On the Up

by Shilo Jones

  I could have said anything in that moment. Take me home. Could have insisted. I don’t want to be here.

  Instead I stayed quiet.

  Amar gave that look he’d been giving me since we were kids, half frustration and half disappointment, like I was the one who wasn’t living up to potential, not him. Then he slipped out of the Caddy, unhurried. I watched him from inside the parked vehicle. It was quiet, the air slightly stuffy and smelling of Calvin Klein cologne and Armor All. I watched Amar’s lips move. His gestures and body language. They were different now. He was different. Blustery. Aggressive. He leaned into people. Laughed in their faces, his gold rings sparkling as his hands waved through the air. You’re tellin’ stories. That was his line when reporters accused him of being connected to a recent shooting or a drug deal gone bad. You’re tellin’ stories. A popular YouTube video showed my brother rolling up in his Cadillac, leaning his head out, glaring at the camera through his gold-framed sunglasses and delivering the line. Then a laugh so carefree and infectious people didn’t seem to mind it wasn’t genuine.

  I sat in the Cadillac and watched Amar walk around to open my door. Can you be wrong about a person for so long? Kind, generous, peaceful. Had he charmed us as well? No. Not Amar Bansal. Not my brother. His enemies were telling lies. Tellin’ stories. But that night, as Amar opened the Caddy door, I began shivering, and less than ninety minutes later the truth of my brother, whatever it was, wouldn’t matter at all. Amar played his part right to the end.

  Clint Ward.

  I know what Amar would say.

  He’d give me a hard look, say the little mouse is still playing nice, ask if I want a fucking roti.

  * * *

  The anniversary is tomorrow. I’m scheduled to fly a group of investors to Osoyoos. An exclusive retirement development, golf course, recreation complex. Medical support staff. High brick walls and a guard posted at a wrought-iron gate. Instead, after meeting Heather Reed, I phone Vincent from a coffee shop on Commercial Drive, tell him I’ve come down with something. He asks what’s wrong and I say I’m not sure and he says he’ll send Elodie to Osoyoos, although the deal really could’ve used my international flair. I thank him and say I’m still okay to work, I just can’t fly. I’ll be by the office tomorrow and he says great we can play foosball, he has some ideas about the Solstice project he’d like to wing around the Flowroom, get my feedback on.

  I ask him how the North Vancouver property bid is going.

  He says Scott Charles Booth is playing hard to get and has yet to sign anything, but Marigold has a solid in with one of Booth’s most trusted advisors so it’s looking like a go.

  We hang up. I’m expecting Heather Reed to call at any moment and say she’ll help with the story. Waiting to see the deal ripped from under Vincent Peele and Clint Ward. Because of me. An ugly knot forms in my stomach. Is exposing them enough? Lawyers, a trial, and…what then?

  I invest in myself and my business every single day.

  I will not bear silent witness while others decide my fate.

  I grab my phone, search for a list of companies Bo Xi is currently on the board of. There are four in North America, but only one with an office in Vancouver. Pillar Investment. A venture capital firm. Thirty seconds later I have an email address for the manager at Pillar Investment, a woman named Joyce Arnell.

  I settle into my chair. Try and see what I’m missing. Sim’s out there, waiting for my word. Clint Ward gone. Vincent Peele gone. Bo Xi will still need that North Vancouver property. It could be me that gets it for him. It’s a big play, Amar would’ve said. The only kind worth the time.

  My mind wanders to the pitch.

  Mark Ward

  Carl Reed looks more like an unemployed math teacher than a man sitting on a quarter billion. Lanky, maybe six three, all of a hundred and fifty pounds. Sandy blond hair flecked with grey and thinning on top, revealing a dry and freckled scalp. Eyes hidden in shadows no detox will ever brighten. Jittery. Wearing a dumpy hippy outfit, rough baggy cloth shirt, looks like hemp, and those wide-legged capris like the poi spinners at the art gallery. Leather moccasins. All he needs is a tie-dye bandanna. I dislike him immediately. A fuckin’ armchair subversive, nattering about working-class oppression from his ocean-view estate. Only blister dude’s had is from hot-knifing. Takes me a half-second to know him for a tweaker.

