Fucking relax. We’re just friends.
Do your parents know where you spent the night?
You’re one to talk.
Get out.
I’ll go when I’m good and ready.
I said get out. Now. Before I call the cops.
Go right ahead.
She stalked me through their apartment as I picked up my things. Cunt, I thought. Thinks I’m not good enough for her freak show. She slammed the door behind me. Jazz, every doubt I’d been having vanished. I could have shot Tom right there just to spite her.
Tom tilted his head up to the sun as we sat on the hood of my crappy old Chevy parked on the shoulder of a road in Richmond near the airport, the silver bellies of planes passing over us.
I saw this movie once, he said. This boat capsizes and this guy hops on his wife’s back because she’s a better swimmer. He drowns her and then spends the rest of the movie whining about his pain. Tom looked at me. It may not feel like it right now, but you’re better off without Jer.
December 14, 1993
Dear Tom,
I brought you to a boozecan in Surrey because Jer promised me a pound of cocaine for a pound of flesh. I knew what he was capable of. I helped him beat up Willy Baker a week after you guys stole the Jag. I knew you were in trouble, and I didn’t warn you. No excuses. What I did was wrong and I’m sorry.
I saw you at school the next Tuesday, and you ignored me. I thought it was over. I didn’t want anything to do with you or Jeremy, and it looked like you wanted nothing to do with me. I thought you got off easy. Two cigarette burns and a head punch? Jer was planning on taking you apart. I thought, Tom can take care of himself.
When you didn’t make it in for the last week of school, I was relieved you weren’t at band practice. I could feel you staring at the back of my head. I wanted to tell you it was your own fault for stealing Jer’s Jag when you knew he was a freakazoid. Then it was June and finals started.
I graduated. I moved out. I paid for my place for six months with the money I made from selling part of my coke. I knew Mom and Dad weren’t going to give me anything but the boot. I was supposed to make enough money to pay for tuition and expenses for the first year of university, but I ended up spending most of the summer in my bachelor suite. Head right in the bag. My own best customer. Then it was all gone, and my nest egg was drying up, and I bought the cheapest shit you can imagine.
Dad used to drive me down the worst alleys in East Hastings to show me the junkie prostitutes and the people who feed off them. This is what sin gets you. All their fears poured in me and festering. You are going to end up on skid row if you fuck boys. Toughening myself up for what seemed like a sure future strolling the razor-wired industrial sections where the freaks chase down women no one’s going to bother looking for.
I saw you in Pigeon Park. Didn’t know it was you. I hate it when people leave junkies to die like stray dogs. Everyone walking past you like you weren’t there. I thought you were someone OD’ing, last convulsions. And then I got close enough to make you out, and I left you there. I walked away. I made it three blocks practically running before I turned back. I helped put you there. I thought you were being sarcastic at first, and then I felt relief when you didn’t remember anything.
I heard an old woman in your building burnt down the place, but it seems too tidy. I should have left you in Emergency. I didn’t mean to blubber all over you in the hospital. You had enough problems without me dumping on you. But when you remembered what I did, you could have been an asshole.
No one’s forgiven me for anything. You are the first. I didn’t even ask you to. You just did. It should feel better than it does. I guess. You are supposed to feel good when someone forgives you. Right? Maybe it’s the newness that’s weirding me out. Is that a word? Newness?
Hey Jazz,
Thanks for the smokes. I throw them at my new roommate when I need space. God, she’s clingy. Hi. Hi. I was named after my grandmother. Who were you named after? Where you going? Are you coming back soon? What’re you doing? Can you help me with my hair? Are you awake? Is that how you fold your socks? I’ve never seen socks folded like that before. If she didn’t run off to the smoking lounge every once in a while, I would rip off her arm and beat her to death with it. I’m supposed to find five qualities I like about her and focus on the positive. Group has been on my back about my attitude.
But she’s getting on my nerves, I said.
The things you don’t like about other people are the things you don’t like about yourself, the anger management facilitator said. When you point your finger, four fingers are pointing back at you-ou!
