Things Withered (4 page)

Tracy said. “We have a sort of a club.”

“A glee club?” I said and we all laughed.

“Something like that,” Lily said. Tracy giggled behind a perfectly manicured hand.

I was about to leave when Gwendolyn said, “These other people, who are looking at the apartment?” I nodded. “Who are they?”

“Well you see, he’s my boss, Richard Maynard. It puts me in an awkward position. If not for him—” I let it hang.

“Richard Maynard?” Tracy said. “And he works in your building?”

“That’s right.” The four of them looked at me, unblinking. I could almost hear their thoughts. “Richard Maynard,” I said again. Stephanie and I locked eyes for a moment.

“I’ll leave you to your club,” I said. They smiled broadly at that, and Gwendolyn let out a throaty laugh that we might have called smoky, back in the day when people smoked.

I waved to the girls sitting and let Stephanie walk me to the door. She opened it. Smells from the hallway were warm and clean.

“Well, goodnight,” I told her. She smiled, but it was small and tight. I held the door a moment longer and looked her right in the eye.

“I hope I have good news soon. About the apartment, I mean.”

“Yes,” said Stephanie.

I shrugged helplessly. “If something changes—”

She smiled. “Let’s hope for the best.”

“Let’s,” I said and I waited as she shut the door.

Two major events happened in the next two weeks. I lost ten whole pounds, enough that I rewarded myself with a decadent lunch of a double cheeseburger with gravy on my fries. And poor Richard died, an accident on the freeway.

Terrible thing.

My commissions for June were very good. I had a sudden increase in clients, as is what happens when friends refer friends. There used to be a TV ad like that
and I told two friends and they told two friends
until the television screen was full of faces. It was like that. Lucky me.

I think Richard would have liked his funeral.

It really
sparkled
.

That September, none of them knew what they were going to do after college, least of all Corey. Until he saw the truck. It was that kind of truck, it made you dream.

He’d first seen it in a flash, driving past him when he pulled up beside the store. They called it the corner store, but it wasn’t really on a corner, it was situated in the middle of a vacant lot. People parked on one side of it, but then on the other side there was room for anything. They used to have baseball games in the lot, football games. In the winter they played street hockey in the lot. No one ever had to quit those games to yell “Car!” Not in their neighbourhood, because they had the lot. Which was where he’d first seen the truck. He was coming back from Bernie Able’s, where they’d been smoking a fattie and shooting the shit, wondering if the Bombers were going to do shit this year or what.

Almost laughable, it was really, the truck. At first blush. Some twit had painted it lime green and that was all you saw until you checked out the bumper-less back end, the snub-nose front with the pattern-grill, the huge headlights, rounded old school, like maybe inside there were tiny little candles burning that some guy in galoshes and a cap had to relight every night. It was vintage something and too bad some idiot painted it, probably painting over the vibrant red script of some dairy farm, (
Meadoway Farms, Milk for Growing
), rendering it impotent and worse, maybe ridiculous.

Then it was gone. A flash.

The second time he saw it, it was parked halfway between his mom’s place and Rocky Penner’s. He’d been walking down to see what Rocky was doing, to shoot the shit, maybe smoke a fattie, see if Rocky found a job yet. Then he saw the truck again.

Except, it wasn’t exactly like that.

Really:
It was more like he’d been walking head down, head practically between his knees whining in his interior dialogue, as his sister called it, thinking maybe his life was the shits, since the best he’d been able to do since finishing school was to work part time at Target, shifting boxes from one end of the warehouse to the other. He could have been shifting boxes from one end of his old man’s Grand Prix to the other, and no one would have noticed.

Truth was, he’d thought it would be different, getting out of school. He thought it would be something better. He’d applied to Barstow-Fedler Industries, taking great care with his application and query letter. For the first time he’d really put himself into the picture—like Goodman, the career counsellor always told him to. For the first time he’d done some real positive affirmation and visualization shit. In fact, he got kind of caught up in the fantasy of it all—working in the office at BFI, wearing a tie, punching shit into a computer, maybe moving out of his parents’ house, getting an apartment with a dishwasher and a big TV. What he would do at BFI was less specific, he imagined only as far as the desk, the computer and the tie. The fantasy was sweet. He found himself entirely wrapped up in it,
expecting
it—he went, for instance, and bought a tie, dark blue with small dots that were either gold or beige—just waiting for his start date. Then last Monday they sent a letter. A form letter.
Nothing at this time keep you on
(circular)
file
—

Whatever.

So he’d had his head down and he was pretty deeply lost in thought. He didn’t know what had made him put his head up in time to see the truck. He could have easily just walked past it. This he took as a sign.

