One Good Hustle (18 page)

I set the shampoo in the basket. He’s busy with hair gel. He’s not paying attention.

Hair gel? Seriously? He’s only got about ten hairs on his head. Why is he looking at gel?

Don’t be so friggin’ paranoid. He’s just a guy. Guys look. That’s in their job description
.

Over in the hair appliance aisle, I run my eyes over the wall of electric combs and blowers. When I spot the right model and price, I pause and look around: just a couple of women nearby but no shampoo guy.

I force my shoulders back and it feels as if my bones don’t fit together properly.

Reaching for the box, I stop. Just past the end of the aisle, the balding shampoo guy walks by. The hair on my arms prickles. He pauses, lifts something off the shelf and then moves on.

My heart is banging around now but I set the blow-dryer box into my basket. Carefully. Quietly. Suddenly it seems important that I make no noise.

They say that breathing is the key to calm. So, I take
big snootfuls of air.
Slowly, slowly. No rush. Take it easy. No big deal
.

At the end of the aisle, directly in front of me, the shampoo guy walks by again.

My guts rumble and squeeze as if I have to go to the bathroom. I look behind me. Beside me. Jesus Christ. Don’t know if I’m going crap myself or throw up.

See? See what living with these assholes has done to you? You’re gutless, witless and broke. Suckhole! Baby!

I clench everything I have, my jaws, my arms, my butt, and head for the Customer Service and Returns desk.

Two people in line ahead of me.

Heat runs up and down my limbs. My skin is melting off.

Breathe through your nose, for chrissake! Breathe slow
.

Finally it’s my turn. I set my receipt and the box of blow-dryer, shampoo and toothbrush on the counter. The bag is in my hand.

“My mother bought this stuff yesterday,” I say. “We don’t need it.” The words echo in my ears. Did I actually say that or did I just think it?

“My mother bought it,” I try again. “We don’t need it.”

The clerk looks at me. “Okay.” She picks up the receipt.

A hand lands on my shoulder. I flinch, jerk around.

Shampoo guy. Bald. There’s a hard smirk on his face. “Can I talk to you for a sec?”

I look at the clerk. She looks from the bald guy back to me and doesn’t say a word. I reach for the hair dryer.

“Leave it,” he says.

The store tilts. I’m falling, pouring through the floor. The muck of me—jelly and blood and all of it turning inside out on the Tilt-A-Whirl floor.

He leads me by the elbow to the side of the counter. The colours of the drugstore spin. Blood roars in my ears.

He stares into my face. “What’s your name?”

“What’s your problem?”

He takes a plasticized ID out of his pocket. “Store detective,” he says, and brings his face in close to mine. “You think I’m blind?”

“I never took anything!”

“Come on, kid. Seriously?” He still has my elbow.

“Prove it. I got a receipt!” I yank free. “You don’t know anything.” I bolt for the front doors, stumble out onto the sidewalk, and run.

Blocks and blocks. A car screeches to keep from hitting me in an intersection. I wish it had hit me. I go and go, panting and pumping hard. I wish something big and horrible would come down and crush me, just get it over with.

I am nearly back to Burnaby by the time I slow down. Wiping my face with the back of my hand, I look behind me. No one’s coming. Everybody can see through me, though, into all the dark crannies and mucky, dirty holes. Everybody can see first-hand what a dirtbag I am, what a lowlife.

Ruby has the goods on me. Drew’s mom too. Even Lou. Lou can see through my phony face; he can see that I don’t deserve any of the nice things he ever said to me.

I miss Marlene. I just miss her so bad all of a sudden. I want
her to squeeze me hard and say that I’m okay, that I’m good and smart and clean.

On the other side of Boundary Road, I fish around in my pocket for change and catch the next bus to Oak Shore Mental Health.

NINETEEN

“
SHE SAID I
need to get a personality.”

“Leave it to a lard-arse like her to say an idiotic thing like that,” Marlene says.

We’re sitting in her room, each of us holding a cold can of Orange Crush that she bought us in the cafeteria.

“You have plenty of personality.”

“I do!” I laugh my most incredulous laugh, the kind Marlene and I used to use when a really stupid actress was being interviewed on
The Merv Griffin Show
. I’m faking it, though. It’s not that funny.

