Flagged Victor (16 page)

I was taken by surprise. I’d forgotten about banks, for a blessed hour or two, and was thinking mostly about dog collars. Now I felt sandbagged.

Are you serious? I asked.

Of course I’m serious. You think I’ve been just playing with myself the last six months? It’s go time.

Go time. I didn’t like the sound of that. But I kept whatever sang-froid I had in me on the surface and frosty.

We’re in a bar surrounded by cops and you’re talking about that.

Oh, fuck that, he said. They’re off-duty.

We both laughed, me nervously and drunkenly, riding the sharp edge of anxiety, him generously, enjoying the irony.

What about a gun? I asked. Have you thought about whether you’re going to carry one?

It was the thing I most wanted to know, and the thing I could not envision.

Of course I’m going to carry a gun, Chris said, as if there had never been any debate.

Why do you need a gun? No one’s even packing at a bank, you said.

Well sometimes they are, but mostly I need it for other reasons.

Like?

To generate urgency, confusion, and a serious impression.

The practical way he spoke. Even his violence was carefully considered, and would be employed like a tool.

But where are you going to get a gun? I asked. I was looking for any way out.

Dad’s got a few. He won’t miss them for a couple hours, I figure.

I hadn’t thought of that. A swallow of Jameson later, I asked the other question on my mind.

Will it be loaded?

Quietly, like Clint Eastwood, Chris gave me a squint.

Now what kind of fucking moron would carry an unloaded gun?

Doesn’t that increase the chance you’ll get shot?

They’re still going to shoot you. You just won’t be able to shoot back.

And he gave a dark, evil FV laugh. Somewhere, in some memory, I heard: This one tends to blow the head clean off the shoulders.

Chris went back to his post. I entered a zone of drunkenness saved for special occasions, a place where I felt bewildered by my inability to navigate life successfully, but certain in my superiority over others. I spent the next hour or so offering the bartender helpful characterizations of his customers, based on the drinks they’d ordered. I was heaps of fun, I assure you.

Finally, it was time to leave. Chris steered me outside into the cold air. I felt troubled by some worry I couldn’t remember. Then, as we approached Chris’s car, his mother’s Volkswagen Rabbit, we saw two parka’d hombres leaning against it, smoking from a hash pipe.

Time to go, boys, Chris said, as if they’d been assigned guard duty over his car until he returned.

Get off the fucking car, you fucking fucks, I contributed.

This fucking car, one of them said, and he looked behind him as though surprised to see a car supporting his weight. Then he stepped away and launched a tremendous kick, knocking the side mirror from its base so that it dangled loosely, like a broken hand.

I readied myself for a rumble.

Chris sprinted suddenly and caught the first one behind the ear with a wild and unexpected punch; then, while that guy was bent over, holding his head, Chris punched the other guy four or five times in the gut, knocking him assward to the cold pavement. Without pausing to admire the quick takedown, Chris then turned back to the first hombre, grabbed him by the parka collar, and rammed his head through the driver’s side window.

A cough of glass as the poor bastard bounced back and fell
to the ground. He writhed about, holding a red crown to the top of his skull.

That’s using your head, I muttered. I scampered around the car and opened the passenger door. Chris delicately picked the larger pieces of glass from his seat and swept away the shards with his forearm, then climbed in and started the car. We drove away.

The cold air streamed through the broken window. Chris was grim and quiet. I had sobered enough to be filled with regret, even as I remained in awe of what I had seen.

Sorry, I mumbled.

About what? he asked.

The whole instigating a melee thing.

He laughed. You’ve got a knack for that.

More silence while I pondered what he meant and how he meant it.

I’m just mad at myself, Chris explained. You know how much a car window costs? That whole head-through-the-window thing just wasn’t necessary.

I hesitated, relieved he was angry about that and not about me. Then the right words came.

Yeah, but I’m glad I saw it.

We were crossing the harbour and the lights sparkled in the blackness all around.

