Chapter 8: Chapter 7

Neea tapped her pen anxiously against the open appointment book, staring at the entry written in her own looping handwriting.

Mrs. DaCosta-Loach: 11:30

Peter had been late for his last meeting with this client and was well on his way to being late for this one too. Neea thought it just wasn't very smart to be late for a meeting with the woman whose legal fees constituted such a large part of his income. Why wasn't he answering his cell phone?

Peter Cavil's law office was on Menzies Street not far from Neea and Teddy's house. It was convenient because Neea could walk to work, but the downside was the fact that her world sometimes seemed too small. Within a few blocks there was a decent bakery, a library, a grocery store, drug store, etc.—but many days Neea never ventured more than a kilometre from home. She sometimes felt like a rat in a cage.

Unfortunately, her job at the Cavil & Co. Law Office did little to alleviate the claustrophobic feelings. The office itself was very small—Peter was the "Cavil" and that left Neea to be the "Co."—and the work she did was repetitive and, in general, very dull. A guilty pleasure some evenings was watching a trashy TV series about the intrigue and excitement in a busy big-city law firm populated with scheming, sexy young lawyers. It was pure escapism and as different from her day-to-day work as fine champagne is from grape soda.

• • • •

"So what was this place again?" Kodi asks.

"You mean where I stayed?"

"Duh... yeah."

Kodi has his hood pulled up over his head and in profile I can't even see his face when he's talking to me.

"Some lady's house," I tell him. "Over in James Bay. She lives there with her son."

We're heading to Switch's house for more meth. Switch is a small-time meth cook and our main source. I've never been to his place before—we've just met up with him downtown in the past—but today Kodi wants to check out the operation. Not sure if he's considering going into the business or just curious about where his favourite recreational drug comes from. Plus, with our bonus cash from Neea, Kodi wants to buy more than usual. Being Kodi he doesn't need to consider that the money also needs to cover things like my tampons and birth control pills for example, or, you know, food. Mr. Generosity wants to make sure Bryn and everyone else gets in on the fun tonight. Generous with my money. Typical.

Well OK, Neea's money, technically.

Kodi—his last name is Gretsch—grew up on Lasqueti Island. That's one of a bunch of islands clumped in the channel that runs between the mainland and Vancouver Island. Not too many people live there which suits Kodi's father just fine. Carl has been in the business of growing and selling pot since long before it was legal and he doesn't like a lot of people snooping around. I never found out why Kodi's mother left them, and these days Kodi doesn't even know where she lives. He was mostly raised by Carl, if you can call it raising. Ignoring is more like it.

At about fourteen, Kodi stopped going to school and pretty much did whatever he wanted. The local police would sometimes bug Carl about Kodi missing school and about the pot-growing operation but nothing was ever really done about either one. The grow-op was small enough that they really couldn't be bothered with it, and young Kodiak didn't seem significant enough to matter much either.

They lived in an old trailer that was parked deep in the woods not far from Carl's weed patch. The land was owned by some American guy who hardly ever came to the island and who had maybe sort of given Carl permission to live there. The details were sketchy and there was no written agreement but until he was told to leave, Carl was going to stay put.

Things got complicated for Kodi when Carl started hanging around with a woman named Lou. Lou had a boat and caught crab for a living. She drove an ancient pick-up and had a big, smelly dog named Skookum. Skookum liked Kodi just fine but for some reason, Lou didn't. Soon the three of them, along with Skookum, were living together in that small trailer and Kodi started to feel like he was a crab caught in one of Lou's traps. Six or eight months of living that way and he knew what he had to do.

A few days after his sixteenth birthday he snuck out early in the morning. Carrying an old backpack with a few things stuffed in it, he walked onto the French Creek ferry to Vancouver Island and was gone. Kodi never went back to the trailer, never went back to Carl or to the island. Eventually he found his way to Victoria, intending to look for his mother, but when he didn't find her, stayed in the city anyway and lived on the streets.

That was five years ago.

Anyway, what's really on my mind is that me being at Neea's house would have given Kodi and Bryn the perfect opportunity to hook up. I don't know for sure that they did, but Bryn seemed even more pissy than usual when I reappeared, as if I was intruding on her cozy new situation. Sure, Bryn, except Kodi and I have been together for more than six fucking months so, really, who should be getting pissed off here?

