“Well, can’t drink it. Too salty.”
“True enough. But I was thinking more along the lines of you can’t sleep on it. We are pretty well homeless right now. We have to work something out.”
“We will. This is the exact kind of place where things work out.”
“It is?”
“It is.”
We wait a bit more, silently, until I run out of patience.
“Well,” I say, “nothing is going to get worked out with numpty peeing down his leg all night.”
“Maybe he got lost,” Da says generously.
“Yeah, maybe,” I say, and start making my way down the pencil-straight lane.
When I get to the end, I am greeted by garbage and excrement smells, a Dumpster, and Jarrod stretched out on his back on the ground.
“Hey,” I say, rushing to him and kneeling down beside him. His eyes are open and staring at the sky. Otherwise, lifeless. “Jarrod, are you all right?”
“I am now. Lots of all right. Stars are beautiful tonight. And busy.”
I look up at the complete cloud cover.
“Yeah, dazzling. Come on, on your feet, Gonzo.”
“I’m not gonzo. I’m right herezo.”
I yank him up onto his feet. He wobbles, wavers, and finally gets something like righted. I lead him back out of the alley.
Where the other one has vanished.
“Jeez,” I say, smacking the side of my head with the heel of my hand. “Stupid, stupid.”
“Don’t say that,” Jarrod says. “If you are stupid, we don’t stand a chance. What’s wrong, anyway?”
I turn my anger on him. “Do you notice anything missing from this picture?”
Jarrod actually says, “Hmmm,” and looks around pensively.
“Ah, come on,” I say, yanking him by the arm.
We make our way farther up the strip, passing a closed insurance broker, an everything-for-a-dollar shop, and a liquor store, which is open but so barricaded and fortified it seems very closed. Da is not in there, anyway.
Then we find ourselves standing in front of a big, caged front window that reads in burnt orange arcing letters, BREAD & WATERS LOANS.
“Hey, it’s the place, isn’t it?” Jarrod says, pointing. “Haven’t we been here?”
“No, we haven’t. It’s one of the places the Golfer mentioned.”
And it appears to be open. And there appears to be an elder gent at the counter, speaking to the young man in charge.
We go in. “Da?” I say, and he turns around to greet us hazily.
“Yes, Young Man?”
“You can’t just flit off like that.”
“I don’t flit. I just walked.”
“Still,” I say. “I was worried. We don’t even know this town and-”
“I have a friend who told me about this place,” he says, picking up the Golfer’s business card off the counter where he’d slapped it.
“He’s a good man,” says the guy across the counter, who can’t be much older than me. “He was a good friend of my dad’s. So that card makes a good introduction.”
“I’m Dan,” I say, by way of my own introduction. I shake his hand.
“I’m Charlie Waters Jr.” he says. “Proprietor of this treasure trove.”
“Cool,” I say, looking around at all the fancy dresses, musical instruments, power tools, lawn statues, and all that make up the pawnbroker business. “Open kind of late, no?”
“Very irregular hours here,” Charlie says. “In this town, pawnbroker is a kind of on-call job, so sometimes I just stick around late. Sometimes I have appointments, late, early. Sometimes I just sleep in the chair.” He gestures to a particularly foul-looking thing squatting low behind him.
“Well, okay,” I say, “seeing as introductions are made and that card has introduced us nicely, can I ask if you know of a place three wise men might crash for the night?”
“Hmmm,” Charlie Waters says. “You mean someplace you would actually want to stay? In Lundy Lee?”
“We are happy to stay someplace we don’t want to stay too.”
He laughs. “Well, I have some storage space upstairs where I have had company stay before. I suppose I could offer you some floor space and blankets, for just a few bucks.”
“Yes,” Jarrod says, standing upright with eyes firmly closed.
“I’m quite tired, Young Man,” Da says, sounding more childlike than I have heard him yet. As we speak, I see his body packing up, curling his spine forward, making his hip hinge outward rather than forward.
“Thing is, Charlie,” I say, “we don’t have even a few bucks right now, to be honest.”
For such a young guy, Charlie Waters wears an expression that already nothing much surprises him.
“I do happen to be in the loans business,” he says, smiling warmly. “It says so right out there on my window.”
I sigh because it just keeps getting incrementally more embarrassing.
“Thing is, Charlie,” I say, “we don’t actually have anything of value, either.”
“You guys are the full winning hand, aren’t you?” Charlie Waters Jr. laughs.
“I do,” Jarrod says, raising his eyelids to half-mast.
“You do what?” Charlie asks.
“I do have something of value,” Jarrod says.
“What?” I ask. “Are you sure, man?”
“Sure what?”
“Sure you have something of value? Sure it’s a good idea? Sure you can manage to part with it?”
“Well, not
Charlie Waters Jr. holds out his hands, palms up, as in
Jarrod steps up to the counter, close to Charlie, to do just that. Bored, disinterested, confused-all that and more-Da wanders the shop now, touching clothes, trying out tin antique fire engine toys and dolls. I have to keep one eye on him while trying to watch the action at the counter.
“No,” Charlie says firmly but not unkindly. “I am not in that business.”
I feel myself, physically, emotionally, psychically exhausted, deflating. Jarrod’s shoulders too slump with the defeat.
“My Da,” I say, “he’s not well. We’ve been traveling a long way. A long, long way. He needs rest. We all need rest, Charlie. If you could just see your way…”
Charlie is watching as Da goes over the collection of eye-catching dress-up clothes. I think maybe he shouldn’t be overhandling the merchandise.
“Stop that, Da,” I say, and he whips around to see us staring at him. He’s got a Royal Canadian Mounted Police hat on his head and it is so big it goes all twisted around at the swift head turn. He can only see us with one eye now, but he remains frozen.
Charlie’s turn to sigh.
“This is why I am a failure of a businessman,” he says. He picks up the Golfer’s card, waves it around at us, and says, “You can thank this fine guy.” Then he turns to Jarrod. “I am going to be sleeping down here tonight. When you get up tomorrow, come right to me, and I will try and steer you someplace where you might be able to convert your merchandise into useable currency. I think I know a guy. And if not him, I am pretty sure this guy knows a guy…”
We sleep on a floor that smells like dirt and sawdust that has been lying there since the thirties. Actually, there is something soothing about the smell. Charlie provided exactly what he promised-floor space and blankets-and although I feel a little stiff when I wake up, I could not complain one bit about the night’s sleep. It could have lasted a week, it was so deep.
