by Paul Slatter
It was the Merc, he thought, peeling off a piece of paint from the side of the hacked-up square.
Fuck me it was. But why on earth would he do that, he thought, unless the birdman was inside somehow? He pulled out his flashlight and took a closer look. It was possible. Maybe that’s what he was up to. He looked around, the inner tubes and chains still to one side, tools on the wall, other trucker stuff from when Archall was a hired gun trucking eighteen wheelers down to the states for his cousin. Till he’d lipped off to a cop early in the morning on the wrong side of the border and still had booze in him from sitting in a tittie bar and wasn’t allowed back.
That’s when he started hauling dope in his pickup until he had enough cash floating around to buy the Mercedes, not long after that, he took to driving Rasheed. There was a lot he’d found out about Diamond, but having talked to maybe a dozen people, the only common denominator Chendrill could find from them all was that the guy was thick.
But thick people still killed people—prisons were full of them and from what Chendrill could make out, Archall Diamond was soon to be in good company.
He moved to the door that connected the garage to the kitchen and gave it a try—open, good work Archall, nice security. He walked in though the kitchen, cocoa pops crunching under his feet, nothing to report. He went upstairs, looked in one bedroom, pictures on the wall of a pretty East Indian posing, leaning against a wall with her head tilted back. Then one of Archall showing off his tooth trying to look cool holding a rubber chicken.
He moved into the next room and saw the bed with its black sheets covered in money and maybe two hundred odd packets of pills. Chendrill picked a packet up and read the label that simply said, ‘Rock Solid’ saying out loud, “So, these are what all the fuss has been about.”
He slipped a pack in his pocket, then stared at the cash. He could do the same, take a couple of years off and see the world—him and Dan’s mother, pull her out of her nursing shoes for a bit and romance her. But thieving wasn’t his style—though if it was, he’d have done well. Pulling out a twenty from his pocket he dropped it down, adding it to the rest.
“There you go Diamond, go get your teeth fixed.”
And that’s exactly what Archall was trying to organise at that very same moment, standing in Dennis’ living room telling him his wisdom teeth were becoming troublesome. Dennis wondered what the fuck was going on, because the guy didn’t have any.
Archall saying, “Yeah I can’t concentrate when I got to do the math from the cash I bring in every night from my business.” Trying to sound cool.
Dennis wondered if he should scam the guy for a few grand and send him on his way, but instead told him the truth, “I don’t think the problem is with your wisdom teeth because, in fact, you don’t have any.”
Feeling stupid now but relieved the pliers could stay in the drawer, Archall instead said, “Yeah well I was really young when I had them out. You know, like when I was about six.” Dennis thinking the guy must be the only human to have teeth that grow in reverse, as at that age his babies were still planted firm, remembering the scar tissue at the back of his mouth and estimating that it could only have been sometime last year he’d had them removed.
He said, “Maybe there’s some other issue you need to deal with?”
There was, Archall thought; and in fact, it’s you. Alla wasn’t there for him to look at and give her the eye. As he made a mental note of the guy’s chest size so as he could get the right fitting inner tube to float him with, he said, “Yeah maybe I’ll see how it goes, if the wisdom teeth are out, I’ll see if they start getting better.”
Dennis said. “Your tooth is looking great.”
Archall grinned now loving it, saying, “Yeah, it already on YouTube.”
******
Dan laid in his bed and stared at the ceiling where the plaster was beginning to come away due to his mother’s new love interest. It was beginning to drive him crazy; he was, after all, a sex symbol, but it seemed his mum was still getting more than he ever would—even if he was still getting texts every hour from the most beautiful women in the world. Fuck it, he thought, he’ll take the car out and pretend he’d just been going fast and had to slow down because of the cops.
That’ll do it, maybe this time he could get laid—maybe.
Putting his t-shirt on back to front, he walked to the front door, slipped on a pair of his mother’s flip-flops, which were too small for him, and walked to the new Ferrari that Sebastian had kindly leased—and governed—for him.
