The Fixes

by Owen Matthews

  Jordan cocks his head. “The fuck if I know. Out on a Tinder date, probably.” He glances over. Smirks. “Why? You wishing she was here?”

  (No, Eric thinks. Exactly the opposite, actually.)

  “This isn’t for the girls,” Jordan says. “Not yet. This is just you and me, E.”

  122.

  They drive up the mountain and take the highway on-ramp. Jordan puts his foot down, and the BMW’s V-8 roars. It plasters Eric against his seat, and he can’t help but smile as the car rockets forward, merges into traffic. Jordan slaloms around slower cars like they’re pylons.

  “Where are we going?” Eric asks, but Jordan’s rapping along to some Drake song on the radio and doesn’t answer. Eric’s about to ask again, but then he notices the GoPro mounted on the dash.

  “Dash cam,” Jordan says when he catches E looking. “Drivers around here, you can’t be too careful.”

  They take the highway east out of Capilano, swoop down across Memorial Bridge and into the suburbs. Jordan slows the BMW, takes the next exit, and bam, they’re in Studio City, back lots and soundstages everywhere. Jordan navigates around a couple of equipment trucks, a few camera cars, and a trailer full of porta potties. He parks the BMW behind a long row of soundstages. The place is deserted.

  “I wanted this to be a surprise,” Jordan tells Eric, “but I can’t do it by myself. Anyway, after what happened at The Room, I know I can trust you.”

  “Right,” Eric says. “So this isn’t for an internship, then?”

  Jordan points out the window. “There’s my dad’s guy,” he says. “Just follow my lead, okay?”

  Eric looks out through the windshield as a pickup truck approaches. “Sure,” he says. “I mean, fine.”

  123.

  Jordan’s dad’s friend is some shaggy-haired old guy in camouflage cargo pants and a black tactical vest. He says his name is Mike, and he looks Jordan up and down as they shake hands. “You Harrison Grant’s kid?”

  “That’s my name,” Jordan sighs. “Harrison Grant’s kid.”

  Then Mike looks at Eric. He doesn’t look like he’s sizing Eric up for an internship position. “Who’s this?”

  “This is E,” Jordan tells him. “He’s a filmmaker.”

  Eric blinks.

  (Follow my lead.)

  “Yeah,” he says. “I, uh, make movies.”

  Mike looks at Eric like he doesn’t believe it. Eric holds his stare and tries to look, you know, artistic. Finally, Mike shrugs. “So what do you guys need?”

  “That’s what we wanted to talk to you about,” Jordan says. “Mainly, we just need to blow something up.”

  Eric tries to hold his poker face.

  (What?!)

  “How big?” Mike asks.

  “Big. You’re the demolitions guy, right? You can help us?”

  Mike hesitates. Chews his lip. “Basically, you got a couple of choices. Obviously, you already know about nitro and TNT and dynamite. All have their pros and cons.”

  “What about fertilizer?” Jordan says. “That’s what all those terrorists use, right?”

  “You mean ammonium nitrate. Yeah, that’s an option. You go that route, you’re going to need a booster, like dynamite, anyway, so unless you’re planning to build a bomb in a U-Haul truck, I would steer clear.”

  Mike looks at Jordan like he’s joking. Jordan doesn’t smile back. “Okay. No fertilizer this time.”

  “No fertilizer. That’s a start.”

  “We’re looking for something compact,” Jordan says. “This is a little, you know, top secret. Guerrilla filmmaking, you know?”

  “Sure.” Mike looks at Eric, who nods along, like he has a single remote clue what’s going on here.

  “We were going to do it in CGI,” Jordan says, “but we want that authenticity.”

  “Fucking right,” Mike says, nodding. “If you want compact, you could always go with gunpowder. It doesn’t detonate so much as deflagrate, but if you keep it in a confined environment, build the pressure, you can get a hell of a bang.”

  “A confined environment.”

  “Like a pipe bomb. The more pressure, the bigger the bang.”

  Jordan grins at Eric. “That sounds like exactly what we’re looking for.” He reaches into his pocket and pulls out a wad of cash. Peels off ten fifties. “So can you hook us up?” he asks Mike.

