“I’m sorry, I really am. But I’m living on a shoestring.” He looked out the window and then directly at her. “It’s my birthday. This is the first time I’ve eaten at a restaurant in more than a month.”

  “Happy birthday. I’m not asking you for money, I’m asking if I can stay in your apartment for a few days.”

  “No, I … I don’t think I could do that.”

  “Why not? I just need a place to sleep, that’s all.”

  “No, I don’t think that would be a good idea …”

  “Yes, it is!” Chantal suddenly reached across the table and squeezed Tim’s hand. “It’s just a complete fluke that we ran into each other. I can be your birthday present!” She tightened her grip on his hand. “I’m not letting go until you say yes.”

  He jerked his hand away. “I said no!” Her fingernails had left white indentations in his flesh. He refused to look at her. Now he was pulling out his wallet.

  “Tell you what, I’ll treat you to breakfast.”

  “No thanks!” Chantal pulled a five-dollar bill out of her pocket and threw it on the table.

  Chapter 29

  Carlos finished telling Hector the story he called “The Jays and the Neon.” He peeked out the living-room window and saw that the dark-blue car was still parked in the same spot. But now both front tires were flat and there were several bullet holes in the windshield. There was something else he’d have to clean up, too: the dead bird caught in the branches of one of the plum trees lining the boulevard. He got a beer from the fridge and sat down on the sofa, tore apart the pads of steel wool he’d bought at the twenty-four-hour market, and repacked his pistol’s homemade silencer. It was still early, relatively speaking. Way too early to be up and at ’em. But if there was one single thing in the world that got his adrenalin pumping, it was gunfire and live targets. Going back to bed would be a waste of time, because he knew from slim past experience that he’d just lie there, tossing and turning, uncomfortable and unhappy. He’d take a nap in the afternoon, if he ran out of juice. Scratching his belly, he headed for the bathroom to take a leak, and a shower.

  The bathroom door was closed, and locked. He could hear water beating against the shower curtain. What in hell was going on? Hector never took a shower in the morning, unless he had to meet with his parole officer — but that had been last week. Carlos pounded on the door with his fist, but to no avail. He pressed his ear to the door. Hector was mauling a vaguely familiar tune. “Send in the Clowns.” Carlos pounded on the door again, but how could Hector hear him over the penetrating wail of his wretched voice? Hector was a goddam shower fiend. He wouldn’t come out of there until his skin started to pucker up like an albino prune.

  Carlos went into the kitchen and urinated copiously into the sink. He gave himself a discreet shake, tucked himself back in.

  Shuffling sideways along the counter, he grabbed the coffee pot and dumped the cold, black, bean-greasy contents into the sink. The filter and grounds went into the overflowing garbage. He filled the pot with cold water and fitted a clean filter into the machine. So far, so good. He pawed through the refrigerator and cupboards, top to bottom and back and forth.

  Fucking Hector! They were out of coffee, bread, milk, eggs, and grapefruit juice. Every last necessity he could think of. How was he supposed to get himself cranked when they were out of grapefruit juice?

  He filled the sink with hot water, got the last clean towel out of the hall closet, went back into the kitchen and washed his hair and body with Sunlight dish soap. The soap generated a lot more suds than he’d anticipated. He rinsed himself clean with potsful of water. It took a long time, because of the spillage. He finger-combed his hair and studied his reflection in the glass door of a kitchen cabinet. He liked the way he looked with a two-or three-day growth of beard. Tough, like a hockey player. That manly Mark Messier look.

  He ambushed Hector as he came out of the bathroom, snuck up behind him and flipped his soapy-wet towel over Hector’s head, at the same time driving his knee into his partner’s spine, knocking him off balance and down. He wrapped the towel around Hector’s empty head and dragged him kicking and gagging into the kitchen.

  “Leggo!” Hector tried to stand up, but the floor was wet and slippery, and he was helpless as a turtle on a frozen pond.

  Carlos said, “How do I like to start my morning, Hector?”

  “Get your foot off my head!”

  “Answer the question! How do I like to start my morning?”

  “Late?”

  “And then …?”

