On the Up Read online

  “Of course, we won’t hire any derelict off the street. Very discerning. Gruelling process. Now, speaking of family. Tell me about your brother. The dead one.”

  Takes me several seconds to catch up to the question, and when I do my hands drop into my lap.

  Your brother. The dead one.

  Vincent puts on his helmet and fumbles with the chinstrap. “My bad. So sorry. Should we discuss your promotion some other time? Call my assistant. She might answer you.” Throws a leg over his mountain bike, rocks the bike back and forth, checks his phone, seems about to ride away as I consider how much he knows.

  “Amar was a gang member,” I whisper, no longer certain Peele can’t see the real me. Did Clint recognize me that night three years ago? Has he already told Peele who I am? And why have I insinuated myself into this circle when good sense says I should go home, grieve in silence, be afraid and stay away—

  “Excuse me, Jasminder? Your brother was—”

  “A gang member.” My voice is loud enough to draw a few glances from surrounding tables. “That’s what everyone said. He didn’t live with us. I didn’t know him during—”

  “You didn’t know your own brother?”

  A gull flies overhead with something gristly dangling from its beak. “Yes, but…not then? I didn’t know him.”

  “Cuz, wow. That is so insane! I remember it on the news. Drug war? Big-time violent gang—”

  “Yes.”

  A business mantra from my research about transforming myself into a successful sales leader: A positive mind engenders a positive reality. Never thought I’d come to depend on nonsense, but at this point I’m willing to give anything a shot. Pessimism, negativity, have always been my weaknesses. A truth is trying to take shape, will do so if I pursue it, the dream of a journalism career still driving me, what I’ve held on to through years of family and friends politely and not so politely telling me to let it go, no reasonable Plan B for this girl, too stubborn or foolish to grow up and get real and if the corruption story doesn’t pan out at least I’ll know I tried. Gave it my best? People say that too. Cold fucking comfort, although the thought has a certain attraction, relief in failure—

  Vincent squeezes his mountain bike brakes, admires his forearms. “That’s incredible, Jasminder. What a sad, super-sad unhappy burden. Must be very hard. To carry that? But good for you. For carrying it.”

  Tell him thank you, try and steady my voice while wondering what he means.

  “Because it’s my understanding—correct me if I’m wrong—that you did carry it? As in: not a word. To anyone? The police? Even though…”

  “I was there, yes. When it happened.”

  “And not a word spoken against whoever…”

  Scoot my chair away from the table and prepare to leave. “No. I didn’t see anything.”

  Vincent’s demeanour changes too fast, from distant to deeply sympathetic. “Totally inappropriate question. I’m sorry. I wanted to hear your side. And now I can tell the Marigold Family: the older brother was a black sheep. She barely knew him. These things happen. So you weren’t involved in—”

  “No.”

  “Of course not. Not getting that gangbanger vibe! Not at all. But I see you.”

  “I’m sitting right here?”

  Vincent inches his bike’s aggressive front tire closer to my leg. “Sitting right here? Peekaboo! I got it! Thrilled to be connecting. You’re like a mango smoothie, Jasminder. Very easy to swallow. I guess we’re about done? Except…here’s the thing. Acquaintance, business partner actually, runs the Aqua nightclub. Heard of it?”

  “Sure. In the Shangri-La.”

  “Been? No. Very high end. Anyway, tight investment, robust return, but…a problematic industry. Great for making money, but otherwise, mega sexist. Just the way it is, though? The manager, Claire, she has to, from time to time, say some like totally objectionable things. Things that I know—because she’s of course a caring feminist-type businessperson like you and me—bother her very much. Have you ever been in that position? Of having to say things you find personally objectionable to keep your job?”

