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.