MARRY, BANG, KILL

by Andrew Battershill

  “Hey, Bill, how’re you doing?”

  “I’m good, you?”

  “I’m thinking sushi.”

  “Yeah, Japanese grocery store?”

  “I’m going to call in to a restaurant. I’m feeling fresh.” There was a brief, buzzing pause through the cheap plastic burner pressed clammily to Tommy’s ear. He performed an extremely risky pass on the right of an old man in an old car. “I mean that I’m feeling freshness as, like, what I want in my sushi. I don’t feel fresh in my own body, or whatever.”

  “No, I got that. I have cash, I’m paying for this.”

  “Nope.”

  “Tommy, seriously, you shouldn’t be paying a commission of a restaurant meal every time you bring me business.”

  “It’s valuable for me to show you that I appreciate our relationship. You’re a skilled person and you do things I can’t. I’m glad we work together, and I really mean that, and I probably don’t say it enough.”

  “You actually say stuff like that a lot, dude. Thanks, though. Are you okay? You sound weird.”

  Tommy had been mugging people for a living since he’d left Victoria as a teen, and the only thing about the town that had changed was that the traffic had gotten worse. It wasn’t surprising that he sounded weird. “Yeah, I’m sorry, man. I’m just . . . emotional, I guess. I feel emotional. But I guess anytime you feel something, you’re emotional. Either way, don’t ever try to pay for your soosh.”

  Tommy hung up the phone to prevent further arguing. Then immediately re-dialled to get Bill’s order.

  Ø

  Tommy walked into the familiar dankness of Bill’s computer dungeon/reasonably priced condo, shaking his head. He could smell the vaporizer bag already.

  Tommy saw the television and Bill’s expectant face. Tommy held a single finger out in front of him, wanting to get his question out before they settled in. “First, I have something I wanted to run by you, just to see if I’m . . . Okay, here’s the deal, this is a thought I had when I was super-baked, but I want to bring it into the light of day. So, like, sober, I want to run this by you.”

  Bill spread his hands to welcome Tommy’s idea into the room.

  “Okay, so I was lying in bed, insomniacking a bit. And then I thought, like, if you take it all the way out of context, isn’t sleeping really crazy? If you don’t totally switch off your whole, uh, consciousness and all for a third of the day, you go insane and die.”

  Bill was already nodding along. “Right, and you need to do it all in a row. That’s what’s really weird. You’ll still go crazy and die if you just sleep one hour at a time eight times a day.”

  “Yes. Totally on that page, man. And that whole time you’re asleep you have to dream or it doesn’t count. Because of REMs, or whatever. You don’t just need to shut off or you go crazy and die, you need to shut off and all the shit in your brain needs to fire off randomly and make you see and act out crazy imaginary scenarios in your mind. To live, that needs to happen every night. That’s a biological necessary thing everyone has to do.”

  “That’s weird as fuck to think about, dude. Legit.”

  “Oh, awesome. I’m glad that held up to sobriety.” Tommy placed the computer and the sushi gently on the coffee table then dropped down beside Bill on the couch, which was so punched out and sloppy that sitting on it you were almost at ground level. He took the bulging vape bag from Bill and inhaled happily.

  “I’m sorry to bust your bubble, man, but I was already pretty baked when you got here.”

  The vapour hit Tommy’s throat simultaneously with Bill’s revelation hitting his consciousness, and both revolted as Tommy lurched forward into wracking, laughing cough. He weakly lifted his arm to pass the bag back. Bill grabbed it and rubbed Tommy’s back with his other hand.

  Eventually, Tommy regained his air. “Jesus, you are a piece of human garbage.”

  Bill laughed. “I do think that thought is legit, though, Tommy. It was just a little buzz I had on, I can still balance on the plane of the notional, brah.”

  “I’m sure, I’m sure.” Tommy settled quietly into the depths of the couch, then pushed himself back up and started untying the knotted plastic bag around the sushi. “Oh, I was driving, so we didn’t have a chance to debrief on this at the time, but you ordered a scallop roll. That’s gangster.”

