Funny Money Read online

  “Yeah, I did. It works on the same basic principle as a helicopter, but it’s battery-powered, and the rotor blades are made of soft plastic.”

  “Rotor blades?”

  “See, the idea is that the propeller blades whirl away the rain. I’m gonna call it the Whirlaway.”

  “Brilliant. But aren’t you worried about people turning on their umbrellas and flying away like so many scraps of paper in a hurricane? Sounds kind of like something Inspector Gadget might think twice about, you ask me.”

  “I’m not saying the idea doesn’t need work. I just started thinking about it this morning. But, face it, the common umbrella has been stuck in neutral ever since the spring-loaded automatic. Its time for a change, Carlos. You can be part of the solution, or part of the problem. It’s your choice, but those are the only choices you’ve got.”

  “Problem,” said Carlos. “All my life, I’ve always wanted to be part of the problem.”

  The brilliantly lit retail strip was behind them now. They were on the downhill slope, in a nondescript area of motor hotels and apartment blocks and big turn-of-the-century houses that had been converted to a warren of cramped but affordable, sometimes charming, apartments.

  A few blocks farther on, the landscape changed again, to a retail strip of modest restaurants and retail shops. Carlos tapped the brakes as he drove past the liquor store. A couple of beat cops were busy with a down-and-outer and the shopping cart he’d converted into a mobile dumpster. Carlos turned in to the Safeway parking lot. The cops, in their bright-yellow plastic rain slickers, looked like a couple of large, extremely bad-tempered bathtub ducks. Carlos parked so that the van was straddling a white line. Two parking spots were better than one, because a life fully lived was a life lived to excess. He killed the engine and turned to Hector.

  “How much stuff you getting? Do we need a cart?”

  “Yeah, we need a cart.” Hector arched his back so he could get at his pockets.

  “Lose something?”

  “No, I’m looking for a quarter.”

  “I got it.” Carlos levered himself out of his seat and rooted around in the back of the van until he found what he was looking for: a large pair of bolt-cutters.

  Hector said, “What would you come up with if I said I was looking for fifty cents, a chainsaw?”

  Bolt-cutters in hand, Carlos climbed out of the van. When Hector had joined him, he pointed his remote. The locks clicked. The alarm chirped.

  Hector had known within five minutes of first meeting Carlos that he was not a particularly well-adjusted personality. No doubt that was why they got along so well together. One of Carlos’ many faults was his tendency to exaggerate problems. Substituting a pair of bolt-cutters for a quarter was typical. Hector trailed along behind as Carlos strode towards a train of chained-together shopping carts. The cops had their backs to him but, being cops, they were likely to turn around without notice. How would they react if they turned around and saw Carlos sauntering across the parking lot, great big Carlos with his long, aimless stride, mindless death stare, filthy shoulder-length hair, black jeans and biker boots, and yard-long bolt-cutters with the Home Hardware price tag, for which he surely could not produce a receipt? Hector didn’t even want to think about it.

  Carlos closed in on the shopping carts. He lifted the bolt-cutters and worked the handles. Clack! Clack!

  Carlos snapped the blades together speedily and forcibly. Clack! Clack clack clack! People were looking at him. Looking at Hector, too, trying to figure out if he was with the freak. Nope, not me. Definitely not.

  Clack clack clack!

  Hector worked out an escape route. He decided that, if the cops turned around, he’d sprint for the low retaining wall at the back of the parking lot, jump the iron-rail fence, and run down the alley. Ducking down behind the sturdy if stylistically bland bulk of a Volvo station wagon, he loosened his sneaker laces and retied them extra tight.

  Clack clack clack! Clack clack clack clack!

  Chapter 6

  Willows lay on his back with Parker nestled in his arms. Her head rested comfortably on his naked chest. Parker was warm and cozy, content to lie quietly, listening to the rattle of rain against the window, and the slow, steady beating of Willows’s heart. After they’d made love, he’d held her in his arms and stroked her hair and shoulder for a long time, but now his hand had fallen still.

  Parker lifted her head. “Jack?”

  Willows’ breathing faltered. He made a garbled, vaguely interrogative sound, and abruptly rolled over on his side.

