In all of the Junky Corners, there is no one quite like Carissa. When she's "on" she's like the Discovery Channel and a new book rolled into one, entertaining and much anticipated. In the weeks I've lived in the buiilding we've spent most of our free time together and it would be more if she didn't have to work nights. Standard practise so far involves her coming home between 7 and 8 in the morning to wake and bake me for some themed Netflix watching before she crashes out at around 14:30.
We haven't touched each other yet - intimately in any case. Sure, there are playful nudges when the TV says something funny and she held me close once without knowing why when I started missing Non-non really bad on her birthday but that's it. Okay, fine, we tried to once but there was hesitation on her part and I balked. And it's not that I didn't want to, far from it in fact. Carissa ranks as the coolest chick I know and dishing out some just desserts on her would be bliss but there's a darkness in her that will rear up sometimes and threaten to blot her out completely.
I saw it rise during a recent screening of "Legends of the Fall" during a Frontier Day themed session and watched her settle into a black tar funk that would sink a mastodon. It scared me so I ran and left my remaining testicle behind. She's cool but that darkness isn't for me - not when I'm just starting to see the light at the end of the Chunnel. It still doesn't mean that I don't want her. Every knock on my door is her until I open it.
Maybe I should stop answering.
It's noon on a Friday five days after running scared when a soft tap tap gets me off my bed and out of an Umbrella Academy novel. I'm hoping it's her even while knowing it's not her knock. And no, it's not my fallen angel but Twitchy the Homosexual Junky scratching his tracks outside my door."Got an extra smoke, man?" He asks through chattering teeth and sweat.
"Sure, just a sec." I turn my back to fetch my pack and he follows right behind without asking.
"I'll smoke it with you," he says, making himself comfortable at the foot of my bed and batting his eyelashes like a strength enhanced major league hitter. "Now that you and Missa Carissa broke up we can spend more time together."
That notion is about as appealing as flaying my foreskin with a Brillo pad and I say as much. "And don't ask me what a Brillo pad is," I say in response to the blank stare he gives back, "just trust that it wouldn't be pleasant. Now, take your smoke and get out."
He's never been ejected so soon and doesn't know how to react but there's a race going on behind his eyes that he knows he can't win with me. "Could you spare a pack til payday?"
Twitchy doesn't work a job unless felating the occasional octogenarian counts as that kind of job. Nope, Twitchy's an artist insofar as he draws a mental disability pension check every month minus his rent and he's about as reliable as a Lybian alarm clock. "You already owe me a pack, man," I tell him fishing a fat clip out of a clean ashtray. "What happened last payday?"
"Aw, you know how it is, I needed to fill a few prescriptions." He's parked himself in the best seat in the house. "Can I have this pillow."
"No, here." He takes the clip and doesn't comment, just pats his hips for a lighter except that he's not wearing pants, just boxers. "And get out." It's the first time I've ever ordered him out and he's not sure how to process. "Get on your feet," I tell him and wait until he does. "Now put one in front of the other until your over my threshold and close the door behind you."
He does what he's told with the clip dangling off his lip and I'm satisfied to be shut of him."Have you talked to Carissa lately?"
There's an extra mincey tone in his voice he knows pisses me off - the one he uses when he asks if he caj see why they call me One Nut."She hasn't been by, no," I tell him flatly. Twitchy really is not the person I want to be having this conversation with.
"She hasn't left her room in days. You were the last one in or out," he says just before shutting the door behind him.Fucker. I've been trying not to think of her sitting in the black tar funk doing nothing but blank staring at a bad DVDs top menu and this junky sperm burper (not that there's anything wrong with that) brings it all back into focus. There's a part of me wants to leave her be and forget she ever knocked on my door but I can feel my better angel getting ready to kick some ass if I don't gird up the old loins and check on her.
If the door's locked I'm fucked.
