The evening unspooled. Shanny and Murch continued to argue. Calliope cried for no real reason. Roen disappeared upstairs only for Harris to numbly register that Jin had gone up the same stairs only moments prior.
Purma joined him on the deck, smoking Pall Malls and smirking. Harris realized he was host to murderous, omnidirectional thoughts. The futility of everything. The smell of blood.
Black rain on the window in Kitsilano, the storm unfurling. Harris hearing Purma as if she were in the room, speaking her precise and killing words. Jin was gay, anyway. They’d kissed earlier, no big thing. One other thing too. “You mind I say one other thing, Harris?”
Like he could stop her. Square face, dark-skinned. Punjabi, he remembered, daughter of a big-time area trucker. Purma didn’t think he was destined to be a writer, she went on to say. And he remembered her words on the topic as if they were typed on the page in front of him, which he realized then that they were, his own type, letter by painful letter. You’re a banker dude and good at it. Ford Windstar, wife, kids, and dogs. Harris, cheer up. I predict you end up with a minivan and lots of money.
Harris in agony then, and now. Harris with tears streaking his cheeks. The phone ringing. Four in the afternoon, rain hammering down. Harris had just cracked his second beer of the day that would end once again down in Chianti’s bar over wine and more wine. He caught his face in reflection in the darkened window. The bandage applied late last night was leaching blood.
What had the man said on the beach where Harris had been drunkenly wandering? Harris couldn’t remember. Only what the man did. Three quick applications of what felt like a concrete fist.
Harris, broke and alone with a busted face. Fifteen years it had taken for the blood to flow, and it was flowing now.
His phone ringing and ringing. Harris typed the words before picking up. He just knew.
Fifteen years later, Murch calls.
2
Murch started in like no time had passed at alclass="underline" “Writer dude.World’s most coveted jobs, droogie. Up there with porn star.”
Harris was holding a fresh beer to his face in his crappy apartment in Kits. The rain had stopped. No rainbows. Just the threat of more rain. “Murch,” he croaked, “how goes building houses for poor people?”
Murch laughed and shifted his weight in what Harris imagined was an expensive leather chair. He was visualizing Murch’s thirtieth-floor harbor views, mountains opposite, sailboats tracing lines in the water. Murch had quit lawyering and gone into real estate, where any idiot could score.
“Follow the money,” Harris said.
“Or be poor,” Murch said.
“The law taught you that.”
“It did indeed, me droogs.”
“But the law is a lie, Murch. Don’t you remember that?”
Big laughs. Harris hated himself for being pleased.
“My God, Shanny,” Murch said, “she sure had a rack. Saw her in Home Depot a couple years back. About the size of an eight-person tent. But listen.”
So here it came, as quick as that. And the rain surged harder than before, charging up the slope of Larch Street toward him. Harris with his eyes closed, seeing that strewn dining table and empty room. It was about Roen. Harris knew it.
“Shit news, man,” Murch said. “Roen’s dead.”
Harris leaned forward, elbows on his knees. Suicide. A week, maybe ten days prior.
“Jesus,” Harris said, hand in his hair, scalp sweating.
Bullet to the head, Murch informed. “All fucked up at the end too. Living in the Downtown Eastside, drugs and scumbag friends. You know about this, me droogs?”
“No,” Harris said. “Hadn’t heard from him since way back.”
So Murch filled him in. Seemed Roen had actually made an album that got some play. Then got ripped off by a manager, taken for everything. Tax bills. Rent arrears. Bankruptcy. Welfare. Escalating addiction problems. “A decade later he’s broke like you never get unbroke.”
“Fucking fuck,” Harris said. “Meth?”
“Purma said dope,” Murch replied. “I thought that was heroin but what the fuck do I know?”
So Purma was in the picture. Purma, who Harris would’ve been happy never to see again. “So they were in touch? Purma, Roen?”
She’d gone into addiction counseling and Roen had walked in her door. “Three months ago,” Murch said. “He was at quit or die. So she helps him out. Six weeks clean. Then something happens.”
Hard relapse. Worst thing for an addict, apparently. He disappeared and Purma finally had the cops bust down his door. “Grim scene,” Murch continued. “The body liquefies after a week. Who knew? Here’s the thing, though.”
Not this, Harris thought. No fucking funeral for a friend. But it wasn’t that. Ten times worse. There was a will. Purma had it and wanted them to take a look.
Harris’s right ear was ringing. Amber pus was oozing from his cheek and came away on his fingers, sticky and odorous. The man had said something before punching, from the shadows of a black hood.
“You okay?” Murch asked.
“All good,” Harris said. “All good.”
Thinking hard here, calculating, weighing what new things the moment now made necessary.
“This one time,” Harris said. “Totally forgot, me droogie. I saw him, I mean. I saw Roen.”
3
Murch’s office. Priceless art and beautiful real estate people rushing around. Murch in gleaming black wingtips, blue striped shirt, dark suit. Grinning, of course. Big hand outstretched. “Writer dude. Warning: I’m a star fucker.”
“Let me just come clean,” Harris said. “It was me. I killed Roen for fucking Jin that one time.”
“You did too, didn’t you? You psychopath. You fucking simmered for fifteen years then wasted him.”
“Ask,” Harris said, fingering the bandage. “But it’s a boring story. I got jumped.”
“Course you did,” Murch said. “Purma’s in my office. Drink? Perrier? Latte? You want booze but it’s the twenty-first century, for fuck’s sake, not Mad Men.”
Thirtieth-floor views, boats in the harbor. Check, check. And with the whisper of a glass door breathing shut, they were together again. Purma, with the soil-y smell of patchouli about her. A courier bag over one shoulder and an envelope in her other hand. So Roen joined the reunion in his own way. No mistaking why old friends were gathered. Do not bend, fold, or multilate.
Purma took Harris’s hand in her iron grip. “Harris,” she said, “I stand corrected.”
“Meaning he got more beaten up last night than expected?” Murch said. “Careful, he’s dripping.”
“A few days ago,” Harris said. “It’s healing.”
“I meant you becoming a writer. Harvey Raven. Serious props, man.” Purma still had not released his hand.
“You seriously read one?” Murch asked. “I had to google that shit. Amazon ranking five million something. Right on.”
“Ignore him,” Purma said. “I read all three. Sorry for what I said on the island. That was me being jealous.”
Harris was stunned. She projected such power. Chin high, proud to clear her personal air.
“Twelve-stepping,” Murch said. “Hey, respect.”
“Yeah, that’s it,” Purma said, finally releasing Harris’s hand. “No more vodka and OJ for breakfast. Twelve years now and the best decision of my life. Harris, we good?”