Most nights, the Halifax police would show up with paddy wagons and scoop up the most offensive drunks and brawlers. Three times I was among those transported to the drunk tank. The first time, I had just been kicked out of a bar by an overly officious bouncer, so I proceeded to tear the flowers out of the flower bed in front of the club and fling them across the street. On a second occasion, I decided to recite a poem (actually the Bob Dylan song Forever Young, spoken rather than sung) to a group of women who’d refused to take us up on free rides, and when they began to mock me, I stood on the back of a park bench, impressively balanced despite my inebriation, and shimmied my shorts and underwear off while I howled the final words of the chorus. Who knew that was a public offence? The
third time, I was simply too drunk and indifferent to scatter when the police busted a joint frequently cited for underage drinking. Since I did not have ID on me, they took me in. Each time, Chris showed up with the appropriate funds to get my release. Not bail exactly, but some kind of fee. Like a parking ticket for being hammered. The details I left to him, and of course, there was no question of ever paying it back. We had a slush fund for that sort of thing.
While I earned plenty of material for stories that summer, I did no writing. This, as much as any lingering guilt I felt about the robbery and betraying my father, and the frustration I experienced over my lack of sexual success, was the reason I engaged in such a slow, glamorous, self-destructive suicide. I had been reading Dylan Thomas and Charles Bukowski and other poets of the damned. Maybe that fed the downward spiral, the romantic belief that I needed to grind myself into the gutter.
I should note, however, that although my behaviour was random, unpredictable, and seemed beyond my self-control, I never acted out too badly when Chris was not in hailing distance.
I did not spend much time at home. If it rained, we went to the movies or spent all day at a diner, or I went to the library and slept on one of the big couches. Sometimes, stumbling blearily back out into the world, I wondered who I was. At some point in August, I realized I was down to my last eight hundred bucks. I had no idea how the funds had been depleted so quickly, and I felt both relieved and stupid to have spent so much money on alcohol and food. I had not bought a bike or a stereo or saved for school or brought home flowers or paid for some sick kid’s
cancer treatment. I also felt wonderfully, blissfully free knowing the money was almost gone. I could never admit to Chris that I’d been so profligate, but that was okay. He didn’t need to know. And then one night, he admitted to me that his own stash was almost blown. This, more than anything, astonished me and put the world back into balance. You blew eighteen thousand bucks in three months! Well, sixteen thousand, he rebutted, looking both sheepish and proud. On what? I demanded, as if I were vigilant as an accountant in my own money habits. You know, Chris said—and the astonishment on his face was genuine—I honestly have no fucking idea.
The money had simply disappeared, as though its magic properties had an expiration date. Since it happened to both of us, we knew it wasn’t our fault, and this absolution made me feel lighter.
Then Chris announced we would need to do another job to replenish the coffers.
How could I have been so blind to that inevitability?
We
took weeks planning it, and we laid out and discussed many possible armed robberies. There were, when you really dug into it, quite a range of options, from the traditional bank job to the lucrative but less conventional deposit-bag snatch, to still more innovative options. I could not help but contribute creatively to the brainstorming sessions.
What about a Brinks truck? Chris asked.
What about a grocery store? Or a jewellery store—
What about an expensive restaurant? Chris interrupted.
Or a movie theatre? I tried.
That’s actually pretty fucking brilliant, Chris said.
Neither of us had ever heard of a movie theatre being robbed before. But when we considered the number of seats, the outrageous price for tickets, and the crowds, we quickly saw the potential.
Any idea that steered Chris away from a bank job seemed good to me.
Chris, however, had a cowboy-like desire to notch a bank on his belt. So my suffering began anew.
The only salvation—and I knew it was a temporary one—was that Chris could not decide on which bank. Some he dismissed because they were stand-alone structures and he would have drawn too much attention approaching or leaving. Some he scratched because they were located too deep within a mall—and running down the hallway would be time-consuming and chancy. Others he didn’t like because they were too far away from our neighbourhood and we didn’t know the driving routes well enough to mitigate any uncertainties.