  Mike looks at the cash. Hesitates. “You kids aren’t planning anything dangerous, are you?”

  “Hell no,” Jordan says.

  Mike looks at Eric again.

  “Hell no,” Eric says.

  124.

  “What are we planning?” Eric asks Jordan.

  They’re back in the BMW, driving over the bridge and out of the suburbs and back toward Capilano.

  Jordan pulls out to pass a slow-moving tractor trailer. “I would have thought that was obvious, E,” he says. “We’re building a bomb. We’re planning to blow shit up.”

  “I mean, duh. But what, exactly?”

  “I haven’t decided yet,” Jordan says. “Anyway, I don’t think I can make it work in time for my next Fix. So it’s going to have to wait awhile.”

  Eric doesn’t say anything. He’s thinking about the ramifications of setting off a bomb in Capilano.

  He’s thinking about what it will do for his FUTURE.

  Jordan looks over. “Look, we’re not going to start planting bombs in, like, the hockey arena, okay? Nobody’s going to get hurt. I just thought it might be cool to blow something up. Can you get down with it?”

  He looks over again, stares at E, steadfast, as they speed down the highway.

  (As they speed toward an uncertain FUTURE.)

  (Duh duh duh.)

  Eric blinks first.

  “Shit,” he says. “Yeah, Jordan, fine, I’m with you. Just concentrate on the fucking road, okay?”

  Jordan laughs. Steers the BMW back into his lane. “Excellent,” he says. “This is going to be rad.”

  125.

  So there. There’s the bomb.

  (You knew it was coming.)

  And honestly, if Eric had any sense, he would probably be questioning this a little more. But Eric isn’t really thinking about the bomb right now.

  Right now, Eric’s thinking about how he’s alone in a car with Jordan Grant.

  Paige isn’t here. Haley isn’t here.

  It’s just Jordan and Eric.

  So you can forgive Eric if he’s a little, you know, distracted.

  126.

  They pull up in front of Eric’s house. Jordan kills the engine, and Eric knows this is the part where he’s supposed to open the door and walk away, but he doesn’t.

  He doesn’t move.

  (He holds on to the Moment.)

  Eric can see his dad’s car in the driveway. He’s dreading going inside. Dreading dealing with his dad’s bullshit, dreading having to look some more for another internship.

  (He’s dreading going down to that lonely basement bedroom and thinking about making out with Jordan Grant all night. Thinking about wasting their precious moments alone.)

  Eric opens his mouth to say something. He doesn’t know what, exactly, but it’s now or never. Make your move. Be assertive. Take action.

  (BUILD a FOUNDATION for YOUR FUTURE.)

  Before Eric can speak, though, Jordan snaps his fingers. “Oh,” he says. “Shit. Right. The internship thing; I almost forgot.”

  Eric blinks. He did forget. “The internship thing. Right.”

  “The subtext to our meeting. The only thing I could think of to get you out of the house.”

  “So there’s no gig?” E says. “This was all just . . . subtext?”

  Jordan shakes his head. “No, there’s a gig.” He pulls a slip of paper from his cup holder. “Call this number. Ask for Liam. He’ll hook you up.”

  Eric takes the paper. Jordan starts his engine.

  The Moment is gone.

  127.

  The next morning, Eric calls the numbe
r Jordan gave him. Liam.

  “I’m Jordan’s friend,” he says. “Jordan said to give you a call about, I dunno, an internship or whatever?”

  Liam clears his throat. “Right. Yeah.” Ringing phones in the background. Voices. A siren. “What’s your name again?”

  “E,” Eric says.

  “E?”

  “I mean, Eric. Eric Connelly.” Awkward pause. “So do you think you have anything? I’m kind of desperate.”

  “Eric Connelly,” Liam says, like he’s writing it down. “Great. You’re all set.”

  “Perfect,” Eric says. “But where are you actually located? Jordan wasn’t clear on the details.”

  There’s a pause. More voices. The sirens get louder. Liam comes back. “Pardon?”

  “What’s your address?”

  “Two seventy-nine Hastings,” Liam says. “Railtown Health Center.” Angry voices. Banging and crashing. “Look, I gotta go, okay?”

