Fireball (28 page)

‘Chris – it's staring right at us!'

‘I know.'

Pretty soon another whale came over to check us out. And another. They cruised past one by one. I guess they weren't used to people being around at night. Whales are curious like that. After Chris and Karen had finished the joint, the first whale circled back to say goodbye. This time, it raised a flipper out of the water and hung half-upside down – like a capsized boat. The flipper was close enough to touch, so that's exactly what Chris did. He reached out and stroked the tip with the palm of his hand. The whale didn't mind at all. It rolled back over and blasted a big fountain of water out its blowhole – spraying the three of us – before fading away into the dark.

Chris tucked the roach in his pocket, and leaned over to kiss Karen.

‘I told you this would be awesome,' he whispered.

Afterwards, we got back in the car and drove to the Lions Gate Bridge. It took about half an hour, because of the one-way system. Stanley Park is just so fucking huge. Supposedly, tons of gay guys go there at night to bang in the bushes, but we didn't see any. We didn't see a single person. There weren't any joggers or cyclists or rollerbladers or shitty people walking their dogs, and for a few minutes, when we first reached the bridge, there weren't even any other cars. It was just like Chris's favourite movie – that one where everybody on earth suddenly disappears for no reason at all, except for these two guys and a girl.

At the centre of the bridge, Chris told me to pull over. He wanted to look down at the water, so him and Karen got out. I put the hazard lights on and stayed in the car, just keeping it fairly casual. At first I switched on the radio and put one foot up on the dashboard. Then I saw that they were talking, so I opened the window a little bit. I wasn't eavesdropping on them or anything. I was just trying to hear what they were saying. I could, too. Barely.

Karen said, ‘That's got to be bullshit.'

‘No – I swear.'

Chris was telling her about this tourist who fell off the bridge trying to take a photo – this seventy-year-old Japanese guy. He lived, too. Nobody knows how, but he lived. He must have been quite small and spry and light. Like a Japanese feather hitting the water.

Chris said, ‘So many people jump off here to kill themselves. Then this guy falls off by accident and totally survives. Trippy, huh?'

‘When I'm a bird,' Karen said, ‘I'll be able to jump off whenever I want. I'll dive straight down and wait until the very last minute before swooping up and away.'

Chris laughed. ‘You're never going to be a bird, Karen.'

He hated hearing her talk like that. Normally, he couldn't even be bothered to discuss it. But that night, for once, I could tell he felt differently. He was so content that nothing could phase him – not even her and her reincarnation.

‘Yes I am.' She reached out to hold his hand. ‘I'm going to come back as a beautiful bald eagle, a girl eagle, with white feathers.'

‘That's such bullshit.'

‘Oh, yeah? So what happens when you die, then?'

‘What do you think happens? Nothing.'

She thought about that, but not for very long.

‘Okay. But let's just say you believe in reincarnation. What would you want to be?'

‘You mean if I had no other choice?

‘Yeah.'

Chris muttered something that I couldn't hear. I assumed he'd told her to forget about it or whatever, but later Karen told me what he'd actually said. I don't think she realised how much that meant. It was the same as if he'd told her that he loved her. Maybe, on some level, she understood that. I hope she did – because that was as good as it got between them.

Within a week, it all went to shit.

46

Those holding cells were cold and cramped, like tombs.

We were too drunk to sleep so we stayed up all night talking. It was just like the sleepovers we'd had as kids – except we were hammered and in jail. Also, we weren't in the same room. Chris was in one cell and I was in another across from him. We had to talk to each other through these little sliding panels at the base of the doors. They kind of looked like cat flaps, actually. The cops are supposed to use them to feed the prisoners.

They never fed us, though.

When we first got to the station, they fingerprinted us and took our photos and made us fill out forms and did all the stuff you'd expect. They also did some stuff you wouldn't expect – like take our shoes. And give us bracelets. No joke. We each got a little plastic wrist band, with a number and barcode and the words ‘North Vancouver RCMP' printed on it. I guess it's how they keep track of prisoners or something. Then they dragged us down a hallway and shoved us in those cells. Chris hated it. He hated being locked up, especially in a space that was all confined like that. In some ways, it's pretty lucky that he died when he did. If they'd caught him, he never would have been able to handle juvie.

‘Fuck this! Fuck you goddamned cop pigs!'

I heard him throw himself against the door. Then I heard him kicking it. He kicked it maybe a dozen times, barefoot. The echoes rang out all along the hallway – these deep, booming echoes. It reminded me of this eighties horror movie we rented one time, about an old man who finds out his house is haunted by some kid who got murdered in the bathtub. As he drowned he kicked the side of the tub again and again. That's what the old guy keeps hearing, and that's exactly what it sounded like in jail when Chris started booting the door.

‘Chris!' I shouted.

He kicked the door once more for good measure. Then he stopped and opened his catflap. His face appeared at the tiny square.

‘Yeah?'

‘I've got to take a leak.'

There weren't even any toilets in those cells. They were really crappy cells.

‘Screw it, man. Use the drain.'

I hadn't seen it, but there was this drain in one corner. I leaned over it and tried to aim straight down, but it was impossible to go in one place. All that punch was catching up to me and I swayed back and forth, spattering piss in wild patterns. The stench caught in my throat. First it made me gag, and then it made me puke. No joke. I ended up puking and pissing at the same time, like some kind of crazed animal with a degenerative brain disease. No wonder they'd locked me away. I was obviously unfit for human society.

‘Razor!'

‘Huh?'

‘You okay?'

‘I'm puking my guts out over here.'

