by Shilo Jones
* * *
“Busy?” I ask Sim.
“Mad busy. Right product, right price. People doing well, need to blow off steam, they come here. Doing shit, need to blow off steam—”
“—they come here.”
Sim’s laugh still makes me smile. More than that. It makes me wish—
“But busy’s better than broke.” Sim’s tone is all business, like I’m a booze rep he’s chatting up and nothing more. “It’s all good, except for the city threatening to pull my permit.”
We’re seated on a red velour sofa in Sim’s office, in front of a panel of one-way glass that provides an unobstructed view into the club. The walls are insulated for sound, reducing the Top 40 to a predictable thump. “Thought that was done? Tourism optics? The Olympics are over.”
“We’re a cash cow they want to keep milking. Which is fine. Same everywhere. Look at Vegas. All in the open. Take it or leave it. Vegas is the most honest city in the world.” Sim spins a gold ring on his middle finger, makes a laughing sound that isn’t a laugh at all.
“A city of gamblers and thieves is the most honest? Sounds about right.”
“This town wants to play it both ways. Wants to be all upstanding and self-righteous and condemn my club, but at the same time, they wanna get paid.”
“Sucks,” I say, wanting to move closer but holding back, unsure of how much I can be myself with him, going through the list of what’s changed between us, the lies and half-truths to keep straight, what he knows and doesn’t. Not wanting him to find out about me working at Marigold. It was Sim who clued me in to the connection between Vincent Peele and Clint Ward. Mentioned it offhand at my nephew’s birthday six months ago. He said he’s keeping an eye on Clint, even though I told him to let it go. Said he heard the wannabe was trying to move out of dope and into real estate. Said it’s a real common career move among aging gangsters. A scumbag dope dealer turned bagman for a big-money developer? Got my journalistic curiosity up, to say the least. Two weeks later, I was enrolled in a real estate marketing course and reconnecting with Eric. Sim hasn’t put any of it together. Like most people in my life, he has a habit of underestimating his little mouse—
“It’s the lying that gets me,” Sim growls. “Be upfront about it. Admit what you are.”
Sim came up with my brother. He finds out I’m at Marigold because of him, he’ll hit the roof. “How much is the ask?”
Sim gives me a questioning look.
“You don’t have to say, but how much do you pay them to keep the club open?”
Sim takes a sip of bottled water. “Still digging dirt, huh? Keeping them honest? Glad to hear it. Anyway, it’s not crippling. It’s the principle. Say fifty grand a year. Cash.”
“To one—”
“Gets sprinkled around. Inspection, zoning, cops.”
Make a note to make a note of that, try and find a source working for the city who wants to talk.
A woman’s dancing on stage, dressed like a sexy cyborg, gold-painted skin and shiny silver short-shorts with a matching silver wig, a tiny top and knee-high boots with thick metal buckles and chunky heels. Fuck-me boots. The music slows. The dancer pauses beside the not-very-polished brass pole, moves her arms and legs in quick, jerky motions, robotic, while the crowd hoots and guffaws and fist bumps.
“Quite the performance.”
“She’s top-tier. Makes it look easy.”
“I meant the men watching.”
“Them too. Keep to script, most of them, and the ones who don’t get tossed.”
“We all have our roles.”
Sim shifts. “C’mon. It’s a game. You never wanted to be someone else?”
“All the time. You?”
Sim goes quiet. He was never one to rush in. Always thought it through. Maybe that’s why he’s still alive and my brother isn’t. I watch him sip his mineral water. He’s slumped against the couch, relaxed, in control. Being near him…fuck you, Sim. That’s what I want to say. Fuck you. But it’s not only his fault. Neither of us has the strength to end it clean. Kissing him, being kissed back, a kiss that proves something, answers a question—would it be the real me, kissing this man behind a wall of one-way glass?
“I was someone else, remember?” Sim glances at his watch. “Wasn’t all that.” He stands, moves to his desk, frowns at a few papers. “About the journalism school thing? Been meaning to mention it. You want—”
“Gin and soda’s all I want. Please.”
Sim phones the bartender, orders my drink. “I mean my offer stands. If you decide to finish your degree. Not free money, but a loan.”
