The Dishwasher

by Stéphane Larue

  Women Greg’s age would come up in pairs and kiss him on the cheeks, yelling over the music that they missed him, that it had been too long, that he should stay in touch. He introduced me to a several of these sublime creatures. After Greg’s rounds we took a seat at the bar and he ordered a vodka rocks. I had the same, without a second thought. He introduced the barman, we shook hands. I was starting to feel like his protégé.

  “So your girlfriend works for François Laurier.”

  “François Laurier?”

  I furrowed my brow, stumped.

  “You said you knew François Laurier, through your girlfriend.”

  “No, I know Benjamin. François’s brother, Benjamin Laurier. And it’s my ex”—how sad and strange it sounded to say it—“she works for Benjamin.”

  “Oh . . . Oh, okay.”

  He took a sip of vodka and smacked his lips together. I saw a gold tooth. He turned toward me and sized me up a bit.

  “Doesn’t matter. Same difference.”

  He paused, and looked at me distractedly for a few seconds. He was drumming his finger on the edge of his glass in time to the song. Missy Elliot sang, “And think you can handle this gadong-a-dong-dong.”

  “Wednesday night,” he said. “I’ve got a guy out on an errand. I need someone to back him up.”

  I was scheduled to work Wednesday, but decided not to mention it. I’d handle it. Worst case I’d call in sick.

  “What kind of errand?”

  I must have looked pretty stupid with my in-the-know, scared-of-nothing act.

  “An errand errand.”

  He took a sip of vodka.

  “No big deal, nothing to worry about. Shouldn’t be anyone packing.”

  “Ha ha, cool,” I said.

  Only when Greg’s last sentence finally registered did the magnitude of the shit I was getting into finally sink in. This wasn’t a movie. There would be no slow-motion, no slick stills. Things weren’t going to play out that way. Not at all. All of a sudden I felt like an idiot. Not just a fuckup, but a complete idiot. I glanced at the door. Two guys and two girls were coming in. Out front people were chatting. Little clouds of steam rose from their mouths. The air current snuck in, snapping the backs of our necks like an ice-cold washcloth. The guys wore long dark coats, and moved in a leisurely manner. The girls talked quietly, in light-coloured belted coats and tall leather boots. Of course guys like Greg didn’t do business with slingshots in their pockets. The promise of a quick fix to my problems was preventing me from seeing just what a janky plan this really was. Yet here I was sitting with Greg at the bar. Objectively, there was no backing down now. I couldn’t just get up and walk away. The idea of coming off as a coward in front of Greg scared me more, it seemed, than the prospect of a gun in the face. I told myself people didn’t actually shoot guns very often. Surely way less often that we imagined. This was Montreal, not Bogotá or Compton. One of my friends had told me that his dad, a Montreal Police Detective-Sergeant, only discharged his service weapon once in his entire career. You never thought about that. I convinced myself that knowing everyone else was walking around with a little something in their pockets must make people think twice before they acted. It’d be fine, I thought. Greg knew what he was doing.

  “You’re gonna ride with Will.”

  “Who?”

  “Will. All you’ve gotta do is go along with him while he runs the errand. Kind of like going into a public washroom when your friend has to take a shit. All you gotta do is be there while he does his thing. Know what I’m saying?”

  He laughed.

  “So this ‘errand’—is in a washroom?”

  Greg’s laughter stopped abruptly.

  “Fuck no, dude.”

  He checked something on his flip-phone. He looked calm, well-rested. Not worried in the slightest. He had laugh-lines around his eyes. You wouldn’t have guessed he’d just finished a crazy shift at work.

  “They’ll meet you at Pie-IX Metro, next to the . . .”

  “They? More than one?”

  “My guy and his driver. They’ll be parked behind the taxi stand. In a blue Civic. You’re meeting at nine at night. Don’t keep them waiting.”

  I took a mental note of everything. The ice-cold vodka made the inside of my mouth numb. It went down like water. Greg ordered us two more.

  “You don’t take your eyes off him. Got it?”

  He was pointing at me as he said it.

