Vancouver Noir

by Sam Wiebe

  * * *

  Pilot walks out of her house and makes it a quarter of the way down East Pender toward Heatley Avenue before her brain starts to pester her about whether she locked the door. She’s almost all the way to Hastings when she realizes it’s no use arguing with herself and she heads back. Her annoyance dissolves the second she sees the house; she’s lived here for a year and her heart still swells to look at it.

  When Pilot first came to Vancouver she lived in a shelter, and then a tent, and then a car that wasn’t hers. She lived in a house with three pregnant vegan Wiccans where the black mold was so bad the city inspectors Pilot called walked out when they saw it, said their union wouldn’t let them be in an environment like that. After that she moved to an unfinished basement where a series of bedsheets on a clothesline separated her “room” from a ska band’s rehearsal space.

  This new house is a little two-story postwar Special, covered in purple bottle-glass stucco. The front yard of this house is small and ratty with weeds choking everything. Cracks spiderweb the stucco and it looks like a stiff breeze could pull it down in big powdery chunks. The front porch is crowded with a never-ending supply of empties that the homeless binners can’t seem to carry away fast enough. Standard exterior of a punk house in Strathcona, but this is just camouflage, something to keep the landlord from venturing in for a closer look.

  Over the last year, Pilot and a hurricane of new roommates have salvaged materials and fixed up the busted hardwood floors, painted, put tile in the kitchen, and installed a hardwood bar in one corner of the living room. The backyard is even better, there’s a huge vegetable and flower garden, a big plum tree, and a little greenhouse where Pilot grows tomatoes. Benefits of living with some budding carpenters and landscapers.

  She won’t let herself put the key in the lock because she knows later she’ll convince herself she somehow unlocked it by checking like that. She turns the knob and pushes but the door doesn’t budge. Her satisfaction evaporates when she turns to leave and sees her landlord’s son walk around from the side of the house. Her landlord is a failed hippie who didn’t manage to alienate his parents enough in the sixties, so they left him a bunch of properties when they died. He’s a wearer of socks with sandals who once told Pilot, straight-faced, that an infestation of raccoons in the attic was a standard feature of a heritage house. His son is the type who asks his dazed-looking girlfriend to hold his shirt before he fights someone outside a nightclub. Pilot used to sell drugs to people like him and he makes the bottom of her stomach drop out.

  “What are you doing here, Jimi?”

  “The backyard looks amazing. How long have you been working on that?”

  “You have to let us know when you’re coming by. You know that.”

  “Just business, huh? That’s cool. I came to talk about your rent increase.”

  He’s standing too close to her. His breath smells like those mouthwash strips that dissolve on your tongue. “You can’t give us another rent increase, your dad just gave us one.”

  He smiles like he just silently farted and no one has smelled it yet. “Yeah, see, when you didn’t complain, I knew I had to come down here. I’m like, Dad, that house is a fucking pit, no way will they pay more rent. So when you just paid up without bitching, I thought for sure you were growing weed or something. And then I saw your backyard. Walked through the house too. Sweet setup you got, but you didn’t ask to make all these changes.”

  “What do you want?”

  “Three hundred dollars per month paid to me, and my dad doesn’t have to know how I suddenly want to move into this house.”

  Pilot’s block has three houses on it full of dude anarchists. If a car backfires, six of them run into the street, hoping the revolution has started. Of course, none of them are around now to hang Jimi from a lamppost, there’s just Pilot’s ancient next-door neighbor who’s come to her window to make sure she’s okay. Pilot gives her a little wave.

  “You’d never live in this house or anywhere around here.”

  “Of course not, my condo is totally the bomb . . . but I could have some great house parties here before I decided it wasn’t for me. My dad respects my life journey. Your band could play the parties or something. You’re in a band, right? Everyone in East Van dresses like they’re on their way to band practice.”

  “Three hundred dollars is too much. I can’t swing that, none of us can.”

  Jimi’s eyes flicker over the new sleeve tattoo that glistens on her arm. “Nice ink.”

