After we unhinged our faces, I grabbed my bag of blow and cut two shoelace-sized lines on the edge of the tub. Drugs helped me forget everything I didn’t want to think about and made me feel good about myself. I snorted mine first, she followed and then rubbed the leftover residue across her gums with her finger and brayed like a horse. The coke kept us up for another few hours, but there was no sex, even though we did try in the bedroom upstairs—I just couldn’t get it up. Hard liquor and blow had that effect on me.
Then the music faded, conversations died out, people bid their farewells, and it was time to go. I thought of her tits as I stumbled home, and was mad at myself for not being a man, for not capitalizing. When I reached Uncle Ron’s I was still wired. I leered at myself in the bathroom mirror, and my eyes looked like two piss holes in the snow.
Sleep is impossible tonight, I concluded.
I decided to go farther down the road, to see if anyone was still up over at Olive’s, the church lady, where, unknown to her, our crew had our headquarters. When I got there, Olive’s son Frank was up watching TV. He told me that the new hang-abouts, Stefan and Mike, two neighbourhood street kids who had no real home like me, had left a few hours before to go out on a “mission.”
“What kind of a mission? Deliver drugs, shoplift at the drug store, sell shit—what?”
“I don’t know.” Frank shrugged.
I could tell he wanted me to leave. I couldn’t blame the kid. His house had a revolving door. Olive’s Christian mission sometimes left her family crowded in their own home and often without food. Frank, who was just sixteen, had done more mission work, I figured, than many pastors had done over decades in Africa. He was the same as his mom—kind, giving, and open to a fault—even if he wasn’t religious. He never raised his voice around any of us, and we’d become good friends.
“Do they have dope?” I asked as I slipped my shoes back on.
“Naw. They smoked it all before they left.” Frank got up. “You don’t have to go,” he grumbled as he shuffled past me to the washroom. “We got PB and J and bread in the cupboard, and you’re welcome to it if you want.”
If Jesus was like anyone, I believe he was like Frank, but without the Mohawk hairdo, facial piercings, and torn-to-shreds punk attire. But the thought of a sweet sandwich made my stomach turn, the liquor and coke sloshing around all toxic.
“Where’s Tim?” I asked. He was Frank’s brother. He was eighteen, looked like Alice Cooper when Cooper was young and scary—black eyeliner, black clothes, black hair shaved up the sides—and he was the opposite of his younger sibling. The constant cavalcade of homeless people in the house had hardened him, made him into what can only be described as a pure metal hell spawn who slaughtered daily goodwill by blasting Marilyn Manson and Slipknot over top of the sound of the church organ Olive had in the living room.
I’m sure that eerie mix of gospel hymns and hard-core thrash traumatized me, but Tim’s reaction to all the commotion and Christian indoctrination was strange considering that most of the transient guests were his friends—teenaged goth misfits from group homes and juvenile detention centres who had been disowned by their families or had fled domestic abuse situations. It left me wondering if it was all some big act Tim put on as a defence against the biblical-level chaos going on around him.
“He’s not here,” Frank said. The sound of piss echoed in the toilet bowl. “Been gone for a couple of days.” I heard the toilet flush, then he returned to his chair to flip through the channels.
I left and went back up the road to Uncle Ron’s to catch some sleep.
I awoke around nine a.m. to Solomon licking my face—I was on my makeshift bed in the middle of the sunroom floor and that was his sign he needed a walk. I could hear Uncle Ron and Jerry groaning in their rooms, and a ten-dollar bill magically appeared from under my brother’s door.
“Take him out, Jess,” Jerry said, his voice as raspy as a desert toad. “My fucking head’s pounding.” The place was filled with vodka bottles and ashtrays overflowing with joint roaches. Zig-Zag rolling papers were strewn across the sofa, looking like a trail leading up to a mountain of cigarette butts cascading over the edge of the coffee table.
Must’ve been one helluva scorcher, I chuckled to myself as I snatched up the money and took the dog out for his shit.