It was almost eight in the evening now. He could cruise for a bit, see if that worked, give some chicks the eye, take them for a spin in the car and get stuck in traffic for a bit whilst he tried to get it on.
He hit Hastings, looking to the open road ahead, passing posters of himself looking like a fool; then, he checked his rear-view mirror to see the line-up of traffic beginning to build behind him, as cars that may very well have been driven by old ladies passed him on the inside. Seeing some girls, he slowed, pushed in the clutch and gave the engine a rev, the engine roaring like a true sports car—but going nowhere.
Looking at him, the girls began to stare, then point, covering their mouths in astonishment and then screaming. My God, it was beginning to work, he thought, it was indeed more fun than the bus. He carried on, saw other girls, two this time, and threw the clutch down, roaring the engine, girls staring, girls doing nothing.
He moved on, seeing no one for a bit except for a few women who looked like hookers. Then he kept his head down through the rough part, ignoring the chants and the cat calls from the crack heads on Main and carried on into town.
He hit the downtown core, revving it up as he had with Melissa when the car had run fine and he could tear off up the road, oblivious to the fact that no one cared. But now he knew it, could see it firsthand. Pulling over, he sat there in the car and turned on the radio, the sound system fantastic, the smell of the new leather still stinging in his nostrils.
And then he saw her walking along the street in her lovely dress and her perfect shoes, the way she walked, swaying her arms in time with her little backside—and not for a second looking at him or the Ferrari—as though she didn’t have a care in the world.
Getting out, he followed her, keeping a good distance back as she switched back and forth along the roads around Yaletown, passing Slave, stopping, coming back, looking at signs, then spotting the bar, quiet and reserved in amongst so many that were not. She walked on in.
Seconds later, Dan was inside also, sitting alone on a leather chair at a table opposite the girl who’d just found her friend, hearing her giggling about how she’d just been walking up and down for half an hour, her friend covering her mouth and holding the girl’s arm as she laughed. Dan watched the Canadian football on the TV screen above them, pretending to care about what was going on.
Then he ordered a beer, the girls noticing him now as he showed his ID, both of them laughing at his mum’s flip-flops. Dan smiling, not giving a shit. Then the girls, really laughing, still holding onto each other’s arms the way young women do in an innocent way, burying their heads into the upright of the leather seat, covering their eyes and peeking out at Dan. Dan stared back grinning. Then the friend asked him, “You that guy who wears the silver pants?”
Dan was about to say, ‘yes,’ as the girl carried on saying, “We hate that guy.” And laughing as she pretended to make herself vomit.
Dan smiled, not knowing what to do now, then trying to instigate a relationship with a lie and denying who he was, laughed and said, “Yeah—same here, I get that a lot. Imagine being me, walking around town seeing that guy up there all day, having people pointing and shit.”
They laughed again, this time through embarrassment though. The girl he’d followed said sorry, then carried on, “You do look like him though, your nose is broken in the same way.”
Dan smiled, saying, “Yeah thanks—lucky me.”
They laughed again, reall
y happy girly laughter, the type young girls can have until life slowly begins to beat it out of them. Looking to the one he’d stalked, Dan said, “Sorry.”
Then she leaned over and held out her hand and said, “You’re a really handsome guy though, even if you do look like Pantie Man.”
“Pantie Man!” Dan replied pointing to himself and staring at the girl’s legs. God she was nice, he thought, young and innocent, around his age and a million miles away from ‘Marshaa’ with all her glam and hair and entourage.
They carried on chatting as the night went on, Dan moving to their table, buying drinks and food with the small amount Sebastian allowed him from his newfound wealth, digging himself in deeper with the lies, telling them how he’d never eat McDonalds because it made him throw up. The girls unable to keep their eyes off him, staring at his feet, him at their tits.
They were from Victoria, on the Island, both studying history at Simon Fraser University in their first year, one with her own room on campus, the other in digs with friends. Dan was sharing his knowledge of Inuit tribal history on Baffin Island and on which Subway sandwiches give you heartburn, keeping quiet about the Ferrari parked outside and offering them a cab ride home when they said it was time to go.
