MARRY, BANG, KILL

by Andrew Battershill

  Greta’s plan was to talk to Glass Jar, confirm that he’d been the leak, and if she didn’t have any leads after that, follow the cops to Marlo, kill the cops and Marlo, and then hit Glass Jar on the way out of town. She should have asked for more money.

  She pulled up to the shack already pissed off, and more than a little grossed out. Somehow the nice, glowy green of the air and trees around Glass Jar’s place just made the trickling lines of rust, the dirty window, the soaked patches of oily dirt he used as a driveway all seem meaner and sadder and more disgusting.

  Before she got out of the car she checked her gun and flicked off the safety, then she took a switchblade out of her glove compartment, fitting it loosely into her palm. She wasn’t even out of the car yet, and Glass Jar was already waiting for her, his arms suspended against the top of his door frame, his hips cocked back, torso canted like a compound fracture. Greta wondered, abstractly, if Glass Jar thought he looked good, or thought he looked any way at all. There was one dark speck on his white T-shirt, the exact size, shape, and colour of a one-month-old piece of canned tomato.

  “Hi there.”

  Greta nodded up at him. “Hi to you too.”

  Glass Jar let go of the door frame and stood up straight. He raised a finger to his chin, coquettishly. “If you’ll sorry me, I don’t remember making a date with you.”

  Greta walked up beside him. Glass Jar went to scratch his left arm, and she grabbed his right firmly by the ulnar nerve. “Hey. Uh, Glass Jar . . . It’s Glass Jar, right?”

  He swallowed a chunk of dry air.

  “Yeah. Glass Jar. I’m here to talk to you. And I’m sent by people who won’t forgive you unless I give them the good word. So what we’re going to do, Glass Jar, is we’re going to go inside, and you’re going to tell me who you snitched to and how you did it, and if I get in a good mood I’ll give the people who sent me one good word.” She let go of his arm, stood on her tiptoes and peeked over his shoulder into the kitchen/living room. “You strike me as a microwave kind of guy. A man who’s cracked the odd mini-pizza. I’ll bet your freezer works. I bet that one could fit an entire dead thing in your freezer, in pieces, maybe, but it’d fit, and nobody would smell the pieces of that dead thing for miles and years. I’ll just bet your freezer works.” Greta put one arm forward and stiff armed Glass Jar backwards into his shack. He tripped over his feet and landed square on the twin sticks of his tailbones. “I’ll bet your freezer is running right now.”

  Glass Jar sucked what was left of his teeth, turned his head to the side, and spit foamily on his own carpet. “I guess I better go and catch it, right boss lady?”

  With everything else around them completely still, the blade of Greta’s knife sprung out. They waited in stillness for a second, and then she jutted out her bottom lip and blew her bangs up in the air. “Ba-dum-bum.”

  Glass Jar loosened up a little when Greta let him have some (more) of whatever clear, weirdly viscous liquor he was drinking. Too stupid to realize he was already dead, Glass Jar relaxed into his story, telling Greta about the big young cop who’d caught him dirty with meth and stolen scripts, open booze in the car, and a bag of stolen scallops.

  In Greta’s experience, the things that people got contract-murdered over were usually on the sadder end of cheap and the cheaper end of sad, but a bag of scallops had to be the lowest price she’d seen yet.

  Greta stood beside the door, leaning on the frame because she was a bit too sleepy to stand upright but also a bit too germ-conscious to sit on any of the furniture. Glass Jar was rambling now. With his wrist flopped downwards at a sickening angle, exposing dirty bandages stained by blood from the inside and dirt from the outside, Glass Jar let his head droop to meet the wrist and stared at his disgusting, cigarette-butted carpet. “Do you . . . You from around here? West Coast, I mean by that.”

  Greta almost didn’t answer, as she was busy figuring out whether to kill him now or wait until after she’d done Marlo and the young cop. Waiting was the smart play, the only play, really. It was crazy risky and unnecessary to do it now, but she really, really wanted to. Just from looking at his neck tendons. “Nope.”

