Flagged Victor (11 page)

Robbing a bank has got to make you a better writer, don’t you think?

I suppose, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, he got me right there.

I
finally got fucked the next night, which seemed proof that some kind of cosmic realignment had taken place. How else to explain the progress in bank robbing, writing, and sex?

Chris had been seeing Susan on a regular basis since Halloween. This meant my time with him was rationed, and made our circumstances doubly painful, even tragic. Susan had been meant for me. Didn’t Chris know that? I hated her for abandoning me, but I blamed him for allowing himself to be led, unbidden, into the bathroom and capitulating without a struggle when she stepped out of her clothes and showed him her back, bracing herself face-forward against the wall while he thrust into her over and over. I resented learning that this experience had been, according to Chris, the single most intensely erotic encounter of his life. To undercut his assertion,
I reminded him of Leah on the pier and a couple other stories he’d told me about. He contemplated the full set for a few moments and then agreed with me.

Yup, them too.

When Leah had swooned for Chris in a compromised setting, Susan dropped her like a hot potato, but Radha did not seem bothered by the bathroom incident and remained Susan’s best friend. And so the four of us hung out. This set me on a spiral of self-pity masked by acerbic wit. Not that anyone seemed to notice my difficulties or care. The nights were often marked by a detour period in which Chris and Susan politely parted from us for a half hour or so, fucked, sucked, or whacked each other off, then returned. In the uncomfortable pause, I felt as worthless as a fluffer on a porn set.

The night after our shopping reconnaissance, we all went to a movie and saw
Less Than Zero
, which was great for the sex and the debauchery of college students but not so great for the descent into male prostitution. Shortly after it ended, Susan announced she had a tickle in her throat and wanted to go home. She was pretty sure she was getting a cold. She was wearing a red turtleneck sweater and her hair was in a tight bun, giving her a convincingly strained and weakened look. So Chris, the good soldier, offered to take her home even as Radha complained that going home would be the most boring thing in the world.

You guys should stay out, Susan said. You, of all people, she added, looking at me, should try to have a good time for a change.

I wondered what the fuck she meant.

After they were gone, I started to wake up to the fact that
Radha and I were now out on the town alone. Should we go somewhere for some nachos and maybe a Long Island iced tea?

How about a bottle of wine? Radha asked.

It turned out her older sister had an apartment in the city but was out of town on a business trip. We walked to the tower where she lived and into a large, shiny lobby. Radha nodded to the security man at the desk and led me to an elevator. We took it all the way to the top floor. The elevator actually opened into a living room, and a little white dog appeared before us and barked its stupid head off.

Ooh, aren’t you the brave little poochikins, Radha said, and went off to give it some dinner.

I was astonished by the opulence and walked around. There didn’t seem to be any curtains in the room. The windows ran floor to ceiling around the back of the couch, past the dining table. I could see the whole city, the harbour, the lights of the bridge, and even the insignificant twinkle of Dartmouth. Then I felt my toe nudge something and looked down. On the carpet behind the couch was a field of small turds. The dog must have shit back there fifteen or twenty times. Revolted, I backed my way out of that minefield carefully and waited for Radha to reappear.

She called my name from another room. It was the kind of call you think will never happen to you in real life.

I found her lying on top of the silk sheets, wearing the belly dancing costume from Halloween.

This, she announced, is what we should have done then.

Really? I asked.

I was too stunned to think of anything more romantic or witty to say.

Although I had read about sex and heard stories about sex and imagined sex so many times before, I did not know exactly how sex got accomplished in practice. But I’m happy to say, despite any expectations to the contrary, this time the good guy won and it all worked out very well indeed. We did what you would call foreplay, which involved licking, gripping, poking, and sucking each other for a time, and then we twisted, groped some more, rearranged, and pushed until actual penetration had been achieved. I stared into her enormous dark eyes with astonishment until they gently closed with what I could only assume was pleasure. I moved in and out of her slowly, as if testing the cushions on a new couch, and then I gained confidence when nothing terrible happened and began a more vigorous and rhythmic plowing. By the time stars were blinking in the dark cave of my skull and subterranean rivers of blood were rushing pell-mell through my veins, I took a moment to consider what I was supposed to do next. That’s when I remembered asking Chris the very question: If you’re not wearing a condom and you’re not sure she’s on the pill, what do you do?

