One Good Hustle (17 page)

“She’s gonna get me my money,” he said, his face contorting.

I wished he’d just talk normal for a second.

In a few minutes, my mother and the man came back out to the sidewalk and each of them had fifteen hundred dollars cash. Marlene slid hers into the envelope with the found money.

“What an ordeal!” she said as Orin handed her his. “Brian said we have to seal it, each of us signs it and then we put it in his safe. Here’s his address.” She handed Orin a business card.

This is the other important thing about these kinds of hustles: official-looking credentials. Fake business cards are good, brochures, fake personalized cheques—whatever it takes.

Marlene licked the bulging envelope and sealed it shut. “I’ll just sign the flap. Um, where can I …?” She giggled. “Can I use your back?”

Orin smiled. His face reddened and a trickle of sweat came down his temple. “When’s your flight leave?” he asked as he turned his back to her. “Maybe I could take y’all for dinner.”

“Aren’t you sweet. That would be lovely! Why don’t I take your card?” she said and set the envelope against his back.

Sam nudged me. “Wanna see her pets? She got pets!”

As Orin bent forward, I came under his nose and opened my paper bag. A couple dozen glistening thumb-sized bugs leapt and flew.

I dropped the bag and shrieked as they smacked against
my face and Orin’s. Crawling on my forehead, in my hair. I screamed and spun in circles.

As Orin laughed and swiped the big bugs off our faces, my mother dropped the cash-fat envelope into her purse and pulled out a second identical envelope, which she’d already signed.

Sam cackled and smacked his thighs like a cartoon character. “Ha! She’s crying! Big baby, big baby!”

I ran behind Marlene, batting my hair. “You’re mean,” I said to Sam. “I’m not your friend any more.”

The idea that I would withhold my friendship always cracked Sam up. He laughed in character, though, and it gave me the creeps, as if his real self had gone away and wasn’t coming back.

Once the bugs were gone, Orin turned and squared his back for Marlene again, still burping a few yucks as he caught his breath.

My mother signed the envelope. Then she turned and let Orin sign against her back. “My brother’s office will be open till 6 p.m. Are you sure you don’t mind doing this?”

“My pleasure,” Orin said. He slipped the envelope she gave him into the inside breast pocket of his sport coat and then gave the pocket a pat as if to say
the cash is safe now
.

Later, looking out the back window of Sam’s Cadillac, I waved to Orin as he stood in the parking lot and watched us drive away.

“Run away, you big green weasel, run away and steal all my loot,” Marlene said into the rear-view mirror.

She didn’t believe for a second that Orin would show up at the address on the business card she gave him. He was a bigger
crook than all of us put together, the way she and Sam figured, and soon he would open the envelope and find nothing but a bunch of cut newspaper.

In the passenger side, my father’s head lolled out the window. “So long, you big dummy,” he said, Farmer Lug–style.

“Stop it!” I turned around to face my father. “You talk normal. Right now.”

We had chocolate layer cake that night too. We picked up Fat Freddy at the motel and then Sam took us for dinner at a place that seemed very fancy to me. I wore a pink dress and black patent-leather shoes and Sam teased me with his half-wit voice all evening. I kicked him under the restaurant table, told him again that I wasn’t his friend any more, and then he and Fat Freddy laughed themselves stupid. I couldn’t figure out the joke.

Marlene told Freddy how brave I was. Freddy insisted I tell him the whole story, especially the part about the palmetto bugs—the flying cockroaches. “Were you scared? How big were they? Like this?” Freddy spread his palms a foot apart.

I brought his hands a little bit closer together and then explained how they got into my hair and on my face. Freddy shivered dramatically and told me that I deserved the biggest piece of chocolate cake in the restaurant. “Double-decker,” he said, “with cherry filling!”

“How come she gets cake?” Sam asked Freddy. “She threw away all them pets I give her.” He turned to me. “You even threw away Jerry. Jerry was the little guy with the hunting cap. He was a helluva nice bug, Jerry. He was married to Trudy, the one that had the blue shoes on.”

