Book Read Free

On the Up

Page 19

by Shilo Jones

“Labour studies. Critical theory. Art.”

  “Wow!” Peele says, pretending to flinch. “Art? Labour? No wonder you’re dressed like a skid. What do you make of that, Clint?”

  “Nothin’. Like I said. Me and Marky get shit done.”

  “I’m counting on it. No degree, though, Mark? You dropped out of UBC to…join the Canadian Forces? Fight the war on terror in Afghanistan?”

  A few seconds tick by. “I never said that.”

  “Isn’t that what you said, Clint? When we discussed your brother’s past? At length?”

  Clint scratches his neck, says it’s the truth.

  A stinging too-hot feeling spreads over my skin because Clint’s giving me his gangster-boss stare-down. I cup my hands over my wrecked leg, realize I’m wincing, and worse, Peele’s leaning over his desk, biting his lip, barely breathing, feeding on me hurting. Which is fuck. Me sitting here drinking the lawyer’s booze and laughing with Russ Fuller, and Peele didn’t care because he’s the one really laughing, and maybe my brother and Fuller were in-secret laughing at me too because I’m the nothing asshole caught thinking he’s all high and mighty. “You got it, Peele. Fought a war for you. Thank me anytime.” I turn to face my brother. “Clint? This guy? You told him—”

  “When did it happen?” Peele asks, looking at my leg real keen. “Your…”

  “Big boom? June 18, 2007.”

  Peele’s hands fold and unfold, and when they settle his expression is sympathetic and sad. “Incredible. I commend you, Mark. Risking your life to defend my freedoms. It must’ve been horrible. Almost four years ago. How do you cope?”

  “Stay on the move, you forget you’re someone else.” I almost say but this city’s bringing me back, manage to clamp my mouth shut.

  “And what about your horrific crime? Was that you, Mark? Clint says it was. What you did to Mr. Combs back in…Clint?”

  Clint clenches his fist, watches his forearm tats ripple. “I said oh-five.”

  “Clint, why the fu—”

  “Thank you, Clint. Two thousand and five. Bludgeoned an innocent man on his sofa, classy—”

  “You stay seated in the fucking chair, Mark,” Clint yells, pointing me down like a mutt. “This is big. You had it easy. Cuz of me. Now you buck up.”

  I dunno. I guess I could say piss off, walk out. Maybe I could do that. If Peele lets me…but then it’s too late because Peele’s lips pull back thin and blue until his teeth and gums are visible and as I watch pinned to my chair his lips stretch and fold down his chin and over his face until all of him is this vicious black-gummed razor-toothed mouth perched on a scrawny pencil-pusher neck and I moan help me please because a forked black tongue slips between Peele’s teeth, rises into the air and shakes and trembles and I hear a rattling sound like bones knocking together and what Peele’s doing is calling them to him and beside me Clint reveals this horror in him too and without looking out the window I know the whole city is nothing but these walking sharp-toothed wide-open mouths with black tongues reaching to the sky and they’re all tuned to the rattling hunger coming from Peele—

  “With us now, Mark?” Peele hisses. “Stay seated. Because Clint owes me.”

  Choking, covering my face, trying to breathe, trying not to hear rattling bone-dry clacking and a woman screaming and feeling my lips stretch, pull back—

  Peele laughs, says something I can’t hear. My brother slaps me so hard my teeth knock together and when I find the courage to look at Peele it’s only a dickbag lawyer spewing bullshit.

  “Ah…the Ward Brothers! Clint? You didn’t tell him how much you owe? And that’s fine. Everything’s above board. In case you were getting the wrong idea, Mark? Are you some sort of negative-minded cynic? Syndicated mortgage. Pooled investment capital. Clint’s money is hard at work. Using extreme leverage to—”

  “You fucked us,” I whisper.

  “Not us,” Clint says, meeting my glare. “Never us.”

  “We’re only talking, Mark. Shooting the breeze? No harm. Do syndicated mortgages upset you? Why is that? Confused? Lacking financial skills? Disoriented? What are you hiding?”

  “Peele, get off him. I told you what his kick is.”

  “Clint?” Room’s going all fucked, leaning in, wiping sand from my eyes, Doyle’s Benelli, hold me, Kandahar road dust, a cellphone ring—

  “A killing rage, Mark?” Peele leans so close he’s almost touching me and I want to stay strong so bad but what I do, chickenshit nobody, is flinch and shy away. “You a killer, Mark?”

