When I reached the Woodland Hotel I stood outside in the dribble of rain, with the duffel bag slung over my shoulder. It was a four-storey beige brick building, with two shops built into the ground floor: a paint and hardware store, all shuttered up for the night, and some kind of Christian mission with pictures of Jesus and a crooked cross in the window display. Above that the hotel sign jutted out on an awning, green-on-white, only half illuminated. I had a notion Jake had chosen the Woodland deliberately, to accentuate his sense of hardship and destitution. Or maybe he really was that down on his luck. With him it was hard to tell.
A black security gate barred the entrance, but somebody had left the gate ajar, so I could walk right in. The hotel had no lobby or reception, and no employees on duty, and in that way it wasn’t really a hotel at all, but more of a flophouse. I pressed the button for the elevator (Jake’s room was on the second floor) but when no elevator appeared I took the fire stairs, which stank of piss and beer. Up there some of the doors had numbers on them, in the form of black stickers, and others didn’t. Jake’s did: twenty-two. I stopped in front of it and considered knocking but then I just reached for the handle and pushed it open.
Jake was sitting on his bed with his elbows resting on his knees, dressed in jeans and a tank top. His hair was wet and stringy as if he’d just come in from the rain. Something about his expression really got to me. A lot of his performance had been planned, I’m sure, and put on – but not that look: a look of surprise and relief and gratitude. He stood and came over to me and pulled me into a hug, holding me fiercely and clapping my back with his palm.
‘I thought you wouldn’t come,’ he said, ‘I thought you’d cut me loose.’
What do you say to that – when your brother tells you something like that? I stepped into his room and dropped my duffel bag on the floor, like an anchor I was laying down.
‘What about the boat?’ he asked.
‘I left the boat.’
‘You mean you left it?’
‘I mean I left it.’
‘Ah, hell.’
He reached into his back pocket and fished out a rumpled pack of Du Mauriers and withdrew a bent cigarette. He lit it and took a drag and held in the smoke as he crossed to the window, which was open: an old sash window with rotten wooden trim. I could feel the cold wind blowing in. He exhaled in a thin stream and stood for a time looking out. I don’t know what he was looking at. Nothing, maybe. Then he nodded, as if I had said something else.
‘I appreciate it, Poncho,’ he said, ‘I really do.’
The room was a ten-by-ten-foot box, not much bigger than a prison cell. It didn’t have a toilet or shower but it had a sink. Above the sink was a mirror with a jagged crack running diagonally across the centre. I could see a divided version of myself in there, and he looked like a damned fool. Next to the mirror an old medicine cabinet stuck out from the wall at a lopsided angle. Then there was the bed: a steel cot with a thin foam mattress. At the foot of the bed lay Jake’s battered leather suitcase, open and overflowing with dirty clothes.
Draped atop the pile was a white sports bra. I nodded at it.
‘You cross-dressing now?’
He grinned, both sly and shy, and I understood.
‘You and your dancers.’
‘I can’t help it.’
‘You know who you’re really after.’
‘Don’t say that.’
He went over and modestly tucked the bra behind the suitcase. Next to it, his old guitar stood propped against the wall. He picked it up and sat on the bed, resting the guitar across his lap. The body was battered and chipped and one of the strings was missing but I was glad to see it. If he still had his guitar it meant something. He plucked the E-string and let it quiver, resonating.
I said, ‘You going to tell me?’
‘I don’t know all of it.’
‘Do you know any of it?’
He squinted through the cigarette smoke. ‘I know we got to make a delivery.’
‘Something stolen.’
‘Probably.’
‘Then what?’
‘We’ll find out more tonight.’
‘And then it’s done?’
‘Then it’s done. And we get paid, too.’
‘I don’t want any money. I’m not doing it for money.’
On the top shelf of his medicine cabinet were two teacups and a twixer of Black Velvet. I got down the teacups and rinsed them in the sink. The water smelled brackish and a ring of rust encircled the sinkhole. I dried the cups on the inside of my shirt and poured us each a few ounces. I took one over to Jake and he accepted it and we each pinched our cup by the handle, very genteel, like a pair of elderly gentlemen having afternoon tea.
We clicked the cups together and drank.
‘Was the old man choked at you?’ Jake asked.
‘Said he wouldn’t take me back.’
‘Damn, man. What about your girl?’
‘Tracy ain’t my girl.’
‘She’s something to you.’
I said I hadn’t even had the chance to break it to her. I didn’t know how she’d react.
‘But maybe she’ll see my side of it,’ I said.
We looked out the window together. Directly opposite was the Paradise, this dive bar and hotel where hipsters go to drink. Compared to the Woodland, the place might as well have been paradise. Out on the patio, a handful of customers stood in a herd, smoking and laughing. Every so often cars hummed along Hastings Street. A few blocks down somebody shouted, though whether in anger or merriment it was hard to say. Either way, things were in motion. Time hadn’t stopped. Already the boat and my chaste relationship with Tracy seemed very distant, like some other life. A better life, maybe. But not my life.
‘So where the hell are we going tonight?’ I asked.
In Jake’s truck we headed east on Powell, then merged with McGill and got onto the Second Narrows Bridge, which connects Vancouver to the North Shore, where we grew up. Beneath us Burrard Inlet shimmered and rippled, a dark swathe of water burnished by city lights, and up ahead the mountains stood out blackly against the night sky. On the far side of the bridge we kept going along the Upper Levels and the Cut – this long stretch of highway hacked into the hillside. Drizzling rain smeared the windscreen and one of Jake’s wipers was busted, so the blade flopped around all crazily, like a snake having conniptions.
Along the way, Jake forgot to act grave and compassionate about the loss of my job. My presence had cheered him up some and as he drove he whistled through his gap tooth – some little ditty that was irritating as all hell.
‘It’s good to have you along, bro.’ He leaned over, punched me in the shoulder. ‘Good old Poncho. The handsome old buck, with a busted hand.’
He was smiling reminiscently.
‘What are you grinning at?’
‘Just thinking. Having you involved always made my schemes seem more legitimate, somehow. You were the respectable one. If you were part of it then Sandy and Ma figured it had to be okay.’
‘Even when you were up to no good.’
‘I was always up to no good.’
‘What