Marlene giggled, and the more details Sam added, the harder she laughed. Sam grabbed her hand and kissed her knuckles. Freddy checked his watch.

“When are we going to Disney World?” I asked.

Before we moved on to the next town, Marlene and Sam took me, just like they had promised. All I remember about that day was being held in the arms of a giant mouse in red pants. I petted Mickey’s fuzzy black arms and his snow-white gloves. Staring into the hard rubber smile, I thought I loved him.

That night Marlene said, “That crazy mouse didn’t want to put you down. You nearly ran off with Mickey Mouse!” She gave me a big smack of a kiss. “I got you back, though. Promise you’ll never leave me again? Promise!”

I promised. Never.

I look around the table tonight, as everyone is still yucking it up.

The chocolate cake is more than half gone. Ruby has snuck herself another skinny piece.

Jill has cracked another joke that I didn’t catch, but I laugh anyway, just so that I don’t look like the odd man out.

“Where did
you
just go?” Ruby asks me, smiling.

I shrug and smile back—give her lots of teeth. “Chocolate cake!” I say, as if that explains everything.

SEVENTEEN

RUBY GAVE ME
five bucks for my allowance again this week. It’s nice that she and Lou do that, but five bucks? What am I supposed to do with five bucks? Sam’s word for money was
cush
, short for
cushion
. “Don’t want to leave yourself without a little cush to fall back on.”

Sucks not having any cush but I feel twitchy about pulling any more drugstore returns while I’m staying here. I feel like I’m being watched all the time. Jill likes to hang out with me and she’s completely confounded if I take off on my own. She wants a reason.

Another support cheque came for me this morning. For Ruby and Lou, I mean. Ruby says it’s a good thing, because she’s never seen anyone pack it away like I do. She went bug-eyed a few minutes ago when she watched Jill and me making our sandwiches.

Jill’s is regular peanut butter and jam. I started with peanut butter, sure, but then I felt creative: drizzled on chocolate sauce, sprinkled on some brown sugar, and a few dashes of cinnamon. Just as I was about to top it with the other piece of bread, I noticed a bag of marshmallows in the cupboard.

“Ew,” Jill said as I sliced up a couple and added another layer to my masterpiece. She puffed her cheeks. “I think I’m going to boke.”

“You better watch it, kiddo.” Ruby gave me a backhand on the rump. “Keep eating like that and all you’ll have left is your charm.”

I bet she’d cram this whole mess into her gob in a heartbeat if nobody was watching.

Marlene has beefed up a bit in the last couple of years but she’s never been what you’d call fat. And Sam has never been close to fat. (Although, one time the two of them were having a fight when I was a kid, and Marlene said to Sam, “You’re nothing but a potbellied, little misery-guts.” Sam couldn’t answer—he just burst out laughing.)

Jill and I sit down at the kitchen table now with our sandwiches and Ruby joins us with a cup of coffee. I’ve got one of Jill’s old sundresses on. The top is baggy but it’s comfortable in this heat.

“Hey, um”—I take a bite of sandwich and chew as if it’s a really casual question—“my dad never called here, did he?”

Ruby looks up. “No.” She glances at Jill.

Jill shakes her head, and with a full mouth says, “
Mmffn
.”

“Are you expecting to hear from him?” Ruby asks.

“He’s probably on the road. It’s hard to get to a phone sometimes when you’re travelling. But he might be coming to town in the next little while so I just wondered.”

“I always write down phone messages,” Ruby says, and she gives me this sort of concerned look. She glances at my chest and then into her coffee cup. “You might want to do up those laces a little tighter,” she says.

I glance down at the bodice of Jill’s old dress. “Nothing much to cover.” I laugh.

“They’re going to hold a shuffleboard competition on Sammie’s chest next weekend,” Jill announces.

Ruby sips and glances at my chest again. Maybe it’s bugging her that I don’t wear a bra. I never wear one. I don’t need one, and anyway, bras are totally uncomfortable.

