by Ivan Coyote
I shrugged, smirked back at him, and said nothing.
“You realize a woman’s love is like a fly?” He raised an eyebrow at me. “And just like a fly, her love is just as likely to land on a pile of shit as it is a rose.” He took out his hanky, blew his nose, and stuffed it into the front pocket of his trousers. “What I mean is, don’t ask yourself why a beautiful girl might love you, just be glad she picked you to love. It’s good to pick a girl older than you, in the long run it is like your old Valiant: if it is too young and beautiful, you may or may not ever get where you are going, and besides, what has it cost you to get there? The shirt off your back, that’s what, young man, that’s what. Comprendez?”
I didn’t really get what Anton was saying, but I could tell that it was very important to him that I did, so I nodded.
“You know my Camilla was ten years older than me? My only sadness, my single regret, is that she is without me now, for a while, up in heaven.” He crossed himself, and I followed, as taught by my grandmother. “There never was a better wife for me than Camilla,” he continued. “I never worried where Camilla was. If she had been ten years younger, maybe it would be a different story, you see?” He wagged a worn forefinger for emphasis. “It is a smart young man who marries an older woman.”
Anton motioned for me to wait a moment, and he shuffled up his back stairs into the pantry that was off the kitchen. He came back with a jar of stewed tomatoes. “Camilla canned these. You take them; it’s one of the last jars I have. You cook a nice meal for that girl, she is a real catch. I watched how she looked at you. She loves you, and you are a lucky man for it. You cook for her, you hear me? I’ve watched them come and go over the years. This girl, there is something about her. She has a kind of grace; my Camilla, she had it too.”
This was the most Anton had ever said to me all at one go, and his eyes were watering. He fumbled for his hanky with one hand as he shooed me home with his other. “And wash your damned car. It’s covered in mud. You take care of it. It’s a good car.”
There Goes the Neighbourhood
I had finally got the amp wired up and the subwoofer kicked in. My van was almost ready for a road trip. That’s how I met my neighbour. I had my ratchet in hand and my head in the dash when I heard her voice.
“Excuse me, but I’m afraid you’re playing your stereo too loud. Would you please turn down that jazz music?”
Aretha Franklin singing “Skylark”? My jazz music is too loud in my own back alley at two o’clock on a Saturday afternoon? Was she serious?
“Could you turn it down? I can barely hear my own weed-whacker, much less the neighbour’s chainsaw.”
She wasn’t serious. She wore a tank top that highlighted her ample chest and showed off where her farmer’s tan stopped. She smiled at me through the open back doors of my Ford Econoline and I saluted her with my wire strippers.
“Nice subwoofer,” she winked and headed up the alley.
I knew she had bought the house up the lane a couple of years ago from the guy who used to own the Mercedes fire truck, but I had never met her. I was interested in the goings-on at her place, though, ever since I had seen the flat-bed truck pull up last fall with the super-sized hot tub, and then the fence went up. I often heard her and her friends splashing about, and could smell their barbecue.
I was out in the backyard on a Friday night when I caught wind of the campfire. I thought about packing up the dogs and driving out to the beach for a fire of my own, but I decided I should get some work done and headed up my back stairs. I heard one of them howl at the moon from over the fence. I howled back.
“Is that my cool neighbour?” a voice came through the hedge and bounced off my garage.
I didn’t know if she was referring to me, or if she thought I was cool or not, but I figured I was her neighbour, and I was at least probably not uncool, and she did have a hot-tub over that fence, so. . . .
“Yeah, it’s your cool neighbour,” I called back.
“Come on over and have a drink. We’re roasting marshmallows.”
I trotted up the alley and rounded their garage. There were about eight of them, mostly big-boned, practical-footwear-type women and a couple of skinny Dungeons & Dragons-looking guys sporting what I call a skullet, which is a guy who’s hair is long in the back and gone on the top. They had potato salad, and strawberries you could dip in yogurt and brown sugar, and little cubes of jello with vodka in them. I had no idea alcohol-laced jello cubes were so intoxicating yet tasty. Soon I found myself deep in a conversation with a permed-haired woman named Roxanne, who had recently started a home business as a travelling music-bingo DJ, music-bingo apparently being all the rage in suburban pubs, unbeknownst to myself.
