I
went to clean Fred’s room and the bathroom. When I was finished Claire told me that Smiley had already left and that he had been in a good mood. While she was getting ready to go to work and I was getting ready for the arrival of the kids, she asked me about what I’d found in his room and I told her.
She nodded. “What now?”
I just shook my head. “I’m not sure.”
Neither of us was satisfied but we both walked away. Claire went to sell houses and I watched children and thought about crime. After supper we read and listened to the radio, alternating between an old rock-and-roll station on AM and CBC’s FM‘s stellar
The World at Six
. Claire was still deeply engrossed in
Buying Homes for Canadian Dummies
while I was trying to chew through
Of Mice and Men
, which she had conned me into by priming me with
Tortilla Flats
and
Cannery Row
.
“You know, this isn’t funny at all. Not even remotely. You’re sure it’s the same author?”
“Uh-huh.” She put a finger in her book and looked at me.
“Did you know that Steinbeck wrote a really bad propaganda novel at the behest of William Randolph Hearst called
The Moon is Down
?”
“No, should I?”
“And that William Randolph Hearst is the grandfather of Patty Hearst, kidnapped by the Symbionese Liberation Army?”
“Didn’t know that either.”
She flipped the page of her book to look at a diagram and went on. “Anyhow, before Patty started robbing banks the SLA demanded that the Hearst Department Stores start handing out free food for the poor and downtrodden. At that point Ronald Reagan, who was the governor of California, said that it would be good time for an outbreak of botulism.”
“Hmmm. Cruel with a touch of crazy. What was his nickname again?”
“The Great Communicator.”
“And the point of all this is what?”
She smiled, which made my heart flutter. “No point. No point at all. But it was under Reagan as president that the war on drugs started to heat up in the States, which jacked the price and popularity of the stuff to astronomical heights. It was also under him that many, many handguns were produced.”
“Aha. Which truth profited me greatly just a few years later as the trend trickled down to the poor and up to the north. Interesting.”
“Maybe. But like I said; there’s no real point, no point at all to this whole discussion. The next question I have is: how can you relax while the Smiley problem is still with us? And why aren’t you worried about Smiley’s current absence?” Claire was genuinely curious.
“Those are easy questions. If I let the stress get to me I
might make mistakes. I can’t afford those so I have to relax. Necessity requires it. Now, a question for you. If Reagan heated up the war on drugs, who started it?”
She perked up. “Finally, something you don’t know! Tricky Dick Nixon started it.”
“Aha.” That made sense. Nixon had had trouble dealing with everyone, especially hippies. Maybe he had associated the two in his mind. “As for Smiley, I know he’ll come back.”
“Aha again.”
“Although I do admit that relaxing is not easy. Without you it would be impossible.”
“You flatterer, you.” She went back to her book and I went back to trying to relax and working through the book, which seemed to be leading unstoppably to a dismal ending. While I was doing that Smiley came back. He was wearing his party clothes: black pants and blue shirt and a really nice black leather duster jacket that ended at his ankles. It had probably cost a grand and a half.
“Hi Mom, hi Dad!”
Claire looked at him and snorted. “You’re drunk.”
“Nope. Never. Well, maybe a little.”
I looked him over and spoke mildly. “So where have you been, what have you been up to, you drunken bastard?”
He sat down on the sofa and picked Fred up. For a few minutes they played together and then he offered, “Went out with Tracey, to whom your lovely wife introduced me. She’s a sweetheart.”
“What does she do, he asked, somewhat fearing the answer?”
“Guess.”
“Dancer-waitress-bartender-card dealer-hairstylist-student …”
He started to laugh. “Nope. She’s a secretary at a law firm. Beautiful girl, with a great big …”
Claire cleared her throat and Smiley caught himself. “… sense of humour. A very firm and hefty sense of humour. And long, elegant vowels. Two of them, just beautifully formed. Yep, a stone-cold beautiful person.”
“So where did you go?”
“First for coffee and then to her place. She has a nice apartment by the Convention Centre. She introduced me to her roommate.”
