Going Fast (11 page)

Sasha continued. “We weighed Scotty on a Weight Watchers' scale, and he was two and a half pounds exactly!”

Scott watched Sasha unload a tray of metal teapots that
leaked when you poured them. From his counter position, Scott could read an antique brass plate that said, M
EMBER OF THE
I
NTERNATIONAL
A
SSOCIATION OF
F
INE
R
ESTAURANTS
. He tried to imagine a monkey on a food scale.

“Squirrel monkeys are New World monkeys. They come from South or Central America and have wide noses and nostrils that are far apart. Scotty had a tiny face with a white Lone Ranger mask, like a raccoon in reverse. And his eyes . . .” Sasha stopped, seeking the exact description. “His eyes were very dark and superficial.”

“What happened to Scotty?” The name was surprisingly easy to say.

Sasha wiped the specials board clean of the vegetarian lasagna. “He died in my sister's arms. We think it was a heart attack, but we're not sure. We just know that he let out a shrill scream and toppled over.”

“Maybe the caterpillars killed him.”

“We buried him in a coffin made from a Buster Brown shoe box lined with a pink facecloth. Even though he was mean to my grandmother, she insisted. We dug a grave under the caterpillar tree and sang ‘Jesus Loves Me.' I don't know why we chose that song. I think we must have heard it in a movie. It seems so American, don't you think?”

Louie picked up Johnny outside Video Madness.

They passed an electric-blue house so loud it echoed. The neighbourhood had once been homogenous: rows of prefabs built with wartime rations, three rooms on bottom, two on top, as simple as a Monopoly house. With the 1980s came a mid-life crisis and a need to make a statement with vinyl siding and hallucinogenic paint. Some of the houses had grown a storey or sprouted an incongruous deck. Others had added the artifice of brick.

Johnny was writing a song, he informed Louie as they headed to Tootsy's. “Here's the chorus,” he announced. “Tell me what you think.”

Take my heart and break it,

Take my day and make it

Take my picture off your drawers,

Leave that cat, he ain't yours.

“Good,” shrugged Louie, not really a fan of country music.

“I think it's got potential,” offered Johnny, who had been inspired by a TV program on Carol Conway, an old doll from the sticks who had made it big in Nashville. Carol had grown up in a tarpaper shack without plumbing but now had enough cash to buy every abandoned lighthouse and destitute fish shack in her former county.

Kitty, kitty kitty, don't go away.

Kitty, kitty kitty, you got to stay

Kitty, kitty, kitty I'm on the ropes

Kitty, kitty kitty, you're my only hope.

“It's for a contest,” Johnny explained. “The top prize is an all-expenses-paid trip to Nashville.”

“If it doesn't interfere with your training, what do you have to lose?”

“Eight months of winter.” Johnny could already smell the dogwood and the hairspray of Tennessee. George Jones was singing a welcome song in his head.

“If you live down south, man, you could be fat, dumb, and happy for life.” Johnny sighed. “I wonder if they have subways in Nashville. If I'm in a city with subways, I feel like I'm going somewhere.” He paused. “And Italians. I like a place big enough to have Italians.”

“Listen.” Johnny sobered as they arrived at Tootsy's and circled for a parking spot. “If Ownie asks, tell him I already ran.”

“Yeah, yeah.” Louie, the mole, blinked nervously.

“I will,” Johnny added lamely, “ah, when I get a chance.” And then: “My Achilles has been a bitch.”

Louie made another circle of the block. The strip club was swarming with bikers. Led by a cracker in an overcoat, they had gathered around a Neanderthal whose butt spilled over the seat of his Harley like saddlebags. Joe Diffie. The name popped into Johnny's head and he smiled, proud of this talent. Not everyone had the ability to look at an ordinary person and spot his celebrity twin. There was Danny Glover changing oil at Ultramar, Tanya Tucker cashing cheques at the Royal Bank.

“The cops told me he offed a kid last year.” Louie pointed at Big Butt. “He shot him in the head over four Cs. The fixer there” — he pointed to the overcoat, a lawyer who had run in
the provincial election — “got him off when the main witness disappeared on a Rhodes Scholarship or something.”

The lawyer's eyes looked like prunes in folds of uncooked pie dough. He squinted across the street at two undercover cops who were drinking coffee and dialling Big Butt's pager every ten minutes for entertainment.

