Wild Awake (6 page)

“They’re closing down the building, and I can’t hold on to her stuff no more. We’ve all gotta move out by the middle of July. I say it’s horseshit.”

He cracks his Coors Light and takes a swig. I smell the warm, watery beer and struggle to keep my voice conversational.

“Are you from razzle!dazzle!space?”

“Razzle
what
?”

I try again: “How did you know Sukey?”

Doug swallows his beer and wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. “We were neighbors, eh. She was down the hall from me.”

The knot in my chest unclenches. Sukey’s art studio. It all makes sense. But why would he wait five years to call? And why does he have stuff that belonged to her, anyway? Didn’t Mom and Dad clear out her studio themselves?

Questions flit around the corners of my mind, but I bat them away.
Stop being such a Lukas
, I tell myself.

“Are you an artist too?” I babble, eager to make the pieces fit together.

“Whassat?”

“Sukey said there were lots of other artists in the building.”

“She did, eh?” Doug chuckles, a rusty sound like a pair of scissors left out in the rain. “Good old Sukey. What a kid.”

Doug jerks his chin at the brick building to our right. “This is the one. I saw you down there with your bike the other night, eh, but you ran off before I could come down and meet ya.”

We’re back at the intersection of Columbia and East Pender, across from MONEY FOOD ENTERPRISES, standing in front of that creepy hotel. Doug lifts a veiny hand and points at one of the windows on the fourth floor.

“Sukey-girl lived in that one. Four-oh-nine.”

He takes another swig of beer and eyes my bicycle.

“Don’t you got a boyfriend with a truck or something, honey? You won’t get much home on the back of that thing.”

I hardly hear him. The window Doug pointed at is a jagged spiderweb of splintered glass. There’s something pushed up against it, a mattress or a piece of furniture, blocking the room from view. As I gaze at it, my elation at finding Sukey’s studio turns into a cold lump at the pit of my stomach.

This can’t be right.

Sukey wouldn’t have lived here. Not in this building. Not down the hall from someone like Doug. And especially not behind that evil-looking window, four stories up from a piss-smelling sidewalk where even the pigeons look strung out.

I look back at Doug.

“Where’d you get my number?”

Doug turns his oversized eyes on me and lowers his beer.

“Looked it up in the phone book. Guess I shouldn’t have bothered, eh?”

We stare each other down. I have the same swimmy feeling in my guts as I get before a piano recital. That trapped feeling, when there’s still technically time to run away, slip out the back door, but at the same time I know I’ve come too far and invested too much to back out.

“She really lived here?” I say.

“Right here.”

It occurs to me that Sukey might have moved here because it was the only place she could afford. Struggling artists always live in cheap places: drafty garrets, crumbling country estates, pay-by-the-week hotels in the Downtown Eastside. . . . But by the looks of the decaying humanoids slumped in the doorway of the Imperial Hotel, there hasn’t been any art happening here in a long, long time.

I cast another glance at Sukey’s window. “Can I come back in a few weeks?”

In a few weeks, Mom and Dad can deal with this. In a few weeks, I won’t even have to get involved. The thought soothes me. Yes. I’ll bike home and practice piano, then go to Lukas’s for dinner.

Doug spits.

“I don’t know, honey. Building wasn’t supposed to come down until September, but now they’re saying it might be sooner. And anyways, I’ll be long gone before then.”

“Can’t somebody else hold it till I get the chance to—”

Doug crumples his beer can.

“You don’t want to deal with it, guess it’s going down with the rest of this dump. I told myself I was only going to try calling her family one more time.
We’re not interested
,” he says, mimicking my dad’s clipped syllables.
“I don’t think so,”
he continues in the voice my mom uses with telemarketers.

A blaze of shame burns my cheeks.
They must have thought he was crazy
. I glance at his beer can.

Maybe they were right
.

“Wait,” I say. “I’m just thinking.”

I could see if Lukas’s mom would come pick me up. But she doesn’t get home from work until six, and she’d ask too many social-worker questions anyway. I guess I could drag everything on the bus. . . .

Suddenly, I have an idea. It’s a terrible idea and it will probably backfire. But it’s the only thing I can think of that might actually work, and once I’ve thought of it, I can’t let it go.

“I’ll be back in ten minutes. Will you still be here?”