  Reed’s sitting on a bench overlooking Lost Lagoon in Stanley Park, smooching and cuddling a hideous hairless dog. The rain exhausted itself last night. A patch of blue sky reflects in the murky water, along with leafless oak and low-rise West End apartments built in the sixties. I stealth beside Reed, decide to fuck with him a bit, settle in so we’re touching elbows. He doesn’t look at me, slides to the far end of the bench. Clint was right. This is going to be piss-easy.

  A snorting sound and suddenly I’m glad there’s some space between us. Reed’s holding a potbellied pig, not a dog. He lifts the nasty thing in my direction. Fat rolls jiggle on its legs and neck. The pig squeals, licks its glistening snout, snorts.

  “You don’t like him?”

  “Barely know him.”

  Hooves thrash and shake. Reed sets the pig between us. Toss my arm over the bench, check my phone, see if Ryan got back to me, decide there are worse places to spend a Saturday morning. “Pig in the middle?”

  “He’s the only non-swine on this bench. Name’s Holdout. My only true and loyal friend.”

  “Tragic.”

  “One more than you, good sir.”

  “H?” I ask, returning the jab.

  “Only to sleep. Sometimes speedballs. Sometimes whatever.”

  “You’re getting up there. Stims help you hang with the kids.”

  “I’m forty-nine.”

  “You look sixty-five. That’s being generous. Time to kick back, old man.”

  “Thanks. Next time I want unasked-for advice I’ll hurry to the reprobate attempting to blackmail me.”

  I light a smoke, pick up a handful of pebbles, huck them in the water. A flock of ducks hurries over, webbed feet paddling furiously, the bigger ones nipping at the smaller as they race for the grub. They dive, emerge crunching rocks. We are ever hopeful. “You high right now?”

  Reed says nothing.

  “Matters because you need to follow what I have to say. And follow it to the fucking letter.”

  The pig rubs its filthy ass against the backrest, glares at me, animal-dumb. I exhale a cloud of cigarette smoke in its face.

  Carl, frantic, waves the smoke away. “Whoa! Really? This is a living being. Do you know what they put in those? Big Tobacco. Fibreglass. Stearic acid. Ammonia. Hydrogen cyanide. Ring any bells? Nazi gas chambers.”

  I fake outrage. “No way. Is that like confirmed?”

  “From the American Med—”

  I start laughing. Even the pig snuffles, which okay is fucking weird. Carl lifts the pig to eye level, whispers be cool don’t let him in, makes my skin crawl. Sets the pig down, says, “Holdout likes you.”

  “A pig? First for everything. Sober?”

  Carl sighs. “Clean a couple days. Since I got out of jail. I’m terribly coherent. Able to hold a conversation. Able to know I’m being divorced. My business partner, former best friend, and lover is abandoning me. My daughter’s missing.”

  “That’d be an interesting story. If I gave a shit.”

  “You been doing this a while? Because it doesn’t suit you. Maybe you’re with Fintrac. Undercover on Vincent Peele and his crew. Of course you don’t know Peele bought off your bosses in Ottawa. Or maybe you do, and that’s why you’re here, hassling a man in the vulnerable early stages of recovery.”

  “Your instincts are lousy. The simplest explanation is—”

  “Useful until it isn’t.” Reed smiles in a way that says I ain’t shit. “I know you’re not a Fintrac Tool. But you’re not entirely of this world, Mr. Mark Ward. Pretending to be someone else, pretending to be an idea of someone else. There’s something atavistic about yo
u. The Fraser Valley hick caught up in his older brother’s big-city bullshit. You smashed your head on that corporate criminal ceiling yet? It’s not made of glass, not for lowborn grunts like you. More like concrete. And when you hit it you fall right to the bottom, into the liquid manure you came from.”

  I think I do an all-right job hiding my surprise, but apparently not, because Reed says, “Vincent Peele found a lucrative eddy in a torrent of sewage. But the rain comes, he’ll be washed away. Like the rest of you. Me? If I have anything, it’s staying power. That’s been proven.”

  “Fuck you on about?”

  Reed nuzzles the pig. “Consider your sources.”

  I pull out the camera. Hold it inches from Reed’s face. “Your politician wife’s gonna drop the North Van property. She can spin whatever bullshit she wants, long as she doesn’t mention Marigold Group. Also. Green Lead is going to double its investment in Solstice Homes. Then this ugly goes away.”

  Reed’s silent so long I give him a sideways glance to make sure he didn’t fall asleep. Then he whispers, “You watch it?”

