Trickster Drift

by Eden Robinson

  After twenty minutes, he made it to the front of the line to discover he couldn’t check in until three, so he sweet-talked the clerk into letting him use the laundry room while he waited. He dumped all his clothes in one washer. He paused and then took off his hoodie and his T-shirt. He kicked off his sneakers and tossed his socks in. The girl loading the washer beside his raised one eyebrow, much the way Sarah would, disdainfully amused, like Spock when Captain Kirk did something typically, illogically human.

  “That’s as far as I’m stripping,” Jared assured the girl.

  “Good,” she said.

  He sat in an old plastic chair and ate some of his nachos and drank his flat root beer. The need to sleep made him heavy, like he’d landed on Jupiter and was being sucked down by two and a half times Earth’s gravity.

  After his laundry was done, he went back to the desk, where the clerk gave him a key card. His room was on the second floor, a male dorm with two bunk beds lining one wall and four lockers, a sink and a desk on the other wall. He’d lucked out and been assigned a bottom bunk near the open window. He untucked the blankets and sheets and checked the mattress but didn’t see any bedbugs hiding in the nooks and crannies. Relieved, he flopped on his bunk, throwing his backpack on top of the folded towel at the foot of the bed. His stomach grumbled. The nachos were not going to hold him tonight. He also needed to hit a meeting or at least take a shower, but his eyelids felt glued shut.

  Later, he woke to a couple of guys laughing as they came into the room. The lights snapped on. He covered his eyes with an arm, and was instantly back asleep.

  3

  In his dreams, his ex-girlfriend, Sarah, was always in the basement of his mom’s house where he used to live. Jared was usually on the mattress on the floor, one arm under his head. Sometimes she was leaning against him, frowning in concentration as she texted. Sometimes she was plucking her eyebrows in the cracked mirror under the barred window. Sometimes she lounged on the swaybacked Ikea chair in the corner, flipping through his mother’s In Touch magazines, bopping her head to whatever was on her iPhone.

  She loved to hotbox when they smoked his js, and they’d make forts out of broken furniture and blankets. She hated the way he rolled, called it fussy. In between the coughing and the laughing and the reek of cheap skunk, they’d make out slowly, starting with her pursed lips, her held breath and her small, crossed eyes as she leaned forward to blow smoke through her kiss.

  Tonight, in this dream, she was bleaching her bangs, idly timing the chemicals she’d foiled in her hair. She had an old beach towel around her shoulders, and she posed for herself in the mirror, changing her pout from demure to duck lips. She tried on a grin, and quickly dropped it, tilting her head and putting her hands on her hips to vamp. The kitchen timer dinged. After she rinsed, her bangs were a stained yellowy white against the blue-black of her long, straight hair. Then she dyed them blue with Kool-Aid.

  She danced while she waited, jittering and humming to no music. He’d liked this part of their relationship the best, before things went all dark and weird. They’d drop their outside faces and hang, not doing anything in particular or saying anything deep. In this dream, Sarah lifted her shirt and tucked the hem into her neckline, exposing a strip of her purple-and-grey sports bra, her smooth torso, and the puckered scars of the skin she’d cut near her hips that peeked above her jeans. She lined her belly button with lipstick, turned to him, and made her voice deep and growly while she pinched her stomach to make her belly button talk: “Cookie! Cookie Monster want cookie!”

  He laughed. She looked up and their eyes met. He woke.

  4

  He squinted, couldn’t remember why the ceiling was so close or why it was wooden slats. Light shone at an odd angle, blinding him when he turned his head towards it. Jared could make out a shadow behind the bright light. Right—he was in a bunk bed. The guy across from him was sitting on the edge of a chair, shining his cellphone flashlight on Jared.

  “Dude,” Jared said, shielding his eyes. “What the hell?”

  “Hello, Jared,” the guy said.

  “Can you shut that off?”

  “How’s Maggie these days? Still a psychopath?”

