Flagged Victor (26 page)

And now begins the sad and weepy part of my tale.

Chris was right. Susan was back on board within days, as though nothing had ever happened. I had no idea what she suspected, whether her concerns were mollified or merely repressed, or whether part of her liked the ambiguity. Either way, Chris could care less. For her birthday a week later, he gave her a card with five C-notes inside.

I told her I’d saved it up all summer, he said. She kissed me like I’d just donated my kidney to her dog. I guess she enjoys the fruits of my labour just fine.

For me, on the other hand, matters took a bad turn.

The
day my parents returned from their vacation in Maine, I realized that I’d forgotten to register for classes in the fall.

It was a bad moment. I had not thought of school all summer, but I’d always taken it for granted that I’d be attending in September. The deadline passed on the Friday Chris and I robbed the bank. I called the registrar’s office as soon as I’d realized my
mistake, but they offered me no reprieve. I made an appointment to see the registrar that week, and when I arrived, early for once, and dressed as properly as I knew how, carrying the goddamn course calendar and a copy of
Humboldt’s Gift
, the registrar was unmoved by my pleas. He was a balding, infinitely patient man, Yoda-like in his bemusement, and he offered that perhaps I had not been as ready to return to school as I believed myself to be.

But then, he admitted, I’m a Freudian.

In any event, a single semester wouldn’t kill me. Perhaps I would be more focused when I returned.

As for the killing part, he didn’t know my father.

There
are some events that do you in. They take away your nerve, your stomach for adventure. They exile you from your future. Looking back on it now, if only I’d had more courage, everything might have turned out differently.

I told my parents of my error. I did not have it in me to concoct a story. Not enough fight remained. My father knew that it was rickshaw, and my debauched and wayward summer, that had been my demise. We all knew it would never be allowed to happen again.

I should have thought about Rivers and his offer to join him in Thailand. If only I had kept my head when I forgot to register for school, forcefully denied that rickshaw or laziness or poor character was at fault, and made a convincing argument for apprenticing with Rivers instead, I might have saved the day. But I lacked the stuffing. Like any heavy, I accepted my punishment before I had even been tried and convicted.

This meant I would go back to work at the bank.

The last few weeks of summer, I did not even have the heart to work rickshaw. I visited the shed once in a blue moon and I paid my rental fees promptly, but there was no life for me there anymore. I was like a football player on injured reserve. Hanging around, I was just bringing the other guys down, taking their mind off more important matters such as drinking beer and getting laid. Even when the busker festival came to town, and a colourful circus of flame-eaters, jugglers, contortionists, banjo players, and scam artists filled our streets, I could not be bothered to watch. I was a beaten man.

I called Rivers and told him I couldn’t pull off the trip—because rickshaw work had not paid out like I’d expected. He was understanding. Don’t put too much pressure on yourself, he said. Enjoy school. If you let things weigh you down too much, you won’t make it to forty.

Rivers himself sounded light, cheerful, and full of bravado. He told me that his book had been given starred reviews in both
Publishers Weekly
and
Kirkus
, a rare event, and that the publishers were on fire for it and getting ready to make him a writing star.

Meanwhile, he said, I’ll be on the other side of the world writing my next book. The one that’s really going to blow them away.

I wished him well, and said I hoped I’d make it over sometime. He wished me well, and said goodbye. A week later, a brown envelope showed up in the mailbox, addressed to me. I opened it up, and a thin copy of Conrad’s
Lord Jim
spilled out. Inside, Rivers had scrawled a note:
Essential reading for every writer setting out on a journey.

I put the book on a shelf in my room, and there it sat, accusing me from its perch.

Of course, Chris had forgotten to register for school too. But for a person of lightness, this was not the end of the world—it was actually kind of hilarious.

My
second day at the bank, the week I should have been back at school, Chris walked in. I was working behind the counter as a clerk and my first thought was: He’s here to rob the place. I watched him warily, wondering whether he might, at some opportune moment, lift a hand cannon into the air and fire to get our attention.

Instead, he politely let others in line go ahead of him until my counter opened up, then he stepped forward and laid a pile of cash in front of me.

