by Tim McGregor
“Yeah. It’s okay but it’s just a job. Not a career, you know?” She wagged her chin in the direction of the shop inside. “Not like Jen with her designs and the shop. Or Tammy with her photography. I’d kill to figure out what kind of pursuit to make. To be honest, I’m almost jealous.”
“Hang in there, kiddo. You’ll find what you’re meant to do.”
Another shrug. Which she hated. She shrugged at everything. It was her default reaction to the world. Like nothing mattered. “I hope so. I just wish I knew what it was. How did you do it? Did you always know you wanted to teach?”
“Hell no,” he laughed. “It was a temporary thing at the time. I was going to be a writer.”
“Oh.” Billie took a second look at her friend’s dad. She had known him since she was seventeen but this was news to her. “So what happened?”
“I couldn’t cut it. But teaching came easy. I was good at it.”
She watched the smile drain from his face just then. It seemed odd, something she’d rarely seen in Mr. Eckler. His eyes had cast off somewhere else and Billie shifted her weight from one foot to the other in the uncomfortable silence. She wished she hadn’t brought it up in the first place.
Jen’s father seemed startled by his sudden wistful turn. Shaking it off quickly, he patted her shoulder. “We don’t always get to choose our calling in life, Billie. Sometimes it chooses us.”
She almost laughed. “You should write that down. It’s good.”
“Maybe I missed my true calling after all,” he beamed. “Fortune cookie writer.”
“Wouldn’t that be a great job? Just coming up with pithy thoughts all day.”
“I’m sure the pay is lousy.” He cranked the chuck on the drill and removed the bit. “Say, how’s your aunt doing? Does she like it out there at the beach?”
Her aunt Maggie, who had taken Billie in when she was eight years old and raised her like her own daughter, had moved out to the shore of Lake Erie after Billie moved to the city. “She loves it. She’d always bugged Uncle Larry to move out there but he wouldn’t do it. So, when he passed, she packed up and moved.”
“I should get her address from you. I’ll stop in next time I’m in the area.”
“She’d love that. She gets a bit lonely out there.” Billie drained the last of her beer. “Okay, I’m going to get you a drink and you’re gonna stop working. Deal?”
“Deal. Just not that Pabst stuff. I don’t know how you kids drink that swill.”
2
LATE FOR WORK, Billie cut the party early. Tammy and Kaitlin still hadn’t arrived and Jen begged her to stay a little longer. Billie apologized, another late start and her boss would turf her sorry butt. Jen saw her to the curb where Billie unlocked her bike.
“We’ll come by the bar after the party’s over,” Jen called out as Billie pedalled away. “Save us three stools.”
Waving back, Billie said she’d try, knowing full well that reserving three stools was impossible. The ladies would just have to fend for themselves.
Work was a small north end bar called the Gunner’s Daughter, a few blocks from the harbour. With its legal capacity clocked out at no more than fifty souls, it could, and often was, manned by a single bartender. The owner was a flint who seethed at seeing idle staff and kept the labour change thrifty. Which was fine by Billie, she preferred a one-man show anyway.
The bar itself wasn’t much to look at, especially with the lights on. An old lunch counter from the city’s steeltown heyday, re-purposed with little effort into a quaint watering hole. With the lights down low and candles on the table, it had a scuzzy charm. It was a place to meet before the night began or a stop along the way to some other place. The tables kept rotating, no lingering cheapskate hogging a stool for hours nursing a single beer. Billie liked the pace of it, people rotating in and shuffling out.
When the ladies arrived, there just happened to be three vacant stools but they weren’t together. Jen said it was fine but Tammy was having none of it. She asked four patrons to slide one stool down and when they grumbled, she lied that it was Kaitlin’s bachelorette party. The drinkers obliged and Kaitlin rolled her eyes at the shenanigans, like it was all beneath her.
“Set us up, Billie,” Tammy drummed the bar top and turned to Jen and Kaitlin. “Jager bombs all down the line?”
“God no,” Kaitlin sneered. Perched like a frail bird on her stool, she tried not to touch anything. “I’ll stick with wine.”