I usually pull out and jerk off all over her tits, Chris answered. Then added, Especially if they’re nice.

So that’s what I did. Radha opened her eyes even wider and squealed in delight, and after I’d pulsed every last bit of myself onto her breasts, a lifelong supply of pent-up jism, she reached up and pulled me down, embracing me fully, smushing my chest into her chest, gallons of sperm squishing around between us, lubricating our skin.

That last part, I thought, was entirely uncalled for.

Just
to further support the whole realignment-of-the-stars theory, the next morning, Chris went to work intending to quit, and then abruptly changed his mind for reasons that proved to have a significant influence on later events.

I worked every summer, as did most of our friends, but in addition to summer employment, Chris had worked the same part-time job all year every year since he was fourteen years old. A neighbour down the street, Mr. Baxter, was the manager of a Canadian Tire store. Canadian Tire was a kind of proto-Walmart, more giant warehouse than store, with enormously high ceilings and endless rows of goods, ranging from automotive supply at one end to carpeting at the other. In between, there were aisles dedicated to plumbing, electricity, athletics, clothing, lumber, windows, tools, televisions, and so on. The deep back corner, like a protected national park, was where the hunting and fishing supplies could be found. You knew because of the fringe of pleasant green Astroturf underfoot, which made you feel as if you’d entered a wilderness.

Starting at $3.15 an hour, Chris had worked his way up to almost $8.00 by the time he was nineteen, doing two evening shifts and one Saturday day shift every week for five years. While that kind of commitment to a menial task seemed utterly uncharacteristic for such a restless and devious rogue, Chris also liked his easy comforts. Putting on the uniform and hanging out with guys he knew well to sell products he was actually interested in selling wasn’t such a bad gig, as gigs went. And he also liked the regular paycheque, however small, every two weeks.

But he had finally grown tired of it, and after several months spent contemplating the end, he’d resolved to quit. He had a
tentative line on a job as a bouncer at a bar, and he figured that would be a far cooler way for a college student to earn spending cash. Certainly, it did a better job at combining his three favourite hobbies: money, alcohol, and women.

Because it didn’t matter anymore, he showed up twenty minutes late for his 9:00 a.m. Saturday shift the morning after I got laid, only to discover the store in an uproar. The weekend cashiers, who were mostly teenage girls, had abandoned their posts and gathered together. The sales clerks huddled at the top of the aisles, as though afraid to venture too close but too curious to stay away. As Chris walked into the store and toward the staff room, he tried to catch wind of what was going on. The cashier girls watched him with big eyes. The sales guys shook their heads and grinned. He figured his tardiness must have been noticed by the CEO of the whole company or something, and he was about to be publicly flogged. But Ron, the manager of hardware, (who you knew was the manager because he had a combed moustache and wore the sky-blue polyester pants that matched the sky-blue shirt with the red pinstripes) gestured for him to come over.

Good day to show up late, hombre, he said.

Ron was not the kind of manager to lay into you for bending the rules. He was more of a player’s coach, so to speak.

Why’s that? Chris asked.

Because no one in management is going to notice today, that’s why.

How do you figure? Chris asked.

Oh, I don’t know, maybe because they’re dealing with a little matter of being robbed at gunpoint about fifteen minutes ago.

Chris was elated and crushed at the same time. He’d missed an armed robbery!

No shit? he said. They catch the guy?

Shit no, Ron said.

They backed up as the store manager, Mr. Baxter, and the assistant manager, and some other suit-wearer, and three police officers suddenly emerged from the offices and strode toward the exit. Discreetly, Chris peeled his winter jacket off and dropped it to the floor, toeing it under the light-fixture shelf.