  “Me? Yes. I mean…not often? I guess I try to avoid putting myself in situations where—”

  “Yay for you! For fighting the good fight. But let me say, it gets more difficult as your career advances. And you become important? So for Claire, she has to say things—because of the not-okay sexism in the music and entertainment industry—that she would never normally say. Like, ‘Sweetheart, you’d look way better if you lost a few pounds.’ Claire must feel horrible! Imagine me saying, ‘Jasminder, you could stand to lose a few pounds.’ Claire has to say stuff like that all the time! I totally feel for her. It’d be like me saying, ‘Jasminder, the bohemian-college-chic look isn’t doing you any favours. And maybe you should try wearing makeup if you want to succeed in this industry?’ So gross, even hearing those words from my mouth as I’m telling you what Claire has to say! Thankfully for us, the real estate profession, especially on the West Coast, is way more progressive. Thankfully I don’t have to say things like, “Jasminder, you look a little yesterday to be presenting penthouse condominiums.’ ”

  Play it cool, look vaguely upset at the unfairness of it all generally but not at Peele specifically, try not to let him under my skin, but realize he is by the way I’m self-consciously picking at my skirt. “What if Claire stopped saying those things?”

  “The nightclub would underperform, she’d be fired, and someone else would. Obviously.”

  “Sure, obviously. Vincent? Can I ask…I’m sorry but…your teeth?”

  The man freezes. Touches a gloved hand to his lower lip, looks puzzled, recovers, puts on the falsely accommodating smirk I’m already becoming inured to. “My teeth? Perfect.”

  “Yeah, of course, except…obvious ortho?”

  Vincent looks like he stepped on roadkill. “Yuck, no way, ortho. Me? For sure not.”

  “Hated that headgear! Everyone does. You must’ve too?” Smiling, looking happy to have connected in a personal meaningful way—

  Vincent grazes the muddy mountain bike tire against my calf, pins me between his bike-straddling bulk and the table, prompts a choice. Either I ignore him or call him on invading my space. I go for option three, keep my leg steady while spilling my tea across—

  “Careful! Demo model! Very pricey—”

  “Oh my gosh I am so—”

  Vincent jerks the bike away, freeing me. Snatches a few napkins to dab at the tea running down the bike’s front fork. “My teeth are perfectly fine. By the way? Straight, white, clean, uncrowded. Perfect.”

  My professional persona helps me stifle a snicker. “Oh, wow. My bad. Very nice teeth. I’m sorry—”

  Vincent says it’s no biggie, he’s got thick skin, takes more than me being wrong to shake him, hands me a soggy business card, tells me the address of an open house he needs me to attend tomorrow morning. To the south, behind the city, the evening sky transforms into an unnatural chemical green–orange punctuated by odd vertical cloud columns. Firestorm. Flashover. My brother Amar, I barely knew him, I barely knew.

  Mark Ward

  When I think about killing my brother, it’s always in some chickenshit way. Creep on him while he’s sleeping. Stab him in the neck. Poison him. Run him over. Been thinking on it since we were kids. A death with no hitting back.

  “Best place on earth,” Clint says, accelerating away from YVR. “Town’s off the charts. Money sloshing around, fucking river, sink or swim.”

  A quick drag off his Colt, ash out the cracked window, me looking at him sidelong, unsteady, catching up to the fact I’ve landed, not soaring at nine hundred kilometres an hour, real life knocking, earthbound, sluggish, already missing Thailand’s beaches, dreamland strangeness glimpsed through smudged mirror shades, my infant daughter—

  “Hey! Hear me, fucker? Good flight?”

  “Body scanners. Belt and shoes off. Walk into an airport, like going to prison.”
/>   “Except nobody sends you.”

  “Yeah. You send yourself.”

  “Quit moaning. Vancity!” Clint sticks a fist in my face, flashes his gold. “See that? A fucking river! Missed the early days, but it’s not too late to get on board. Hey—you psyched?”

  No answer. I’m lousy at lying to my brother face to face. Always have been. The bastard can scent it. An instinct. I never had it like he does. For me, it’s safer to assume everyone’s lying.

  Clint seems about to ask again, punches my shoulder, laughs, toothy, says he’s real glad I’m back in town, family reunion, his batshit soldier little bro, mad-dawg killa, yo! Ain’ that right! And something in how he’s eyeing me, his voice pitched too sharp, mania, makes me shiver, wonder if I’d survive hurling myself out of the truck commando-style, flee into the night, vanish into legend, myth. Instead I manage: “Must be cool, making bank?”

  “More than cool. Get your head around what’s happening. You hungry?”

  “Nah. Ate on the plane.”

  “Smart ass. I said. You fucking hungry?”

  “For what?”

  Clint scowls. “For what? For more. What else?”