It's not and opens onto a scene that might as well be straight off my childhood horror reel. I know this layout all too well; the neglected disarray of scattered magazines and a toppled vase, the smell of an unflushed toilet coupled with sun ripened garbage complete with a hovering veil of red eyed fruit flies. The vase bothers me and I stand it back up where it belongs. Carissa's on the couch where I left her, pretty much exactly as I left her except for the new stains which smash the unflushed toilet theory to smithereens. Sitting in her own piss and shit she's still staring at the television only her hair's been chopped down to stubble and it's scorched in places. I'm also prepared to bet from the remains of her hair that she used the paring knife pressed against her wrist to do the deed.How far gone is she? And I shout, "Carissa!" to check her reaction. Not so much as a twitch.
"Shmiggle-dee piggle-dee alakazoo!" Her eyes narrow in what experience has taught me is annoyance - paydirt. "Nice to see that I'm not dealing with full on catatonia," I say on my way to the bathroom with her eyes following me the whole time.
"Leave me alone," she croaks.
"Nawp," I tell her without hesitation. "Call me crazy but I'm of the opinion that you might be in a bad way." There's a clean glass next to the sink and the water comes cold right out of the tap. But when I bring it back to her she purses her lips in refusal so I just put the glass down on her handmade coffee table. "You'll drink it when you're ready."
Without a word she sends the glass flying with a kick I'd never have expected from anyone in her condition. It shatters against the wall to bring a pounding from Twitchy in the next room. There are plastic cups and straws left over from a hen party months ago and I repeat the process. "You need to drink something, Carissa."
"Leave me alone," she croaks again.
"Again, nawp." I'm seriously considering physically restraining her and really don't want to - she played soccer through high-school and she's still a solid athlete. Probably why she isn't dead yet. "Do you honestly expect me to leave you sitting here like this? Now drink something."
She wants to tell me off but she's too dry and her voice won't come. Instead, she mouths something colorful at me and I laugh. "Take some water and then at least you could tell me off."
She nearly spills the glass in her haste to get the straw into her mouth, takes two long swallows and tries again. "What the fuck do you care?"
"I like you too much and have invested too much time in getting to know you to let you sink out of sight. Happy?" She's already shaking her head but I'm not done. "Carissa, I have no idea why you're so sad but I'm not going anywhere until I know you're floating again...and not in your own mess."
She's not buying it so I do the only other thing I can think of and sit down on the couch close enough to put my arm around her. She tries pulling away from my arm but her time without food or water has left her weak as a drowned kitten and I hold her against my chest. When she starts crying and clutching me back I hold her tighter. I can imagine the picture we'd make right now, clinging to each other like little kids in a pile of fecal matter and ammonia. I'm just too relieved that she's releasing to care.
I don't think I've ever told you faithful readers about my sisters but I have five and they're all younger than me. When they were little and upset I used to cuddle them and sing silly songs to make them laugh. There's something about sitting here with fecal stink in my nose and tears soaking through my shirt that takes me back to those days. Before I know it, I'm singing "You are My Sunshine" to the top of Carissa'a head and planting tiny kisses there after every chorus. Time stops to matter as her tears continue and I think she's finally fallen asleep like the kids used to do when she stops. No such luck.
"Do you know 'The Eensy Weensy Spider'?" she asks into my chest.
I don't bother answering except to start singing the song. And my voice hasn't been any good since I stopped singing to what passed as god but she doesn't complain as I make three quick rounds through - she even joins me on the last one.
The last "again" has barely faded from the room when she pushes herself away from me, tries to take her feet and sits right back down on the mess. A whole new scent experience is released by the movement which is enough to make me stand up to and offer my hand. "You need a shower worse than anyone I've ever met."
"I can't get up," she admits and her eyes start filling with tears again.
"So take my hand and let me help you," I tell her and she does. Once I have her off of the couch it's only a few steps to the bathroom and I can feel her trembling against me. "Lean into me," I tell her and she does so I can support more of her weight. We make it to the bathroom without incident and she stays leaning against me while I get the water running. "Do you need help undressing?"
She shoots me a 'what the fuck are you on' look out of what's probably habit and then nods. I starts with her pants because they need coming off and i try to ignore the tearing sound as the poop pasted fabric separates from her skin. There's the start of a nasty case of diaper rash forming on the general area and I make a note to fetch some talc and antiseptic spray. Shirt and bra come off next and I must be some kind of serious perv to note that she's got pretty much the best pair of breasts I've ever seen live.
