by Tyler Keevil
‘What a cute baby-face he’s got,’ she said.
‘Uh-huh,’ her sister agreed. ‘He’s got to be the youngest-looking twenty-one-year-old I’ve ever seen. I wouldn’t mind taking him home and teaching him a thing or two.’
She winked at the mullet, who laughed so hard she started wheezing. Behind me the other customers were snickering, too. The sisters insisted on helping me place all the bags in my cart, one by one, carefully arranging them. I paid in Canadian cash. The exchange rate was terrible but I didn’t have any American money yet and just wanted to get out of there.
As I was turning to go, they offered me a keychain. Apparently you got a free keychain if you bought enough booze. The keychain was in the shape of a baby soother.
‘I don’t need that.’
‘Sure you do, baby-face.’
‘Okay,’ I said, grabbing it. ‘Whatever.’
They told me to come back soon. As I pushed my cart away from the till, I heard them joking and chuckling with the other customers about me. Outside I could still hear them, as if their voices were following me, floating around my head.
I loaded my beer and smokes and booze in the trunk, keeping a twixer of whisky with me as I got in the front. Near Tsawwassen I’d stopped for coffee, and the empty cup was still lying in the footwell of the passenger seat. I shook the dregs out the window, then opened the whisky. The cap made that satisfying cracking sound when the seal broke, and the bottle went glug-glug-glug as I filled up the cup. I was still stoned enough to think that what I was doing was vaguely awesome in some way.
‘Show you who’s young,’ I said, and took a swig.
I turned on the car. It trembled beneath me, like a horse at the starting gate. I pressed the gas down a few times, revving the engine. In the rear-view, peering back at me, was a smooth-cheeked, cherub-faced boy. I angled it away, so I didn’t have to look at him.
chapter 12
I was lying face-down on the floor of my suite. That was what I did every night, waiting for something to happen, wanting something to happen. I fantasised about the walls of our house falling down, the roof collapsing, the floors giving out. I daydreamed about a tornado tearing through town, and carrying away the remains of my old life.
‘Trevor?’
I rolled over. My stepmom was standing by the door that connects the suite to their house. She still had on her work uniform – this white skirt and blouse – and looked like an apparition, hovering there.
‘Hey, Amanda,’ I said, as if everything was totally normal. That’s what we do in our house: pretend everything is normal, even when it’s not. ‘What’s up?’
‘Your father and I thought you might like to have dinner with us.’
I didn’t, obviously. But I could tell the whole thing had been orchestrated for me – probably by Amanda. Since she’s not my real mom, she tends to overdo the mothering part.
‘I’ll come over in a bit.’
When I got there, they were already sitting down at the table in their kitchen. Above the table is an overhead fan. The fan doesn’t keep anything cool. It’s mostly decorative. It just goes around and around and around, like the hands of a very fast clock.
‘Prince boy-child,’ my dad said, rolling his eyes. ‘Thank you for finally gracing us with your presence.’
I took my usual seat between them. They’d ordered Szechwan. In the centre of the table sat styrofoam containers stuffed with spring rolls and chow mein and moo shu pork.
‘How’s everything going with your film?’ Amanda asked.
‘Oh, so-so.’
She smiled, ladling a nest of noodles on to my plate. She still had her name-tag pinned to her blouse. She works downtown, at an injection site, handing out free needles to heroin addicts and helping them shoot up. They all adore her.
‘How many days do you have left?’ she asked.
‘We finished today. The wrap party is on Friday.’
My dad grunted, which meant he had something to say. He just couldn’t say it yet, because his mouth was full of spring roll. We waited while he chewed and swallowed.
He asked, ‘What are you going to do after that?’
‘Go back to Ecological, I guess.’ That was the landscaping company where I worked cutting lawns: Ecological Lawn Care. ‘And wait for another film job to come up.’
‘What about Prague? I thought you had your ticket booked.’
‘I do have my ticket booked. That’s a couple of weeks off, though.’