  Pilot fights the urge to tuck her arm behind her back. She saved for months to get the work done, and the artist cut her a break on the price. None of this is Jimi’s business. She grinds a thank you between her teeth.

  “Hey, I know how hard it is to get by these days; it’s a good thing you’re so industrious, you’ll figure it out. Or you can get kicked out and wander from shack and shack to fix them up before they get torn down. Like a shitty East Van Johnny Appleseed. We got a deal or what?”

  She could explain it to her roommates tonight and they’d all be angry for a while, but they’d just move on. She likes her roommates, they’re kind people who don’t make her feel like she needs to padlock the door of her room. One of them just got a job in a kitchen and has started bringing home Cuban sandwiches for everyone when he gets off work. Pilot will figure something out, anything to get Jimi and his plastic mint breath away from her.

  “Deal.”

  * * *

  Pilot picks up shifts in four bars along the Hastings strip and one illegal booze can above a closed artisanal butcher shop on Powell. Tonight’s shift is at Dumpster Fire, the newest and by far the nicest of them. Dumpster Fire is a gentrification special, once a hot underground club, now home of the third-best burger in Vancouver. Unlike her other workplaces, this bar doesn’t smell heavily of bleach and rot, and no fights break out that aren’t solved with sarcasm.

  Tonight it’s only half full, and Pilot is thankful for the quiet. The soundtrack inside is third-generation alt-country. Drinkers periodically interrupt the flow of conversation and hold their phones up to identify a song. The beer taps are topped with doll heads and the walls are dotted with flat-screens. The TVs play clips of skateboarding injuries, old chat line ads full of women with giant eighties hair, and YouTube stars giving commentary as if they’re astonished or angered by everything in the world.

  Charlotte, the other bartender working tonight, finishes lashing her dreads into a thigh-width ponytail and frowns as Pilot checks the time again. “You okay?”

  “I guess I am. I’m meeting that guy.”

  “Creeptastic?”

  Pilot nods.

  “Gross.” Charlotte slices bar fruit while Pilot pulls a pint for herself. Charlotte shifts uncomfortably. “Did you get my text?”

  Pilot nods and slurps foam off the top of the glass. “Yep. I can cover your shift, no problem.”

  “Thanks, I wouldn’t ask only my mom comes into town tomorrow and she’s really freaked out someone is going to, like, abduct her as soon as she gets off the bus, you know? Small-town moms are scared of everything, I guess.”

  “Yeah, my mom’s scared of everything too.”

  Charlotte is six foot one and wide, with biceps built for crushing. Pilot has seen her lift full kegs one-handed, toss drunk bros out onto the street like they were inflatable dolls. With her hair tied back like that, she looks like a Geiger painting. She is sure to give her mother city confidence.

  “You texted me this guy’s details, right? Phone number? License plate?”

  Pilot nods, takes a drink of the cold and bitter beer, something local named after a cartoon she’s never watched, and sets the glass behind the bar. “Watch this for me? I have to change.”

  Pilot heads to the storage room, waving at the kitchen staff as she walks past. She stowed her backpack full of slut clothes in the corner earlier, behind stacked flats of cheap pilsner. She thinks about her mother, a woman she dearly hopes has a rich interior life,
who has said about ninety words to Pilot, ever. Pilot actually thought she saw her dad in the bar at the Balmoral Hotel two nights ago and she nearly fainted, but it was just someone who could have been his twin: long wild gray hair, wiry bordering on skeletal, and dead eyes like a shark.

  She hasn’t seen either of them in eight years. Last time she’d been crouched in their little kitchen listening to her father explain himself to a poor legal aid lawyer who’d been foolish enough to make a home visit, foolish enough to try and help her dad.

  “Let me tell you something right now—these charges against me are bullshit. I picked her up hitchhiking, no panties, and her skirt was so short you could tell she kept it shaved down there. She told me she wanted it, so I pulled off the road and gave her one. Tell you the truth, it was the easiest piece of ass I ever got.”