At lunch break, Ron and Chris grabbed some burgers and a couple of beers at the nearby bar, and he got the full scoop. The armed robbery had taken place not in the store but along the route to the bank deposit machine across the street. One of the management trainees had set out with the deposit bag first thing in the morning. Just as he was crossing the road, a motorcycle pulled up to the light. This was strange since it was winter. There were two men on board, both wearing helmets with full visors. The one on the back aimed an evil-looking thunder cannon and reached out for the bag. Shitting his polyester pants, the management trainee handed the bag over, and the motorcycle roared away.

Jesus Christ, Chris said in amazement, that wasn’t too hard, was it?

Nope, Ron agreed. Like the candy and the little fucking baby.

They continued to eat their burgers and sip their beers thoughtfully. And then Chris said, How much money do you figure was taken?

Ron leaned in. I heard Baxter tell the cops the deposit was just shy of $115,000.

Holy living crap, Chris said.

He was so impressed, he forgot to quit.

That
night, Chris and I had planned to get serious about studying for exams, so we packed all our books and notes and hit the library. But then we got hungry and distracted and gave up and went for beers. He was excited to tell me about the armed robbery at Canadian Tire and the ungodly amount of money involved. I was excited to tell him about getting laid. I got to my story first. He listened but seemed distracted, and I felt as though I were boring him. For Chris, getting laid was right up there with learning how to ride a bike, something that had happened so long ago, and involved so many rides since, that the initial exhilaration and stress—the huge fucking deal of it—was largely forgotten. So I embellished the details and the number of times we did it and the variety of the positions we’d tried—not grasping yet that it was the little miracles, the smallest pushes and reactions, the particular touches and smells that were really worth noting. After I’d stretched the truth as far as possible, I felt like I was approaching the level of a Chris story, and still he seemed to be not really paying attention.

What? he asked, when I said he was pissing me off.

I told him I thought he’d be a little more impressed on my behalf.

He got himself together and agreed it had been a hell of an accomplishment. He had an easy way with earning redemption. It was nearly impossible to stay mad at him for long.

There you go, he said. It looks like planning to steal a shit-load of money has done wonders for your confidence.

I let that sink in and wondered, Was that what had happened?

As well as your complexion, Chris added.

Despite
my enhanced confidence, I didn’t get into the creative writing class. I got my notice mid-December. Chris was even angrier than me. Motherfuckers, he said when I told him. We were in my basement for a change, on a lazy Friday, the girls having skipped a high school field trip to hang with us. Radha and I lay on the couch together; Chris and Susan lay on the floor. The letter was in Chris’s hands. I felt burned too, but Chris took it personally, and his reaction, while it would have been appreciated had we been alone, seemed over the top and embarrassing in the presence of others.

Seriously, he said, what are they looking for? Stephen fucking King?

I doubt it, I said. I was self-conscious about Susan and her Toni Morrison thing. I always tried to sound smarter around her, knowing she read real books. Chris was a reader too, but he read indiscriminately. If a book was entertaining, well written, and kept him flipping pages, he enjoyed it. That meant he had no taste. Currently, he was on a Stephen King kick. To him,
The Shining
sat next to the
Iliad
and
Garfield at Large
in the pantheon of literary achievement.

Well, what story did you give them? he asked. That crazy one about the beach?

I willed him to hush. Didn’t he remember what that story was about?

I didn’t think it was ready, I said, hoping to divert any interest in its contents from Susan and Radha.

Ready my nutsack, Chris said. That was a kick-ass story.

It was no use trying to make him understand. But I knew that a creative writing class for seniors was likely to be looking for a certain kind of work, something literary.

Give me that catalogue, Chris said.

He meant the description of all available courses, a huge beast I’d thumbed through obsessively before registering last summer and that Chris had barely glanced at.

I heaved it to him and tried to work my hand down Radha’s pants, subtly, so no one else but my throbbing cock noticed. Susan snaked her head around Chris’s elbow and read too. Radha started to make little invisible grindy movements against me, so I figured she was getting my message.