Armed with a little cash for dope, I returned Solomon to the apartment and again made my way down to Olive’s. It was eleven a.m. and Mike and Stefan were in the middle of the kitchen throwing dice. Mike dressed like a flashy Puff Daddy crossed with Eminem. He looked Scottish or something, but it was hard to tell. Stefan easily pegged as Italian—olive skin and a Roman nose, and he talked with his hands and said things like “forget about it” and “mangia cake.” He was much harder around the edges than anyone in our hood. He dressed like a professional weed dealer and his hair was tied up in a ponytail and was covered in a do-rag, and he had a Yankees hat perched perfectly atop his head. He’d once told me that he’d come to Canada from the United States after he’d gotten into some serious trouble down there. He towered over me and Mike and anyone else at Olive’s.
Their friend, Stan, a black kid, was behind the circle of dice players holding the day’s winnings. He was born with a club foot and had a severe limp and some cognitive challenges, and it was his job to dish out the round’s payout to whoever threw sevens or elevens. Stan was trustworthy and always treated everyone with whatever he had—dope, food, booze, which was rare around us younger street people. I liked Stan, even if I didn’t understand what he said half the time, his stutter was so bad.
There were a few other kids I didn’t know rifling through the fridge.
“Y-yo, J-Jesse,” Stan stuttered. “You-you w-wanna p-play?”
“I can’t. I only have ten bucks,” I said, “and I want to smoke a dube.” I yanked out my lone bill and dangled it mid-air, hoping someone would step up and break open their weed sack and let me have a gram.
Stan smiled. “I’m a-all out-t, b-buddy.”
Stefan reached into his pocket and hauled out a lean fold of bills. “I’m a-all o-out, bu-buddy.” He curled up his arm and held it like a little T. Rex arm, then contorted his face. The room exploded in laugher. Stan froze and stuttered but no words came out. They all sounded like a wild pack of hyenas, and I wanted to fucking punch Stefan in the head.
Stefan peeled back the layers of his billfold, counting out his cash like he was Tony Montana in Scarface. He only had around $100, but to us it was like having a fortune, and he knew it.
“We had a good night,” he said. He grinned and punched Mike’s shoulder.
“Yeah, good night.” Mike’s voice petered out and he gazed a thousand-mile stare down at the linoleum floor.
Olive’s music started up in the next room, so I knew she hadn’t gone to church. The sound of her singing psalms cut through the tension. I expected Tim’s music to soon drown her out, but he still wasn’t home, apparently. I saw Frank get up from the sofa to go into his bedroom, and he waved to me on his way.
“Number one rule,” Stefan went on, raising his voice above Olive’s melodic petition of David. “Don’t rat.” The room fell silent.
What Stefan said was true: We were bound by a code—the code of silence. You only talked about what you did with those you did it with—it was better to not know than to know and have a secret that could eventually find its way out. That was our only protection.
Stefan repeated the sentiment slowly, this time running his thumb across his throat. I’d seen lots of guys warn dudes to keep their mouths shut before, but the way Stan cowered made my skin crawl.
One of the kids near the fridge stepped forward to put a glass on the table and fill it with juice. He took a swig and then said, “I got a gram,” and flicked a little green baggy my way. It bounced and landed square in front of me. He either didn’t care about Stefan and his warning or was too daft to listen.
“Thanks.” I opened it, rolled up a pregnant spliff, and in
vited the room out. Only Stefan, Mike, and Stan accepted and we went out to our spot at the side of the building. Stan trailed behind me. Mike and Stefan shifted from corner to corner, staying in the shadows.
“I don’t want to be out here too long,” Mike said, ducking behind the cement wall blocking the view of the building next to us. Stefan joined him and kept his eyes on the pathway near the road. Stan and I held our ground out in the open as we blazed up the joint and each took a toke. Sirens in the distance moaned and whined, a familiar sound in the hood. They were much too far away to catch us, but I kept my eyes peeled regardless. Stan took another drag, then passed it off to Stefan. He, then Mike, took a short, almost non-drag then passed it back to me.