  Her mother was sitting next to him staring at her hands gripping her coffee cup. Her husband snapped his fingers and she jumped, coffee spilling a little into the saucer, lit a cigarette for him, and handed it over. Pilot packed a bag that night. She was sixteen, with a fake ID and enough money saved for a bus ticket.

  Pilot pushes those thoughts away, hard. She ditches her jeans and a torn Sepultura T-shirt, changes into the slut clothes, and walks back out into the bar. Charlotte has put a beer mat over the top of her glass. Pilot takes another sip, thinking the beer tasted better when she was dressed more like herself.

  Charlotte raises her eyebrows at Pilot’s wardrobe change, but a big group has come in and they’re too slammed for her to comment. Pilot doesn’t notice the time pass until she’s nearly late.

  “Shit, mind if I ditch out a little early?”

  Charlotte waves her off. “Yeah, I got this.” She takes Pilot’s hand. “Be careful, okay? I really need you to cover that shift. Hey!” She’s raised her voice and glares at a table sitting close to the bar that’s started to get a little rowdy. They turn around, see her, and immediately quiet down.

  Pilot heads out the door, pushing past a clot of smokers. She’s glad someone like Charlotte has her back.

  * * *

  Pilot hustles down Hastings Street; her slut skirt keeps riding up and she’s worried that she’ll be late. She pulls out her phone and checks the time. There’s a new text from her boss at one of the other bars she works at: The ceiling over the bar collapsed. And part of the floor. Don’t come to work this week. No point in asking for an advance on her check then.

  There’s a mailbox on the corner and she wants to knock it over and stomp it flat, or pick it up and throw it through a car window. She counts to twenty instead, spaces the numbers out by muttering Motherfucker under her breath. Her footsteps could crack the pavement by the time she reaches the meeting spot, where she lights a cigarette, takes deep, starving drags.

  She leans against the shuttered window of a paint store. A white two-seater Porsche convertible with the top down slows in front of her. She’s about to yell at the driver to move on when she realizes he isn’t looking at her, but at the storefront. Regardless, she gives him the finger and he speeds away. Another property developer wearing sunglasses at night, rolling down Hastings Street, probably touching himself while looking at vacant buildings.

  She’s just ground out her cigarette when a car pulls up to the curb. The driver lowers the passenger window and asks her if she does Greek. She can’t remember what she’s supposed to say to him so she opens with a joke.

  * * *

  Now, he’s trembling slightly under the full moon, kneeling in water gas-slicked by the tankers floating offshore.

  The plastic wraps her up tight, but her face is exposed, head pointed toward the water. Pilot can’t resist it anymore and opens her eyes.

  She thinks that if he was really going to kill her, he probably would have done it by now, and she unclenches her fists a little. She rolls her eyes back and looks across her forehead at him. A wave hits him with enough force to splash his face; water flies into his open mouth and he chokes a little. Pilot almost laughs and closes her eyes before he catches her. She doesn’t mind this location. The sand is more comfortable than being laid out across tree roots in Stanley Park, or against a stinking dumpster in an alley. She can’t remember the last time she went to the beach.

  Pilot doesn’t know if it’s some ritual he’s actually thought through or it’s just a pantomime of what he thinks he should be doing. Whatever it is, it’s taking forever. After he grabbed her throat, he ranted at her about how she’s just another sheeple. She recognized some of what he was saying from Fight Club. Some of it he must have thought of himself, which was only a little bit worse.

  Finally, she hears a little splash as he gets up and walks over. Pilot has worked up a sweat under all this plastic. She’s starting to feel cold and her tattoo itches like mad. She doesn’t fidget—he might get mad if she spoils the fantasy so close to the end. She can hear the jingle of change in his pockets and it sounds like he’s messing with his belt. She swears she’s going to demand extra if he’s standing there jerking off while she’s freezing amongst the sand fleas and half-buried cigarette butts.

  “You can open your eyes now.”

  She does, and is relieved to see it’s still in his pants.

  He tears at the duct tape that’s holding her cocoon together. She wriggles free and stands, pulls her skirt down, brushes sand off her knees. She’s only wearing one of her stilettos, on her foot that has a razor blade taped to the bottom of it. She’s painted one edge of it with rubber cement so she can grip it easily.