  Glass Jar seemed to wake up a little and swung his head up at her swiftly, broke into this weird half-ass snarl. “I am. I grew up here. I grew up down in Sidney when they still had the wood boat races.” He smeared his arm across his nose, his snot across a razor wire tattoo that didn’t go around his arm, just down it in a random straight line for about four inches. “These boats, they were like, whatzaface, replicas. Remakes of old boats. The race went right by my house. And this is the first thing I remember in my whole life. I’m, like, eleven or twelve years old and I’m at the beach, and I’m lying down because my friends buried me in the sand. You ever been buried in the sand, boss lady? When you were young? Young as you still are.”

  Greta didn’t respond. She had been buried in the sand by her friends at the beach as recently as a couple years ago, but she wasn’t going to tell Glass Jar that. She just looked out his stained window and reached around her back to put her palm against the butt of her gun. It soothed her.

  “Anyhow, since I’m talking to myself, I’ll keep on it, there’s this small wood sailboat with a round bottom, looks sort of like a bath toy but real-boat-sized. It’s called a caravel.” He looked up at her, the corners of his mouth pulling back in a vaguely human way. “That’s a thing I still remember. I’m lying in the sand, I’m packed in, and I’m warm all over, and all of a sudden this caravel comes up over the horizon, I’m serious as a ball cancer right now . . .”

  “Wow, that is serious.”

  “The tip of this boat, it’s purple, like bright-ass purple, and the bottom of it is a mirror, showing me the sea under it, only a little more red and a little more blue than usual. And this huge boat, it just floats over everyone, and I look around and nobody’s looking but me, and I just think: they’re here to fetch me. I think the word fetch. Have you ever thought the word fetch? Because I haven’t, before or since. And then I fall asleep. And that’s all I remember. True story. That’s a thing happened to me.”

  “Cool story, bro.” Greta turned to go, then, against her better judgment, she turned around. “You don’t remember anything before you were twelve.”

  Glass Jar was back to just staring at her breasts now. “No. Not . . . Whatzit? Clearly. Not clearly. I worked in this dry cleaner’s in high school. You ever heard of carbon tetrachloride?” He waited two seconds then plowed ahead again. “Don’t matter, because I huffed it either way. Just a whole strong hootful of it. Almost died. Did me a shred of damage.”

  “You were getting high?”

  “Nope. It’s toxic. Don’t get you high, though.”

  “Then why’d you do it?”

  Glass Jar actually took a second to think about it, or at least to think about thinking. “Just to see.”

  “Explains a lot. It’s been a slice. But I have to get going now.”

  Glass Jar squinted at her, hatefully. “Yeah? You’re busy?”

  Did he think they were going to hang out now? Greta turned to leave. Her hand on the door, she heard Glass Jar, back to his baby-bear snarl now.

  “Hey, girly, before you go, you know what a hole is?”

  Greta stopped another second, took three deep breaths, and once again did not spin around and shoot the junkie eleven times.

  “A hole is a while of nothing with a circle of shit around it. That’s what a hole is. So if anybody called you one, a hole, that’s what they were sayin’.”

  29

  Mousey had called Grace six times and left two messages before he decided to bring her one of the breakfast muffins that she liked from the Cafe Aroma.

  In sharper times, Mousey would certainly have noticed some of the hard skid marks in the gravel of the driveway or the dented case of beer in the ditch.

  He hopped out of his car, leaving the door open, and tried to make his body language chipper and pleasant as he approached Grace’s
porch. He knocked as loudly as he usually did, and then winced. Mousey had a really good cop-knock, but he’d never quite figured out the friend-knock.

  Grace appeared at the door, her eyes hooded with sleep, squinting disdainfully at him. He made a sheepish face, gave a thumbs-up with one hand, and held up the muffin bag with the other.

  “Motherfucker.”

  “Too early?”

  “Motherfucker, yes. I got your messages. I was going to ring you up, I was going to spend your money, and I was going to do it on nine fuckin’ hours of sleep, son, come on!”

  “I can see where I misplayed this. Want a delicious muffin?”

  “I love that muffin, I want that muffin, and I know you’re bullshitting me right now. You’re a tofu-eating drunk who’s afraid of carbs. I don’t understand it, and I don’t like it. I know you don’t love that muffin the way you should. Love it the way it’s normal to love a muffin.”