“T-that’s b-boy d-dem,” Stan said, his eyes trained on mine. “L-lots of squad c-cars ’round here l-last night—t-they even had the g-ghetto bird in the air.” He made the noise of a helicopter and pretended to duck low. He nudged my arm. “C-careful, J-Jess.”
Mike and Stefan fell dead silent watching Stan, then cackled, only softer and more sinister than in the kitchen.
Stan whispered again, so only I could hear. “Be careful.”
Mike stopped laughing. “Yo, blood, I see you got some bunk clothes, homeless motherfucker. You like my jersey?” He pointed down to his UNLV shirt, pulling at the bottom to make the team’s logo more visible. It was this season’s. I couldn’t afford something that nice.
“Yeah, dog, it’s fresh,” I said. “I wish I was dipped out like that, but I’m jus—”
“You can have it,” Stefan interrupted, “if you can help us out.”
His offer hung in the air as I took another drag.
“Sure,” I said, releasing the smoke. “What do you want?”
Stan started shaking his head, his lips pursed shut. Mike walked in front of him.
“Two things,” Stefan continued. “We’re trying to go out west tonight and know you have connections—can you link us with a place to go? Maybe even a ride?”
I took another puff. Seemed reasonable—ride, place to stay, no problem.
“And we hungry as fuck,” Stefan said, rubbing his belly and smiling. “Can you do us a solid and order us a pizza? I ain’t no good at it and don’t like talking on the phone neither. Plus, we’ll give you a whole pizza on your own for doing it.”
“Order you pizza? What the fuck is wrong with you?” I laughed and coughed on smoke, the pressure burning my throat and chest. I noticed Stan was gone. He must’ve slipped in through the side door, didn’t even stay to finish the blunt.
“Okay. Give me the jersey right now and I’ll do it.” As long as I didn’t have to do anything sexual or pay out money to get clothed and fed, I was game to do whatever they were asking.
Mike pulled the jersey off and gave it to me and I slipped it on.
“One more thing,” Stefan said. “Just ask for the ride—don’t say who it’s for.”
“Whatever,” I said as I admired my new dips—it fit snug around my waist and looked crisp as it hung over my frame.
When we got indoors, I got on the phone with my buddy Shawn, a friend I’d hitchhiked and gone to high school with. Shawn said he could hook up a place to stay in Calgary, but that the ride would be harder to find. I knew he was puzzled by my request—I knew how to travel long distance, I knew how to hitchhike, and I already knew people to stay with in Calgary any time. Before I got off the phone, I made a mistake: I let it slip that the ride wasn’t for me. But I wasn’t clear who it was for.
“That makes a little more sense,” Shawn said as he hung up. “I was wondering if you’d banged your head somewhere.”
Next, I ordered three large pizzas, and tailored my very own just the way I liked it: ground beef, pepperoni, and extra cheese.
Fucking beautiful.
When the pizza dude arrived, Stefan and Mike told me to tip him extra. I gave him a twenty.
“Thanks, buddy,” he said. “Best tip all night!”
I went home to Uncle Ron’s thinking it was the simplest work I’d ever done. I was grateful to my new friends that I’d started the new millennium in such a positive way.
“The Saint’s a remake, you know,” Uncle Ron said as the credits rolled at the end. “I like the original better.” He flicked his thumb in his beer and it made a blopping noise, like a stone dropped down a well. Solomon cut another fart. “Jesus,” Uncle Ron said, “I’m suffocating over here.” The dog lifted his head as if he knew we were talking about him.
Just then the eleven p.m. news flash came across the TV. A cab driver had been murdered, New Year’s Eve, near the Gateway Six movie theatre in Brampton. The reporter went on to say that police were looking for two suspects—a tall man with black hair in a ponytail and a shorter man with blond hair, both in their late teens or early twenties.
“If anyone has any information, they are encouraged to contact Peel Police,” the reporter said. A picture of the murdered cabbie flashed across the screen, and Uncle Ron went to change the channel.
“No,” I said, knocking the remote out of his hand. I stared at the name of the cabbie—Baljinder Singh Rai, 48, father of two.