“We give away T-shirts and coolers and movie passes, and folks love it. We do classic rock and country nights, and everyone has a hoot,” Roxanne informed me as we polished off the last of the magic jello cubes.
The next thing I know, I was in a hot tub naked with eight strangers, all of whom knew each other, as I suspected earlier, not from music-bingo, but from a Dungeons & Dragons club, which they played together on Sundays. So enamored with the thought of the hot tub, I momentarily forgot that I was – relatively speaking when it comes to your average straight neighbours – heavily pierced and tattooed as I dropped my towel and stepped up and into the steaming water.
These guys were hot tub pros: they had warm sake in a hot water bottle bobbing between them. I felt sixteen eyes upon me as I lowered myself in, then Roxanne said, “Okay, so of course I have to know. Did that hurt?”
“Did what hurt?” I raised an eyebrow and smiled.
“The nipples. I know the tattoo hurt, I have a chain of roses around my ankle, and a daisy on my ass, but didn’t the nipples kill?”
“Not as much as my clit did.”
Roxanne coughed and sake came out of her nose.
“I’m joking,” I said.
We drank hot tub-warmed sake and told jokes and picked out the big dipper.
“Good for the cramps, huh?” my cool neighbour asked me as we towelled off.
How did she know? As I slipped back into my briefs, I realized I’d forgotten to tuck my tampon string up.
Handy
It was Saturday morning and I had been up since before seven. My idea was to rise early and get all my errands done, but I must have forgotten where I lived: nothing opens on Commercial Drive till about ten, so by eight-thirty I was on my second latte at a sidewalk table at the Continental coffee bar, waiting for the credit union to open.
The car must have pulled up when I was inside. A ’67 Valiant two-door convertible was parked in front when I returned to my seat. It was mint, sparkling chrome and two-tone, midnight blue and black. Looked like it had just been driven off the lot. I had to have a closer look.
It was tricked out, three on the tree with a custom hand grip on the gearshift, spotless blue and white leather interior, the dash gleaming and still smelling of Armor-All. Somebody loved this car.
That somebody was seated at the table next to me, eyes sparkling pride as he checked me scoping out his ride.
“You like my car?” he asked me with a grin as our eyes met. He had the popeye forearms and hard palms of a working man. His boots were dusty and his belly hung a bit over his wide brown belt and brass buckle.
“Yeah, man, I love your car.” I checked out the two fellas he was sitting with. One guy was wearing sandals and Mountain Equipment Co-op pants, a fleece jacket and a Navaho printed velcro rock-climber’s watchband. The other guy was pasty-faced and heavily tattooed, with jet-black hair hanging in greasy coils halfway down his back. He had silver rings on almost every finger and freshly healed track marks on the insides of his arms.
An odd menagerie, I thought, as I lit a smoke.
“Can I bum one a those?” The guy with the track marks pointed a pale finger at the pack of smokes I had forgotten to hide.
I passed him a Player’s Light. “I don’t care where you pu
t it.” I got that line off a guy I went to electrical school with. Belt buckle guy laughed. Track mark guy managed a thin grin, and then coughed a lot from his first drag.
We talked a bit about cars. I told them about my dad’s ’53 Mercury Comet convertible with its custom paint and four colour flames he did himself on the front quarter panels. Then we had Little Gem, my dad’s candy apple red ’49 Ford pick-up that you could see your reflection in when it had a fresh wax – which was always. That truck could do a hundred miles an hour pulling a boat up the Alaska Highway.
The guy with the belt buckle told me he had just bought his Valiant last month, took her to a car show and got offered three grand more than he had paid. His eyes lit up when he talked about his car, and his grin about split his tanned face in half as he lifted the hood for me.
