THE PICASSO PROJECT

by Carol Anne Shaw

"I hate to break the news, babe, but I already have one of those. You must have missed the memo."

  "But you told me Georgia was—"

  "A bitch? Yeah. She is. Everyone knows that. But she's killer in bed."

  Maya's head swims. There's that nausea again. "But you...I mean, we...and I've never—"

  "Me n' Georgia have been off this week. You've been filling in the space, Maya," Mark says. "Or more like, I filled yours." His words sting Maya as much as if he'd hit her. "But listen." He takes her chin in his hand and rubs her lower lip roughly with his thumb. "I'll give you one last chance to make a better decision. You have my money for me before first block tomorrow morning, or I won't be as nice as I'm being to you now. You got that?"

  Maya nods her head, afraid to breathe.

  "You sure?" He leans in close and breathes heavily against her ear. She nods again.

  "Good. Because if you screw it up, Maya? If you rip me off, that would really disappoint me, especially after how well we know each other now, you know?" He takes hold of her wrists in his hands and then licks the entire length of her cheek with his tongue like a dog.

  When Eddie opens Ms. Bailey's door, Mark is gone, and Maya is standing by a row of lockers, rubbing the side of her face with her hand.

  "Jesus," Eddie asks her, dropping his backpack. "What the hell happened to you?"

  "What do you mean? Nothing. I'm fine."

  Eddie looks at his sister, and all the anger and frustration he's felt quickly dissipates. "You're not fine, Maya. What happened?"

  "It's nothing," Maya insists. "I just...I just have really bad cramps, Eddie. Can we just go? I need to lie down."

  Eddie stops at the nurses' office before they leave and makes Maya get some Ibuprofen. On the way back to the clearing, they stop at Tim Horton's and he shells out change for an iced tea with extra ice. It's hot out, hotter than it should be for this time of year. It isn't even summer yet.

  "Drink this," Eddie tells Maya. "It'll cool you down."

  They sit on a cement planter while Maya finishes the drink. Eddie isn't buying the cramps thing. He knows her better than that. Something's happened. He's sure of it. They could be in real trouble, and if they are, this time he can't pin it all on his sister. Because even without whatever Maya has done, Eddie has managed to fuck things up. He just assaulted Mark Johnson. Things are bound to get really complicated. And fast.

  But right now, Eddie can get Maya an iced tea and they can sit outside Tim Horton's for half an hour. It isn't much, but it's something.

  ***

  When they reach the start of the trail that leads to the Buick, Maya sees Mark's Trans Am speed across the intersection up ahead and disappear down Harper Avenue. She doesn't think he saw her—there were too many other guys in the car with him.

  But five minutes later, when they push through the trees to the clearing, they find their blue tarp has been ripped down. Eddie takes a step forward then freezes, and Maya reaches for her brother's hand.

  "Eddie!"

  He doesn't answer. He's staring at the Buick.

  All of its windows have been smashed out. The hood is caved in. The front and back tires on the left side have been slashed and the car lists dramatically to the right. But the worst part are the words. In bright orange letters than run along the entire length of the car, someone has spray painted in capital letters: HOTEL DUMONT.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  JOURNAL ENTRY

  (late May)

  "As soon as the hourglass is turned, the sand will begin to run out. And once it starts, it cannot stop until it's all gone."

  - Pablo Picasso

  A drum roll—a knocked-over, snaking trail of dominos. Something fragile gets kicked to the ground and the whole world spills out of control. Then, like a train, it builds momentum until there's no fuel left for the fire. Yeah, enough metaphors, but Pablo isn't pulling any punches with this one.

  Our sand just ran out, and we don't have the bucks to buy any more time.

  If I wasn't so jaded, I might just be angry.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  "Shit," Eddie says.

  Maya lets go of his hand and sidestepping the beads of glass from the shattered windows, peers inside the car.

  There is a dented can of spray paint on the ground, as well as a few empty beer cans. The Buick's driver side door is hanging open, and someone has defecated on the front seat.

