Fireball (34 page)

58

I went to see my shrink, one last time.

As soon as I entered her office, I sensed the difference. To begin with, the window was wide open. I mean, her window was never open. It was supposed to stay shut to keep in all that cool, soothing air. But it was open, all right. Sunlight had leaked inside, spilling across the floor beneath the windowsill. Harsh traffic sounds – honking and shrieking and squealing – clamoured up from the street. I started sweating before I'd even closed the door.

‘Your air conditioner's broken.'

It sat on its side beneath the windowsill, lifeless and silent.

‘It was only a matter of time,' she said.

There was something different about her, too. Actually, there were a few things different about her. She sat slouched behind her desk, one hand gripping a bottle of rum as if it was glued to her palm. Her blouse was damp and wrinkled. Tiny pinpricks of sweat showed through her layers of make-up.

In other words, she looked terrible.

‘What's with the boxes?' I asked.

There were boxes stacked on her desk, and more boxes piled up behind the door. There were boxes everywhere, half-filled with books and folders and loose sheets of paper.

‘I'm all done with this.'

Her gesture took in the desk, the office, the boiling bright world outside.

‘Why?'

‘As you may have noticed, lately I haven't been practising what you'd call an orthodox form of psychiatry. In fact, I don't think I've treated you very fairly. I've referred most of my other patients on to colleagues, and I imagine I should do the same for you.'

‘I'd rather talk to you than those jokers.'

She smiled. ‘We have something in common, don't we?'

Then she took a long drink, straight from the bottle. I sat in my usual chair, angling it towards her so we were face to face. The hot leather cover clung to me like plastic wrap.

She said, ‘I heard about Chris.'

‘On the news?'

‘Mm-hmm. On the news. I saw your friends Karen and Julian, too. It was quite surreal – seeing and hearing these people, after listening to you talk about them. That's a first for me, as a psychiatrist. Typically my patients aren't headline material.'

I smiled, this super fake smile. What I really wanted to do was cry. But I'd already cried in front of a bunch of girls recently – on the day Chris beat up Jules – and I wasn't about to do the same with my psychiatrist. She didn't need to see that.

‘You were the other teenager in the car, weren't you?'

I nodded.

She pushed the twixer towards me across her desk. I reached out mechanically and dumped rum down my throat. It didn't taste as good as it had before. There was lipstick all over the bottlemouth that gave it a bitter cherry flavour. Also, the rum was warm and oily, as if it had been simmering away on a stove. Super nasty. After one swig I dropped the bottle back on her desk, as far from me as possible.

‘How long have you known him?'

‘My whole life. Since preschool.'

She felt around beneath all the papers on her desk until she found her ashtray and cigarettes. The ashtray was loaded with old butts – all mashed together like a pile of dead maggots. She had two smokes left: one for her and one for me. We leaned together and lit them over her lighter.

She asked, ‘What are your favourite memories of him?'

I puffed on my cigarette, but didn't bother to inhale. I just wasn't into it.

‘Hanging out, I guess,' I said. ‘We rode our bikes around and rented movies. This one time we got high on nutmeg and saw the Northern Lights. We messed around with my dad's video camera a lot, too. Making skits and films and stuff. That was cool. And we never got in fights. Not with each other, at least.' I trailed off. I mean, there was no way I could put all my memories into words. It just sounded lame. ‘We went swimming, too. We swam all the time. In the river, in the ocean, in Julian's pool. I don't know why.'

‘Sounds like you were water babies.'

‘Sure. I guess.'

‘My daughter loved to swim, too. I think that made it even more of a shock, the way she died. I imagine it constantly. It's difficult not to. She was a tremendous swimmer for her age but she didn't have much chance.' She reached for the rum again. She could really suck it back when she got going. ‘I can't decide if it was a good way to go or not.'

I thought of Mrs Reever, and Chris's dad, and the long, cool drinks they'd taken.

‘Drowning's okay,' I said. ‘Better than almost any other way.'

‘Do you really think so?'

‘I didn't used to. Sleeping pills always seemed pretty nice. Or doing that thing with the running car and the exhaust pipe. As far as suicide goes, I mean. I wouldn't hang myself, or cut my wrists. It's too sick and melodramatic. People who pull that shit mostly just do it for the attention, anyways. I'd hate it. The only thing worse would be to die in a super lame household accident – like slipping in the shower or electrocuting yourself changing a light bulb. Dying that way would harsh suck. Dying any way would harsh suck, actually.' I took a nervous little drag on my cigarette. I got pretty worked up talking about this stuff. ‘But if I had to go, like Chris, and if I really had the choice – like if somebody came up and asked me how I want to die – I'm pretty sure I'd say drowning. Actually, I know that's what I'd say.'

As I finished, she leaned forward to pick up the picture frame from her desk – the one with the photo of her daughter in it. She didn't say anything for a while. She just sat there, tracing her daughter's features through the glass, as careful as a blind person reading brail.

She said, ‘You've obviously thought about it a lot.'

‘Haven't you?'

She smiled and put the picture down, making sure to get it at the proper angle. The rest of her desk was a mess of pens and papers and cigarette ash and spilled booze, but she was intent on getting that frame just right.

‘Do you think Chris wanted to die?' she asked.

‘No.' I sat up, because my back was getting all sweaty in that chair. It was hideous. ‘He wasn't suicidal or anything. I just don't think it was a big deal to him.'

‘Hmm.'

She rested her hands behind her head and stretched both legs out on the desk. Her ankles were right there, directly in front of me, and she wasn't wearing shoes or socks. Normally that would have made my day. There was one problem, though. Her soles. I'd never seen the soles of her feet before. They were rough and calloused and dry. Also, she had a wart on her heel. It was like finding out that your favourite piece of pottery – a mug or a bowl or whatever – has a chip. Her feet were chipped pottery. I couldn't believe it.