“Sounds like a
Penthouse
letter
, I never believed it could happen to me …
”
“Naw. Her roommate’s a guy named Louis; he’s a bodybuilder and a bartender.”
“Okay, sounds like a
Hustler
letter,
I never believed it could happen to me …”
Claire glanced at me and winced before asking, “So, are they an item?”
“Nope. Just buddies.”
Smiley went to bed and Claire and I looked at each other and she said slowly, “Beautiful women don’t normally room with beautiful men.”
I agreed and wondered why Smiley wasn’t doing anything about the route, nothing at all. And I wondered wishfully if maybe he had changed his mind again about going straight. But I knew that was bullshit and I settled back to wait some more. He would act eventually; he was built that way. He had already betrayed me once to Sam.
All I had to do was wait, patiently or impatiently, it didn’t matter.
Eventually he’d act.
T
he next day was tortuous for me but uneventful. Late that night Smiley came home. Claire and I were at the dining-room table, playing a desultory game of crib and waiting for him to show. He opened the door with the key we’d given him on his first day and then stepped inside. When he saw us he froze and slowly put down the plastic bag he was holding.
“Is there a problem?”
“No.”
“Did I do something wrong?”
“Uh, not that I know of.”
He took off his shoes and padded forward and I could see he was wearing some of his new clothes, but they looked a little unkempt. His tie was loose, his shirt had the buttons done up wrong, and there was a deep furrow between his eyes.
“So Tracey didn’t call?”
“No.”
Claire smiled and shuffled the cards. “Should she have?”
“Who the fuck knows?”
He put the bag down on the table and drew a medium-sized bottle of Southern Comfort liqueur out of it and bit his lower lip until a thin trickle of blood started.
“I want to get drunk.”
Claire smiled again. “You’re a grown up. Do what you want.”
He looked at me and I told him, “It’s your choice.”
“Do you, either of you,” the words seemed to stick in his throat, “… want some?”
Claire nodded and brought glasses from the kitchen, one for her and one for him, and he filled them to the brim with the thick, sweet liquor. He drained his glass and my wife from sipped hers and silence spread through the room.
“So …,” Smiley started, “… were you guys waiting up for me?”
I looked at Claire. We silently agreed to keep our mouths shut and that’s what I told him. “No, everything’s fine. What’s wrong?”
“Nothing. Everything. I had a date with Tracey.”
“And?”
He refilled his glass. “I went to her place. She didn’t want to go for drinks, or dinner, or see a movie … she just wanted to screw. So we did.”
My wife shrugged. “It happens.”
“Yeah. Sure. Sometimes. But she kept getting louder and louder as we did it. You know sometimes women fake it, right?”
I agreed, “Sure, sometimes men do too.”
Claire stuck her tongue out at me. “And why would they do that?”
I listed reasons on my fingers. “First if they’re tired and
can’t. Second if they’re just not in the mood. Third if the girl is a real dead lay. Fourth is if the guy can hear the husband walking up the stairs. And fifth is to have it over and done with.”
“I may punch you.”
Smiley interrupted. “Yeah, anyway, back to me. I think she was faking it. Loudly. Over and over again. And her roommate was in the next room. He started to pound on the wall, telling us to shut up.”
It was hard to imagine that, and I tried to figure what Smiley would’ve done, but he kept talking.
“I wanted to go over and punch him out, make him shut up. Whatever. And she wouldn’t let me. Just kept doing things and making noise and telling me to keep doing things we weren’t doing. It was embarrassing.”
Claire flinched and filled her glass again and let him keep talking.
“You know, put it in … don’t stop … harder, harder … stuff like that. And throughout it the roommate’s pounding on the wall. It was fucked up.” He said it mildly.
“Anyhow so we finished and she goes over to the door and pulls it open, you know,
bang
, like that.”
Nope, still couldn’t imagine it.
“And there’s the roommate standing there. And she’s yelling all sorts of shit at him. And she’s buck-ass naked and she’s holding this condom she pulled off me in her hand and she throws it at him!”
