Pillow

by Andrew Battershill

  ‘In more ways than are countable, sweet Pillow.’

  Don reached across the gearshift for an awkward upper-body car hug, then they settled back into their seats, looking out at the misty, glowing water, waiting for a phone call that would tell them where a morphine-addicted schizophrenic man was so they could speed over and grab that man and handcuff him to a chair in the Bureau and beat him with a phone book until he told them where some coins were.

  Emily had gotten a whole lot of UTIS as a teenager and was now ‘cautious and right and totally not unreasonably vigilant’ about peeing right after sex. Pillow waited and stared at her wall, which was probably the best wall he’d ever seen or heard about. It had an old, gold-patterned square of wallpaper on it, but the rest of it was painted blue. There were three Edward Hopper prints in a line, and a black-and-white analog photo of a topless woman lying on a rock. Below the wallpaper there was a row of three other fabric swatches, different and complementary colours. Matching but not matchy.

  Emily walked back into the room, sat in her chair and tried very hard not to smoke a cigarette out the window naked. She waved the unlit cigarette at him, snowing some dry flakes of tobacco onto the floor. ‘Woof. You wasn’t holding back there, mister. Aren’t guys usually freaked out about rutting at us pregnant bitches?’

  Pillow smirked. ‘Oh right, I’m supposed to be weird and worried about the baby seeing my dick from the womb? I’m a grown-ass man, I know where your cervix is.’

  Emily laughed. She leaned back in her chair and spun the cigarette around in her fingers. ‘You’re such a goon. What were you doing tonight? You were out so late.’

  ‘Me and Don were out looking for Artaud. We’re making progress.’

  ‘Okay, okay.’

  Pillow glanced over at her and shrugged, then he stared at the wall a while longer. He wondered who invented wallpaper patterns. Like who did the first one and thought it would look good on some paper and then put that paper on a wall.

  ‘So, um, what about these coins? Is that all okay?’ Emily seemed more tense than Pillow could really imagine being. Bodies are nice mostly when they’re soft and easy to rub up on. Why stiffen them?

  For several years now, Pillow had been trying to think about coins as little as possible. They’d been the first sign, the first time he’d known something was wrong on his own instead of some doctor telling him he’d be messed up in his fifties. He was checking out at the bulk store. He’d been bantering with the cute counter girl with the dreadlocks and the earring that was just a hole. The whole place smelled like ginger and tamarind had a baby and somebody had left the afterbirth out in the sun for a few days. Pillow put his bill down, no problem, then he pulled change out of his pocket. He made a joke and the girl laughed and turned away a little bit and grabbed her elbow, and when he looked back at the change in his hand, the coins meant nothing to him. He knew what they were, he felt the weight of them, but he just couldn’t make that step of really knowing, really getting that they were money, that they had numbers attached to them. He remembered the man behind him with the weirdly pouting lower lip and the yoga mat sticking out of his bag sighing, all affronted, and the girl behind the counter pulling away her elbow, reaching forward and taking three coins out of his hand and touching his arm on the way back. The ding of the till, and still just dead weight in his hand. A few chunks of metal.

  He’d gone home and counted more change than he had in his whole life. Hours making change, and the change was always correct, he got pretty good at it. He’d tried to reason it out. Money had never meant much to him, until he needed it. But that wasn’t the point. The point is never what you need it to be.

  ‘They’re worth enough. Six figures.’

  ‘And what about when you find them?’

  ‘We skip town, go live in your hometown, get jobs, free grandparent babysitting, livin’ the dream, y’know.’

  Emily aggressively scratched at her temple. ‘I really don’t like this. I don’t think you should mess around with this.’

  Pillow took an extra second so it wouldn’t be too obvious he’d worked out the speech beforehand. ‘Listen, I know that this is way outside what you’re comfortable with. I feel that, but if you think about it, nothing I’m doing now is any more illegal than what I’ve been doing anyway. And this way we can get the money and I can quit this, and then, I dunno, get my GED and work at Burger King or something fun like that. Or I could be a dog trainer. Dogs love me, I can tell. They always lick my hand right away, I don’t even have to let them smell me like you’re supposed to.’