I poked at the pile of food in front of me, like a ragpicker looking for scraps. I was pulling that old trick, where you shift things around without actually eating much. I couldn’t get away with it entirely, though. Amanda was staring at my plate.
‘Aren’t you hungry, dear?’
I managed to swallow a mouthful. ‘Not really. I think I had some bad food on set today.’
‘I’ll make you some tea,’ she said.
‘Peppermint would be nice.’
She was already up, rooting through the tea drawer. My dad gave me one of his looks – a kind of exasperated, ‘how dare you?’ look. He thinks I take advantage of her trying too hard to be my mom. Which I do, obviously.
‘Your food will get cold,’ he told her.
‘It’ll just take a minute.’
My dad started attacking his food again, as if he wanted to eat enough for the both of them before it went to waste. He stabbed at the plate with his chopsticks. The ends made little clicking sounds, like the mandibles of a ravenous insect.
‘How is Zuzska, anyways?’ he asked.
‘Not so good,’ I said.
He stopped eating. Amanda brought me the mug of tea. She sat back down and they waited for some kind of explanation.
‘We’re having problems.’
I put my hands around my mug, cradling its warmth, and blew on the surface of the tea. Swirls of peppermint steam spiralled up in front of me.
‘I mean, we’re having a break, I guess.’
I couldn’t bring myself to tell them more than that. It seemed like enough.
‘So that’s it.’ My dad crossed his arms, shook his head and chuckled – like a doctor who had finally diagnosed a tricky case. ‘That’s why you’re staying up all night listening to Leonard Cohen and raiding my liquor cabinet.’
I nodded. He had me there.
‘Poor Zuzska,’ Amanda said.
My dad tilted his head, as if he’d misheard. ‘Poor Zuzska?’
‘Poor both of you.’
After that, neither of them said anything for a minute or so. It was fairly awkward. The overhead fan whipped around and around. Then my dad picked up his chopsticks and started eating again.
‘Anyways,’ he said, between bites, ‘I hope you don’t use this as an excuse to do something stupid and irresponsible.’
Until then, I hadn’t really considered it. But he put the idea in my head. I began thinking: I should probably do something stupid and irresponsible…
chapter 13
South of the border, Highway 99 becomes an American interstate, the I-5. There’s this long stretch before Ferndale where the highway divides, so that the southbound and northbound routes separate. I followed the southbound side as it looped through hills covered in scrawny spruce trees and pipe-cleaner pines. There was hardly any traffic and the blacktop had been freshly paved and the Neon wanted to gallop, so I opened it up and let her run. I had my cup of whisky in the cup-holder and took a swig every few miles. I don’t think I was going that fast. If anything, I was probably under the speed limit. But the tarmac felt slippery and the car had a tendency to wobble. I kept overcorrecting, weaving back and forth. It was like trying to steer a canoe.
I wasn’t listening to the radio. I’d decided not to, as part of my fast. I wouldn’t eat any food and I wouldn’t listen to any music for the entire trip. As I drove I held my arm out the window, spread my fingers, and felt the wind slide between them. Then I leaned all the way out there, sticking my head in the slipstre
am. The air blasted back my hair, made my eyes water. I felt like an explorer, standing at the prow of his ship, arriving in the new land.
‘Here I come, America!’ I shouted, shaking my fist at the landscape. ‘You beautiful country! I’m going to conquer you and plunder you and make you mine! Do you hear me?’
A white car pulled alongside me. It was an old box-style sedan driven by a woman with a shaved head. She honked and waggled her finger like a schoolteacher, chastising me. I was encroaching on her lane. I swung back and gave her a mock-salute as she passed.
‘I am a conquistador!’ I shouted.
I reached Bellingham in less than half an hour. From the highway I spotted the factory outlet stores where I’d often shopped with my old man, and the Best Western where I’d stayed with Zuzska the year before. By that point my throat had gone dry and my tongue had shrivelled up. I also had a brutal headache that felt like a hairline fracture at the base of my skull. I was burning out, big-time. I tore open a pack of Lucky Strike and smoked a few, but the nicotine didn’t help at all.