  Bill blew a smooth, thin line of vapour a discreet distance away from Tommy. “Is it?”

  “See, man, see. That’s how it is, when you’re in it, when you’re that scallop-ordering baller, you don’t even see it. A scallop roll. The gall.”

  Bill grinned, passed the bag back, and carefully wiped some imaginary dirt off his real shoulder. The two men giggled for a while, then watched two episodes of Paddington Bear as they ate.

  Ø

  As Bill was pillaging everything he could off the laptop, Tommy was trying to play a video game where you start as a tiny ball that rolls and picks up dirt and turf, kind of like a snowball. You, the ball, grow and start gathering small trees and benches, and on and on until you have consumed entire people, then buildings, then cities, then continents, and then you end up in space rolling through light years gathering stars and moons and planets, and eventually galaxies. Then the game ends, and you get a score. Or at least that was what happened if Bill stoned or Tommy totally focused played it. As it was, Tommy was having trouble growing his ball. He kept taking runs at fences or businessmen and bouncing off, shedding whatever meagre lawn he’d picked up.

  “Uh, Tommy . . .”

  Tommy took a hard roll at a park bench and rebounded, dissipating back into his original form. He put the controller down and turned to look at Bill, who was staring deeply at the laptop. “Yeah, what’s up?”

  “Who did you steal this computer from?”

  “Some chick outside the Hillside coffee place. You know, the one with those dope blueberry scones?”

  Bill dug into his beard with both hands and stood, pulling the hands through in a way that Tommy couldn’t imagine being comfortable.

  “Did she give you the impression that she maybe was in, y’know, the most terrifying criminal motorcycle club in the history of the universe?”

  “No, she was . . .” Tommy closed his eyes and failed to imagine dying because right in the moment, when you know it might really happen very soon, that’s kind of an impossible thing to do. “She mentioned her dad.”

  Bill sat back down and angled the computer towards Tommy. “Look here, you remember that armoured car heist, all on the news, last week?”

  “I don’t have a TV.”

  “Well, an armoured car heist happened, they took, like, a hundred G’s. Guard got fucked up, in a coma. It was bad, and it’s here. The money’s being stashed in a hidey-hole behind this address until it gets picked up tomorrow. That’s . . . Holy fuck.”

  “How do you know that’s the —”

  “Because this computer is owned by a man who stopped learning after DOS, dude. Everything is on the desktop. His My Documents is empty, nothing is in code, and it’s all very scary.”

  “I put a knife to his teen daughter. I called her a bitch face. Well, by accident . . . No, that — that was on purpose. It was all on purpose, if we’re being real.”

  “This is literally the first file I opened, Tommy. And it’s a thing people get killed over. Do you see that background image? That is straight black with white text that says: ‘Don’t let your tongue get your teeth knocked out.’”

  “Yeah, I see that. This is not good. This is bad.”

  “I’m not going to open this jpeg, but just looking at the thumbnail I can tell it’s a bloody crowbar. A picture of a bloody crowbar. A really very bloody crowbar.”

  Tommy got up to pace, but that only lasted a couple seconds. He dropped to his haunches and stayed there, looking straight at the stained carpet past his knees.

  “Is that a severed foot?”

  Tommy popped up and swiped the laptop off the table. He carried it precariously to
the kitchen and began wiping it down with a loose, stained piece of paper towel. Bill followed a few seconds later.

  “What are you doing? What’s our plan?”

  Tommy spun and grabbed Bill around his chest for a hug; he buried his head in the crook of the larger man’s chest and closed his eyes for a second. “Okay. Fuck. I’m sorry, this is bad, and I wasn’t here. Okay? Wipe all that shit, whatever you got off this laptop onto whatever computer of yours, and put that fucking computer in an oven. This is my problem.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  Tommy had been scared for his life three times before this, but those had all been occasional. A quick flash, and then over. Once, a woman he’d been mugging had pulled a can of mace from a holster and he’d thought it was a gun. Once, he’d been jumped and shit-kicked leaving a nightclub in Kingston. Once, driving back from a hiking trip in the Okanagan, the van he’d been riding in had lost its brakes on the highway, and his quietest, most competent friend, a leather artist named Nic Gething, had almost magically glided the van up a hill and eventually stopped them. All of those times, Tommy had been frightened. He had felt it deeply in his chest, but the moments had gotten behind him before he’d known it, as if he’d blinked or looked the wrong way and missed them. The fear now was different. It was big and external and it didn’t feel like it would be gone anytime soon. But he was somehow calm, able to think.

