Burrard Inlet Read online

  In a week or so, after the films hadn’t been returned, they’d be added to our late list. Our manager would start calling up his house, asking after them. And the next time he came in, the enormous late charges would show up on his account, along with the titles.

  Everybody would know what kind of guy he was.

  *

  I was happy about the break-up. My fantasy was coming true. Mangleface would need me more than ever now that the asshole was out of the way, and she was alone.

  I was surprised when she didn’t show up that week, or the week after.

  I started to worry. What if being dumped had made her do something crazy? What if she’d killed herself? It had to be something like that. Poor Mangleface. I concocted all kinds of scenarios. She had cut her wrists. She had hung herself. She had overdosed on Tylenol, or sleeping pills. She had thrown herself off the Lions Gate Bridge. Mangleface was no more. She would be laid to rest. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.

  Nobody would think to invite me to the funeral.

  She came back.

  I hadn’t seen her for a month. I heard the chime over the door and turned, and there she was. She looked terrible. She’d really let herself go. She was wearing sweatpants and a dirty blouse and her hair looked as if it had gotten caught in a fan.

  I pretended not to notice.

  ‘Hey – haven’t seen you for awhile.’

  Her mouth twisted into a smile.

  ‘No,’ she said.

  ‘Are you okay?’

  ‘No.’

  Then she started sobbing. I had imagined this. I went around to the other side of the counter and held her. She smelled of sweat and felt fragile as a bird in my arms.

  ‘It’s okay,’ I said. ‘It’s okay.’

  It was just what I’d wanted. I was her great protector.

  After a few minutes she stopped sobbing. I held on until it passed, rubbing her back, then let go of her. She still hadn’t really cried at all. I mean, there were no tears on her face.

  ‘You know what’s strange?’ she said, staring at my chest. ‘I’ve gotten so used to seeing this face in the mirror that I can’t tell how hideous it is anymore. I only remember when I see other people’s reactions to it.’

  ‘It’s not that bad.’

  She sniffed. ‘You don’t react to it like other people.’

  ‘It doesn’t bother me.’

  She looked up at me. She had such nice eyes. They hadn’t been damaged at all. They were clear, and blue, and wide open. A baby’s eyes.

  ‘But would you ever be able to kiss it?’

  I thought of countless lonely nights, of all the times I’d kissed her in my mind, but for a few seconds I couldn’t bring myself to act.

  The chime above the door rang out like an alarm. Two teenagers sauntered in. They were laughing and shoving each other, horsing around a bit. That all stopped as soon as they noticed her. One of them whispered something. They lingered nearby, watching.

  Her question still hung unanswered between us.

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said, stepping back.

  I barely whispered the words, but she flinched as if I’d shouted. She didn’t say anything else. She just turned and walked out. The door eased shut behind her, sighing on its hydraulics. I gazed at the space where she’d been, still stuck in the scene. I wanted to press pause, and rewind, and play it out all over again, with a different ending.

  Those two kids were still standing there, gawking.

  ‘Get the hell out of here.’

  They looked at each other uncertainly. One of them tried a smile, as if he thought I might be joking. I wasn’t. I started towards them.

  ‘I said get the hell out of here!’

  They did. I followed them to the door and slammed it behind them and flipped the lock. Further down the street I could see her, walking away, getting smaller. I pressed my forehead against the glass and watched her go, feeling as if I’d crushed a butterfly in my fist.

  Edges

  Ben had just started his morning shift when the guy came in. He walked with a wrestler’s swagger: puffing out his chest, holding his arms away from his sides, turning his whole upper body at each step. His head was shaved into a crew-cut, bristling grey, and he had that look about him. But he also had a paunch that spilled over the waistband of his snow pants, and jowls that shivered under his chin. There was a kid with him – a boy of about ten – who gazed around the rental shop as if he’d never seen skis or snowboards or any of it before.

  Big Jane, Ben’s coworker, was already busy serving two schoolgirls so the guy led his kid up to Ben’s counter and smiled. Ben knew that smile – the kind of fake plastic smile customers use when dealing with a sales rep or employee, somebody who has to serve them. He saw it every day.