  “No.”

  “Could be anything.”

  “Anything named Hannah Reed, yeah.”

  “Drugs. Sex. Both. What kind of a man are you? To resist watching that video?” Reed reaches in his pocket, pulls out a bag of gummy bears, feeds a handful to the pig, pisses me off because I feel like asking for some. “You brutalized Sebastian Price?”

  “With gusto.”

  “And the Bryant family in North Vancouver?”

  “My homecoming present.” Check the time, say I’m due somewhere. Say I need an answer.

  “Everything’s rotten,” Reed says. “Rotten all the way through. Some kind of disease. Woke up one morning and couldn’t shake the feeling I’m as guilty as everyone. No more believing I’m above it. Realized the rot is in everything. Realized it is everything. The kids talk about being online like it’s an inherently liberating experience. Pffft. The internet’s a shopping mall floating on an ocean of excrement. Instant access to questionable information doesn’t make you liberated. It makes you tired. Awash in trivia. The repressive regimes and canonical fascists sought control above all else. Information. Sex. Ideas. All required an iron fist. Imagine the energy they expended maintaining control. The resources? We’ve moved beyond that. There is no singular oppressive force. No material enemy. We’re decentralized, coded in light. The new century demands a new us. You know I could have you killed right now, at this very moment? Think about that. In the middle of the breath you’re drawing…perhaps I’ll ask the pig if you should live. Holdout? Should Mark Ward the former soldier live or die? Hmm? Or should we let him prove his worth?”

  The pig wipes snot on my leg. I smack at it, send it scurrying onto Reed’s lap, examine Reed, try and figure out if he’s bluffing. Wish what he was saying didn’t make so much sense, wish there was a way out that didn’t involve…

  “Killing me isn’t worth the risk,” I tell him. “Besides, won’t do you any good. We have copies. You’d have to kill—”

  “Quite a few.”

  “So. You agree? The politician wife calls it quits on the property. You toss some more money in Peele’s direction. Easy. This video, it’ll destroy your daughter. You’re right about the internet. This’ll go viral, trust me. It’ll live forever and Hannah will never live it down. It’ll destroy your family.”

  “That ship sailed.”

  “Okay. I might be fuck all. But the people I work for? You know this is a shot over the bow. Wifey keeps pressing the bid, we fire a real shot. Maybe the next video it’s not your daughter doing something. It’s something being done to her. You’ll never recover. Even with all your money.”

  “All. My. Money.” Reed repeats, slowly, his eyes unfocused as he nibbles the arms off a blue gummy bear. “You really do hate it? Remarkable. You honestly hate it. Last of a dying breed. Must be lonesome. And maddening. Remind me of an old friend.”

  Reed slides closer and I’m feeling not so shit-awesome, not so sure this work’s gonna be so straight-up—

  “Speaking of friends,” Reed continues, “have you seen yours recently? The kid? What’s his name? Ryan?”

  I fight to keep myself from unsheathing the KA-BAR.

  “You keeping a close eye on that Ryan boy? He’s around the same age as my daughter.”

  I dig my teeth into my lower lip. “Nothing to do with this.”

  Reed shakes his head. “See? Your inexperience is showing. These things you’re involved in, dark matter, they have gravitational fields. They pull objects, people, toward them. Sometimes a person’s floating way out there, clear of harm’s way…and they get sucked in. That idea we’re all connected? Nice idea? Like we’re all in this together? Sense of solidarity?” Reed smiles. Sickly but confident in a way that makes me scan the tree line across the pond. “They never said what we’re connected to.”

  Me strangling the skinny bastard. Right here, in broad daylight. Wrapping my fingers around his neck, crushing his windpipe, and next thing I know I’m reaching for the KA-BAR—

  A roaring boom, so loud it feels like my brains are being blown out my ears and the wooden bench explodes beside my left shoulder. Splinters stab my cheek. A heavy-calibre round, most likely a Cheyenne Tactical, precision range up to two fucking kilometres.