  The oppressive heat hangs heavy and still in the clearing and the ground is dry and dusty. Eddie notices the boot tracks that someone, no, that three people, have left behind.

  "What are we going to do now?" Maya says.

  Eddie stops staring at the car and looks at his sister. She is chewing her fingernails again. She's terrified. Twitchy. "You know something about this, don't you?"

  "What? No! Why would you even say that?"

  She's full of shit. Eddie can tell. "Maya? You'd better be straight with me. If you know something, you have to tell me."

  "No, Eddie!" She starts to cry. "Don't ask me. Don't!" She runs to take cover under the bit of tarp that's still attached to the tree and begins sobbing in great, heavy gasps that shake her whole body.

  Eddie doesn't say anything. He barely feels anything. No anger. No shock. No frustration or fear. Nothing. He is numb. All he can think of is that they had under four weeks to go—just under a month until graduation. A month until he turns nineteen. Four weeks, and they could have come out of the dark and built a little life somewhere: a crappy little apartment, a crappy little job at Burger King, four crappy little walls somewhere. Anywhere. But, not now; now there's this. Their cover is blown, and now everyone will start sticking their noses in.

  He picks up a plastic bag from the ground and deals with the mess on the seat of the car, laughing at the irony; he'd always called the Buick a piece of shit. When he's done, he picks up the empty can of spray paint from the ground. Then he winds his arm back and fires it at the car. It pings off the smashed windscreen and ricochets over the hood to land top down in the dirt. Maya is still shuddering under the tarp, staring at him with her wide watery-blue eyes.

  "Ready to talk, Maya?" Eddie asks quietly. "Wanna tell me what this is about?"

  "I don't know."

  "Yeah. You do."

  "Stop grilling me," Maya stammers. "I can't tell you anything. I CAN'T! You'll hate me."

  Eddie reminds himself that despite everything, Maya is only fourteen. Just a kid.

  He walks over to her and puts his hands on her shoulders. "Maya," he says, keeping his voice even. "You have to listen to me."

  "No, Eddie!"

  "Look! I don't care how bad it is. I don't. You need to tell me what went down here. You need to tell me what's going on with you."

  "I...I can't."

  "I'm your brother, Maya. You can."

  "Do you promise...do you promise you won't get mad?" She says, trembling.

  "I promise."

  Maya takes a gulp of air and starts to talk. And once she starts, she can't stop the flow of words that spew from her mouth. She tells Eddie everything. Everything. From the moment she first talked to Mark, to what happened at his friend's apartment, to the dope deal, and finally to Nicole's betrayal. She hits him with so much information that he has a hard time processing it. When she's done, he sits down onto the Rubbermaid container near the trees. He can't talk. Not for a minute. Not yet.

  "Eddie?" but Eddie puts his hand up like he's stopping traffic.

  No.

  No talking.

  Not yet.

  Eddie is a pressure cooker; his head is getting tighter and hotter, expanding with each passing second. Any moment now, it's going to explode. His brains are going to spray straight across the clearing. He feels a burning hot rage in the centre of his belly. Not for Maya. Not even for Mark. But for the useless waste of carbon molecules who spawned him, and then left without a backwards glance; a rage for a mother, weak from the start, addicted, too scared to get help, then too sick to stick arou
nd and do her job. And now she's gone for good. Now Eddie has had to step up. He didn't sign up for this job. And clearly, he sucks at it. He's let his sister down. He's failed to protect her; something he swore he'd do above and beyond everything else. How could he not have seen something like this coming? How could he have been so fucking blind?

  "Eddie?"

  He looks up at his sister, suddenly exhausted.

  "Eddie? Do you hate me?"

  "Hate you? Do I hate you? No, Maya. It's okay."

  "It isn't," she says. "It's not okay. It's not okay at all. You're just saying that. If I don't have a hundred dollars for Mark in the morning—"

  Eddie lets his head rest on his hands. "Can I just think for a minute? I just need to think."

  "But what are we going to do?" Maya says. "We're screwed!"

  Eddie gets up and starts putting glass and beer cans into another plastic bag.

  "What are you doing?" Maya asks.