A hophead in a beanie helmet climbed on Big Butt's Harley. On her back was a crest that said, P
ROPERTY OF
J
AKE
(
THE
S
NAKE
) P
ORTER
. She had skin the colour of plum sauce and a fetal-alcohol face with flattened cheekbones, small eyes, and smooth skin under her nose.
Vrrrmmm
.

“My days of ugly women are over,” Louie vowed. “A man should always go with a woman who is better-looking than he is. If he's a five, she should be a seven. If he's a seven, she should be a nine. Otherwise, guaranteed, it cannot last. It's all about the balance of power, man. It's science.”

“I don't think I could find someone better-looking than me.” Johnny laughed.

“They're out there, man, they're out there.”

More bikes arrived. They had teardrop gas tanks and forked front ends, five-hundred-pound outlaw hogs with rebuilt bodies and unknown origins. Some of the riders were carrying stuffed animals, which puzzled Louie until he saw the sign: B
IKERS
' T
EDDY
B
EAR
R
IDE FOR
S
ICK
K
IDS
.

“See that guy.” Louie pointed to a gorilla with a noose tattooed around his neck. “He's the sergeant-at-arms. He grew up next to me in Low Rental, one of those fat, change-of-life kids with old parents. He had a sister in my class, Doreen, who decided to join the Brownies. The third week in, the pack leader told Doreen that she couldn't come back until she had the full uniform. Doreen quit but wouldn't tell her parents why. When Sarge found out, he went to the pack leader's house and torched her shed.”

“Kerosene?”

“Probably.” Louie pulled in to park. “You know how they started, don't you?”

“Who?”

“The Brownies. They were a paramilitary group like the Hitler Youth or the Red Brigade. Just on principle, I never buy their cookies.”

“Well, that's easy for you, man, since you don't eat sweets.”

Johnny shuffled into Tootsy's trying to look like a man who had pulled six hard miles, a man ready to rumble with Hansel Sparks.

“How's Turmoil doing?” he asked Ownie.

Ownie took his time responding. Unlike Johnny, Turmoil did the labour. Every morning, in rain, fog, or snow, he ran his six miles. He arrived at the gym at 2 p.m. and he worked the speed bag, the heavy bag, and the medicine ball. He did push-ups, chin-ups, and he skipped until he left a pool of sweat, slick and symbolic.

Ownie was old school, so they didn't lift heavy weights, which he believed would tighten up Turmoil and bind him like Louie. “He needs to be mobile.” It was the same template that Ownie had used with Tommy, only more intense, because Turmoil's large body could handle more. Turmoil ate the right food, Ownie had noticed with approval, and the fighter believed — from the moment he arrived at Tootsy's Gym — that he was destined for greatness.

“I had him spar three rounds with Donnie blindfolded,” Ownie said.

“How did that go?”

“Pretty good,” Ownie decided. “I think they're engaged.”

Ownie watched Turmoil lift an aluminum bat, weigh it in his hands, and position himself before a Motomaster tire strapped to a pole.
Whammm
. The chop rattled the steel-belted radial.
Whammmm
. His arms reverberated, shock running up his triceps like a chill.

“The man's problem is concentration,” Ownie continued. “He loses it and he loses the rhythm of the fight. He starts thinking about what he's going to have for dinner and pretty soon he's done. So blindfolded, he has to concentrate. He has to feel what's happening.”

Louie trotted over, harbouring his report on Johnny's delinquent roadwork.

“I was reading a story with Hagler's trainer.” The fireman was stalling, hoping that Johnny would duck out, as he often did, to the convenience store, and he could squeal to Ownie. “He said some doctors think the chin gets weaker if you get your wisdom teeth out.”

“Yeah?” Ownie shrugged noncommittally, keeping an eye on Turmoil, who had teeth like Chiclets. Whammmmm. Another chop of the Louisville Pro.

Turmoil had scored a TKO over Sanchez, who, after earning his pay, had stretched out in the sixth round and refused to get up. Sanchez had hit Turmoil more than Ownie would have liked. “He is still raw,” Ownie told Scott. “I call him the
steak tartar
of boxing.” Turmoil had to be taught how to slip and slide, how to avoid being hit by someone more substantial than Sanchez. The plan was to build him up with a few soft fights — maybe four in the first year — and then, as his name became known and as his skill increased, take on tougher men. While Ownie handled the gym work, Champion controlled the matchmaking and promotion.