  ‘Okay. Okay. Do your thing. But I’m not built for this, man. I just wish credit-card debt didn’t make me feel like I was going to die. It’s totally not supposed to do that to you, but it does. I don’t know. My mother says I have an overdeveloped sense of obligation. We need money, is what I’m saying, but I still don’t think any of this is a good idea.’

  ‘Yes. Totally. First thing tomorrow I’m going over to Gwynn’s house. She’s really smart, and she likes me. She knows her way around stuff like this, and I’ll run it all by her, and if she thinks it looks bad I’ll duck out. Okay?

  ‘Sure. Just be careful. I can’t talk about this anymore, it skeeves me out.’ Emily let out a deep breath. She pulled on her earlobe for a minute, then forgot about the ear, her hands hanging loosely below the chair. ‘So tell me about other stuff. Personal stuff. Your childhood.’

  ‘I don’t remember that business.’

  ‘Liar!’

  ‘Are you kidding? I spit truth like it’s sunflower seeds. Every time I see my sister she tells me some new amazing thing from when we were seven.’

  Emily crossed her legs and rubbed her chin thoughtfully. She looked as much like Sigmund Freud as she could and did hope to. ‘It’s interesting that you referred to your youth as a business.’

  Pillow made a pained face until he remembered something. ‘I had an afro. I had one of those real, awesome little-kid ’fros. And one time I was out shopping with my mom and she put her hand in my hair, I was like four probably, and she called it a rat’s nest. And for a long time after I thought rats were born in trees.’

  Emily flicked her unlit cigarette out the window, it hit a railing and fell into the dark. ‘One of these days we’re going to have a personal conversation that doesn’t end with you talking about animals.’

  He kicked the sheets off and rolled over, giving her his back. ‘Yeah, good luck with that.’

  Emily reached the bed pretty quickly, and didn’t stop jumping on it until Pillow tackled her and rolled them onto the floor, taking the impact on his ribs and sort of enjoying it. He felt her whole body tense up.

  ‘I don’t want to be a bitch, and I know you didn’t mean to, but you can’t be like that with me anymore, Pete. I have to be careful with my body. I know you were just fooling around, but you have to be careful.’

  ‘Yeah. I’m. I’m sorry, I won’t. I’m sorry.’

  ‘Seriously. You need to promise me. And I know I was fooling around too, but you need to be careful.’

  ‘I understand.’

  She blinked as he wiped a mascara smudge out of the soft corner of her eye.

  ‘Now and then it is good to stop sprinting after happiness and just be happy. Those of us with brain damage would do especially well to remember that, Pillow, if we could only manage it.’

  There was something about having tea with elderly women that always made Pillow sit with his knees very close together and hold the cup with two fingers.

  Pillow was sitting with his knees very close together on Gwynn’s long, flaccid couch, the cushions denting all the way under his weight. Gwynn was sitting across from him in her lucky chair, a fancy gold-coloured thing that was oddly low to the ground; it made her knees rest higher than her waist when she sat in it.

  In certain people’s houses, Gwynn Apollinaire’s condo would have been called the conservatory. Its main feature was a set of three floor-to-ceiling windows that faced out
onto the street, their thin, paneless edges trembling once in a while when large trucks went by. The rest of the condo was lightly decorated, a small oil painting of half a gentle-seeming horse with one straight leg and one crooked one, an ornate lamp that looked like a dinosaur egg and a row of four charcoal drawings of that same lamp in the process of breaking against a kitchen counter. There was a tiny chandelier made of black glass hanging above her chair. Behind the couch there was a set of very tall doors, and Pillow could never tell if they led to another room or if they were just decorative. The doors didn’t have any handles he could see, plus they were taller than any person had ever been.

  The Bureau guys had been fascinated by the world’s biggest man for a while. He was a nine-foot kid from the prairies. He’d wanted to be a cowboy but the weight of his bones would crush a horse’s spine if he rode one, and his legs would dangle on the ground anyway. Nobody knew for sure he was the biggest man in the world until he died and they studied his skeleton at a university. At the Bureau they’d all laughed, but Pillow thought it was one of the saddest stories he’d heard. To have your bones be more famous without you.

