The bartender looked him up and down and said: “Two birds and one stone.”
“What?”
“Two birds—two tens—and a one. Twenty one bills. That’s what you owe.”
He started to reach into his wallet with a sweating hand— Two birds and one stone. Haven’t heard that in a while. When he glanced up the keep’s face looked like the sordid visage from a Hieronymus Bosch painting. All of them did, every face in that pub. He looked around the low-lit room filled with smoke and laughter and saw the contorted, twisting faces of madmen. Deformed and foul they were, all cackling with wickedness. He ran out into the crisp, cool air of the early morning.
The fresh air pacified him some. Two birds and a stone. I took the grocery money to the Pill and all I got for it was four bottles of Bohemian and two highballs. Two birds and one goddamn stone.
Several blocks down Yonge it got worse again. The sweating and the shakes were debilitating. Again he saw the vision from his dreams: that Thunderbird’s grill and dark treetops beyond it. He staggered and banged into a light post. A snow plow was flashing amber across the street and was making a neatly packed ridge of firm snow running parallel with the sidewalk. The grinding noise of it faded off as it passed, and the sheer of sparks from its blade on the asphalt arced in the distance. It was nearing two in the morning and Will Nash, not drunk, but going quickly into shock, fell across the mound of newly graded snow.
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He awoke later, still under the crushing weight of his head—there was a pinging inside it now. His body was weak and heavy. The air felt cold and he was chilled. Snow was falling and his breath was white fog coming from lips that felt like warm strips off a rubber tire. He lugged himself to his feet and headed down the road, north. Blocks and blocks seemed to pass as he searched for any store that would be open. He didn’t trust himself to drive; his senses were not acute at all and the snow falling now was icing across the roads. There were no shops open. None. What store would have hours at this time of the morning, whatever time it was?
This had happened before. The alcohol did it and he should have remembered. But he didn’t. Never did. When you’re not born with a condition, living with it day after day, maybe you don’t ever really get used to it. The wife had to remind him when to take his shot, had to remind him each time. And she had let him only have one drink a day. Alcohol, she repeated at him—nagged at him, the original Nash might have said—made the chances of this much greater. Just like the last time—there was a vague recollection of what had happened then—his body went into insulin shock, what some called diabetic shock. This was a later stage, brought on in part by a lack of glucose in his blood, and in part by the alcohol he had been downing at The Purple Pill since eleven. He needed to raise his blood sugar soon or a hypoglycemic coma would come next. And there would be nothing after that. Except perhaps lost memories and an empty life.
If he recovered, that is.
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Ahmed Izhad Farukh owned and operated the Pit Stop, a tiny convenience store which dedicated most of its space to cigarettes and dirty magazines, more than it did to food products and beverages. But, nonetheless, the Pit Stop did have a large cooler for cans and bottles of pop, water, juices and cold teas along one side of its narrow innards.
Above the door there was a jingle as it came open. Will Nash moved through the belly of the store like an empty strand of smoke, blowing straight for that cooler where he snatched out a cold can of Orange Crush. Standing under a flickering yellow fluorescent, he was about to place his thumb under the tab, pop it, and chug from it when Ahmed was there, standing between Will and the front counter.
Farukh’s father had owned this shop and had sunk a considerable chunk of cash into its down payment a year after his second son had been born. He nearly lived at this store, made the monthlies to the bank for its eventual full title, had it open at any hours that the municipality would let it, stood behind the counter and greeted every customer personally, and eventually made enough money, besides payments and his own day-to-day expenses, to send for his wife and two sons living at home in Iran.
That had been four years ago. The store had opened twenty-three before that. Except for pirated videocassettes and CNN, Ahmed and his brother were strangers to the English language and everything this country had to offer when they landed. The elder Farukh had been shot to death by a street junkie looking dizzy from a fix and screaming about “taking care of Pearson.”
After, his two sons took over the business, eventually starting to sell the magazines and a huge variety of imported cigarettes. Profits increased enough in the last three years for Ahmed’s older brother to move to Trenton, New Jersey and open his own store there.
But the death of his father left the youngest boy, Ahmed, shaken. Every night—though he kept the light on, the door unlocked, and the open sign hanging in the window—he was nervous about what could happen to him. He stared with accusing eyes at customers and it’s a wonder the demeanor didn’t hurt his bottom line. He sent agitated letters to Jersey, and his brother finally came to visit. He brought with him a gift he said would alleviate his brother’s fears.
It was a small black derringer, two-chamber, with long slender handle. Forty-five cal. Ninety-seven fifty. The highest closing bid on an Internet auction site specializing in guns and related pre-owned goods. It was delivered easily enough, with no contest from the postal service in Trenton. But that was across the border. He brought it to Ahmed, wrapped in a pink rag in the center of the spare tire at the bottom of his trunk, hidden from border officials who would have dished out a hefty fined and confiscated the weapon had they found it.
Ahmed kept his brother’s derringer on the shelf immediately below his cash register. Easy access. Less than an arm’s length from where his stool sat.
“You pay now,” he said to Will, in tight, controlled English, as Will held the pop can in a shaking hand.
“Yeah, okay.” Will Nash could barely get the words out.