  Parker was short on sleep. By all rights she should have been exhausted, but she was wide awake and full of energy. She lifted herself up on her elbow and studied Willows’ face. They had known each other a long time, more than thirteen years, through Parker’s early twenties and into her mid-thirties. Their relationship had progressed by halting, imperceptible degrees, from a coolly distant professional partnership to a passionate love affair and then something akin to routine domestic bliss.

  She lowered her head onto the pillow. Willows’ divorce had been finalized well over a year ago. A few months after the papers were signed he’d bought her an engagement ring and asked her to marry him. She’d accepted with alacrity, but had made it clear that she wanted to have children. Willows hadn’t objected. But on the other hand, he hadn’t been wildly enthusiastic either. At the time, his lack of enthusiasm hadn’t rung any alarm bells, but lately she’d been worried about it.

  Willows was forty-six years old.

  Sean was twenty, Annie eighteen. Both children were on the cusp of adulthood. Sean would be leaving home soon and Annie wouldn’t be far behind. Why would Jack, at his advanced age, want to start a family all over again?

  Parker counted off the months. If she gave birth in mid-June, Jack would be sixty-five by the time their child was Annie’s age. And she would be … fifty-three.

  Sixty-five was getting up there. No wonder Jack was passively reluctant to have more children. From what Parker understood, children began the final rebellion against their parents in their early teens, but usually settled down by the time they were nineteen or twenty. Twenty seemed old. Even so, having to cope with a hulking, hormone-fuelled teenager probably wasn’t in anybody’s top-ten list of how to spend your sixth decade. How could she have been so wilfully blind to the reality of the situation?

  Parker moved over to her own side of the bed. She felt miserable, and then angry, and then unbearably sad, and then angry all over again.

  She stretched out her arm and turned off the light. Six weeks earlier, when she was at the most fertile stage of her cycle, she’d teased Willows to a peak of sexual desire and then made sure he didn’t use a contraceptive.

  Two weeks later, she’d faked her period. How would Jack react if she told him she was pregnant? Would shock turn to dismayed resignation, or even strident demands that she get an abortion? That wasn’t going to happen, no matter what. But how much longer could she keep her pregnancy a secret? Parker’s mind raced. Money was always tight. They’d gone out to a movie a few nights ago, and it was the first time they’d been out together for longer than she could remember. How could they possibly afford to raise a child? A lonely tear trickled down her cheek. She hoped that, when she told Jack she was pregnant, he would be overjoyed, dizzy with pride.

  But if he was unable to handle the situation, to hell with him.

  Would he resent her, accuse her of manipulating him, or was she being incredibly unfair to him?

  Parker needed to relax. She eased out of bed, tiptoed out of the room and down the hall to the bathroom, shut the door and began to fill the tub. She wanted more than anything to have this baby that was growing inside her. The more she allowed herself to think about it, the more strongly she felt. She sat down on the lip of the tub and trailed her fingers into the water.

  What if Jack …?

  Parker burst into tears.

  Chapter 7

  Nick’s hair was so short it
was hardly more than a rust-coloured haze hovering over his scalp. His pale-green eyes were unusually large, and wide-spaced. A scattering of freckles lay across his cheeks. His lips were spoiled-looking, pouty.

  Nick was good-looking, in a careless, blurred sort of way. Naive women, especially older women, found him attractive because he was a little bit scary. He liked to tell them he was a male model. From time to time he imagined himself smirking and preening for Calvin Klein.

  Nick was nineteen years old. His twentieth birthday was two weeks into his future, but he never gave it a moment’s thought. A birthday was just another day in his life of days.

  He lay sprawled out on his hotel-room bed, flat on his back with his legs together and his arms folded across his chest. His eyes were shut. He’d fallen asleep in this exact position an hour ago and hadn’t moved an inch.

  The clang of a heavy metal dumpster lid violently yanked him awake. He lifted his head, then let it drop back onto the soiled sheets. The rancid orange light leaking through the tattered curtain hurt his eyes. He yawned, and lit a cigarette. His dog, an even-tempered and undemanding Rottweiler-cross named Tripper, opened her eyes and made a low grumbling sound. She watched Nick closely, because he sometimes blew smoke in her eyes. When he did that, she always jumped off the bed and lay down by the door, her nose to the draft from the hall.

