Blood Sports (3 page)

“It would have been better if they’d given you up for adoption or not had you.” Aunt Faith so serious and scrubbed, grey sweater set and slacks under a tailored coat, pearls but no makeup, her skin under the fluorescent lights the colour of bread dough. In the winter air, her breath frosted over her head as she spoke. “Some people are not meant to be parents.”

The bus had a sickly sweet smell of cheap strawberry air freshener and stale cigarette smoke. Tom knelt in his seat and rested his forehead against the window. His mother dozed beside him. The window was cold, but the heater beneath it blasted hot air. Tom’s cheeks felt sunburnt if he stayed that way too long.

They’d scored the front seats by the door, overlooking the driver and the road ahead. The lights from passing cars and trucks and semis kept him awake, and now, in the pre-dawn, the view was the same as it had been yesterday: long stretches of highway dusted with blowing snow, rolling hills dotted with the occasional horse or cow herd. They’d had lunch in Calgary, his mother leaving their coats on the seats so no one would steal them.

“Do you want to play a video game?” his mother had asked. “Look, they have Pac Man.”

“No.”

“Do you want a chocolate bar?”

“No.”

“Now I know there’s something wrong,” she said. “My sweet tooth never says no to candy.” She felt his forehead. “How about a comic?”

She bought an
Archie & Jughead
. She pointed to the pictures and read the bubbles as the bus swayed.

“You’re not laughing,” she said. “What’s wrong?”

Tom shook his head. “Nothing.”

“Are you scared?”

“No.”

“Are you sad about leaving your auntie? We can go out for Christmas once we’re settled.”

“I don’t want to. She’s mean.”

His mother closed the comic. “What happened?”

“Nothing.”

“Oh, Lord,” his mother said. “Oh, honey, come here.”

“No, no, I’m a big boy.”

She pulled Tom into her lap. “She’s not trying to be mean, you know. Do you remember when we talked about her being blunt? That’s what she is. She likes you, Tommy.”

“No, she doesn’t.”

“She does. She wouldn’t have let us stay so long if she didn’t like you.”

“I’m tired.”

“Whatever she said, she meant it in the best way. She thinks she’s just being honest, but she doesn’t know how she hurts people, and she doesn’t understand why they don’t like her any more. She’s very, very lonely – Tommy, look!”

Mountains like crooked teeth glittered in the distance.

“Don’t be sad, Tommy. The sun is shining and the whole world’s opening up for us.”

Paulie’s favourite
TV
show repeated at 3 a.m. They found this out when Mel started teething. Mel had been sleeping through the night for two months, and they’d been smug because all the other parents in their parenting group were having problems getting their kids down. They’d even got Mel in her crib in her own room. Then her cheeks became red and chapped, her gums swelled, her weaning stopped, and her schedule went to crap. Mel was back in their bed, snuggled into Paulina. They temporarily moved the
TV
into the bedroom. The pert host of
DIY Live!
bounced around the set with starched bangs and a ponytail that bobbed with each excited flick of her head.

“I think she’s on speed,” Tom said.

“Who?” Paulie said.

“Ponytail, there.”

“No, she’s not.”

“She’s been fucking going on about
curtains
for an hour. She’s got to be cranked, man.”

“Window treatments, dummy. Shh. We’re coming up to the blinds.”

“If you know it already, why are we watching it again?”

Paulina reached over to the nightstand and handed him the remote.

“No, that’s okay,” Tom said.

“Watch what you want.”

“I don’t care about the curtains, Paulie. I don’t care about the paint or the furniture. We got a nice place.”

She sighed. “We’ve got a shit hole.”

“Says who?”

“Mom. Dad. Everyone who’s visited.”

“Your parents were here?”

“Resentfully, yeah. Just to shut me up about how they ‘forgot’ to visit us at the hospital.”

“When?”

“First week after Mel was born.”

“Weren’t impressed, huh?”

“Oh, ecstatic. Mom wouldn’t sit on the furniture and Dad counted the condoms and needles in the alley.”

This was the height of irony coming from the people who drank themselves stupid in their basement so they wouldn’t break their antiques when they went haywire on each other. “So? Mel’s happy. That’s all that counts.”

Paulie squeezed her eyes shut. “Go to sleep, Tommy.”

Tom shut the
TV
off. “Don’t listen to them, Paulie.”

“Maybe they’re right.”

“You’re a good mom,” Tom said.

Paulie went quiet. He thought she’d fallen asleep, was drifting himself when she touched his hair, brushed it from his face.

23 JUNE 1998

The 20 Downtown bus crawled along Commercial Drive. Tom pushed his way to the back, dropping his knapsack to the floor between his legs. The sharp, musty tang of sweat hung in the air. Tom wished he had a car. Any car. Even a bike would do.