"Okay, in you go...be with you in a second." I ignore the next questioning look, being too busy stripping myself to notice, and climb into the stall with her. She's got the usual female complement of lotions, soaps and gels in her shower but there's a bar of Ivory and a washcloth and that's all I need. Washing her's about as much fun as bathing a corpse but the soap and water do the trick. I consider washing what's left of her hair but she shakes her head and I don't wanna push my luck. Clean towels on the rack outside the stall dry us and I have her laid down in bed clean and naked within twenty minutes of undressing.
Eyes closed, lips parted, I can't help running my fingers over her scalp and sighing. "Carissa," I tell her, "you don't tear down curtains of hair, you take down curtains of hair."
She opens her eyes, finds mine and answers, "It all depends on how bad you want to see out the window."
What can I say to that? Sometimes you just need to look out the window.
Monday, June 27, 2011
Saturday, June 4, 2011
Me Equals Emm See Scared
Albert Einstein, the father of relativity, once said that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. Now, I didn’t throw any quotes up around that line because I know it’s not verbatim but, fuck sakes, the book it’s in is sitting in a box at the other place and I’m just trying to illustrate a point here. See, his words have been ricocheting inside my skull since quarter past seven Thursday night when I quit my job without having a safety net - again. Even now, sitting here with my laptop warming my nuts, I can feel the familiar stirrings of panic churning espresso and bile into a bubbling brew that threatens to burst my guts and paint the walls of my cell bloody. I’m trying to keep my matter at rest but I don’t know how to keep my brain from squaring the speed of light into a mind bending oblivion.
In all honesty, I believe that I must be severely fucked in the head to keep doing this to myself. Around about every five years since I was sixteen I follow the same steps: Someone will try to make me do something that goes against what passes for my moral code, offer me an ultimatum and I fold their bluffing hand by up and quitting on them - bosses, friends, wife or whomever. And every time it happens I imagine myself pulling off some miraculous save to maintain my "standard of living" but (woe unto this poor besotted husk) all for shit. I’ve starved and shivered in filthy traps, mooched and malingered my way onto couches and laps, slung dope and thrown hands to make ends meet but nothing good comes from despair and I’m left worse off than I was - every fucking time, brothers and sisters, every goddamned fucking time. I am the living embodiment of Mr. Einstein’s definition.
Now, I’m not looking for sympathy or head patting - no “there there Air” shit or whatnot - because I don’t deserve it - this is my mess. But I do wanna’ make something perfectly clear: I never meant to hurt anyone else with the chain of causality which has led to this resulting resignation. I got high on what I thought was freedom, spread my shit down thick, irrigated with liquor and cropped up a big old field of pipe dreams that saw me treat the workplace as my own personal pretty girl preserve. Through action and inaction I have managed to achieve both bliss and botheration on an unprecedented scale where every 2.55 centimetres translates into light years of humiliation and regrets. I shit you not, brothers and sisters, but this faithless servant leader has had enough of all the old excuses.
What I need is a good ass kicking to drive the sense of decorum I lost when I started drinking back into me. I need the priesthood holding Mormon Boy Scout back and don’t have clue fucking one where that kid might be. Hiding under some mouldering bed of lies in my back brain is my best guess - he just won’t come when I call, even when I invoke the three given names. Maybe he doesn’t think he deserves any head patting either. Maybe he fears some lurking duplicity’s waiting to snatch him back to the same name-brand of hell we grew up in? Can’t say as I blame him - poor kid.