  Jared went cold, then sat up. The man lowered the phone so it lit his own face from beneath, like someone telling a ghost story around the campfire. Clean-shaven, angular features, dirty-blond hair, blue eyes, a pale linen shirt and khakis, shiny loafers. David always had a preppy thing going.

  “You look terrible, Jared.”

  “You have to leave. Get out. Now.”

  David raised the phone again so the light shone in Jared’s eyes. Jared wished he’d worn a T-shirt. That the sheets were covering him. That the worst ex of his mother’s long string of bad exes wasn’t parked an arm’s length away.

  “We have a restraining order,” Jared said.

  “It expired. They only last a year, dumb-ass.”

  “Yeah, you would be an expert on that.”

  “I like watching karma at work,” David said. “You and your psycho bitch made my life hell.” He sounded sincerely offended and hurt, like he was the innocent party.

  “You broke my ribs,” Jared said.

  “She nail-gunned my feet and arms to the floor and you both left me there, all night, screaming in agony. I have nerve damage. I had to have months of physio.”

  “You got off on torturing me. That’s messed up. What you’re doing now is messed up. How did you get in? How did you even know where I’d be?”

  “So you’re not going to take responsibility for anything?”

  “Dude, you seriously need help,”

  A pillow whacked David’s hand and the light wobbled. The guy from the upper bunk near the door peered over the edge, glaring. “Some of us are trying to sleep! Go outside if you want to talk!”

  “Yeah,” the other bunk mate growled.

  “Sorry,” David said. “Jared? Let’s go to the dining room.”

  “Go fuck yourself.”

  “I recorded that,” David said.

  Jared gave his phone the finger. “Bye, cray-cray.”

  “I’ll see you later,” David said, standing. “And we’ll continue our talk.”

  “Get help.”

  “With Maggie as a mother, you’re the one who needs it.”

  The light from the cell clicked off and David left. In the dark, Jared reached for the sheets tangled at his feet and covered himself, trying to tell himself he’d been dreaming.

  “Can you hand me my pillow?” the guy from the upper bunk asked.

  Jared reached over, grabbed it and tossed it to him.

  “Thanks,” the guy said.

  “You’re welcome,” Jared said automatically. He was embarrassed that there had been witnesses, but at least with the two other guys in the room, David had been more restrained.

  He couldn’t fall back asleep. Whenever he heard footsteps in the hall, his heart raced and his skin went clammy. The sensible part of him knew David wouldn’t do anything to him if he stayed put. But he wanted to go down to the front desk to report him, except David was likely waiting in the stairwell or something.

  Head fuck, Jared thought. One massive head fuck.

  When there was enough daylight that everything in the room was grey, he got up and got dressed. He jammed his feet into his sneakers, grabbed his phone and hesitated at the door, listening. Silence.

  The clerk at the front desk was holding an extra-large Starbucks mug close enough to her face that she could breathe in the steam. Her reddish-brown hair was tightly controlled in two French braids. She smiled at him. “Can I help you?”

  It was one thing to have your freakazoid past show up and stalk you, and another thing to explain it to a complete stranger, especially a cute girl with freckles across the bridge of her nose.

  “Do you speak English? Parlez-vous français?” she said. “¿Hablas español?”

  “Low caffeine levels,” Jared said.

  “Preach,” she
said, slightly lifting her coffee in a salute.

  Maybe he’d give her an edited version. He hated the way people changed when they learned things, the way they looked at him afterwards. That combination of pity and revulsion.

  “I…a guy…when I woke up…” Get it together, he told himself. Use your words. “I caught the guy in the bunk above me recording me sleeping on his phone. The guys in the other bunks saw him too. I was wondering if I could change rooms.”

  “Yikes,” she said, putting her coffee down. She typed into her computer. “He checked out a half-hour ago.”

  So David had waited around. Ew, Jared thought.

  “Would you like to make a complaint?”

  “No,” Jared said. “As long as he’s gone.”

  “Creeps. Gotta love ’em,” the girl said. “Wanna switch rooms anyway?”

