by Karina Halle
For some reason it bothers me to hear him talk about Alyssa that way.
Remember, you’re her supposed boyfriend. You should be bothered.
“That’s none of your business,” I tell him. “But yes, everything about her is real.”
Well, everything except our relationship.
“So refreshing to see a man like you find a nice, normal girl,” Yvonne, our wardrobe girl says as she adjusts the tie on the black suit I’m wearing for the scene. “Gives the rest of us hope.”
“Yeah,” Tina says with a dreamy sigh. “And to think you met at a wedding. It’s just so romantic. She must feel like she’s in a fairy-tale dating you.”
Or a nightmare. It’s hard to tell with her sometimes.
When the scene is over, fifty million takes later and all Julian’s fault, not mine, I get in my car and leave the studios. It’s too late to go and find Alyssa and I feel like she was pretty serious about having her three nights a week to herself, so I head downtown.
But I don’t go to Gastown or Coal Harbor or Yaletown for a drink or a bite to eat. Instead, I park my car in a secure parking garage off Hastings, grab the plastic bag beside me, put a baseball cap on my head, and head out onto the street.
If you’ve never been to Vancouver’s downtown east side, consider yourself lucky. And maybe a bit naïve. The city is known around the world as being one of the best places to live thanks to the gorgeous scenery and healthy living and it being Canada, of course. But aside from the outrageous expense, Vancouver has a dark and dirty secret that most citizens turn a blind eye to.
Homelessness and drug addiction rules the east side of downtown, so much that you can’t walk down those streets without seeing something horrible. Hundreds of junkies wander about, sleep outside doorways, try and sell DVDs, yell and scream at nothing or shoot heroin right in front of you. The police can’t handle it, the province and their non-existent health care sources can’t handle it. So it’s just this lawless town where people are dead and dying, a sort of limbo leaning towards Hell.
I grew up down here. I lived at the top floor of a flea-ridden apartment, the hallways filled with addicts trying to find shelter for the night. My mother did the best she could for me even as her addiction worsened. By the time I was ten, I was pretty much fending for myself while she tried to wean herself off her medicine.
I was ten years old when she just took too much. She became another statistic, one of the hundreds of souls who die each and every month on these streets, alone and undocumented. If it wasn’t for me, no one would have even noticed or known her name.
But for my shitty upbringing, one I try so hard to bury, one that’s impossible to escape, I harbor no hard feelings toward my mother. Despite her addiction, she did everything she could to provide the best life she could for me. I never went hungry, I always had a bed. I was able to go to school with other kids who had lives just like me. On her best and brightest days we would escape the east side and walk just a few blocks over to where the scenery changes and Chinatown begins. We’d explore strange shops and she’d pretend she spoke Cantonese. I could never quite figure out if the merchants understood her or not.
And through it all, my mother always had a back-up plan. I think she knew, deep down, that she’d die from the drugs one day, which is why she arranged for her estranged-sister to be my guardian. She needed to know that I would be okay in the end.
Little did she know that I had actually preferred living with my comatose but loving mother in the zombie-like slums compared to the cold, Christian prison of my aunt. But life isn’t something you can plan. You can only hope for the best.
“Hey man, can you spare a quarter?” a toothless man asks me. His face is caved in, covered in sores. Maybe meth, maybe carfentanil or whatever opioid of the month is killing people in the alleyways. Either way, though his voice sounds young, his face is halfway to dying and I have no idea his age.
I reach into the plastic bag and pull out an energy bar I had gotten from craft services on set. “I can spare you this.”
“Nah man, I need a quarter,” he says and when he sees I’m not budging, he takes the bar. I watch him, curious, and see him shuffle down the street before trying to sell it to another junkie for a dollar.
I’m not surprised. I never give them money because they only want it for one thing and as often as I do bring food from the set, occasionally buying someone in need a burger from McDonalds down the road, it can be hard to find people who are seriously hungry. Usually their only hunger is for drugs.