So what next? Let’s follow the pattern forward a bit, shall we, oh my brothers and sisters. I’ll take a few days off, it being Friday and all, and tell myself to start looking for work on Monday. Odds are that in the meantime I’ll find someone willing to front me a beer or two in exchange for this weary tale of woe-begotten expectations come to shit and I’ll wind up going on a tear worthy of the Old Gods’ waking up to notice. Sunday might see me feeling well enough to choke down cigarettes I can’t afford while I try to navigate the uncharted seas of wretched excess by the light of fading childhood constellations that inevitably lead me to recall transgression upon trespass upon dumbfuckery. Some decent hearted woman or other will inevitably find me handsome sad enough to suffer my attentions until whiskey-dick sends her laughing back to whatever tattooed stunt cock calls her Babyluv. I’ll update my resume, sweat through my good clothes and watch potential employers scribble 110 (where a simple \ turns the number into "no") in the upper right corner until I bow to necessity and fit myself into another polyester uniformed niche pouring coffee or flipping beef patties for pennies. It’s so familiar that it’s almost comforting.
Fuck me running, not this again. Thanks for the insight Mr. Einstein and thanks for nothing. I always hated your moustache.
In all honesty, I believe that I must be severely fucked in the head to keep doing this to myself. Around about every five years since I was sixteen I follow the same steps: Someone will try to make me do something that goes against what passes for my moral code, offer me an ultimatum and I fold their bluffing hand by up and quitting on them - bosses, friends, wife or whomever. And every time it happens I imagine myself pulling off some miraculous save to maintain my "standard of living" but (woe unto this poor besotted husk) all for shit. I’ve starved and shivered in filthy traps, mooched and malingered my way onto couches and laps, slung dope and thrown hands to make ends meet but nothing good comes from despair and I’m left worse off than I was - every fucking time, brothers and sisters, every goddamned fucking time. I am the living embodiment of Mr. Einstein’s definition.
Now, I’m not looking for sympathy or head patting - no “there there Air” shit or whatnot - because I don’t deserve it - this is my mess. But I do wanna’ make something perfectly clear: I never meant to hurt anyone else with the chain of causality which has led to this resulting resignation. I got high on what I thought was freedom, spread my shit down thick, irrigated with liquor and cropped up a big old field of pipe dreams that saw me treat the workplace as my own personal pretty girl preserve. Through action and inaction I have managed to achieve both bliss and botheration on an unprecedented scale where every 2.55 centimetres translates into light years of humiliation and regrets. I shit you not, brothers and sisters, but this faithless servant leader has had enough of all the old excuses.
What I need is a good ass kicking to drive the sense of decorum I lost when I started drinking back into me. I need the priesthood holding Mormon Boy Scout back and don’t have clue fucking one where that kid might be. Hiding under some mouldering bed of lies in my back brain is my best guess - he just won’t come when I call, even when I invoke the three given names. Maybe he doesn’t think he deserves any head patting either. Maybe he fears some lurking duplicity’s waiting to snatch him back to the same name-brand of hell we grew up in? Can’t say as I blame him - poor kid.
So what next? Let’s follow the pattern forward a bit, shall we, oh my brothers and sisters. I’ll take a few days off, it being Friday and all, and tell myself to start looking for work on Monday. Odds are that in the meantime I’ll find someone willing to front me a beer or two in exchange for this weary tale of woe-begotten expectations come to shit and I’ll wind up going on a tear worthy of the Old Gods’ waking up to notice. Sunday might see me feeling well enough to choke down cigarettes I can’t afford while I try to navigate the uncharted seas of wretched excess by the light of fading childhood constellations that inevitably lead me to recall transgression upon trespass upon dumbfuckery. Some decent hearted woman or other will inevitably find me handsome sad enough to suffer my attentions until whiskey-dick sends her laughing back to whatever tattooed stunt cock calls her Babyluv. I’ll update my resume, sweat through my good clothes and watch potential employers scribble 110 (where a simple \ turns the number into "no") in the upper right corner until I bow to necessity and fit myself into another polyester uniformed niche pouring coffee or flipping beef patties for pennies. It’s so familiar that it’s almost comforting.
Fuck me running, not this again. Thanks for the insight Mr. Einstein and thanks for nothing. I always hated your moustache.
Wednesday, June 1, 2011
Frying Pans and Fires
The classified add on kijiji.ca shows a bright clean "bachelor suite" with it's own facilities for 5 bills a month available immediately. My Android files an automatic response to the poster's account and I'm motorvating my ass downtown. Two days in the scum hole turned into two months shacked up there with with What's-her-tits (Wanda, her name's Wanda) and I'm in great need of getting the fuck out from under her calculating gaze and salon nails. We've already gone through the 25K I had saved and the Rolex went for better than three grand on EBay but the last of it's folding change in my pocket. Everything's either gone up our noses or through our lungs and I've been tripping so hard lately that it's a wonder I can still find my balance.
