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| She's all growed up now. |
Louis Shalako
Dee. Some years had passed and Dee had grown into a
beautiful young woman. In some sense, she was a statistically-average 20
year-old, but then I don’t particularly need humongous breasts, the massive
backside which seems to be a fashion in certain circles these days. She was
well-formed, with all the bits and pieces in all the right places…the sort of
girl who really should have been painted on the nose of a B-17 bomber.
After seven years together, the relationship between
my girlfriend and I had ended.
I have to accept full responsibility for that,
admittedly, I was suffering from some pretty bad depression after my big
failure in journalism. My girlfriend had a really good job, I was dead broke,
and what was almost worse, there was some pressure to marry. Willy told me. He
told me I had six months to propose, or she was probably going to walk anyways.
His wife and my girlfriend, were very good friends. The information was
credible enough.
Truth is, I broke off with her, and to say that my
depression got even worse, and went on and on and on, with no relief in sight,
would be nothing more than the truth—
So, when Zoomer finally got caught, and sent away, I
was both single and at something of a loose end.
A guy like Zoomer, once he’s got a charge or two against
him, he’s out on bail. If he fails to attend court, that’s another charge. If
he evades the police, that’s another charge, if they get him on camera
shoplifting, that’s another charge. When they finally do catch up to him, he’s
got a long list of charges. Some of that goes away with a plea agreement, even
so, he’s looking at some time in the bucket—and the local jail isn’t really
meant for long terms of incarceration, with no provision for recreation, no
provision for education, not even remedial reading, let alone a trade. Once
he’s been sentenced, he’s likely to be assigned to a provincial (or federal),
institution somewhere a little further down the road. This time he ended up in
the Elgin-Middlesex Detention Centre, located in southwest London, Ontario.
When Dee asked me to drive her up to London so she
could visit her boyfriend in jail, I probably hesitated a bit, but she was
buying gas—maybe a cheeseburger and fries if I was lucky, and we probably did
have a joint or two for the ride.
***
There I was, with a sweet-smelling young woman on the
seat beside me. It’s a good hour’s drive up to London. She’s not overweight.
She’s not all skinny and scrawny…she had nice knees, thick, dark brown hair,
brown eyes and good shoulders. She was never heavy on the makeup, her nails
were never big, long, painted claws. She’d never needed it, I suppose. She was
exactly perfect just the way she was, and this is an assessment from forty
years later—well, there’s no accounting for taste, as they say. Assuming four
or so years younger than either Zoom or I, she would be twenty-two or
twenty-three years old.
While her history was well known to me, what with
being Zoom’s criminal accomplice, in all so many things, it was like the girl
next door, wholesome and healthy. But she had the driver’s license, grandma’s
car, she could get over the river into the U.S. where Zoom was banned. Her and
a girlfriend could go over the river and come back with a couple of 60-oz
bottles, a carton of cheap smokes and somehow stuff all that into their rather
oversized purses.
Perfect, and yet one had to wonder what went on in her
head…and mine.
Good
enough to eat.
Yeah, if only I had the nerve.
We have to talk about something. She hadn’t finished
high school, she had no real education, and as far as I could determine, no
real ideas of her own. She seemed bright enough, and at some point we’re at the
gate. We’re parking the car, pushing a button and gaining admittance to the
public area of what is a maximum-security prison.
It’s pretty easy to get an idea. It’s pretty easy to
get a bit of a crush, what with being lonely, as well as physically healthy.
Truth is, I was as horny as a ten-peckered Billy goat, and I probably spent a
little too much time thinking about the significance.
Truth is, she just needed a ride, no one else was
available—or that dumb, yet Zoom seemed glad enough to see me as well as
her—otherwise, he might not have seen her at all. Probably, her grandma would
not allow her to take the vehicle for hours at a time, not to another town a
hundred kilometres away, and most especially, not to visit Zoom in jail.
It was me or nothing, probably.
 |
| There it is, the Middlesex-Elgin Detention Centre. |
And of course, I got this horrible crush on her.
It was sappy enough, as such things often are. But
with me, she wouldn’t have to steal, or so I told myself. With me, she wouldn’t
have to worry about me cheating on her, with me, et cetera, et cetera, et
cetera.
Yeah, ladies and gentlemen, with me, she wouldn’t have
to worry about coming down HIV positive due to dirty needles and a lifelong
amphetamine habit, which was one reason guys like Zoom don’t want to go to jail
in the first place.
All they want, is to keep going—they’re never going to
quit, and they’re usually the first ones to admit it.
As for your girlfriend, Zoom, quite frankly, she could
do better. Maybe even a lot better.
Alas, it was not to be.
***
This went on for some weeks, visiting Zoom once a week
or so. At some point it’s like Stockholm syndrome, where you’re sort of
captive, and yet dependent. It was better than being alone all the time, and of
course I had my thoughts. Which were predictable enough.
One night she called me up. Asked me what I was doing,
and I said nothing much. She said she’d stop by and smoke a joint with me. I
was grateful enough, what with being out of work six months in a row. There
might have been a bit of a recession going on, or maybe I had just lost all
confidence…
Depression will do a lot of funny things to an
otherwise sensible person.