Billie’s lopsided smile went large at the sight of her friends. “What about you, Jen?”
“Uh, just water,” Jen said, waving her hand as if calling a time-out. “I’ve had enough.”
“Don’t be a pussy, Jen. It’s you we’re celebrating,” Tammy sneered before nodding at Billie. “She’ll have what I’m having.”
“I gotta open up tomorrow. I don’t want to do that bleary-eyed.”
“Killjoy,” Tammy spat.
Kaitlin surveyed the crowd. “We can’t all drink like sailors, Tammy.”
Billie got their drinks up, placing an extra tall glass of water in front of Jen. The poor girl’s eyes were already droopy. Tammy was jawing up the patron on her right.
The four of them were an odd clutch of friends. Jen she had known for dog’s years. Tammy, the photographer who lived like a rock star, they had met after moving to the city. Kaitlin, prissy and proper, came tagging along after Tammy one night.
“Here we are again,” Tammy said, clinking her glass against Jen’s. “Just like always. Cheers, Jennifart.”
Jen held back. “Wait, Billie doesn’t have a drink.”
“Pour yourself one, kiddo.” Tammy wagged her chin at the draught taps.
Billie waved the notion away. “I’m working.”
“C’mon. Half a glass. Enough to make a toast.”
“She won’t let up until you do,” Kaitlin suggested.
Billie relented, pouring three fingers of pilsner into a glass and chinking it against her companion’s glassware.
“Atta girl,” said Tammy. “Wait, what are we toasting?”
The bar had become a defacto meeting place for the ladies, on their way out somewhere or swinging back for last call. Which was great, Billie loved seeing her friends but she was on the other side of the bar while the three of them blew off steam. They worked days, Billie told herself, you work nights. No biggie.
Still, it gnawed at her. Something had changed within the foursome, an unmentioned but acutely felt shift in their relationship. The three of them were busy charging ahead with life while Billie slogged it out four nights a week behind the bar. After a year of planning and prepping, Jen had finally opened her shop. Tammy was busier than ever, shooting photos for an ever growing list of clients. Kaitlin was getting married next spring, the first of their core group to take that plunge.
Billie was being left behind, the distance between her and her ladies growing farther all the time. They partied while she worked and she slept till noon when they fought the morning commute. Time and circumstance were pulling them apart.
How long would it be before they parted ways altogether? How long before they stopped coming to this skeezy bar in favour of some more upscale place? The grimy charm was wearing thin, especially on Kaitlin. A flutter of panic rumbled through her guts at the thought of drifting apart and along with that came a hasty idea. “We should go away this weekend. To aunt Maggie’s for some beach time. Like we used to.”
Crickets. She watched all three of them stop cold, sentences dropping away unfinished. Excuses rushing in to replace them.
“Can’t,” Tammy said. “I got two shoots to do this weekend.”
Jen gave a mock-pout. “I’d love a weekend at Maggie’s but I can’t. Not with the shop finally opened.”
“I’m sure I’m busy.” Kaitlin dismissed.
“Sure.” Billie became busy restocking the clean glassware. “It was a stupid thought.”
“It’s not stupid. It just needs some planning.” Jen sti
rred the ice in her glass. “I’d kill for a beach day at your aunt’s.”
Her aunt Maggie’s house, situated on a mile long stretch of beach, had become a cheap getaway for them over the last few years. Aunt Maggie frowned on all the drinking but she adored the company. The woman fawned over the girls, referring to them as her wayward daughters. Billie was about to suggest another weekend when she noticed a man at the end of the bar flagging her down.
“What can I get you?” she asked the man.
He looked over the selection of taps. “What do you have that passes for decent lager?”
Billie set a glass under one of the taps. “I like this one.”
“Ta,” he said. “And a sidekick for it too, yeah? Single malt.”
Billie hazarded a guess at his accent as she poured. English, maybe Irish. She wasn’t good with accents. She felt the man watching her, triggering her radar for potential trouble. In a minute, he’d hit on her, trying to charm her with lame banter. It was a hazard that came with the job.