But there’s always Jimmy. Jimmy’s been part of my life for as long as I can remember and by some kind of luck, he’s never been addicted to the hard stuff. That’s not to say he’s perfect. He’s a drunk, through and through. But he’s a good man and even as he’s pushing into his seventies, he’s still living in the same apartment in my old building, with a job working at the homeless shelter and soup kitchen.
I tuck down the brim of my baseball cap by habit, even though no one would ever recognize me here, and then head into the apartment. I step over a man passed out on the stairs, cover my mouth with my sleeve to block out the smells of urine, vomit and shit, and head up to Jimmy’s apartment.
I knock on his door, even though it’s partially open, and wait a long minute before I step inside.
This is the moment I fear. The idea that I might step in here and find him dead. It only gets worse as time goes on, that I’ll have to deal with the same situation I found my mother in.
But this time, Jimmy is snoring loudly on the sagging couch in the living room. I take the moment to put the plastic bag on the counter and put some of the food away before slipping on a pair of rubber gloves and cleaning his apartment the best I can.
I do this about once every two weeks, more if I can get away from work. I know it sounds strange but there are times when I look up to Jimmy as if he’s my father. My actual father left when I was two years old, which then turned my mom onto drugs, but growing up Jimmy was really the only face that was always around. Sometimes it feels like he’s my only real friend. That’s not to say Will isn’t. But even though Will knows bits and pieces of my childhood, he doesn’t really understand. How could he? How could anyone know what it’s like to grow up in a true house of horrors, surrounded by the stench of death and depravity at every turn.
But Jimmy knows. He understands. And he doesn’t judge. With him, I can just be me. I can let it all out, all the hurt and the fear and the anger that still lingers in me. The kind of stuff that even my therapist couldn’t coax out.
“Hey, Tetty,” Jimmy says, stirring from the couch. “What time is it, Tetty?”
Tetty has always been my nickname. He wouldn’t call me Em because he says it sounded too much like my mother’s name (Emily), so Tetty it was.
“It’s late,” I tell him. “You can go back to sleep, I’m almost done.”
“You love me and leave me, don’t you boy?” he says and after a feeble attempt to get off the couch, he lies back down again. “You didn’t happen to bring me anything to drink, did ya?”
From the way he’s slurring his words, I can tell he’s been on another bender. He normally isn’t so bold as to ask me, either. I’m not an enabler.
“Just fruit juice,” I tell him. “And food. Please tell me that you’re still keeping your job.” I know he doesn’t actually need the job to survive. The government only gives him a couple of hundred a month for welfare but I’ve secretly been paying his rent here for the last fifteen years. If it weren’t for me, he would have been homeless a long time ago.
And yet, that’s the extent of what I can do for him. I can bring him food, give him shelter, but I can’t get him to stop drinking. I can’t make him go to work. I can’t make sure he’s brushing his teeth and eating right and taking care of himself. Which makes me both direly needed and absolutely useless.
“Fruit juice?” he says, grumbling. “Ah hell, I guess it will mix well.”
I close my eyes and lean aga
inst the counter, taking in a deep breath that smells mercifully like the bleach I just used to clean his place. “Jimmy, promise me that you’re going to pick yourself back up tomorrow and go to work. They need you there.”
“Bah,” he says, turning over on the couch so his face is in the cushions. “No one needs me and I don’t need them. I don’t need you either, Tetty, so get your fancy suit out of here and leave.”
I glance down at my dirty jeans and t-shirt and Timberland boots and nod. When he gets abrasive like this, there’s no reasoning with him. “I’ll come back soon,” I tell him. “Might even pop in at your work and see you there.”
He mumbles something in response and as I turn toward the door, he starts snoring.
I leave his place feeling dirtier than when I came in, with the same damn thoughts as ever bouncing around in my head.
I tried.
But it’s never enough.
It’s Saturday morning, bright and early, when I swing by Alyssa’s to pick her up. I saw her briefly on Thursday night when I took her for a quick dinner at Gotham steakhouse, but today we have the whole day together and Autumn said that some fun outdoor date would really help my image. I guess too many nights spent at the bar paint a different picture.