  Gwynn reached forward and grabbed him by the wrist; the veins in her hand reminded Pillow of above-ground pipes. ‘I’ve known you for almost fifteen years and you’re still such a young person. I often feel as though I was never your age. I’ve been here so long, looking out these windows and listening to traffic, spinning in one spot like a top.’

  Pillow put his cup down. The tea had cream in it, and he’d only been sipping at it to be polite. It’s not really fair to expect an eighty-three-year-old Frenchwoman to respect your veganism. He gently patted her hand, and she slumped back into her chair.

  Up until eight years ago, Apollinaire had overseen most of the things Breton ran now. She’d been the one who’d brought Pillow in, paying some of his bills and betting on him while he’d still been fighting. Gwynn had run the syndicate, but she hadn’t been as organized, or as firm, as Breton was now. People had done things because they liked her. She took care of you. Her big claim to fame was being held for six days under suspicion of stealing the Mona Lisa. She was getting a bit frail, which was how Breton forced her out in the first place, but she was still smart and connected.

  ‘Still trying to work the old-lady bit, Gwynn?’

  She had a multi-level tea stand where she kept her pipe. The top tray had a huge, loose pile of noxious black tobacco on it.

  She winked, patted her stomach and picked up the pipe. ‘It’s the best bit, because it only gets more believable with age.’

  Apollinaire had a way of making Pillow feel just as old and cool as she was.

  ‘Do you remember when you taught me how to wink properly?’

  She got her pipe lit and blew out several thick puffs, as quick and hot as a steam engine, letting the long stem of the pipe hang down, almost touching her chest as she exhaled. It really was an awful thing.

  ‘I remember every monster I created, Pillow, and I remember some of them fondly.’ She wheezed through a quick spurt of laughter. ‘You winked at me in a championship fight! He had you in the corner, and you winked, ducked behind him and tousled his hair. Such style! You were a favourite, my favourite. Oh dear! I forgot the custard tarts.’

  She started to get up and Pillow sat her down with his index finger. ‘I’m good.’

  ‘Still watching your figure?’

  ‘Something like that.’

  Gwynn shook her paunch proudly. ‘So, before we get to your problems, I have one of my own.’

  ‘Sure, what is it?’

  ‘I need to apologize to you, Pillow. I should, I should have visited you, but I haven’t been getting out much and … Anyway, we should have stayed in touch, after I bought out. I apologize.’

  ‘Don’t worry about it, you lost a lot of money on me. And I wasn’t exactly on the ball right around then. I wouldn’t have called me either.’

  She looked at him like he was the loneliest, strayest kitten she’d seen, and like she’d seen him at the end of a long career in animal rescue. ‘Guilt is an indulgence of the elderly, and one I hope you’ll allow me. We all owe you a lot more than apologies, Pillow.’

  They looked out the window for a second. They could hear the traffic and the apartment was very still. Not even the chandelier moved.

  ‘So, have you heard about these coins?’

  Gwynn rubbed what was left of her eyebrow. ‘Yes I have. And both of us would be better off if we hadn’t. I wouldn’t mess around with a thing like that if I were you, Pillow. Your heart is not in it. Take it from someone who has stolen the Mona Lisa, my boy, big scores don’t feed you, they eat you up.’

  ‘Okay. Let’s say that someone has just gotten their girlfriend pregnant. And this same person needs to get the fuck out of this place and never see these people again. And say, just say, this same person finds the coins. Do you think you’d be able to move them for him?’

  Gwynn took a long pause, and after she’d congratulated him and made him promise to make her the grandgodmother of his child, she took a short hobble to the kitchen for the custard tarts, because guests aren’t always the only people in the room. Pillow explained his theory. Gwynn didn’t seem impressed.

  ‘So you’re putting all the rocks in the Artaud basket? There’s a pun available, but I’m above it.’

  ‘I think I can flip him. I’ll finesse Costes, get you the coins and if you move ’em it’s a pretty decent score. We can chop it seventy-thirty.

