Kickback and Other Stories

by Peter Sellers

  Deirdre smiled at me. “I care for Lisa a great deal,” she said. “Be nice.”

  We went up to Lisa’s room, which was large and bright, as I was to discover the next morning. The furnishings were sparse but comfortable, though one thing struck me as odd: there was no turntable, no radio, no cassette machine. Instead, Lisa had a TEAC reel-to-reel tape player. “I only have one tape,” she said, without any hint of apology. It was the Broadway soundtrack for Camelot. She played it whenever we were together there. It didn’t take long for me to get sick of “If Ever I Would Leave You”.

  I never learned how Deirdre came to own such a large and desirable house. Situated in mid-Toronto, the property was in a prime area, and values in the neighbourhood occasionally spurted upwards in waves of real estate inflation.

  In addition to renting out three of her spare rooms, Deirdre made a kind of living for herself, and for her boyfriend Bernard, through various enterprises. She worked part time at a yarn store and was forever knitting and crocheting. There were throws on every piece of furniture, and her tenants were frequently given pairs of woolen socks. She even gave a pair to me. No one had ever knit anything for me before, except maybe when I was a baby. I still have the socks, though I wear them only on special occasions.

  Lisa and I went downstairs for coffee the next morning, and that’s when I met Bernard. He glanced at Lisa and winked at me.

  “You get along okay with Bernard?” I asked as Lisa walked me to the bookstore.

  “Deirdre seems to like him,” she said.

  Lisa had a summer job working as a porter for Via Rail. It took her away from home on the Canadian, the passenger train that ran across the country to Vancouver and back. She worked the two-day leg of the journey from Toronto to Winnipeg. There, her crew exchanged places with the crew that had come to Winnipeg from Vancouver on the eastbound train, and she worked her way back home again.

  Having those days to myself was helpful. I caught up on sleep, went to hear live music with friends, drank beer on patios, and thought about what I might do with my life.

  “There’s something wrong with that tape player,” I said one night. “It doesn’t sound right.”

  “It sounds okay to me.”

  “No. It sounds like it’s mono.” I checked and, sure enough, one of the speakers was not working. “Something’s happened to this wire.” I held it up so she could see the problem. “Listen.” I squeezed the damaged parts of the wire together, and the sound became stereo, with Lancelot in one speaker and Guinevere in the other. When I let go again, one speaker fell silent. “I can fix that tomorrow if you want.”

  I brought the tools from home and picked up some speaker wire at the hardware store. It took only a few minutes to repair and Lisa was happy with the results.

  In addition to working in the yarn shop, Deirdre worked briefly as a waitress in a busy bar. This had been Bernard’s suggestion, but Deirdre’s nature made her unable to keep track of the orders, and the job did not last.

  Bernard also came up with the idea of stuffing envelopes for money. There were several companies that farmed out this tedious task. The job was piecework, paying a set amount for each thousand items Deirdre filled. She did most of the work, folding the contents, stuffing and sealing the envelopes. Bernard’s contribution was to buy her a moistener so she didn’t have to lick them.

  When the envelopes were filled and sealed, Bernard would have me drive him to the distribution centre, to bring in Deirdre’s completed quota, so he could get paid. He did not want to waste money on cab fare. He turned in the work, picked up the cash, then had me drive him to the beer store.

  On one of the drives, I asked him what he had done for a living before moving in with Deirdre. “I live by my wits, kid,” he said.

  I guessed that was why his living was so meager.

  Bernard was in the kitchen making ox-tail soup and drinking vodka. He held up the bottle. “You want some? I don’t like it much but it’s all there is.” He poured a shot for me, and I sipped it and grimaced. “Yeah, it’s a tough joint,” Bernard said and reached out to pour me some more.

  “Soup smells good,” I said.

  “Yeah. There’s not much to it, though. It’s all there is until she brings in some dough.”

  “Is Deirdre working today?”

