Nothing Looks Familiar

by Shawn Syms

Shauna was a very tall woman. She was bigger than Shaggy, though at least four of her inches came from black stiletto pumps. Her lids were painted in pale blue eye shadow, her lips in a bubble-gum pink that matched her bustier. She spat out a piece of gum. Shauna looked down her nose at Shaggy and said, in what Adam thought was a Caribbean accent of some sort, “Bitch, you can’t afford me.”

  Her pupils narrowed, then opened wide. She threw her arms around Shaggy and picked him up off the ground. Adam watched in amazement as Shaggy’s face was crushed against her breasts. As Shaggy reciprocated her embrace and let his hands quickly roam around her back, she put him down and said in a warning tone, “Hey, just don’t touch the hair,” tossing her long, chemically straightened locks behind her shoulders and flashing a toothy grin. She glanced over at Adam and winked. He couldn’t take his eyes off her, but remained a few safe feet away.

  Shaggy quietly engaged Shauna in small talk so that Adam couldn’t make out what they were saying. Shaggy touched her arm and then stepped back to join Adam, giving Shauna an overblown, lurid once-over to which she responded with a haughty, heavy-lidded glare.

  “See you later, sweet thing,” Shaggy called out, gesturing to Adam to return to the park.

  “Yeah. Show me the money, bitch!” Shauna called out in a mocking tone.

  Adam dodged several lanes of traffic on Jarvis to catch up. “Shag, is she a transsexual or something?” Across the street, the bold Amazon ignored them now, her eyes focused on oncoming cars. A dark-blue Mercedes slowed in front of her.

  “Bro, that’s a pretty personal question. You’d need to pay to even ask her.” Shaggy replied. “She’s spun out of her mind on speed right now. You didn’t notice her track marks? If she were packing a tool, there’s no way she’d be able to get it up now,” he offered, adding in a mischievous tone, “She used to be my babysitter when I was a kid. Makes a lot better money now from what she told me.”

  Shaggy was undoubtedly shitting him about the babysitter bit, but Adam didn’t bother to call him on it. As they approached the playground, Adam’s eyes honed in on the only other person nearby. That old hag. She was sitting on the swing.

  Adam had always hated that bitch. He saw his chance to recover from making a fool of himself in front of Shaggy before. He tapped Shaggy on the shoulder and brought a finger to his lips. As Shaggy watched, he entered the open gate into the playground and tiptoed closer.

  Her brown wooden cane and canvas bag leaned on the swing set beside her. Adam paused right behind her, then lurched forward, made a grab for her bag, and ran like hell.

  “Hey!” The astounded woman bellowed as he sprinted away.

  “Faggot! Faggot! Faggot!” she screamed. She jumped up, grabbed her cane, and lobbed it at Adam, striking him hard in the calf. Pain sliced through his leg and Adam let out an agonized yell but kept going, breaking into a staggering but determined limp. The bitch stood there and shrieked.

  Shaggy detoured around the playground and ran to meet Adam at the other end of the park. They stopped at a bench right at the entrance. A police car drove past with sirens blaring. Ignoring it, they plopped the hefty bag onto the bench and began to rummage.

  A can of Lemon Pledge. A bunch of old newspapers. What looked like a half a meatball sub neatly wrapped in wax paper. A handful of packets of K-Y Jelly. A balled-up wad of bloody gauze. And a small change purse covered in large, gaudy rhinestones.

  Adam pulled it out, snapped it open, and saw a clutch of twenties inside. He knew that bitch wasn’t really poor. He turned to Shaggy and smiled. Shag patted him on the back. Adam felt vindicated. He put the change purse in his pocket, and tossed the canvas bag back into the park for the old woman.

  The night now felt wide open. Adam trembled with adrenaline. He felt he’d done something right for the first time in years. Then he looked down and saw that his leg was oozing blood right down into his shoe.

  It wasn’t gushing out, and he only lived two blocks away. He turned to Shaggy and smiled. “I gotta get cleaned up. Let’s go back to my place.”

  On the way, Shaggy ran into the beer store, and Adam leaned against the building and waited. He watched Shaggy through the window as he paid for six tall cans of Crest Super. The pimple-faced clerk put them into a black plastic bag. Ten-percent alcohol, Crest was a great way to start a party. Adam got tanked pretty easily anyway; he was a certified lightweight. Some coke would balance things out. On the way home, Shaggy said now that they had some money, he should bring Shauna to Adam’s.