“Reckon so.”

“I do want her stuff. I just need to go get—”

“Go on. I ain’t going nowhere.”

Doug crutches his way over to the doorway and sits down on the steps. He slides a half-smoked cigarette out of his pocket and lights it.

I get on my bicycle and pedal as fast as I can.

“Oh, hey. You brought back my light.”

Skunk slides the door open a little wider and turns the bike light over in his fingers before slipping it into his pocket. He’s blinking funny, and his hair’s tousled as if he just woke up from a nap. He’s wearing an old band T-shirt that makes him look like the kind of huge, soft, stuffed gorilla you win at a carnival for throwing a dart at a balloon. I know I should probably feel embarrassed about showing up at his house like this when he probably never expected to see me again, but all I can think about is getting back to the Imperial before Doug decides I flaked.

I wonder if Skunk can tell how edgy I am. I’m picking at the rubber grips on my handlebars and dancing in place like a monkey. He rubs his eyes.

“How’s the tire working out?”

“Great.”

He glances at my bike appraisingly, as if he thinks I came here to get him to fix something else. Like my squeaky brakes. Or my questionable sanity.

Before I have the chance to lose my nerve, I jerk my thumb at the van parked in the alley.

“Is that yours?”

He nods slowly, his sleepy eyes still half-closed. “Yeah.”

“Do you think you could give me a ride?”

I know it’s a long shot. I’m pretty sure I just got him out of bed, and by the looks of it, the van probably doesn’t even run. I know if some random stranger came and knocked on my door looking for a ride, I’d say hell no.

But Skunk just yawns and says, “Let me get my keys.”

He steps back into the house, sliding the door and curtains all the way shut behind him. I wonder what he’s hiding in there. Posters of naked death-metal chicks? Indoor grow-op? I try to steal a glimpse inside when he comes out, but he’s too fast for me, and all I see before the door snaps shut is a slice of hardwood floor.

“Want to put your bike in the shed?” he says.

“Hm? Oh. Sure.”

I follow him across the courtyard and wait while he unlocks the shed. When I hand him my bike, I get a shiver of anxiety, like I’m leaving an arm or a leg behind, or a baby, or a pet. As we walk to the van I resist the urge to run back and knock on the corrugated metal and say,
I’ll come back for you soon, I promise
.

Skunk’s van smells like cigarettes and sandalwood. The rust-colored upholstery is worn so thin it’s shiny. The stereo is too old to have a CD player, and the cup holders are full of dusty cassettes that must have been there since he bought the thing. Even though Skunk hasn’t asked for an explanation, I find myself babbling at him. Sukey. Columbia Street. Imperial Hotel.

He seems to get it.

There’s a faded sticker in the corner of the windshield with a picture of a duck that says
FRIEND OF MARSHLANDS
. I point to it and say something, but we’re driving down the alley and the gravel’s making a racket under the tires. Skunk says, “What?”

“Are you a friend of marshlands?” I shout.

This time, Skunk says, “Yeah,” and I flash him the devil horns because even if he’s just saying that, that’s badass.

We roll out of the alley and take a right, then left and a right again to get onto Columbia Street. I’m starting to relax a little now that we’re on our way. I hate cigarettes, but I find it oddly comforting when cars smell like them. When Sukey lived at home, she smoked Marlboro Lights out her bedroom window, and sometimes if I was good, she’d let me flick the lighter.

“This it?” says Skunk.

I look out the window. It’s taken us all of ten seconds to drive to the Imperial.

“Yeah.”

“Want me to wait here while you grab your stuff?”

I nod, fumbling with the door handle. I can see Doug through the dusty van window. He’s sitting against the wall with a couple other guys, talking. My heart bangs. I start to get out, and Skunk says, “You okay?”

The question takes me by surprise. I hang there awkwardly, my legs already out of the van and the rest of my body still inside it. I hate that question, “Are you okay?” It’s like asking someone if they think you look fat. You’re almost guaranteed to get a lie.

“Huh? Oh. Yeah. Of course I’m okay. Sorry. I’ll try to be quick.”

“No, I mean—take your time.”

He glances out the window, taking in the snaggletoothed windows of the Imperial Hotel.

I give him my best and bravest smile. “Don’t worry. I’ll be done in five minutes, tops.”