  ‘We want to rent some ski equipment.’

  ‘Sure,’ Ben said. ‘What size boots?’

  ‘Size eight for me. Michael – what size are your shoes?’

  The boy held up one hand, spreading the fingers wide.

  ‘You can talk, can’t you?’

  Michael lowered his arm and said, ‘Five.’

  His father nodded, satisfied.

  ‘All right,’ Ben said. ‘Sizes five and ten. You skiing or riding?’

  ‘We’re going skiing for Michael’s birthday, right Michael?’

  ‘Maybe we could snowboard, Dad?’

  His father stared at him. Michael started to fidget; he grabbed the side of his pant leg with his right hand and tugged on it.

  ‘We came up here to go skiing, Michael.’

  Michael looked at his feet. ‘Okay.’

  Ben said, ‘Maybe you could ski and he could snowboard.’

  The guy’s head came around in a quick, jerking motion, like a turkey. ‘No,’ he said. ‘We’ll ski because I can teach him to ski so we’ll ski.’ He finished with another fake smile. ‘Okay?’

  Ben said that it was okay.

  He walked back among the racks of gear, where they kept the helmets and ski and snowboard boots. As he was taking the two sets of boots down Big Jane wandered up to get some ski poles for the other customers. She was a forty-year-old hippy with a wild mane of dreadlocks. She had worked up Seymour since dropping out of high school, and smoked even more weed than Ben. He’d heard Jane had a little grow-op in her cabin up Indian Arm. Wherever she got her stuff it was good.

  ‘Man,’ Jane whispered. ‘That guy you’re serving has a mad-gruesome vibe.’

  ‘I just feel bad for his kid.’

  Ben took the boots to the front and handed them over. In front of his counter was a circular bench where people could sit to try on boots, and Ben left the man and his son there while he handled another group of customers – a Japanese family who were pleasant and smiled constantly and spoke no English at all. They were going snowshoeing.

  When Ben finished with them and returned to the father and son, the guy was walking around, testing his boots.

  ‘How are those?’ Ben asked.

  ‘They’ll do.’

  Michael was still sitting on the bench. He said, ‘Mine feel too tight, Dad.’

  ‘Ski boots are supposed to be tight, Michael. That’s the whole point.’

  ‘But they hurt.’

  ‘I can get another size,’ Ben said.

  The guy held up his hand to him, palm out, like a traffic cop. ‘Look,’ he said to Ben, ‘I’m paying nearly a hundred bucks for this and we’re wasting time. Where are the skis?’

  Ben went to get the skis.

  At the till, when the guy paid up, he put the rentals and lift tickets on his credit card. The name on the card said Mr Schroeder. The name seemed appropriate, for a guy like him. Ben rang up eighty-six dollars on Schroeder’s credit card and sent him on his way.

  He figured that would be the end of i
t.

  It was a lazy weekday, a Thursday, and after the early rush of customers there was the usual mid-morning lull. Ben went out back with Big Jane to smoke up; they lounged on the snowbanks by the groomer and burned a bowl of her organic grass, passing the pipe back and forth and taking huge, chest-scorching hoots. It was a warm spring day; the sky glowed neon blue and the snowpack glittered in the glare of the sun. You could see for miles: the inlet and the city and the sea beyond, shining like sheet metal. Between tokes Ben told Jane about Schroeder. Jane listened and shook her head, releasing smoke slowly from her nostrils like some kind of ancient sage.

  ‘You be careful,’ she told Ben. ‘The last thing we need is for you to get involved in an altercation with a guy like that.’

  Ben nodded. Management knew about his record and had already tried to get rid of him twice: once when some cash had gone missing from the till and once when he’d lipped off Ed, their supervisor. Both times, Jane had gone to bat for him. Jane was good like that.

  ‘I’ll watch myself,’ he told her.