  ‘Okay, let’s say you’re right, Artaud tells you where the coins are. Why take them to me? Why not just give them to Breton and let him pay you? He would let you out if you wanted it. He let me out.’

  Pillow smiled the way he used to after taking a clean punch. ‘That guy wants people to kick it upstairs, so he can decide how much to give back. And I hate it. I’ve been kicking it upstairs my whole life. I was in a bad way when you were in charge, we both know that, but it was my own fault. You were nice, Gwynn. It hasn’t been the same since you left. He’s running everyone. Wants everyone committed, like we’re in the army, and I’m not into that.’ Pillow punched one hand with the other. ‘Nobody fights for you, and you shouldn’t fight for anyone else. You die alone, and you live with your friends. I’ve known that a long time. Since I was eight. I don’t need to be on any fuckin’ team. I have friends.’

  Gwynn looked out the window for a long minute. Then, without turning her head, she killed the pipe and laid it back down on her tray, a thin line of smoke and smell still trickling out of the bowl.

  They talked for a long while after that, about the good times, and then she gave him advice about life on the run. By the time she agreed to move the coins, they were standing in front of the window.

  ‘Yes, I think I will, Pillow. I would have done it just for you, but I want you to know that I’ll do it on my own behalf as well. This is risky enough to feel a bit like stealing. I miss stealing. I liked it. Are you sure you want to do this? It’s low percentage, and I, personally, am old enough to take any risk I please. I am actually so old it would be stupid not to. For you it could be a bad idea.’

  ‘Yeah. I’m sure. It’s not nothing for you either. It could fuck with your buyout.’

  She slumped forward and let her forehead press into the glass. ‘I don’t care. I thought it was the right thing to do, to let the younger people have their time. And maybe it was, it could well have been …’

  A giant raindrop slapped the window in front of her forehead, followed by a lot of other similar but smaller ones.

  Gwynn spoke to the glass, the window fogging with every word. ‘It’s raining, my soul, it’s raining. But it’s raining rotten eyes.’

  Pillow hustled over to the produce stand down the street from Gwynn’s apartment to buy some groceries. It was the best fruit place in town, and for going on fifteen years now he’d been buying hundreds of dollars’ worth of produce there each month. The old Korean couple who owned the place had still nev
er recognized him. But those papayas.

  Pillow was mid-squeeze on a mango when he caught sight of Julio Solis. He angled his shoulders away and tried to focus on the fruit. The man had ended his career, and here he was. Julio Solis must have been forty now, fat and happy, bouncing down the sidewalk, umbrella way above his head spraying water off it with each step, sharkskin jacket stretched tight across his chest. Solis almost ran into the apple display and stopped to look around.

  ‘Pillow! Get over here, brother.’

  Pillow put his thumb halfway through the mango, squeezed out a smile and walked over to hug Solis. Pillow reached around Julio’s head and sucked the pulp and mango juice off his thumb. Julio was still hugging, and Pillow could sense that his eyes were closed.

  ‘Howzit goin’, Jules?’

  Solis finally finished the hug, pushed Pillow back and looked him up and down. Pillow was under the edge of the awning and a long stream of water ran straight down the back of his shirt.

  ‘Shit, you look good, Pillow. Me, I’m fat like the sea now, you’re turning to dust! You having a comeback?’

  ‘Naw, man, no. You were my last one. You know what the girls say, once you go Mexican you never can again.’

  Solis rocked his head back and laughed, then he gestured to the street with the whole left side of his body.

  ‘Come on, I’ll show you my gym. I was thinking about you the other day, really, I own a gym now, give my father something to do so I don’t kill him.’

  ‘Oh shit, how is he? Man, he’s a trip, I love Pedro.’

  Solis let his chest puff down a little. ‘He’s himself. I’m older now, I forgive shit, I take him for who he is. He never gave me a beating like you did, like we gave each other. That was one you give each other, hey?’

  Pillow rolled his eyes and neck around at the same time. ‘Can’t speak to it, though, Jules. You knocked me into next year.’