  “Got it.”

  “If this goes well, we’ll talk about another thing.”

  I lifted my glass. He clinked his against mine. I figured this Will couldn’t be worse than the skids Jess hung out with when we were together. I imagined him with the face of Gilles, the crazy dealer Marie-Lou went out with back in the day. It was going to be fine. I’d just follow Greg’s instructions to the letter, and everything would work out fine.

  Some girls came over to sit with us. I was starting to get a healthy buzz on. The conversation I’d been having and the alcohol spreading through my bloodstream made me feel like another person. The Lauryn Hill lookalike from the other night came up and sat with us. Her braided hair was all over the place. She pushed up next to me, with a malicious gleam in her eye.

  “Hey,” she said. “You a friend of Greg’s?”

  I nodded, with a smile.

  She was wearing a loose-fitting tank top with nothing underneath, and I could see half a dark aureole. With a slight French accent, she told me she was a graphic designer. She’d studied at the same Cegep as me. She worked on Web stuff now, but liked print better. I was having a hard time focussing on what she was saying. She said Pierre, my illustration teacher, was the best she’d ever had. I said I thought so too. I flashed back to our chat in his office, his disappointed face. I drained my vodka. Greg had ordered a twenty-sixer of Belvedere, on ice. We drank glass after glass, with the women, with Lauryn Hill who was sure to realize, sooner or later, that I was just a kid.

  One thing was certain: the more we drank, the less interested she was in me. Now she was chatting with Greg and the other girls. I sat on my stool, feeling increasingly sullen. A lot of the talk was going over my head. I was off somewhere, floating drunkenly, sweetly drifting over the dub beats, excited and drunk and thoroughly exhausted. I was a thousand miles away, in a distant land untroubled by my thoughts. When I heard Greg say they were going to the Stereo, I still had enough of my wits about me to realize he didn’t need me tagging along. I stayed there glued to my stool, like a guy finishing up his last drink on his own. Like a boss.

  “Good rest of the night, man,” Greg said. “Don’t forget about Wednesday. I’m counting on you.”

  He set off with his three graces. I mumbled something indistinct. I wasn’t used to straight liquor, it had gotten the best of me. I contemplated ordering another drink, but remembered that I didn’t have a cent. I looked around. In my hazy state, I could see faces with broad smiles, beautiful people clearly living out their lives under a lucky star. And I was once again myself, a broke-ass kid who washed dishes for a living. I checked my pager. No messages. I pictured Marie-Lou’s angry face. She’d have to forgive me sooner or later. One more drink would have given me the courage to knock on her door. Instead I left the lounge and ambled to the bus stop to catch the last No. 30 back to Ahuntsic. I stumbled into snowbanks, grunting. The smell of the wet cold reminded me of my elementary schoolyard at the end of the day. I saw my reflection in the black window of a closed restaurant. I could see my breath turning to steam. My face was limp, my features sagged. It took me a minute to recognize the reflection as my own. I flashed myself a peace sign and continued on my way to the bus stop.

  Chapter 34

  I’d gotten Eaton to cover my Wednesday night shift by trading for one of his mornings.

  I showed up at Pie-IX an hour early and so nervous I felt like I might explode. The
wait was interminable. It was like showing up for a blind internet date, back when that was a big deal, only a thousand times more stressful. When Greg had offered me this job, sitting back swirling my vodka around in its glass, it sounded like a piece of cake. Now that I was here I would have given anything to be elsewhere. The surroundings were bleak. Small clusters of people in winter coats and scarves emerged periodically from the Metro station, then disappeared into the cold night.

  The blue Civic came rolling down Pierre-De-Coubertin with a sound like a death rattle, as if it might shed a hunk of engine at any moment. It parked where Greg had said it would. I walked over.