Tran's blazing a fat joint outside the office and throws me a chin when I walk by. He's the connection around here and has been more than happy to take my money for all the candy and pot I've been doing. He smiles and touches the side of his nose in an unspoken question. I shake my head and he throws me another chin. Yeah buddy, I think to myself, keep right on believing I'll throw any more money at you so long as I get those chins, you plaguey junked out scumlord. Tonight he's surrounded by a heavy rich smoke of blended hashish and opium that smells like spring break in Katmandu and I know it's only generous donations from the Ronald MacDonald Weaver Degeneration Fund keeping him on such a Himalayan high. Yeah, well, fuck that Mr Tambourine Man jazz, I don't wanna' listen to that song anymore.
The add gives a Sutherland Street address I don't recognize aside from knowing that it's closer to downtown than the arena. Five minutes from the hotel I hit Suth and start navigating by the house numbers. The descending order takes me downtown past St Michael's and the Cooking Pot towards the city's slow beating heart. Down-and-outers camping on street corners supplicate themselves for the silver in my pocket and raise their eyebrows questioningly at the prospect of more than dimes and nickels. But I have eyes only for the numbers and unless there's a big digit drop off soon I know where I'm headed. Sure enough, it's the nold Keystone bar - scene of more debauchery and shame than I care to recount.
The sign stenciled on the steel and reinforced glass door reads: Keystone Apartments, 227 Sutherland Street, North Bay, Ontario...For Inquiries please call 705-845-9449. I get the Android working on that straight away and wait while the connection is made after more rings than I've been taught are polite. The recorded message playing in my ears is an actual live voice introducing the speaker "...reached the voicemail of Brad Logan...I'm occupied for the moment but please leave me your demographics and I will return your call." There's a pause before the beep that makes me think his mailbox is bursting bites at capacity but I do what I've been told.
"Good evening Mr Logan, name's Ronnie Weaver and I'm calling in reference to the add I saw online about your available bachelor unit. I'm very interested in..."
"Evening Mr Weaver, Brad Logan here...I was just reading your email."
"Yessir, I am really anxious to arrange a viewing."
He rattles an old man's coughing laugh at me and asks, "Where are you now, son?"
"Right outside the building."
"Just a moment then." He breaks the connection to leave me waiting on the ass end of town wondering when the world went and got itself on crack. But a moment later there's a light on over the next door up from the stencil and a wirey old man in overalls and fuzzy slippers comes padding out to scan the street. "Mr Weaver?"
"Ronnie," I say advancing with my hand out until I notice the twisted nicotine stained claws he's trying to pass as his own. So I let mine fall back to my side and try to counterfeit a reassuring smile. "Thanks for this."
"I was awake," he says propping the door with his shoulder. "Come on up."
The front hallway smells of cleaning solvents and grief and he leads me up the short rise stairs to a steel reinforced fire door to the second floor. "Place is coming along since my boys took over for me but I'll warn you that there are some bad elements roaming about."
I don't know if he's trying to scare me or what but it's not working. "I've lived in way worse, sir, believe you me."
"If you say so." He's fumbling at a ring of keys on his belt with those crab claw hands and it's all I can do to stop from talking them away and finding the right one myself. But he's got the look of a man who shuns help from strangers so I wait while he completes the manouver on his own. With the key fit into the lock he turns it clockwise, winces and the door opens to more cleaning smells and new paint. "Here we are."
It's just like the add but smaller than I'd expected. He's watching me look the place over so I smile a bit and nod. "Exactly as advertised," I tell him. "I like it very much. Let's talk turkey - what do you say to me taking it over."
"Money talks and bullshit walks," he says matter of factly. "Why don't you cross my palms with some gelters?"
