The City Still Breathing (13 page)

The piano man goes back to attacking the keys. It's real classical stuff, like what you hear at Christmas or in doctors' offices, but everyone seems to be enjoying it. Then he makes a big dramatic gesture and falls off the bench.

Everybody laughs – just like that – because this guy fell on his ass, and sure he looks okay as he gets back up, but it's cruel. People are the same all over.

And just like that, he's off the bench again,
kerplunk
, and looking all surprised. This time it's even more hilarious to everyone – the woman beside him laughing so hard she starts coughing, big wet phlegm on her fat lips. People're the same. Laughing at this little old geezer with his thin moustache. Laughing more the more he falls, the more he hurts. Laughing when you're down, laughing when you fuck up cause they'd never fuck up. Laughing when you piss your pants in Grade 1. When your dad leaves, cause they all knew he was no good to begin with. When you wear the same clothes all week cause your mom can't afford new ones. When you say you want to be a photographer, cause you're supposed to be a mucker, or if you're any good laughing cause what the fuck good is a photograph. When your girl leaves you, when your best friend's sick of you, when you got nowhere left to turn – when you're finally face down, full of bullet holes and dying, there they'll be standing over you, laughing. Cause you never were any good. People are cruel all over. Well, fuck em.

The piano man's on the floor a third time and they're howling, rolling in the aisles, even Heck now, and it makes you so sick you want to jump up in the middle of the whole theatre, stand tall like Lee Marvin against the mob and say, Stop it! Stop laughin at him, you fuckin sickos!

But you don't cause they only do that in the movies and the thought of it all stopping and everyone looking, the spectacle of it, makes you want to cover your face cause it's so fuckin embarrassing to be alive.

The piano man gets up, flips up the lid of the bench and pulls out two straps, metal clattering. A seat belt. He sits down and straps himself in.

And so even this little frail old geezer is part of the joke. Fuck it all.

His head throbs and he looks down at his watch. Arms stretching out, but even that's not inviting because all it's saying is three hours – less than three hours left.

‘Do you like good music?'

He looks up – it's the piano man. Seat belt off, he's at the front of the stage, looking down at Slim, holding some pages against his chest. Not accusing, not making fun, and although there's a twinkle in his eye, it's kind. It sets Slim at ease, he doesn't turn red.

‘Do you like good music?' the little man asks again.

‘Uh, yeah – sure.' He says it real quiet, but the piano man smiles, big and friendly, and leans down, holding out the papers. Offering. Slim reaches forward and takes them, and for a moment the piano man holds on, seems about to say something else. Maybe make a joke. But instead he just lets go, turns back to the piano and straps himself in again.

Slim looks down at the papers – sheet music. Hungarian something by Franz somebody he's never heard of before. But down at the bottom of the page is a note in messy handwriting.
The shortest distance between two people
. And that's it.

Is what? It's missing something. Did this little man, back playing more music that makes the audience go
haw haw
, did he write it for him? What is the shortest distance between two people?

Van as far away from him as a person can get. Martha a few blocks away down at the diner, but in some ways as far away from him as Van. Heck two inches to his right and his best friend, sure, but does he really know him? Then Francie.

All the naked of Francie stretched out next to him in the shack in the summer, bodies stuck by sweat, sunk down deep into each other. This the shortest distance.

Heck elbows him. ‘This guy's fuckin hilarious!'

And Slim tries to laugh, tries to laugh with everybody laughing around him, tries to be in on this. But he's never felt so far away from everything. Everybody.

Francie out there god knows where and that distance growing by the minute.

All the way back down Beech, Heck's going on about how great the show was, but something is nagging at Slim. Something more than the time ticking down on his left wrist. Maybe it's the dead-quiet night – no breeze at all. Even Heck seems to feel it, shutting up as they pass the church, the big dark pines silent and still, the rose window dark. It's only when they're both back in the Dart that he realizes what it is. The snow's finally stopped.

The street is empty. Their footprints leading back the only sign that anyone has been down here. Like the entire world had been put on pause, everything waiting on something to drop.

He turns the key, the engine rumbling awake. He flicks the headlights on – and back at the top of the hill, a pair of lights answers.

Just someone else from the concert, and he waits for the car to turn around or approach, but it doesn't move. It just sits there. The perfectly round headlights staring down, and there's something unnerving about it, the way a hunk of metal can feel alive like that.

‘Let's get out of here, Slim.'

He puts the car in gear and starts to crawl up the hill. Just pass it on by – but then those headlights start their own crawl down. Swinging over to their lane.

‘Slim.' Not panic in Heck's voice but riding the edge.

Slim reverses the car back down to the bottom, spinning her around, so she's facing up Durham now. Out Heck's window he can see the other car advancing on them, slow but deliberate. Yellow – a Beetle. He leans over, trying to get a better look. ‘Who is that?'

‘Who gives a fuck – let's go.'

He puts the car back in gear and gives her gas. The wheels spin. He gives it more, but he can see the slush being kicked up in the rear-view.

‘Slim!'

The Beetle's high beams pop on and the car is flooded with light. Slim grabs a handful of Heck's vest and twists him toward the back seat. ‘Get your fat ass back there!'

Heck throws himself over the console and lands in a heap in the back. Slim rides the brake and opens her up, feeling the wheels finally bite down on something, the ass of the Dart fishtailing up Durham. He winces, thinking about the spare.

‘Go, go!' Heck on his knees peering out the back window.

In the mirror he catches the Beetle making the corner and following in their wake, gaining speed. He gives Elm a quick scan as he's pulling up and then blasts on through.

‘Slim – it's one-way!'

‘Let's see the fucker follow us.'