Fuck it, he said, let’s just do the CIBC at Penhorn Mall.
This struck me as inconceivable.
But that’s the bank we opened our first accounts in!
So?
We still have accounts there. They know our names, our addresses, everything!
I don’t think they’re going to run down a list of account holders to see who could have done the job.
Jesus fucking Christ, it’s about a five-minute walk from where we live!
Yeah, and who knows the back roads and the woods and the lakes and every other nook and cranny around here better than us?
He was right about that, no one in the entire history of mankind knew the contours and features of the neighbourhood like we did. Even so, his logic seemed indescribably flawed to me.
To accommodate his lightness, I doubled down on my drinking.
The
worst element was the psychological delay. I was never sure which forces of preparation, circumstance, and what-the-fuckism needed to be aligned in order to make a decision to go for it. Chris held that secret formula in his own head. My only job was to suffer and be ready.
Running out of cash, and more desperate now to have this rickshaw summer pay off financially, I took to working afternoons. There was little payoff, but one day, standing next to my chariot, I saw Rivers exiting a café.
He seemed more at ease with his crutches, and he had a knapsack slung neatly over his shoulder and wore a beret like a Frenchman. He kissed the cheek of a woman he’d been sitting with and headed down the sidewalk.
I hesitated and then called out to him. He stopped, saw me, and smiled. I walked over.
You look good, he said. How are things?
I suppose he meant I looked in shape and well tanned. I knew that inside I was poisoning myself. I was corrupt, cirrhotic, ulcerous, cancer ridden. I was a mess, and I had not written in months.
I confessed that last bit to him.
He nodded. Happens sometimes. People think discipline is just determination and a schedule. That’s like saying writing is just a pen and a piece of paper. Discipline is a desire stronger than any other desire to produce something. Maybe you don’t have your story yet. When you do, the discipline will come.
I blinked in relief. Was this an example of the wisdom I had passed on by neglecting to seize his apprenticeship offer? If so, I wanted more.
I think I’ve got a story but I’m not sure I can write it, I said.
Technical challenges?
Personal challenges. It’s about people I know.
Ah, potentially destructive to others in its truthfulness? The insufficiently disguised
Bildungsroman
autobiography?
Probably.
I knew my story was the source of my cancer. It was eating me from the inside out, a vicious baby angry to be born.
Write what you can now, he said, even in diary form, and come back to it in ten years. If it’s powerful enough, it will infuse everything else you work on.
Ten years? I said.
Seems like a long time, doesn’t it, he said.
Seems like forever.
It’s not. You’ll get there. Or it’ll get you.
We stood before each other. He seemed to decide something.
I’m going abroad for my sabbatical, he said.
Abroad?
I can’t sit in the middle of this vast America and build the bomb that’s going to blow it up. I need some exile, silence, and cunning.
Europe? I asked. Thinking Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Henry Miller. You name it.
Too expensive. You been to France or Italy lately?
Not lately.
Me neither. I’m thinking Southeast Asia. It’s the Paris of the twenties. Cheap, affordable. You get a beach hut and a desk for a couple dollars a week. You throw in beer, food, and a massage every other day for a few dollars more. You want a coconut or a mango or a swim, you go out your front door, walk five feet, and get one. If it goes well, I may stay two years, maybe more. I can write at least two novels with that kind of time, perhaps a good chunk of a third.
Wow, I said, feeling abandoned and wondering about the implications for his teaching career. They’ll miss you at school.
He grimaced. I have an offer to make. You come over, you can hang out with me. Get a hut nearby or something. We’ll be neighbours. You can work on your stuff, I’ll work on mine. If I need a mango or a beer, maybe you’ll bring it over. If I need someone to motorcycle into town and post something, maybe you’ll do that too. No obligations, mostly just company. I’m a little worried about being cut off from good conversation. I’d like a small hand-picked community.
This time he did not seem so expectant of an immediate response.