  “I guess so? More of what?”

  “You guess so? Fuck sakes. Kind of answer—”

  “Just asking. More of what?”

  “More of—fuck sakes, Marky. More of more! It’s here in Vancity, more and more for the taking, but you gotta want it. You gotta be hungry. Shit.”

  A weird mix of emotion, feeling smarmy-superior at riling my brother up while feeling ashamed at his disappointment—

  Clint hits the on-ramp leading to the bridge over the Fraser River, merges onto the highway, floors his Dodge Cummins into the red. I brace against the seat, glance at Clint to make sure he doesn’t notice, but his shoulders hunch and that means he does and that’s bad news because like the lying Clint can sense this shit, loves to hear a man yell I GIVE, PLEASE, I GIVE. Like when he was running dope lines, if a street-level dealer fucked up, got ripped or otherwise mishandled product, my brother would set up a grudge match, is what he called them, basically a group shit-kicking that ended with the offender begging through a mouthful of blood and broken teeth. I remember those puffed-out eyes, shattered noses, fractured jaws—how when you beat a man long enough his face takes on a cartoonish appearance, funny in an ugly way, identity erased by trauma, violence thriving on abstraction—

  “Want me to slow down?” Clint, hands loose on the wheel, watching me flinch as we slide over the white line, daring me to admit I’m afraid.

  “Nah. If you want?”

  It’s night. The Fraser River’s a smooth obsidian plane. Begins deep in the mountains, born of once-blue glaciers now dirtied with ash and soot, rivulets running into one another, blind and unknowing, gradually gathering strength, compelled downhill by physical law, toward the ocean, home, I dunno, carving a path through stone towers, this vast country, all that beautiful squeaky-clean wilderness we always hear about, and I try to take something from that, a life lesson, a hidden truth to carry me through, but there’s only reflecting fast-flowing water and my brother’s forearms flexing as he cuts through traffic and Colt cigar smoke swirling in the truck. Time stutters, I blink, and we’re two blocks ahead of where we were.

  Jet-lagged. Shell-shocked. Most likely it’ll pass.

  “Relax, Marky. You’re home now. Anyway. How’s Thailand?” Clint’s tone makes it clear he could give a rat’s ass, is playing at being big brother concerned.

  “Earnest.”

  “Huh? Yeah. You look shit, Marky. Thought you’d look good. Beaches. Pissing around, doing fuck all, banging slants—”

  “I’m almost married.”

  “—but you’re pale, skinny. You look shit. You training?”

  “Nope?”

  Clint smacks my shoulder. “Not training? Working out?”

  “For what?”

  “Strength matters.”

  I look at his cigar.

  “Oh, piss off. This is nothing. I do my cardio. Besides. I’m jacked.”

  “You’re super cut. Haven’t seen you like that since—”

  “Right? Seriously ripped. And check out this Dodge. Lit as fuck.”

  “Truck’s sick.”

  Clint caresses the dashboard. “Paid cash. Know what? We should hit the gym. You could use it. And you should see me bench. Plus, no one knows how to spot anymore. Can’t trust ’em. On their phones, whatever.”

  “Gym sounds rad.”

  “I can trust you. Family. That’s rad.”

  Silence except for the diesel engine growling and Clint’s hands grinding on the steering wheel. Real quick he asks, “You miss them?”

  I tell him sure, of course.

  “You just left them, fucking, hours ago.”

  “So? That’s when you miss people most.”

  Clint paws through the glovebox. Always been fascinated by how my brother moves. Muscles rippling down his arms. There’s an exaggerated quality to Clint’s motions, like he’s struggling to contain a power or potency. He pivots instead of turning. Thrusts instead of reaching out. Even the simplest gesture portends an assault. Now the hand in the glovebox darts back, smacks my chest with a dull-sounding thud that I don’t feel. Clint laughs, does it again, shakes his head at my lack of response, says I still have shit reflexes, army did fuck all for me, no wonder I got blown to shit, resumes searching in the glove, left hand hanging off the wheel, truck veering across the lines—

  Clint’s company logo is stitched into the dash in crimson thread. Redline Contracting. He cusses at not finding what he’s looking for, tells me to hold the wheel. “Shit’s different now. Town’s gone global. You feel it? Electric. Hooked into something big, jacked into the mainline—”

  “Mainframe?”