  “Fucked if I know.” Hector twisted sideways, got out from under Carlos’ foot, scrabbled across the floor and leaned against the refrigerator. “My neck hurts.”

  “Grapefruit juice, Hector. That’s how I like to start my day, with a glass of cold grapefruit juice.”

  Hector’s eyes brightened as the light went on inside his brain. He said, “If we’re outta groceries, whose fault is that?”

  “Okay, so I got a flamboyant personality. That’s why I put up with you, because you’re a responsible, clear-thinking type of guy. Situations like that, you’re expected to save me from myself.”

  But still, Hector had a point. Carlos helped him to his feet. “Tell you what, why don’t we go out for breakfast? My treat.”

  Hector thought it over, his brain working hard, chugging away as if on a steep grade. Where was the downside? Carlos was half Gila monster and half snake, all twitches and jumps and weird bends and curves …

  *

  Mom’s was busy, for Mom’s. Half a dozen seedy, down-and-out, doomed-to-be-a-loner-for-life types lurked in the gutted booths and at the grease-slick counter. Every last one of them looked as if he’d skipped out on a day pass as a consequence of a grievous bureaucratic error.

  Carlos and Hector sat at the prestigious booth next to the fire exit. Hector brushed a thousand flakes of Budweiser label off the table. Carlos lit a cigarette and flicked away the burning match. The black cook slammed a plate of bacon and eggs and hash browns down under the heat lamps, and punched the bell with his fist. A toilet flushed noisily. Mom snapped her suspenders hard when she spotted Carlos and Hector, but otherwise ignored them, in favour of forcibly evicting a wannabe vampire she noticed sucking ketchup straight from the bottle.

  She picked up the order of bacon and eggs and delivered them to a customer in a fly-specked window booth, veered towards Carlos and Hector’s table wielding a pair of ragged menus and an ice-cold smile.

  Carlos said, “How’s it goin’, Mom?”

  “As if you’d know what to do if I told you. Coffee?”

  “If that’s what you call it. Mona quit?”

  “No, she’s in the can, preening.”

  Hector shifted in his seat, moving tight up against the dingy wall so he had a clear view of the door to the women’s washroom. Mona came out with a tube of lipstick in one hand and a rat-tail comb in the other. Her mouth was the colour of a five-alarm fire and her shoulder-length platinum hair was a silvery, angelic halo that hung effortlessly above her, like a summertime cloud. Her hips strained the fabric of her tight black dress as she zigzagged up to the booth. She beamed at Carlos. Flakes of eyeshadow and pancake makeup rained down on the table. Her slim fingers disappeared into her hair and reappeared clutching a stubby pencil.

  “Ready to order, gents?”

  Carlos nodded. He said, “I couldn’t help notice you’re wearing an engagement ring.”

  “My other sweetheart gave it to me.” Her eyelashes were batting a thousand. She thrust out her hand. “Tell me that ain’t the biggest zirconium you ever did see.”

  Carlos looked away.

  Mona said, “Okay, so it ain’t a diamond. It’s the thought that counts.”

  “Think so, Mona? Try counting your thoughts. What d’you get? Zero, because a thought is nothing. A thought is only there for as long as you keep thinking about it. The second you stop thinking about it, it’s gone.”

  “I don’t follow you.”

  “Like they say, a kiss is just a kiss, but a zirconium is forever.” Carlos slid the menus across the table. “Me’n Hector both want the same thing — a double stack with blueberry compote, and I’ll have a large grapefruit juice, easy on the ice.”

  Carlos had dated Mona and had a mild crush on her, though he’d never have admitted it to anybody, especially himself. He’d been born in the Age of Commitment, and he’d been born too soon.

  The food arrived just inside the half-hour time span stipulated on the menu. Carlos and Hector ate quickly, in a moody silence. When Mona put the bill down on the table, Carlos pushed it towards Hector. He said, “He doesn’t get much — but he’ll get the bill.”

  Hector cocked a hip and slid out his wallet. He extracted a perfectly matched pair of crisp new American twenties, tossed the money on the table, and then leaned sharply back as Carlos let fly a roundhouse right that missed by inches.

  “You goddam moron!”

  “What’d I do?” But Hector knew, he knew.