  “She better be,” he said, and stirred the soup.

  For a short time, Deirdre worked in a supermarket, trying to get shoppers to sample a new kind of cracker. The days were long, and she was on her feet every minute. I was at the house when she came home from her second day.

  She sat on the sofa. “Can you be a dear and bring me a glass of wine?”

  “And grab me a beer while you’re at it,” Bernard said from his chair by the window.

  I handed them their drinks. When he took his, Bernard’s fingers touched mine. Deirdre said, “My feet are so sore.”

  “You’ll get used to it,” Bernard said.

  Two days later her legs started to swell, and she quit, bringing home several unopened boxes of crackers.

  “You’ll have to find something else,” Bernard said. “Quick, too. I have bills.”

  One of Bernard’s biggest expenses was dope. He smoked a lot, and for some reason his dealer let him run a tab. Between the two of them, they cooked up a scheme to offset some of what Bernard owed.

  “Bernard wants me to make some deliveries for him,” Deirdre explained one evening as she sat on the porch with Lisa and me.

  “Deliver what?”

  “Just some packages. I don’t know.” I had trouble believing how naïve she was. “I get paid cash.”

  “It’s probably not legal,” Lisa said.

  “I’m just delivering a couple of packages,” she said with a laugh. “There’s no harm in that. It’s like working for Purolator.”

  Bernard was drunk, so I went to pick up Deirdre from jail. It was two o’clock in the morning, and we had been wondering where she was. Since she had no record, and was not a threat to flee or to reoffend, she was released on her own recognizance. That was good, because none of us would have been able make bail for her. She was upset when I picked her up, but before we got back home she was laughing about it. “I was in this cell with some of the toughest women I’ve ever met,” she said. “I guess they’re used to getting picked up. Most of them seemed to know one another and the cops, too.” She shuddered. “Let’s go home and have a drink.”

  “We will if Bernard didn’t finish it all.”

  Bernard came home one afternoon with a window air conditioner. “No more sweaty nights.” He grinned at Deirdre. “Without a good reason.” He winked at me.

  “How much did that cost?” she asked.

  “Not much. I got it used from a buddy.”

  “How much?” she asked again, but he was already heading towards the stairs.

  Deirdre never got to the point of hooking on street corners. But she did take a job briefly in a body rub parlour. Before she started she was quite upbeat about it. “I’m good at giving massages,” she said. “I like to help people relax.”

  It was hard to tell whether she was joking or whether she really was ignorant of what the job entailed. If she did not know before she started, she discovered fast enough. She quit as soon as her first customer took off his pants. That’s what she told us, anyway, but Lisa said she’d come home with a lot of cash. Whatever had happened, Deirdre never went back.

  She had a dispute with Bernard that evening. I assumed it was about her decision. Their voices were raised through the door of their bedroom. I could hear them as I went up the stairs but could not make out much of what was being said until I neared the door. Then I clearly heard Deirdre say, “I will not do that again.”

  Bernard said nothing but there came a noise that I knew from my boxing days. It was the sound that comes out when you hit someone just right in the gut, making it really hard to breathe. It was abrupt and shocking and followed by a high-pitched gasping for air.


  “Everything okay in there?” I asked.

  “Just fine,” Bernard said. In the background, I could hear Deirdre regaining her wind.

  One evening, I was invited to a gathering of Deirdre’s friends. They all shared the same peripatetic background, and their conversation was interesting and touched on many mystical topics. I had little to add, being more pragmatic than they seemed to be. The highlight of the evening was a game called Past Lives. The lights were turned off and, one after another, we held a lighted candle under our chins. The flickering light cast intriguing shadows on our faces, and these were supposed to reveal who we had been in our previous lives. The candle flame was very warm. I was amused to be told that I had been a highwayman, a Centurion, or a monk. Perhaps all three.