Claire let out a bray of startled laughter and Smiley just nodded. “No, it’s cool. It was funny. So she steps out and shuts the door and starts to talk to him and I’m left in the room and I don’t know what to do. So I pull on some clothes and wait there, feeling like a dick. Pardon the expression.”
He drank some more and I realized that the two of them
had almost polished off a forty-ounce bottle, with 90 percent going down Smiley’s throat and neither of them was showing any effects.
“Anyhow. The door opens and the guy comes in, this big fucking bodybuilder wearing pajama bottoms, and Tracey’s in the doorway wearing his robe and sniffling. He sits down beside me and puts his hand on my knee.”
He stared off into space and then shook his head. “First I thought he was coming on to me and then that maybe this was some kind of three-way hustle. But no. He starts talking that him and Tracey were an item and had some problems but now everything was cool between them and maybe I should take off.”
I realized I was waiting for the punchline, but there was none, and he kept right on.
“I didn’t know what to do.” He said it wonderingly. “And I look at him and say that I need to hear it from her. And before I’m finished saying it, well, Tracey is opening her hole and says that I took advantage of her at a difficult time and that we shouldn’t see each other again. And the guy’s nodding and the chick’s nodding and I can see past her head to this light fixture in the middle of the living room and the condom she pulled off me is stuck to it. And I swear it’s smoking and stinking from the heat off the bulb.”
I couldn’t help myself, I had to smile. He saw me and his face flushed with rage, and something snapped as he stood up and said,“Fuck you, Monty.”
I stared at him and he blew out hard through his nose before getting control of himself and calming down. Then he went on with a strange edge to his voice. “Let’s do it now. Let’s dump Marie. Let’s take the route. Let’s make some real money. Let’s have some fun. Let’s see some action. I’m tired of
this half-straight shit—it’s not for me. It’s not for you either. Fuck it. Shit or get off the pot.”
I shook my head and I could see a creeping look of pity coming into Claire’s eyes, and then I said softly, “No, man, no.”
His anger flared. “You’re doing nothing. Let’s get started. Let’s do this.” I didn’t say anything and he went on in a more conciliatory tone, trying to con me. “Let’s go. Your family’s slowing you down, you have to realize that.”
He stared at me hard and I shook my head. “No.”
I had set him up. His eyes widened and he realized that I had never intended to go into the biz with him again. “You fucking bastard, you chickenshit coward … you betrayed me!”
The words hung there.
W
ords, they were only words, and I let them rush over me. “I’m not your enemy. I didn’t betray you. You were the one who took Sam’s contract to set me up.”
I took a deep breath, swallowed some words, and finally came out with, “I’m not your enemy. You are.”
His rage was like a fire in a forest, leaping from tree to tree, boiling creeks dry, and cracking rocks. “Aren’t you? Aren’t you the one with the fucking clean slate? Aren’t you the one with the fan-dam-ly? Aren’t you the one who said, ‘just let it go.’ Maybe you can. You and your fucking family. You owe me. I did you a favour. I could’ve handed your ass to Sam.”
He exhaled and went on. “I didn’t because we have connections, because we have a history.”
His voice was calm, silky now but his face was still red and his whole body was taut with something. Claire looked back and forth between us and the anger started to burn in me but when I spoke my voice was just as silky as his, just as smooth and unyielding and slick. “Leave my family out of it.”
His rage flared again. “I don’t want this. I don’t want any of it. You can FUCK your normal citizens and you can FUCK the honest people and you can FUCK YOURSELF AND YOUR FUCKING BITCH AND BRAT TOO!”
That was apparently my limit.
He was out of breath there and I hit him in the upper belly with the tips of my fingers and his eyes widened as he folded in with the blow. Then I was out of my chair and looking for a new target. Claire stood up too and backed up a little to circle behind Smiley.
For a heartbeat Smiley was shocked and for another heartbeat he was betrayed and then he pushed back hard to move away from a hammer blow I’d aimed to break his collarbone and end it.
“FUCKER!”
He wheezed but I said nothing.
Claire came in while he was distracted and aimed a kick from behind at his balls. Smiley twisted slightly and used the motion to scoop her leg up high.
