by Shilo Jones
I reach out to hold my friend’s hand, happy to discover he’s still warm, fears of vampirism lingering. Truth is I didn’t kill anybody out there in the sullied wilds. But I gave the command to Caltrop, if not in so many words, and for fifteen years Heather and I made love in a six-by-eight cinderblock room while oily-faced guards peered through the observation window. Wasn’t as sexy as it sounds. Michael’s the reason I wasn’t murdered in jail. He was outside, staying connected, making sure we still had juice, and not of the fresh-pressed variety. It would’ve been very easy for Michael to cut me loose. Justifiable, even. And if the situation were reversed—
“Green Lead is winding down,” Michael says. “Everything does. You feel it. It’s okay.”
“I’m still seeking inspiration.”
“You’re too old to be inspired. Bow out with dignity.”
“You think it’s really Bo Xi?”
“You forgot about him.”
“Uh…”
“If it is Bo Xi, Caltrop’s on it. Our job is to not fuck the operation up.”
“Operation? What?”
“Just…let me deal with Vincent Peele, Carl. He’s an errand boy, but he’s not an idiot.”
“And that’ll be that. We could…let it go? Move on? Couldn’t we?”
Michael glares out the window. “Bo Xi was chair of the board. He pushed to send the goon squad into Bute—”
“So long ago, almost like it never happened.”
“Marjorie? Tincan Bill? You’d let them become a never-happened?”
“The North Vancouver property development is a lure.”
“We draw the enemy into the open.” Michael smiles. “Vincent calls his boss Tectonic. So big he makes the earth move. I shouldn’t need to tell you to be careful, but I will anyway. Be careful.”
“I’d like to get kind of insanely high.” The oddity is, those years of incarceration were the best of my marriage. Conjugal visits. Nothing like fifteen scheduled minutes a week to add urgency. We should all be so lucky. “What’s in Calgary that could possibly be worth going to Calgary?”
Michael says good question, picks up his tablet. “A meeting at the Delta with an aide from the prime minister’s office.”
“Prime-ministerial projects?” I’m fighting it down. Panic. Need. Michael knows me better than that, so I grab my rig, ask what their ask is, start prepping something uplifting.
“The prime minister’s aide intends to sell us on a scheme to seed the atmosphere with experimental chemicals. A covert global warming reduction strategy. Of course the prime minister himself is completely hands-off. Admission of guilt, tar sands politics—”
“Carbon-based fuels are the next tobacco. The next drunk driving,” Holdout says.
I pat my piggy on the ass, say yeah, we’ll be biking around, wagging our fingers at the blue-collar reprobates who have to drive between work and home because they can’t afford to live downtown.
Holdout gobbles a plastic seat cover. “Social shaming. There’ll be bylaws. Zoning. No vehicles within twenty metres of a building entrance. Prohibitive licensing fees to own a vehicle that consumes more than x litres per kilometre. Only the rich will have the money to drive, and only the poor will need to.”
“Perfection demands sacrifice,” I say.
Michael smiles, sad. “The more certain we are, the less tolerant we become.”
Holdout wriggles between me and Michael, leaks snot on my lap. I love you in all your unglory. “Nobody says, ‘I might be wrong, let’s go to war!’ ”
“I’m imperfect, those motherfuckers deserve to die!”
The three of us laugh, nudge one another, chillin’ with my crew.
“Hold me again,” I say to Michael. “It was nice.”
“No.”
“Touch—”
“No, Blitz.”
“Then leap out of the airplane with me. At least? You were wrong about death being the only achievable human perfection. There’s another. Even more terrifying.”
“So?”
“So let’s make the leap. I’d trade five seconds of perfection with you for whatever else this life has in store.”
Michael sets his hand in mine. “Spending too much time with the brewery kids? You’re being—”
“Emotional? Fuck you.”
Holdout curls in my lap, pretends not to listen.
“Hysterical.”
“Okay then, fuck you twice. The most destructive phrase ever uttered: You’re being too emotional. How much war? How much killing could’ve been prevented if we only allowed ourselves to be—”
“Rage. Jealousy. Hate. They all motivate murder. They’re called crimes of passion.”
