One Good Hustle (25 page)

“
Puke!
” I say. “How could you kiss Crystal Norris?”

“Crystal’s my girlfriend,” Jill says.

“Since when do you make out with your girlfriends?”

She pauses and then begins to cry. “Oh God, I can’t believe I was necking with Crystal.” Jill is really bawling now—heaving and sobbing mixed with these high little squeals.

“Shh.” I glance out the back window at the house. The windows are still dark.

A long whimper comes out of Jill. “I’m not a virgin any more.”

“You don’t mean
tonight?
Holy shit. See! This is why I do not drink. Shit like this. You don’t even
like
Roman any more.”

“He gave me ten bucks and put me in a cab. Like I was a
hooker
.”

“I don’t think people pay for a hooker’s cab rides.”

“And the two of them stayed there together.” Jill is silent for a long second and then she lets loose. “I lost my
virginity!
”

A close-up of Roman comes into my head, his moustache, and his tight jeans and his gruesome hard-on, and the thought makes me gag. “I don’t get this. Did Roman force you or something?”

“He said he loved me.”

I wince. Suddenly it is clearer in my mind than ever that sex and booze are the downfall of humanity. Drew’s
I Love You
echoes in my head. The sensation of his hand on my breast comes back and I scratch the sheet roughly over my chest to make it go away.

“I wonder if my mother did it with Fat Freddy,” I say, my mouth twisting up. “She must have.”

“What are you talking about?” Jill wails. “Are you
listening
to me?”

I want to kick the crap out of them all: out of Drew and out of Jill and Roman, Freddy and Marlene, Sam and Peggy! All of
them fucking while Rome burns. That’s the phrase right there. That’s what they’re doing: Fucking while Rome burns.

Sam pushing Marlene toward the bedroom, Roman telling Jill he loved her—and then the way Marlene and Jill act about it! Both of them in a snit as if they just had something swiped when in both cases they handed it over on a silver platter. I’m supposed to feel sympathy?

I can’t stand any of them. All of this bullshit probably has a lot to do with why Sam doesn’t call. Except with him it’s not booze and sex, it’s money and sex. How am I supposed to compete with that?

It’s light outside but not bright. My watch says 8:10. The sound of birdsong seems really inappropriate right now. I’d be surprised if I slept three hours.

In the cold light of morning, my rage feels a bit broke-down and limp. When a picture of Drew slips into my head again, though, when he takes my hand along the back road in Langley, I pull it away. I fold my arms and keep to myself. I don’t want any of it. From anyone.

Jill told me once that there was a rumour going around at school about me. “People notice that you’re a bit tripped out about being touched,” she said. “A lot of people think you must have been raped.”

Apparently the rape rumour started because one of the guys in Jill and Crystal’s crowd—probably that idiot, Mark—came
up behind me in the courtyard at school and put his hand on my butt. My elbow flew back and nailed him in the gut. He doubled over and bellowed as if I’d just shot him.
Tough titty, don’t touch my ass!

Another time, the same idiot reached for the locket on the chain around my neck and I smacked his hand away before he could touch it. It was a locket that Sam had given me when I was little. And it was right in the vicinity of my boobs, for God’s sake.

I had the impression that Jill enjoyed telling me what they were saying about me. As if, not only did she have the inside dope, but she now had more evidence that I acted like a child as well as looked like one. I wonder if she told Ruby all that crap. Jill’s big mouth is probably why Ruby keeps on hugging the hell out of me.

I look across the trailer at Jill now. She’s still conked out, lying on her side. Only one eye is showing. Her makeup is smeared around it like a bruise. There’s a vague stain of purple lipstick on her puffy lips. She stinks worse now than she did when she came home.

She looks like a giant baby, lying there. Except she’s not one. Can’t even call her a technical virgin now. That seemed to be the worst of it last night: the fact that she wouldn’t be able to tell people that she’s a virgin any more. She kept repeating it over and over. As if her hymen was the best and most crucial part of her.

You’d think that someone had murdered her family and stolen everything she valued in the entire world the way she
carried on. Meanwhile, nobody we know ever believed she was a virgin anyway, not the way she’s always strutting around like she knows more about sex and drugs than we’d know in a lifetime.

I hope to hell she had the brains to make Roman use a rubber, that’s all I can say.

Sitting up, I grab my jeans from the end of the bed, haul them on and step into my sandals. Jill wakes. A groan. She rolls onto her back and then back onto her side. She pushes herself up on one elbow.

“Oh fuck. I think I’m going to boke.”

“Better do it out the window,” I tell her.

She squints up at me, eye shadow and mascara smudges all over her face. “Sammie,” she says.

I just look at her.

Her eyes are red and puffy and it seems as if she’s about to start bawling all over again. “Swear. Please. Swear to god you won’t tell anyone what I told you.”

I shrug and shake my head. “Who am I going to tell?”

TWENTY-SEVEN

IT’S ABOUT TWO
in the afternoon when I get to the balcony of our apartment. I was supposed to be here sometime around noon but I decided to walk from Jill’s and the closer I got the more anxious I got. I stopped at a phone booth on Kingsway and dialled Marlene. I’m going to be late, I said. Have an errand to do. Have to pick up something for Ruby.

“That’s okay,” my mother said. “I’ll be around.”

The way she said that made me feel sad. Ruby had said that Marlene sounded good, but maybe what “good” meant to Ruby was that Marlene had lost her will to kick ass.