The sound of Claire hitting the floor back first was loud and I feinted a combo to drive him back and then I followed him into the living room. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Claire catching her breath and then she palmed one of Fred’s wooden blocks and pitched it at Smiley’s face.
He ducked it easily but when he raised his head I was ready and moving and my kick took him square in the chest and drove him right through the front window onto the lawn. The rage inside me bubbled over, the feeling of having been controlled and manipulated, of his having put my family in danger and I took it all out on the man in front of me.
Outside I moved; left foot, right foot, weight centred over my hips ready to kick or punch. Watching for a knife or a club
or a gun, wanting to take him out with the rage red and bright in my face and feeling that friendly coldness start somewhere deep inside, that happy glorying in pain.
“Fucker!”
He had his breath back and straightened up flipping his jacket into one hand. There are two theories to words in a fight. The first one is that if you use the right ones you’ll make the other guy mad and he’ll make mistakes.
The second theory is to save your breath.
In this case I saved my breath.
A fight is never one move. It’s never one kick or one punch. In a real fight each blow leads to another and to another and every defence has an offensive component and every offensive move has a defensive component. Until the other person is on the ground and you can heel stomp their throat flat and kill them.
Smiley punched with his right hand and I directed it away from me with my left forearm. And when he was open I tried to use the heel of my right hand to flatten his nose or break his jaw, either would have been fine. But he was very close and turned his head away and used his left elbow coming up to hit my chin and blur my vision.
Before I could recover, his jacket was somehow around my throat and he was behind me taking my weight on his back. If he’d finished the throw I would have landed with the jacket still in place and my neck and back broken or dislocated.
“That’s two for flinching!” I broke my own rule and muttered. Then I slammed an elbow into his kidneys, first on one side and then on the other. The pain was enough to make him drop the jacket and turn to face me as Claire yelled from the house that she was calling the police. Smiley just grinned at me and kept coming, “Bitch. Fucker. Chickenshit.”
He whispered it all, lunged for my forearm, and took a
grip on my wrist. From there he could do many different bad things, but I turned my hand quickly towards the gap between his thumb and index fingers. Then I pulled my hand towards my chest and slammed an open-palm strike roundhouse into his ear. While he was still reeling, I put the flat of my foot back into the middle of his chest and drove him back to give me room. Before I could do anything more, though, he kicked at me himself and buried the tip of his toe in my gut. While I was backpedalling, he used a right-armed horizontal elbow blow across his body aimed at my throat.
Had it connected he would have crushed my larynx and killed me, but I leaned backwards and the blow missed.
Remember what I said about a fight never being one move? When I leaned back to avoid the throat shot he took the second shot and brought the same hand in from the side to clip me hard in the soft tissue below the base of my skull. In his perfect world it would have dislocated my neck but it didn’t and instead swept me down to his left knee, which rammed all the rest of the air out of my belly.
And I went down. The whole fight had taken maybe ten seconds … maybe less. And I was down on the ground and he was over me raising his heel just like he’d learned in the same schools I’d attended. Heel comes down with all the weight on the throat and the victim suffocates fairly soon.
It takes about two minutes to die that way.
Two minutes to think about everything you haven’t done in life and everything you wanted to do. Above me Smiley’s face was … ecstatic, and I’m not sure he could recognize or even see me. And then the sirens roared again, this time from much closer, like at the end of the block. He had to look, and while he was doing that, Claire reached the dining-room window and screamed “FIRE!” as she threw a box of toys to
clatter and shatter in the grass all around us, which made him flinch.
At the same time I realized he was standing on his own jacket and that I had a sleeve in my hand. So I grabbed it tight to my chest and rolled away and he went up and down onto the grass and screamed as his ass smashed onto a solid steel Tonka dump truck. Which gave me a chance to reach my feet and gesture at Smiley, “Come on.”
He stood there with Claire screaming “FIRE!” and Fred screaming, the dog barking, and the neighbours yelling at us to please shut up! Smiley was frozen in indecision and confusion at the chaos that was filling the air around him.
And then he ran.