  As per the plan, there were two people inside. The driver—a chubby little dude with an early onset double chin and finger full of rings—pointed, indicating I should get in the other side. I walked around the car. The guy in the passenger seat rolled down his window and pushed his head out a little, as if to spit on the ground. The one who must have been Will was four or five years older than me. He shot me a truculent, condescending look. They were listening to old Snoop Dogg. Will had an eyebrow shave, hollow cheeks, and chapped lips struggling to contain his buck teeth, and was rocking a visor toque, gold chains over his warm-up suit, and a fake Rolex. He gruffly asked my name. The driver scoped me out without a word. He looked like a big baby with peach fuzz. I answered in an equally unfriendly tone, to stand my ground.

  “Get in, dude. We got shit to do.”

  I got in. I went to buckle up, but caught myself just in time. These weren’t the kind of guys who followed safety procedures. The driver hit the gas. The car hurtled forward, almost running a red light. We were doing a good twenty kilometres over the posted limit. I was sure we’d get stopped by the cops.

  “I don’t know what Greg told you, but listen up, yo. Follow my lead. And if you see him before me, tell him I don’t need a fucking babysitter. I can handle my shit.”

  To the left, the massive, luminous scoop of the Olympic Stadium rose from a blanket of low-hanging clouds. Over Will’s shoulder I could see a big sports bag shoved under the glove compartment. Probably full of Uzis or rolls of cash. I slumped down in my seat, like a kid frustrated to have chosen the wrong ride at the amusement park.

  We kept on to the end of Pierre-De-Coubertin, then turned onto Viau. The car’s suspension felt ready to give out at any moment. We took Hochelaga. If it weren’t for the street signs I would have had no idea where we were. We turned onto another street, then slowed down. Will gave directions in the snarky tone he summoned every time he opened his mouth. We parked next to a city park. Soft melting snow fell gently on the deserted playground and dilapidated swing set. The driver lowered the volume. Will turned to me.

  “All right, man, do exactly what I say now. Try not to fuck it up.”

  He turned to the driver.

  “And call me if anything’s up, y’hear.”

  “No worries, chief,” said the driver said, staring at the end of the road ahead.

  Will got out first, then me. I was so nervous I was dizzy. It didn’t help matters when I saw something that looked like a pistol butt sticking out of Will’s team jacket. I had to steel myself just to put one foot in front of another. Will slung the sports bag over his shoulder.

  “All right, let’s go.”

  We went up the street. Will was looking around every ten seconds. We skirted the edge of the park. In the stands in front of a snow-covered soccer field a group of kids was checking us out. My one desire was to get this over quickly. On the other side of the street, three shapes bundled up in puffy coats were looking in our direction. One was leaning against a car. Will told me to get a move on.

  To the right was a complex of brown brick apartments with windows like arrow slits. The grounds were littered with twisted scraps of bicycle and torn-up garbage bags. A tattered couch lay upended in a snowbank. No one was looking through these windows.

  We went onto the grounds of the social housing complex. I was having a hard time keeping up with Will. We crossed an interior courtyard covered in cracked cement blocks. The place was deserted. I mindlessly followed Will. I had no idea why we were here. We entered a narrow, overheated lobby. Dented mailboxes lined one wall. The other held a panel, with units and names written in Bic pen next to doorbells. Will pressed one. It coughed out a nasty buzz. The main door eventually unlocked. We walked into a labyrinth of hallways. The walls were a despondent beige, the apartment doors unconvincing turquoise. The commercial carpeting was greyish and spotted with stains and burns. I followed Will into a stairwell that smelled like the top floor of my primary school, the decommissioned one we took anyway sometimes when we were in a rush to get to class after recess. Will pushed open a big door with a small square of tempered glass. We finally reached the apartment we were looking for. He knocked once, hard. He rubbed his nose. Muffled sounds from the apartment. I must have been white as a ghost; my body felt as insubstantial as a radio transmission. Sweat was running down my sides. I was dying to take off my coat, but figured it was too late to unzip it. Someone opened the door and checked us both out. He closed it again, surely to unlock the night latch. There were metallic sounds, then the door opened again. We went in, Will first.