  “I’m okay now. That’s…all done?” But someone whispers burning, piled against the door, screaming.

  “What’s he saying, Clint?” Peele asks. “Burning? You said he was primed.”

  “He’s talking about the war, Peele, fuck—”

  “Is he? Maybe. Maybe not. Mark, you unstable?” Peele lifts an index finger to silence my brother, never looks away from me, “Syndicated mortgages, words on paper, no one to blame. Kill. Only a word. Kill. See? Words don’t mean anything. Only us gents shooting the breeze.”

  “I told you,” Clint says to Peele, like I’m not even here. “Marky’s game. Let me walk him through it.”

  Jasminder Bansal

  “The trouble is the news agencies expect us to work for free, or close to it,” I tell Meeta, who, since marrying her high-school sweetheart, Will Blevins, at eighteen, prefers to be called Maddy. We’re at the Granville Island Market, on a Sunday morning grocery excursion for my sister’s cooked-from-scratch nightly meals. “And there aren’t many jobs in this city. Even if I re-enrol at Langara and graduate there’s no guarantee I’ll find work, and definitely nothing that pays like real estate. But let’s say I do get an internship. I’m there a couple years, working for nearly nothing? Eventually they let me write for some blog, and then I’m twenty-eight, thirty—”

  Meeta drags her six-year-old son Andrew from under a craft table, tells him not to dirty his cricket whites before practice. “You’re going to be thirty anyway.”

  “I suppose I am.”

  “And Will says there are no guarantees in life.”

  “I suppose there aren’t.”

  My sister leans over a display of imported radicchio. Folds a white-veined leaf, furrows her brow, says she can’t tell if it’s fresh. She has a colour-coded meal planner on her phone, organized by ingredient and nutrient lists. Errands and chores for home and community fill Meeta’s days. Library fundraisers. Park cleanups. PTA meetings. Takes a long time to hand-pluck pomegranate seeds for a salad dressing. I used to feel superior about the real-world seriousness of my ambition. Now I worry I’m envious.

  “How’s Mom?” Meeta asks without looking up from the radicchio.

  “Working on her project.”

  “Still? That has to end—”

  “—when she decides to end it.”

  “I wish you’d move out,” Meeta says, nudging her stroller when my niece, Chloe, babbles for attention. “Find roommates. It’s not healthy, you being there. For either of you.” My sister catches my questioning look. “It’s not that we don’t like having you stay over. Occasionally. It’s just…Will says people our age never want to grow up.”

  “I won’t leave her,” I say, barely audible over the throng of enthusiastic shoppers, earning a reproachful glance that makes it clear Meeta’s as shocked as everyone that I’m the one floundering, high-school star student, the daughter who was sure she had it figured out and was foolish enough to let everyone know.

  “Who’s it helping, Jaz? No one.” Meeta’s tone reveals that she mistakes her good fortune for earned reward.

  “It’s helping me. You’ve never looked for a decent rental in this market. And I bet if you asked Mom she’d say—”

  “People must do it, though,” Meeta interrupts, embarrassed by me broadcasting the family financial situation in public. “I mean…there are people who do it. Have journalism careers? And lives. Families.”

  “I think I have a life?”


  “You know what I—”

  “Of course. Yes.”

  “Then why can’t you?”

  Meeta’s wearing head-to-toe Dolce & Gabbana: ankle-length pants in wool for fifteen hundred, T-strap brocade pumps with flower embroidery for another thousand, knit cardigan with encrusted lace for a cool two k. Topped with a personal accent Vincent Peele would approve of, a thirty-dollar silk dupatta draped loosely around her neck, so people are clear about where she’s from.

  “Jaz? I mean, real estate? For now, I get it. But you’re so much better than that.”

  “Maybe I’m not. There are things I like about it.”

  “Of course you’re better. Creative but more grounded than…”

  “Mom?”

  Meeta doesn’t answer. She grew up hating our mother’s art practice, believes it was a selfish choice, that she should’ve focused on a more pragmatic, financially viable career. Sacrifice for the family? I get it. But now here she is saying I’m better than needing to pay the bills and should focus on my creative side? The truth is Meeta has no idea what it means to hold a job. My sister does what she wants, period, yet manages to talk about her life like she works sixty-hour weeks.