I pluck at a loose thread, tell him it’s only a diploma, not a full degree, but maybe someday. The dancer inverts herself on the pole, which seems to be one of her favourite moves. The men watching her also have a limited number of moves. I count six:
1. Hip-hop nodding with a gangster-serious pursed-lips look while glaring at the dancer.
2. Brooding, shoulders slumped, not impressed, bored/cool, pretending to ignore the dancer like he’s waiting in a drive-thru line at Wendy’s.
3. Laughing, dancing in his seat, making come-hither gestures at the dancer. The too-jovial guy everyone hates.
4. Holding a wad of cash, occasionally catching the dancer’s eye but mostly staring at the cash.
5. Intellectually studying the dancer like she’s a conceptual painting or a split-open frog on a dissection tray.
6. Sitting with a blank expression, flicking bills at the dancer as if discarding used tissue.
“Jaz?”
I startle. “Yeah?”
“I said…you good?”
A waitress wearing a fluffy pink tail skitters into the office, hands me my drink, leaves. I rattle my gin and soda and ignore the worried look in Sim’s eyes. It’s partly why I see him so rarely. That worry never leaves his face when I’m around. He used to be the big man with the even bigger smile.
“It’s a trick question. You never come here when you’re good.”
Sim asks about my mother and Meeta, the neutral topic of family. I offer brief, noncommittal answers. He settles beside me, leans into the sofa, crosses his arms. His head’s shaved close. He’s wearing a custom suit in a beautiful grey-blue that brings out the depth in his eyes, makes me think of Bentleys parked in London sub-basements. Before he bought this club it was a notorious dive. Carting girls out on stretchers nearly every week. Sim put an end to the prostitution ring that ran out of the second floor. But I have no illusions about who he is. I tell him I’m sorry me being here upsets him, ask if he wants me to leave.
“I think so, Jaz,” he says, quiet. “I know that’s what should happen.”
I can’t remember if I’ve ever heard Sim raise his voice. We used to hop the fence at Mountain View Cemetery, me and Sim and Amar and sometimes Meeta, and scare the shit out of each other playing hide-and-seek among the gravestones and crystal-specked granite mausoleums. But that kind of yelling—childish, fun, a way of confirming ourselves in the big wide world—no longer counts.
“I think about him a lot this time of year,” I say. “Three years next Saturday. I think I want to stop thinking about him. Shouldn’t I have stopped by now?” And I almost tell Sim the truth about the things I’ve been seeing since Amar’s death, but instead I take a sip of my drink, pretend to check my phone.
Sim’s quiet for a long time. I watch the men watch the women in the club. A stainless-steel ladder descends from a second-storey dressing room onto the stage. Men cluster at the bottom of the ladder, cheering as the girls teeter down. I wonder what it’s like to stand at the top of that ladder, above an oval trapdoor cut into the floor, and look down at those hungry faces, how you’d have to fight to stay whole, take a deep breath as you step onto the top rung—
My prosperity thoughts create my prosperous world.
—submerging yourself into that hunger, knowing it’s wrecking you but doing it anyway, or maybe doing it partly because you know it’s wrecking
you, no coming through it, no other side, and how being wrecked confirms an unspoken suspicion about the world. Taking satisfaction in the fact that although it’s wrecking you at least you were right about what it is and does, at least you have that and always will.
Some girls, maybe they’re strong enough. But me?
From my seat on Sim’s couch I have a view into the upstairs dressing room. It’s a dizzying perspective into a foreshortened space. A side table spray-painted gold. A woman’s bare calf. Part of a sparkling mirror ringed in Hollywood vanity lights. I attract my ideal clients and customers with my energy. I could handle the dancing, if I had to. Being on stage with the music and lights, alone and apart. But the talking? Socializing on the floor, drawing clients backstage for a private dance? No. And the ones who want to talk would be the worst. Who want to prove they’re different. They’d ask questions about where I’m from. My cultural heritage, if they were university students. I’d have to wear a belly dancing outfit. Wink and talk about the Kama Sutra. Tell the sensitive ones I’m going to school part-time, tell them it’s not a bad job, it’s liberating, pays well. Tell them we’re vilified, that society can’t stand a woman in charge of her own money, her own body. The guy’d nod and say wow there’s more to it than I thought, then I’d hit him with the pitch. Come upstairs, hun. Fifty bucks a song—
“I think about him too,” Sim says. “Can’t believe it’s been three years.”