It was Toronto’s first murder of 2000. I swear I heard a helicopter and Stan stammering. Stan lowering his head in silence while Stefan pulled out his roll of bills like a big shot. Everyone in the kitchen laughing. How Stefan and Mike had moved to avoid unwanted attention, watching their angles and lines of sight, like we all did when we shoplifted or ran from the police.
“C-careful, J-Jess,” Stan had said.
I stood up, my legs trembled underneath me, and I fell backward onto Uncle Ron.
“What the fuck?” he said. The room started spinning, and I ran to the bathroom to throw up, but I missed the toilet bowl and hit the sides of the sink and tub and got vomit on the front of my shirt.
Uncle Ron ran in. “Jesse. What’s going on?”
I wiped my mouth with my shirt then realized it was the jersey—my nice new gift from my nice new friend Mike. I fell back onto my ass, up against the towel rack. The shirt, the pizza, the ride out west, the “mission” from the night before—I fell for everything. I was caught up in something huge.
I didn’t even have an alibi for the time of the murder on New Year’s—I was with that drunk chick doing blow, trying to score. I’d made all the phone calls, gave the pizza guy the cash, talked with the pizza place and given my name, and had the shirt Mike was likely wearing when the crime was committed.
I vomited again. The small black pubic hair I could see on the bowl’s edge seemed immense, the smell of urine dominated my nostrils, nauseating me further, my uncle’s breathing behind me sounded like the bellows in a blacksmith’s forge. He was scared, I could tell, and the sound of my own blood coursing through my ears thundered louder than a jet engine. I sat down on the tub, clutching the edge. I ripped off the jersey and threw it onto the floor. I wanted to take a shower all of a sudden, but knew nothing could wash off the filth of what they’d done or the trouble I was in.
Uncle Ron looked at the shirt. “What?”
He had no clue.
“They did it,” I shouted. “They fucking killed that taxi guy and gave me this shirt!” A stream of tears rolled down my cheeks but I wasn’t crying. It was a mix of fear and rage and confusion. I was under a giant’s thumb, and it was pressing me further and further through the bathroom floor into hell, crushing every bone in my body.
“Don’t you say a word,” Uncle Ron said, bending down to me. “Just shut the fuck up. You don’t want trouble, if I think you’re saying what I think you’re saying.”
I backed up against the shower wall, shocked. “You don’t understand,” I said. “I’m involved. I can’t shut up.”
He shook his head and scrunched up his face like he did when someone fucked around with his money. He was like me—a street person—we weren’t supposed to talk. Not now, not ever, no matter the circumstances or the trouble. He was someone who’d done time, was solid, woul
d solve problems at the drop of a hat.
He grabbed my arm and hauled me to my feet. “Snap out of it,” he shouted. “You’ve gotta think.” His lunchbox hands squeezed my shoulders. “I love you, Jesse. I’m trying to protect you. Burn the shirt.” He picked it up and handed it to me.
I stared at it, wishing the nightmare would end.
He closed my fist around the shirt, holding my hand in his. “Your life’s on the line.”
I knew what that meant. I ran out of the apartment and down to the dumpster out back, and started gathering paper and sticks. I laid the jersey on my collection of kindling and sprayed the wood pile with the lighter accelerant Jerry kept in the apartment for his Zippo, but just before I struck a match, a sobering thought came to me. I knew Frank had seen me the night before—twice in fact. I’d stopped by Olive’s at nine p.m. before I went to the Y2K party, and again at around three a.m. when it was over, and he’d told me that Mike and Stefan had gone out. He was also there, today, right before I got the jersey from Mike, so he would’ve seen Mike with it on earlier, and then me leaving with it later on after I’d eaten the pizza.
I put my match back in my pocket, rescued the jersey from its funeral pyre, and hightailed it to Olive’s. When I got there, I peered through the sliding glass doors. It was dark. I banged on the window a few times but no one answered. Olive’s two cats pawed at the glass.
From the Ashes Page 16
