusted her to keep him calm, and to help him understand all the shitty things in the world that didn’t seem to make any sense – like filet mignon. That’s part of being in love, I guess.
Then again, betrayal is part of being in love, too.
On the other side of the wall, there were no sensors or lights or security guards or cameras or anything. There was just this series of connecting pools and tanks, each with a different kind of sea animal. We crept past the seals, who were sleeping, and the sea lions, who weren’t, and at the aquatic petting zoo Chris stopped to touch the sea anemone.
‘Hey,’ he said, ‘it sort of feels like pussy.’
‘Chris! That’s gross.’
‘Razor, touch this thing.’
I did. It was all soft and wet and slippery.
‘Now you know.’
Even Karen agreed with him – apparently it really did feel like one. After that we stole some nachos and pop from one of the concession stands, then tiptoed over to the beluga whale tank. I hung a bit to the back, not really saying anything. I mean, I didn’t want to intrude. It was their date, after all. I was just kind of along for the ride. And to drive.
‘Wow,’ Karen said.
‘Shhh.’
He wasn’t scared of being caught. He was just worried about disturbing the whales. At least five of them were visible in the darkness – these fat white shapes that looked like giant ghosts. Chris and Karen forgot all about their nachos and pop. Instead they stood together and watched the whales, while I stood by myself and watched the two of them.
‘Can they breathe underwater?’ Karen asked him.
‘No.’ Chris shook his head. He knew tons about whales. Not as much as me, but still a lot – mainly from all the nature programmes my dad showed him when he stayed with us. ‘They’re mammals. They’ve got to breathe air. But they can hold their breath for a super long time, and they live mostly underwater. They eat and screw and play and die and even give birth underwater.’
‘That must be amazing.’
Chris pulled out a joint. He always had a joint on him somewhere or other – behind his ear or up his sleeve or tucked into his sock. He was like a marijuana magician.
‘Want to smoke this?’
‘Sure.’
He took the first couple of drags to get it going. They didn’t really offer me any, and I didn’t really ask. I’d started to pretend I was more like their bodyguard. You know – the kind who doesn’t ever talk and is almost invisible, until danger looms. Then, suddenly, he spr
ings into action and kicks the bad guy right in the face and saves the day.
‘Check it out.’
The whales must have noticed us or something, because one of them broke away from the pod and drifted over. I’d forgotten how weird beluga whales look up close. Their skin is slick and smooth and totally white, like bleached rubber, and the dome of their forehead sticks up in this super strange way. As it cruised by, it rolled onto its side and sort of ogled them with one eye.
‘Chris – it’s staring right at us!’
‘I know.’
Pretty soon another whale came over to check us out. And another. They cruised past one by one. I guess they weren’t used to people being around at night. Whales are curious like that. After Chris and Karen had finished the joint, the first whale circled back to say goodbye. This time, it raised a flipper out of the water and hung half-upside down – like a capsized boat. The flipper was close enough to touch, so that’s exactly what Chris did. He reached out and stroked the tip with the palm of his hand. The whale didn’t mind at all. It rolled back over and blasted a big fountain of water out its blowhole – spraying the three of us – before fading away into the dark.
Chris tucked the roach in his pocket, and leaned over to kiss Karen.
‘I told you this would be awesome,’ he whispered.
Afterwards, we got back in the car and drove to the Lions Gate Bridge. It took about half an hour, because of the one-way system. Stanley Park is just so fucking huge. Supposedly, tons of gay guys go there at night to bang in the bushes, but we didn’t see any. We didn’t see a single person. There weren’t any joggers or cyclists or rollerbladers or shitty people walking their dogs, and for a few minutes, when we first reached the bridge, there weren’t even any other cars. It was just like Chris’s favourite movie – that one where everybody on earth suddenly disappears for no reason at all, except for these two guys and a girl.
At the centre of the bridge, Chris told me to pull over. He wanted to look down at the water, so him and Karen got out. I put the hazard lights on and stayed in the car, just keeping it fairly casual. At first I switched on the radio and put one foot up on the dashboard. Then I saw that they were talking, so I opened the window a little bit. I wasn’t eavesdropping on them or anything. I was just trying to hear what they were saying. I could, too. Barely.
Karen said, ‘That’s got to be bullshit.’
‘No – I swear.’
Chris was telling her about this tourist who fell off the bridge trying to take a photo – this seventy-year-old Japanese guy. He lived, too. Nobody knows how, but he lived. He must have been quite small and spry and light. Like a Japanese feather hitting the water.
Chris said, ‘So many people jump off here to kill themselves. Then this guy falls off by accident and totally survives. Trippy, huh?’
‘When I’m a bird,’ Karen said, ‘I’ll be able to jump off whenever I want. I’ll dive straight down and wait until the very last minute before swooping up and away.’
Chris laughed. ‘You’re never going to be a bird, Karen.’
He hated hearing her talk like that. Normally, he couldn’t even be bothered to discuss it. But that night, for once, I could tell he felt differently. He was so content that nothing could phase him – not even her and her reincarnation.
‘Yes I am.’ She reached out to hold his hand. ‘I’m going to come back as a beautiful bald eagle, a girl eagle, with white feathers.’
‘That’s such bullshit.’
‘Oh, yeah? So what happens when you die, then?’
‘What do you think happens? Nothing.’
She thought about that, but not for very long.
‘Okay. But let’s just say you believe in reincarnation. What would you want to be?’
‘You mean if I had no other choice?
‘Yeah.’