The man scanned down the other drinkers at the bar. “Your friends are carrying on without you,” he said.
The trick to handling chatty men was to never give up anything personal. Keep it polite but vague. Never reveal any detail that they could latch onto and prolong the conversation. Billie replied “Everyone’s a friend. Long as they keep drinking and don’t bother me.”
“Course,” he said. “That means we’re chums, yeah?”
Billie slid the drinks before him. “You’re still on the bubble.”
A burst of laughter bubbled from the ladies, momentarily overwhelming the music. The man studied Billie as she watched her friends. “That happens to you a lot, doesn’t it? Being left on the sidelines.”
The question seemed barbed. She flung it back. “Nope. Too busy working.”
“That’s the part that mystifies.” Loosening his tie, he turned and scanned the room again. “Why are you working here?”
“Everybody’s gotta work.”
“Sure,” he said. “But why not do what you’re meant to do?”
The glass she held under the tap slipped a little. Something was off. She had kept it vague but he seemed to latch onto something personal anyway. Without turning, she took a second look at him. A little older than her and not bad looking but something seemed off. Despite the tie, he didn’t look business. His sleeves were rolled up, like he was used to getting his hands dirty. He seemed shrugged together at the last minute, like he’d just rolled out of bed in those same clothes and came straight here. The phrase ‘snake oil’ popped into her head.
Playing along would only exacerbate the problem but she couldn’t help herself. Not after a question like that. “Oh. And what am I meant to be doing?”
“You’re taking the piss now,” he guffawed. “What is all this then? A cover? The Daily Planet with taps?”
She didn’t know what he was talking about. Was that British humour or was he just a mental case? His smile was lopsided, she noted. Like hers. “I’ve been doing this awhile. And I like it just fine.”
The pint was halfway to his lips when it stopped and stayed there as he blinked at her. The gape of surprise passed and his eyes narrowed on her. “You honestly don’t know, do you? Here I thought this was just an act, you playing dumb and whatnot.”
“Hey, mind your manners, chum. Or leave.” Billie took a step back. This was giving her a headache and she didn’t want to play his game anymore, whatever it was. If he was trying to pick her up, he had a strange way of going about it.
He rubbed his eyes, as if her headache was infecting him. “I’ve spent months tracking you down, luv. Don’t tell me it was all for nothing.”
“Five bucks for the pints,” she said. “I’ll spot you the scotch if you leave right now.”
“Christ. That’s quite a feat you managed.” He reached into a pocket but instead of cash, he came up with a crushed cigarette pack. He shook one out, clamped it in his teeth and dug for a lighter.
“You can’t smoke in here.”
He glanced at the other patrons. “They won’t say anything.” Everyone turned at the snap of his Zippo as he lit up but no one said a word. Even her friends kept mum, instead harshing looks at Billie to do something about it.
“Just so we’re clear,” he said through the smoke billowing around him. “You don’t have something on the side? Another line of work?”
She wished the bar employed a bouncer. She wanted this creep gone but the pain in her head notched up the dial so fast she closed her eyes. It had been a while since she’d had a migraine come on so fast.
“Billie?” Jen’s voice cut through the clatter of pain.
“Look at me.” The voice with the accent.
Billie let her eyes slit open a hair. The dull glow of the tea candles was blinding and too powerful. The creep at the bar materialized through the haze.
He took a lengthy haul on the damn cigarette, then wagged a finger at her and said “You don’t know, do you? Jesus, girlie. How long have you been keeping your eyes shut?”
Her eyes were open. If only a slit, she thought. What was he talking about? Why doesn’t he just go away?
She heard Tammy’s voice. Something rude as she approached the creep, Jen crowding in as if they were about to take the creep down. Kaitlin, she wasn’t surprised to see, stayed perched on her stool and watched.
The man downed the whiskey and rose from his stool, tossing a crumpled bill onto the bar. He looked at Billie and said “I’m not finished with you.”