“True. But all the big killing’s done for a reason. Logic. Intellect. Tyranny.”
“I think you’re wrong. I think emotion comes first, hatred, then the rationalization, then the killing.”
“Then why’s it so much easier to convince yourself murder is justified—on a rational level—than it is to actually feel okay about it? Because the intellect’s a liar, that’s why. A lying, petty tyrant. I can hate someone, or a group of people, sure, hate them so much I dream about killing them. But without an attempt at rational justification it would stop there. It’s the mind that convinces me I can live with myself. The mind makes big killing possible.”
“If you don’t have the desire, there’s nothing to rationalize.”
“It seems a safe bet to say every one of us has the desire. At some point.”
“What I’m hearing is…you don’t want to go through with Bo Xi?”
Holdout lifts his head, growls.
“Michael? Was my potbellied pig growling at me? It’s so unsettling I need to do a speedball. You in?”
“What?”
“Huh? Drawbacks to the prime-ministerial global warming thingamajig?”
“The program might be a dry run for disseminating a swarm of hostile nanobots. Think locusts, only with more bite. And one more thing, before you hit that. Bo Xi and Vincent Peele’s development project? Remember why Green Lead is investing? Our cover story?”
I rattle my brain, say no.
“Still in prototype. A cutting-edge self-contained communal waste recycling and regeneration system.”
“A condominium that eats its own shit?”
“Zero-waste lifestyle. Zero-style. Anyway, it’s a selling feature. You don’t remember the play? Dammit, Carl. I’ve been telling you for weeks.”
I lie, tell him bells are ringing.
“Your wife wants the North Van property to build a green space.”
“A what?”
“A park.”
“Oh, yeah. Heather might’ve mentioned. So you’re feeding her intel about Peele and Marigold.”
“You’re certainly not. Anyway, plan is we pull out at the eleventh hour, Peele fails to secure the property, Bo Xi surfaces to push the deal through, we close the book on him, end of story is your wife gets the one-of-a-kind property and there’s a new park in North Vancouver. Happy ending. Except. Listen up, Carl. This is important. Peele’s recruited…two unique assets. Wannabe players. Midlevel Valley Boys.”
“Ruffians?”
“For sure. Brothers.”
“Sounds hot.”
“These two are total throwaways. But possessing a certain skill set. One of ours, a real estate lawyer we planted inside Marigold, got roughed up—”
“Roughed up?”
“Beat half to death. In front of his wife and son. Couple nights ago. Who knows what he told the gangsters. We’re vulnerable. Okay? So I was wondering—”
“Funny. Mind-meld. I was thinking about contacting him.”
“Who?”
“Caltrop. Our redoubtable man-at-arms?”
Michael slips his hand from mine, puts it on my shoulder. “You still able to make contact? He still…answers your call?”
At a certain level of influence the causal chain disintegrates. The logic of A following B no longer holds
. That’s what the brewery kids don’t understand. They demand instant turnaround between action and result. Impatient. Foolish. I’ve learned to play the long game, but I envy their lack of substance, gumming their way through fire-lit dances in Playa dust. It’s exhausting, trying to keep track of the systems, seeking a through line, a thread to follow. Complexity’s emergent, leaves me feeling glitchy. I rub my temples, acutely aware of my limitations. The plane’s nose dips into a pocket of unsettled air, sends my insides lofting. “Michael? Are we still doing good?”
“On the whole?”
“Yes. And including Caltrop?”
“You’re still kicking your own ass. It’s destroying you. Your family.”
“I wanted to know everything. Ran myself ragged trying to stay current. Now I get exhausted trying to keep everything out.”
“Crotchety.”
“If you won’t love me, there’s only one thing that will make me a better person.”
“I need you to stop talking like that.”
Atonement. Guilt is a powerful motivator. To do a little more good than bad in the world. Caltrop didn’t just murder those stooges. He strung them up. Gutted them. Fed their insides to ravens. Might’ve been a wolverine, too, elusive bastards. And how much good needs to be done, to make up for—
Michael turns to the window. Cloudless western light streams in, chiselling his face. I make to kiss his cheek but he nudges me aside, tugs the shade down. “Cut yourself some slack, Carl. You think the Homathko goons are still paying for it?”