‘I need more juice,’ I yelled, banging the steering wheel.
On the outskirts of town I pulled into a gas station. I thought I might be able to pick up an iced coffee or an energy drink, but when I got inside I found something even better. In the dairy section they had canisters of whipped cream. That would get me going. I gathered up an armful of cans and carried them to the till. When I put them down they clanked and rolled all over the counter. The clerk was a girl about my age, with short pigtails that stuck straight out from the sides of her head. She wrinkled her nose and began scanning my cans.
‘Huffing whippets is dangerous, you know,’ she said.
‘I’m just making a big birthday cake.’
‘My friend knew somebody who died doing it.’
Nobody dies huffing whippets. That’s a total urban legend.
‘I’m sorry to hear that.’
She shoved the cans in a bag and took my money.
Back in the car, I popped the cap off the first canister, but the clerk was watching me through the window so I didn’t try it out until I’d left the lot and pulled on to the highway. I had to steer with one hand. Putting the nozzle to my lips, I thumbed the trigger and inhaled. If you hold the canister upright, you don’t get any cream, only gas. I hadn’t huffed whippets since I was a kid. The sweet chemical taste was like a blast of déjà vu, and the effect was instantaneous – as if somebody had lopped off the top of my scalp.
I kept the canister in the cup-holder, next to my whisky. Every few miles I’d take a sip of booze, or a dose of nitrous. Whisky and whippets was an ingenious combination. They seemed to balance each other out. Each time I hit the nitrous, I imagined it was like real nitrous – the kind they use in street-race movies to give the car an extra kick. I’d take a huff and hold it in, making my head spin, and accelerate until I had to breathe again.
Doing that, I blew past Mount Vernon and Stanwood and Arlington and Marysville. I’d been through all those places before, some of them with her. They were sinkholes like Tsawwassen: memory swamps that threatened to draw me in, bog me down. I didn’t stop at any of them. I didn’t even look at them. Whenever I was tempted, I just went faster.
chapter 14
Technically, I didn’t get invited to the wrap party – I’d just overheard the DP and grip talking about it. I didn’t really want to go, either. But being around people was better than being on my own. They held the party at this hotel downtown. I can’t remember the name, but it’s close to English Bay, just off Denman Street. The bar has wall-length mirrors and crystal chandeliers. Forty years ago it would have been in full bloom. Now the décor is fading, the furniture is wilting, and the barflies have begun to arrive. It’s pretty much a dive. But it’s cool to go to dives, if you’re hipsters or indie filmmakers who’ve just wrapped a shoot.
When I arrived, our group was standing in the centre of the room, beneath one of the chandeliers. I got myself a Molson and sidled over. Most of the cast and crew were there, along with some people I assumed were their friends. They were all dressed in skinny jeans and scarves and beanies.
The director was telling the story about the bar manager he’d cast.
‘And then,’ he said, ‘she kept calling them “lovebirds”. I mean, who says that?’
Everybody laughed. I lingered on the outside of the group, wishing I’d worn a beanie too. Then I thought, I’d rather shoot myself than wear a beanie.
‘You’ll see it later,’ the director was saying. ‘Her performance is priceless.’
‘You’re screening the rushes?’ I asked, as casually as possible.
‘Sure – in the conference room.’
He looked surprised to see me. He’d be even more surprised when he saw the close-up I’d shot, of his face in the bar taps. I wouldn’t be sticking around for that.
Eventually the one big conversation broke into a bunch of little conversations. The DP noticed me standing alone and came over to talk to me. He was all right like that. He wasn’t a full-on hipster, either. He had the scarf, but not the beanie.
I said, ‘This shoot has been tough for me, man.’
‘You were a little off your game.’
‘I was way off my game.’
I wrapped an arm around his shoulder, drawing him in.