She’s so chirpy, she makes group feel like remedial cheerleading. Does that mean I secretly loathe myself for being chirpy? What a lame theory. I am not chirpy. Or clingy. I am angry, resentful, bitter, quick-tempered, grudge-bearing, unreasonable, but I am not clingy.
There was that one time with Tom, but that was the coke psychosis. Instead of seeing snakes, I clung. Curled up to him in his bed. Hung around the hospital and waited for him to get out of his tests. Put my head in his lap while we watched TV. And cried nonstop. Bawled like I’d shot Old Yeller and the gun was still warm. I’m so embarrassed. I don’t ever want to see him again. God. It was the coke. It was the summer of coke. I’ve never done that with anyone. Never. Even Jer couldn’t make me cry. And he tried really hard.
If his mom hadn’t shown up three days later and had security boot me out, I think I’d still be bawling at Tom’s feet. God. God. I want to scrub the memory from my brain. That’s what scared me. That’s what made me try to go cold turkey. His mother’s expression, so disdainful. The nurses. Looking at me like I had no self-respect at all and I didn’t. He barely had his brains in his skull and I was so needy.
I was shocked sober. Miserable. So sick. I finally gave in and sold my car and then Carrie Fucking Lanstrum and her Barbie gang tried to jump me. I got held for psych evaluation. And then plead guilty to minor possession and got sent here.
I can’t face Tom. I can’t. I can’t even write his fucking amends letter. Mom’s letter was easier to write. It wasn’t what he said or the way he said it or the look in his eyes or him. It was the coke. I was in coke psychosis. It had to be the coke. Either that or buried deep, deep down, I am a squishy, weepy weakling and that is just not possible.
8 JULY 1998
“That should be enough for now,” Firebug said, shutting off the camcorder.
Tom hung against the ropes, writhing slowly. With each breath, pain spiked his sides like stitches from a long run. Firebug had drilled five needles into the muscles between his ribs. Tom’s thighs were freckled from shallow puncture marks where Firebug had poked him awake when he was on the verge of passing out.
Firebug cut a plastic, beige patch into quarters. He peeled one of the quarter patches and stuck it above Tom’s belly button.
Tom waited, tensed. Firebug placed the three remaining quarters in a small plastic bag, which he tucked in his tackle box beside the blowtorch. The patch tingled. Tom thought it was a nicotine patch but then someone was pouring warm honey over his belly and his chest and down his arms and his legs. Air caressed his skin. He could still feel the needles and the burns and the punctures, but they became pleasant, interesting as the honey sank under his skin and through his muscles and bones right down to his marrow. He closed his eyes and took a slow, deep breath.
“Nothing beats opiates,” Firebug said.
The crickets sang in the yellowed grass in the nearby meadow, and Tom was lost in the sound, nodding. The trees glowed, their white bark golden in the slanting late-afternoon sunlight. Mosquitoes brushed his skin, tiny sparks when they bit the soft flesh of his face and chest and thighs. Sensation stopped at his shoulder joints, which felt hot and sore. It was like he didn’t have arms any more. He found that cool.
Firebug brought his pliers to the needle in Tom’s nipple. Tom felt a tug, and then blood ran down his chest like tears, warm,
warm and absorbing. Firebug studied the needle and the flesh baked on it. He picked the needle off the pliers and dropped it into a white, plastic kitchen bag crumpled and open beside them. A fat black fly with glossy wings landed on the needle. It was joined by another fly, and another, and they danced around each other as they swarmed and whined. Tom rocked as Firebug jerked the needles out one by one. A squirrel spiralled up the trunk of a tree. Tom’s head fell back as he watched the squirrel disappear into the canopy. The sky he felt he could fall through, blue etched by the white wake of a jet.
He heard sizzling. Felt a wash of lukewarm water and lowered his head. Firebug poured hydrogen peroxide on the open wounds and they foamed, rabid.
Panic. He felt panic, but distantly, as if he were a supersonic jet leaving his boom a minute behind.
“Boom,” Tom said. “Boom.”
