“For all I care, you can beat him, maim him, kill him. I don’t care.”
Julien jumped out of his seat. “What the fuck, man!”
My arm rose to the sky, finger pointing like the Old Testament God. “Trust me,” I said as harshly as I could. “You want to sit yourself back on that chair and shut the hell up. Right now!”
He sat down, shoulders slumped forward like a scorned child.
I took a deep breath to calm myself. “My wish, Monsieur, is to remain independent. My brother and I happen to be beer enthusiasts, and that is the main reason why we even care about our brewery at all. We like brewing it, we like serving it, the people, the noise, the staff, the waitresses — that’s really all there is to it. While this incident is unfortunate and undesired, you can see that we took swift and immediate steps in order to ensure our neutrality. If you wish for us to handle Julien for you, we would be happy to do so, but the bottom line is that it remains your call to make, not ours. We will be happy to live with any decision that you make at this point.”
“Richard,” Julien pleaded, “don’t do this, man.”
The Italian sighed and looked at me, then Julien. Maybe the Bloods did want to start a turf war, and he’d need to beat some information out of Julien. Maybe the Bloods didn’t want a turf war, but two idiots they had allowed in their outer circles could provide an opportunity to reopen certain negotiations. Maybe I didn’t want to think about the real reason why this meeting had been called for in the first place. The silence started to weigh heavily, and I just wanted it to be over.
“We’ll handle it from here,” said the Italian. “It was a nice gesture: the envelope, him, the way you presented your case. It was well put together and you seem honest enough. We’ll handle the rest.”
“Richard,” Julien muttered.
I didn’t look at him.
“The coffee was flawless,” I said as I got up. I took my last sip and put on my shades.
“Thank you. It’s appreciated.”
As I walked toward the door, the bouncer nodded at me politely. I nodded back. I started to feel like I had gotten us out of it. It looked that way for a minute. Maybe the two pieces of driftwood from Hochelaga could rise with the tide and become rich, honest men on their own terms.
I was inches from the door when the Italian said, “But of course, you have to understand that this business...” I stopped and turned around. “This trouble of yours, him,” he added, referring to Julien, “is going to take a certain amount of our time.”
Fuck! I thought. Goddamn fucking fuck! It hit me like a wrecking ball. I wanted to scream. I wanted to smash a wall or Julien’s face. I couldn’t let it out, though. I couldn’t let it show that I had been fucked. Not now, not ever. Stay classy, I kept thinking. Stay fucking classy.
I swallowed my pride and said, “Of course,” as calmly as I could.
“Now exactly how much time this is all going to take will be entirely up to our friend’s collaborative spirit. So do not bother yourself with worrying quite yet.” He got up from his chair and put his jacket on. “We’ll get in touch with you when we know for sure. Go now, enjoy the rest of your day. It’s a beautiful day outside. Go and enjoy it.”
There was nothing else to say. I had just signed up for a lifetime protection plan, and I couldn’t get myself out of it.
We were fucked.
“I’m sorry,” Julien tried saying to me. I didn’t answer. That goddamned idiot had gotten me into so much trouble. So much fucking trouble. I didn’t want to answer. It could get ugly and this wasn’t the time and place for me to lose it.
The Italian walked up to me. The bouncer approached Julien.
“Thank you for your time,” the Italian said as he opened the door. “Don’t worry about a thing.”
I could hear the first punch hit Julien as I walked out. I heard him whine, cry, plead, and shout. I didn’t feel bad. Not for a minute.
I got in my car, lit up a smoke, and started the engine. After I made it to Maurice-Duplessis Boulevard — that’s when I lost it, and I lost it bad. I started punching the steering wheel, punching the dashboard. I punched my own fucking head, shouting, “Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck!”
It wasn’t gonna do.
I still had Julien’s guitar in the trunk. I still had his fucking guitar. I still had his shitty guitar that was out of tune with the broken stings and the cheap porn glued to the back of it. I still had his shitty fucking guitar.
I was going to nail that fucking thing to the wall in my bar. I was going to nail it right over the bar, right over the fucking bar as a reminder of things that are and things to come.
Shit! I said to myself. The light was green again. There is no such thing as independence in this world.
Joke’s On You
by Catherine McKenzie
Saint-Henri
I
A Murder Is Announced
The sky above my grandfather’s funeral was low and cloud-covered. Hovering around the gravesite in a far wing of the Mount Royal Cemetery, I felt oddly claustrophobic, like we were tucked into the back room of my father’s favorite bar. Only it was raining, our breath marking each of us.
There weren’t many people in attendance, just our immediate family and a few of my grandfather’s golfing buddies. The sad fact is that when you die at ninety-three, there aren’t many people left to pay their respects.
No funeral, my grandfather had always said. But despite the bleak weather and the sadness that weighed me down like a wet cloak, I was glad we’d ignored him. He never wanted to be a bother, but he was a man worth making a bother for.
We held black umbrellas handed out by the funeral home. Rain dripped off my umbrella’s edges, creating a wet circle around me in the freshly turned dirt. I shivered inside my grandfather’s old trench coat, which I wore because he’d once told me, in that prairie-plains accent of his, that it belonged to me after he died.
“You use this after I die,” he said, pinning a slip of paper with my name on it into the label. I would’ve preferred the paintings from Spain that brightened the hall, but a trench coat wasn’t the sort of bequest you denied. The coat was too big for me, and it smelled of aftershave, mothballs, and cheap gin. He and my grandmother would drink gin and tonics nightly; none of the rest of us would drink them unless absolutely necessary.
I had trouble concentrating on what the nondenominational pastor was saying. I hadn’t being sleeping well lately. My brain whirred awake at night and most of the time I lay in a racing panic before the sun was up. My sleep symptoms, combined with a constant, nagging catch in my throat, were telltale signs of depression, so WebMD told me.
Oh joy, I thought when that result turned up, but of course there wasn’t any joy, only a long flat line representing the time I had to get through every day until I could retreat into my bed and hide under the covers.
After the pastor said his final words — Ashes to ashes, dust to dust — and my father lifted a spade, placing a dash of earth on the cheapest coffin he could get away with purchasing, we trudged down the hill to the waiting cars. My brother and I climbed into the first one, shutting the door firmly behind us. No parents welcome here was written as firmly in our actions as it was on one of the signs we’d affixed to our bedroom doors as teenagers.