Anticipated Results

by Dennis E. Bolen

  “I just tried to say hello.”

  “She’s in one of her moods.” Paul paused to sip from a liqueur glass.

  “Is there coffee left?”

  Paul looked across the counter. “About a cup.”

  “Well there better be.” I mock-raised my voice. “Or there’ll be hell to pay!”

  Paul didn’t laugh.

  •

  Late in the afternoon we started hearing on the radio about an accident in the canyon. A motor home had crossed the centreline and smashed head-on into a semi-trailer. The highway was blocked in both directions. Two dead. It was the lead story on the news for the whole evening. We never did go horse riding.

  That evening Paul and I cooked up a massive lasagna. Everybody raved about it. Bill had a small portion, picking at it with a fork. His mood seemed improved. At the back of the fridge we found a couple of bottles of cheap champagne. We drank them quickly and found more down in the basement.

  Flutes in hand, Bill and I sat on the veranda contemplating the view. He gestured down the verdant valley with his nearly full glass. “This stuff is made just down the road.” We gazed along the serpentine twistings of a major creek and could hear the periodic grinding of vehicles on a gravel road.

  “Wine country, huh?”

  Bill took a swig. “Such as it is.”

  •

  We boozed determinedly because this was our last night. Paul killed the last of the scotch. After midnight I was swilling my final Pinot noir when Elaine came out to the veranda and lit up. She gave me a look.

  The smoke lilted my way.

  I moved to the front yard, climbed the picnic table, and considered the sky.

  “What’s out there?” Elaine spoke through her grey fumy veil.

  “The air is clean.”

  “Oh.”

  “No big deal.”

  •

  At five in the morning I woke up sickish, fearing nausea. For insurance I chugged a whole litre of water; filtered, not out of the tap. I got a few hours more sleep. The radio still talked about the big accident. There was no breakfast. We spent a couple of hours frenetically cleaning the house. I put myself in charge of the loads of garbage. Bill sat in the living room, quiet. As she cleaned, Doreen became angrier and angrier.

  Paul and I packed our stuff and stowed it in the van. We left the empties in the garage for future redemption—the tradition, as Paul termed it, was “Bill’s Maintenance Fund”—so our load was back down to minimal. The jobs in the house were all being done. While everybody else was inside I sat in the van and watched a sparrow play among the breeze-blustered trees at the back of the property. It flitted and stood upon wavering branches, then flitted again, a rust-coloured actor on a testy stage.

  A hummingbird buzzed by.

  I spotted a hawk patrolling the valley.

  After a while, Paul came out of the house and got in.

  Bill stepped off the veranda, car keys in hand. He did not look at us.

  Paul snapped on his seatbelt. “Might as well get started.”

  “Where’s Elaine?”

  “Riding with Bill and Doreen.”

  “Oh? Diplomatic relations improved?”

  “She says she gets a funny vibe off you.”

  “What?”

  “That’s what she said.”

  “That’s ridiculous. Just because I can’t stand the smell of cigarettes.”

  “Whatever. It’s best to stay out of it.”

  “Amen.”

  “But it’s going to cost you with Bill.”

  “Cost me what?”

  “I don’t know. But somehow someway it’ll cost you.”

  “Huh.” I stared off again into the trees. “Some trip.”

  “Whaddaya talking about? I’ve seen way worse.”

  “Remind me again why we came up here?”

  “Haven’t you had a good time?”

  By the pace of things it looked like Doreen and Elaine had a good bit of packing yet to do. Bill struggled to fit all the stuff into the Exploder.

  “Oh man. I don’t know how to answer that question …”

  We left without saying goodbye.

  •

  After an hour my gut was roiling. “I have to have a banana or something.”

  “You’re the driver.”

  We stopped and gassed up. I got an orange, cup of coffee and a couple of doughnuts. Paul dozed in his seat.

