The Drive Read online

  ‘Then we got to Vancouver,’ the stocky one said.

  ‘We were only going to spend one day here,’ his brother added, ‘before heading home, to start editing our footage. We decided to visit Gastown, to see some sights.’

  I lowered my head. I could already see where this was going. All the tourists get lured to Gastown. It’s this historic area near the water, with souvenir shops and a steam-powered clock. But it also happens to be two blocks away from Hastings and Main, which topped some poll as the worst area in Canada. That’s where my stepmom’s heroin addicts hang out, along with all the other nutjobs in the city.

  ‘We parked on the street…’

  ‘…and somebody broke into our van.’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘Please don’t tell me they took –’

  ‘Everything,’ they said together. ‘They took everything.’

  All their camera gear had been stolen, and all their footage of the gangs. Thinking about that, and about what they’d gone through to get it, actually made me sick to my stomach.

  ‘What are you going to do?’ I asked.

  They raised their glasses and drank. I imagined them sitting there forever, watering themselves with rum. They would put down roots, like plants, and slowly grow into their stools.

  ‘You could print up flyers,’ I said. ‘Pin them around Gastown. Offer a reward. Say you don’t even want the equipment back, just your footage.’

  They shook their heads in unison.

  ‘That won’t work.’

  ‘This is Canada, boys. It’s full of congenial criminals and gentle junkies. Appeal to their soft West Coast hearts.’

  I don’t know if I convinced them or not. By then all three of us were swaying at the bar, like cattle drinking from the same trough. We downed one more round together.

  ‘Fuck,’ I said. ‘That must have been something, eh? Being on the road.’

  They were both staring into their empty glasses, like mirror images of each other.

  ‘Best time of our life.’

  That was when I first started thinking of doing something similar. Not joining a biker gang, obviously. But hitting the road. I’d been filming a movie about it. Then there’d been these guys. All the signs seemed to be pointing in one direction: away from here.

  chapter 15

  Somewhere past Everett I hit the traffic jam. It was one of those insane traffic jams that spring up instantly, like a booby trap. I was taking a sip of whisky when all the cars in front of me just stopped in a solid wall. I dropped my cup and grabbed the wheel and stomped on the brake pedal. The tyres skidded and I fishtailed back and forth, sliding to a halt at a wonky angle, inches from the car in front of me. The driver noticed, too. She turned around to glare at me. It was that same bald-headed lady that had passed me before – the one in the white sedan. I waggled my fingers at her, just to acknowledge that I’d almost rear-ended her.

  ‘Sorry,’ I mouthed.

  I’d spilled whisky all over my lap. It looked as if I’d pissed my pants. I didn’t have anything to sponge it off with, so I had to wallow in my wet jeans as more cars pulled up behind me. Like everything else in America, that traffic jam was big. Ahead of me, I could see four endless rows of cars, trucks, SUVs, trailers, eighteen-wheelers, camper vans, RVs and motorcycles. All the vehicles shuddered and quivered, as if waiting for some signal that would start a gigantic race. But the signal never came. I rolled up my windows to keep out the exhaust fumes, and stared at the back of the bald lady’s car. It was an ancient Dodge St Regis, with one of those silver fish-shapes stuck to the bumper.

  We were in the lane next to the shoulder. Behind me was a Ford pickup truck, and on my left was a mini-van, filled with kids, all of them bouncing around like balls of flubber. People were smoking, listening to music, playing games, doing the kinds of things you do in a traffic jam. I smoked, too. And every so often I sucked on my canister of whipped cream.

  One time, as I was doing that, I noticed the lady eyeing me in her rear-view. Then she got out of her car, and came towards me. I managed to stash the whisky under the seat before she reached my door. She rapped once on the window. I rolled it down an inch or two.

  ‘I passed you before,’ she said.

  She had a pale, perfect face, like a plaster cast. She was wearing a beige gown and robes. I think she must have belonged to some sort of religious cult or sect. A real zealot.

  ‘You were swerving all over the place.’

  I sunk lower in my seat, glanced around. People were staring at us.

  I said, ‘I thought I saw something on the road.’