I set my empty glass on a chrome table, already wishing I hadn’t mentioned Amar. Shake my head at Sim’s offer to order me another drink, fold my hands in my lap, try and think of something cheery to say. Something positive, small talk, a harmless bit of nothing to round out the visit, then excuse myself, glad to see you’re doing well, Sim, and that’s goodbye. Whatever I can dream, I can achieve. No wonder Sim bowed out. My brother was Sim’s best friend. It was hard enough, hiding our relationship from Amar. The conversations about when we’d tell everyone. When Amar was gone Sim and I had no reason to hide, and nothing made sense. And now? The man in front of me is my last link to that world.
“Saw him again,” Sim says, and from his tone I don’t have to ask who.
“No,” I say, mentally rehearsing the lies I need, so easy now, the lying truth, and maybe that’s what living is, the point where you can’t tell the difference or the difference no longer matters. “I was wrong. It wasn’t Clint. The light…it was noisy…maybe he was there, in the club, but it wasn’t him who—”
“You saw who you saw. Now you’re afraid.”
Afraid? Or not ready? I need enough time at Marigold to break the story. Then Sim can do whatever needs to be done. “I was in shock. I wasn’t thinking.”
“Don’t protect that motherfucker. You came to me that night and you told me, Jaz. You trust me. Trusted me? I don’t know. But you looked me in the eye and you said a name, and we both know it was the right name. Clint-fucking-Ward. Three years now, we’ve been carrying him. Look what it’s done to us, while he’s free and easy. But it’ll come around.”
Look what it’s done to us.
“You saw him when?”
“Other day. Condo job off Clark. Backed by his real estate buddy, I bet. Trash, both of them, money or not. Clint was standing outside, surrounded by his crew, all tatted up, playing the big shot. Dude thinks he’s out. Sucker motherfucker.”
“Sim? Leave it alone for a while.”
Sim glares at his hands. Hopefully thinking I’m still grieving, too broken to deal. The bass goes quiet. The dance is over. I’m not the person I was before Amar’s death, but Sim believes I am. The audience turns toward a boxing match on the massive flat screens suspended from the ceiling. The dancer crawls across the stage on her hands and knees, gathering ten- and twenty-dollar bills in a threadbare baby’s blanket. A few men approach, slip cash between her fingers and beneath her costume. She smiles, cups their cheeks, kisses them on the forehead as if in blessing, nods toward the stairs. She makes most of her income from her regulars.
Mark Ward
Straight jacked. I’ll make bank and get the thing I gotta do done and then adios to this greed-pit town. Clint can have his yuppie boss trip, whatever. Maybe I’ll head back to Bangkok, try and make a go with Daree and Sarah. Open a campground for backpackers in Northern Thailand. Bob Marley on repeat. Slacklines. Hammocks. Shitty Thai weed.
Could be worse. A lot worse.
We hop in the truck and Clint fires her up and tears off without the headlights. Cuts away from the golf course. Feels sweet, speeding across a mountainside in pitch black, and if we’re lucky we’re already dead. I light a cigarette, groove on the smoke stinging my lungs, cancer, bad choices I’m free to make, piss off, no one asked for your permission. Lean my head against the window, try and think of more happy future shit about my daughter, fail, mood skips, pinch a chunk of arm skin, try and tear it off, see what’s underneath. Clint says fuck sakes stop it Marky, so I do. Clint turns the headlights on when we hit Millstream, the last road before the rainforest stretching from here to fuck knows. The British Properties are a maze of looped boulevards and cul-de-sacs. Only a couple roads lead to the highway, and if a cop rolls up and doesn’t like what he sees—
Clint asks what the fuck’s the matter. Maybe sounds worried. I try and laugh, tell him I’m living the dream, but by the time I think of something to say it seems like too long since he asked, so instead I say nothing because what’s flashing through my head is Am I alive repeating over and over like those scrolling TSX tickers with symbols like RBC and ENB and IMO and ABX up down gains losses profits tickticktick and I’d short that motherfucker Marky Patrick Ward (MPW) for sure and Am I alive fifty-two-week low market capitalization can I be monetized it’s a for-serious question and I’m tempted to sink my cigarette into my wrist, try and feel a hundred per cent here but end of the day, does it matter?