Good scene for your book, Chris agreed, as if me writing a book about what we were doing had always been in the plans.

It’ll be a classic, I said.
Tom Sawyer
meets
Dirty Harry.

Chris nodded. You might want to say there were nine or ten guys, though. Spice it up a little.

That’ll work, I said.

And it did seem as though the chapters were writing themselves.

I
have boxes of notes. I have letters, recorded conversations, court transcripts, photographs, photocopies, and maps with Xs and arrows representing actual robbery locations and escape routes. Those shards of pottery, those yellowed bones and corroded coins, are the artifacts of my archaeological dig, the midden of what we did and the evidence of why. But I am also reminded of the inadequacy of material explanations, the possibility that even elaborate and convincing theories can be completely wrong. Looking through my yellowed copy of
Beyond Good and Evil
, I hear Rivers read, Suppose we want truth:
why not rather
untruth? and uncertainty? even ignorance? Flipping through Dostoevsky, I hear another voice, a bit more shrill, coming from vodka-moistened lips and a sweaty brow, saying: Tell me, who was it who first declared, proclaiming it to the whole world, that a man does evil only because he does not know his real interests …

And I think to myself, this drunk beside me on the bar stool, the stinking old man no one else can see, this Dostoevsky of my mind, is on to something. There’s a temptation when analyzing a wrong path in life to assess and ascribe motives. Especially if we know the person in question, and know him to be lacking in little and with much to lose, we want to grasp what secret reasons, circumstances, or forces led to the upsetting outcomes, to understand
why they would throw it all away.
Through gossip
and speculation, we develop mental flow charts that show directional cause and effect, lining up influences and motivations. We say, They must have wanted X. Or, They must have thought it would lead to Y. But what if we’re on the wrong track altogether? What if we lack the ability to understand the reasoning involved because the moral algorithm is too complicated or radical to grasp?

In
Notes from Underground
, Dostoevsky lays out an argument in favour of irrationality when it comes to making moral choices. He says, And what if it so happens that a man’s advantage,
sometimes
, not only may, but even must, consist in his desiring in certain cases what is harmful to himself …

I knew, indisputably, what was good for me: to do well at school, to have a healthy physical body, to have sound relationships with my parents, to proceed with as few mistakes as possible toward a desirable future state. And yet—the feverish, writerly part of me wondered—what if reason is mistaken about what is good? What if going through with Chris’s insane idea was the single action I could take that would lift me up from a mediocre writer with mediocre experiences to a Dostoevsky standing against the firing-squad wall as the blank rounds go off, or a Hemingway with a bullet-torn leg, dragging a wounded soldier to safety?

Robbing a bank has got to make you a better writer, Chris said.

Writing is a life-threatening activity, Rivers added.

What if writing a novel isn’t like robbing a bank, Dostoevsky asked; what if writing a novel
is
robbing a bank?

But
in spite of my occasional moments of feverish clarity, those times when I actually saw virtue in my own self-destruction, I never shared Chris’s certainty in the ease of doing wrong. I knew that if we did go through with a bank robbery, I would get caught. And if I got caught, my meagre life would be over. And so I prayed—I actually prayed—for a way out.

Did God listen?

During one particularly fit-filled night, I woke in the utter darkness and lay there, my heart pounding and my tongue swollen and dry. I wondered if I’d heard a noise, a skulking intruder, a murderer, a ghost. I listened, and then realized it was not a noise that had woken me but an idea. If I didn’t work at the bank, I couldn’t be Chris’s inside man. I would be of no use to him. He would have to do the robberies on his own.

When I reawoke, several hours later, I felt rested for the first time in months. I tried to understand why, and then I remembered the elegant answer to my problems, the escape plan that seemed divinely inspired. I carried the answer around with me all day. I tested its worth from every perspective and found it sound. No bank work meant no bank robberies. Which meant no getting caught robbing banks, and no ruining my father’s career or destroying my own life. So that night, at dinner, I steeled my spine and told my father, under no uncertain terms, that I would go bank-less this summer. I wouldn’t be working behind the counter or at a desk. No khaki pants. No overly tight necktie. No thumbing money or adding numbers. No form filling. No signature taking. No coffee making. No lunch breaking. I was going to haul rickshaws instead, and that would make for a summer worthy of the name.