  “I’d appreciate that,” Jared said.

  “No worries. I once had a guy trying to film up my skirt the whole bus trip to work. I still feel slimed when I think about it.”

  “That’s shitty.”

  She shrugged. “Watcha gonna do?”

  Breakfast came free with the room. Jared loaded up, knowing he had to make his money stretch. But he had to talk himself into eating, working past his nausea to swallow. He wondered how David had known he’d be here, and which dorm he was in, which caused him to run to the nearby washroom, where he heaved until stringy yellow bile came up.

  He knelt in front of the toilet. The chills kicked in. The old Jared would have gone and gotten hammered. Found a party. Drank and smoked up until nothing made sense anymore. He was days away from his first birthday, the anniversary of his sobriety. He didn’t want to remember the shit David had brought to his life.

  It wasn’t fair. He’d worked through this. The amount of therapy one-on-ones, group work and AA meetings he’d spent talking and feeling and processing amounted to nothing as he fought the flood of raw panic—his traumatized, broken-ribbed, inner eleven-year-old resurfacing with a vengeance. It felt unfair that he was bothering Jared now he was away from his mom. David hadn’t gone anywhere near Maggie after she and Richie had paid him enough visits.

  The world is hard, his mom liked to say. You have to be harder.

  In that moment back in Jared’s bedroom when Maggie had caught David torturing her son, and she had him screaming on the floor, nailed in place, she had handed Jared the nail gun and Jared couldn’t do anything but cry and shake his head. If he could travel back in time, knowing everything he knew now, maybe he’d be colder. Practical. Some guys really didn’t know when to stop. You had to let them know you wouldn’t put up with their shit.

  What had happened was in the unchangeable past. But he hadn’t bargained on David ever showing up again. He couldn’t think straight now. He had a hard time taking a deep breath. He couldn’t put together the steps he needed to take to look for a place to live or go check out the school. But he didn’t want to hide in the hostel and stew all day.

  He checked the list of AA and NA meetings Bianca had sent him. They were happening all around him, any time he wanted, open, closed, Big Book, men only, women only, LGBTQ, youth. He had his pick.

  You get your head right, Jared told himself, and everything else follows.

  The day spat rain, hissing on concrete sidewalks and parched lawns, giving the air a fresh scent, the promise of green. The great thing about meetings was that you could sit in the back and cry and it wasn’t a big deal. People emoted all the time here. The woman beside him dug around her purse and handed him a wad of tissues. He nodded thanks.

  He hit four meetings in a row, living on weak coffee until his stomach could handle the fruit from breakfast he’d stuck in his backpack. Around supper, he found a Chinese restaurant and ordered won ton soup. He sat at the back, facing the door. If David was stalking him, watching him meeting-hop, then he was a sad, weird dude with no life. Jared was going to have to ask his mom to dig around for the restraining order. Even if it was expired, it was there in black and white to show something had happened. People tended to believe the clean-cut white guy over the mouthy Native kid.

  His phone pinged. Text from Sarah: Last night I dreamed we were in your basement hanging like we used to. It was so real. I could hear you laughing.

  Damn it, he thought. Jared had about a thimbleful of magical ability and so did Sarah. But put the two of them together and freaky things like this started happening. He wanted to see her, especially today, but Sarah always wanted to go there, wanted to see what they could do. Jared wasn’t willing to let his life descend into weirdness again. Not after they’d literally tripped out of their heads with ’shrooms and went for a walk through the spirit world and brought back a troop of half men, half apes. Jared remembered choking on the thin air as Sarah followed the cosmic fireflies that swirled around her head, seduced by their song. Once they’d come home, he’d pretended the ape men were hallucinations until Sophia sent them back to their own world. Their dabbling in magic was what had attracted the otters. Sarah saw none of that, hadn’t been haunted by ape men or chewed on by otter people. She’d just remembered the trip and the fireflies’ song.

  He hesitated before deleting her text.