  A tiny two-bedroom apartment. Sparse black melamine furniture, all of it on its last legs. An aura of hash so thick you could have scraped the walls for resin. Two girls stared at the TV. The volume was turned up to deafening, their unfocused eyes barely open. They couldn’t have been much older than me. Cloudy glass pipes lay on the coffee table next to open bottles of Bacardi and crumpled bags of chips. A guy with big cheeks in a hoodie and a toque pulled down over his eyebrows scoped us from his La-Z-Boy, with minimal interest. He looked like Raekwon in the “c.r.e.a.m.” video, and was using the remote to tap out an imaginary beat on the arm of his chair. Someone called out to us from the kitchen, beyond the living room. Wholly absorbed by the TV, the girls didn’t bother looking up at us. Jerry Springer was trying to calm down his guests, who were deep in a battle royal.

  Nothing in this kitchen suggested the preparation of food; nothing made you feel like eating. Naked lightbulbs gave off clinical light. The stovetop was covered in junk. On the table I counted ten Ziploc bags stacked like little greenish pillows. A thin, muscular black guy with a shaved head gave Will an exasperated nod. I accidentally caught his eye. I was sure he’d take it as a dis. He wore an immaculate wife-beater and oversized dark jeans. One of his friends sat on a counter, chewing a McDonald’s straw. Staring us down, testing us. I could see my reflection in the window. I looked out of my depth. Will dropped the bag on the table. He took out two bags full of pills, the same ones I’d seen Greg with in the staff room. He placed them one on top of the other, next to the Ziplocs of weed. The guy in the wife-beater picked one up and turned to me:

  “Wait in the living room, man.”

  I did as I was told. The two girls had woken up a bit, but didn’t register my presence. Raekwon watched me like a hawk. One of the girls packed the pipe. From the smell and the effect it had, I could tell it wasn’t pot or hash. From the corner of my eye I watched Will and the other guy. I could see them in profile. He held out stacks of bills strapped in elastic bands. Will took them, put them in the sports bag, and zipped it up. I looked away.

  Will walked back in with the bag on his shoulder.

  “We out.”

  Worked for me. I was in no mood to linger. The girls had slipped back into comatose bliss. One had the pipe in her hand again. Her head was angled back and she had the vacant eyes of a dead doe.

  A minute later we were back in the courtyard. I already felt lighter. I could feel the pressure dropping.

  Then everything happened, all at once and out of nowhere. The shit came raining down on us. I heard the scraping of sneaker soles on wet cement, then menacing yells from every direction. We were surrounded. There could have been five of them, or fifteen, for all I knew. Will lifted u
p his hands to appease the crazed mob, then raised his arms to ward off the blows. I had the same reflex. They jumped us and started beating. The blows came from every direction. They hit me in the ribs, the side, the head. Something was burning my eyes. I tried to get back up and cover my eyes. They were spraying liquid in my face. It burned my eyes. I couldn’t tell where it was coming from. I felt my right eyebrow swelling up and hardening. I teared up and my nose filled with snot, like when you get campfire smoke in your eyes, only a thousand times worse. The pain was leeching in behind my eye sockets. Everything was hazy. My eye hurt so bad everything else seemed secondary. I was thrown down to the ground and hailed in kicks—on the stomach, on the jaw. All I could feel was the burning in my eyes and on my face. I played dead. I saw Will out of my good eye. He was shielding his eyes with his hands and yelling that they were all dead, those motherfuckers. I was sure he’d pull his gun. I figured he’d start shooting any moment. I was all balled up like a prawn in a frying pan, with a pain in the stomach and sides, while a voice kept yelling at me not to move. From my position I could only see the top of his face. The rest was hidden by his neckwarmer. He had an Anglo accent.

  Finally the gang took off. Will came to see me, leaned over, and asked if I was okay. For the first time his voice had lost its abrasive edge.

  “It’s okay, I’ll make it.”

  “C’mon, man, get up, let’s go.”

  I couldn’t really see where I was going through my tears. I followed Will as best I could. We ran to the Civic. It felt like my face was imprisoned in a white-hot cake pan. The only noise that got through to me was the sound of our footsteps over a sidewalk covered in greyish snow and slush. When Will opened the door the driver asked: