by Beth Goobie
“Thanks,” she mumbled, ducking her head as the man held open the door. Once inside, she stood, letting her eyes adjust to the gloomy interior. As expected, on a late Friday afternoon, the pub was packed, several large TVs blaring from the walls as a bartender briskly took orders. Approaching the bar, Shir stood, holding the box and waiting for him to notice her.
“Excuse me,” she said as his gaze fixed on her. “I have a delivery for Mr. Ninto.”
“Huh?” barked the bartender, his eyes widening as they locked onto her face. Then his gaze flicked to the box. “Oh, yeah,” he said, his expression growing careful. “Mr. Ninto’s in the back. I’ll let him know you’re here.”
Picking up a phone, he spoke into it, then set it down. “You can take it through those doors there,” he said, pointing to a set of swinging doors on his left. “He’s in his office—first door on the left.”
“Thanks,” said Shir, hefted the box higher in her arms, and pushed through the doors. The hall beyond them was narrow, a door marked Office a few meters in on the left. Bracing the box against the wall, she knocked. Muffled footsteps sounded, and then the door opened to reveal a middle-aged man in a polo shirt and jeans.
“Delivery from Bill’s Grocer?” he said, pointing to a chair. “Put it over there.”
“Yes, sir,” said Shir and set down the box. Picking up the clipboard from the taped-over top, she held it out hesitantly. “I need your signature, sir,” she said warily, wondering if this man was going to be a replay of Mr. Dubya. “Just to show you got your order.”
“Signature?” asked Mr. Ninto. “Sure, sure. No problem.” With a flourish he signed, then stuck his hand into his pocket and fished around. “Here you go,” he grinned. “A tip. Spend it wisely.” Unhurriedly, almost mockingly, he dropped two toonies into her hand, his eyes like a security camera taking in every detail of her face.
“Thanks!” exclaimed Shir, fighting off a flush. Pocketing the toonies, she turned to the door.
“And give my best to your boss,” added Mr. Ninto, as she stepped into the hall.
“I will, sir. I will,” promised Shir, turning back to face him, but he was already closing the door. Dismissed, she pushed through the swinging doors and made a beeline out of the busy pub. Deliveries were over for the day, she thought, relieved, and she was hauling her sorry ass back across town as fast as possible. Climbing gratefully into the van, she headed out of the mall’s parking lot, her foot heavy on the gas. Nope, she decided, thinking better of it. Ease off—might be a speed trap coming up. The last thing she needed was a ticket, on today of all days.
After several blocks, she pulled onto a side street and parked. Then, leaning her forehead against the steering wheel, she let the shakes come. Cocaine, ecstasy, crystal meth, she thought miserably. Whatever had been in that package, it was the mob that did this kind of thing … organized crime. While most of what she knew about the mob came from TV, she had also heard rumors over the years about things that went on in this city—beatings and disappearances. Almost by instinct, she knew which pawn shops were best avoided; keeping her eyes peeled had taught her which of the neighborhood toughs could be convinced to hire out their mean edge.
But, she thought helplessly, Mr. Anderson? Bill’s Grocer? It was crazy, the whole thing impossible. Mr. Anderson was a nice guy, a family man with a wife, children, and grandchildren. Neighborhood kids knew him as a soft touch, someone they could depend on to support bike-a-thons and bottle drives. He even had a Neighborhood Watch sign posted in the front window of his house. He couldn’t be a drug dealer, she thought miserably. The idea was insane.
Without warning, the memory of Eunie Jahenny’s visit to the store flashed through Shir’s mind, bringing back the manner in which the girl’s manufactured boredom had contrasted with the intent look in her eyes as she had said, “Oh, thirsty. Real thirsty. So I thought I’d come in for a Coke.” And then Mr. Anderson’s studied casualness as he had taken a Coke from the cooler, saying, “Ah, yes. A Coke. While you’re drinking this, why don’t you come to the back with me? There’s something I’d like to talk to you about.”
All that talk about a Coke that Eunie had never drunk, thought Shir—a Coke she had ultimately left sitting unopened on the storage-room counter. And she had come in at 8:30 on a Tuesday evening, when it was practically guaranteed the place would be empty of customers. No, realized Shir, dismayed, what Eunie had actually come in for was cocaine, probably wrapped in a small unlabeled package. Not for herself, obviously—she didn’t have that kind of money. She was probably a courier and the Coke a kind of code—a signal to clue in Mr. Anderson as to her real purpose for being there.
Now that she thought about it, there had been similar incidents, other customers Mr. Anderson had, apparently casually, fallen into conversation with, then taken into the storage room—not often, perhaps three or four times in the six months she had been working at Bill’s Grocer. And, Shir realized, her thoughts racing, more frequently, there had been times she had walked in on her boss talking to individuals at the storage room’s outer entrance. Had all these people come by for a “Coke”? She hadn’t previously given them a second thought, but now she wondered if she had stumbled onto a pattern.
Would it be smartest to quit? she wondered heavily. But if she did, where would she get the money she needed to keep herself in beer? Mom had cut off her allowance when Mr. Anderson had hired her, and she expected Shir to buy her own clothes. She wouldn’t look favorably on having to dole out extra cash again.
Besides, it would look suspicious, just up and quitting. And from this point on, Shir realized with sudden startling clarity, nothing could look suspicious—nothing she did, nothing she said, nothing she even thought.
Forcing a sob down her throat, she restarted the van and headed off toward Bill’s Grocer.
Nine
Shir woke to an avalanche of sunlight pouring through her bedroom curtains and Celine Dion caterwauling across the hall. Blearily, she opened one eye, then closed it again. The day, she thought, poking around the grunge inside her head. What is the day? Oh yeah, Saturday. That had to be the reason Stella was running her stereo at top volume. Burying her head under her pillow, Shir let out a groan. Her brain felt like a throbbing, over-soaked sponge. Why, oh why, she thought miserably, didn’t someone invent a beer that you could drink without getting hung over? It would sell like hotcakes; people would be lining up to buy it.
She had drunk seven … maybe eight beers after getting off work last night, somewhere in a back alley, she couldn’t remember exactly where. One after another she had poured them down her throat, so steadily that her gut had been sloshing like a washing machine as she had come staggering up the alley behind the apartment building, holding onto the Black to keep herself upright. Yeah, the Black, sighed Shir. No question about it—the Black was her trusted buddy, the one who had stood by silent and sympathetic as everything had gone suddenly vertigo one block from home, and she had heaved the entire contents of her stomach onto the pavement. Wasted it! she thought, cringing at the memory of all that good beer running smelly and acidic across the ground.
At least her stomach had waited to dump its contents until after she had seen the gang of kids tearing up and down an alley three blocks north, spray-painting graffiti onto the black garbage bins the city had placed behind each house. She had stopped to watch, standing inside a copse of trees to avoid being noticed, and had been impressed with the boys’ efficiency. Swift and quiet, they had spray-painted their gang logo onto each bin, then gathered around one halfway down the alley and poured something into it. Next, they had tossed in several lit matches, watched as the bin’s contents exploded into flames, and taken off at top speed.
Shir had taken off, too, in the opposite direction. Knocking on someone’s door hadn’t even occurred to her, past experience having repeatedly revealed that simply being in the vicinity of trouble meant getting blamed. A face that resembled a dog’s hind end looked guilty to most people; i
t was that simple. God, she thought, touching her temples, am I hung over! Dark and heavy, her brain throbbed like a fresh bruise. Slowly, ever so slowly, she rolled over and peered at her clock radio. “Nine-forty,” she moaned. That was early, way too early to have to listen to something as rage-inducing as Celine Dion. There should be a law against playing high-up screechers before noon. A person should be free to wake up in her own home without having her rage induced before lunch.
Centimeter by centimeter, Shir worked herself into a sitting position. Then she sat for a while, head in hands, as she stared at the floor. She had to pee like a racehorse, her bladder in a massive emergency state, but for some reason, she couldn’t seem to get herself up and moving. Something—the part of her responsible for flicking the switch that got her legs going—wasn’t flicking the switch. Eyes dull and unblinking, her brain in deep sludge, Shir continued to sit and stare at the floor. A minute ticked by, then another and another. The pain in her bladder worsened, the black throb in her brain deepened, and still she didn’t move. Still nothing flicked the necessary switch.
With a rumbling belch, Shir glanced again at her clock. This time it stood at 9:56, which left approximately three hours until she was due at work. I have to get moving, she thought weakly. A lot of coffee was going to have to make its way down her throat before she cleared today’s hangover. But though she repeated this to herself several times, the inner switch didn’t flick. Slowly, soundlessly, her head sank back into her hands, and she returned to staring at the immense, vast nothingness of the floor.
A knock sounded at the door. “Yeah?” mumbled Shir.
The door opened and Stella peeked in. “Good morning,” she said, smiling brightly. “How are you?”
Shir stiffened. Experience had taught her that the statistical odds on the possibility of her sister actually caring about how she felt ran at about one hundred to one. Stella wanted something. “Fine,” she said shortly.
“Great!” Stella said cheerily. “Well, today’s my walk-a-thon for cancer, remember? It starts at twelve. So, can I borrow your new runners? Y’know, your Nikes—the ones you bought a month ago.”
“Nope,” said Shir, without lifting her head.
“Why not?” demanded Stella, her voice rising a notch. “Our feet are the same size, and you’ll just be standing around the store all day. I have to walk a long way. It’ll take me hours. Your shoes are better than mine.”
“Just can’t, that’s all,” mumbled Shir. No way was she going to explain to Miss Saturday-morning-walk-a-thon that she had lost her runners last weekend because she had been too shit-drunk to find them in Dana Lowe’s back hallway. Stella was just going to have to suffer through her walk-a-thon wearing her own runners—cute little pink ones with daisies appliquéd across the tips. You would never have trouble finding them in a back hallway.
“You can wear my runners to work if you want,” wheedled Stella, taking a step into the room. “They’d look nice on you with my pink sweater. I’ll let you wear that, too.”
Of all the colors in the spectrum, pink was the one best designed to accentuate the limp, carroty-red shade of Shir’s hair—especially with cute little daisies appliquéd across it. “Get out!” she roared, the rage erupting in her without warning so that she was suddenly lunging for her pillow and flinging it at her sister. With a squeak, Stella backed out of the room and slammed the door, and Shir sank back onto the bed where she lay clutching at her pounding head. Unfortunately, an imaginary monster happened to choose that particular moment to show up and begin kicking the left side of her head with steel-toed boots. Steel-toed boots, Shir realized incredulously, with pink daisies appliquéd across the toes. And now the imaginary monster was pulling out a sledgehammer and pulverizing her brain with it. A pink sledgehammer, of course, and it was repeatedly slamming her brain in the same spot. The exact same spot, she thought, dozing off. The exact …
When she woke again, it was 11:30. Except for the sound of the TV, the apartment was quiet—Stella had obviously left for her walk-a-thon. As soon as her eyes opened, Shir realized that she had to pee like three racehorses. No, she thought, groaning, three brontosauruses. Brontosauruses that were about to go extinct if they didn’t let loose soon.
Taking the utmost care not to jar her bladder, she eased herself off the bed and started toward the door. Easy now, she thought soothingly. Easy does it. One heavy step, she knew from experience—one that was made too quickly or came down not exactly right—and her bladder would erupt, bursting at the seams. Cautiously, she opened the door and stepped into the hall. Ten steps to the can, she thought, projecting ahead. Nine, eight. From the living room came a surge of melodramatic music, then a scream and some half-shouted dialogue, but Shir kept herself frantically focused on the bathroom door. Three steps to go, she moaned silently, two, one. Fortunately, the door was open. Once inside, she didn’t bother to flick on the light, nor did she check to ensure the door had latched behind her. Her legs simply bolted for the toilet, her hands jerked down her pj bottoms, and she let ’er rip.
It took Rambo-like determination not to howl with pain, but after the first blast of urine, Shir floated in relief. Yeah, she thought dizzily, this is ecstasy, this is bliss. And not bad for eight beers—holding them all without a single trip to the can until 11:30 am, even if the three or four she had upchucked were subtracted from the total. No matter what her mother said, she, Shirley Jane Rutz, could hold her own with any guy when it came to handling the bottle. Yeah, Shirley Jane Rutz really had things under control. She was managing fine, she was laughing.