“You pay now,” Ahmed Farukh said more adamantly. “Drink after.”
“All right.” He followed him, staggering, sweating, knocking cans from a shelf, back to the counter, where the shop owner hit keys on the register. Its jangle-rattle-grind was a loud crash in Will Nash’s head. It shocked him and his half-closed eyes sprang wide open. The flourescents overhead were bright, buzzing loudly and flickering like a mosquito light. The pain, as always, was more intense.
He put the can on the counter, nearly knocking over a cardboard display box of jerky. He hunted in his coat pockets for a wallet. But the wallet, and his keys, could not be found.
Farukh was growing more wary, nervous, jittery. He too had begun to sweat. It stood out in drops across his dark, wrinkled brow. There had been junkies in here before—crackheads, dope-fiends, and shooters too—he could recognize their wet faces, their smudgy eyes, and the way they had trouble walking and putting words together. He still couldn’t understand English as well as he thought he should, still used movie dialogue when he didn’t know what to say, but he could tell when someone else was having problems with it. This one had been speaking with a slur so thick that Ahmed took almost no meaning from it—only assumed the customer would be paying for the pop when he came with Ahmed back to the counter and started rifling through pockets. This one’s eyes were red and his face was pale. What was he hopped up on?
They always need a drink, the shooters. Usually they buy whole two-liter bottles of pop or sometimes just a jug of water, whatever they can afford. Some of them can’t pay so he kicks them back out into the street. But most can—after counting out nickels and dimes, pennies even, to cover the enviro deposit. And, on occasion, some get irritated. Some don’t have enough and he has to call the cops or place his hand on the derringer his brother gave him. The derringer his brother gave him: it was, at that moment, still resting under the register, atop the pink rag, a loaded piece of machinery, wound up like an industrial strength cork. Just as it had
on a few other occasions, Farukh’s right hand lay on its grip hidden below the counter, as the man with the red eyes searched in pockets for money that probably wasn’t even there. Like the other shooters, this one was making Farukh nervous. But there was something else. Past the shakes and the sweating, past the surface flags of someone fighting bodily addiction, something more, something greater was tinkering in Ahmed’s mind. Something made this one seem...not quite right.
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Will Nash had no recollection of where his keys or wallet were. His mind was thick and he was having more trouble seeing. His body was past the insulin shock. He was moving into territory untouched for nearly three years. The buzzing in his head had started and that only happened in the last moments, he remembered, when nothing could fix anything.
This life was nearing its conclusion. He had stepped out for a drink, just one bloody drink, and it had landed him here. Two birds and one fucking stone. The buzzing in his ears made everything worse. It always got worse. His judgement would leave entirely and if he didn’t act soon there would be no way back to the world. Alone, he would drift away to his icy spot and he didn’t know what would happen after that.
“My wallet. Look. I. M. in— an. Epis. Ode. I jus— ne— a drink and then. I’ll. Be. Fin— Money. Late— r.“
He reached for the can, knocked over the jerky box and a host of other displays with a crash that lit the insides of his head with further pain. The buzz blared in his ears and his sight teetered. The view of Ahmed swayed like the world might if his eyes were at the end of two long springs. He finally clasped his fingers loosely around the can of pop, picked it up and popped the tab.
Under his crinkled and damp brow, with shaky hand, and confusion, Ahmed Farukh pulled the derringer from under the counter. In his muddled anxiety his finger nearly squeezed the trigger. He pointed it at Will—
The bell above the front door rang out.
A man stood there, dressed in long brown pea coat, eyes wide with realization of what he had stepped into.
Willem Nash called for the remainder of the strength in his body, fought back the buzzing in his ears, and dove across the counter, spilling fizzy Orange Crush across everything.
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The man in the long brown pea coat was a counselor for inner city youth at the rec center on Price Street. He loved his work, loved the kids, and drove in from his basement suite in Richmond Hill six mornings a week to set up basketball schedules and look over case files starting at seven. Unlucky for him, he drank coffee on these mornings. While in his heart he loved the kids and the early start, his eyes and his brain didn’t always feel up to the challenge. Today, yet again, a can of coffee crystals in a plastic grocery bag sat forgotten by his apartment door. He had been meaning to bring it with him all last week, after someone had donated a coffee maker which waited just outside his office. He would bring the crystals tomorrow, he thought. But right now, he really needed a coffee. Digging in his coat pocket for change, he pushed open the door of the Farukh-owned Pit Stop.
There was a jingle of bells. He looked up. Into the crammed shop. He saw things happen like a flash across a television screen: they didn’t seem real.
One man dove across the counter mixed into the spray of orange liquid. The other flinched. The two intertwined with the diving man overtaking the other.
The counselor fell to his knees covering his face with his hands. But it was all over in seconds.
The man wrestled the weapon away from the clerk. The counselor recognized him from other mornings when a hot cup was his only fix. The weapon went off, blowing a hole through the proprietor’s throat, just off to one side of dead-center. The sound erupted inside his head and something spattered behind him, coating cigarette cartons with darkness. The explosion rang through the tiny store like a sonic boom. He had seen gunshot wounds, had even held one bleeding boy in his arms waiting for paramedics to arrive, but he had never heard the sound of a gun. Only on T.V. Not a real one.