“Brock Hollings shot himself in the face in eighty-nine. Andy ‘Crank’ McCoy drove his Harley into a telephone pole in ninety-four. The last died in 2002, crushed by a big piece of steel on a rig outside Fort Mac. So do I think they’re still paying? Yes and no.”
Michael squeezes my hand. “Those were natural deaths, Carl. Natural all the way. Am I wrong?”
I tell him I wouldn’t be the one to ask. I was in prison. But Caltrop wasn’t.
“What’s done is done. You’d do better to focus on the living. Your daughter.”
The living? I almost spit. Michael’s in the mood for giving credit where it isn’t due. The girl’s a paragon, but sometimes I have to make sure she’s not plugged into an outlet. Like her mother, but with more ambition, which is…whoa. These kids. At nine they can recite the elements of the periodic table, play a Bach concerto, hack into Goldman Sachs, write a love poem in iambic pentameter. But ask how they feel and they draw a blank, or they natter until they create a blank. The next revolution will be an unpredictable affair, defined by completely inappropriate affect. A comrade will get blown up and the kids will burst into laughter. They’ll sob while making love. Wires crossed. Perhaps it’s better that way? The problem with war is its reductive appeal. If war makes sense, maybe it’s better if the kids don’t.
Mark Ward
Vincent Peele has an office, a suit, and a mouth. The office, like Peele, is contemporary in the West Coast style, pseudo-scruff designed for effect from start to finish. Rough-cut cedar planks provide texture against polished steel and granite. A view north over the city. Posh without being stuffy. Relaxed while conveying the essential message: we’re rich, but we’re cool, so we’re even better. All Clint told me is the guy’s a real estate lawyer for the development branch of Marigold Group, the company spearheading Solstice Homes, and our inside contact for securing the North Van property.
Peele’s behind his desk, talking, muddy blue eyes not focused on much of anything. Me and Clint are facing the lawyer, Clint sitting hunched forward, me flung back in my chair like Peele’s carrying something virulent. I’m watching the lawyer’s hands. Peele likes fluttering them around, wiggling his fingers like a fucking necromancer. Creepy pale hands. Never seen a day of real work. It hits me that Peele’s practising this set of oratory gestures on us. Rehearsing. He’s a little older than me and Clint. Early thirties. Impeccably crafted beard. Hair parted neat to the side. Dark-framed glasses. Looks ridiculous, like a news reporter from the eighties.
“People complain,” Peele says above the electric whine of a bus out on Broadway. “In such an incredibly vibrant market that’s bound to happen, sourpusses…”
Peele wasn’t born rich. I can see that. But not poor either. The middle, now close to making it big. Maybe the worst.
“But—gentlemen? I don’t say this to anyone, but you two…I have the feeling we’re on the same page? You know what gets me a little down?” Peele taps his desk, pauses, like he’s struggling to articulate a transcendent truth. “I’m an upfront guy. Used to play lacrosse. Can’t play lacrosse without being an upfront guy. Agreed?”
Me and Clint say fuck all. My brother’s wearing a cheap-ass suit I’ve never seen before. The black fabric’s saggy and stretched; makes him look like a flooring salesman. Clint doesn’t know a thing about lacrosse, and neither do I, and that’s why Peele’s talking about it. Who knows lacrosse? Not many people. I have half a mind to ask Peele what position he played, but the sneaky prick probably has enough brains to google whatever he’s bullshitting about. Instead I look at the art: one First Nations painting, two generic abstract things, Asian calligraphy on scrolls manufactured to look old, a landscape of a farm in the Prairies. A collection chosen to say absolutely nothing except to point to the owner’s diverse and accommodating taste.
Peele pauses mid-thought, scratches his beard, studies his immaculate fingernails.
“Seven hundred times a day,” I tell him.
“Pardon me?”
“That’s how often a man touches his beard.”
Peele frowns. “I did not know that. Factoid! Where was I?”
“You were feeling a little down? Beards also collect fecal matter.”