  “Fuck it. I’ve split from plenty of towns. My mom’s on Quadra Island, that’s . . . remote, I guess. Hang there a couple days, y’know, say I’m sorry about the jumping bail that time and . . . just, also, sorry for my whole life, I guess. Then grab a boat. Get up to the Yukon or some shit, figure it out. Fucking just punch the clock. I’m fine. This’ll be fine.”

  Bill bit his lip really hard. “Do you have the money to . . .”

  “My problem, my problem. I’ll . . . I’ll take this computer, and I’ll work something out. All right? Last time you’ll hear of it. That’s it.”

  They stood in the kitchen, breathing quickly, for several seconds.

  “Are you sure about this?”

  “It’s done, I already went to Quadra, saw my mum, and I’m in the Yukon, man. Fuckin’ staring at a rainbow. It’s midnight, sun’s up, all that. Having a party. I’m good. I’m already good. I’m over it, I’m fine.”

  Bill didn’t say anything or move his head at all. He just stood there and looked a little like he might cry, but it’s possible that Tommy was only thinking that because of how close to crying Tommy was.

  Tommy didn’t know exactly how making a life-changing decision felt. Like everyone else, Tommy had made such decisions every second he’d been awake as an adult. Like everyone else, Tommy’s life was nothing more than a ceaseless, arbitrary stream of mortal micro-choices. Regardless, Tommy would afterwards remember ripping off the club not as a choice at all but rather as a series of stunning realizations, a short, slick conveyor belt of epiphany.

  The first realization was that Bitch Face had not been exaggerating. In fact, she’d undersold the threat. Her father was the road captain of the local club chapter. His name was Jason Darillo, and he was not just a high-ranking member of the club but also a very, very crazy and gleefully violent one (that thumbnail was, indeed, a picture of a severed foot).

  The second realization, almost simultaneous with the first, was that if he did not leave town immediately, he would not only be killed but — as Bitch Face had warned — his feet would be cut off and thrown in the ocean.

  The third realization was that he did not even have the money to pay for the gas to get himself out of danger.

  The fourth was that the money from the armoured car robbery was being held temporarily at a club-owned gas station in Esquimalt, not more than a ten-minute drive from Tommy’s apartment.

  Ø

  The certainty he felt that it would take the club between thirteen and forty-eight hours to find and kill him overwhelmed Tommy’s already pretty limited instincts to be careful and forward-thinking about the dangerous things he did. So instead of packing and preparing to go from robbing the money stash to Quadra Island — where he could appreciate nature and think about his life a little and, after things cooled down, hop on a boat and maybe get one of those fishing or oil jobs in Alaska where they give you money just to go there — Tommy left all his valuables at his apartment as he headed to the gas station, taking with him only his knife, a scrawled note to remind him of the stash’s exact location, and his glasses.

  Since his second week in Victoria, Tommy had been using a car belonging to the senile old woman down the street. After noticing that the Corolla never left its spot during the day, he had waited for a whole afternoon outside the house before finally seeing, frightening, reasoning with, and bribing the owner’s baggy-eyed, slump-shouldered home care worker. For the $120 he’d had left in his wallet, Tommy had purchased himself unlimited, unsupervised use of a car with clean plates. It had been, easily, his biggest accomplishment since arriving in town.

  Even as he coaxed the desperately underpowered seventeen-year-old car out of the senile woman’s super-steep driveway, and even later, as he approached the gas station, Tommy did not feel very different than he had earlier in the day. The buzz of adrenaline made his legs and hands feel tingly and distant from his head, but his legs and hands often felt that way, like when he’d had a bit to drink or smoke, which, come to think of it, he had.