Doug and his homies are still drinking on the steps. When I walk over there, they’re caught up in an argument over whether Larry stole Fink’s cigarettes. Nobody looks at me. The guy who is apparently Fink is wearing a red ball cap that looks like it survived several cycles through a trash compactor. He has pale white skin and red hair that looks surprisingly delicate compared to the rest of his thickset body. The guy sitting next to Fink has a square chin and brown eyes and is wearing a denim jacket with fraying cuffs. The accused cigarette thief is not present. I make sure I speak loudly.

“Hey, Doug.”

He ignores me. “I’m just saying if I see that son of a bitch come around here again, I’m gonna punch his goddamn lights out,” he says to Fink.

“Hey, Doug, can you—”

“And if he says it’s a free country, I’ll say look, buddy—”

“Um, Doug?”

The guy in the jean jacket glances my way. “Doug, I think the little lady wants to talk to you.” He elbows him in the side and jerks his chin at me.

“Oh, hello!” says Doug, as if I’ve just dropped in from outer space. “You’re back.”

“I’m back.”

“And you want to ask old Dougie out on a date.”

Fink and the denim-jacket guy start laughing, wheezing through their teeth. Even though I’m grateful for Skunk’s van, suddenly I wish I had called Lukas’s mom after all—she would have come up to the door with me, and she wouldn’t have taken any shit. I square my shoulders and do my best to channel Petra Malcywyck: “Actually, I’m just here to pick up my sister’s things.”

Doug slaps the pavement beside him. “Siddown, have a drink with us.”

He holds out his Coors Light. The thought of sharing beer that’s been backwashed through Doug’s gray lips revolts me. I wonder if Skunk’s following this interaction from the van, but I’m too embarrassed to look.

“No thanks.”

“Come on. Have some fun.”

Doug floats the beer can back and forth in front of me in what is meant to be a tantalizing fashion. When I don’t take the beer, Doug loses interest and becomes reabsorbed into another conversation with his friends, this time concerning a stray dog someone in the building has adopted. They’ve named the dog Jojo, and it trembles all over unless you speak to it very, very softly.

I realize that if I don’t make a stand, I could be waiting here all day while they drink. I crouch down so my face is level with Doug’s and clamp my hand on his shoulder.

“Hey! Doug! Let’s do this and then I’ll be out of your hair.”

Fink and the other guy start giggling again. Doug gives them an exaggerated raise of the eyebrows and says, “The little lady wants me to show her upstairs.”

At the word
upstairs
my temples throb. I hadn’t thought about what it would be like to actually go inside. But if Sukey lived here, it couldn’t have been that bad.

“Why don’t you give old Dougie a hand up, honey.”

He belches with so much vibrato I wonder if he’s been classically trained.

My eyes flick to the crutches leaning against the wall. Of course.

I hold out my arms. He puts down his now-empty beer can and grabs my wrists in a fireman’s hold. The warmth and dryness of his hands surprises me, like baseball mitts left out in the sun. I lean back and pull while he wriggles up on his leg, and when he’s more or less standing he clamps a hand on my shoulder to brace himself while I hand him the crutches. I adjust my footing and we almost lose our precarious balance, but we find it again and Doug gets his crutches in place under his arms and then he’s standing on his own.

For a second, we eye each other, catching our breath. Doug hop-steps over to the greasy glass door of the Imperial and pulls it open. I wait behind him, casting one last glance at the bright, sunny street before I step inside, hoping it’s what Sukey would have wanted me to do.

“Me and Sukey-girl were neighbors, eh
.
We shared a wall.”

The elevator is broken, so Doug and I are climbing the stairs to the fourth floor. The stairwell is dark, narrow, and carpeted with what appears to be pureed roadkill. So far, we are on step number twelve and making such slow progress I’m pretty sure I’ll have gray hair by the time we reach the fourth floor. He places the rubber tips of his crutches on a step, braces himself, and hoists his good leg up. This process is complicated by the fact that he is totally hammered and keeps putting his crutches at crazy angles and having to start again.

“We were real good neighbors. Sukey-girl was a sweetie pie. She gave me Snoogie. That’s my kitty cat, eh.”

As Doug rambles, I remember Sukey dabbing yellow paint on my nose:
I have my own studio, Kiri. Right downtown
.