  “Let’s wait and see just how much money we’ve got,” Adam proposed as they turned off Sherbourne into the back alley behind his basement apartment. He knew Shaggy wanted to use the money—or was it those pills?—on his hooker friend.

  “I’ve been with Shauna before, and she’ll blow your fucking mind, bro.”

  They reached the back of the low-rise. A concrete stairwell led down a few feet to the entrance to Adam’s unit. Adam unlatched the gate, and they walked down the stairs. They entered the tiny apartment. Adam groped for the switch.

  They stepped into the dimly lit underground space with its brown carpet and low ceiling. The apartment was two adjoined rooms, the kitchen and the bedroom, which had a tiny bathroom off it. The windows were all at the top of the walls, only an inch from the ceiling. The view showed the first six inches of the laneway.

  A pile of dishes sat in the sink, remnants of last night’s macaroni and cheese with tuna. A banana peel hung off the rim of the metal trashcan.

  Shaggy ignored the mess and made himself comfortable, pulling out a chair from the Goodwill-issue grey metal table. Adam excused himself to take a quick leak as Shaggy cracked open two of the beers. When he came back out, Shaggy handed him a can of Crest.

  “Chug it, bro. You earned it!” They clinked cans together and each tried to down as much of the beer as they could in one gulp. Adam let out a huge belch, sat down next to Shaggy, and untied his shoes.

  Shaggy extolled the virtues of Shauna’s pussy, and told him the best way to prove it was to find out for himself. Adam smiled at the thought, already feeling drunk. He could stand to eat some pussy.

  “Finish your brew, then you better wash all that blood off your leg, bro.”

  Adam polished off the remainder of his can and Shaggy did the same. Shaggy went to the fridge for two more. Adam stood and headed for the bathroom, wobbling slightly. He pulled the door shut behind him.

  Adam stripped down and ran warm water in the tub. He stood in the bathtub and splashed water onto the back of his leg, clearing away the dried blood as gently as he could. Before long, it started to sting, and he pulled back. His knees trembled; the beer, blood loss, and steamed-up little room made him woozy. He sat on the edge of the tub to get his bearings and took stock of the evening. He’d conked a guy with a two-litre plastic bottle of Canada Dry. He’d stolen a purse. Now they were about to dope up a hooker? He was used to following Shaggy’s lead, but maybe it was time to say something.

  Adam scratched his forehead as he sat naked on the edge of the tub and drained a piss into it. He didn’t know if he could have sex with someone as intimidating as Shauna, no matter what state she was in. He’d seen two guys and a woman in porn before and it wasn’t too queer, but he didn’t think he’d be able to pull it off. That single beer already made him so groggy. Couldn’t they just go and score some coke? They probably had enough cash for half an eight-ball.

  He’d better talk to Shag. Adam stood up and lost his balance, stumbling onto the toilet seat. He pulled the bathroom door open to let cooler air into the room, and struggled to put his underwear back on. Adam stepped out and found Shaggy in the kitchen counting out money from the studded change purse.

  “Hey bro—another brew?”

  Everything was slowing down on Adam, the blood dripping through his veins, his breathing, his numb footsteps. “Bud, I gotta rest a sec.” Adam flopped onto his bed. As he leaned back, he caught a glimpse of the view outside. The sliver of a waxing crescent mo
on reflected in a puddle of motor oil in the back alley just beyond his window.

  The last thing Adam remembered was the sensation of Shaggy’s stubbly moustache brushing against his nose before their lips met and Shaggy’s hand rubbing the hairs on his left leg, right above the knee. His touch was gentle, like that of a young girl tracing the spine of a kitten with her fingertip.

  Family Circus

  I’m going to take the kids away from all of this for good. Tomorrow. But for now, just get through tonight.

  July 29. It’s three a.m., and the apartment is full, rife with the gagging stench of nail-polish remover. The reek of Big Kathy’s pungent Camels wafts in from the kitchen, mingling with the chemical haze rising from the aluminum baking trays. There’s a tinge of mould in the air, too. And endless chitchat from the other girls in the apartment.

  What’s worse is I’m used to it—the dizzying odours, the absence of quiet. Sammy is too, and he’s only eight. I put him in the living room. There’s a door that shuts; he’s probably still watching TV. I keep Cindy in the crib in the back bedroom when we wash the cheques, so the fumes don’t get to her.