  “Uh, okay,” Eric says. “Sure.” He’s about to ask Liam when he should come in and, like, start, but it’s too late.

  Liam’s already hung up the phone.

  128.

  Eric drives into the city the next day. Finds 279 Hastings. It’s not hard. It’s pretty much the drug-addict epicenter.

  (Pretty much the exact opposite of Capilano.)

  Eric parks his mom’s G-Wagen on a side street off the main drag, across from the Jimi Hendrix shrine and a boarded-up house. A guy with a messy beard and even messier tattoos shambles past, pushing a shopping cart. He gives the Benz a long look as he passes.

  The Railtown Health Center is around the corner. It’s a dirty little brick building beside a shady-looking bar and a graffiti-spattered convenience store. Eric pushes in through the front door and asks for Liam at the front desk. A harried-looking middle-aged woman points toward the back. “In the office.”

  Eric walks where she’s pointing. Behind the front desk is an open area, tables and chairs, a coffeemaker. Then a little hallway with what looks like a couple doctors’ examination rooms. There are a handful of homeless men sitting at the tables, nursing cups of coffee and eating sandwiches. They don’t look up at Eric as he squeezes past them.

  Liam looks surprised when Eric knocks on his open door. He’s in his early twenties, maybe. He’s cute, in a nerdy-hipster way. He looks busy.

  “You didn’t have to come down here,” he tells Eric as he leads him into the office. “Jordan made it sound like I was just supposed to lie to your admissions officers for you.”

  The office is small and hot, and the furniture is piled with paperwork and posters. “I couldn’t just not come,” Eric tells Liam. “I’m pretty sure that would be unethical.”

  “Unethical.” Liam puts down the file he’s been flipping through. Studies Eric. “How do you know Jordan again?”

  Eric shrugs. “School.”

  (Suicide Pack.)

  Liam cocks his head. “Huh.”

  “How about you?”

  He looks away. Kind of blushes.

  (It’s kind of cute.)

  “I mean,” he says. “How does anyone know Jordan?”

  Eric looks at him. Waits.

  Liam sighs. “We hooked up, I guess. He got me this job. So, you know, when he tells me I have to lie for his friend, I kind of have to do what he says.”

  Eric looks around the office again. At the stack of paper on Liam’s desk. The top of the stack is a pamphlet about dirty hypodermic syringes.

  “You don’t have to lie,” Eric tells Liam. “I’ll stay.”

  “Really?” Liam says.

  Out in the waiting area, one of the homeless men is yelling at somebody. Voices are raised, and something clatters to the floor. Eric thinks about Ann’s office, and somehow, data entry doesn’t seem so bad right now.

  (At least Liam’s better-looking than Ann.)

  He shrugs. “Sure,” he tells Liam. “Why not?”

  129.

  Liam gives Eric a stack of pamphlets. “You know what we do here?”

  Eric looks around. “You’re the Railtown Health Center, right? You do, like, health-center stuff?”

  “Well, kind of,” Liam says. “We’re a needle exchange.”

  Eric stares at him. Doesn’t get it. “What, like, for junkies?”

  “Addicts, yeah,” Liam says. “There’s a lot of drug-injecting going on in this neighborhood. Addicts use dirty needles. Dirty needles are a serious health problem.”

  “So you give them clean needles,” Eric says. “So they can inject their drugs?”

  “It sounds crazy, I know, but it’s proven to really reduce blood diseases. HIV, hepatitis, that kind of thing.”

  “In drug addicts.”

  Liam sighs. “It’s not only the needles. We provide counseling, too, and addiction resources. Every little bit, right?”

  Eric scuffs his shoe. “Uh, I was actually hoping for something a little more legal.”

  “We’re legal,” Liam says. “If that’s what you mean. But I don’t have any, like, pre-law activities for you. This is more of a volunteer position.” He kind of smiles. “But, hey, it will still look good on your application, right?”

  Eric opens his mouth, but nothing comes out.

  (Do CONNELLY MEN work at needle exchanges?)

  (Does it matter? Eric thinks. You’re doing good in the world, aren’t you?)

  (Aren’t you fixing something by being here?)