  He crumples the plastic sheeting, shuffles his feet, avoiding eye contact. All the bravado seems to have spewed out of him. Pilot flamingoes on one leg, slips off her shoe, then tears the razor free and palms it, just in case.

  “Can I drive you somewhere?”

  “You expect me to call a cab?”

  His stammering small talk starts up while she searches through his car and pretends to listen. She finds her other shoe behind the passenger seat along with her purse. Pilot digs her cigarettes out as the car rolls past grain silos, old warehouses, and new microbreweries. The Volvo is spotless and well maintained but old enough to still have a cigarette lighter in the dash. Pilot enjoys the novelty of lighting up that way.

  “I’d prefer you didn’t smoke in my car.”

  Pilot rolls the window down. “You should do something that frightens you every day, Rob.”

  The wind is bringing the scent of rancid chicken fat from the rendering plant toward them and she blows smoke out her nostrils to cover up the smell. Rob turns up the volume on the stereo, the one modern thing in the car. Pilot doesn’t know the band but it’s statement music, banjos and smugly clever lyrics about an ex-girlfriend. She snaps the volume down.

  He turns onto Hastings Street a little too hard and she’s pulled a little closer to him. He takes one hand off the steering wheel and she thinks he’s reaching toward her. Pilot can still feel his hands around her neck, can still smell him on her. She reaches for the razor blade she’s tucked between her thigh and the car seat but grabs the wrong edge and slices open her thumb. She barely feels it cut her, but it’s deep and the volume of blood is substantial. Drops splash onto the ugly tan seats.

  Rob pulls his hand away when he sees the blood, clears his throat. “Sorry, I was just reaching for the volume! I hope you don’t think . . . I mean, I would never have really . . .”

  “You owe me three hundred dollars.”

  He’s already got it in the pocket of his coat, wrapped up with a rubber band.

  “When can I see you again?” Rob looks at her so earnestly she wants to leave a bloody handprint on his face.

  She drops the razor in her purse, grabs a pack of tissues, and wads a few of them around her thumb. She reaches to tamp out her smoke but the ashtray is full of loose change so she drops the butt out the window.

  “I’ll text you,” she says as she gets out.

  There’s a prowl car approaching and Rob’s already rolling before Pilot has the
door shut.

  She keeps her shoulders back as she walks home. She can feel the bruises forming on her lower back, her arms, her ribs. Jimi has left a cheap cardboard For Rent sign leaning against the porch. There’s a Post-it note stuck to the front: Just kidding. Don’t forget my rent. xoxo. Pilot tears the sign into four pieces and stuffs them in the recycling bag next to the front door.

  The door is propped open with a skateboard and a fan is blowing the scent of weed out onto the street. Inside they’ve got the music playing loud—someone else must have gotten paid today because she can hear the beer bottles clinking together over the sound of the stereo. No one hears her come in and walk into her little bedroom at the side of the house.

  Pilot texts Charlotte to say she’s still alive, and Jimi to tell him she’s got his money. Then she texts Rob to set up another date. Outside in the living room the music changes to a song that she likes. Pilot walks toward the noise, debating how many rounds she will let them talk her into.

  The One Who Walks with a Limp

  by Nick Mamatas

  Greektown

  Papou’s apartment was on West Broadway in Kitsilano, or at least the door was. Step inside, like Manolis did most every afternoon to check in on his grandparents, and the place was Greece. White walls and fake marble floors, ANT1 news on the TV featuring politicians shouting at one another at jet-engine volume, the smells of rigani and lemon and oil wafting out of the kitchen. Instead of books on the shelves, cheap but well-dusted statuettes—The Discobolus and the headless but winged Nike of Samothrace, next to an old bottle of ouzo in the shape of a white-skirted soldier. And Papou, stationed at the head of the table in the living room, a pair of Greek-language newspapers from Toronto and Montreal spread out in front of him. Manolis bent over and kissed the old man on both cheeks.