Flagged Victor (18 page)

I felt as though my legs were stuck in quicksand. I had about thirty feet on him and my arms were windmilling, but he quickly ate the distance between us. As I reached the car, automatically going for the passenger side, I remembered that my job was actually to drive, so I leaped over the hood in classic
Starsky & Hutch
fashion but lost it somewhere mid-air. First I bounced on the hood, then I rolled, and finally I landed shoulder first on the pavement.

Chris appeared above me seconds later, that oval mouth amplified in appearance, ugly and murderously angry.
Keys!
it said, and I shoved my hand in my pocket and turned them over, as if to a carjacker. Then I felt a hand under my arm and got lifted to my feet like a child.
Get in!
And when I started for the driver’s side:
Over there!
And I reversed course and ran for the other door.

He was turning the engine over before I even sat down. The gym bag, the gun, the goggles, the helmet, the deposit bag, all lay at my feet. Put that shit away, he said, in a calmer voice, and the car moved forward.

I put that shit away. The goggles and ski mask I shoved into a side pocket of the gym bag. The deposit bag needed some squishing and shoving before the gym bag could close up around it. The helmet I clenched below my knees. The hand cannon I slid underneath the seat. Even as I did that, I wondered about my fingerprints. I never wanted to touch a gun again.

Chris pulled us onto the main street, then headed back toward the Tim Hortons, the last place in the world I would have gone. I mentioned the cops. He told me to calm down, as if he’d always known they’d be there and it was a critical part of his plan. The sun had disappeared behind the inky morning clouds, darkening the world. Beyond the road and the strip malls that lined it, there were low forested hills all around, and I saw the peaks of house roofs and the simple cross of a church. Telephone poles, sagging wires, transistor boxes sitting next to traffic lights. The red turned green and Chris rolled forward again. More cars now. No cops following. No sirens. We’re just going to drive like there’s nothing to worry about, Chris said,
as if in teaching mode. He waited at the stop sign, looked both ways for oncoming traffic, and rolled through, picking up the pace ever so slightly on the straightaway. We passed our old junior high school with the paved courtyard, the fence, and brown grass, and Chris hauled off his jacket and flung it into the back seat. Next, he tried to take off his father’s poofy down hunting vest but the zipper was stuck. He gave it a ferocious yank and the material ripped open. Tiny white feathers exploded into the air and Chris spat them away from his face.

I wanted to apologize for fucking up. I wanted to close my eyes and never open them again. I wanted to cry. But with the appearance of the feathers, Chris started laughing and the laughter became surprisingly contagious. We were in a snow globe that had been shaken so vigorously, the world was dazzled with the sheer fucking wonder.

There
is a familiar ritual in bank robbery. It is required that the perpetrators find a sheltered space and count the money as soon as possible. Most bank robbers, however, must not have part-time jobs or school. Chris’s shift at Canadian Tire was starting in an hour, and my end-of-year party for Rivers’s class was scheduled for that afternoon. So, Chris decided we would keep the deposit bag locked until we could get together, either late Saturday night or sometime Sunday, and celebrate like men.

He dropped me at home, then drove the two and a half blocks to his own house to put his helmet in the garage, return the .357 to his father’s gun safe, hide the deposit bag behind the washing machine in the basement, dispose of the remains of
his father’s down vest in a garbage bag, shower, change into his uniform, put his workout clothes into the same bag, and drive back to work. I crawled into my bed to assume the fetal position and stare wild-eyed at the wall.

When Chris arrived at the Canadian Tire the usual fifteen minutes late for his shift, it was clear from the demeanour of the morning employees that something bad had happened. A robbery, one cashier confirmed. The morning deposit. As subtly as possible, Chris asked Ron, his floor manager, how much those bastards had gotten away with this time. Ron was only too happy to answer.

Baxter is saying over a hundred grand again.

That’s a lot of dough, Chris said, a little snow-globed all over again.

Then Ron remembered it was Chris’s last day on the job.

You picked a fuck of a day to quit, he said. If I didn’t know better, I’d say you were the one who robbed the place this morning.

Ha ha, Chris said.