She pulled into the driveway, on a warm summer
evening. We sat on lawn chairs in the door of my old man’s garage, and she
pulled out a big joint and lit it up. She told me she was going out with one of
her girlfriends and wondered if I wanted to come along—I shrugged, saying I was
broke and she didn’t exactly insist.
Dee was wearing a pair of thin, short shorts in some
floral pattern, with a bit of lace around the legs. She had brown leather
sandals on, and she had good feet. Her top was thin, stretchy cotton, not
exposing the midriff but not meant to be tucked in, either. She smelled good
and the smile was good. Fuck, she hung around for fifteen or twenty minutes and
then off she went, presumably to have a good time.
It’s a good way to remember her. Young, healthy, and
cuter than the belly-button on a tsetse-fly, as my old man used to say.
It was also one hell of a signal, or so I remember
thinking. The only question was what to make of it.
In the end, all I made was a big mess, and if nothing
else, embarrassed the hell out of me, and probably, her too.
***
Speaking purely objectively, I knew what love was—and
love lost. I also knew what sex was, and I’m thinking that might have been part
of the problem. There was nothing wrong with my imagination, ladies and
gentlemen. There was nothing objective about this situation, it was all subjective.
Somehow I knew her birthday was coming up, maybe a
week or two before mine. Here I am, a pretty nice guy by almost any standard,
and I have no idea of how to go about it.
Somewhere I scraped up a ball or two and decided to do
something about it, come hell or high
water, and let the chips fall where they may. Just to put that in its proper
perspective, I’m trying to fuck my buddy’s girlfriend, while he’s in jail, and
who knows where that might go, if only a man was lucky enough—
She was definitely worth a gamble.
One way or another, the situation must be resolved.
***
 |
| This one was worth a gamble... |
So, firing up the Wayback machine here, setting the
time and the date, circa 1985 or ’86 or so, pulling the big red handle, the
wheels go round and round…I must have had some money. I don’t see how I could
have done it otherwise.
Let’s say it was payday and I was working at Central
Cab. I had a few connections of my own. I bought a gram of cocaine. I bought a
40-oz bottle of Wiser’s Canadian Rye Whiskey. I had a quarter bag of pot…I had
a little bit of this and a little bit of that.
I scraped up the nerve and dialled the phone. After a
few rings, she picked up…my heart sank. By the sounds of things, the party had
already broken out over at her place…I asked her if she wanted to get together,
what with it being her birthday and all.
She laughed over the phone.
‘Oh, Louis,’ she says. Oh, Louis.
Yeah, I’m a nice guy and everything—oh, well.
That night, I came very close to shooting
myself, right in the head.
I didn’t, but I came awful close. I still had her on
the phone. She was distracted by stuff happening at her end. I wanted her to
hear the shot…
Bang. I let the phone drop to the floor.
I could still hear her laughing…finally, I pushed the
button and hung up.
If that didn’t put things into perspective, I don’t
know what will, as the saying goes.
There’s not a whole hell of a lot more to add.
 |
| Don't try this at home, kiddies. |
All I can really say, is that a .22-calibre short,
fired from a Cooey bolt-action sporting rifle, will go through ten or eleven
paperbacks, and lodge, slightly misshapen, in the twelfth paperback. Don’t try
that at home in your bedroom, kids…
That would have made real mess of my head, wouldn’t
it. Not that it wasn’t pretty messed up at the time.
Right?
***
I was at a gas bar downtown a few years ago, and some
woman in the checkout line was talking to me. I had no idea of who it was, I
didn’t recognize her until she started talking about my old man—she’d seen the
obituary, and she called him Big Frank.
Yeah, she was real sad to see him go.
It was her.
She was dying her hair, but then all women of a
certain age are dying their hair.
She had dentures, at least on the uppers…it was
winter, but she seemed a bit scrawny to me, frail, maybe.
She was like real glad to see me, and for the life of
me, I could not think of one damned intelligent thing to say.
I couldn’t even think of anything stupid to say, which
is definitely not like me—I’m usually pretty good at that sort of thing.
But.
To think I almost killed myself over that girl.
Fuck.
END
Louis has books and stories available from Everand, a
new ebook and audiobook platform.
See his art on Fine Art America.
Check out One
Million Words of Crap, an audio essay on independent, digital publishing,
in celebration of fourteen years here at Long Cool One Books.
My Criminal Memoir. (Part One).
My Criminal Memoir, Part Three.
My Criminal Memoir, Part Four.
My Criminal Memoir, Part Five.
My Criminal Memoir, Part Seven.
My Criminal Memoir, Part Eight.
My Criminal Memoir, Part Nine.
My Criminal Memoir, Part Eleven.
My Criminal Memoir, Part Twelve. (Access restricted due
to content. 18+)
My Criminal Memoir, Part Thirteen.
My Criminal Memoir, Part Fourteen.
My Criminal Memoir, Part Fifteen.
My Criminal Memoir, Part Sixteen.
My Criminal Memoir, Part Seventeen.
My Criminal Memoir, Part Eighteen.
My Criminal Memoir, Part Nineteen.
My Criminal Memoir, Part Twenty.
My Criminal Memoir, Part Twenty-One
Thank you for reading, and listening.
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