  The rest of the morning passed in a smoky daze. Ben worked through lunch because he’d had a late breakfast, and if he waited until the end of his shift he could score some free cafeteria grub. After the midday rush, he gave his board a hot wax. It didn’t really need one, but he enjoyed the process, especially when he was stoned. The way the block of wax liquified against the iron, turning clear, and drizzled onto the base of the board. The smoothness of it, and the smell of it: pleasant and pungent. And then the satisfaction of scraping the wax off, once it had cooled, and seeing it fall to the floor in flakes, like snow.

  He’d just begun buffing the base when the doors opened and Schroeder came back in with his son. The kid’s face was scarlet-red and sticky with tears and he was crying silently.

  ‘Come on, Michael,’ Schroeder said. ‘Quit dawdling.’

  He was holding Michael by the arm and dragging him along behind him like a doll. Michael’s ski boots scraped and clattered across the floor; he couldn’t walk quickly enough to keep up and kept faltering and tripping. Schroeder hauled him over to Ben’s counter and let go and Michael collapsed on the ground in a tangled, cross-legged position.

  ‘He thinks his boots are too small.’

  ‘My feet,’ Michael said, between sobs. ‘My feet.’

  Schroeder smiled at Ben, then bent to one knee and gripped Michael by the face with one hand, squashing his cheeks. ‘You’re acting like a baby girl right now. Do you hear me? You have got to stop whining about every little thing. This is not appropriate behaviour on your birthday…’ It went on and on like that, in a terse, restrained monotone that was hard to make out: a kind of low-fidelity virulence. As Schroeder spoke Ben could see the tendons in his neck and jaw flexing – as if every word, every syllable, was an effort to articulate.

  Eventually Michael’s sobbing faded.

  ‘That’s better.’ Schroeder used his sleeve to wipe the tears and snot off his son’s face. ‘Good boy. We’ll get you a bigger pair, okay?’

  Then he stood up and smiled his plastic smile and asked Ben if he could please get his son a new pair of boots.

  Ben had to consciously relax his grip on the counter. He nodded and retreated to the back of the shop; from there he could still hear Michael whimpering – these faint sounds like an injured dog. Ben stood and listened to it and studied the boots on the boot racks. He was still feeling pretty stoned and didn’t know what to do, exactly. What was there to do? There was nothing to do, except his job. He would just do his job. Big Jane must have noticed him standing like that, because she came over and touched his shoulder and asked if he was okay.

  ‘Sure,’ Ben said. ‘It’s just that Schroeder guy.’

  Jane glanced towards the counter. ‘You want me to deal with him?’

  ‘It’s all right,’ Ben said.

  He got down some kids’ size six boots and took them back to the front. Michael was sitting on the bench with his knees tucked against his chest and his arms wrapped around his shins. He looked up hopefully as Ben approached. Schroeder reached to take the boots but Ben pretended not to notice and instead knelt down in front of Michael.

  ‘Here, buddy – let’s see if these ones fit.’

  Schroeder hovered at Ben’s shoulder as he eased the first boot onto Michael’s foot.

  ‘How’s that feel? Better?’

  Michael nodded. But when Ben went to put on the other boot Michael winced and a made a small, startled sound. He said that it hurt. Ben stopped and placed the boot to one side. He guessed what had happened and tentatively touched the bridge of Michael’s foot.

  ‘There?’

  Michael nodded again. The boot had been pinching him, bruising the bones.

  ‘This might not work, then,’ Ben said.

  ‘Of course it’ll work,’ Schroeder said. He’d already picked up the boot. He moved in, shouldering Ben aside. ‘He’s just being a big baby. Sit still Michael, for God’s sake.’

  He took hold of Michael’s foot and worked it into the boot. As he did Michael’s face seemed to wilt and shrivel up: his mouth pinching to a pinhole, his eyes squinting into slits.

  ‘Look, man,’ Ben said, ‘I don’t know if he should go back out there.’

  Schroeder did not answer immediately; instead he very carefully and very deliberately finished fastening the bindings on the boot. When he was done he let Michael’s foot drop to the floor and stood up and turned on Ben.

  ‘You telling me how to treat my kid?’

  ‘I’m just saying.’