  ‘There was nothing on the road.’ She sounded both certain and conciliatory – like a nurse accustomed to giving patients bad news. ‘Nothing at all. We both know that.’

  ‘There was a rabbit. A little white rabbit. I didn’t want to hit a rabbit.’

  ‘You’re drunk.’

  ‘I don’t drink, ever. I’m a monk.’

  ‘I can smell it on you. And you’re huffing on that.’ She sighed and shook her head. ‘If it was just you, fine. But you could hurt somebody. I’m going to have to report you.’

  ‘Wait – report me to who?’

  But she was already walking away. She got back in her car. I sat with my hands on the wheel, watching. She dug her cellphone out of her purse and dialled. She was serious.

  ‘Shit,’ I said.

  There was a bit of space between me and the truck. I backed up, threw the Neon in drive and pulled on to the shoulder. It was wide enough to drive on, so I did. I floored it and took off. In my wing mirror I saw the lady scrambling out of her car. She shielded her eyes and stared after me. She might have been trying to read my licence plate, but I couldn’t tell if she got it. I just kept going, zipping past all the gridlocked traffic. I flicked on my hazard lights in case anybody wondered what the hell I was doing.

  Half a mile along, the traffic started moving again. I pulled back into the lane. The guy behind me honked at me for cutting in, but that was it. We crawled through a work zone, past diggers and pylons and men in high-vis bibs. On the other side, it all opened up again. I got in the fast lane and grabbed my nitrous and took a couple of long, dizzying hits. I sucked the can dry, then tossed it out the window. It landed on the shoulder and danced around.

  ‘Fuck you, America,’ I shouted, laughing. ‘Is that all you’ve got?’

  From somewhere ahead, I heard a rumbling noise. It might have been a jet plane, or it might have been thunder. Either way, it freaked me out a little. I rolled my window back up.

  chapter 16

  The sole on my right shoe was peeling off at the toe, and I could hear it slapping away as I walked down Granville Street. After getting hammered with those two brothers, I’d left the wrap party. It was just after ten and the sidewalks were crowded with drunks and clubbers and bar-stars. I passed all the other people without really seeing them. Instead I was seeing her. I saw her smoking in the line-up outside the Commodore, her silhouette back-lit by the club’s strobe lights. I saw her on the ice rink at Robson Square, gliding in figure-eights and performing perfect pirouettes. I saw her sprawled on the art gallery steps, soaking up sun, and I saw her in a bubble-tea café by the library, peering at me through the window. Near Cambie Street I saw her floating along, completely candy-flipped, her mouth open wide as she tried to catch a snowflake on her tongue. I saw her everywhere. I couldn’t shake her.

  ‘Demons begone,’ I said, flailing at the air.

  I fled. I rushed along with my head down, forcing everybody else to get out of my way. If they didn’t get out of my way, I’d bulldoze them and shoulder them aside. I didn’t do it to the girls, obviously. You don’t bulldoze girls. But I was bulldozing all the guys.

  ‘Easy, there,’ one warned me.

  ‘Watch out, man,’ another called back.

  Then, out of nowhere, this guy bulldozed me – so hard that I spun sideways and fell back flat on my ass, getting one of those electric, funny-bone jolts of pain
, right in my coccyx.

  ‘Hey,’ I shouted after him. ‘Watch where you’re going, shit-dick.’

  The guy turned around. He was wearing black boots and a leather jacket and looked like the kind of biker those brothers had been making a film about. He also had on this pair of super-dark aviator shades. I don’t know why he was wearing them at night, but he was.

  ‘What are you gonna do?’ he said.

  I stood up. This was it.

  ‘I’m gonna kick your ass, Cory Hart.’

  The guy laughed and palmed my face like a basketball and shoved me back. I tripped and fell over again. I was beginning to feel like one of those inflatable punching clowns that bob up and down.

  ‘Don’t waste my time, kid,’ he said. ‘Come find me when your balls drop.’

  He kept walking. I stayed sitting on the ground, hanging my head. Eventually I picked myself up. I’d skinned my knuckles and there were bits of grit stuck in the cuts.

  ‘Maybe I will,’ I called after him.