Firebug half-carried, half-dragged Tom to the truck and hauled the passenger door open. Waves of heat wafted out of the cab. Firebug waited a moment and then lifted Tom onto the seat and slammed the door shut. Firebug walked around the front and the driver’s side squealed open. The truck started with a rumble. Dust rose behind them as they climbed the hill.
Tom fell against the door, his head lolling, drowsy. He wanted to see where they were, to try to fix a location, but there were only more trees and the road. They crested the hill and the logging road dipped.
His head snapped up as the truck jerked to a stop. He wasn’t sure if it was a short trip or if he’d dozed or blanked out. They were parked on a gentle slope in front of a squat stone building with shuttered windows. Solar panels shone black on the roof. An ancient, rusty white satellite dish almost the size of the house dominated the yard. A hedge of cedar trees formed a high wall around the fence. They parked beside a black Land Rover. The engine rumbled into silence. One of the burglars from yesterday, the man in a black muscle shirt with a brown ponytail hanging down his neck opened the front door and walked up to the passenger’s side. They stared at each other.
“What the hell have you been doing? You had him all fucking night,” Muscle Shirt said, yanking the door open. “Stop pussyfooting around.”
“Leo,” Firebug said. “Back off and let me handle this.”
“This is how you get Jer to pay us what he owes.” Leo slugged Tom in the stomach.
“You fuck-wit, stop –”
“Get the camera!” Leo said. “Get the fucking camera!”
Tom covered his head as Leo dragged him from the truck and threw him to the gravel. Tom curled into himself as Leo kicked him, screaming for the camera.
They lifted him onto the butcher’s block in the middle of a kitchen straight from the seventies – avocado appliances, orange counters, and dark-stained cupboards. The curtains were drawn even though the outside shutters were closed. The only lighting came from a block of fluorescent lights humming above them.
Leo rested his hand on the revolver he had tucked in the waistband of his pants. He moved close, trying to stare Tom down. Firebug rummaged through the cupboards and pulled down clear plastic tumblers. He put them on the counter and then took a Brita water filter from the fridge.
Tom looked down at himself and realized he was still naked. Pain crept back into his body, biting through his haze. Paulie and Mel had to be in the house, maybe in a backroom or the basement. Glock Man must be with them, he thought. He wondered how close they were and if they could hear him if he shouted for them. Adrenalin woke him the rest of the way up. The kitchen opened to the hallway and across from the hallway was the living room. He hadn’t been paying attention enough to notice a staircase or other rooms in the back. He could say he needed to use the can and check out the backrooms. Leo’s revolver looked like it had come out of a cereal box. If they were alone, Tom would gouge Leo’s eyes before he introduced the cast-iron frying pan on the stove to the bastard’s skull.
Tom touched the patch above his belly button. He knew how much it was going to hurt when the drugs wore off. He wasn’t interested in suffering, but he couldn’t do anything if he couldn’t think. If they had any hope of getting out of this, he had to have his brains back. Tom pretended to scratch, peeling off the patch and letting it drop to the floor.
“He took something off,” Leo said, pulling his revolver out and aiming at Tom. “Look, he threw it on the floor.”
Firebug sipped his water.
“Did you hear me?” Leo said. He half-turned to face Firebug.
Firebug placed the tumbler on the counter. He turned in a smear of motion, punching Leo so hard he folded as he flew back against the butcher’s block and his revolver clattered to the hardwood floor. Leo gasped for air, staggering.
“You agreed to do what I say,” Firebug said. “Do you want to quit the crew?”
Leo sullenly shook his head.
“Good,” Firebug said.
Firebug picked up another tumbler and brought it to Tom. He held it up in offering and Tom took it. Water sloshed over his hands as he tried to bring the cup to his face and Firebug patiently steadied Tom and helped him drink. Leo hesitated before he tucked his revolver back in his pants.
“When you’re tempted to shoot Tom,” Firebug said. “Imagine yourself in a beachfront hotel in tropical Aruba as you and two nubile whores frolic in a bed full of money.”
Leo’s expression went slack, his mouth opening just slightly in wonderment as if an angel or a UFO had landed in front of him.
“Tom alive gets you to Aruba,” Firebug said. “Tom dead means you keep knocking over snack shacks. We’ll let Jer take care of him. Okay?”