‘Duking it out, huh?'

‘I'm the duke of puke, all right.'

I fell against the door and slid down to the ground. Sometimes puking helps a guy. Not this time. Whenever I opened my eyes the whole room spun around me in slow circles. Also, the lights in my cell were broken and wouldn't stop flickering. It was like being trapped in the very worst section of a funhouse. The only thing that made me feel better was closing my eyes and lying absolutely still. I didn't move more than a few inches the entire night. I didn't sleep, either. Like I said, all we did was talk. It was pretty awesome, actually. We talked about a lot of stuff we'd never talked about before, and some stuff we'd never get the chance to talk about again.

‘What do you think that guy meant?' Chris asked. ‘That guy at the funeral.'

This was one of the things we'd never mentioned.

‘About Mrs Reever?'

‘Yeah.'

‘I don't know, man. He was pretty drunk.'

‘But what do you think he was saying?'

I tried to remember. It seemed like the funeral had been a long time ago.

‘He said that she was crazy,' I said. ‘That's all.'

‘I thought he was saying something else.'

‘He was saying a lot of stuff.'

‘I thought he said she was better off dead.'

‘Yeah. He did.' I rolled over to spit on the floor. I couldn't get the taste of vomit out of my mouth. ‘But I don't know if he meant it, you know, literally and shit.'

‘What does that mean?'

‘Like I don't know if he actually meant it.'

‘Fuck it,' Chris said. ‘It doesn't matter, anyway. Maybe she was crazy. Maybe she wasn't. She's still just straight up dead. People pretend death is this big deal, but whatever. Being dead isn't much different from never being born.'

‘Except if you've never been born, you don't know what living is like.'

‘It's all the same when you're dead. Dead people can't remember that shit.'

I was too drunk to get my head around that. It just seemed so bizarre.

I said, ‘My shrink told me dying is like having an orgasm.'

‘Not even.'

‘That's what French people think, anyway.'

‘French people are awesome.'

‘I wish I was French.'

‘Me, too. Then we could fuck each other to death.'

We both cracked up. Our laughter sounded super weird – partly because of the eerie echoes in those cells, and partly because I hadn't heard Chris laugh like that for a long time. Now that I think about it, I'm pretty sure he didn't laugh again until the day he died.

In the morning a bald cop I hadn't seen before came to get us. He led us back to the room where they'd checked us in and taken our fingerprints. It was a pretty basic room, with three or four desks and some storage lockers lined up against one wall. There were a bunch of other cops in there, too – including Bates. I couldn't believe he was still around. He must have stayed at the station all night, waiting to see if we'd be charged. Luckily he didn't get to deal with us in any way. He just stood on the opposite side of the room, arms crossed, sort of staring us down and at the same time trying to pretend he didn't give a shit.

‘All right,' the bald cop said, ‘you kids are free to go.'

They let us keep the bracelets, which was pretty cool, and they gave us back our shoes. They also gave us a speech about respecting authority and staying away from booze. Nobody made it clear why they decided not to press charges. I mean, I know my dad had a hand in it, but he didn't bother to explain what he'd actually said or done. That's the thing about my dad. He's a super savvy lawyer. He knows all these loopholes – these legal loopholes – and he's not afraid to use them. Plus, I guess they figured that a night in jail was enough to make us think twice about fighting any more cops.

They know better, now.

My dad was waiting for us on the front steps of the station. They'd called him in the middle of the night and he'd driven over. They didn't call Chris's mom. On the forms we had to fill out, Chris put down my dad as his legal guardian. It wasn't exactly true, but it worked. Which meant my old man was the one we had to face.

‘That's him.'

‘Where?'

‘Over there.'

We shuffled down the steps in the morning sunshine, nursing the worst hangovers of our lives. The funniest part was that Chris was still wearing his toga. My dad watched us approach with this deadpan expression on his face – the expression he uses when I've done something totally unforgivable.

‘Are you two insane?' he asked.

My dad loves that word. Insane. He loves it so much he asked
us the same question over and over. Considering how pissed off he was, Chris and I were both pretty surprised by what he did. He drove us straight over to this restaurant on Upper Lonsdale and bought us breakfast. It was a fifties diner, with red
plastic booths and old movie posters all over the walls. They even
had one of James Dean in his leather jacket, hacking a dart and looking pretty awesome. We mopped up poached eggs with fatty bacon and scraps of burnt toast while Elvis crooned on the jukebox. The waitress didn't know what to make of Chris in his toga. She didn't mention it, though. The mood at our table wasn't exactly sociable. After we finished, me and Chris sat there waiting for my dad to give us a lecture that never came.

‘Feel better?' he asked.

We nodded. We actually did feel a lot better.

‘Let's get you home, then.'

The whole drive back he seemed pretty distracted. He drummed his fingers on the steering wheel and kept fiddling with the radio. He was obviously having some kind of anxiety attack. At the same time, I have to give him credit. Through­out all the shit that happened, he didn't once try to pin it on Chris. That's what Julian's parents did. And Karen's. After the fallout from the toga party, they didn't want her to go anywhere near him. That was fine, because he didn't want to go anywhere near her, either.

When we dropped Chris off my dad said, ‘Chris, if you ever need to talk – about anything – you know I'm around, right?'

That's my dad, all right. I mean, he's hopelessly out of touch – Chris would never have taken him up on an offer like that – but at least he was trying. It's important to try, for Christ's sake. At the same time, I'm not saying my dad was totally cool about it or anything. He still gave me that lecture, after we got home. He dropped it on me in the kitchen.