  •

  But he was awake for the drive through the canyon. We came around a corner and there were the highway department vehicles. A flag person slowed us right down. Yellow-vested workers swept black dust off the highway. There was a low-bed truck and mobile crane parked at the side. Pulling closer we could see remnants of wheels, tubing, scrap. A big hunk of melted plastic. What looked like various furniture frames. For a second you couldn’t understand what it was. There was a massive burn mark in the road. Our tires rumbled when we drove over it.

  “Whooeee.” Paul craned around to watch the sight as long as he could.

  “Yeah, man.”

  After a few minutes the phone started ringing. Paul answered but there was no conversation. “Damn.” He stabbed the off button and gazed out at the close mountains. “Bad reception.”

  The phone rang again and then stopped for good.

  Behind, somewhere, was Bill.

  The Pathetics

  A while after that I have to confess I availed a woman to Paul when I shouldn’t have. It was somebody I had dated but didn’t want to see anymore. I suppose there’s an argument against sexual brokering at any time, but the poor guy hadn’t had a significant girlfriend in three years.

  She was a fine enough match as far as it went. As fine for Paul as she was bad for me. Tending toward pretty. Just the right age. Damned smart. She’d worked as a rocket scientist at one point, a systems engineer for a blue-sky contractor or something like that. Then tried architecture. When Paul and I knew her she was working on a degree in urban design. There were all kinds of little mini-mall prototypes around her apartment.

  I’d been put off by the way she left a whirring computer going near her bed day and night. There was also her substance abuse—she drank and puffed ganja every spare second—but we didn’t last long enough to get concerned about that.

  When Paul noticed we weren’t seeing each other anymore he asked for her number. I gave it, thinking not a moment into the future. A week later they were lovers and for the first time in years he started to smile and laugh without reason and actually leave his living room to see movies. They ate in restaurants and spent weekends out of town. Took little boat cruises. Whenever I was around there was constant cuddling. It was easy to forget she and I had dated. I found it reassuring to celebrate her as Paul’s completely. He beamed widely and nearly quit cigarettes.

  Paul’s apartment turned into a couple’s nest, a place not entirely welcoming to me. We’d watch the hockey game with her curled up on the couch like a tabby. It was okay that she left the room frequently and came back smelling of burned rope; she made him happy as hell.

  He began to narrate their lives together, gleeful about how compatible she was with his friends and relatives. “She shared the driving and the cooking and we slept in the guestroom like human beings!” Paul told and retold me about a trip they’d taken to see some friends up country. “Sally and Phil like her.”

  I had no opinion about how fast things were going—this was only about three weeks in—but I semi-enjoyed the proceedings right along with him.

  They went to Las Vegas and Paul drunkenly phoned late one night. “We keep hitting our heads on the walls!”

  “What? You’re so drunk you can’t stand up straight?”

  “No. Well yeah but … It’s the walls, man. They’re slant!”

  “Oh. You must be staying at the Luxor. Is it shaped like a pyramid?”

  “Yeah, that’s it. You can’t even look out the window without bashing yourself.”

  “Yeah, okay. Ju
st watch yourself, alright?”

  “We’re having a great time.”

  “Just don’t come back married, okay?”

  “Huh?”

  “You heard me …”

  As fun as it was to watch giddy new love, I was relieved when they came back unmarried.

  But the good times rolled on: They went to farm country and played on a hobby ranch. Considered buying a dog together. Got sweet over her getting a speeding ticket in his car.

  They were so damn cute together it was hard to say anything, and harder still to see what might be happening. But at a certain point a line got crossed; all the magical togetherness becoming the source of a weird, growing sense of indeterminate discomfiture.

  •

  One Sunday, they had me over for brunch. I brought wine for me and champagne to share. They also had champagne. Then there were the Greyhounds. When the vodka was gone we watched football with beers. She disappeared and reappeared, as was her wont, with the smell of hemp-smoke normal as air freshener.