Aw fuck...the $35 in my pocket won't do shit all for this guy but I feel something else in there while I'm counting the bills from memory - the platinum Dunhill. "Thing is that I'm short for a while but I will give you this as a deposit."
I hand him the lighter and his eyes go big when he feels it in his hand. He doesn't have any trouble making it work, smiles and looks me straight in the eye. "This'll square you for six months in advance, son. How's that work for you?"
"Done," I say and offer my hand again.
He slaps it lightly with his own, winces and smiles. "You're coming down off a high high horse, Ronnie, I can tell that much. But I'll tell you that if you're looking to escape evil influence, this ain't the place. Not too late to take your pretty lighter back."
"No sir, I'm here to stay. Thanks a lot for this."
"Don't thank me until you've been here a week or more. I'll write you a receipt for the six months and slip it under the door. Fair?"
"Fair as a summer day."
He smiles and tips an imaginary hat at me before shuffling off to wherever he sleeps and I'm left to survey my new domain. Fridge, toaster oven, microwave, flat screen TV (with cable, lordy lordy)and a bed make up the furnishings but it's all I need. For the first time since catching Manon blowing the Milanese stunt cock I feel like I'm on firm ground again.
As if on queue, my Android beeps it's incoming text tone and of course it's her. "I miss you and forgive you" the message reads.
"Fuck you and your forgiveness" I type back, not caring if she's across the Pond or across the hall. "This wasn't my idea"
The bed's sprung in the middle so that I'm hammocked in when I sit but it's the least of my worries. I've been fielding this type of text for the last two months and it's always the same. "I forgive you" "I miss you" "I want you" like it'll make everything better. She's funny that way, making me think that I did something wrong by catching her playing another guy's skin flute.
"Hey, Lonnie! Lonnie! I'm sick man!"
The voice is coming from right below my wondow and for a sec I think it's calling me but another voice answers through the wall in the room next door. "Frig off, Reuben. Come back with my money and we'll deal."
"But I'm sick man." There's no curtain on the window but my room's dark so that the only thing they'd see is my shadow at the window. Reuben's standing on the sidewalk outside the building scratching at his right arm like he's got a bad case of the heeby-jeebies and looking every inch a burnt out, full on junky. He does look sick but it's not the kind of sick you take chicken soup and Nyquil for. "Can't you front me a rocket til I get my checque?"
"I've sent more rockets up your arm than NASA sends to God, Reuben. Fuck off before I get my gun."
That's got me taking two steps back from the window before the words are out and I half expect to see Reuben fly back with two in the chest but there's only the sound of broken hearted sobs from outside. I take another quick peek but he's out of sight and "Lonnie" closes his window with an audible click. Great, I move out of the scum hole into a shooting gallery. Well done, Weaver, a $10,000 dollar lighter for a cell next to a wanna-be pharmacist.
Ten minutes later I'm spinning a spliff, and starting to feel better about this whole deal, another voice calling Lonnie from outside. There's no back talk this time, only the metallic jingle of keys hitting the sidewalk. Perfect, so much for a secure building. Soon there's a knock on the door next door and I can hear it open to a brief exchange as the caller is admitted to Lonnie's den of shit.
But it's not like I have many options. Tyler got the house when I moved in with Non-non and even though he'd take me in without hesitation it's just not my place any more. Sure, I've got acquaintances who'd let me ride a couch for a few weeks but that kind of deal stinks more often than not. Absently, my fingers probe my watch pocket for the lighter I know isn't there anymore. Can't even christen the new place.
Another knock. For a second I think it's Lonnie's door but the sound's repeated and I can tell it's mine. Who the hell? There's no peep hole so I open the door a crack to come face to face with a busty young thing with big blue eyes and a smile that'd strip years of malaise off of the tiredest old soul.
"Help you?" I ask holding the joint out of sight.
"I heard Brad bring you in. My name's Carissa - I live next door."
"Hello, Carissa from next door. Wanna' come in and burn one with me? Do you have a lighter?"
Her smile gets even bigger when she pulls a nifty three burner Nibo from deep out of her pocket and I can feel the stirring in my pants that lets me know trouble's on the way. "Don't mind if I do, handsome. Thanks." She slips past me trailing a sweet scent of vanilla and fruit that has me slavering before I close the door. Like I was ever one to learn from my mistakes.