A photocopier beeps and whirs in the reception room behind Peele’s office door. Marigold occupies the top two floors of an unremarkable six-storey office building. Smaller operation than I thought. Residential one floor beneath us, commercial and development here on the sixth floor. Maybe five people on staff.
“Fecal—”
“Particles in the air. Like a walking shit sponge.”
Clint sighs, presses his fists together, glares at the floor.
“Oh, sure. Ha!” Peele waves a stack of papers at Clint. “Good thing I’m meticulous about personal hygiene. Almost OCD?” The lawyer gives me a pointed look, rubs hand sanitizer into his palms, fills the room with raspberry-ginger smell. Then he stands abruptly, snatches a Kleenex from a desk drawer, hands it to me, points at my arm. “Unlike you, uh…Mark?” Peele gives me a disgusted look, retreats behind his desk. So I’m bleeding a bit from something. Press the Kleenex to my elbow. Then a thought from nowhere, not totally welcome, maybe connected to the traffic noises outside, car horns, commuters, and I wonder what Ryan’s sleeping spot looks like. What kind of blankets? Is he invisible until you step on him?
“Can I confide in you gentlemen?” Peele says, grimacing while I sop blood from my arm. I can tell he’s not quite sure what to think of me, so I’m feeling not bad. I consider asking Peele if the beard’s new, but before I can get a word in the lawyer takes a breath and launches. “Of course. Best part of my job is the people I meet. Different backgrounds, different ideas. Like you two? Very different than me! Nothing in common at all. If you’re not meeting new people all the time, it’s easy to slip into a rut of thought. People challenge you. To reconsider how you feel? Take that first-edition painting I see you admiring, Mark.”
Hearing my name from the guy’s mouth, I dunno, it makes me grit my teeth, pine for an Oxy. Peele sees I hate him saying my name, picks his lower lip, repeats my name, very slow, tonguing it. The man has eyes like the lead singer of a boy band and the mouth of a piranha.
“Do you like that painting? Does it resonate with you?”
“Which one?”
“The one with the…you know? On the left? Bright colours and the…uh, swirly things?”
“The Northwest Coast First Nations painting? Those are ovoi
ds.”
Peele leaps to his feet. “That’s the one, Mark! Ovoids? First Nations? No probs! I appreciate you didn’t say ‘Indian.’ Cultural sensitivity is important to the Marigold Family. I’m all about tolerance and having fun. We do lungi Fridays! To show how in tune we are? But some people…aren’t quite as in tune as us? An issue of education? Are you educated?”
“High school, yeah.”
Peele runs his fingers through his hair, or tries to, but can’t get through the sticky product. “But not university?”
“Nah. Fucked it.”
Peele checks his phone, fires off a text. Clint does the same.
My brother’s been sitting quietly through all this. Almost attentively. But under the cheap suit, Clint’s shoulders are bunched. Man has the finest blue-collar bullshit detector around. Peele must be killing him. Which proves how bad he needs this deal—
“Studying where?”
“UBC. For a bit.”
Peele tosses his phone on the desk and settles into his seat, legs crossed at the knees, creepo hands folded on his lap. I slump lower in my chair, yawn, stretch my feet out, fold my hands behind my head, push my crotch up at Peele so my nuts are centred in his field of view.
The lawyer gives me a solid look of contempt, feels real familiar, been seeing it my whole life. I ball up the bloody Kleenex, drop it on the floor.
“Mark, great school. The University of British Columbia. Right here in stunning Vancouver! Ovoids, Indians, awesome. My alma mater. We’re fortunate to have world-class schools. In fact, we’re fortunate in so many ways.” Peele jerks his chin at the mountain view framing his desk. “I’m like, wow, gratitude. Of course everyone wants to move here!” A percussive laugh, completely self-satisfied. “I mean, look what we have!”
Peele raises his hand, begins ticking the list with his fingers. “Oceans! Mountains! Rivers! Lakes! Incredible opportunities for outdoor recreation. I won’t bore you with how good of a mountain biker I am. Do you guys ride? I could show you some incredible trails—”
“No,” Clint says, stretching, making sure Peele sees the tats on his hands and neck. “Used to dirt bike. Not much anymore. Work. Fucked-up back.”