When Alyssa emerges from her apartment I can’t help but smile.
Fucking hell. In the week that I’ve known Alyssa, I’ve seen the overly-done bridesmaids version, the hungover in her pajamas version, the dressy summer version, the date night version, but I think my favorite version of her is this one: working out Alyssa.
She’s dressed in purple running tights, bright pink running shoes, and a tight yellow top that puts her breasts front and center. I guess to the average person, her outfit might totally clash but I love the colors on her. They’re a perfect representation of who she is, bold, fun and sexy as hell.
She slides in the passenger seat and glances at me over her shades.
“You know, I didn’t think we were actually going for a run,” she says slowly. She eyes me up and down, her nose crinkling in disdain. I’m in a wife-beater, mid-thigh running shorts, sneakers, set up for a run just as she is.
“I’m actually more of a trail runner,” I admit. “Have you done that before?”
She laughs. “Trail running? My god. I walk on trails, Emmett. I don’t run on them. I don’t even run on pavement. Or treadmills. I only run to the bar when they’re giving last call.”
“Well, I hate to break it to you but we’re going to be going around Stanley Park today.” I wait until she’s buckled in before I drive off.
“You’ve got to be kidding me, that’s like…ten kilometers.”
“We can walk most of it.”
“It’s still ten K! I don’t know what kind of girls you’re used to dating but I do not go on jogging dates and I certainly don’t spend hours walking. In a circle, mind you.”
“And yet here you are, dressed like you do it all the time.” While we pause at a light, I lean in closer to inspect her clothing. They do look brand new. “In fact, I have a feeling you just bought all this just to impress me.”
“Phhfff,” she says, waving me away. “You think everything revolves around you. I’m trying to impress the damn paparazzi.”
“By wearing the most-mismatched outfit in the city?”
She shrugs. “Why not? Damned if you do, damned if you don’t. Might as well go all out.” Her eyes trail over my arms and chest. “Besides, you’re doing the same. Yeah right you would normally go running in that.”
“This old thing?” I ask, pulling at the wife-beater.
“Yeah. Also brand new. You’re just trying to show off your muscles.”
She’s got me on that one. “Hey, I have a lady here I’m trying hard to impress. Problem is, even if she was impressed, she’d never tell me.”
“She sounds prickly. You better tread carefully with her.”
“The only time I can get any sort of reaction out of her is when I’m kissing her. Then it’s like she forgets how to breathe, she can only moan my name in response.”
That gets her attention. Even though I can’t see her eyes beneath her glasses, I can feel them burn. “Maybe she’s as good of an actor as you are.”
In this instance, I hope that’s not true.
Still, I flash her a smile. “Maybe.”
It takes a long time to find a free parking spot in downtown’s West End, closest to the park, and by the time we get out and are ready to go, Alyssa is already complaining about shin splints.
“But we’ve been jogging for one minute,” I tell her as we negotiate the crowded path along the seawall.
“For the last time,” she says with a scowl, her blonde ponytail swinging in her face in time with her steps, “I don’t run. I don’t jog. And if this keeps up, I’m going to have a coronary.” She puts her hand at her heart for added effect.
I bite back a laugh. “Fine. Let’s just go around Lost Lagoon then and come back.”
Lost Lagoon is a small lake situated just outside of downtown and one of the more popular places to take a stroll. With a fountain in the middle, weeping willows that hang over the water with swans that glide to and fro and the glass high-rises of the city rising into the sky behind it all, it’s an urban oasis.
It’s also the perfect place to be seen if that’s what you’re looking for, the path filled with tourists and locals alike. Every now and then as we jog past, Alyssa huffing and puffing beside me, someone takes our picture or records us.
When we complete the loop around the lake, we decide to explore some of the trails leading off of it until Alyssa insists on having a break.
“Are you okay?” I ask her, hand on her back as she’s leaning over and breathing hard. Luckily we’re in a forested nook by the lagoon with plenty of privacy, if you don’t count the rustling in the bushes. I’m assuming it’s from raccoons and not the paps.