  OPFOR, a ragged bit of metal moving fast and I slam into the target, press behind him, edge the KA-BAR to his throat. Scan the apartments ringing Lost Lagoon, thousands of spots for a comfy nest and the joke’s on me, Marky’s a bonafide asshole, meeting a target in the open, exposed—

  “Tell your boy to stand down.” My voice going warba-warba in my ears and Reed’s not even trembling, the junkie set me up, in fact the bastard seems real cool considering the blade’s cutting his neck, blood leaking onto his ugly-ass hemp shirt and I have to look away, killing’s so easy, so easy, him or me or maybe us both. The potbellied pig screeches and tears off into the woods. That seems to get to Reed because he sounds sad when he says, deadpan, “Holdout won’t stop growing. It’s his tragic flaw.”

  “Where the fuck is he? Reed! Tell your man—”

  “I never could see him. He used to go out and hide and we’d get high, walk through the woods looking for him. I stepped on his arm once. What am I connected to, Mark? That’s what you should be asking. How powerful is my gravitational field?”

  “Tell your man—”

  “To stop shooting? Not kill you? It appears he’s already made that decision.”

  Reed’s right. The shooter didn’t miss. He set the round exactly where he wanted.

  “Another question, for fun? How long do you think my ‘man’ will let you hold that knife to my throat?”

  Five seconds tick by. Pissing sweat, ears ringing, trembling, not from fear but from being such an asshole, underestimating a target so badly, not paying attention—

  I sheath the blade, inch away from Reed, lift the KA-BAR so the shooter sees it, set it on the ground, kick it onto the lawn. The ducks waddle over and peck at it.

  Reed dusts off his shirt, sets a finger to the nick on his throat, stares at the crimson stain, says his friend wants to meet me.

  “So tell him to come on out.”

  “You keep assuming I tell him what to do. That he’s under some sort of control. Let me assure you, that is not the case.”

  Tongue feels like a fucking brick and I tell myself now isn’t the time to be pawing for a goddamned pill bottle. The slug punched a fist-sized hole through three inches of solid wood. I try and muster a smile for the shooter’s benefit, show him I’m not squirming on the mat just yet. “Looks like your boy mistook me for big game.”

  “He’s not known for understatement.”

  “Like I mistook you. You’re not the man. You’re the messenger.”

  “You want to reduce a thirty-year friendship to some sort of bullshit power dynamic, you go ahead. Jeesh. What a sad life you lead. I’m becoming less enamoured of you, Mark. Let’s
say there is a signal. Let’s say you’re alive because I’ve decided to give you the benefit of the doubt. For the time being.”

  The pig waddles out of the woods, burps. Reed pats his knees, calls it, laughs when the thing leaps into his lap, snorts and happy-giggly snuffles all round.

  “I’m not the only one with a copy of this video,” I say, feeling shit.

  Reed twirls the pig’s tail, doesn’t bother answering. After a while he says, “I made my money on a prison card game. True story.”

  “Don’t want to hear it.”

  Which is when things go haywire, because something changes in Carl Reed. Not one thing, but everything? His posture. The look on his face…that blank-eyed junkie stare replaced by a supreme or supernatural confidence, a power, and the hippie burnout—swear to fuck—he seems taller, larger, his hands not only narrow but huge, bony fingers stretching a foot long and this has gotta be the drugs or lack thereof, drugs and adrenaline from the sniper shot, death having a grand time toying with my mind because Reed doesn’t seem like a washed-up rich prick poseur anymore and his eyes are bright and turquoise blue, glowing, blinding, forcing me to shield my face from those empty all-seeing orbs and while this thing sitting on the bench stares at me my heart goes pingpingping on its way to the pop and I know with sick certainty that Reed’s doing it, an ageless power, sorcerer, shaman, deity, and his voice, if it even is a voice because I’m like fairly fucking certain the alien-thing’s lips don’t move but his voice booms like a Cheyenne bullet through my head, and what I hear is:

  “SON, THIS IS WHEN YOU SHUT THE FUCK UP AND LISTEN.”

  Then air being drawn into my lungs and my heart rate slows and the hallucination’s gone, drug-mania, delusion, because it’s only the pathetic has-been Carl Reed sitting on a park bench, nuzzling his potbellied pig.

  “You hear me, Mark?”

  “That was…uh…pretty wild?”

  Clamp my teeth together, fumble for a smoke, offer Reed one, try and get in front of this mess. He looks at the smoke in disgust. Spread my arms on the bench, dig my fingers into the bullet hole, imagine a second Cheyenne ripping through my chest, punching my sternum out my spine. Not a bad way to go. There’s way worse.