He made for the door, Tammy cursing him out the whole way. Jen came around the bar and gripped her elbow to keep her upright. “Easy,” Jen said. “Are you all right?”
“I’m fine,” Billie flushed. “No. I’m not. Watch the bar.”
With that Billie spun around to the sink behind her and retched loudly into the stained basin. Three people at the counter collected their drinks and fled.
3
THE DRAG OF the wind cleared her head as Billie shot down the highway with the windows down and the music up. She almost felt normal again.
The migraine that came out of the blue the night before had been replaced with a numbing hazy sensation that Billie described as ‘the fog’. The two had gone hand-in-hand her whole life, the headaches followed by a deadening numbness. She never seemed to get shed of them. It was partly to blame for Billie’s poor schooling in the past, her inability to focus.
After ralphing in the bar, she assured Jen that she was fine and slogged through the rest of the shift. There was nothing to do except push through it, no matter how foggy she felt.
The fog was still there when she woke this morning. She thought back to the creep at the bar who had unsettled her, as if he had brought it on. She got all kinds of crazy at the bar, most were easily handled but once in a blue moon she caught a real humdinger who threw her off her game.
Drawing back the curtains she noted a serenely blue sky and decided it was time to get the hell out of Dodge. So what if the ladies couldn’t make it. She’d go to Maggie’s by herself. All she needed was some wheels.
Bruce lived on the floor below her, a crotchety ex-mechanic in his sixties whose eyesight was rapidly deteriorating. Bruce also owned the garage next door where he kept a collection of old cars. He and Billie had an arrangement. She agreed to do his shopping for him if she could borrow one of his vintage rides from time to time.
Answering her knock, Bruce squinted up at her. “Where’s all the damn soup gone?” he gruffed.
“I don’t know,” Billie said, accustomed to the older man’s bark. “You must have eaten it all.”
“A dozen cans?” he scowled. “I think that Philipino woman down the hall sneaks in here when I’m gone and pilfers my cupboards.”
Billie cocked an eyebrow at him. “Mrs. Santino? No way.”
“Are you going shopping?”
“Not today,” Billie said. “But I need to borrow some wheels. Can I take the Citroen?”
“No, you can’t take the Cit.” He reached over and took a set of keys hanging near the door and dropped them in her palm. “Take the Rover. I just replaced the manifold on it.”
“Aw, come on, Bruce. When are you gonna let me take the Citroen out?”
“When you’re old enough,” he grumbled, shooing her on. “Be careful with the Rover. And bring back some soup this time.”
The Range Rover was bigger than what she used to but once she was outside of the city, Billie had eased into it and rolled through the small towns on her way south. Drifting past fields of corn and tobacco, she hummed into Norfolk County and coasted onto the causeway of the sand spit. Her favourite part of the drive, a long stretch of pavement with the marsh on her right and the smell of the lake drifting in port-side. Everything felt different here, unlike any other part of the province. Long Point was a beach town built on a finger of sand jutting a mile out into Lake Erie. A summer town that came to life when the vacationers returned to dig their toes into the white sand of its immense beach.
Rumbling slow along the boulevard, Billie took in the newly renovated cottages and the older sun-faded homes of the permanent residents. Although the summer season had kicked in, it never got too busy for the place to lose its breezy feel. She pulled the Rover into the sandy driveway of the woman who had raised her since she was eight years old.
The screen door twinged open on its rusty spring and a short woman in her fifties stepped onto the faded stoop. “Hey kiddo,” Aunt Maggie trilled in her sing-song way.
“Hi.” Billie wrapped her arms around the woman and squeezed. The familiar smell of lilac perfume hit her nose, triggering memories. Her aunt felt slighter in her embrace, a little less there than last time. “Sorry this is so last minute. I just wanted to get away.”
Aunt Maggie brushed it off with a wave. “Anytime is good with me, you know that. What is that you’re driving?”
“Another one of Bruce’s toys. It’s English.”
“Hmm. They drive on the wrong side of the road there, you know.” Maggie swept her niece up in another hug. “Let’s get your stuff.”