There it was, like a revelation. Parked in a driveway, like any other vehicle might be, except it was nose out, and it was sweet as hell, even if it was lime green. The green stuck out like nothing else, the only bright spot of colour on the street. Even the houses were mostly brick-fronted with the wide, silent lawns that kids stayed off of. The street was quiet, except for the screaming of the lime green truck.

Over the flat front window was a sign, held fast by an impossibly long wiper, it said “For Sale by Owner.”

Corey became giddy and excited. “Owner,” he presumed, meant whoever lived behind the set of bamboo blinds closed over the window in number 362. All he had to do was walk over and knock—

And it could be his.

As long as he could remember, he’d liked old things. When he was a kid, he and his old man would go to equipment meets, his dad on a constant quest to get Corey to play more sports. His old man would be bitching somebody down for the newest of the old stuff at the meet and Corey would be talking to the old timer selling the leather pads and crotch cradles, the scuffed, lace-up skates with no plastic forms over the ankle. But not just hockey stuff, he liked anything old. He’d once spent twenty bucks of his own money to buy this thing called a Tru-Vu 3-D stereoscopic viewer, first manufactured around the ’30s and ’40s. He got a set of filmstrips with the viewer, tourist destinations with inflated, exotic names, like The Grand Canyon, and Yellowstone National Park. Most of the reels had scenes with people and old cars, little houses in them, and it was these that Corey liked to look at most. Everything seemed smaller, quieter (he didn’t want to say easier because he was sure it wasn’t; he never got drafted or had to go to war, shooting Krauts or anything else); it just seemed
calmer
in the old stuff. He’d just always liked it. Like maybe the folks in those days cared less about cash and titles. Simpler.

He’d be looking at those old folks in those old pictures and he’d be thinking,
They’re all dead
.

“Yeah?” said the guy who answered the door at 362. The guy was younger than Corey expected. He half expected a grizzled old guy, the kind of guy who maybe knew someone who’d driven a milk truck like the one in the yard, maybe he’d rescued it from a junkyard, but had to pass it on. Someone Corey could sit and shoot some old shit with. Not this guy.

He was grizzled, but he wasn’t old. His hair was long, but not cool-long, just uncombed. The beard was a mix of grey and black.

“I was looking at your truck.”

The guy leaned in the doorframe. “You want to buy it?”

Corey shrugged.
I do
, he thought.

“How old is it?”

The man grinned, baring teeth stained pink. It was startling. “Old as the hills, kid. That truck’s been around a long time.”

“Oh yeah,” he said, and he couldn’t help it, he looked back over his shoulder at the truck.

It practically glowed green, and it was beautiful, the narrow snakes of paint where it had dribbled down the sides after the indifferent spray job looked like ribbons of tickertape; the flat front from his angle was chiselled like the jawbone of an old-timey actor, the taillights and their slight, jocular hoods winked. It tugged at him.

The guy went on, his voice a pleasant drone, background music. “It’s got a celebrated history, this truck. It’s journeyed up and down this great country, a lot of accomplished men got their start in life behind the wheel of this big fella.”

Corey’s eyes were at half-mast like the hoods on the taillights, his voice quiet. He wasn’t exactly sure he spoke it out loud. “Fella?” he said. “I thought vehicles were always women.”

“Not this one,” the man chuckled. “This one’s all man. That’s a 37-horsepower engine, four-poster, gravel-eating, old-school V8. Himmler drove a truck with that very engine. German engineering, built to conquer.”

“Yeah,” Corey whispered. The lines of the body rose straight and tall on the six-foot box and cantered to the flat front without a single deviated rivet, not a single dent or even chip in the paint. The drivers’ side door was flush with the side of the truck, appearing seamless. “You’ve taken great care of it,” he said.

“Not just me. Every man who’s owned Him has treated Him with respect. Oiled Him, cleaned Him, painted Him when He needed it. Nobody really owns this truck—it’s only borrowed from history. You want take it for a ride? You put it in first gear and you can feel the shift of the earth under your ass—”

“I’ll take it,” he said. He pulled his eyes away to look at the man. “How much?”

For just a second the guy hesitated and Corey thought he saw something falter in his eyes. “How old are you?”

“Twenty-one.”

He nodded. “Good age for starting out. Gimme $400 and we’re square, deal?”

Corey put his hand out, his face almost splitting with a ridiculously happy grin—he had $600 squirreled away in a shoe box under his bed at home.
Four hundred dollars!
He would be able to buy insurance, fill the tank—

Delivery truck.

“I’m starting a business with it—a delivery business,” he blurted. After he had, it felt right.

The guy leaned forward to shake Corey’s hand and for the first time Corey smelled his breath which was bad as if the guy had been sick, and he saw the red veins in his eyes, the dark circles of long nights underneath. It pushed him back a little.