  The odd light had a way of making everyone look sad. The moment that sticks in my head came when Bernard held the candle. There was a woman in the group who had been burned so badly in a house fire, over so much of her body, that she could no longer perspire. She was the only one who did not take a turn at holding the candle. When she looked at Bernard she said, “Stay away from the flame.”

  There was a large park a couple of blocks from Deirdre’s house. The park backed onto a ravine that was heavily wooded, with walking paths and trails cut through it. Lisa and I sometimes went to the park at night. It was quiet and, seated on one of the benches placed around the edges of the park with the slope of the ravine behind us, we had a lovely view of the city, much of which lay to the south, down a hill, and spread out towards the lake.

  One night as we sat in silence, holding hands, there was a sudden, intense rustling in the bushes behind us. At first, I thought it was a raccoon, but the noise grew louder and more frantic and started up at several points in the bushes to our right and left.

  All of a sudden, a man burst from the bushes in obvious panic. He tripped, staggered forward, and fell full length on the ground. Struggling to rise, he pitched forward again. He was panting loudly with distress or fear. He regained his feet and ran across the park.

  He had just started running when the mad rustling transformed into a steady stream of men emerging from the bushes. They came out urgently, pushing branches aside, looking around warily once free of the undergrowth. Some ran like the first man had, but most of them slowed once clear of the woods, and walked away with an effort at calmness. At first I thought that the large group of men were chasing the first man, who was running for his life. But later, in talking it over with Lisa, a more likely explanation occurred to me.

  That part of the valley was a well-known cruising spot. On weekend nights it was reported to be very busy. The cops must have done a sweep through the area, and all the men who were there were forced to flee. Since the cops would have been following the path, the best and quickest route out of the valley was up the hill, through the trees and bushes, and across the park.

  To Lisa’s and my great surprise, one of the first men to leave the bushes had been Bernard. If he had been a few seconds later, in the midst of a larger number, he might have passed unnoticed. But he was apart from anyone else as he walked by the right side of the bench, brushing at his clothes. He did not see us at first. At the last moment, he turned his gaze to his left, and our eyes met. He looked from me to Lisa and back. His first glance contained a plea, his second a warning.

  After the last man disappeared in the distance the park fell quiet again. “I think we should go home,” Lisa said. Neither of us mentioned Bernard.

  Two days later, as I sat on the porch waiting for Lisa, Bernard came up the stairs. He stopped beside me and said, “I was down there selling dope. That’s all.”

  “Cool,” I said. “Deirdre could use help with the bills, I reckon.”

  “That’s all I was doing,” he said. “I go down there to sell dope. And poppers. There’s no need to mention it to Deirdre. She doesn’t like me selling dope.”

  “I won’t say a word.”

  The slamming screen door told me he wasn’t happy. Then he came back with a beer for me, something he never did. I assumed it was a bribe.

  Deirdre decided to sell her house. She announced this one Sunday. The news seemed to come out of the blue, but I’m sure someone had given it long consideration. A real estate agent came through and said that, despite its rough condition, the house would command a good price because of its location. If some of the home’s shortcomings were fixed, the price would go up accordingly.

  “I don’t think Deirdre’s happy about selling the house,” Lisa said. “She loves this place. It’s her security.”

  “She seems cheery enough about it.”

  “She’s always like that around people she doesn’t know that well. But she told my mom that she doesn’t want to sell.”

  “I hope she wasn’t expecting your mom to keep that a secret.”

  “Not a chance. She knows that mom can’t keep anything to herself.”

  “So why’s she selling? Does she need the money that badly?”

  “She may not, but I think Bernard might.”

  “The other question is, how come she wants you to know but went through your mother to get you the message?”

  I had never seen Bernard do any maintenance around the house. As far as I knew, he hadn’t done much more than dry a dish in the months I’d been seeing Lisa. So it was surprising to find him sitting on the living room floor, cutting a small rectangular hole in the wall, just above the baseboard. The wall was plaster and lath, and he was creating a fair amount of dust, hacking away with a hand-held keyhole saw. It was obvious from his technique that he was not handy.