  The restaurants and bars gave way to strip clubs and all-night pharmacies and sex shops with half-naked mannequins in the windows. One of the sex shops advertised peepshows for a dollar. I went on in. Big plastic dildos and vibrators dangled from the ceiling, and hanging from the walls was all kinds of bondage gear: crotchless pants and leather chaps and gimp masks and other stuff I didn’t even recognise. At the back of the store I saw a viewfinder and a coin slot. I put a loonie in the slot and looked through the viewfinder. A screen flickered to life. It showed a lady giving a Chinese guy a massage. Then she started giving him a handjob. It was just a video, not a real peepshow. I could’ve watched the same thing at home for free.

  Somebody coughed behind me. An old man in a chequered suit was waiting to go next. He spat some phlegm into a napkin. A single strand lingered, stretching from the napkin to his lips.

  ‘You done?’ he asked.

  ‘It’s all yours,’ I told him.

  The peepshow had given me an idea – one of those ingenious ideas you only get when you’re hammered. I went up to the till. The guy working had a spiky mohawk and piercings all over his face. He even had one of those fat discs in his lower lip like an African bushman.

  ‘Is there a place called Madame Cleo’s around here?’ I asked.

  ‘The massage parlour?’

  ‘I heard they give other stuff. Extras.’

  It was a rumour that had gone around in high school. I didn’t know if it was true, but figured it might be a way of getting over the little plumbing problem I’d developed.

  He shrugged. ‘It’s on Richards. Two blocks up.’

  ‘Wicked. Thanks.’

  I didn’t have trouble finding the place. It was right where he said. It was open, too. The lights were on, but you couldn’t see inside because the windows were foggy and opaque. A neon sign hung next to the door, with a glowing rose beneath the words Madame Cleo’s.

  I knocked on the door. After a minute it opened. A middle-aged lady stood there, in a pink blouse and pencil skirt. She looked me up and down.

  ‘Are you okay?’ she asked.

  ‘Can I get a massage?’

  ‘Of course. You don’t have to knock.’

  ‘Sorry.’

  I walked into a kind of lobby area. It smelled as if it had recently been carpet-cleaned. Hanging on the walls were abstract paintings of bathers at the beach. The secretary-lady had a desk, which she sat down behind. Across from it, two men in suits were waiting in chairs.

  The secretary opened her book.

  ‘It’ll be a fifteen-minute wait. What type of massage would you like?’

  ‘What type can I get?’

  She smiled. ‘We do shiatsu and Swedish and Indian head massages, among others.’

  ‘Just a regular massage. A back massage.’

  She asked me if I had a preference of masseuse, and I said no. Then, as she was making a little note, I added, ‘I’d prefer not to have a redhead, or a Czech woman.’

  She looked back up, her mouth pursed to a rosebud.

  ‘I’m not really picky, though.’

  I took a chair beside the two other men. Neither of them looked at me, or talked to me. I stared at them and sort of sneered. I was thinking, at least I’ve got a good reason for being here. I’m young and drunk and I’ve lost my sex drive. What’s your excuse?

  ‘Been here before?’ I asked the nearest one.

  He mumbled something and shook his head. He was reading the Sun. He rustled the pages and raised it, putting a barrier between us.

  After about ten minutes a blonde woman came in from the hallway. The secretary nodded at me. It was my turn, apparently. The two businessmen must have been waiting for a particular masseuse. That was fine by me. This one was wearing white slacks and a crisp white blouse. She looked like a military nurse and was fairly hot, in a severe sort of way.

  ‘Come with me,’ she ordered.

  I followed her down the hall and into a room about the size of a doctor’s office. It had a massage table in the centre and a laminate counter off to one side. On the counter, bottles of oil and tubes of lubricant lay scattered around a portable stereo system. She instructed me to take off my jeans and shirt and lie on the table. I stretched out on my stomach, in my boxer shorts. I hadn’t been planning on coming to a massage parlour, so I was wearing really lame boxers – these red Christmas boxers decorated with cartoon reindeer.

  ‘Let’s see,’ she said. ‘A back massage, yes?’

  She had a European accent. Maybe that was part of her act.

  ‘To start with,’ I said.

