I’ll never know quite what that was like, Carla thought. She heard around her the language of her own childhood, a language she didn’t speak or understand now, but whose tones she felt comforted by. “To Angela Chiarelli,” she said aloud, raising her coffee. She made a new vow to remember Angie, not with the same frantic effort at preservation, at loyalty. She had held on as if she could lose loyalty. Now she knew she couldn’t. And she couldn’t hold the baby any more either. She knew all this when Jamal came by in the black Audi. She knew Derek hadn’t lent it to him. Derek would never lend anyone his car.
She’ll go back to her apartment and live her life. She’ll have parties with Tuyen, she’ll go to the Roxy Blu, she’ll go to jazz concerts, she’ll wait in line to hear U2, she’ll go with Tuyen to Pope Joan, to Afrodeasia. They’ll dance together. She’ll check out the open-mike spoken word at Caliban with Oku. She’ll cut her hair, she’ll go to Jackie’s Ab und Zu and get a new wardrobe. She’ll be seduced by someone. She can’t hold the baby any longer.
It won’t matter that Jamal left Carla’s place, cruised up Weston Road, turned into a small street with an apartment building, waited outside until a friend came down, who then sat in the passenger seat; a friend who greeted Jamal with, “Hey, J-man. Shit, it’s great to see you,” clasped his hand, and hugged him. Jamal put the car in gear with a flourish and first drove through the growing neighbourhood of ex–West Indians, ex-Eritreans, ex-Somalis, ex-Vietnamese, and ex–South Asians. His friend Bashir, the son of an ex-Somali, was born right here when you could still smell the beef terminal from the Junction; when they hadn’t yet turned the abattoir south of here into town houses.
“Fuck, this is a sweet ride,” Bashir said. “You’re living very large, J-man.”
Jamal grinned at the compliment and turned left onto the main drag, with its brief mix of used-car dealerships, dollar stores, cheap, ugly furniture stores, food stores, banks, and panicky “stop and cash” booths. He nosed the Audi through the sluggish traffic up toward the highway.
If it means anything, the conversation they had was about how smooth the ride was, how sleek this Audi looked, how it was his father’s, the fucker—“the vain old fuck-head,” Jamal said. “But I wouldn’t buy no Audi like him. I know this guy with this X5, sweet, man.”
“Beamer X5? Whoa! Put some Pioneer speakers in there …”
“Pioneer! Are you crazy, man! No way. Some Anaconda with subwoofers, like twelves, right … real bass, built-in equalizer …”
That conversation was punctuated by drags on a spliff and chuckling. And then his friend Bashir said, “Let’s roll, man.” And then Jamal said, “No doubt, man, I’m ready.”
Carla has already decided on the new course of her life when Jamal drives the Audi to Richmond Hill because there are rich motherfuckers there and they got great cars to boost, in garages off roadways called crescents and drives. They got monster houses and monster rides and his friend is the garage-door specialist and a strong man and he’s the driver. And really it should be three of them, but they are two. They spot the silver Beamer X5 outside near a stop sign, and there’s an Asian guy in the passenger seat. The guy looks middle-aged to them. His head is laid back on the headrest, and his eyes are closed; the windows are open because it’s a nice evening, not so hot as earlier in the day. And maybe the middle-aged Asian guy is waiting to meet someone; maybe he’s resting for the first time in a long time, and is waiting until someone comes out of the house not far away to get him. The Beamer’s silver skin burns like a fish in the dark pond of the evening.
They circle him once, twice. And Jamal wants to take this one, so he gets out and gives his friend the wheel of the Audi. He has a small black object in his waist, and he slides up stealthily on the resting man. He practised two or three times in his head, Get out, motherfucker, as he’s heard in the movies. So when he gets to the car, he says these words and presses the gun to the man’s face. And the man seems insulted and stunned—how could he have been caught in this way?
Adrenaline makes Jamal wrench the door of the Beamer open violently, grabbing the man and dragging him out of the car, flinging him to the pavement and kicking him in the ribs. But the man, surprised and suddenly charged himself, hangs on to Jamal’s left leg.
The gun falls, clatters against the pavement, and slips under the car. Then the friend in the Audi jumps out and comes running, kicking the man loose of Jamal. The man is stupidly fighting as if he has a life that’s precious. He realizes that they want the car, and he says, “Take the fucking car” in Vietnamese, but no one understands him. So