“Hey,” he said, “it’s not stolen or anything, is it? It’s not been used in some kind of crime?”

The guy laughed, slapped Corey on the shoulder as if he’d just told the funniest joke in the world. It was contagious. Corey laughed with him. They were still laughing when he reached into his pocket and pulled out the keys.

He told him to come back with the money, dangling the keys in front of Corey.

He hesitated. “Ah,” he said. “Aren’t you worried I’ll just take off with it? Skip town?” he joked.

The guy chuckled. “Not a bit. I’d find you—and then I’d kill you and eat your heart.” He thumped Corey in the chest hard, but playfully and then he threw his head back and laughed. Corey tried to join him.

“Right.”

Corey took the keys, closing his fingers over the fob, a leather strip embossed with
Ambrosia Candy Com,
the last bit bleeding so close to the key ring, it was impossible to read. Corey rightly assumed
p a n y
.

Corey drove the truck home without registration. He was feeling pretty good.

His sister and her roommate Madeleine were there, talking to his mom in the kitchen. Madeleine—Maddy—had long black hair and a pixie face, like the kind of fairy you’d see in a children’s book (if pixies in children’s books had nice honkers). But as usual, when Corey walked into the kitchen and saw her, his face went red and hot and he couldn’t speak.

The two of them had an apartment downtown, a television kind of place with a huge open area, the rooms not rooms so much as places behind screens and curtains and makeshift walls. His sister was an administrative assistant at RCA and Madeleine was getting her stockbroker’s license. He thought that meant she was still in school but the way they talked about it, it sounded like she was out of school and working somewhere. He couldn’t keep up. Half the time they were talking it was all big shit and he couldn’t concentrate with Maddy’s awesome honkers jiggling.

It was all unbelievably exotic to Corey, who had struggled to finish a BA and had struggled since then to find and keep a job. He’d done the shit job route, fast food, stockrooms, waving flags on the highway, but nothing a man could call work.

Until now, of course. Oh gawd yes, until now
.

The truck was parked out front and with his face red as a grape he told them about it. His mom smiled encouragingly—if somewhat indulgently—his sister ignored him except for a quick roll of her eyes, but Madeleine looked him straight in the face and raised an eyebrow, her soft pouty lips turning up at one corner.

“That’s wonderful, honey,” his mom said. Then she asked Madeleine how often she had to get her hair cut for it to stay so fashionable.

“I go every six weeks,” she said.

Amy said, “Sometimes you have to go more often, you know, different seasons.”

“Really?” his mother said.

“It’s outside now,” Corey said. “Come and check it out.”

Then Amy gave him her full attention. She sighed and her eyes half-closed in long-suffering fury. It was like when they were younger and Corey had the audacity to interrupt her, or take the last piece of cake.

“You
bought
a truck,” she said, “as in paid money, wrote a cheque, that kind of thing?”

“Yup,” he said, beaming in spite of Maddy’s honkers and his mother’s sudden tensing up as she did whenever the sibs were together.

He didn’t like the way Amy said it, but he decided to let it go—a sudden and oddly welcome fantasy of diving across the table at her, his hand closing around her slender, smooth throat, and squeezing,
squeezing
while her eyes bulged and her teeth bit down on her fat, bitchy tongue, the blood pooling in her mouth and running out the crook of her lips—

It was enough. Just thinking about it.

Amy sniffed, her smile insidious.

And suddenly in that second—the second where Madeleine should have stood up and run to the window and
ooohed
over the retro cool of the baby parked in the drive and should have asked for a ride, which he would indulgently give—he felt himself flinch, remembering how quick to the mark Amy could be and how powerless he usually was in the stream of her words.

Then he remembered
squeezing
again.

Squeezing.

But his brain was sluggish with images of Madeleine in the truck, standing in the open space where a passenger seat would be, gripping the safety bar, a terrified
squeal
and the brush of her thigh against his bicep when he took a corner just a little too fast. This was mixed in with what was the ongoing, fantasy image of his hands on Madeleine’s breasts, pawing,
squeezing
, stroking.

And his sister’s voice, so high, so sharp, like knives and axes and the spikes on the branches of the hedge—

“—so you have no job but you spent your savings on that stupid truck? Where exactly do you need to be, that you need a truck at all?” She finished. Her eyelids fluttered and blinked in dismay and astonishment, in
personal affront
.

How
dare
he.

“It’s a delivery truck,” he said calmly, even though his palms suddenly felt itchy and the only thing that made his voice possible was the image of Madeleine’s long thigh pressing up against his arm as he manoeuvred the truck around the block, her clinging to him, the side, the door sliding open wide rounding the corner, loosening her grip on the bar, her body tumbling—