  "Didn't you know?" he says acidly. "You always have to clean up your place when you move out."

  ***

  Arlow's Restaurant sits on the other side of town. Eddie and Maya wrap their hands around tall glasses of Coke, grateful for a little time out from the sticky heat.

  "Are you hungry?" Eddie asks.

  Maya looks at him and raises an eyebrow. "We don't have any money," she says.

  "Fuck it. We have enough for a piece of pie or something. If you want."

  "No, we don't," Maya says. "And if I don't have that hundred dollars by—"

  "Just order some pie, sis," Eddie says. "Get ice cream on it, too." He slides out from the booth. "Back in a sec. I gotta take a leak."

  In the bathroom, he splashes cold water on his face and stares at his reflection in the mirror over the sink: blue eyes, prominent nose, decent teeth, a lot of hair. That's about it. Nothing outstanding here, he thinks. Edward Harrison DuMont: first-class fuck up. Edward Harrison DuMont: Waste of Skin.

  When he gets back to the booth, the pie has arrived. It's apple, with sugar dusted over the crust. The waitress has warmed it up, and a generous scoop of vanilla ice cream melts in the middle of it. Eddie watches as the scoop slides off the side of the pie to form a white pool on the plate.

  "You should eat it before all that ice cream melts," Eddie tells Maya.

  "I'm not that hungry."

  Eddie shrugs and picks up a fork. "Suit yourself." He stabs at the pie, watching the filling ooze into the puddle of melting ice cream. He mixes it together with the tines of his fork, making a syrupy mess that threatens to slop off the plate altogether.

  "Want a refill?" the waitress asks Eddie, her coffee pot poised in the air in one hand.

  "Sure. Thanks."

  She picks up Eddie's mug and fills it, then digs out a couple of creamers from the pocket of her apron. "How's the pie?"

  "Good. Great, in fact. Thanks."

  "Okay, well, let me know if you need anything else," the waitress says as she leaves.

  Sure, Eddie thinks. How about a hundred dollars? Can you spare a hundred bucks?

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  (Flashback)

  Maya finds a dog when she is six years old—a small, black & white mutt—half Jack Russell and half who-knows-what. She finds him shivering in a vacant lot near the apartment her family is living in. The dog is dragging a length of frayed rope behind him and has a deep cut on one of its paws.

  "Can we keep him?" Maya asks when she and Eddie get home.

  "Are you kidding me?" their mother says. "Who wants to drag a dog up and down to this place three times a day? Not me!" Their four-room apartment sits above the Spin City Laundromat, and to get to it you have to go up a set of poorly built wooden stairs that are rotted on one side.

  All of the apartment walls are painted a pale pink, and the rug is light green shag. Eddie's mother hates the suite, but Eddie likes it. It has a lot of windows, and there is a big chestnut tree at the back that's home to a family of fat grey squirrels.

  "I'm going to dig out my air rifle and blow those little assholes away," Eddie's father threatens. "Noisy little shits." But he never does.

  Eddie and Maya hide the dog in an abandoned storage shed to one side of the vacant lot. They clean his paw with hydrogen peroxide and bandage it with one of Maya's Sesame Street socks. They steal an old wooden box from behind the grocery store and line it with a sleeping bag for him to curl up in. For four days, they sneak him food and water. Maya sings him songs from all her favourite Disney movies while the little dog rests his head in her lap and closes his eyes. He quickly grows stronger, wagging his whole body when either of them arrives at the storage shed for a visit.

  When Eddie and Maya arrive home from visiting on the fifth day, their mother looks them straight in the eye and says, "Where have you hidden the dog?"

  "How did you know?" Eddie asks.

  "There are white hairs all over you. Where is it?"

  "He isn't an 'it'," Eddie argues. "He's a dog."

  "All right, then. Bring him home."

  They call him Chips because that is the little dog's favourite thing to eat.