Here we go again.
Tran's blazing a fat joint outside the office and throws me a chin when I walk by. He's the connection around here and has been more than happy to take my money for all the candy and pot I've been doing. He smiles and touches the side of his nose in an unspoken question. I shake my head and he throws me another chin. Yeah buddy, I think to myself, keep right on believing I'll throw any more money at you so long as I get those chins, you plaguey junked out scumlord. Tonight he's surrounded by a heavy rich smoke of blended hashish and opium that smells like spring break in Katmandu and I know it's only generous donations from the Ronald MacDonald Weaver Degeneration Fund keeping him on such a Himalayan high. Yeah, well, fuck that Mr Tambourine Man jazz, I don't wanna' listen to that song anymore.
The add gives a Sutherland Street address I don't recognize aside from knowing that it's closer to downtown than the arena. Five minutes from the hotel I hit Suth and start navigating by the house numbers. The descending order takes me downtown past St Michael's and the Cooking Pot towards the city's slow beating heart. Down-and-outers camping on street corners supplicate themselves for the silver in my pocket and raise their eyebrows questioningly at the prospect of more than dimes and nickels. But I have eyes only for the numbers and unless there's a big digit drop off soon I know where I'm headed. Sure enough, it's the nold Keystone bar - scene of more debauchery and shame than I care to recount.
The sign stenciled on the steel and reinforced glass door reads: Keystone Apartments, 227 Sutherland Street, North Bay, Ontario...For Inquiries please call 705-845-9449. I get the Android working on that straight away and wait while the connection is made after more rings than I've been taught are polite. The recorded message playing in my ears is an actual live voice introducing the speaker "...reached the voicemail of Brad Logan...I'm occupied for the moment but please leave me your demographics and I will return your call." There's a pause before the beep that makes me think his mailbox is bursting bites at capacity but I do what I've been told.
"Good evening Mr Logan, name's Ronnie Weaver and I'm calling in reference to the add I saw online about your available bachelor unit. I'm very interested in..."
"Evening Mr Weaver, Brad Logan here...I was just reading your email."
"Yessir, I am really anxious to arrange a viewing."
He rattles an old man's coughing laugh at me and asks, "Where are you now, son?"
"Right outside the building."
"Just a moment then." He breaks the connection to leave me waiting on the ass end of town wondering when the world went and got itself on crack. But a moment later there's a light on over the next door up from the stencil and a wirey old man in overalls and fuzzy slippers comes padding out to scan the street. "Mr Weaver?"
"Ronnie," I say advancing with my hand out until I notice the twisted nicotine stained claws he's trying to pass as his own. So I let mine fall back to my side and try to counterfeit a reassuring smile. "Thanks for this."
"I was awake," he says propping the door with his shoulder. "Come on up."
The front hallway smells of cleaning solvents and grief and he leads me up the short rise stairs to a steel reinforced fire door to the second floor. "Place is coming along since my boys took over for me but I'll warn you that there are some bad elements roaming about."
I don't know if he's trying to scare me or what but it's not working. "I've lived in way worse, sir, believe you me."
"If you say so." He's fumbling at a ring of keys on his belt with those crab claw hands and it's all I can do to stop from talking them away and finding the right one myself. But he's got the look of a man who shuns help from strangers so I wait while he completes the manouver on his own. With the key fit into the lock he turns it clockwise, winces and the door opens to more cleaning smells and new paint. "Here we are."
It's just like the add but smaller than I'd expected. He's watching me look the place over so I smile a bit and nod. "Exactly as advertised," I tell him. "I like it very much. Let's talk turkey - what do you say to me taking it over."
"Money talks and bullshit walks," he says matter of factly. "Why don't you cross my palms with some gelters?"
Aw fuck...the $35 in my pocket won't do shit all for this guy but I feel something else in there while I'm counting the bills from memory - the platinum Dunhill. "Thing is that I'm short for a while but I will give you this as a deposit."