  “Oh, one more thing,” Liam says. He gives Eric a handful of tokens. “These are good for a sandwich at the diner down the street.” He shrugs. “We find people are more willing to talk to us if we come bearing gifts.”

  130.

  Eric walks outside in a daze. The whole street smells like piss and pot and garbage. Eric stands in the health center’s doorway and looks around at the dirty sidewalk, the graffiti, the grunge.

  You could be working in a prestigious—and air-conditioned—law office in freaking Capilano. Instead you’re helping junkies in the center of skid row.

  Some guy rolls a shopping cart past. He looks at Eric. “You want to buy a radio?”

  Eric looks in the shopping cart. There’s a radio in there. It’s older than Eric.

  Eric tells the guy no thanks, he doesn’t need a radio. Holds out a pamphlet and a token. “Do you know about the resources at the Railtown Health Center?”

  The guy takes the token. He ignores the pamphlet. Puts the token in his pocket and rolls the shopping cart away. Eric watches him go. Turns around and almost collides with a woman. She has her hand out. “Do you have any tokens?”

  Eric gives her a token. He tries to give her a pamphlet, too, but she waves him off. Gestures to the tokens.

  “Give me another one,” she says.

  Eric looks at the tokens in his hand. He looks back at Liam’s office. “I don’t think I’m supposed to do that. I’m supposed to be telling you about the needle exchange.”

  “Fuck the needle exchange. Do I look like a junkie?” She reaches. “Give me another one.”

  “Maybe if you take a pamphlet,” Eric says.

  She shrugs. Takes the pamphlet. Eric gives her another token. She puts it away with the other one and walks down the street. Wads up the pamphlet and drops it on the sidewalk, doesn’t look back.

  It’s pretty much like that for the rest of the afternoon.

  131.

  Eric runs out of tokens in a couple of hours. He still has mostly all of the pamphlets.

  “Yeah, it’s like that,” Liam says, when Eric comes back to the office to re-up. “People around here aren’t trying to hear sermons, you know? They’re pretty set in their ways.”

  “Do you really think this is helping?” Eric asks. “I mean, it’s still illegal to do drugs, right?”

  “Yeah, and how’s that working out? If people want to get high, they’re going to get high. We might as well reduce the health risks.”

  Eric shrugs. “I guess.”

  “Anyway.” Liam sighs. “Try to
get them to take a pamphlet when you give them their tokens. We can at least try to get the word out.”

  “Sure,” Eric says. “Do you have any more tokens?”

  Liam looks around the office. All the paperwork, balanced precariously on every flat surface. “Listen, why don’t you call it for today?”

  “You mean, like, go home?”

  “I wasn’t really expecting you would want to actually do something,” Liam says. “Come back in a couple of days, if you’re serious. I’ll make sure there’s real work for you.”

  “Okay,” Eric says. “Sure.”

  “Thanks.” Liam gives him a quick smile. Then the phone starts to ring, and Eric figures that’s his cue. He’s halfway out the door when Liam calls his name. “Eric.”

  Eric turns around. Liam’s surrounded by papers and the phone is still ringing. He looks busy and tired.

  (He’s still kind of cute, though.)

  “Thanks for coming,” he says. “I guess I didn’t think Jordan’s friends were into this kind of thing.”

  Eric shrugs again.

  (He’s not really into this kind of thing, but he can’t exactly tell Liam that. If he’d known not showing up was an option, he might not be here.)

  “I mean, yeah,” he tells Liam. “No problem.”

  KIK -- CAPILANO HIGH PRIVATE MESSAGE GROUP – 07/17/16 – 11:43 AM

  USERNAME: SuIcIdEpAcK

  MESSAGE: My favorite cocktail is a Molotov.

  132.

  “His name’s Allen Headley,” Jordan tells them. “You’ve heard of him, right?”

  Paige leans forward between the front seats. “The big-shot lawyer?” she says. “The guy who defended all those hedge fund managers?”

  “Exactly. That guy. This is his house.”

  Eric peers out through the windshield into the darkness. They’re up the mountain somewhere, some posh Capilano neighborhood, dark streets and big houses and, like, zero signs of life. They’re parked curbside, listening as Jordan lays out his next Fix.