  Carlos snatched up the twenties and shoved them deep into his pocket. He tossed some real money at Mona, told her to beat it, reached across the table and grabbed a handful of jacket and pulled Hector towards him, overturning glasses of cloudy water and syrup-smeared plates and overflowing ashtrays, a vase of dusty plastic flowers.

  “You got into one of Jake’s boxes, didn’t you?” Carlos’ close-set eyes were dark as thunderclouds, spiked with lightning. He gave Hector a spine-rattling shake. “How could you be so fuckin’ dumb?”

  “I only took a few bucks.” Hector was whining. He hated himself, but couldn’t stop. “I taped the box back up just like it was.”

  “Jake finds out what you done, he’ll cut us into pieces so small he could run us through a garden hose!”

  “Jake’s in intensive care. He’s got about as much juice left in him as a June bug celebrating the Fourth of July.”

  Carlos frowned. What the fuck did that mean? There was no point asking Hector, because he wouldn’t know. His head ached something fierce, and the sad truth was that he’d been so much happier scratching out a living breaking into parked cars. Ambition was a terrible thing. The higher you climbed the ladder, the farther you could fall.

  He said, “Got any more of Jake’s twenties on ya?”

  “A few.”

  Carlos sighed. “Hector, we work pretty good together, but when you screw up like this, it makes me wonder. Jake or Marty find out what you done, they’re gonna blame me, too. ’Cause we’re partners. That’s why you’re gonna put every last one of them twenties back where it belongs. Understand?”

  Hector nodded agreeably. It felt like a hurricane was playing with his heart. He’d heard that rumour about a guy being fed to Jake’s Rottweiler, Butch, but he’d never believed it was true. He imagined himself in bite-size chunks, being poured into Butch’s doggie dish. Those big teeth ripping into him, chewing him to a pulp.

  Should he mention he’d paid that hooker, Chantal, with Jake’s cash? No need. Hector decided that, if Jake somehow found out that Chantal had been paid with his bogus U.S. currency, he’d tell Jake it was Carlos’ fault. Jake would believe him, because Carlos was always running around telling anybody who’d listen that he was the brains of the outfit.

  Hector imagined dullard Carlos hanging from a sharp hook in Jake’s basement.

  Chapter 30

  Willows had skipped breakfast. His stomach had been complaining all morning long. Abbotsford was blessed with all the usual chain-restaurant suspects, but when he spotted a drive-in hamburger joint a block off the main road, he knew he’d found the right place to park his appetite. The place was called Fat Bob’s. An animated sign towering over the parking lot featured Bob opening his jaws wide to accommodate a monstrous cheeseburger that kept slipping away from him.

  Parker braced herself as the car hit a particularly deep pothole. The Fat Bob sign was in good working order, but the rest of the place looked pretty grim. A face briefly appeared in Fat Bob’s dusty window, then vanished. She said, “Are you sure you want to eat here, Jack?”

  “Takes me back.”

  “To what? The birthplace of ptomaine poisoning?”

  “No, my frivolous, wasted youth. Did I ever tell you about Marilyn?”

  “No, you were smart enough not to.”

  Willows parked under a covered walkway with enough angled slots to accommodate a dozen cars. He said, “Marilyn Weaver was the first girl I ever met who wore matching nail polish and lipstick. She had a beehive hairdo at least as big as Marge Simpson’s, and thoughtless blue eyes I thought were mysteriously unfathomable.”

  Fat Bob’s menu was painted on a sheet of plywood. The once-gaudy hamburgers and milkshakes had faded so badly they’d lost almost all their colour, but the prices, printed in black paint, were bright and sharp. Willows studied the menu for a few moments, decided on a cheeseburger and fries. And a chocolate shake, but he’d only drink half, because he was on an informal diet.

  “Anyway, Marilyn had a part-time job, Friday nights and weekends, carhop at the local A&W.”

  “Is that how you met her?”

  Willows nodded, remembering. “I’d worked all summer, spent every cent I earned on a second-hand ’56 Dodge. A straight six, blue and white, with whitewall tires.”

  “Thought you were pretty hot stuff, did you?”

  “At the time. You eating?”