Blood’s smeared beneath Clint’s right eye. I tell him. He licks his index finger, wipes it off, and I wish I had a bag of gummy-candy raspberries.
“Man, that bitch can scream,” I say, which is when I figure out what’s really bugging me. Truth is I can’t get the sound out of my head. Reach in my backpack, pull out a shaving kit stuffed with pill bottles, pop two Oxys while Clint shakes his head.
“You need to watch that shit.” All paternal.
“Bad things. Can happen.”
“Keep a lid on. I need your badass warrior self, not some doped-up junkie that needs babysitting.” Clint cranks the truck around a switchback while headlights come up quick behind us. “Okay, so here comes a motherfucker.”
Take a look, the vehicle approaching like it’s aiming to ram us off the road and—
Am I alive.
Clint shouts something, slams on the brakes, forces the vehicle following us to swerve into the oncoming lane to avoid rear-ending him, but before the guy can pass Clint veers hard left and cuts him off so now the guy floors it and speeds by on my side. A two-seater Datsun with rusted-out wheel wells. I get a look at the driver, scrappy-looking old dude, and the weird thing is he’s giving me a solid not-friendly stare-down like he knows me somehow, and I dunno from the look of him I’m thinking soldier, I’m thinking boots on the ground and after Clint’s done screaming out the window he glances over, says, “Sweet. Not a cop. Hey Marky you look total shit don’t throw up.”
“…following me?” Struggling for breath, lingering afterimage, sniper’s nest, crosshairs seeking my heart, a haunting or hunting.
“Following you? Nah. You’re nothing.”
Acrid taste in my mouth, gunpowder, burning blood and I tell my brother yeah, I guess he’s right.
* * *
Clint slows the Dodge in front of a Spanish-style mansion with a clay tile roof. Makes a call, says Breezy in Vancity and a steel gate glides open.
“Dope grow?” I ask, wincing at being such a gluehead.
“Nice work tonight, Marky. Stay on it.”
A stamped-concrete driveway slopes steeply downhill. Clint kills
the engine, puts it in neutral and coasts, slightly unnerving, like we’re floating, about to slip off the mountain and wreck into the city below. Another awful time-stuttering deal hits and the ragged feeling makes my gut curl around the beer and Oxys and it takes a lot of swallowing to keep from throwing up again. The house is dark. Motion-sensing floodlights click on as we approach, blinding, making me shield my eyes. Clint inches the truck against the side of the house where it won’t be seen from the street while muted sirens sound across the mountain.
“Day late dollar short,” Clint says, laughing at the cops. He shows me the selfie of us in the kitchen, him holding the Kasumi to my throat.
“Custom cabinets,” I say. “Pretty woodgrain. You’re holding the blade wrong.”
Clint gives me a weird look. Blink and we’re marching up the front steps, dripping water inside a giant foyer, leaving muddy puddles on hideous pink-and-gold-veined granite. A gold-foil balustrade winds up a spiral stairway. Ornate moulding—looks like it got squished through a pasta maker—frames the walls. Floral wallpaper. Not a single piece of furniture in sight. Clint stomps toward the TV noise coming from down the hall, some action flick, yells and blasts and machine-gun fire. The house reeks of lemony disinfectant and Pop-Tarts nuked too long, splattered the fruit stuffing.
Clint vanishes into a room before we reach the main living area. I follow behind, forget where I am, launch into space, shout Daree’s name in a placeless panic. Clint yells at me to shut up and get in there. Lights are out when I enter. A smallish guy, I’m guessing Asian, wearing only jeans, his back turned to me, is sitting cross-legged in front of a massive flat screen mounted to the wall, playing Call of Duty like he means it. Dude’s back is all ink, a blur of swirls and lines I can’t make out in the flickering TV light. The room’s huge. No furniture in here either. Clint sneaks up, puts his cocked index finger to the guy’s head, says boom!