  Late in the afternoon she and I spoke about her work:

  “I don’t understand the big fuss about the big robotic Canada arm.” I fumbled for my glass. “Although I could use one about now.”

  Paul whipped out vinyl and put on Weather Report. “Now drink your drinks and listen. These guys were terminal.”

  “Fuss?” She spoke soberly.

  “I mean, what is it if it’s not just a straightened-out coat hanger with a computer hookup?”

  Her eyes nearly crossed. “You are not that stupid.”

  “You’ve never heard of humour?” I burped. “You should try it sometime.”

  “When something’s funny, I laugh.”

  “Then go ahead and laugh. You’re stoned enough aren’t ya? Cut ’er loose.”

  “You’re just pathetic.”

  “Pathetic can be funny.”

  “Pathetic is sad. That’s all it is.”

  “In my life I’d have crashed and burned long ago without humour.”

  “Do you talk to all your friends like this?”

  “Like what?”

  “Like you’re the only person in the room.”

  “Of course not. Was I doing that?”

  “Do you ever listen?”

  “To who? Whom.”

  “To anybody. To yourself, even. Especially yourself …”

  Paul slumped onto the couch. “What’s with you guys?”

  I excused myself and went home.

  •

  Paul and I did our usual mid-week phone check-in. He sounded down, like the old Paul.

  “How’s the cab business?”

  “Haven’t been driving.”

  “What?”

  “Haven’t been to work in two days.”

  “And today’s the third. You can’t afford that.”

  “I’m in love.”

  “In hock too. I hope I don’t have to remind you.”

  “Whatever. I’m pretty hungover. Damn sick, as a matter of fact.”

  “For two whole days?”

  “We kept going after you left.”

  “Where’s she?”

  “Home, I guess. Working on her thesis.”

  “Wasn’t she hungover?”

  “Some I guess. But nowhere as bad as me. She can sure drink.”

  “Yeah, she sure can …”

  Normally Paul would have been supremely irked at any loss of income. Not this time. Apparently she’d got right up Monday morning, left Paul’s supine body to its fate, and marched out to do her thing.

  •

  A little time went by and then one night Paul threw supper on during a hockey game and announced: “Well. We broke up.”

  “How so?”

  “In a glass-bottomed boat.”

  “Go on.”

  “She ended it.”

  “You went for one of your little cruises?”

  “We were going to spend the night at the hot springs.” He sighed. “That got trashed.”

  “And so it’s over.” I took a drink, keeping my eyes on him. “Done and kaput?”

  “We’ll see what she says.”

  We watched the TV.

  Paul intended to call her after a time. Meanwhile, there were the shadowed lines around his eyes and the more-than-usual rounded shoulders.

  Weeks later, after much extra drinking, he blurted: “I don’t know why she did it.”

  All I could wish for was that he’d never find out.

  A.A./N.A.

  Kenny was a friend of ours who always had use of some kind of vehicle and never let us down.

  He once drove me home from another town through a downpour in the middle of the night with me braced face-up in the bed of his pickup because he already had a full cab and I had to get home. I just had to get home.

  Because Kenny wasn’t drinking in those days he was our most dependable designated driver. He was also the guy to help you move, pick you up at the airport, procure sold-out concert tickets and generally hang with and be cheerful.

  And that wasn’t all. He could do a tune-up. Discuss movies and books and politics. Gossip with good natured, even-handed fairness. Fire off rapid stand-up comedy lines non-stop. He was extravagant in his congratulations for fortunate men, especially when the fortune had to do with women. It seemed to reflect something in him, luck with women. Not that he wasn’t. During the time I knew him he had several involvements with intoxicating, intelligent beauties. Overall, Ken was a terrific guy. There was no end to the general positives.

  Still, we didn’t kid ourselves.

  We were at Paul’s place watching the ballgame one summer afternoon when Kenny turned up. With him was Gisela; a childcare worker, poetess, and sometime girlfriend of just about everybody.