They jumped in the cab, an East Indian in the driver’s seat, staring at the two brunettes in the back as they headed east, the girls still giggling, calling out ‘Pantie Man’ each time they passed a poster of Dan in his undies looking terrified. The driver joining in, trying to be part of the fun saying, “I hate him, I hate him.” Every time. The girl Dan had followed sitting next to him now with her head on his shoulder getting cozy.
They dropped off the other girl at her apartment, waved goodbye, and carried on up the hill towards campus. The night air was still and cool, wafting in from the front passenger side window. The girl silent, comfortable, breathing slowly, her finger unconsciously rubbing Dan’s knee, passing ‘Pantie Man’ and saying nothing now. Then after letting the driver know which block was hers, the cab pulled up outside and they sat there quietly, not wanting to move for a moment as she kept her head on Dan’s shoulder and said quietly, “I’ve never done this before, but I like you Dan and if—” she said, thinking out loud, weighing up the night and taking a breath. “If—you can remember my name, then you can come upstairs with me—okay?”
They sat in silence, the three of them, there in the cab, the driver with his turban in the front motionless now waiting, the girl with her head on Dan’s shoulder, Dan sitting there having heard her every word with his mind whipping back, recalling every bit of the conversation they’d had that evening and coming back a complete blank. One second passed, then two, then four, then six, and at ten she was off his shoulder, out the door, up a short flight of concrete steps, through another door, and gone. Then the cab driver spoke up, “You fucking idiot!”
Dan moved to the center of the cab’s rear bench as though that was going to bring her back as the cab driver looked at him in the rear-view mirror. He put the battery powered taxi in gear and pulled away, and said it again, “You fucking idiot!”
They turned a corner, Dan in silence watching the cab driver’s head shake from side to side as he glanced back at him in the darkness, saying, “She was beautiful—beautiful!”
Fuck, Dan thought as they drove back down the hill. Fuck! he thought, what the hell happened? He could read a book in fifteen minutes glancing at a page and recite it three years later, but he couldn’t remember one fucking name?
“You ask her her name?” the cabbie asked, staring at him now in the rear-view mirror as they pulled up at the bottom of the hill. He hadn’t, he thought, that was why—what an idiot he was. Then the taxi driver said to him, still mad as he shouted out and into his front screen as the orange campus lights bled through, lighting his off-white turban, “Always ask a girl her name—always ask a girl her name.”
Dan nodded his head, looking back at the cabbie as he pulled away from the lights. The guy looked familiar. He said, “Yeah I’m an idiot.”
Then he saw the field hockey stick propped up against the door in the front seat as he shifted positions in the back. No. It couldn’t be? he thought. The cab cruised along the main road heading back into town and the cabbie shouted at another forty-foot poster of Dan in Mazzi Hegan’s underpants as they went, “I hate that guy!”
He paused, and then said again, “I fucking hate that guy.”
It was him, Dan thought, the same cabbie he’d run from on the night he got busted at Mazzi Hegan’s pad. But that guy was older, much older, he thought, as he sank back more to the side of the cab, keeping out of the man’s line of sight. The guy trying to talk to him, adjusting his mirror as he went. Still saying, “That fucking guy, he run from me—he not pay. I kill him.”
Fuck, it was him, Dan thought. Jesus, he was having shitty luck. He hadn’t taken a cab since he’d run from this guy and the first one he steps into is his—and he was wearing his mum’s flip-flops.
They carried on along the empty dual carriage way, the man leaving him be for a moment, the engine off, the vehicle running on batteries. Then ahead Dan saw it, a green stoplight which was about to turn red, directly next to it at a bus stop a picture of Dan beautifully back lit with LEDs. Slowly the driver braked as the lights changed and the electric motor whirred to a stop.
The driver sat there staring at the poster six feet from his face, Dan sitting in the back, the driver adjusting his mirror, Dan scratching his forehead, the driver looking back at the poster, Dan’s picture in the poster looking back at him with his nose bleeding.
