Fireball (26 page)

‘What did the bouncer do?'

‘Oh – he was shitting himself.'

We were driving along Georgia towards Stanley Park, with Chris riding shotgun and Karen in the back. I'd decided to take the Lions Gate Bridge across to the North Shore, since there'd be less chance of hitting a police road check.

‘Everybody freaked out,' Karen said. ‘Screaming and crying. Some just ran.'

‘Only the smart ones. The stupid ones dropped to the ground and covered their heads – like they thought the sky was falling.'

‘Like chicken little, eh?'

‘They got a little chicken, all right.'

I guess I couldn't really blame them. I mean, it's the kind of situation nothing can prepare you for. There's no telling how somebody will react. Like Karen. When she gets scared – and I mean really terrified – she starts laughing hysterically. She did it in the woods the night we told her about the paperbag killer, and apparently she did the same thing outside the Roxy – so loud that everybody heard. Including the guy with the gun. He thought she was mocking him, I guess. Or maybe that she didn't believe it was for real. I don't know.

But basically, he raised the gun and pointed it right at her head.

Somebody must have reported it, because the incident got mentioned in the
Sun
– just a little article on page four. The thing is, they didn't even know who Chris was. Or the guy, for that matter. They assumed he was American, partly because of the gun, but also because he'd said. ‘You fucking Canadians'. It would have been a pretty bizarre thing for a Canadian to say. Other than that, though, they got most of the facts wrong – like always. To begin with, they called it ‘an altercation involving a firearm'. That's the most idiotic thing I ever heard. A guy points a gun at Karen, for no reason, and they call it ‘an altercation'. Plus, they missed out the best part, as far as I'm concerned. I don't know how. I mean, there were tons of witnesses and I'm sure some of them must have seen what Chris did.

‘All of a sudden I was on the sidewalk.' Karen leaned forward into the front seat, talking super fast. She was dying to fill me in. ‘And I heard this weird popping sound. At first I didn't know what had happened. I thought I'd been shot. I thought I was dead.'

‘That's crazy.'

What had actually happened was even crazier. Chris had shoved her out of the way – sort of down and to the ground. Then he broke a beer bottle on his own head. I doubt anybody knew what he was doing. Even he didn't know what he was doing. In situations like that, Chris didn't think. He just reacted, even if his reaction was totally insane. Afterwards, he stood there dripping beer and blood, holding out the broken bottle like a sword. A very small glass sword.

‘Holy shit, man,' I said. ‘You actually stared him down?'

Chris shrugged. ‘I just told him not to point his shitty gun at my girlfriend.'

I'm pretty sure that was the only time he ever called Karen his girlfriend. Of course, the fucking papers missed all that out. But they got the last part right, at least. They said the guy with the gun fired two shots in the air, then took off. He did, too. He backed down, like a total bed-wetter. And that was it. Chris and Karen walked away. The end.

‘You must have been terrified, man.'

I said that to him, later – after we'd snuck into the aquarium. That was the last thing the three of us did on their date. It wasn't planned or anything. It just sort of happened.

‘Yeah,' he said, ‘I was.'

‘Really?'

Hardly anything terrified Chris, but guns were an exception.

‘Sure.'

Karen said, ‘But you didn't look that terrified.'

‘Fear's like pain. If you ignore it, you can make it go away.'

That was arguably the greatest thing he ever said.

42

Dollarton isn't really a highway. They just call it a highway, even though it's only got two lanes. Don't ask me why. But near the bridge it connects with the real highway – The Upper Levels – and that's where we headed. We flew up the cut, between that long corridor of pines, then swooped like a dive-bomber towards Lonsdale. It was the hottest day of the year. They said that later, on the news. It was like Judgement Day out there. Old people started dying in their apartments. Kids came home with bright red blisters on their necks and shoulders, as if they'd caught some strange disease. Also, this black dog over at Ambleside went crazy with heat exhaustion and bit a baby.

In other words, it was hot.

Chris said, ‘Mrs Reever's funeral was a shitshow.'

He flicked his cigarette out the window. The rushing air snatched it back and it landed on the highway behind us, skittering sparks. On the radio the Chinese DJ was jabbering excitedly about something or other – probably about the insanely high temperatures.

‘There's got to be a better way to do it.'

‘I heard about this guy,' I said. ‘I think he made fireworks or something. But he was sweet. He got himself cremated, then had them pack all his ashes into this one firework – the biggest firework he'd ever made – and shot it right over English Bay. Boom.'

Chris grinned. ‘No shit?'

‘No shit.'

The police radio crackled for a bit. Then a woman started talking. She didn't say anything interesting, though. She just announced a bunch of numbers, and an address over in Kitsilano. We were a long way from Kits. We were a long way from anywhere. Chris blew by the Cap Mall exit and traffic started falling off. Wind rushed past our windows. It poured into the cab, tugging at our shirts and sucking things off the dashboard: receipts, parking passes, napkins, candy wrappers. It kept us cool, at least. Outside the whole world was melting but we were going so fast nothing could catch us – not even the heat.

‘Keep talking,' Chris said.

‘Yeah?'

‘Yeah.'

‘I heard about another guy.' I hadn't, but I made it up. ‘He didn't have a funeral. He just got his kids to bury him in the middle of the forest, with a tree planted in his belly. Then as he rotted the tree sucked up all his nutrients. It was like he became part of the tree.'

‘Did the tree ever die?'

‘Yeah, but not for a long time – not until his kids were dead and even his grandkids. Then this family cut the tree down and used it to build their dinner table.'

‘That's nuts.'