“Look how clean she is.” Mountain Equipment Co-op man and junkie boy both got up for obligatory looks at belt buckle man’s engine.
Mountain Equipment Co-op guy ran his hands over the air filter cover, and checked the tightness of the wing nut. “She’s clean,” he agreed.
Junkie boy stood back. “Sure is.” He nodded in agreement.
It was obvious to both belt buckle man and myself that neither of his buddies knew anything about cars, so he directed the rest of his conversation towards me.
“She’ll go zero to sixty in not too long at all. Makes me feel eighteen again, although it’s a fucking good thing I couldn’t have afforded a car like this back then, or I probably wouldn’t be standing here talking to you. I’d be six feet under by now for sure if I’da had a ride like this back then. She’s my present to myself for staying sober for ten months straight. I’ve been clean almost a year now, and I got this car to prove it. The only thing wrong with her is I can’t get the stereo to work. Weirdest thing, there’s power to the deck, it’s wired for sound, but there’s none coming out. Can’t even get the radio to work.”
“Let me have a look,” I offered. He cocked his head to one side. Junkie boy snorted and fleece guy crossed his arms, rocked back on his sandals.
“No, seriously. I used to be an electrician. I’ve wired up lotsa stereos. I bet I know what it is. There’s a little wire, goes from your deck to your amp, tells it when to turn on and off. Bet it’s just a loose remote switch.” I knew this not because I am a master stereo installer, but because I had spent two whole days last fall cursing with my head up inside my own dash trying to solve the very same problem. But these guys didn’t need to know that.
“Where’s your amp? Under the driver’s seat? Let’s have a look.” I removed my Leatherman from its sheath and snapped it open.
Belt buckle man nodded at me to go ahead. Sure enough, the blue wire that peeked out from under his floor mat had slipped out from under the screw at the back of the amp. It sparked a bit as I put it back in place and tightened it down.
“Give that a try.”
He jumped in and turned the key. “I been drivin’ down the road tryin’ to loosen my load, I got seven women on my mind . . .” the Eagles sang out through four speakers, and the subwoofer throbbed in time. We all cheered, then looked around self-consciously. Junkie boy and fleece guy couldn’t believe their eyes.
Belt buckle man pumped my right hand with his. “Hey, thanks a lot man, can I buy you another coffee?”
Fleece dude tapped his rock-climber’s watch. “We have to make a move, buddy. The meeting starts in half an hour and I want to get a seat.”
“You a friend of Bill W’s?” Belt buckle man raised one eyebrow at me. “You wanna come with?”
“Thanks, no. I don’t drink much. Don’t have any problems with alcohol. Except my father.”
“You smoke a lot of crack then?” Junkie boy piped up.
“No.” I laughed. “No crack either.”
Fleece man shrugged like he didn’t believe me. Cocaine, I thought. I bet cocaine is his weakness. He only snorts it though. No needles.
“Suit yourself,” he shrugged again. “We got to get.”
They all three climbed into the Valiant, junkie boy in the back, and belt buckle guy peeled a bit of rubber for me.
Man, I love old cars.
Rumble in the Park
Last Wednesday, my littlest cousin graduated from high school. I was an adult when she was born, I had my driver’s license and everything. So I was already feeling old the day I threw my back out. It took two days to get in to see the chiropractor – two days of me hobbling around, shaped like a lower case “r,” grumpy and stoned on Robaxacet.
Finally, I got cracked and rubbed, and was feeling some relief. I pulled over to grab a coffee at Turk’s and go smoke a spliff in the park. As soon as I hauled my sorry ass out of my car he was on me: did I want to buy some this, some that, just twenty bags, come on man, like that.
I motioned to the unlit joint dangling from my lips. No thank you, I was set up already. I went to get one of those chocolate iced coffee things with the frightening names, and ran into my friend the mail sorter. She decided to come to the park with me.
We had no sooner sat down when dealer boy was on me again, but this time a little more insistent: did I want to buy some pot, and was I selling any of my own? Because this was his turf, and maybe did I want to move along?