  We all watched the game. Paul and I were drinking, as was Gisela after we offered her one.

  Kenny started yakking on. “We’ve got each other where we want each other.”

  Neither Paul nor Gisela seemed ready to engage him, so I bit: “What’re you talking about?”

  “It’s like the international arms race and why we’re all still here. Mad.”

  “What? You mean Mothers Against Drunk Driving?”

  “No, no. The thing I’ve been doing lately.”

  “The thing.”

  “You know.”

  “Oh. The thing I know but I’m not supposed to know.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Okay, lemme get this straight. You’ve been mucking around in a grow-op business?”

  “Right.”

  “And you’re referring to criminal associates in said business, your intention to leave said business, and the Mutually-Assured-Destruction element of the planned extrication of yourself from the grow house you’ve been living in.”

  “Got it.”

  “Well …”

  Nothing further was said.

  We watched the game a while longer but anyone could tell Kenny was restless.

  “Hey.” He turned to Gisela. “Gimme your car keys.”

  Without a word she gave them.

  “I’ll be back in ten minutes.”

  We talked about him when he was gone.

  “I’m pretty sure he’s doing crack.” Gisela was resigned.

  “Oh man. I wonder if you should have lent him your car.”

  “I know …” She wrinkled her brow. “But he’s always been such a good head. I can’t resist helping him out.”

  “Yeah, but there’s helping and there’s helping. Enabling is another thing altogether.”

  “He’s way beyond that kind of stuff.” Paul scoffed aloud and reached for his drink. “It’s detox for him, now or never.”

  “And where’s his car, anyway?”

  “He sold it.” Gisela tossed this out as if it were a crime report.

  “Oh, come off it.” Paul had his eyes on the TV. “Kenny hasn’t owned a car in months.”

  “He’s always got one.”

  Paul took his gaze away from
the screen long enough to give me the narrowed look he always gave when I was being naïve.

  Then we talked about Alcoholics Anonymous and Narcotics Anonymous. Gisela had been to an A.A. meeting, but neither Paul nor I had. She once took an old boyfriend who had asked for help. Nobody knew where he was now.

  We hung around waiting for Kenny. The ballgame ended and Paul put on a DVD. Kenny never showed up.

  Nobody saw him again for three years.

  •

  But my favourite Kenny story is the one where he went down to Los Angeles for a Rolling Stones concert—circa mid-nineties—and ingratiated himself into some movie-people circles enough to get a studio pass, a weekend in somebody’s gazebo, use of a Porsche, schmooze-time at a premiere, and several other favours he mentioned but I can’t remember now. He did it by dropping a name. He’d met this writer, a local guy whose reputation didn’t reach out of the Pacific Northwest for all any of us knew. But Kenny had gone to a launch party, got the guy to sign a book, and used it to promote himself as an agent or producer or something around Hollywood for half a week.

  The wild thing is that the writer—whose name I used to know because I once talked to him in a bar but I can’t for the life of me remember now—started getting calls. He ended up scoring a couple of option deals as a result of Kenny’s grand illusionary freeloading L.A. holiday. Kenny loves to tell the story. I’m sure at least some of it is true.

  We know that he lived for a considerable time in the grow house—nine or ten dozen pot plants budding below floors—but it was never clear what his function was, to tend the crop or just use the top part of the place to make things look legit. It was always edgy with the kind of people you had to deal with in those kinds of situations. But edgy was Kenny’s medium and his taming of the general wildness for the comfort and safety of his friends was what, to me, made him immediate and entertaining and good.

  He had an irrepressibly sunny attitude about it: “If you guys ever hear I got disappeared, have a party.”

  I never heard whether Gisela ever saw her car again. But the good thing was that after I left that day she and Paul got going and they were good and close for quite a few weeks. Rekindled an ember that had cooled but not quite guttered. This was a welcome interlude for Paul.