  Nick sucked smoke into his lungs. He exhaled a smoke ring, and then another. He concentrated on blowing increasingly small rings, fitting each successive ring into the one preceding it. He blew seven rings, and then missed. He climbed off the bed, unzipped as he plodded towards the bathroom.

  He emptied his bladder in short bursts, making as much noise as possible. Finished, he gave himself a shake and tucked himself away, then leaned back and kicked the little chrome lever protruding from the toilet’s water tank. The toilet groaned deeply. A rush of water swirled into the bowl and down and away, flooding into an unimaginable network of pipes. Nick took a last pull on his cigarette. He flicked the butt into the toilet and wandered out of the bathroom. He moved listlessly and without purpose, as if he had no idea where he was or what to do next.

  He shifted aside the orange curtain and peered down at the alley. Below him, a stooped man wheeled a bicycle loaded with clear plastic garbage bags full of pop and beer cans. Each of the pop cans was worth a nickel. The beer cans were worth a dime apiece. The man climbed into the dumpster, poked around for a few minutes, and climbed out again, empty-handed. He mounted the bike and got it rolling. A bottle shattered on the asphalt. The scavenger stopped the bike, got off, and leaned it against the dumpster. He kicked every last scrap of glass aside, and then climbed back on the bike and started off again.

  Nick watched the man until he’d turned the corner at the end of the alley and disappeared from view.

  He unlocked the window and pushed it up. The wood was damp and swollen, so he had to push hard. Flakes of dull red paint fell away from the frame, were caught in an updraft, and skittered away. A previous occupant had nailed a rectangle of plywood to the window ledge and made an open-air cage by nailing a balloon of chicken wire to the outside edge of the plywood and to the window frame. The wire kept the pigeons out, and the rats, if there were any. There was enough room to store a quart of milk and six-pack of beer, a fat length of sausage, a loaf of bread, a plastic bag of pre-made salad and a bottle of Paul Newman salad dressing.

  Nick cut an inch off the sausage. He stuffed the spicy chunk of meat into his mouth, chewed and swallowed. Still hungry, he cut another, larger, piece of sausage. He sliced the sausage lengthwise several times, and flopped the meat down on a slice of bread. He put a second slice of bread on top of the meat and hammered it with the side of his fist to make everything stick together.

  As he lifted the sandwich to his mouth, he suddenly had an almost overpowering urge for mustard. Funny how he always wanted what he didn’t have and was too lazy to go out and get. He grabbed a bottle of beer, unscrewed the metal cap and tried to toss it through the chicken wire. The holes were too small. He twisted the wire until he’d made a larger hole. The cap hit the alley. It sounded exactly like a dropped coin, but nobody came running. Nick felt let down. He shut the window against the thrum of rain on the dumpster, and the irritating cooing of the resident pigeons.

  He ambled over to the bed and lay down, beer and sandwich in hand. Tripper eyed him, equal parts hungry and wary. Nick ignored her. He took a bite out of the sandwich, rinsed his mouth with a slug of beer. The beer was fairly cold. Not as cold as if it had been in a fridge, but cold enough. He finished the sandwich, and got a second bottle of beer from the window ledge. This time he tried to flip the cap into the toilet through the open bathroom door, and missed by a mile.

  He lay back down on the bed and lit another cigarette. Smokes were impossible to steal because they were always behind the counter where you couldn’t get at them, and there was nothing in the world that was half as suspicious as a convenience-store clerk.

  Nick blew a large smoke ring and then a smaller ring that shot through the first. Alcohol was hard to steal, but you could do it, if you were careful. Food was easy. You had to know where the staff were, and you couldn’t hesitate or look around, had to just reach out and grab what you wanted. Well, that was life in a nutshell, wasn’t it?

  *

  Nick was watching TV when Chantal finally got home. He heard the key in the lock, and then the door swung wide and she walked into the room. He stood up, weaving a little, fifth or sixth beer in hand. She said hello, but he ignored her, went over to the rabbit ears and tried to bring in a better picture, clear the snow out of Humphrey Bogart’s eyes.

  Chantal said, “Hi, Nick.”