  A man in his early forties, handsome, well dressed, selects oranges one at a time, carefully inspecting each one, a slight squeeze, a discerning once-over. I wonder if he’s thinking about his family when he does this, will his son or daughter enjoy this orange? Will he set the orange down in front of his partner and watch him eat, vaguely satisfied? What should I say to my sister? Tell her yes, maybe I could’ve returned to Langara after Amar’s death. Or maybe I should tell her I did get an internship while I was still in school, a spot with local radio, not exactly the Globe and just writing ad copy, but a start, and it took the station manager less than a week to discover I was sister to Amar Bansal, drug lord, gangster, a man who was accused—it was revealed after he died, at the trial of an associate—of ordering a hit on a rival, propping the body in the backseat of a gold-trimmed Cadillac Escalade and spending an evening driving the corpse through his drug territories, showing it off, a warning and a boast.

  “Anything’s possible if you work hard enough,” Maddy sniffs, squeezing Andrew’s shoulder. “Like raising a family. It’s a ton of work, trust me.”

  I bite my tongue, resist telling her most people have to work and raise a family. I don’t want to start another argument. I’m gauging to see if it’s a good time to hit her up for a loan. Not a lot, a few hundred, enough to fix my brakes until I sell a condo and a commission comes through.

  Image is everything. Amar’s words when I teased him about how long he took getting ready for a night at the clubs. Amar opening the Escalade’s rear door and the dead man’s head slumped against the headrest and his associates peering inside, saying baller dude you fuckin’ gangsta, you boss, no one steppin’ to Bansal—

  “Do you think about him?” I ask Meeta before I can stop myself.

  My sister falters. Lifts an avocado, asks what’s in season.

  “Nothing. It’s March in the Northern Hemisphere.”

  Sighs in disappointment, plunks three avocados in her shopping basket.

  “Meeta? I said: Do you think about him at all?” Too loud to ignore because I’m ashamed about asking even once, especially in front of the kids, and that shame blurs to anger—at Meeta, Amar, myself. And at Clint Ward. He’ll get his, Sim said. It’s awful how I’ve learned to cope by being angry.

  “Jaz? Let me go.”

  I’m clutching Meeta’s arm. Hard enough to stretch her blouse. I release her, step back, feeling short of breath. “You’re still embarrassed of him.”

  “He destroyed this family.”

  “Amar is this family. All of him. What he did—all of it is us, too.”

  “He was, you mean.”

  “Is. A person doesn’t stop being family because they’re gone—”

  “Only because you let him stay. You and Mom both. But for me, he’s gone. I have another family.”

  Meeta makes a show of rearranging Chloe’s blankets, asks when Mom and I plan to visit her house for dinner. I mutter something noncommittal. Family looms large in my sister’s conception of the world. Like a domestic black hole, everything in a life must inevitably bend toward it.

  Granville Island is pretty much the last place I want to be this morning, but it’s one of Meeta’s favourites; I suspect she’s soothed by vegetables better travelled than most of the world’s population. She spears her stroller through knotted shoppers and asks if I gave up on journalism too soon, another way of saying she thinks I did.

  Instead of answering I pull out my phone, read a message from Eric asking about the open house. Drop the phone in my purse, wonder how long I’ll need to dodge him before he clues in we’re finished, and then another pang of guilt at being so self-centred but isn’t that common to people in crisis, all my emotional energy spent putting out fires.

  Meeta pins Andrew between her hip and a vegetable stand while she inspects heritage tomatoes with ugly yellow stripes. Andrew squirms, plucks a four-dollar tomato from the bottom of a pyramid, sends the stack tumbling, squeals joyfully. I smile to myself, relieved, feeling I made at least one right decision in my life. Distracted, I begin picking up tomatoes while Meeta chastises her son in a manner that’s for the benefit of anyone listening.

  “Is this all you wanted to talk about?” I ask. “My lousy career choices?”

  “Wanted to see you. Too tired last night. Andrew misses his aunty. I miss my sister. Who texted? Eric? How’s it going with him?”

  I swallow, resist walking out.

  Meeta balances her shopping basket on the stroller’s handlebar, sips her decaf latte, fusses over the baby’s spittle while I watch, vaguely horrified. Then she says she doesn’t know why I went to school, wasted my money, if I was going to quit halfway through.

  “Because I wanted it more than anything.” What if I tell her I’m working for a development company linked to Amar’s killer? That I am pursuing my career? Would she support me?