  The table had a faux-leather cover that stuck to my skin like clingfilm and squeaked whenever I moved. I waited, shifting and squeaking, as she popped open the CD player and put some music on. It was choir music – an all-male voice choir. It wouldn’t have been my first choice, but I could roll with it.

  ‘Is that Mozart?’ I asked.

  ‘Is Bach,’ she said.

  She was rubbing her hands together to warm up the oil. Then she leaned over me and started doing things to my back. She smoothed it out with her palms and pounded it with her fists and kneaded it with her knuckles, working it over like fresh dough.

  ‘Oooh,’ I said. ‘Ahhh.’

  The choir started singing louder.

  ‘Is nice, yes?’

  ‘Very nice.’

  It went on like that for a while. I didn’t know what the protocol was when it came to getting extras. I figured it might be up to me to ask, so next time she stopped to get more massage oil, I rolled over on to my side.

  ‘Is something wrong?’ she asked.

  ‘I was just wondering if I could buy some extras.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘You know. Extras. Fringe benefits.’ I propped myself up on my elbow. My face had gone as red as my boxers. ‘A hand release. Is that what you call it? Like a handjob.’

  I was trying to act extremely casual about the whole thing, but lying like that made it tricky. Plus, ‘handjob’ is one of those words that happen to sound very funny. I smiled when I said it, and she smiled when she heard it. It was like a little joke between us. She took me by the shoulders and eased me back down on my stomach.

  ‘Who told you we did that?’ she asked.

  ‘Some guy I know.’

  She ran both her hands from my shoulders to my waist, on either side of my spine – using my back like a washboard.

  ‘A lot of people think that,’ she said, ‘but it’s not true.’

  ‘Oh.’ I figured she was probably lying, but I didn’t want to get in an argument about whether or not she would give me a handjob. ‘I guess that’s my mistake, then. Sorry.’

  She kept massaging me. Partly I was relieved. I mean, even if she had agreed I might not have been able to get it up. On the CD, the male voice choir was going crazy and singing at the tops of their lungs – almost like they were all getting the handjob I’d missed out on.

  ‘Where can a guy get a
handjob?’ I asked.

  ‘Beats me.’ By then, she’d dropped the fake accent. ‘Down on Dundas, I guess.’

  She meant this super-sketchy area, east of Gastown, where all the junkie hookers hang out.

  ‘I mean a trustworthy handjob. A safe and legal one.’

  ‘The only place it’s legal is Amsterdam. Or Nevada. The brothels.’

  She started karate-chopping my back, super-fast, to finish things up.

  ‘Ouch,’ I said. ‘Oww.’

  It cost me a hundred and twenty bucks, that back massage – more than I got in a day for shooting that goddamn film. But it was worth it. I knew where I wanted to go, now.

  chapter 17

  As I neared Seattle, I saw that it was enveloped by fog. Some kind of sea-mist had crept in off the bay, obscuring the skyline. Tendrils of vapour curled between office towers, wrapped around apartment blocks, encircled overpasses – as if a giant squid had settled on the city and subdued it. The only thing free of the mist was the Space Needle, jutting up like a lighthouse beacon. The red light at the top flashed every three or four seconds, warning travellers away. Don’t come here, it seemed to be saying. Keep going.

  The Space Needle was another place I’d been with her. We’d passed it every time I picked her up from Sea-Tac Airport. I’d kept promising to take her up there one day. She had a thing about heights so I planned it out as a surprise. I booked us tickets to the Space Needle and a night in a four-star hotel that overlooked the harbour.

  When we got to the Space Needle, it looked closed. Only half a dozen cars were in the parking lot. There was nobody going through the doors, and nobody inside, either. The interior had a sci-fi design and was constructed entirely out of steel and glass, with curved staircases and abstract shapes hanging from the ceiling. It was cold and empty and creepy.

  ‘Where are all the tourists?’ Zuzska whispered.

  ‘Maybe they’re at the top.’

  They weren’t. The observation deck was just as empty. When we stepped out of the elevator, a security guard was standing by the doors. He was shaped like a bowling pin, with a tiny head and huge hips. As he checked our tickets, I asked him if it was always this quiet.