It was such a good joke, Ron repeated it ten or eleven times to other staff. Then, since the upper management types were so distracted with the police and the lawyers, Ron made an executive decision and decided to throw Chris a goodbye party at lunch.

Baxter would have done it himself, he reasoned, if he wasn’t so distracted. You’ve been here six years or something, right?

Thereabouts, Chris answered.

His mind was on the deposit bag. But a goodbye party was better than working, so Chris allowed himself to be taken with four other willing male colleagues to the Brass Rail, the nearby
titty bar, where the burgers were passable and the watery beer came in pitchers. The laughter and the conversation seemed particularly jacked up, an energy possessing all of them, and far more beer was consumed than usual. Chris was gifted two lap dances in appreciation of his years of service, and acted enthusiastic even though it was the middle of the day, and he was facing middle-of-the-day type strippers. When it was time to return, they stumbled back to the store to finish the shift. Within the half hour, Chris was confronted by a housewife complaining about the carpet cleaner she’d rented. Though drunk, he thought he was behaving in a professional manner as he listened. Then she smelled the beer on his breath and demanded to see his manager. Chris obliged by calling Ron over, glad to get away from the crazy lady. As he walked to a safer and quieter section of the store, he heard the woman screech in shock, and shout, You’re drunk too! Then he saw her leaving the store in a huff.

One could only laugh.

Chris escaped to the warehouse for shelter from more irate customers. When he stepped into the cavernous space with towering racks for stored goods, he found another manager sleeping on some rolls of carpet. He looked around, hands on hips, and took it all in one last time. Then he grabbed his coat and left, three hours before the end of his shift.

He couldn’t wait anymore. He needed to count that money.

I
awoke as if reborn. I had never slept so soundly in all my life. I’d slept through the morning, slept through lunch, slept through the early afternoon. The light had changed in my room in the
meantime. I opened my eyes without realizing I was finally awake. I saw shadows on the wall, and books on my shelf, and the motion of a bird hopping along my awning. I stretched out, and became aware of my body. I remembered the robbery as if it had happened a hundred years before. I was alive and I was free. I had been given new life, and I was experiencing an acutely new level of consciousness as well. No longer obsessed or fretful, a Buddhist sense of eternal now had possessed me.

I realized, in the most detached way, that it was time for Rivers’s party. My house was empty, as any Buddhist’s house should be, and I got dressed and ate. I absconded with an opened bottle of my dad’s Irish whiskey and caught the bus to Rivers’s place.

The party was in full swing, and included students from classes of previous years as well. Rivers’s girlfriend, Megan, was there, looking flustered and sexy, bustling from kitchen to backyard with various necessities. Rivers himself sat in an Adirondack chair beneath a blanket, like FDR, and held court. I walked up and put the bottle on the broad wooden armrest, and he eyed it, and eyed me, and shook my hand in a way he wouldn’t have when he was teaching the class. Have a glass with me later, he said, and I agreed that I would.

I saw Giles and nodded at him. He grinned and plowed his face into a burger. Then I saw Leah.

It was difficult not to see her. She wore a bright pink sundress, despite the chill, and I had never seen longer legs or a more beautiful neck, and never felt a stronger urge to grab a woman from behind and cup her breasts. Still, even these thoughts passed through me with Buddhist detachment. I was
aware of my desires and her beauty more than I was weakened by them. I gazed upon her with a kind of reverent appreciation until she saw me and smiled with her peculiar enthusiasm.

What are you doing here? I asked.

I’m part of the team, she said. Delmore said that he couldn’t have gotten through the semester without me.

It was good to be next to her, to be friends with her, and we had a relaxed conversation as we stood on the grass, drinking beer. Then Rivers called Leah over and she left me, and soon I saw her heading into the kitchen to help Megan.

In the full darkness, later that night, the bonfire roared, and the remaining people were huddled in chairs and on log stumps, watching the flames. I found myself next to Rivers, and he offered me a drink of the whiskey I’d brought. It was almost empty when I received my slug.

Loosened, Rivers began to talk. We all listened, but he was talking to me.