  Tommy pulled into a parking spot at the gas station but left the car running. For the first time since he’d decided to steal the stashed money he felt like he needed a minute to think. He looked at the knife on the seat next to him. He was literally bringing a knife to a gun fight. Or — Tommy managed to hope solemnly — he was bringing a knife to no fight, which was almost as stupid.

  The minute of thought Tommy took for himself was, in real time, more like three. Just enough time to catch a second look from the bored hangarounds assigned to guard the money.

  The two men were smoking cigarettes outside the gas station, gossiping and making plans for after they were relieved, leaning against the gas station’s freezer, chain-drinking the 5-Hour Energies that taste like grape cough syrup.

  Tommy reversed his car out of the spot and towards the storm drain behind the gas station. This way he wouldn’t have to back out of the tight space.

  Seeing the weird, shitty car swing backwards across the length of the store and parking lot, the hangarounds followed it, each subtly drawing a large, not particularly functional handgun.

  Tommy pulled his vehicle around more quickly than was cautious and narrowly missed a truck pulling up to the diesel pump, then he lurched the car backwards in three awkward bursts. He jumped out of the car, circled around it, dropped to a knee, and threw aside the grate covering the storm drain. Just as he reached the large canvas sacks full of money hiding under the lip of the drain, the sprinting hangarounds turned the corner, and in their excitement, both fired their booming hand-cannons without their feet under them. The shots missed Tommy (and all other solid objects) by a good margin.

  The gunfire startled Tommy, and he hugged the money bags to his chest and froze, still on his knee. One of the hangarounds’ guns jammed, and not knowing how to fix it, he just pulled the trigger while the gun made a series of loud metallic clicking sounds. The other loosed three shots in Tommy’s general direction, hitting the side of the store twice and sending shards of grey brick dust into the glowing early-evening orange of the sky.

  Tommy finally reacted, diving for his car, misjudging the distance, and smashing his face (and glasses) against the passenger door. The sounds of the world at large had boiled down to nothing but a long, sustained wail, the sights a blur of colours, the smells smoke, and the tastes only the metallic hints of his own blood. He wrestled the door open, tossed the bags in blind, and dove across the seats. The windshield exploded and glass spread enthusiastically across his back. Tommy reached down and pressed the gas pedal with his hand as the hangaround with th
e jammed gun reached the front of the car. The Corolla lurched forward, and the hangaround spun out of the way, instinctively reaching a hand out and smacking the hood of the car angrily as he fell. Tommy kept one hand on the gas and awkwardly swung the other arm back towards the steering wheel, hitting it with his elbow and succeeding only in making the car wobble slightly and resume its beeline path over the lip of the curb and then across the small patch of grass, the sidewalk, four lanes of light traffic, and one other sidewalk before slamming into the soft grass of a gentle roadside hill.

  The collision threw Tommy forward, raking his ribs across the handle of the transmission. Now facing the back of the car, Tommy grabbed the seat and pulled himself up, kicking the still-open passenger door further open against its hinges, causing it to rebound shut. He twisted back and opened the driver’s side, crawling halfway out, then kicking himself the rest of the way free, ending up face down in the grass.

  Getting up, Tommy saw the guy he’d hit with his car lying still on the ground, and Tommy, an intuitively guilty person, knew right then that the smack of the hand on the car had been the sound of that hangaround getting hit by his car and dying. He knew it for certain.

  The second hangaround headed straight towards Tommy at a full sprint, immediately tripping forcefully on the curb, sprawling out face first and sending his gun skittering across the ground.

  Tommy grabbed the cash and made it around a long, countryish block with mostly grass and empty lots on it that he remembered clearly but could not see. He came to the next street corner, and in the swirling blur of car colours he waved his free arm as calmly as he could at the yellow blurs. A cab stopped, and then a skinny Indian man, too busy speaking loudly on a Bluetooth to notice or care about his passenger’s bloody face, drove Tommy home.

  Clutching the bags to his chest, Tommy closed his eyes, sunk into the back seat of the cab, and imagined the rhythm of the man’s shouted Punjabi as long, violently twirled ribbons of silk, tracing arcs over his head.