“Okay.”
“Get my tackle box out of the back of the truck.”
“Sure,” Leo said.
“I have money,” Tom said. “I have seventy thousand dollars and three keys of coke. They’re yours if –”
“How’d a grimy little shit like you get that kind of money?” Leo said.
“Leo,” Firebug said. “Don’t get distracted by the quarter on the sidewalk when you’re holding up a bank.”
“Money’s money,” Leo said. “How much is the coke stepped on?”
Firebug slapped Leo upside the head. “Get my tackle box out of the truck, fuck-wit. Now. Goddamn Jesus fucking Christ in a sidecar. You make gum look smart.”
Firebug stood in front of him, talking, but Tom found himself straining to catch Paulie and Mel noises. Then his legs cramped and there was a long, long time he thought he was going to throw up on Firebug again, but he came back to himself to find Firebug holding his arms so he didn’t fall off the butcher’s block. Leo did not seem to be in a rush to return with the tackle box, and Tom hoped he had fallen off the steps and broken both legs.
“Goddamn useless no-brain dickskinning fuck-up,” Firebug said. “Christ. It’d be faster sending a monkey.”
Tom could feel the promise of the needle punctures now, the twinges in his side, the pinch in his thighs, and the throb in his left nipple. He looked down. The nipple had stopped bleeding, and the blood had crusted on his chest. The burn looked wet and the hole gaped. The needle marks between his ribs were closed and puffy, sticky with a clear fluid like sap. The ache in the small of his back was new. Thankfully, Leo had been wearing socks or the shit-kicking would have been worse.
“I need to use the bathroom,” Tom said.
Firebug slung one of Tom’s arms over his shoulder and helped him off the block and across the kitchen into the hallway. No stairs going up to an attic or down to a basement. Two rooms in the back, one with the door open, the other closed.
“Did you have a good cry?” Firebug said, swinging Tom around to face Leo, who carried the tackle box and the reek of cigarette smoke. “Did you phone your mommy and say I was being mean?”
“Don’t get your panties in a twist,” Leo said.
“Should I make your part less complicated? Here. Take Tom to the bathroom.”
“I didn’t sign up to ass-wipe Gomer.”
“Gomer beat a biker to death with a to
ilet-tank lid,” Firebug said. “Which is less impressive than it sounds because he is a dumb fuck like you.”
“Stop calling me stupid.”
“Go to town on him, Tom,” Firebug said, patting his shoulder as he handed him off to Leo.
It was tempting to reach over and pull the revolver’s trigger. But Firebug’s trash talk was just that, and it wouldn’t get Tom closer to Paulie and Mel. Firebug in a mood was something to avoid.
Tom expected the open room to be a bathroom, but it was a master bedroom, wide and dark, lit by four TVS lined up on the dresser to the left. The camera to the far left showed the logging road behind the wall of cedars. The two middle cameras slowly surveyed the front and back yards. The camera to the far right stopped Tom cold.
Paulie was bent over, finger-walking Mel across a room with a mural of a grassy hillside filled with bunnies and puppies and rainbows. One wall of the room had been replaced by bars. Glock Man sat on a chair on the other side of the bars and read a book. Paulie wore a yellow summer dress with spaghetti straps and her mouth was moving, but there was no sound. Mel strained forward, trying to go faster.
“Paulie!” Tom shouted. “Paulie!”
Paulie didn’t react.
“Move it,” Leo said.
“Paulie!” Tom screamed.
“She can’t hear you,” Leo said. “It’s soundproofed, dumb-ass.”
“Paulie! Mel! Paulie! Paulie!”
Leo yanked him past the TVS and dragged him to a bathroom on the far side of the bedroom. He flipped the light on and tossed Tom in.
“Where’s Paulie?” Tom said. “Where’s –”
Leo pulled his revolver and aimed at Tom’s groin. “Finish your business.”
Tom sat on the toilet and Leo sat on the edge of the tub. Leo pressed the gun against one of the needle punctures on Tom’s ribs.
“Where’s your stash?” he whispered.
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