  ‘Don’t say, okay? Don’t say anything.’

  ‘Whatever.’

  ‘That’s right.’ Schroeder stepped in closer. Too close. He had something wrong with his left eye – there were tiny flecks of red in the white, like the blood dots in an egg yolk. ‘I spent good money on those tickets and your shitty gear and he’s going to ski so maybe you should keep your parenting tips to yourself unless you want me to talk to your supervisor.’

  Ben didn’t say anything. He couldn’t say anything. The muscles in his upper arms and across his shoulders had gone tense and taut and he could hear a faint buzzing noise that seemed to be all around him and also in his head, right inside his skull. Insistent as a hornet.

  ‘Is everything all right here?’

  It was Jane. She put a hand on Ben’s forearm, and her touch acted like a grounding wire, draining that tension out of him.

  ‘Fine, fine.’ Schroeder smiled and jerked a thumb towards Ben. ‘Your employee here is just telling me how I should treat my boy. I guess that’s included with the rental package?’

  Jane looked at Ben, and Ben shook his head. ‘Kid says his foot hurts.’

  It took a lot of effort to shape the words.

  ‘How you feeling, little guy?’ Jane asked Michael.

  Michael stood there blinking. For a second he looked as if he might say something, but the words never formed and he just gaped up at her with his mouth half-open. Schroeder didn’t give Jane the chance to ask again. He took Michael by the wrist and lifted him back to his feet. Michael hung there like a puppet.

  ‘Thanks for all your help,’ Schroeder said, and glanced deliberately at the nametag pinned to Ben’s fleece. ‘I’ll be sure to remember it, Benjamin.’

  As he said that, Ben felt a fleck of spittle hit his cheek. He didn’t wipe it away. He didn’t move at all. He just stood there. The guy was a son of a bitch but that was okay and Ben wasn’t going to do anything. The fat son of a bitch. Schroeder was walking away, now, dragging his son towards the door. Michael plodded along behind him, head down, resigned and obedient. That was the worst part – the kid was so used to it that he didn’t even know he had a fat son of a bitch for a father.

  ‘Somebody should report that guy to social services,’ Jane said.

  ‘Somebody should kick that guy�
��s fucking ass.’

  ‘Hey,’ Jane said, and patted him on the back. ‘Forget it, okay?’

  She asked him if he wanted to take a break from the sales desk for the afternoon; he could stick to sharpening and repairs instead. Ben told her he thought that was a good idea.

  Before doing anything else he ducked out back to burn a quick joint, the smoke warm and mellow and comforting in his lungs. Then he grabbed a Pepsi and some pretzels from the snack machines and took them with him into the work room, which was off to one side of the rentals shop. In it they kept their tools, belt sander, sharpening machine, and a workbench for making equipment adjustments and doing repairs. Their rental boards tended to get battered and there was always a lot of sharpening to do. He picked up the first board from the stack to inspect it; the edges were riddled with nicks and gouges.

  He switched on the sharpening machine and while it warmed up he used a gummy stone to remove the worst burrs. Then he configured the machine to grind side edges, set the angle for 90 degrees – standard for rentals – and laid the board flat on the loading tray. He held the board steady and pressed down on the foot pedal, which started the grinding disc and feed rollers. He could feel the vibrations through his forearms. He wasn’t wearing earplugs and in the confined space the noise was deafening. It overwhelmed all other sounds, all other thoughts. He didn’t have to think about that son of a bitch or the stuff he’d said or anything except the edge of the board, and holding it steady as he ran it through the machine, which he did several times, on both sides, before adjusting the set-up to do the base edges. When that board was finished he put it aside and started on another.

  He must have done half a dozen boards before he glanced up and saw Ed. He was out in the rentals shop, talking to Jane; Ben had a good view of them both through the door, which he’d left ajar in case Jane needed him. He turned off the grinding disc to listen. He caught his name and the word ‘complaint’ and that was enough. He switched the machine back on to drown out the rest of the conversation. He knew Jane would come tell him as soon as Ed had left, and she did.