Both bodies were gone, vanished behind the counter like wraiths that had never even existed in the real world. In its little darkened window the register still read $.80.
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Ahmed’s mother had always made her boys wear a white dress shirt, dark wool slacks and a necktie to work. She insisted they both shave clean and put on cologne and if that shirt was even a little wrinkled they would be made to take it off and re-iron it before leaving the house. This was every day. No exceptions. It was an ethic she wanted instilled in them both, and since her husband was gone now, she counted on only herself to deliver it.
The first thing the counselor did when he crossed to the other side of the counter and crouch at the spattered bodies there, was to pull Ahmed’s tie off. His frantic thinking was on the money; this would help open an air passage and allow him to press a hand against the clerk’s bleeding throat. Blood bloomed on the white collar of Ahmed’s crisp shirt and, as the counselor checked for pulses on both he and Nash, Ahmed’s eyes flickered white under shaking eyelids. They rolled back in his head.
The other was gone. The one who had dived across the counter, soaked in orange soda, was dead. But the counsellor found a faint pulse beating inside Ahmed. He applied pressure on the wound with a quivering palm, performed CPR as best he could, then paused to call nine-one-one on the telephone beside the register.
When he crouched once more, the pulse felt stronger. He breathed into Ahmed’s mouth again as he heard the first set of sirens blaring north on Yonge, and was astonished to find a shallow breath come back at him.
The shocking events of the morning came to their peak in the next moment as those dark flicking eyelids settled and opened. The store clerk looked up at the stranger kneeling over him in the tiny space behind the counter. His eyes were black beads floating in pools of placid white liquid. They came into sharp focus like the sun moving out from behind a cloud. He pushed the stun-faced counselor violently aside with a force that seemed impossible only minutes behind a near-fatal gunshot. The brutality of the shove was enough to knock him sideways against the cash register’s iron drawer casing. The result was an audible clang of bone on metal.
With sirens calling to him in his head, the Thief staggered to his new feet, not sure if his next opportunity—the man who had clearly brought him back—was dead or just unconscious. Either way he was no good to the Thief. He had to go. He couldn’t waste time. Time was empty for him. He ran out of the store carrying only the long-barreled derringer. The bell above the door jingled again and past it, the dark barren morning gave him a chilly sweat.
They would be looking for him. Sirens would sit atop cars that would drive down roads and alleyways looking only for him. As he ran, the glassy, crumbly snow crunched under his dress shoes. He pinched his eyes shut tight against the stinging air and squeezed his fist around the grip of the bloody derringer. All he could see there, behind his eyelids, was the vision of that old Thunderbird’s front end sinking, sinking, sinking into icy waters.
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The Thief took a giant risk with every attempt he made, with every one he stole. Both the new life and the old had to leave at the same breath. It had never worked otherwise. And after it all went down, after he took them to his icy field and removed them for good, he needed to be pulled back. To a degree, he always required something there to give him the kiss of life again. Once yanked, pulling them all the way down was not the hardest part. And trusting that he would be pulled back afterwards was a constant. He could grab them from here, from wherever, and do anything he wanted once they got to his spot on the precipice near the edge of the water.
But getting them there was the difficulty.
Getting them there was the trick.
He knew that he had to engulf the body, put an arm around its neck, or a hand, and constrict it with brute force. That was part of it. But he needed something else: some arbitrary shock, some substantial force. An object or means that put life in question, canceling its option for ren
ewal in an instant. A bullet, the cold edge of a knife, something blunt. Those were the quickest and the easiest, but not the best. They left gaping holes, damage that would let problems arise later. A shock that didn’t ruin what he was after would be best. It would lessen the volume of painful sounds when he took over. It would make the buzzing come later instead of sooner.
As for Willem Nash, the Thief had stolen what he had after tossing him from a causeway at the plant where he worked, then jumping after him. Both fell into a cooling tank thirty feet below. As they thrashed, he pinched the fingers of his left hand into a narrow blade. Below the surface of the water he squeezed Nash’s windpipe at his larynx with this dull finger-knife until the struggling stopped. The Thief had been a temp at the plant, showing up dutifully for about four and a half weeks when he saw Nash’s wife and kids for the first time—they arrived one evening en complet in the family wagon to pick up the man they loved after his day’s work had ended.
To the Thief, that looked like perfection.
But to Nash, the original Nash, it had been reason to bitch.
That made the Thief’s infection of resentment worse and so, without remorse, without guilt, he took what Nash had. The opportunity to give it back did not exist but that didn’t bother him for a second. He deserved it more than Nash, he told himself. He deserved it so much more.
But this was it. He believed—really believed—that the shove which sent Will Nash over the iron railing and into that water tank would be his very last and that he could throw this habit out of his life for good. He could settle finally, and forget the years he had spent looking. The pinging in his ears as he came conscious on a bank of graded snow, as did the sound of jangling bells over the door to that magazine shop, told him otherwise. And so did that vision of his Thunderbird’s bumper. It had come back like cancer and showed no signs of leaving again.
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