I stood on the sidewalk and tried to think of some decent way to stall. I glanced at the arcade a few doors down but I can’t stand those crummy places. Talk about the ultimate sucker’s paradise: a room stuffed with flashing machines that scream for quarters.

The Pantry Restaurant was behind me. I thought about going in there and killing time over a cup of coffee. Then again, I was right beside the bus stop. Why not go downtown for an hour, hang out. The sight of Vancouver would probably do me good, remind me of my goal in life: to get the hell out of Burnaby.

The more I thought about it, the better downtown sounded. I could even hit the big drugstore down on Robson Street again. Sitting in the bus shelter, I imagined myself walking into that drugstore, bag in one pocket, receipt in the other, but every time I tried to see it in my head, a hand landed on my shoulder, and that voice echoed in my head again:
Come on, kid. Seriously?

When the downtown bus finally stopped in front of me, I just sat there looking up at the driver while a wrinkly little man moved slowly down the steps and onto the sidewalk. The driver raised his eyebrows at me but I didn’t budge.
Come on, kid. Seriously?
He shut the door and drove on.

Shut up!
I thought. Get over it. Shake it off. That hustle was amateur-hour anyway. There are better reasons to get out of Burnaby. Go down to Robson Street and look in the fancy shops, walk all the way down to Denman. Hang out at English Bay.

I imagined myself hopping on the next bus, getting off downtown and kicking around Robson Street without a care in the world. I’d be just turning away from a store window when I’d run smack into Sam.

Fancy meeting you here, I’d say.

He’d be stunned and tongue-tied at first and then he’d ask me if I wanted to grab a bite. We’d go to a restaurant.
Someplace nice. We’d sit down at a table and … And I couldn’t imagine what then. Sitting in the bus shelter, I worked on witty lines, clever quips that would cause Sam to see me in a way he never had.

Come on, kid. Seriously?

The thought of those words in Sam’s mouth made me shudder.

Fact of the matter is, if I were to see my dad on some street like Robson, he’d likely be with Peggy. I wonder if Peggy still boosts, if she’s been working her way through those designer shops downtown already.

Marlene told me that people used to place orders with Peggy for exactly what they wanted, right down to the brand name, size and colour. Peggy would make a list and go shopping. That’s nerve, boy. I guess that’s why Sam likes her.

I must have sat on that bench for an hour thinking about that stuff. Four busses went by, until I realized that I wasn’t going anywhere. I finally got up and headed into the Pantry.

It was quiet in there. On Sundays, the Pantry is loaded with churchy-looking types: moms in pastel suits and dads in shirts and ties. The little kids always have shiny patent-leather shoes. I kind of enjoy looking at them. They seem more like illustrations of people than real ones. Happy, shiny people.

I sat down at a booth in the corner and ordered a cup of coffee. As soon as the waitress came back with the cup-and-saucer on her tray, I changed my mind. Before I could speak, she set it down.

“Can I have tea instead?”

She looked at the coffee and let loose a sigh as though she’d just jogged down to Colombia and picked the beans herself.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I don’t really like coffee. I forgot.”

She came back a minute later with one of those little aluminum teapots and a fresh cup. As she set them down on my table I heard a familiar voice. I cringed, not wanting to be seen.

“Excuse me,” I said quietly, trying to keep the waitress near to block me from view a little longer. “Can I have some, uh, do you—Hey, do you have honey … dear?”

When I called her
dear
she gave me another one of her world-champion sighs and pointed to a blue plastic bowl at the side of the table with packets of jam and marmalade.

“Should be some in there,” she said and walked away.

Glancing around, I caught sight of Jill’s poofy hair sprouting up over the back of a booth. Facing her, droopy nose and all, was Roman.

He probably wouldn’t have recognized me but I slunk deeper into the booth anyway. I didn’t want to talk to them. Either of them. He’s twenty-two years old, I thought. Doesn’t anyone else find this icky? Doesn’t anyone else want to call the cops?

Picking up one of the creamers on my saucer, I peeled back the paper top and poured it into my tea. I put the teaspoon in and stirred a little, then stopped and listened. Couldn’t hear a word from Jill or Roman.

Inching sideways on the bench seat, I tried to get a better look. Roman wasn’t paying attention to anyone but Jill. His hands reached across the table toward her. His face looked pained. His eyes were red-rimmed and baggy. He leaned
forward as though he didn’t want anyone else to hear what he was telling her.

The waitress headed over to them. I sipped my tea. It tasted like rust. I glanced at the back of the waitress at their booth, decided I didn’t want to be there any more, got up and walked out the door.

Didn’t occur to me until I was on the sidewalk that I’d just pulled a dine-and-dash. My heart started to thump. I imagined I heard my waitress sigh. What if she has to pay for it?

Just as I turned back to look at the entrance, she shoved through the door. She looked at me. Her mouth hung a bit as if she didn’t know what to say at first.

Finally she said, “Are you taking off? Or what?”

I glanced across the street and then down at my watch, patted my pockets as if I were looking for a smoke. “Um, yeah,” I said. I found a crumpled dollar bill. I came toward her a couple steps. “Is that enough?”

She looked down at my buck, then snatched it out of my hand.

I watched as she yanked the door open and went back inside.

I called myself a loser on the waitress’s behalf. Kingsway traffic rushed past me, trucks and buses roaring, exhaust pluming. I headed west, in the direction of our apartment. Felt strange to think
our apartment
. Walking toward it, I tried to picture myself sitting in the living room, hanging out with Marlene like old times.