Marlene’s pissed off and I’m glad of it. I feel mean and gristly when I think about what Ruby said, which is better than feeling small and shivery. I just sat there at the kitchen table like a little mute wart while Ruby spewed her crappy theories, even though I wanted to huck my plate through the window. In the end I
went out and did something worse, though. More stupid. More useless. I haven’t told Marlene. I can’t.

“I do
not
like that woman,” Marlene says now.

I look at the floor. That dark-in-my-guts feeling is coming back hard. Deceive, delude and desert: that’s all I do these days.
Traitor
.

“I guess she’s just trying to help me become a better person.”

“A
better
person? So I raised a bad person? Is that where this is going?”

“No. I just mean that Ruby’s usually all right. She made me a cake. I got my driver’s licence, you know—so Ruby made me a chocolate congratulations cake.”

“She’s a bossy, abusive person. People like that are emotional bullies.”

I roll that one around for a few seconds and wonder if it’s a term they use here in group therapy. “She’s not exactly a bully. She just has her ideas about certain things. I guess she’s particular.”

“Try peculiar.”

I shrug.

“Now you’re defending her.”

I am, even though Marlene is saying what I wanted her to. What I thought I wanted to hear. I wish instead she’d hug me small again. Hug me quiet and soft.

She shakes her head. “I talked to Margaret, the social worker, because I was worried about our rent getting paid on time. Apparently that little
Ruby
actually tried to convince them not to give me my full cheque.
Ruby
wanted the Welfare to deduct the support that was going to her from
my cheque
.”

I study her face. “Why would a social worker tell you that?”

“Ha! I knew it.” She looks defiant and victorious. As if she’s just won big. “Margaret didn’t spell it out in so many words. But I can put two and two together.”

I focus on the top of my Orange Crush can, watch the little bubbles slide around in the rim, burst and liquefy. “Ruby figured you wouldn’t need it since—”

“Who the hell is she to say what I need? You know what I remember most about her being in our place that day? The way she kept referring to you as
Sammie. Sammie
this and
Sammie
that. Like it was your name.”

I glance up.

“Your name is
Samantha
. Sammie is what
I
call you.”

I bullfrog my cheeks and exhale. I play with the pull-tab of my soda can. “She just wants me to feel like I’m part of the family, I guess.”

“Well, you’re not.”

I’m the piggy in the middle right now. Marlene is jealous as hell and if I look at it from that angle, it feels kind of good.

“So when are they sending you home?”

Her eyes turn dark. They’ve probably been dark the whole time and I’m only noticing now how each black pupil is taking up her whole eyeball.

She glances out her door into the hall. “Wednesday, I think.”

That’s two days from now.

Sitting on her hands, Marlene kicks her feet out a little, looks at the toes of her shoes and then drags her heels back close.

“I washed the dishes,” I say.

“What dishes?
Our
dishes? At the apartment? When?”

“Last week. Took down the garbage too.”

“You did?” She looks baffled—as if I just said,
I painted the place plaid. Hope you like it
.

“Does that mean you’re coming home?”

Now it’s my turn to be scared. I don’t want to go home with her. I don’t want to live with her. Not yet. Maybe never.

“I didn’t think so,” Marlene says, and does that thing with her feet again. “That’s okay. I quit drinking. And the pills too. Whether you come home or not. I’m quitting for myself.”

I tuck my elbows in and wrap my fingers around the can in my hands, trying not to take up so much space. The walls still feel tight, though, tighter and tighter as if the box is shrinking, as if there’s no room for me anywhere I go.

TWENTY

JILL ASKED PERMISSION
for us to sleep outside in the old camper Lou and Ruby keep beside the house. Mostly it’s just sleeping space, but there’s also a tiny sink and a bathroom. Except that the water isn’t hooked up. Drag. Still have to head into the house if we need to pee.

Jill said that sometimes they tow the camper to Vancouver Island or out to the Okanagan Valley. It’s a bit musty but it smells like being away. Not that Sam and Marlene ever had a camper. That wasn’t Sam’s style. He’d rather stay in a hotel and skip out on the bill any day. As far as he was concerned that was the best way to keep the nut down. I wonder how he does it now. Everyone uses a credit card these days.