What’s this? I asked.

I’d like to open an account, he said with a grin.

I hated him for that.

My manager needed to assist me. I was forced to count each bill in turn, and when I had added them all up and announced the sum, Chris told me I was wrong.

No, man, there’s got to be sixty more dollars in there. I’m sure of it.

And my hatred for Chris grew.

I felt my manager’s disapproval at my curt and impatient manner. But when I had slapped each bill and finally came to the end again, we all saw that Chris was right. I had been exactly $60.00 short of the sum of $3,280.00.

The manager kept an eye on my incompetence ever after.

Chris
was waiting outside the bank when I finished that afternoon, sitting on a new motorcycle. He tossed me a helmet.

Come on, man, let’s go get a beer.

I put the helmet on and hopped on the back. There’s nothing so unmanly as hugging another man from behind on the back of a motorcycle. You might as well give him a reach-around.

The bar faced the harbour, with outdoor seating, and if you didn’t mind the seagull squawks and the seagull shit and the putrid seaweed smell, it was pleasant.

Chris told me he was sorry to give me a shock at the bank. It was just a little joke.

You’re really funny, I said, then added, I’m stunned you’re putting stolen bank money back into a bank.

Who’s going to know where it came from? he asked.

He had a point, but I did not feel like acknowledging that.

Besides, he continued, I put most of it back into the CIBC at the mall.

These words, and the audacity they indicated, could have turned me to stone.

You’re shitting me, I said.

I put about eight thousand back in the CIBC, in my old account. He grinned.

When did you do this?

About three days after the job. People in line were talking about the robbery.

My jaw dropped.

It was like John Dillinger had been there. You’d think I’d rappelled from the ceiling in a ninja outfit and strafed machinegun bullets around the room.

Our wings came, and our nachos. I had no stomach for them.

I did figure out the whole lanky business, though, Chris said.

The lanky business?

You know, the part where they described me in the newspaper as lanky.

How did you figure it out?

I asked Dad about eyewitness testimony, whether it’s reliable, and he said it’s a well-known if little-divulged fact that eyewitnesses are worse than useless. They never give a reliable report of a crime. The only reason it’s not common knowledge is that the police don’t want defence lawyers to know.

Why?

Because then every goddamn lawyer would have eyewitness testimony stricken.

The waitress was hovering, smiling a shy smile, like she wanted Chris’s autograph.

Chris asked her what was up. She asked whether he owned the motorcycle, and wondered whether he’d mind moving it farther from the door for fire code reasons.

Oh, sure, he said enthusiastically, and didn’t move. We watched her ass as she walked away.

How did you go about asking your dad a question like that?

I told him I was studying for my police academy application.

I was struck, for the thousandth time, by the difference between us. My lies so heavy, his offered up with ease.

In other words, Chris said, there’s no way we can get caught.

We watched a pair of seagulls fighting over a french fry, squawking and flapping. Chris kicked a plastic beer cup toward them.

I heard the tellers were kind of shaken up, though, he said. A few of them were given a week off and therapy to get over the trauma.

To emphasize the word
trauma
, he made air quotes with his fingers.

That sucks, I said.

Yeah, and it’s bullshit, too, Chris said. I was the most polite and considerate bank robber they’ll ever encounter.

I did not know what to say.

You’re bringing me down here, Chris said.

I apologized, and said I had a cold.

Yeah, I’m cold too, he said. Been thinking about going to Australia.

Australia? I was stunned again.

My grandfather is there. And a couple cousins. I barely know any of them.

Why did your grandfather move to Australia?

A shrug. Hated my grandmother, I guess.

Maybe he was a convict, I said.

That’s not funny, Chris said. Anyway, since school is fucked this year and rickshaw is almost done, I’m thinking: Why not?

Why not? Rivers wants me to go to Thailand to hang out with him while he writes.

Why don’t you?

How could I explain to Chris the meaning of weight?

Not enough cash, I said.

Yeah, I need more too, he said.

And in the pit of my stomach, the beast gave a kick.