At the bottom of Commercial Drive, the waterfront turned industrial, with rundown stores, boxy warehouses, and old factories. The bus turned west on Hastings Street and then picked up speed as the stops came wider apart. The number of boarded-up stores began to outnumber the stores still open. Wrought-iron bars appeared on windows. The old brownstone hotels with their grand names and neon lights took over from the modern buildings. The deeper into the skids the bus travelled, the more churches and detox centres started popping up.

Tom automatically scanned for his mother. He felt bad about not wanting to see her. But he’d spent so much of his life wandering in and out of bars looking for her, waiting for her, worrying about her, that he didn’t want to do it any more. Assuming she was
drinking again. Maybe she wasn’t. Maybe she lived down here on one of the more respectable residential streets and she had a good guy in her life and she had the garden she’d always wanted. Even if she was on a tear, she was a big girl. She could handle herself.

He worried, though. You heard so many rumours. People disappeared down here all the time. Besides the obvious
OD
’
S
and muggings gone wrong, you could die for the dumbest reasons. Go to the wrong party. Stand under the wrong window. Have the wrong colour hair. He jerked awake, realizing he’d missed his stop.

The Regina still had ornate signs over separate entrances to a now-defunct bar for Ladies and Gentlemen. Tom had lived there for two months when he first moved to Vancouver with his mother, way back before the carpet was ripped up in favour of the original concrete. His mom had hooked up with a bull bucker named Frank who was passing the off-season in Vancouver. When his mom told him Frank was a logger, Tom had been disappointed. In the picture books, loggers were brawny, square-jawed men who wore plaid and big boots, and carried axes. Frank was a heavy-set, balding, and bearded man who looked more like Santa. He would sneak Tom jelly beans and jujubes and chocolates.

The Regina had been respectable then, and the owner, a retired fisherman, had actually lived in the hotel. But then he’d died, and The Regina had been sold to a number of indifferent owners until the current ones took over, overseas investors who’d decided heat and hot water were unnecessary luxuries. The Regina held the record for the most emergency calls in a day.

The lobby door had been kicked in again, so Tom walked into The Regina without having to buzz his friend Willy. The metal door, off-kilter, whined as it scraped shut. The lobby had once boasted a front desk with a uniformed clerk and a bellhop, but
now it was abandoned. After the searing afternoon sunshine and the honking sprawl of late-afternoon traffic, the quiet of the dark, close lobby made him uneasy.

Tom took the stairs two at a time. Willy lived on the third floor, in a corner room. A dark-haired man on the second floor blocked his way. They were the same height, but the man was probably the ideal weight of a socialite. He shook like a cold dog. “Weed? Powder? Rock?”

“I’m good,” Tom said.

The man nodded absently and wandered down the hallway, knocking on doors.

Tom slung his knapsack forward and searched for the flashlight he carried when he visited Willy. The lights between the second and third floors had been burnt out for years and never replaced. He snapped the flashlight on and started up the stairs. The acrid, sweet reek of piss intensified. On the middle landing, glossy cockroaches swarmed a hardened coil of shit. Tom felt a bump and heard a crisp crunch as he stepped on a roach. He lifted his foot and knocked it off with the flashlight.

Double pinpoints of red light bobbed and weaved ahead of him. Rats slid past, squealing away from the watery yellow light as if it burned. Near the top of the stairs, parts of the wall were sprayed with chunky vomit, other parts with fine arches of blackened blood.

“Penny bets will get you penny wins,” his cousin Jeremy had liked to say. But Tom was not a high roller. Management did not offer him
VIP
suites with free mini-bars, stretch limos, or accommodating hostesses. Tom was perfectly happy nursing his free drink, diddling with the quarter slots, pull tabs.

“Come on, Big Spender,” Jeremy said, pulling him away from a one-armed bandit. Jeremy pressed a five-thousand-dollar chip into his hand. Tom tucked it into his wallet. He knew he’d need it later.

“No, no, no,” Jeremy said. “Watch and learn, Tommy.”

Jeremy rolled and rolled and his chips were fruitful and multiplied. Maybe it was the free drink, maybe it was the boozy bonhomie of the crowd around the crap table, maybe it was Jeremy blowing smoke up his ass: “Life is a limited-time offer, Bauer. Grab some
cajones
. Risk something. We were born to take risks. That’s what life is, isn’t it?”

They cheered when he rolled, and the temporary attention made him feel ten feet tall and bulletproof. It was all very exciting until the people around the table booed.

“Snake eyes,” the stickperson said.

“What happened?” Tom said.

“You crapped out,” Jer said. “Don’t worry about it. That was chump change.”

Tom stared at him, finally realizing he’d lost.

“You didn’t know the numbers, that’s all. Once you know the numbers, everything falls into place.”