  Still, I keep the place pretty clean. The crystal helps with that. I know I need to get off it, but for now speed actually makes me a better mom. I manage to keep things tidy and focus on working the mail, and the money we get from that lets me feed the kids. Rent, meth, beer, food—in that order. And then clothes and toys for the kids. Oh, and formula for Cindy. I know it wouldn’t be safe for her to take my breast milk. I’m not stupid.

  In the kitchen, Big Kath opens the envelopes and extracts all the cheques, taking slugs of Carling Ice as if it were water, chain-smoking. As she sorts through the stolen mail, Kath makes piles. The largest one contains people’s account information: bills and credit applications. Next to that, a stack of cheques. On the yellowed linoleum floor at her feet, everything else. The account numbers go to Rhonda, sitting at the computer in the front bedroom.

  The cheques go to me. I soak them in acetone long enough for the ink to evaporate, then rewrite them in the name of Edna Windecker—an identity Rhonda created on the computer. “Edna” has a birth certificate, a health card, and driver’s license. And an account at Crosstown; we figured a credit union would be lower profile. Rhonda told us she could make her a SIN card too. Zeke and I laughed at the thought. Why declare any income? Rhonda said if we had any sense we’d be buying RRSPs.

  Zeke and Duarte are out on their last run of the night, boosting bags of garbage from behind the Osborne Street Cash Mart—they don’t shred their paperwork there. The guys will throw it in the back of the red pickup and cover it with a tarp. They shouldn’t be gone much longer.

  Zeke will want to fuck when they get back. I hope we can shower first—everyone’s got that ammonia drug smell leaking out their pores. I’ve never met anyone as horny as Zeke. I bet he’s even fucked Duarte’s round, hairy ass. He had to do something to keep himself busy when I was pregnant. Cindy’s his. Sammy isn’t.

  Lise, the new girl, sits next to me. She’s got a pretty face, I’ll admit. Her skin’s light brown and her hair is long and straight. Her upper lids are heavy with grey eye shadow. One of her front teeth is crooked. Zeke dropped her off with the last batch of mail, but it seemed like they already knew each other. A hooker from the corner of Furby and Ellice, I’m sure. Probably a glue sniffer. She wipes her runny nose with the back of her arm, blankly staring up at me.

  When Zeke and I met two years ago, I would’ve been jealous at the thought of him with another woman. Now I’m relieved. All I can think of is the coming calm. Gimli is quiet, a town on the shore of Lake Winnipeg, with less than two thousand people. Sammy and Cindy will love it. I grew up there. Mom’s there. She’ll help me with the kids, especially seven-month-old Cindy. I’ll need a while to sleep off all the meth—then we’ll start over. I’ll bring a baggie or two with me so I don’t fall asleep at the wheel on the two-hour drive. After that, I’m done.

  I quit tweaking when I was four months pregnant with Cindy, till a few weeks after she was born. Stopping was hard. She cried a lot at first, but she’s okay now. I gave her a couple spoonfuls of cough syrup to make sure she’d sleep through tonight’s freak show. Robitussin, my only reliable babysitter.

  Lise’s syringe sits on the coffee table in front of us. I’ve been snorting bumps instead of shooting up tonight. Gotta keep my wits about me for tomorrow. Once I cash the cheques in the morning—while everyone else is crashed out—I’m going to pick Sammy up from school at lunch, stop by here to get Cindy, then keep driving till we reach the water’s edge.

  Next to Lise’s rig are three large aluminum baking trays from the Provencher IGA. The trays are full of acetone. That’s where the cheques go. A small bottle of bleach sits on the shag rug next to the coffee table; it gets the ink that doesn’t come out with the acetone. There’s also a yellow chamois scrap and an ink eraser I sometimes use for touch-ups. I’ve gotten good at this.

  “Get over here, motherfucker!” A shout from upstairs, followed by a woman’s wordless shriek.

  Fuck’s sakes. It’s that wrinkly weirdo in 13B and his drunk old bitch. One more reason to leave: I’m determined not to end up as pathetic as them. Maybe I’ll be a doting old grandma by then. I hope no one calls 9-1-1 on them, not with everyone down here. I don’t think he ever really hits her anyway. A heavy thump from above, and then nothing. Maybe I was wrong about that.