Chris muttered something that I couldn’t hear. I assumed he’d told her to forget about it or whatever, but later Karen told me what he’d actually said. I don’t think she realised how much that meant. It was the same as if he’d told her that he loved her. Maybe, on some level, she understood that. I hope she did – because that was as good as it got between them.
Within a week, it all went to shit.
46
Those holding cells were cold and cramped, like tombs.
We were too drunk to sleep so we stayed up all night talking. It was just like the sleepovers we’d had as kids – except we were hammered and in jail. Also, we weren’t in the same room. Chris was in one cell and I was in another across from him. We had to talk to each other through these little sliding panels at the base of the doors. They kind of looked like cat flaps, actually. The cops are supposed to use them to feed the prisoners.
They never fed us, though.
When we first got to the station, they fingerprinted us and took our photos and made us fill out forms and did all the stuff you’d expect. They also did some stuff you wouldn’t expect – like take our shoes. And give us bracelets. No joke. We each got a little plastic wrist band, with a number and barcode and the words ‘North Vancouver RCMP’ printed on it. I guess it’s how they keep track of prisoners or something. Then they dragged us down a hallway and shoved us in those cells. Chris hated it. He hated being locked up, especially in a space that was all confined like that. In some ways, it’s pretty lucky that he died when he did. If they’d caught him, he never would have been able to handle juvie.
‘Fuck this! Fuck you goddamned cop pigs!’
I heard him throw himself against the door. Then I heard him kicking it. He kicked it maybe a dozen times, barefoot. The echoes rang out all along the hallway – these deep, booming echoes. It reminded me of this eighties horror movie we rented one time, about an old man who finds out his house is haunted by some kid who got murdered in the bathtub. As he drowned he kicked the side of the tub again and again. That’s what the old guy keeps hearing, and that’s exactly what it sounded like in jail when Chris started booting the door.
‘Chris!’ I shouted.
He kicked the door once more for good measure. Then he stopped and opened his catflap. His face appeared at the tiny square.
‘Yeah?’
‘I’ve got to take a leak.’
There weren’t even any toilets in those cells. They were really crappy cells.
‘Screw it, man. Use the drain.’
I hadn’t seen it, but there was this drain in one corner. I leaned over it and tried to aim straight down, but it was impossible to go in one place. All that punch was catching up to me and I swayed back and forth, spattering piss in wild patterns. The stench caught in my throat. First it made me gag, and then it made me puke. No joke. I ended up puking and pissing at the same time, like some kind of crazed animal with a degenerative brain disease. No wonder they’d locked me away. I was obviously unfit for human society.
‘Razor!’
‘Huh?’
‘You okay?’
‘I’m puking my guts out over here.’
‘Duking it out, huh?’
‘I’m the duke of puke, all right.’
I fell against the door and slid down to the ground. Sometimes puking helps a guy. Not this time. Whenever I opened my eyes the whole room spun around me in slow circles. Also, the lights in my cell were broken and wouldn’t stop flickering. It was like being trapped in the very worst section of a funhouse. The only thing that made me feel better was closing my eyes and lying absolutely still. I didn’t move more than a few inches the entire night. I didn’t sleep, either. Like I said, all we did was talk. It was pretty awesome, actually. We talked about a lot of stuff we’d never talked about before, and some stuff we’d never get the chance to talk about again.
‘What do you think that guy meant?’ Chris asked. ‘That guy at the funeral.’
This was one of the things we’d never mentioned.
‘About Mrs Reever?’
‘Yeah.’
‘I don’t know, man. He was pretty drunk.’
> ‘But what do you think he was saying?’
I tried to remember. It seemed like the funeral had been a long time ago.
‘He said that she was crazy,’ I said. ‘That’s all.’
‘I thought he was saying something else.’
‘He was saying a lot of stuff.’
‘I thought he said she was better off dead.’
‘Yeah. He did.’ I rolled over to spit on the floor. I couldn’t get the taste of vomit out of my mouth. ‘But I don’t know if he meant it, you know, literally and shit.’
‘What does that mean?’
‘Like I don’t know if he actually meant it.’
‘Fuck it,’ Chris said. ‘It doesn’t matter, anyway. Maybe she was crazy. Maybe she wasn’t. She’s still just straight up dead. People pretend death is this big deal, but whatever. Being dead isn’t much different from never being born.’
‘Except if you’ve never been born, you don’t know what living is like.’
‘It’s all the same when you’re dead. Dead people can’t remember that shit.’
I was too drunk to get my head around that. It just seemed so bizarre.
I said, ‘My shrink told me dying is like having an orgasm.’
‘Not even.’
‘That’s what French people think, anyway.’
‘French people are awesome.’
‘I wish I was French.’
‘Me, too. Then we could fuck each other to death.’
We both cracked up. Our laughter sounded super weird – partly because of the eerie echoes in those cells, and partly because I hadn’t heard Chris laugh like that for a long time. Now that I think about it, I’m pretty sure he didn’t laugh again until the day he died.
In the morning a bald cop I hadn’t seen before came to get us. He led us back to the room where they’d checked us in and taken our fingerprints. It was a pretty basic room, with three or four desks and some storage lockers lined up against one wall. There were a bunch of other cops in there, too – including Bates. I couldn’t believe he was still around. He must have stayed at the station all night, waiting to see if we’d be charged. Luckily he didn’t get to deal with us in any way. He just stood on the opposite side of the room, arms crossed, sort of staring us down and at the same time trying to pretend he didn’t give a shit.