Suddenly, finally realizing just who he had in the back, the driver whipped his head around to see an empty seat and, through an open rear door, saw Dan running off across the road, jumping the central reservation in his mum’s flip-flops. Running as fast as they would take him, Dan headed along the road in the opposite direction, watching over his shoulder to see if the crazy hockey stick wielding cab driver had left his vehicle. Then he saw the cab moving, its reversing lights on and its yellow top shining brilliant under the street lights as it reversed up silently on battery power following him backwards, going the wrong way on the other side of the street—the cabbie alongside him and leaning out of his open window banging his field hockey stick on the door with only the concrete bollard there to stop him from cutting across and running him down. Dan looked up at the sky train tracks running above him and then to the station. The steps leading up to it were just some three hundred feet ahead, and a train in the distance was coming towards the station along the tracks held almost fifty feet in the air by monolithic concrete pillars.
He reached the steps, hearing the other motorists’ horns as they approached the out of control cab, forcing the crazed man to the side of the road. Dan raced up the steps and made it, hot and panting, to the platform just as the train pulled into the station and looked back to see the cabbie, in his turban, field hockey stick in hand, appear at the bottom of the steps and begin to climb, screaming, “Fuck you!—Fuck you!” as he did, stopping only once he reached the top and then speeding across the platform and jumping on the train—just making it as the doors shut.
Only Dan wasn’t on the train.
******
Dan watched from the alcove he’d snuck into as the train pulled out of sight, stepped out onto the platform, and took a deep breath. Fuck me, what a night. He knew from experience the next station was about a mile or so away and that Gandhi, realizing he’d been duped, would get off there and either be running back or on the next train. He had about five minutes.
He walked down the stairs and looked at the cab half on and half off the road with its lights still on. He walked across the road and looked in through the open driver’s window at the keys still in the ignition. He could steal it, he thought, drive it all the way back into town. But what was the point? It would only get worse; and in the end, Chendrill would get involved because somehow he’d find out and he’d get another black eye on top of the
one he already had, and then on and on the trouble would go.
But his legs were aching and so were his feet. It was getting late and he was all sweaty now and couldn’t be bothered to play hide and seek. Anyway, he didn’t ask for the guy to suddenly go nuts on him, so he opened the door and got in, pushed the seat back, started the cab up, slapped it into drive, and pulled back onto the Lougheed Highway heading back into town, ignoring anyone trying to flag him down as he went until he’d reached the city. When the coast was clear, he parked the Punjabi field hockey playing warrior’s cab right under a ‘Pantie Boy’ poster just for good measure.
He moved along the street, his mum’s flip-flops flapping with every step, and reached his Ferrari, pulled a parking ticket off the windscreen, balled it up and threw it onto the ground, beep bop beeped the doors unlocked and was about to get in when he heard a woman’s voice from behind say, “You always do that with your tickets, do you?”
As a matter of fact, he did, but what did she care. He turned around, a woman there now in a tight dress and heels, sexy as hell with short blonde hair. She said, handing him back the ticket, “If I was a cop, I’d ticket you.”
Dan replied quickly, “Lucky you’re not then.”
She said, “You’re that ‘BlueBoy’ guy, aren’t you?”
“Yeah, but the girls are calling me ‘Pantie boy’ now.”
“Really?” the woman said, then carried on asking, “I hear you’ve got a penthouse?”
Dan replied, “Who from?”
“Magazines.”
Dan said back, “Really?”
He looked at her titties, big and firm, bursting out of her dress. Watching him look, she smiled and said, “You like them, do you? I saw you pull up here earlier in your car before you shot off after that girl. You should have waited a moment because I’ve been fantasizing about you for weeks and you could have been having a sexy time with me all evening instead.”
Fuck me, Dan thought, just like that. The woman offering herself up to him on a plate. Then she said, “Well, you’re not going to have made me wait around here all night for you for nothing, are you?”