I wish I would quit thinking about that stuff. What’s the likelihood that Sam and Marlene and I will ever be on the road together again? Zip.

I do like it out here in the camper. Especially now, when it’s late. You can actually hear crickets.

“I bet it’ll be great when it rains,” I say to Jill as we’re lying in the dark. “The sound of raindrops pelting the roof. Our own little house.”

Jill is lying on the skinny bed on the left-hand side and I’m in the skinny bed on the right-hand side. I just said that thing about the rain to lighten the mood. A few minutes ago I’d asked Jill if she ever missed having a boyfriend, if she missed Roman, and it started to get weird.

“No way,” Jill said. “It’s summer. Having a boyfriend in summer is like bringing sand to the beach.”

“Yeah!” I said and laughed.

It was quiet for a bit. I was thinking about how lame it is that I’m this old and I’ve never even kissed a guy.

“I don’t think guys like me that way,” I said.

No comment from Jill. It was embarrassing. Seemed like she didn’t want to lie and didn’t want to hurt my feelings either.

Then she said, “A couple days ago, my mom sat me down and told me that I should try not to be jealous of you.” There was a long pause. Just as I was about to speak, she continued. “I was like,
jealous? Of her?
I mean, no offence, Sammie, but I never thought you were anything to write home about.” Jill’s voice had become mocking. Sort of like Crystal Norris’s.

I stared up at the ceiling, let my eyes follow the cuts of streetlight through the little camper curtains, the way it sliced the room into grey and black chunks.

Just as I was forming the question, Jill horned in with the answer.

“The reason she said it is that I told her how Crystal phoned me the other night. She said that Roman saw you and me out on the street somewhere and Roman wanted to know who you were and if you had a boyfriend. Obviously he’s trying to make me jealous by saying that to Crystal, but when I told my mom I guess she was concerned that it could come between us.”

“I’m not interested in Roman,” I said.

Roman is this big Italian guy. He’s got a soup-strainer of a moustache and a beak that hangs down over top of it. Jill used to joke that Roman’s nose was roamin’ all over his face. After school, I’d see her get into his ugly black Firebird with the huge flaming decal on the hood. They’d start necking and the tongue action was hard to stomach, but at the same time it was hard to look away. Sort of like when you see a dog throw up on the street.

“He’s not your speed anyway,” Jill said. Her voice was hard. “Roman is a total boob-man, so you’d have, like,
nada
to offer in that department.”

“Totally!” I forced a laugh, looked through the space in the curtains and watched the moths flutter under the street lamp. That’s when I said the thing about the rain, how cool it would be to hear the sound of raindrops pelting the roof.

“My mom thinks you and I should get a summer job,” Jill suddenly says. “I think it’s a good idea. You in?”

Probably the best part about being out here in the camper is the absence-of-Ruby aspect. But there’s no real escape from her.

“I’m not sure,” I say, nonchalant as I can be. “My dad’s going to be coming out here soon. What if I have to go out of
town? Because, you know, he was talking about me coming back to Toronto. With him. For a while.”

“He was? When?”

“We’re playing it by ear.”

“What does he do again?”

“Huh?”

“For a living.”

He’s a rounder
. I don’t actually say that. God, I want to, though. I want to slam her right between the eyes with that one. “Do you know what a rounder is, Jill? Didn’t think so. Not your speed really.”

What I actually say is: “He’s a salesman.”

“What does he sell?”

“Oh, you name it. Cars, insurance, real estate …”

She’s silent a few seconds, then says, “I don’t want to be tied down either, you know. But I think we should accept responsibility for our finances and know what it means to earn our own money.”

Clearly parroting Ruby with that last bit.

“Crystal’s cousin works for Pacific Inn Catering,” Jill continues. “They have the hotel restaurant but they also run a catering company for weddings and stuff. It’s casual. You don’t have to be somewhere
every day
—you just call in for work when you want it and they give you your hours.”

“Maybe.”

“It’s good money. And it’s almost August. Do you want the whole summer to go by and have nothing to show for it?”