  Mousey handed her the bag and she took it. “Gracey, I’m sorry. I could have done that a bunch of different ways, with the money and all, and I meant it nicely, and it came out fucked up. I don’t have much family. And I have hardly any friends, and you mean a lot to me. And I’m a middle-class white man of a certain age, so I bottled a bunch of shit up and then just shoved my smelly feelings all up in your face all at once in the form of cash. And that’s what happened back there.”

  Grace laughed and shook the muffin bag at him. “You’re a good apologizer, Mouse-Man. Good apologizer. Awww, come here.” They hugged, and Grace spoke into his shoulder. “It’s all good, now lemme go. And lemme go to sleep.” They released each other and Mousey stepped back and took a deep breath. Grace peeked in the bag. “These have bacon in them, and sausage, and green onions, and bits of egg.” Everybody took two breaths. “Ah, it’s all good. I’ve been a little out of it myself. I’m not shoving anything in anyone’s face, but . . . yeah.”

  “What’s going on? I’m available to listen sensitively to your problems.” Mousey made a small sidelong shift towards the open door.

  Grace hit him with a dose of side-eye cold enough to freeze smoke. “I’m not worried about how you’re going to listen, okay? I’m worried about how you’re going to respond. Is that going to be sensitively? Because that’s the only part that affects me. You listen to whatever you want, cry on your wounded man-insides. I don’t care. How are you going to respond to my problems?”

  Mousey stopped, stood up straight, and stilled all the irony-muscles in his face. “Sensitively.”

  Grace smiled, shook the bag at him. “Tonight, around suppertime, go to the HBI, sit on the patio and order yourself some dinner, and I will join you. Might even ask you for some advice about something. Now scram. Some of us are sleeping. Some of us are sleeping right now.”

  Mousey rocked back on his heels, let the lack of balance carry him to the steps. He skipped off the porch, light-stepping back to his car.

  After he got home from Grace’s, Mousey considered going to visit Tommy, then thought better of it, smoked a relief joint, drank a very poorly blended fruit smoothie, and accidentally passed out while watching an episode of Catfish: The TV Show where nobody actually got catfished, the couple just hadn’t bothered to meet in person for eight years.

  30

  Glass Jar usually liked to get really, really tweaked before he watched the local news, inevitably staying tuned when it switched over into the Mandarin news. Typically, these sessions would switch seamlessly between his harsh cursing of ethnic minorities; vicious, unavailing masturbation to the female anchors; and loud, vicious, oddly bird-themed commentary on the physical appearances of interview subjects. And today was no different.

  Glass Jar was rummaging aimlessly around the front of his sweatpants when Tommy Marlo’s face appeared in the air beside the comely Chinese anchor’s beautiful, round, but somehow also thin face, instantly redirecting Glass Jar’s erotic reverie on a long, violent detour. Marlo’s face onscreen was close enough to smell the gorgeous tiny Asian hairs of her cheek. Glass Jar spoke to Tommy’s image on the television, slowly at first, stretching his vowels out like they were rubber bands he was shooting at the ceiling. “Everybody knows. Like your half-a-shade-past-white-Arab face is fooling anyone. We all know. You ain’t Turkish.”

  Glass Jar jumped to his feet and began pacing, kicking old beer cans and candy wrappers out of his path with his eyes still fixed on the screen. Picking up steam.

  “This fuckin’, this fuckin’, this fuckin’ . . . I’m . . . I’m stuck now. Boss lady up my ass now, fuckin’, I need business. I need business. I need to work. This guy, this fuckin’ guy, MOTHER BIRDS COULD MAKE A HOME FOR THEIR BABIES BETWEEN HIS LIPS. I’m ready. I’m ready to make money and touch every cheek hair of every fullmoon­skinnycheek around, and this fuckin’ half-a-nigger twists my shit all up, robbin’ a fuckin’ money stash, moron half-a . . .” Glass Jar stopped his path and raised his hand to his chin thoughtfully. “Yes!” He ran across the room, swept his arm through a mound of the garbage on his kitchen counter, did several unintentional jump squats, punched his fridge, and threw three beer bottles into the wall across the room before dropping to his haunches and pumping his fist sixty times. “The black lady from the bar. It’s her. She’s his mom. He’s at her place.” He jumped up and ran out his door, leaving it open behind him, he went straight to the truck, fumbling for his keys. Glass Jar was ready to break this thing wide open.