  He was going to have to deal with it, talk to her, but he didn’t want to, and at the same time he wanted to see her again, desperately.

  Right now, though, the waitress brought his soup.

  He let it steam in front of him until his stomach grumbled. He ate slowly, not wanting to hurl again. The soup stayed down. He finished eating and then, on a whim, decided he wanted to be by the water. He wanted to hear the ocean.

  Slanting sunlight streamed through the high-rise apartment buildings as Jared checked his Google map. Wisps of steam lifted off the sidewalk as the sun evaporated the rain. He found the seawall by the bay filled with people. He paused near a bunch of bronze statues of laughing men. People took selfies in the golden light as the sun and its reflection glittered on the water, close to touching. The beach was lined with logs in careful man-made rows. He found a spot and then sat in the damp sand, his back against a log. Seagulls complained overhead. The surf rolled in lazy waves. Little kids ran into the water and screamed and ran out.

  He wasn’t eleven anymore, Jared thought. David wasn’t the scariest thing in his world, not by a long shot. He wasn’t running. He wasn’t hiding. He wasn’t going home to Kitimat. There were always people who wanted you hurt, who cheered when you failed. David wasn’t the first and he wouldn’t be the last. Normally, he’d be texting his mom by now, letting her handle this kind of shit. But he was almost eighteen; he was striking out on his own. Plus there was her whole pissy mattress post and the fact that she’d ripped up his letters from Granny Nita.

  He’d figure out the David thing himself. Probably not tonight. He sat on the sand until the breeze shifted and brought a chill to the early evening and then he went back to the hostel.

  The upper bunk wasn’t as bad as he’d thought it would be. His new bunk mates had spent their evening bar-hopping, and after they got back, they continued drinking on the lower bunks, laughing about who had hurled first, who’d fallen down the most, who’d danced the worst. They were about his age. He couldn’t place their accents. The booze fumes were as thick as cheap cologne. Jared hopped down and they offered him a beer. He begged off and took his backpack to the lounge, where he cracked open his copy of Living Sober.

  A couple of hours later, he went and checked, and they had all passed out. Lightweights, he thought as he put his things back in his locker. He hesitated at the light switch then left the light on. He climbed up onto his bunk, crawled under the sheets and watched the ceiling until his eyes burned, waiting for sleep that never came.

  Jared was walking back to the hostel from a Friday morning meeting when he got another text from Death Threat.

  I’m here, Death texted. U ready?

  Not far, Jared texted. Be there soon.

  As he rounded the corner, Jared instantly sp
otted him. Death Threat was tall and still skeletal, but he’d stopped wearing skinny jeans, which was an improvement. The bandana over his long, stringy hair and the ratty leather pants were not. How he made it through customs without a free colonoscopy was a mystery.

  “Yo!” Death shouted, waving. “Jared! Over here!”

  When Jared got to him, Death Threat gave him a bro hug.

  “Kid,” Death said. “Only people with male-pattern baldness should have shaved heads.”

  “How was Washington?” Jared said.

  “Overrated,” Death said. “It’s an extremely reluctant legalization. Their grows are too limited.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Colorado’s light years ahead of them. Do you have a passport?”

  “No.”

  “We’ll get you one. The future is edibles—’cause you know how squares hate bongs—and we need someone with half-decent culinary skills.”

  “I’m stuck here for classes.”

  “Screw your classes. Go get your shit. Come on. Places to be, fortunes to make.”

  Jared tucked his hands in his pockets. “I thought you said it was just some security.”

  “Plans change.”

  “I dunno. I’m, you know, sober now. And I’m going to school.”

  “The sober part is your big selling point. I know you won’t sample.”

  “Yeah, yeah, I hear you. But I’m not travelling. And I’m not making product.”

  “Look at you,” Death said. “Fucking thinking you’re going to get a free ride.”

  “Hey, man. I’m just being straight with you.”

  “If you want to park your lazy ass at my place, you are going to fucking do what I tell you to do. Got it? Are we clear?”