He swung wide around a turn. The tyres screamed and we fishtailed into the next lane. I braced myself against the door, waiting for an impact that never came.

Chris said, ‘Promise me you won't go to my funeral.'

I promised him. I kept my promise, too. I didn't go. Nobody understood why.

43

We threw them together.

They sailed into the air, bright gold against blue sky. The red and white ribbons stretched out behind, like little comet tails. There was a moment – just a moment – when they reached the peak of their arc and hung there, as if all the clocks in the world had stopped at exactly the same time. Then the medals started falling. They streaked towards the water, getting faster and faster and faster. Just before they hit one of them caught the sun, flashing out a mysterious signal. A second later we heard two little plops and they were gone.

‘How's it feel?' I asked.

‘The same.'

The sea was flat and still and glaring, like a giant piece of sheet metal. Two kayakers crept across the surface in the distance.

Chris said, ‘Let's drink those brews.'

He pulled two Kokanees out of his backpack. We sat on a piece of driftwood and sipped them without talking. Chris hadn't been talking much, lately. Not since he'd found out about Jules and Karen. Not since he'd beat the shit out of Jules. The noise from the public beach at Cates was softened by distance. I could hear splashing and shouting and laughing but it was like the sounds weren't real. Or we weren't real. It was hard to say.

‘Hey, check it out.'

A fluorescent green circle floated near shore, bobbing in the surf. I went to pick it up. The edge was cracked but other than that it looked like it might fly.

‘Want to play?'

I assumed he'd say no. Chris hadn't played frisbee in his entire life.

‘Let's shotgun, first,' he said.

Our beers were almost empty. We drained them and got out two more. Chris turned the cans upside down and used his dad's knife to puncture holes in the sides. I took mine, keeping it level so the beer didn't spill, and got my forefinger beneath the pull-tab.

‘Ready?'

‘Ready.'

We turned the cans upright and fastened our mouths over the holes, pulling the tabs at the same time. The beer rushed out and I started swallowing, but Chris finished first. He threw his can down in the sand. I never beat him at shotgunning. He had this way of opening his throat and guzzling ridiculously fast. It was another one of his super abilities – like his extra hard skull. I finished a few seconds after him and we both burped two or three times in a row. My eyes started watering and I could feel all that beer bubbling in my brain.

We were ready to play some frisbee.

‘Come on, man. This'll be awesome.'

‘Hell yeah!' Chris said. ‘Toss that bitch over here.'

I did. It wobbled a little in flight but other than that it flew pretty straight. Chris snagged it easily. I didn't think he would but he managed it. Then he waved me back.

‘Go long, Razor. Go long.'

I ran away from him, turning to look over my shoulder. His first throw wasn't so hot. The frisbee tilted on its side and curved out across the water. I went for it, anyways. I ran into the shallows and tried this awesome catch – stretching myself out like a wide receiver diving for the football. I caught it and landed right in the water. Splash. Then I popped up, holding the frisbee above my head so Chris could see I'd made the grab.

‘That's genius,' he shouted. ‘Give me one.'

I whipped the frisbee back at him, aiming it straight and low along the shore. His catch wasn't quite as cool as mine, but it was still pretty cool. He reached for the frisbee and bobbled it a little before gathering it into his chest. Then he spun around and fell over backwards into the water. He came out sputtering and choking and laughing his ass off. He hadn't laughed for weeks and now it all poured out.

‘Keep it coming!' I called.

He fired the frisbee back. It went on like that, with us flopping around in the water and making these super dramatic catches.

‘Frisbee rocks, man.'

‘It rocks the Casbah, all right.'

‘We're rocking like Casper the ghost out here.'

I don't know how long we played for. Hours, maybe. We played until we were dying of thirst, and then we played one-handed while we swilled more beer. And after the last beer was gone we still kept playing. It was as if the smooth, spinning disc had hypnotised us, and for a while nothing else seemed to matter – not Karen or Jules or Bates or anything. Whoever had had left that frisbee there was the biggest idiot on the entire planet. It wasn't an ordinary frisbee. Actually, it was the least ordinary frisbee I'd ever seen.

‘This thing's magic.'

That's what Chris said, just before he threw it away. By then we were so tired we could barely stand up. We staggered onto the beach, dizzy and gasping and waterlogged, and he whipped the frisbee out across the waves. It flew straight, rising on the wind, and eventually settled flat like a spaceship coming in to land. At the last second, I lost it in the glare of the water – way out there – so I didn't actually see it touch down.

‘Man, I'm beat.'

‘You look like a bit of a beatnik.'

‘Yeah, a hardcore beanbag trick.'

After that, morning became afternoon. A hot wind scorched along Indian Arm, stirring the water. It smelled of rotten seaweed and dead fish. The tide sucked itself out, leaving warm puddles of brine among the rocks, and the sun got brighter and brighter, like a bomb going off in the sky. There was nothing to do but stretch out in the shade. We lay there for a while and then these two kids flew by on skateboards, barrelling down the path that led back towards the public beach and concession. They were racing, I think. Or maybe they were just trying to go as fast as they could. Either way, it made me super sad.

‘I want to be a kid again.'

Chris made a sound in his throat, like a growl.

We closed our eyes and listened to the waves as the heat cooked seawater off our skin, leaving us all salty. He'd never been as calm as he was right then. I could sense that something had changed in him, that he was ready. All the fury and rage had melted away. It was just like in a samurai film, when the old master makes his apprentice complete a bunch of impossible tasks – like walking on hot coals and breaking bricks with his hands and balancing on tree stumps. Then, once he's done all that, he's ready for the final showdown: ready to fight, ready to kill, and ready to die.