Think about it, he said. I know you’ve got school to consider, and your parents. Sell it as a semester abroad. That used to be the done thing.
It was the kindest invitation I’d ever received. He needed me, or something about me, and he liked me, too.
I said I would think it through, and tossed it in with the mix of concerns already keeping me up every night.
The
next week, my parents went away for their summer vacation in Maine. They’d rented a house down there, and while I was formally invited, my presence was not expected or even particularly desired. I’m sure they were as happy to be free of me as I was of them. I felt the weight lessening on my shoulders as their car pulled away. They even left me a couple hundred dollars to cover groceries and expenses.
That night, Chris decided we should go somewhere too.
We were sitting in broken rickshaws drinking beer, readying ourselves for another pointless night out on the Halifax streets, he to get laid, me to get tossed in some paddy wagon.
Go where? I asked, assuming he meant a bar.
Montreal, Toronto, Boston. Let’s just do it.
How? I asked. He may as well have suggested Mars.
How much money you got left?
Maybe two hundred plus the two my parents left me. I’d tightened up as it dwindled. I was no longer so large-hearted buying rounds. I had hardened around my own solitary drink.
I’ve got seventeen hundred. Let’s go spend it.
I struggled to offer a rebuttal. Once again, he’d flabbergasted me.
What if we run out when we’re away from home? I finally asked.
Like that’s a problem, he said.
I think he was joking.
Let’s get rid of what we got. Clean our plates. Have a good time. Get some motivation for the next job.
I felt the cancerous mass within start to gyrate. Feeding on me.
Twelve hours later, hungover and wearing sunglasses to hold out the brutal blink, we arrived at the Halifax International Airport with gym bags containing the minimal change of underwear, socks, and T-shirts. It had been Chris’s job to buy the tickets, but he’d forgotten to do so. We looked at the departing flights and tried to make a choice.
London leaving in forty minutes, Chris said. Blimey.
That’s London, Ontario.
Whoa. That would be a mistake. What about Sydney?
That’s Sydney, Cape Breton, I said. How about Toronto?
Fuck that, Chris said. I hate the fucking Leafs. How can you beat Montreal? Let’s go there.
But when we arrived at the counter, the attendant was puzzled by our request for two tickets to Montreal.
Yeah, Chris said, I’d like to buy them. For the 11:30 flight. How much?
She punched numbers in her console, bit her lip, punched more numbers.
I’m afraid that flight is totally full, sir.
We did indeed dig the
sir
stuff.
Okay, what else you got?
To Montreal? Three-thirty, also full. Seven-thirty tonight. I could get you on that.
No thanks, Chris said. I don’t think we can wait nine hours in an airport. Unless you’re getting off soon.
I shook my head. Chris working the airline attendant.
She smiled, joked about a husband, and seemed to get into the spirit of things.
Is it only Montreal you’re interested in?
What else do you suggest?
I’ve always loved New York, myself.
New York would be ace.
She punched, frowned, punched some more.
I can get you on the last two seats on the 1:15 to LaGuardia.
Is that near New York? I asked. It sounded suspiciously like Quebec.
I need your decision now. I can’t hold these for long.
Sold, Chris said. If we can return Sunday. He looked to me. Got to go to Susan’s place for dinner Sunday night. First time meeting the father.
And he shelled out $642.00 for the two of us.
The attendant wished us an excellent vacation. I can’t imagine what she thought of us.
We
had a few hours to kill, so naturally we hit a bar. We sat at a table and split a pitcher, our gym bags tucked under our feet. We were mighty pleased with ourselves, and then a strange look came over Chris’s face. He’d gone utterly expressionless. Holy shit, he muttered. Don’t turn around.
What? I asked.
A grin came over his face. You’re not going to believe this. There’s three Dartmouth city cops in plain clothes sitting at the bar.
I whirled around, practically knocking the pitcher off the table. Chris kicked me, so I whirled back.
A little more casual, please.
I gripped both sides of the table. Do you think they’re following us?