The kitchen went silent. Not a fork was lifted, not a plate shifted. I did not swallow. My mother did not lift her chin. My father’s face did not change in any perceptible way, but I saw reproach somehow deepen and grow starker, as though the sun itself had altered and the quality of light in the room had shifted, and his disappointment was the heaviness in all of our limbs.

Okay, he said.

It was the epitome of hollow victories. He did not add: Throw away the job. Throw away your future. You think the world will welcome you as a writer? You’re delusional. You’re probably homosexual. You are no son of mine.

But he did not have to. In his eyes, I might as well have announced I was off to Broadway to sing in musicals.

Did he have any idea what I was saving him from? I didn’t take your stupid summer job because I hated it (which I did anyway). Instead, I threw away my future because it would have destroyed yours.

If only he could have understood: I did it for him. But, of course, we men typically cannot explain or reveal our complicated love until it is too late.

Chris
was almost as disappointed.

When I told him I was going to pull rickshaw and that I was not going to work at the bank, I acted as though such complete commitment to our wanton summer lifestyle was like joining him in volunteering for the French Foreign Legion. I feigned ignorance of his down vibe. I knew that he wanted me to rickshaw
and
work behind a counter, that he wanted me in a tank top
and
wearing a necktie, because he wanted my freedom
and
he wanted insights, carefully gleaned, into the operations and security of a branch. He wanted a free man and an inside man, and I had defied him as much as my father in choosing one over the other.

It was my one way out. He didn’t really need me to drive, he needed my access. Now that I was less useful to him, I hoped he would realize that, combined with my other deficiencies, I was not worth bringing along, and certainly not worth a cut. As a result, I hoped he would either abandon his plan altogether or leave me out of it.

This was my way of trying to save Chris too.

But I acknowledged none of these complicated calculations and showed raw exuberance instead.

Dude, a whole summer pulling rickshaw, getting suntanned, hauling women up steep streets while they whip our backs with purse straps. This is going to fucking rock, I said.

I felt so relieved, I began to have solid bowel movements again.

I
should have known Chris would not be thwarted so easily. A week later, just before finals, he picked me up on a Sunday morning so that we could hit the library and study. Instead of heading for the bridge and across the harbour to Halifax, however, he drove deeper into Dartmouth, and left it up to me to puzzle where we were going.

To a strip bar? I asked.

Too early, he said.

To your gay lover’s apartment? I asked.

Ha ha, he said.

Even as he passed through familiar intersections and down well-known roads, the destination and the purpose of our sojourn was completely mysterious to me. I still didn’t get it when we pulled up to the curb outside the parking lot of the Canadian Tire. Instead, we sat in the car, sipping Tim Hortons coffees and watching the empty, closed store, as if Chris expected someone or something to exit at any time.

So? I asked.

This would be way easier than a bank, Chris said. Especially for the first time.

What would?

I was confused, and then it finally dawned on me, and the cold hand of fear crept down my back and cupped my balls.

But you work there.

Exactly.

They’ll know who you are.

Nah. We do it like the last one; they’ll think it’s the same guys come back for more.

They never caught them?

That’s what I’m saying.

We sat and watched. A door opened. Two people walked out—a young management type and a regular guy in jeans. The management type was carrying a bank satchel.

The only difference from last time, Chris said, is they’ve doubled their security.

He put the car into gear again.

May I remind you, he continued, the score that last time was $100,000. That’s $33,000 to you just for driving my car.

It wasn’t the right argument for me. It never was. But what does a coward do?

He shakes his head in awe and says, Holy fucking shit, that’s a lot of money. He’s still shaking his head later as though thinking, Money, money, money.