  “Watch the road. Wreck my truck, I kill you. Where the hell is that goddamn—”

  The steering wheel vibrates beneath my hand. A single hard swerve would put the truck through the guardrail and the Ward brothers into the river. “Clint? I’m not staying.”

  “Currents running international. New York…London, uh…Beijing? L.A. Tokyo. Boss town! Like you seen those satellite pictures? The world at night? Cities lit up, a web of money, all connected, everywhere else dark as hell? That’s where Vancity’s at. Rest of the world can fuck off. Animals living in darkness.”

  Clint snatches a silver wolf tooth from the glove box, hollers, balances his smouldering Colt on the centre console. Uncorks the snuff container, taps a pile of blow onto the back of his hand, lays into it with me still holding the wheel. Corks the wolf tooth, tosses it in my lap without a word. I give him the wheel, mutter about the scrubbed sterile air in Vancouver and how it’s too thin to get a full breath, smack the dash when I’m done with the blow because it seems like the right thing to do.

  Clint glances in the rear-view, cusses, slams the brakes. A horn blares. The Colt tips onto the floor. Clint mutters about teaching the bastard riding his ass a lesson while I pick the Colt up from between my brother’s feet, hand it to him. “Thing is—these people are idiots. They’re owned. Morons spending the bank’s money. The more I charge the more work I get.” Clint laughs, cynical, throaty, makes me turn away, wish I was holding something heavy, a lead pipe, I dunno, maybe an assault rifle, something cool like the Tavor—

  “Say what you want about the old man. But he knew a scam. Hated the banks. Cash is king. Old school, remember?”

  Our father is the last thing I want to think about, but I say, “I remember he never got home insurance because he thought the insurance company would see what he owned, send a crew to rob him, deny his claim.”

  “Had that shit on lockdown.” Clint flicks his half-smoked Colt out the window. “Here’s the thing. You think I’m showing off? Truck cost eighty grand. Say I’m an asshole for buying it.”

  I tell him it’s his money.

  “Best remember that,” Clint sneers. “Me and Vancity left you behind. We’re looking i
n the rear-view, laughing. Remember that beater Ford Lariat the old man used to drive? Piece of shit. But that was the game back then. Decade ago, roll up in an eighty-grand truck, customer wouldn’t have nothing to do with you. Smart enough to know they were paying for it. Wanted their contractors driving beater rigs and grovelling for a meal. Under the thumb. Now? Customer doesn’t trust you if you’re driving a shitbox. Doesn’t want your ugly shitbox parked in front of his three-million-dollar rebuild. Afraid the neighbours will think he can’t afford decent help.” Clint laughs. “Image, right? This truck is straight-up marketing.”

  Clint spits out the window. I inhale a blast of ocean-stink air. Why does this city feel like someone has a boot to my neck, screaming ENJOY ENJOY ENJOY? Deeply treaded tires whir over wet pavement. Mist obscures low spots along the river. Remind myself this isn’t home anymore. Clint’s still talking, a wall of sound—money, work, money, respect, money, bitches, money, property—while I sink into the leather seat, unhappy with the blow making my nose run, try and remember my maybe fiancée, Daree, and my daughter, Sarah. Eighteen months old. How afraid I was to hold her. How she is of me but also entirely her own. How I violated my daughter’s trust by coming here, how I always knew I would, writing on the wall, destiny, game over.

  Important not to forget them. But there’s something bigger than the Pacific Ocean between me and my family. This town. My brother. The wildness in how he talks about Vancouver. Raving. Drawing me in. Make something of yourself. I can’t put the family out front. I tried. Couldn’t do it. There’s another need running the show. The target.

  Which is why they’re better off—

  Clint tells me to hand him the wolf tooth. I do as he says. Then he yells “Worst head for business. Worst head for money. Looked down on me when you went to school for no-money bullshit. Dropped out, joined the army, fuck sakes, loser move, nearly got killed. Sense did that make? Got you nowhere, like I said. Now look at you. Ran away, knocked up a slant, ran away again. Not even thirty and busted, no work, in debt, fuck. You only get so many chances.”

  “I’m here to work. Pay you back.”