  “No thanks. I’ll have a Diet Coke. In the can, unopened.”

  Willows turned on the headlights. Marilyn was a good-looking girl, but it was her snazzy A&W uniform that had really turned his crank. He’d gone out with her for two full years, and never understood one word in ten that she yelled at him. Not that she ever had any trouble making herself clear when that word was “no.” The relationship had ended the day of their high-school graduation ceremony. Willows went straight into first-year Arts; Marilyn trained to be a hairstylist. Within a year, she’d married a telephone repairman, and started producing babies. Or so Willows had been told.

  He was startled by a sharp tapping on his side window. He turned and damn near had a heart attack. The carhop was Marilyn Weaver, thirty-odd years older and fifty pounds heavier. Her cornflower-blue eyes had not been sullied by time — they were as vacant as they’d ever been. Her blond hair had some silver in it now, and roots black as Marilyn’s windowless basement rumpus room with the lights turned off.

  Her Fat Bob’s uniform had a name tag stitched on the breast pocket. The material was folded and rumpled by her posture, but he could make out an “M” and an “r.” He rolled down the car window, and forced a smile.

  She said, “Hi, what can I get you?” Her voice had been deepened by a lifetime of booze and cigarettes, but was hauntingly familiar. She dipped her head so she could see Parker.

  Parker smiled. “A Diet Coke, please. In the can, unopened, if you don’t mind.”

  “Diet Coke to go,” said the woman. She turned her attention to Willows, gazed quizzically down at him as she waited for his order.

  “I’ll have a cheeseburger, hold the pickle. Side of fries, a chocolate shake, and a coffee.”

  “That’s it?”

  “Side of onion rings,” said Willows. He could already feel his cholesterol level shooting up. But how often did a man get a chance to step backwards in time?

  “Bob’s making a fresh pot of coffee. Should be ready in a minute.” She gave her head a little sideways flick. “Cream and sugar?”

  “Just cream, please.”

  She waved her hand at his headlights as she walked away. He turned them off and rolled up his window against the damp.

  Parker said, “Think that’s her?”

  “Who?”

  “Marilyn. You should see the look on your face. Did you notice that her name’s stitched on her jacket?”

  “Not really,” said Willows unconvincingly.

  “‘Ma …’ something. I couldn’t see the rest of it.” Parker’s laugh was low and musical. “Wouldn’t it be something if that’s her? Are you sure you didn’t recognize her?”

  “It was a long time ago, Claire. But no, I didn’t recognize her.” Not that he was at all sure he would.

  “Wouldn’t it be a coincidence, though?”

  “Yes, it would, but I don’t have much faith in coincidences.”

  Parker was feeling mischievous, but let it go. She decided not to say another word, even if the woman’s name turned out to be Marilyn. But if it was, could she resist asking if her last name was Weaver? The answer to Parker’s question was written across Willows’ face. Marilyn had been his first true love, and that was something that she suspected nobody, man or woman, ever got completely over. If the carhop was Marilyn, it likely meant her marriage hadn’t worked out and her children couldn’t help her financially. Or wouldn’t. How sad.

  The glass door swung open and the woman came out carrying a brown plastic tray high over her shoulder. As she drew near she lowered the tray with a flourish, obscuring her name tag. Willows rolled down his window about halfway. The woman hooked the tray onto the glass, and told him his burger and fries would be ready in a few minutes. She said, “Did you want your milkshake extra thick or regular?”

  “Extra thick’s with more ice cream?”

  “You got it.”

  “Extra thick,” said Willows. He wanted to check out her breast pocket but was afraid she’d think he was ogling her, and so he maintained eye contact.

  She smiled and turned away, but not before he caught a quick glimpse of an “r.” How many names started with “Mar”? Only one that he could think of. He emptied a creamer into the coffee, stirred it with a plastic stick. She was about the right age, and the shape of her mouth was exactly as he remembered it. The odds were swiftly narrowing.

  Parker said, “Thirty years is a long time, isn’t it, Jack?”

  He nodded, and sipped his coffee. It was hot, but weak. Unlike Marilyn, who had been cold and strong.

  “Think that’s her?”

  “I doubt it.”

 

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