  Soon, Chips becomes inseparable from Maya and Eddie. He waits for them while they are at school, lying on his ratty sleeping bag, but now in a warm spot in the kitchen. He follows them around from the minute they get home until they leave again the next morning. He takes turns sleeping with them on their beds, always curled up in a tight little ball in the little space behind their knees, not stirring unless they do. It is the first pet Eddie and Maya have ever had. Eddie calls him, his buddy, and Maya, her ray of sunshine.

  The dog isn't much to look at—he has bow legs and a wall eye—but he is smart. He knows enough to keep away from Eddie and Maya's father; if he doesn't, he will likely receive a kick from one of Mr. DuMont's boots.

  On weekends, Eddie and his sister put a leash on Chips and walk him through the city park not far from the apartment. Eddie loves this the best because there are lots of other people doing exactly the same thing. He imagines that this is what normal people do on the weekends: walk their dogs before heading home to do Saturday chores. Chores like washing windows and cars, grocery shopping, bathroom renovations, and driving kids to karate practices. But for Eddie and Maya, Saturdays are never like that. Mostly their mom stays in bed and their father hadn't returned home from wherever he went the previous night. Saturdays are all about going through coat pockets for spare change, and if Eddie finds enough, he can buy a Slurpie or a big bag of Doritos the and Maya can share on the way home from the park.

  It's a particularly bright Saturday in March. The daffodils are in bloom and most of the trees are covered in buds. Eddie and Maya set out with Chips earlier than usual before the stores are even open.

  Maya wants to go to the playground—she loves the swings, so they take a shortcut through the park's landscape maintenance yard to get to the Kiddie Park.

  "Push me, Eddie!" she pleads, pumping her legs furiously on her swing.

  Eddie ties Chips to the wire fence near the slide and gives him a dog biscuit. Then he runs over to the swings.

  "Higher!" Maya screeches. "HIGHER!"

  Eddie pushes her higher, and then higher still.

  "Give me an under duck!"

  One under duck turns into ten, until Eddie finally protests, saying his arms are sore and that he needs a rest.

  "Come on," he says. "Let's take Chips to the ball field for a while and throw sticks for him."

  But when they get to the fence, Chips is gone.

  They spend the better part of the day looking for him, but it is as though the little dog has vanished into thin air. They ask everyone they meet about if they have seen Chips but no one has spotted a bow-legged little white dog dragging a red leash. No one has heard any barking.

  When they eventually go home and tell their mother, she says, "Oh well, it's for the best. Dogs are a big responsibility. We were never the right family for that dog."

  Eddie's father doesn't say any
thing, but Eddie sees the self-satisfied smile.

  Maya cries herself to sleep. Eddie goes outside to sit by the chestnut tree, just in case. He stays out there until his parents finally switch off the TV and go to bed. He waits for a long time for Chips to come home, only Chips never does.

  The little dog was the one bright spot in their life, Eddie thinks, and he let him get away.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  JOURNAL ENTRY

  (June)

  "The older you get, the stronger the wind gets, and it's always in your face."

  - Pablo Picasso

  Great. Just great. I'm already in need of a case of friggin' Chapstick because of my wind-burned lips. Gimme a break, Pablo. You think that might be possible? You think? Or is this some kind of whack test that some of us have to take? To see if we possess strength of character or something? Well, I've had enough tests. And my nose has stayed clean. So, this last one? This last one when we're so close to the end? What's with that? What's the point? Or is that the point. Have I been deluded all this time, thinking I could get us out of this hellhole and into some kind of normal life? Is this the Universe's way of reminding me that that's never going to be the way it is? Okay. I get it. So, blow on, gale force wind. Send a freaking hurricane my way. And while you're at it, why not throw in a tsunami and a meteor strike, too. What the hell. Give 'er!

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  "Hey, stranger."

  Eddie is so fixated on the apple pie, that he doesn't notice the short, squat man standing just a few feet away. It's Randall. Jesus.

  Eddie looks over at the door of the women's washroom, hoping his sister does not come out.

  "Mind if I join you for a cup of coffee?" Randall asks.

  "I'm with someone," Eddie says.

  "Oh? Are you now? That pretty little blonde thing?" Randall raises his eyebrows and cups both of his palms in front of his chest. "Saw her earlier. Nice rack."