I hand him the lighter and his eyes go big when he feels it in his hand. He doesn't have any trouble making it work, smiles and looks me straight in the eye. "This'll square you for six months in advance, son. How's that work for you?"
"Done," I say and offer my hand again.
He slaps it lightly with his own, winces and smiles. "You're coming down off a high high horse, Ronnie, I can tell that much. But I'll tell you that if you're looking to escape evil influence, this ain't the place. Not too late to take your pretty lighter back."
"No sir, I'm here to stay. Thanks a lot for this."
"Don't thank me until you've been here a week or more. I'll write you a receipt for the six months and slip it under the door. Fair?"
"Fair as a summer day."
He smiles and tips an imaginary hat at me before shuffling off to wherever he sleeps and I'm left to survey my new domain. Fridge, toaster oven, microwave, flat screen TV (with cable, lordy lordy)and a bed make up the furnishings but it's all I need. For the first time since catching Manon blowing the Milanese stunt cock I feel like I'm on firm ground again.
As if on queue, my Android beeps it's incoming text tone and of course it's her. "I miss you and forgive you" the message reads.
"Fuck you and your forgiveness" I type back, not caring if she's across the Pond or across the hall. "This wasn't my idea"
The bed's sprung in the middle so that I'm hammocked in when I sit but it's the least of my worries. I've been fielding this type of text for the last two months and it's always the same. "I forgive you" "I miss you" "I want you" like it'll make everything better. She's funny that way, making me think that I did something wrong by catching her playing another guy's skin flute.
"Hey, Lonnie! Lonnie! I'm sick man!"
The voice is coming from right below my wondow and for a sec I think it's calling me but another voice answers through the wall in the room next door. "Frig off, Reuben. Come back with my money and we'll deal."
"But I'm sick man." There's no curtain on the window but my room's dark so that the only thing they'd see is my shadow at the window. Reuben's standing on the sidewalk outside the building scratching at his right arm like he's got a bad case of the heeby-jeebies and looking every inch a burnt out, full on junky. He does look sick but it's not the kind of sick you take chicken soup and Nyquil for. "Can't you front me a rocket til I get my checque?"
"I've sent more rockets up your arm than NASA sends to God, Reuben. Fuck off before I get my gun."
That's got me taking two steps back from the window before the words are out and I half expect to see Reuben fly back with two in the chest but there's only the sound of broken hearted sobs from outside. I take another quick peek but he's out of sight and "Lonnie" closes his window with an audible click. Great, I move out of the scum hole into a shooting gallery. Well done, Weaver, a $10,000 dollar lighter for a cell next to a wanna-be pharmacist.
Ten minutes later I'm spinning a spliff, and starting to feel better about this whole deal, another voice calling Lonnie from outside. There's no back talk this time, only the metallic jingle of keys hitting the sidewalk. Perfect, so much for a secure building. Soon there's a knock on the door next door and I can hear it open to a brief exchange as the caller is admitted to Lonnie's den of shit.
But it's not like I have many options. Tyler got the house when I moved in with Non-non and even though he'd take me in without hesitation it's just not my place any more. Sure, I've got acquaintances who'd let me ride a couch for a few weeks but that kind of deal stinks more often than not. Absently, my fingers probe my watch pocket for the lighter I know isn't there anymore. Can't even christen the new place.
Another knock. For a second I think it's Lonnie's door but the sound's repeated and I can tell it's mine. Who the hell? There's no peep hole so I open the door a crack to come face to face with a busty young thing with big blue eyes and a smile that'd strip years of malaise off of the tiredest old soul.
"Help you?" I ask holding the joint out of sight.
"I heard Brad bring you in. My name's Carissa - I live next door."
"Hello, Carissa from next door. Wanna' come in and burn one with me? Do you have a lighter?"
Her smile gets even bigger when she pulls a nifty three burner Nibo from deep out of her pocket and I can feel the stirring in my pants that lets me know trouble's on the way. "Don't mind if I do, handsome. Thanks." She slips past me trailing a sweet scent of vanilla and fruit that has me slavering before I close the door. Like I was ever one to learn from my mistakes.
Here we go again.
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