“What do you think?” Louie persisted. “About the teeth?”

“I think I'm a bad one to ask, since I've had fighters with no teeth at all. When Hungry Hannaford fought Rocco James, he looked like he was ready for the glue factory.”

“That why they call him Hungry?” Louie asked, with Johnny still within earshot.

“Naturally.”

Garth found a seat in the fast-food restaurant. He tried not to look at a woman who was hunkered over a chrome table, face hidden by hair and a greasy mask of shame. Beside her, a pale boy, probably her son, was picking at french fries. Their feast, which consisted of the fries, chicken fingers, nachos, and Hawaiian pizza, had been unwrapped and laid out for sharing.

“You should eat, Justin,” the woman panted, justifying the spread. “You
said
you were hungry.”

Her chair was pushed in tight to the table's edge, like the armless woman Garth had seen at the library, turning pages with her mouth. Russian history seemed to be the woman's area of interest: Peter the Great, Ivan the Terrible, anything to do with barbarism. To get to World War II, Garth's desired field, he had to pass her table, and every time he neared the Reformation, he prayed she wouldn't be there.

Have Carla check phone bills
. Trying to ignore the glutton and her insipid boy, Garth was logging reminders in a book that he carried close to his heart, like a hidden wire.

Pick up #124 Red
. Garth smiled, thinking about his passion. The red paint was going to be for a splendid WWII formation of model airplanes on his bedroom windowsill: a Flying Fortress, a P-51 Mustang, a P-38 Lightning, and, up front, where the sun would strike it first each morning, the spunky Spitfire.
Get waxed paper
.

Numbly, the woman reached for a chicken finger, the sleeve
of her ball jacket embroidered with her nickname, Powerhouse. Her lips quivered and her eyes rolled.

Check the lunchroom
. Garth added an annoyed asterisk. Last week, Boomer, the publisher, had confronted him about a Queer Nation sticker plastered over the mouth of the softball mascot. “Where did it come from?” Boomer had demanded. “I wouldn't worry,” Garth had assured him. “Monarchists are generally a low-key group except for that problem with the Girl Guides and the oath.” Christ, it was these bifocals:
Queen
,
Queer
, they looked the same.

Garth glanced up as an ancient man with translucent skin pulled himself from a plastic seat. He looked like a crooked Q-tip with a cotton-ball head. He was wearing a plaid shirt buttoned to his thin neck and wool pants. The man's bones cracked as he lurched to a wrestler's crouch, bracing himself on a chair back.

Look at Cullen's expenses
. Garth underlined the notation, angry at the unsettling man. First the library, now here. Was there no place you could sit in peace, where you didn't have to be reminded of other people's afflictions?

He figured that Cullen, the legislature reporter, was robbing them blind. Someone was skimming petty cash too. Three years ago, the publisher caught Hart in Advertising selling long-distance calls to outsiders, routing them through the paper as conference calls.

Get very fine sandpaper
. The old man took a step. Why can't he wait until his friends return? Garth wondered, as the man stumbled to another chair back.

Come up with good story idea for Sports. Where Are They Now?

What is Smithers up to? What happened to those two characters?

Garth thought about his planes. They had their own room now that Garth and his wife, Jean, had moved into her dream
house, a two-storey in the South End, a society bunker sealed off from the hoi polloi and the guilt of scorned relations. “An address,” Jean had sighed. “I finally have an address.”

Jean had written the listing in her dreams:

Stately, tree-lined south-end boulevard, area of some of Halifax's finest homes. Well-appointed. 4,200 square feet. Hardwood. Three baths, four bedrooms. Built-in china cabinet, leaded glass. Walk-up attic. Very few properties come up on this street.

To Jean, the front hall of the house smelled of grandfather clocks and acceptance. Honorary consuls, the Halifax Club, the Waeg, and Neptune Theatre. Upstairs, it was Junior League, kermesse, ladies auxiliary, and aerobics at the Y. “Ahhh,” Garth could hear the voices dripping with a disappointment that Jean would just have to ignore, “so you're not related to the judge.” Unfortunately, Jean's family had only appeared in court as defendants. He thought about how happy Jean was with her heated bathroom floor and a built-in scale. All of this for a girl who'd grown up in a trailer court eating bologna.