‘What's wrong?' she asked.

She must have seen my face – but I pretended I didn't know what she meant.

‘Well,' I said, looking away, ‘my best friend is dead, and now I don't feel like doing anything. I don't feel like eating or sleeping or getting up in the morning or even breathing.'

She leaned forward, reaching past her toes to pick up a pen and pad of paper from her desk. Then she settled back, pen ready, and started scribbling down notes.

‘That's perfectly understandable. Chris's death has made you realise that life is futile, that nothing really matters, that it's all pretty pointless, etc. Sound about right?'

‘I guess so.'

‘You could find religion. That's what my husband did. My ex-husband.'

‘You left him?'

‘It was a little more complicated than that. People handle their grief differently.' She tossed her notepad on the desk, and I saw that she'd sketched a cartoon picture of me – like the ones street artists do for money. It was pretty good, too. ‘My husband handled his by going to church and praying for our little girl. It's a natural psychological reaction, but not one I was willing to deal with. You're welcome to give it a shot.'

I tried to imagine myself, kneeling in some boiling hot church.

‘I don't think that's for me.'

‘Fall in love, then. Or pick a career. Whatever you do, don't think too much. That's the best advice I can give you. And listen to music. Say, how about some Lennon?'

‘Sure,' I said, even though I wasn't that stoked. ‘Put that guy on.'

She brought her feet down and tugged open her top drawer. Her movements were all slow and deliberate, like a diver working underwater – but eventually she got the Discman started. It was that same song again. I guess it was her favourite or something.

‘Lennon's the best, man,' she said. ‘The absolute best.'

She snapped her fingers to the beat, totally into it.

‘Yeah,' I said. ‘Too bad he got capped.'

‘Did you know his killer sat down to wait for the police? Wanted to be famous.'

‘What a treat.'

She nodded. ‘He was carrying
The Catcher in the Rye
in his pocket, too.'

‘What's
The Catcher in the Rye
?'

‘A book you'll read one day.'

A little while ago, I found a copy in the library. I liked it so much I didn't take it back. I just told them I lost it. I mean, I could have bought my own copy but what the hell.

‘Listen,' she said. ‘Listen to this.'

Keep you doped with religion and sex and TV…

‘Isn't that a great line?'

‘Yeah. Sure.'

We kept listening, but I had a hard time paying attention. It was too hot and bright in there and I was getting a super bad headache. I couldn't think of anything else to say, and I guess she couldn't either. After a bit, I started hearing these strange, nasal sounds beneath the music. She was snoring. Her head sank to one side, flopping against her shoulder. I stared at the sweaty mask of her face and the longer I stared the worse I felt. She was one of the best I'd met and all she had to offer me was booze and smokes and music, and a few witty words. I butted out my cigarette in her ashtray and got up, then crept over to the door. I only looked back once. She hadn't moved. The light from the window stretched across her desk but couldn't reach her.

I shut the door.

59

Somebody filmed the crash.

It must have been a bystander, because it's shot entirely handheld, and the quality is pretty bad. Of course, none of the networks screened it. Not CBC or City-TV, or even Global – and those guys love broadcasting sensationalist shit. I guess they weren't allowed. I mean, you can't put something like that on television. Maybe in the States, but not here. I managed to see it, anyways. I downloaded it from a website – one of those websites that are full of real accidents and shootings and bizarre deaths. I saw clips of this Colombian drug dealer being executed and a pizza guy getting hit by a truck and some kid falling off a five story building.

And I saw how Chris died.

It's all shot in one take. First you see the barricade by the cliff, and the cops scurrying around to get in position. There's no sound. At least, there wasn't any sound in the file I downloaded. The camera holds on the roadblock and zooms in a bit, before swinging over to the left, way down the road. That's when you see the car, snaking back and forth around all these tight curves, coming right at you. The windows are bright with white-hot sunlight, almost like the cab is burning up. You can see a figure behind the wheel but you can't make out Chris's expression or anything like that. There's this one moment, though, when the car rounds the last curve and slows down – as if he's seen what's waiting for him. It's hard to say what he was thinking. Actually, I doubt he was thinking of anything right then, or anybody. He just needed a second to figure out what the hell was going on.

Then he decided: ‘Fuck it.'

He starts accelerating, and the camera zooms out, until the car and barricade are in the same shot. Next comes the moment when all the cops realise that he's not going to stop, and the lady filming realises the same thing. I know it's a lady because the footage goes all jerky as she backs up, trying to get out of the way, and for a few seconds you can see her feet and sandals. But she doesn't panic. She just retreats about ten yards and keeps rolling.

That's when the cops open fire.

First they shoot into the air, and when that doesn't work they try to take him out. If you pause it, at a certain point, you can see the windshield go. They claim they got him but that's total crap. I mean, maybe they shot him and shit, but that's not the same as getting him. It's not like they actually stopped him or anything. In the video, he just keeps going faster and faster and faster, like a plane about to take off. At the last second, the cops give up with the guns and scramble away from the barricade like dozens of blue cockroaches.

Then he hits it.

I watched that clip almost a hundred times. To see how it actually happened, I had to slow it down and play it frame by frame. The sawhorses are the first to go. They just disintegrate into splinters of wood. Then the two cars blocking the road jerk back like a pair of pinball bumpers. The weirdest part is how the back half of Chris's car bursts into flame – not the front. I guess one of the bullets hit the gas tank or something. But even that doesn't stop him. He keeps going – right through the guardrail, right over the edge. For a second the car hangs in mid-air, burning like a meteorite. Then it drops out of sight.