“You should always pay attention to the way you dress,” Ruby says, and looks me in the eye. “You want to look sexy-sweet not sexy-slut.”

I start at the word
slut
.

Ruby stares into her coffee cup as if it’s a crystal ball. “If you look slutty, Sammie, you could be the cause of another woman’s rape.”

I stare at her, speechless.

Beside me Jill nods. “Mm-hmm.”

I glance sideways at Jill’s boobs, which are pretty well bursting out of a low-cut white T-shirt.

“I’ve never even
kissed
anyone,” I say. “How can I be a slut?”

“I didn’t say you
are
a slut,” Ruby clarifies.

“If you go around looking slutty,” Jill explains, “you get a
guy all worked up and he could take it out on someone else. Therefore, you could be the cause of some other girl’s rape.”

Ruby raises her gaze to the window and tilts her head as if Jill has just said something totally profound. “You might get attention by looking trashy,” she says, “but be careful what you wish for.”

I glance at Jill’s cleavage again, take in her dark blue eyeliner and the stripy pink blusher on her cheeks and wonder if Ruby’s actually talking to her daughter.

“The point I’m trying to make to you, Sammie,” Ruby goes on, “is that it’s easy to sit back and rely on your looks. You need to understand, though, that the most important thing for you to be is an interesting person. What you need to develop is a personality.”

I blink into my peanut butter, brown sugar, chocolate and marshmallow sandwich, then I take a huge bite and chew for ages so that I can keep my mouth shut.

EIGHTEEN

SITTING NEAR THE
back of the bus, I glance down the front of Jill’s dress at my chest. I tie the bodice laces a little tighter and then glance around me. Nobody’s looking. I’m not the cause of bugger-all.

Jill was peeved when I told her that I was taking off. But after that whole cause-of-another-chick’s-rape thing, I’d rather listen to a dog fart than Jill talk.

“I just remembered it’s Monday,” I told her. “I have to go visit my mom.”

Instead, I got on the bus and headed toward Vancouver. Just to move. Just to get the hell out of Burnaby.

Who does Ruby think she is? “Listen, you tubby little dyke,” I imagine myself saying, “why don’t you keep tabs on that cock-sucking virgin daughter of yours and leave me the fuck alone?”

An old man facing me on the other side of the bus recoils a little and I realize that I’ve been snarling for real. I try to look gentle for him, smiling and harmless, but he lowers his eyes and turns away as if I’m a hooligan.

I look down at my dress and loosen the laces again. Nobody gives a crap about my chest; they’re all just staring out the nearest window. So I stare out my window too, and watch the stores fly past.

As the bus rolls through East Vancouver, I catch sight of a drugstore along Kingsway, nearly as big as a supermarket. I’ve been in that place before. A couple thousand people must go through that joint every day.

I ring the bell and get off at the next intersection.

Outside the drugstore, I surreptitiously check out the garbage can for an old receipt. Feels as if each person who comes in or out of the store doors gives me the once-over. My heart is a bird swooping around in my chest. I can see a receipt now but I can’t bring myself to grab it. It’s as if an alarm will be triggered—lights and bells will go off.

Sure, big words on the bus and now look at you. Some hustler you turned out to be
.

I snatch it out of the can and march inside the store as if I’m late for an appointment. The total is thirty-two bucks and change: a hair dryer, a toothbrush and some shampoo.

A shopping basket with a discarded store bag sits a few feet inside the door and I grab it on my way.

There you go. You know what you’re doing. You’re Sam’s girl, aren’t you?

I drop the receipt into the basket so that I can read it without being too obvious. Down aisle 3, I grab the toothbrush. Two aisles over, I survey the shampoos while sliding the toothbrush inside the store bag. Just as I’m about to pick a bottle off the shelf, I catch sight of a guy a few feet over. He drops his head and looks down at the bottle in his hand.

Was he watching me just now? Did he see the toothbrush go into the bag? Wait a sec, was that guy just in the toothbrush section a minute ago?