  I get up, lurch toward the open window, and stick my head out toward the starless sky. On the street, a kid with a Mohawk revs by on a red motorbike. The tidy, yellow-brick façade of this building misleads: this is nothing but a slum. If you live here, you’re either a struggling student, a whacked-out head case, a deadbeat on welfare, or some kind of crook.

  I inhale through my nose, taking in as much clean night air as my lungs can hold. I wipe my brow and pull my fingers through my brittle hair. At least a half-inch of black roots have forced their way through my blonde dye job. When I get out of here, I’m going to grow it back out past my shoulders.

  Anyway, back to teaching the new girl how to forge cheques. I turn toward the coffee table. Lise sits cross-legged like some gnarly hooker Buddha, injecting some of Zeke’s speed into a vein in the sole of her foot. I wonder if she slams there for vanity’s sake—her arms don’t look so bad. As she pulls the needle out, Lise looks up at me, all brown almond eyes with big, vibrating pupils. Now that she’s spun, maybe she’ll pay better attention.

  “That weird girl with the funny glasses came out of the bedroom. She looked rough.” Lise means Rhonda, our hacker at the bedroom PC, with her vintage horn-rims. I could hear the sporadic clatter of her keyboard clicks from here. Rhonda’s a bit kooky, yes, but her computer skills have come in handy. She works at Value Village; judging by her nerdy wardrobe, she obviously shops there too. She’s a rapid-fire typist because she’s high like the rest of us. Even over the chemical odours, I swear I can catch a whiff of her trademark BO-infused polyester scent. I may shoot up a lot, but at least I know how to bathe. Christ.

  I sit down next to Lise and address her slowly. “I want you to pay attention now, okay?”

  She stares in silence. She actually looks a bit frightened. I ask her age.

  “Seventeen.”

  Oh boy. Anyway. “Take the piles of cheques and divide them up by the type of ink. Anything felt-tip—like it was written with a small marker—put it in one pile. If it was done with a ballpoint pen, make one pile for blue ink and one for black. Anything else weird, just put it in a separate pile. Got it?” I hand her the cheques and she begins to separate them. After a minute, she laughs and hands me one written in pencil.

  “That should be easy enough to erase!”

  “No. Pencil leaves trace marks grooved right into the paper. We’ve gotta throw those away.” She drops it to the floor and continues sorting. Maybe she’s not so dumb after all. I show her how to put the cheques in the wash one at a time using the tongs.

 
Sammy trudges into the living room, clad only in Underoos. Startled, I grab a newspaper and toss it on the coffee table, covering Lise’s needle. He’s carrying a tube of something. Toothpaste? “What you got there, kiddo?”

  “Cindy’s got a sore in her mouth. It’s called Orajel. I put it on the red spot when she wakes up crying. You didn’t hear her, did you?”

  Without waiting for an answer, he walks up to me, and I put my arms out, thinking he needs a hug. Instead, he unscrews the Orajel tube, puts some on his finger, and lightly touches my dry, chapped lip, smearing me gently with the numbing cream.

  “Where’d you get that stuff, Sammy?”

  “I asked Mrs Rainders.” The next-door neighbour. He kisses my cheek and turns around. Passing Lise he pauses, reaching toward her trio of piles. He moves a mislaid blue-ink cheque from the black-ink pile to its proper place.

  Sammy retreats to the living room and closes the door. Lise stares after him, smiling. “What a beautiful little boy.”

  A bump of crystal piled on the tip of my house key, I hold it up to my nostril and snort back hard. After the initial bite of pain as the shards hit my nasal membranes, warmth spreads from my face through the rest of my body. I hadn’t heard Cindy cry with all the racket. I oughta check on her more.

  “I had a baby girl once,” Lise says with a distracted look. “When I was fifteen. But they came and took her away.”

  “Who?”

  “Winnipeg Child and Family Services. They gave her away to a white family.”

  I thought she’d looked kinda Native. Métis, maybe?

  “My mom called them on me. I wasn’t even living at home anymore. She heard about the baby from my sister.”

  Rhonda steps out of the bedroom wearing only a pair of panties, waving a trembling hand in front of her face. Her body’s slick with perspiration. “The FTP server cacked out again.” She stumbles on her feet, sweat running off her face and breasts, dripping onto the carpet by the cupful.