She looks up at me, sweaty and red-faced and nods. “Yes. Just. Trying. To. Survive.”
“I can’t believe I didn’t bring any water, I don’t know what I was thinking,” I tell her. I’m fit as fuck thanks to my role, which has me working out harder than anyone should, but even so I rarely go trail-running without at least a Camel-Pak. “We’ll just walk from now on.”
“How about you just drag me along, that’s much better,” she says, taking in a deep breath and straightening up. “Jeez. I have extra admiration for those muscles of yours now.” She gestures to them half-heartedly. “How many times did you almost die in order to get them?”
“Enough,” I tell her. “But I was on the swim team in high school, so it’s kind of ingrained in me.”
A lazy smile teases her lips. “A swimmer. I can tell. No one can naturally have that chest and those shoulders.”
I can’t help but grin at the compliments. “How rare it is for you to say something nice. I must take you jogging more often, you’re totally delirious.”
She laughs. “Yeah, well, I call it as I see it. Your face and body are as gorgeous as they get. Too bad your personality doesn’t match.”
“Ha, ha,” I say dryly. “Are you feeling better? On second thought, I’m not sure I should be in the woods with you at all, you might just off me when you catch your breath.”
She shakes her head, smiling, and looks away. Then her face freezes in shock.
I turn to see what she’s looking at.
It’s a raccoon.
A three-legged raccoon to be more specific, looking up at us from the edge of the bush with big eyes.
“Oh my god,” she says in a panicked whisper. “We should go. Now.”
“Why? It’s just Cyril Sneer.”
She looks at me in confusion, her face scrunched comically. “Who?”
I gesture to the raccoon. “Cyril Sneer. You’re not a real Canadian unless you’ve seen the cartoon The Raccoons. Actually, you’re probably too young.”
She takes a step closer to me, her eyes fixed on the raccoon again. “I’ve
seen the show. But Cyril Sneer isn’t a raccoon.”
“Sure he is,” I tell her. “And this is Cyril. He’s the three-legged raccoon of Lost Lagoon. Hey. That rhymes.”
“Uh huh. So you personally know this raccoon?”
I crouch down so that I’m at eye-level with him. Cyril takes a few awkward steps closer and tilts his head, eying me. “Sure do. He’s friendly. I always feed him.”
I stick my hand into shorts and bring out a small piece of beef jerky I was eating in the car earlier. I’m about to give it to him, knowing he’ll come over and take it from me with his little human-like paws when I stick my hand up and give it to Alyssa.
“What is this?” she asks, peering at it.
“Beef jerky. He’ll love it. Give it to him.”
She raises her arm, about to throw it.
“No, feed him by hand.”
She shakes her head. “I’ve had bad experiences with raccoons.”
“But you’ve never met Cyril Sneer before.”
“Emmett, for the last time, Cyril Sneer isn’t a raccoon,” she says, not breaking focus with the animal. “He was a pink aardvark on the show, and the raccoons’ enemy. If you’re going to name a three-legged raccoon after an iconic cartoon character, at least get the character right.”
I’m trying to think if she’s right or not. I remember the show’s villain being a pink animal…
But as I’m pondering the names of the raccoons on the cartoon, Cyril is coming towards Alyssa.
“Give him the food,” I tell her.
But Alyssa just grasps the jerky to her chest, totally frozen on the spot.
And Cyril is picking up speed, wobbling on three legs toward her, a crazy bloodlust in his eyes.
“Alyssa, throw it!”
“Ahhhhh,” she yells as Cyril somehow leaps up into the air and starts clawing up Alyssa’s body.
“Holy shit!” I jump up to my feet as Cyril claws at her bare arms and chest, trying to get to the jerky. What the fuck do I do?
“Ahhhhhhh!’ she keeps screaming, trying to turn around. “Get it off, get if off, get it off!”
I look around for the nearest branch even though hitting a three-legged raccoon seems kind of cruel. Then again, I can’t just let it mob her like this, what kind of man would I be?