  There were a few new electrical outlets, boxes, and cover plates on the floor beside him.

  “You know how to wire those in?” I asked.

  “That doesn’t matter,” he said. “There’s no need.” He went back to work as if everything was now perfectly clear.

  “What do you mean?”

  “The real estate agent said there aren’t enough outlets in the house, so I’m putting more in. That way we’ll get more money for the place.” He looked up and grinned. “They said they wanted outlets. They didn’t say they had to work.”

  “What happens if someone tries one?”

  “Let’s just hope that doesn’t happen.” He started whistling, which told me our conversation was over.

  The real estate agent was right about the outlets. Some rooms had only one. Webs of extension cords ran across the floors, and sometimes under carpets, which I knew was not safe. Several cords would feed off a single outlet, using as many as two multi-plug adapters. I couldn’t imagine how Bernard could possibly think he’d get away with his scheme. Deirdre must have known about it, too. Given her nature, though, it probably seemed to her like a sensible idea.

  I was sitting at the window in a pub across the street from the park one evening when I saw Bernard walking by. His movements were furtive. He looked around repeatedly, although he did not see me in the dimly lit bar. Then he turned the corner and disappeared into the park.

  Maybe he was going to sell dope, but I doubted it. It didn’t matter to me one way or the other, but I wondered what Deirdre would think. What would Lisa think, for that matter? She was already deeply concerned that Deirdre was being coerced into selling.

  “I saw Bernard going into the park again,” I said to Lisa later that evening.

  “Do you think Deirdre knows he’s selling drugs down there?”

  That made me laugh. “Whatever he’s doing down there, he’s not selling dope. I’ll give you odds on that.”

  “What makes you so sure?”

  “Just a hunch. Plus the fact that he’s a perpetual liar. Plus the way he looks at me sometimes. Plus the fact that he’s always broke. Other than that, no reason.”

  Deirdre was more distracted than usual these days, which I figured had to do with the sale. She alternated between unhappiness that she had to sell at all, and worry that the place might not fetch enough money. There were a few showings in the fi
rst week, but no offers. On the plus side, no one tried any of Bernard’s fake outlets. But that could happen any day.

  Fortunately, I hit upon an easy solution. My dad had taught me how to rewire lamps and to install dimmer switches. Running some wire off an existing, working outlet would be a piece of cake. Plus, I had a bunch of speaker wire left over that might as well be put to good use. It wasn’t up to the building code, but it only had to work briefly. I liked Deirdre and did not want things to backfire on her.

  I did the work on a hot afternoon when the house was empty. Lisa was on her way back from Winnipeg. Deirdre was trying her luck reading Tarot cards at a table Bernard had set up for her on Queen Street West. Bernard was somewhere in a bar, waiting for her to bring him money.

  I went to the fuse box in the basement. It took me a while to find the right fuses. The rooms they affected were not indicated in any way. Working alone, I had to take out a fuse then run up stairs to see if the lights were still on in the living room or the master bedroom. If they were, I had to go back to the furnace room and try a different fuse. On the third attempt, I found the right one for the living room.

  By fluke there was an outlet on the other side of the wall from the spot that Bernard had chosen for his phony outlet. I set to work. It was hard connecting the wires in the confined space between the walls, and I lost my temper a couple of times, but I took a few deep breaths and managed to get it done in a reasonable amount of time.

  I followed the same procedure with the outlet that Bernard had put in the master bedroom. I had to fish the wire about two feet along the space between the walls, which I did using a straightened coat hanger. Other than that it was an easy enough job.

  I was going to do more but did not want to push my luck. Time was running out. I tested both outlets with a lamp into which I put a 20-watt bulb. Both worked fine. I did not leave anything plugged in to either outlet.

  I was on the porch with a beer when Bernard came home. He was already drunk.

  “What a day,” he said. “You got one of those for me?”