  Meeta, whose husband is heir to a family fortune made in several lucrative varieties of nastiness—internet gaming sites, e-cigarettes—lifts her nose, tells me Will thinks people our age are entitled, don’t really want to work, want everything handed to them.

  Money and wealth come easily to me.

  “I don’t feel great about all my choices,” I tell her, too strident. “But at least they’re mine to make.”

  There. One step away from calling her a kept woman. Yet another person I’m pushing away, bit by bit, every time we see one another. Meeta lifts an eyebrow, has the class or compassion or good sense to keep quiet.

  “Okay, you know what?” I say, forcing a smile. “I’m sorry I brought it up. Not the best couple days. This week will be better. Can we talk about something else?”

  “I would’ve loved to see my sister on TV.” Meeta lays a sympathetic hand on my forearm. She looks centred and youthful, like she sleeps twelve hours a night and enjoys hour-long massages every other day, which she does, and that’s wonderful, but what frustrates me is she still has the gall to complain when other people are overworked, run ragged, and otherwise too busy to accommodate her and her family’s considerable needs.

  “Maybe next year I’ll be in the annual commercial with Marigold. Then you can see me on TV. Singing the jingle? It’s al-ways a good time for pro-perty—”

  “Will says you should’ve studied a trade. There’s lots of work for tradespeople these days.”

  “Except I can barely make scrambled eggs, never mind build a house. There’s this impediment called aptitude.”

  You fall short of perceived potential, people feel justified in providing unasked-for advice. Constantly. Like: we’re only trying to help.

  Meeta asks a craft-cheese vendor if Gouda is gluten-free. Andrew, seeing his mother isn’t watching, pulls a stolen tomato from his pocket, drops it on the floor, smashes it with his heel. Tomato slime splashes
across my only decent pair of boots. Andrew picks up the gooey tomato, slips it in Chloe’s blanket. I ignore him, pretend to rub my eyes, too tired to do much else, try and take comfort in the fact that at least I’m inside Marigold, and maybe nothing gets written and nothing happens, but right now I need this feeling of mattering.

  Mark Ward

  Back to the wall, sitting in the alley behind Peele’s office. Not feeling shit hot. Made it outside before I threw up. Thinking about Peele, what comes next, my first bit of work for my new boss. Clint lights a blunt, hands it to me, asks how I’m doing. I’m quiet, looking down the alley, watching lunchtime crowds hurry along Broadway, a poodle in a lavender sweater, a bike courier balanced in a track stand. “Sorry bro. Didn’t mean it.”

  Clint’s kicking rocks against the cinderblock wall. “ ’Pologizing for?”

  “Lawyer got to me. Slimiest scumbag ever. And I’ve seen Afghan narco-kings sitting pretty in their personal fiefdoms.”

  Clint takes a hit off the blunt, checks his phone. “Don’t sweat it. Peele’s a pro. Getting under skin is what he does. But he’s got no meat. No code. Besides. Best to have a guy like that in our corner.”

  “You think?” Tap the blunt against a garbage can, start to say something, change my mind while a tinted Audi rips through the alley, almost runs my brother down. Clint cusses, picks up a baseball-sized rock, whips it at the Audi. I wait to hear if it hits, then ask what I looked like in there.

  “Looked like?”

  “Yeah. I always wonder how people know? When I’m…not feeling so great? Did I look different?”

  Clint’s face scrunches like it’s the stupidest question ever. “You fucking looked like you. Peele had a one-up. He was testing.”

  I run my fingers over the piss-stained asphalt. “Not…shaking and spitting? Like I’m crazy? Cuz the military shrink said…” I should stand, walk, focus on my breathing, but the truth is I’m so tired I could pass out in the alley and not give a hoot.

  Clint kicks another piece of gravel. It ricochets off the wall and thuds into my good leg. “Marky. Relax. I told Peele about you beating that pervert. Had to. Peele offered me an in. These syndicated mortgages Marigold runs, they’re special elite. Not offered to any asshole.” Clint flicks me a glance like he’s wondering if he should say more, and if it wasn’t for the blunt loosening his tongue he probably wouldn’t, but he blurts, “Speaking of coming up, you should see who Peele has working for him and he doesn’t even know.” Clint laughs, takes off his suit jacket, tosses it on the ground. “Bitch is selling real estate for him. Course she’s a glorified tour guide, showing Peele’s clients properties to run money through. Anyway, Jasminder Bansal. Remember?”

 

‹ Prev