‘I haven’t been sleeping or eating. That’s why I threw away the piece of pizza. You remember when I did that, on the highway?’
He said he remembered.
‘Well, that’s why.’
‘That was good pizza, bro.’
‘It’s all because of my girlfriend. She lives in Prague.’
‘Ah.’ He started shaking his head, even though I hadn’t told him what had happened, or what she’d done. ‘There you go, bro. The long-distance thing never works. I’ve tried it. Trust me. You’ve got to let go and move on.’
‘Move on how?’
He shrugged. ‘There’s plenty of other fish in the sea.’
I’d been waiting for somebody to feed me that old chestnut. I had my answer ready.
‘There’s other fish, but none like this fish. She’s rare and exotic. A real catch.’
‘I hear you, bro.’
He patted me on the shoulder, and moved off to talk to somebody else. I stood on my own for a bit, then wandered over to the bar and ordered three shots of whatever whisky they had on special. Famous Grouse, I think. I drank them one after another – as if I were holding a one-man drinking contest – and chased with the rest of my beer. I’d been nursing a mickey of gin on the bus ride over and by that point I felt pretty tanquerayed.
At the other end of the bar, the green-haired actress and the jock actor were standing with their friends. She made the mistake of glancing in my direction. That was my cue. I barrelled over and butted into their little circle. They all stopped talking and stared at me.
‘I like your hair,’ I said to her.
‘Thanks.’
‘Is that dyed or natural?’
I think I was trying to make a joke. Nobody laughed, though.
‘Do you mind if I smell it?’
Before she answered, I leaned in and sort of sniffed at her hair.
‘It looks like seaweed,’ I said, ‘but it smells like flowers.’
She arched her eyebrows at her friends, as if to say, who is this asshole?
‘Hey, buddy,’ the jock said, shooing me away. ‘Go walk it off, eh?’
They turned their backs and tightened their circle, like a herd of elephants.
Later on, all the cast and crew vanished. I guess they went off to watch the rushes. I sat at the bar alone. Then, after a while, I realised I was no longer alone. Two guys had appeared on the stools next to me. I first noticed them in the mirror behind the bar, and glanced over.
‘You look like you could use a drink,’ I said.
They nodded without looking at me. One of them was stockier than the other, but they both had shaggy hair and crusty
clothes and half-grown beards, like curly black moss.
‘I’ll have more rum,’ one said.
‘Same,’ the other said. ‘More rum.’
I ordered rum, too – since it seemed appropriate. The bartender splashed out some Havana Club for us. We raised our glasses and clinked.
‘Tonight,’ the stocky one said, ‘is the worst night of our life.’
‘The very worst,’ the other added.
They told me that the two of them were brothers. That didn’t surprise me – they looked like brothers. What surprised me was that they also happened to be filmmakers.
‘Weird,’ I said. ‘Me too.’
They claimed they’d been driving across America, shooting a documentary. They’d spent eighteen weeks on the road, in the company of a drug-dealing motorcycle gang.
‘Like the Hell’s Angels?’ I asked.
‘Crazier than the Hell’s Angels.’
It had taken them months to find a gang willing to let them document its activities. Even then, there were certain conditions. The leader told them they could only go on the road with the gang if they underwent the same initiation rites as any other member. They had to slit open a live cobra and drink its blood. They had to pierce their balls and take a tonne of mescaline. They even had to get the gang’s sign tattooed on their biceps.
‘You’re shitting me.’
They both rolled up their left sleeves. They had matching snake tattoos.
‘That was just the beginning.’
In Montana the gang had ripped off a truckload of industrial chemicals. They used the stuff to make drugs, apparently. At some bar in Texas, there had been a shoot-out with a bunch of Mexicans, and a big chase through the desert. The two brothers had filmed all that, and a bunch of other weird shit. They’d seen meth labs and gangland executions and crooked politicians paid to look the other way. They estimated that they’d shot five hundred hours of footage, maybe more. It was supposed to be the definitive documentary on biker gangs.