I assured him that no, I was just smoking, not selling, and told him to leave us alone. He was drunk and stinky and sloppy and leering at my buddy. I felt my adrenaline start to pump and noticed for the first time his posse over by the tree watching us, and maybe close enough to hear what was going on. Dealer boy puffed up his chest and took a step closer. I could see the spit line stringing his dry lips together, and his puberty-grade moustache. He was bigger than me, but that’s not saying much. He was just a kid, maybe eighteen.
His friends had moved in for a closer listen, and my heart jumped in, pounding. My friend the mail-sorter weighs about one hundred pounds including her handbag, and had been uncommonly quiet thus far. Dealer boy’s three friends were all older and bigger than he was. This is usually the part where I would run; my car was mere paces away. So was the coffee shop. But I couldn’t.
It wasn’t just the principle of it all, of being intimidated out of the park on a Saturday afternoon by a fuzzy-lipped drug dealer. No, I stood my ground more for the fact that I couldn’t run. I got an image of myself hobbling towards my car, shaking my fist at him from my R-shaped stance before crawling painfully into my station wagon and driving away.
My pride couldn’t handle it. Fight or flight, the ancient question. Fleeing was out of the mix, but then so was fighting for the very same reasons. But there was always bluffing. Bluffing it was going to have to be. Luckily, I’m a natural.
“Listen to me, you snot-nosed little brat, I’ve lived around here for thirteen years, and I have not once before seen your sorry face around here. You’re not even a local drug dealer, for chrissakes. What, Daddy wouldn’t lend you the car so you took the Skytrain in from Surrey to try and tell me what I can do in my own park? Do you have any idea who you’re dealing with?” (I have uncles who are bikers, and this approach used to work for me back home) “Do you know who my friends are? Tell you what, why don’t I call them up and have them come adjust your attitude for you, huh?” I whipped my cell phone from my hip.
I dialed a friend, the performance artist. He’s never at work, I thought. He wasn’t. I was cryptic on the phone, like I called him in for rumbles all the time. “Hey man, there’s a guy down at Grandview Park hassling me and Jeanette. I think he needs to have a word with you.”
“What? Are you serious?” He knows my tendency to exaggerate. “Put Jeanette on.”
Jeanette takes the phone. “Yeah, he’s bigger than us and drunk and it looks like he’s about to hit Ivan.” She gives the phone back.
“I’m on my way down. I just have to throw on some pants. I’m wearing a kilt right now.”
I hung up and faced off with dealer boy again, a little more confident and righteous with backup on the way.
His friend walked up beside him and put his hand on dealer boy’s shoulder. “Come on, don’t be an asshole. Leave her alone.” Dealer boy was stupider than any of us realized.
“I’m not even talking to her, I’m talking to him.” He points at me. “This guy is moving in, and it –”
“I told you I’m not a loser drug dealer hanging around the park,” I said. “And I’m not a guy.” I wasn’t about to explain my rich and multi-faceted gender identity to him. He understood that it was okay to hit men smaller than him, and leer at women. It was in my best interest at that moment to have him include me in the latter category.
Ten long seconds ticked past. It finally dawned on him that I wasn’t just another punk to harass. He stuck out his yellow tongue and made that same motion that the truck driver in Thelma and Louise made shortly before they blew his truck up.
I felt the pot kick in a little and my back straightened up a bit and I let go. I was feeling a lot braver now that he knew I was a girl and he probably wouldn’t hit me in front of witnesses and the performance artist would be here any minute.
“As if you would know what to do with your tongue,” I said. “Look at you, you probably don’t have any hair on your nuts yet and you think you can tell me what to do in my own park? I’ve slept with more women than you’ve met, you punk; I’m not going to tell you again. Get your skinny ass on your bike and vamoose before my friends show up.”
“Oh yeah? You got to get your friends to fight your battles for you?”
But his friends were laughing at him now. “You hear what she said? That’s a good one. Fucked more women than he’s met. Ha ha.”