When the steady stream of urine had finally trickled to an end, Shir flushed the toilet and stood up. Then she flicked on the light and peered hesitantly into the mirror. A low moan followed as she assessed the pouchy, bloodshot eyes gazing balefully back at her. She looked, she realized in dismay, like death warmed over. On second thought, forget the warmed-over bit. She was death in deep-freeze.
Popping a few Tylenol for her headache, Shir opened the bathroom door and started down the hall. The next thirty seconds, as she well knew, were the important ones—if her mother didn’t start nagging right away, she wouldn’t bother. Cautiously, Shir edged forward, wide-eyed with apprehension as the living room couch came into view, revealing a pair of fuzzy blue slippers, the plump rise of her mother’s hip, then her face. Eyes closed, her mouth sagged dully open, Janice Rutz was lying flat-out comatose as the TV buzzed aimlessly on the other side of the room. Collapsing against the nearest wall, Shir stood staring at the scene. So, she hadn’t been the only one hitting the sauce last night, she thought wryly. And with the way her mother looked, she wouldn’t be coming out of this one for hours. Which gave Shir enough time—more than enough—to pour several cups of coffee down her throat and get herself out the door. By the time she returned from work, she would have recovered enough to look somewhere near normal, and Janice Rutz would never have the slightest inkling about her elder daughter’s latest binge.
An opened package of English muffins sat on the kitchen counter, but Shir’s stomach lurched at the sight. Plugging in the kettle, she boiled some water and made herself a cup of coffee. Then, sitting down at the table, she sipped it slowly, yawning as her body’s sluggishness began to recede. With a sigh, she glanced at the clock above the sink. Eleven-fifty-five, she thought. That left forty-five minutes before she had to leave for work, a full hour before she had to walk in the door of Bill’s Grocer. Sixty minutes before she had to smile at Mr. Anderson and—
Shir’s eyes shot wide open and she remembered: the unlabeled package in the Fox and Brier order, the taped-over boxes, Eunie Jahenny’s Coke. Drugs! she thought in a wash of fear. Mr. Anderson, the mob, organized crime.
Stop it! she shouted angrily inside her head. Jumping to conclusions like that—it wasn’t fair. After all, she hadn’t actually opened the unlabeled package. And just because one taped-over delivery box had contained a package like that didn’t mean they all did. It wasn’t right to assume
bad things about someone, especially someone who had treated her decent. Yeah, Shir thought fiercely, Mr. Anderson treated her decent. Out of this whole goddam city, he was practically the only person who treated her okay. He wasn’t a drug dealer; he couldn’t be.
Savagely she brushed away a tear. She wasn’t crying, she told herself firmly. No, she wasn’t. She was just … tired, that was all—tired because she had drunk one too many. Well, okay—maybe three or four. But Mr. Anderson would understand that. Just last month during a quiet spell in the store, he had told her that he had been a wild kid way back when—sowed his own reckless oats. “It doesn’t pay, Shirley,” he had said sadly, gazing out the front window. “All that craziness—it catches up to you in the end.”
Had it caught up to him? she wondered, staring out the kitchen window. Was that why he was sending her across town to deliver unlabeled packages in taped-over boxes to hotels, pubs, and rec centers? Lifting her mug, she drank steadily, then set it down empty. “Time to get up now,” she told herself in a bright, peppy, Stella-type voice. “Time to get up and moving. Time to head off for work. Yeah, time to go to work.”
Still nothing flicked the switch.
When she walked into the store fifty minutes later, Mr. Anderson was waiting for her—not in an obvious way, and not in a manner anyone else would have identified as waiting, simply standing beside Cathy at the till nearest the door and chatting up a customer as he bagged her purchase. Normally, Shir wouldn’t have thought anything of it; normally, she would have felt only a rush of pride as her boss turned to her with his customary smile and said, “There you are, Shirley. Early as usual, I see.”
But today, as Mr. Anderson handed the customer her bagged purchase and turned to face Shir, she was hit with a gut-surge of panic. Taking a frightened step backward, she bumped into a small display table of oranges and had to grab at the stack of fruit to keep it from toppling over. Instantly, Mr. Anderson was at her side, breathing quickly as he helped steady the wobbly produce. For five, ten seconds they stood side by side, clutching at the orange pyramid, and the stack of fruit held.