I finished edits on the novel. The publisher loves it, she thinks it’s going to be one of the biggest books of the year, but she has no idea how to classify it. They’re calling it a cross between
The World According to Garp
and
The Eiger Sanction.
I’m calling it
Transassination.
It’s about a rogue CIA agent who gets a sex change to go undercover. It’s outlandish and it’s dangerous, and it’s like nothing the world has ever seen.

There was nothing we could do but lift our glasses in cheers.

Gentlemen, he said, as the ice clinked, we’re here to make axes for the frozen sea inside us.

Years later, I read the words in a quote from Kafka, yet they still seemed somehow cribbed from Rivers.

We congratulated him. We basked in his accomplishment. We cheered the bold choice he had made in writing a novel on the edge of such polar extremes. And yet, inwardly, even as I spouted off like the others, I was surprised, horrified, and strangely excited by the bizarre and unlikely combination. Sex changes and espionage? Garp meets Clint Eastwood? I’d never heard of such a thing before. Was this the future of the novel? I wasn’t sure. I had my doubts.

Rivers seemed to sense my confusion, perhaps even my reticence, the skeptical cracks in my faith.

I didn’t write an absurdist thriller because I think the world needs better airport novels, he said. I wrote it because the originality of my story will command attention, drive my sales numbers up, and allow me to do what I really want, which is to keep writing, and to keep shaking people up. You think that’s a crime?

Of course not, I said. What did I, after all, know about crime?

He thrust the whiskey bottle at me again. I took it robotically and poured the dregs for both of us.

You and me, friend, Rivers said, are never going to be afforded anyone’s attention the easy way. We have to hit people over the head with story, goddamn it. We have to make it impossible for the reader not to read us because the story we’re telling is too goddamn gripping to put down. We’ve got to arm ourselves to the teeth, kick the doors in, take hostages, and still somehow get away with all the loot. You understand?

I do, I said. I do.

You can’t bore readers with writing that builds to some important philosophical point. You can’t drag them through three hundred pages of Kmart realism just so they come to
know your everyman character. You can’t expect them to give a shit about your nifty little postmodern jerk-off moves that have been old hat since Donkey fucking Coyote. You have to put a gun to their forehead and demand their cash. You have to grab them by the throat and choke the fucking shit out of their ears. Otherwise, they’ve got too many other distractions. They can watch
Hart to Hart
or read Sidney Sheldon. Or, if they want to feel literary, they can pick up the latest novel by whoever is currently getting their cock stroked by the
New York Times
or dig into whatever great master they pretended to read in college.

But that’s okay, Rivers assured me, because being good at story is going to be critical for surviving in this business from now on. There will be no Bellows, Updikes, or O’Haras going forward. The nineties will be market driven. So that’s what I’m doing with the novels I’m writing now; I’m making it impossible for publishers not to publish me and reviewers not to review me and readers not to read me, and that’s what you need to learn how to do if you want to make it. Otherwise, it’s too fucking hard. You won’t be able to keep going. The rewards are too few and way too far between. You’ll feel like a loser because everyone around you is making a living and you’re not. You won’t have the confidence to look people in the eye, or the time for a girlfriend, or the resources to support a family. You’ll take up some shit job like night watchman, janitor, or dispatch agent to get by and because it gives you time. You’ll end up living all alone, in some basement apartment, eating crackers and typing, masturbating once in a while for release, and thinking about shooting yourself in the head.

Do you get it? Do you get what I’m telling you?

I
did not realize how drunk I was until I felt Megan at my side, nudging Rivers awake. You have to get up and go inside, she said, or you’ll freeze to death. And Rivers said, I’m pretty sure I should have frozen to death on that fucking mountain, and closed his eyes again.

Can you help me? Megan asked.

I rose and tried to lift Rivers’s arm. He pushed away from me.

Drape his arm over your shoulder, Megan said, and lift him that way.

Ow! Rivers said, and muttered something about us being cocksuckers.

I’ll help, Leah said. Out of nowhere she emerged and gently edged me aside. She was wearing a leather-sleeved hockey jacket now, with the name Dave stitched onto the shoulder. It felt unmanly to step back but Rivers submitted more easily to her. Flanked by Megan and Leah, he hopped his way inside.