  “Niggers, niggers, niggers; I’m a goddamn genius!”

  31

  Tommy knew that it would be smart to follow Mousey’s advice, and more importantly he really did want to, but he ended up leaving the campsite and finding a nice group of surfy-seeming people on the beach nearby. He did it a little bit because he had the start of a cider buzz on and he smelled their pot and heard their shitty acoustic guitar and the sound of pretty girls laughing, pretty girls who were also willing to hang out and pitch tents and get sand in their clothes. And he did it a bigger bit because sitting alone in the campsite with nothing but nature around him gave him a horrible feeling in the bottom of his chest, like people he couldn’t see were thinking about stepping on it.

  The beach party was inclusive and a bit fluid, and after passing around a few cigarettes, Tommy found himself comfortably situated, talking to a small group of well-groomed hippies about jobs. Three of them worked in Victoria, one at the Ministry of Agriculture, the other two at an organic bakery down the street from the ministry.

  Joey was the least hippyish of the bunch, wearing a maroon sweater cut to look like a rich woman’s winter coat. She’d said her name, and it was the only one he remembered, but she hadn’t said what she did for a living. She was sitting on the far log, drawing heavily on a cigarette with her head turned away from the circle, checked out of the conversation, but in a calm, easy way rather than a stuck-up way.

  After he’d listened to the others talk a minute Tommy got up and walked across the circle. He almost managed to disguise losing his balance as his foot moved around a large rock and he landed heavily on the log next to her.

  Joey pulled her head around then, slow but not lazy. Her hair was a little too short to get in her eyes, but she gestured at pushing it aside anyway.

  “Howdy, leadfoot.” She waved her cigarette at him, and for the first time Tommy realized she wasn’t just too cool for hippies, she was a few bong hits deep, and a few hours deep into the session. “I didn’t forget your name. I just didn’t listen when you said it.” She let the silence ride a minute, then she poked him once on the elbow, laughing in that way where the laugh stays halfway inside your mouth. “Did you have a plan when you launched yourself over here?”

  Tommy ran his hand across his shaved scalp, stopping to brush back and forth with and against the grain for a second, then he dropped the hand to his side. “A plan. Those are things you make right before you almost dome yourself on a log, right?”

  The sun was finally starting to dip below the horizon, the light orange and drained out
. She laughed. Tommy took a little pause, and he thought for a second about what he’d say next. Joey filled the pause, reaching over and touching him briefly on the forearm. “Are you from here?”

  “BC yes, this sweet island no.”

  “I grew up in Kingston, Ontario. This is a very sweet island.”

  Tommy sucked in a breath and shook his head sympathetically. “Ooof. Sorry. Man, that’s bad.”

  She laughed again, flicked her cigarette into the sand, and waved a loose, goofy fist at him. “If you say ‘Onterrible,’ I will . . .” She paused to think but kept her fist waving in front of him. Their bloodshot eyes met.

  “It’s tough, it’s tough to think of a good threat. I see your struggle. On the spot, it’s tough. I get it.”

  She moved her fist to knock twice on the top of her head. “You’re right. How do the threateners do it? All the threateners out there.”

  “It’s like anything else, they think it up in advance. But that option’s passed you by. So get that fist back out. I’ll show you.” She shot her fist back in front of his face, started another playful wobble. “Great. You’ve got that hammer ready . . .”

  “It is a hammer, yes. I am a hammer woman.”

  “Totally, totally, the hammer is solid. Now, all you’ve got to do is show me that I’m the nail. Right? So just go for it. From the heart. I just said Onterrible. What are you going to do to me?”

  She stopped the fist and held it an inch from his nose. She wiped the smile off her face and narrowed her eyes at him. “I will . . . beat you.”