But the fucker does follow them, some car honking and swerving through the slush to avoid the Beetle as it also cuts across Elm. At the end of the long straight stretch ahead, Slim sees another car pull onto Durham facing him, but he blows the next intersection anyway and keeps on.

Some drunk stumbles off the sidewalk into the road, Heck yelling, ‘Watch out!' and Slim has to jerk the wheel to the left to avoid clipping him. The Dart hops the curb, then comes back down with a crash, Heck flopping around in the back seat.

The oncoming car now one block on and closing – that driver's head so far up his ass he hasn't seen them yet. Slim steals a look at the mirror – the Beetle right there behind him, sandwiching them in.

‘Look out!'

Heck's shout brings him back – another intersection, a truck turning onto Durham. Slim screeches around it, the driver's mouth hanging open as they pass, and then he yanks back to the right to avoid the next car. The shriek of metal and he watches his side mirror tear off.

Just ahead the road ends with a hard left onto Elgin. He guns it – Heck's shout pitching up – and pulls on the handbrake, steering into the turn, the ass of the Dart drifting, pulling the nose back the other way, and then opening the throttle as they straighten out onto the thoroughfare.

Heck's crying or laughing back there now.

The car jolts – something hitting them from behind, and Slim checks the rear-view – the big globes of the Beetle trying to climb in through the back window.

He flashes the brakes, hoping it will throw this guy off, but instead the Beetle veers into the oncoming lane and, with a snarl, pulls up beside them, going neck and neck down past the Friendly, May's, the Nickel Bin – giving the drunks something to look at.

The Beetle inches over, sparks flying as they touch. He pulls as far to the curb as he can, but in comes the yellow car again. He looks over, making out the dark shape of a man. A hand coming up, a finger pointed at him.
You
.

Slim swerves left and slams into the Beetle, sending it up over the curb and rolling across the grass outside the arena, cracking into one of the concrete planters. He pulls back into his lane and jams the pedal to the floor, his body thrown back as the Dart rages forward. He blows the red on Paris and sails into traffic.

And it's in slow motion and he's as cool as Lee Marvin in
Point Blank
, the lights from all angles the horns the screeching, and then he opens his eyes and they're across, climbing the hill on Van Horne.

He takes a hard right off the main drag up a dark gravel lane. Pulls them into a tiny lot behind some trees and shuts it all down.

Waits. But no one's coming.

‘Aw, jinkies.' Heck coughs in the back seat. ‘I puked all over the place.'

They get out and follow the winding path up into the Grotto, passing the big granite statues of people in togas in various states of agony. Agony maybe at the ground littered with broken beer bottles and grocery bags.

They reach the top and sit underneath the glowing neon cross. The lights of downtown twisted out before them. Slim picks up a handful of gravel and starts chucking stones at a little porcelain sculpture of the Virgin Mary.

Heck's holding his belly like he's been gut-shot. ‘I'm so hungry I'd eat Normando's popcorn, boogers and all. You got anything to eat?'

Slim digs around in his pockets and comes out with a green sucker, tosses it over. ‘Try not to barf it back up.'

Heck pulls off the wrapper and pops the sucker in his mouth, crunching away at it. ‘So … you think that was Milly?'

Slim gives him a look to let him know how stupid he is.

‘Well, I dunno! How much time we got left?'

Slim checks the moonwatch. ‘Just over an hour.'

‘Fuuuck.' He watches Slim hit Mary, a piece of her cheek cracking off. ‘Don't do that, man.'

‘Fuck off, Heck – you're not Catholic.'

‘It's bad luck.' Heck tosses the dead sucker stick away.

‘So's littering.'

Heck leans back against the cross, the red neon glow washing across his face. ‘So what're you gonna do?'

‘Nothin.' Slim standing and flinging the whole handful down at the city. ‘All my life, Heck – one big nothin.'

‘C'mon, man – it'll work out … somehow.'

‘Really? Then tell me what to do.'

‘Maybe you could take him on – y'know.' Heck stretches one arm up. ‘I have the power!' He snorts it off.

‘I'm serious.' Slim sitting down beside his friend, looking him in the face and really asking. ‘What do I do?'

Heck swallows his laugh and comes back at him with this look. ‘I dunno.'

‘I'm so fucked, Heck.'

And the look opens up even more and Slim gets it. Disappointment. He always has the answers, but not this time.

Heck shrugs. ‘Maybe you could talk to this guy – explain it to him.'

‘Jyrki fuckin Myllarinen? He tries to shoot me, run me off the road – I don't think he's that into talking.'

‘Well, get out of town then.'

‘No, I'm done with that. He wants to find me, he'll find me.'

‘So what do you want – you wanna die, man?'

Bullet through his head, his car flying off the Paris Street bridge, beaten and kicked until everything's broken and bleeding – all the ends of Slim, none of them good. None fit. Like the way Slim and Francie fit. They'd have had dinner at that Mexican place, and now they'd be walking Yonge Street, floating on all the light and noise. Out of here. On the way to something. If he hadn't stolen those boots. If he hadn't sold his gear. If he hadn't taken that body. If he hadn't fucked things up with Francie. If he'd only tried harder. If if if – if only. They'd be on their way, the two of them. Good days for all the days left. It's his fault. All his fault.

‘Let's go.'

‘But what about – ?'

‘Fuck Milly and the fuckin body and all the rest of it. Fuck it all.'

He pulls the Wayfarers out of his pocket and slaps them on, heading back down the hill, cutting it all loose. But there Heck is, right at his shoulder. ‘Where're we goin?'

‘I'm gonna find Francie.'

And down they go, that cross burning in neon behind them for someone else to bear.