  “Yeah, hi.” Nick had never been a travelling man. The two-hour drive from Abbotsford to Vancouver was the longest trip he’d ever made, by far. But he knew it never snowed in Casablanca.

  Tripper rushed past him, happy to see her mistress. Tripper was trained not to bark, but couldn’t help uttering a low huffing sound that was welcoming, and full of joy. Chantal scratched her behind the ears, but didn’t put much into it.

  Nick stood there in his Jockeys, beer in hand, his body swaying like a sapling in a fitful wind.

  Chantal said, “Don’t you ever get dressed?”

  Nick’s laugh was high-pitched, frantic, a childish tittering. If he had time to get set, he was able to conjure up a masculine, dignified chuckle. But when he laughed spontaneously, he sounded like a chipmunk full of helium. There was nothing he could do about it, just as there wasn’t much he could do about everything else in his life.

  Chantal shut and locked the door. She walked past him, into the bathroom. Tripper followed her with her dark-brown eyes, tail wagging hopefully. The hotel room was lit only by the small black-and-white TV. Even so, Nick noticed Chantal’s swollen cheek, the smear of blood on her upper lip.

  “Jeez, what the fuck happened to you?”

  She turned on him. “What d’you think happened, Nick?”

  “Beats me. That’s why I asked.”

  Chantal unzipped her jeans and sat down on the toilet. She glared at him through the open door. “What’re you looking at?”

  “You’ve got great legs, baby.”

  “And you are such an asshole.” She flushed and stood up, leaned towards the mirror over the sink, splashed cold water on her face, rinsed her mouth. Clots of blood swirled down the drain. She patted herself dry with the end of a worn towel.

  Nick checked his watch. “I’m sorry you got roughed up. You okay?”

  “Fine.”

  “You taking a break, or …?”

  “No, I’m through for the night.”

  Nick tapped his watch. “It ain’t even midnight.”

  He plucked a cigarette butt from the ashtray and tossed it at her. The butt hit her on the arm and fell to the floor.

  “Tired?” Nick’s voice was drenched with sarcasm, and sexual jealousy.

  He tossed another butt at her. She batted i
t away. This wasn’t the first time she’d come home with scrapes or bruises. Before, she’d always been very angry, but tonight she was sad and vulnerable. Nick didn’t know how to handle it. He fiddled with the rabbit ears.

  Chantal said, “Tell me something, Nick. What’d you do tonight?”

  Shrug.

  “Drink beer, watch TV. What else? Snort a little coke, drink a little more beer?”

  He spread his arms wide, as if inviting her to frisk him. “I’m a drug-free zone, baby. Why? Because we’re fucking broke.”

  “Want to know what I did tonight?”

  “Forget to duck?”

  She rushed him, but he was ready. He grabbed her wrists, spun her around and gave her a measured push. She fell face down on the bed. A spring creaked.

  Nick sat down beside her. He stroked her calf. “Want an Aspirin?”

  “Fuck you!”

  “Tylenol?”

  Chantal lay quietly for a few moments, and then rolled over and unbuckled her belt and reached down into her panties for the wad of American twenties.

  Nick smiled. His teeth were still pretty good. He offered her his beer, and she took the bottle from him and drank deeply. Tripper, sensing a change in the weather, jumped up on the bed and lay down beside them.

  She tossed the money in the air. The bills stayed together, so Nick was able to catch them without spilling any. He spread the bills on the blanket and counted them very slowly, his lips moving.

  “Six hundred bucks!” He smiled dangerously. “Whatever you did, you must’ve been pretty damn good at it.”

  Chantal sat up. “Fuck you,” she said without heat.

  Nick nodded agreeably. He took the bottle away from her and dropped it on the uncarpeted floor.

  Chapter 8

  Tripod came meowing into the room and hopped up on the bed. The cat was about as light on its three feet as an anvil. Purring furiously, he nuzzled Parker’s neck. She drowsily reached out and patted him. Tripod was in a playful mood. He raked at her fingers with his sharp claws, raced to the foot of the bed and back again, and chased Parker’s retreating hand under the covers. Confident that he’d wakened her, he jumped off the bed and thumped noisily down the stairs.