It’s almost three large for a ticket to Australia, and we burned
through the last pile so fast. I’ve been thinking it’s time for a bigger job, something that will tide us over for an extended period.

What kind of job? I asked.

Something significant. A Brinks truck should do the trick.

I closed my eyes and wished the whole world would disintegrate.

Would they have more cash than a bank? I asked, trying to steady myself.

Usually, he said. At the CIBC, I just went after the tellers. Kind of loose cash. But the Brinks guys are delivering for the safe. I’m guessing a drop-off might be ten times what we got last time.

Two hundred thousand?

Maybe you could reconnaissance the facts and get a round estimate.

Don’t those Brinks guys carry guns? I asked.

Indeed, they do, Chris said. But they’re rent-a-cops. No different than mall security.

But guns, I insisted.

Yeah, he said. You’d have to neutralize them pretty quick.

What do you mean neutralize? You mean take away their guns?

I don’t know. I’m still working on it.

The waitress returned. She did not mention the motorcycle parking job. Instead, she offered to replenish our beers. I said that I needed to split. Chris said that he was taking Susan out for dinner. He needed to break the Australia idea to her over an expensive night out.

How soon do you think you’ll go? I asked.

Soon as we can get the money, he said.

I
took the ferry home, then the bus after that. It dropped me off on the main road, and I descended on foot into our neighbourhood as the Indian summer sun was setting. By the time I reached home, I had a plan.

I visited a travel agency on my lunch break the next day and bought Chris a ticket to Australia. It cost me over five thousand dollars. It would have been less, but I chose a departure date that was only a week away. I figured not even Chris could get his shit together in that amount of time to pull off a Brinks job.

When we went out, that Friday night, I waited until we had had a few beers, then I slid the envelope across the table to him.

He looked inside. He looked up. He looked back inside.

I told him it was a gift. I was just going to piss away the money anyway. Why not put it to some good purpose, like him seeing his grandfather one last time?

Chris was more touched than I ever would have imagined, and he asked me, before the end of the night, to watch over Susan while he was gone.

I know you two don’t always get along, but I’d feel better knowing you were checking in on her.

I promised that I would.

It’s
difficult to describe the emptiness of the world with Chris gone. My bearings were off. There was a little uncertainty in my step. I felt as though I’d woken from a long illness and was only starting to make my way around again, putting my life back into place, readjusting my understanding of what was normal. Even the weather seemed to struggle to know what to do with itself.
As soon as the rickshaw season ended, the rains started, grey, listless, chilling days of endless drizzle. I wore sweaters and fought a cold. It was difficult to make it through a mere eight-hour workday and have any energy left over. Once, we’d casually and thoughtlessly packed a week’s worth of life into every single day and drop-kicked every night.

The bank was a suitable place to spend such muted time, sedate, orderly, rule-bound, requiring the maximum amount of the minimum of my attention. I felt like Kafka as if he’d never written and stuck to clerking instead. At lunchtime, I left the bank and sat in my car—the black Fiero Chris had left for my use even as he kept up the lease payments—and read. But I did not read the difficult works. I read for escape. Books like
Lord Jim
were rebukes I couldn’t handle.

Above everything else, I missed a good laugh. I had not suspected until then how essential our shared sense of humour had been to our friendship, how intensely freeing and light this immaturity was, and how little there was to enjoy when he was gone. I thought of him in the past tense, and while I missed him terribly, I was also relieved he was out of my life.

I did, however, get the occasional postcard. A beach shot with two bikini-clad women from Sydney, both wearing baseball caps that said Sheila. A
Close Encounters of the Third Kind
–shaped mountain from a place called Alice Springs. A koala bear, slant-eyed and pleasure-stricken, holding a beer can in two sloth-like paws, as though it were masturbating with a slow languor. I did not know where to send a note to Chris, so I did not write him back. I’d planned, at one point, to write an ongoing letter and to send it to him once I did get an address. I didn’t bother to start
because I had nothing to write about, and because our friendship had become dangerous to my health and well-being. If I could, I would have been the one to choose exile. I wanted to be forgotten.