Bryn and I were never going to be best buds, but to this point we always managed to put up masks of semi-friendliness whenever we were together, which was nearly every day. Now it looks like the masks are coming off.

After a while, even though I know better, I ask Kodi about Bryn.

"Is something up with you guys? It seems like something happened while I was away."

Kodi doesn't answer at first, just does a kind of mocking grunt, then says, "Yeah something happened, Darwin. Something always happens."

So there you go.

• • • •

Mrs. DaCosta-Loach was due to arrive in a few minutes. Neea tried Peter's cell again, but still no answer. Where was that silly man? She got up to water the large potted dracaena in the corner.

Neea's thoughts had been returning all morning to Darwin who, she guessed, was back on the street, probably taking drugs, and no doubt back with her boyfriend. No point in agonizing about it because there wasn't much Neea could do. Her heart sank again thinking of that poor girl standing on the front porch of their house, turning down her offer of help but looking so sad and alone.

It was nearly 11:30. Mrs. DaCosta-Loach would be there any moment. A few years ago, when Neea had started working for Peter, he had seemed like a dream man offering her a dream job but now she found him aggravatingly lazy and often unprofessional. She only stayed on with him because of the steady paycheque.

When Peter hired her she had little experience as a legal assistant. He was very kind and considerate, allowing her to train on the job and paying her better than he had to. It wasn't long before she realized that some of that kindness was due to his attraction to her. If she felt a little awkward about the situation she was also excited by it. He was nice, financially secure, well-educated and sort of handsome in a rumpled way, with a warm smile. When he wanted to be, he was extremely charming. Soon they were dating.

It was no coincidence that, only a couple of months earlier, he'd been ditched by his previous girlfriend. He was so forgetful and absent-minded in the office that Neea thought he was in danger of losing clients. She thought it was due to a broken heart and she told him that she wanted to help. He was happy to accept, saying that he might be able to focus better on work if she could—just temporarily, of course—help him with some personal errands. She soon found herself picking up his dry-cleaning, getting his car washed, taking his cat to the vet, and on and on. At the time, she was quite happy to be getting more wrapped up in his life, but even then she had reservations about the wisdom of doing chores for him. As long as it's only temporary, she'd thought to herself.

Of course it wasn't only temporary. Even after she decided that she didn't want a relationship with him, she still found herself doing too many things for him, generally taking care of him as if he were a child. When she finally put her foot down and said that she was going to stick to the job requirements and stop doing personal duties for him he sulked like a moody teenager. Then, after drinking too much over lunch one day, he fired her.

Neea was furious. She told him, in a rapid-fire mix of English and Finnish, that he was a fool, a bad lawyer, a lousy lover and a drunk, as well as a few other things that she no longer remembered, then she stormed out. The next morning she came back at her usual starting time of 9:00 am, went straight to Peter's office and confronted him. "I'm not fired, Peter," she said firmly.

"What?" Peter said, even though he heard what she'd said.

"I'm not fired!" she repeated loudly then turned and went quickly to her desk to start work. Peter came to the door of his office and stared wide-eyed at her. She angrily straightened up her already tidy desk and didn't look up at him. Finally he just shrugged his shoulders and went back into his office.

That was more than three years ago. Since that day Peter hadn't once asked her to pick up his dry-cleaning or look after his stupid cat. Neea came into the office, did her job and did it well and even managed to be fairly pleasant to her boss as long as he stayed in line. She was his assistant—not his friend, not his lover, not his mother, and definitely not his maid.

It was almost noon when Peter finally called. "Neea, sorry. I just got your message. I meant to tell you that Ina asked me to meet her at the house. I'm there now. Any calls?"

"No. None," she said.

"Are you mad? You're mad, aren't you?"

"No Peter, I'm not mad. It's just... you're supposed to let me know things like that. I need to know what's happening in order to do my job. You know that the folder of papers for Ina to sign is here on my desk, right?"

"Oh damn, that's right. Um... that's fine. Look, I'm really sorry. I won't be back for an hour at least, but you can lock up and go out for lunch, OK? On me. We'll deal with the papers tomorrow."

She said goodbye and hung up. Tomorrow is Saturday, she thought. Senkin typerys! Fool!

Her stomach growled. She was tempted to go over to Cucina for a glass of white wine, the crab agnolotti and a nice salad and stick Peter with a big bill, but it would be so much simpler, she thought, to just dash across the street for a take-out salad and bring it back to her desk. If she took a short lunch then she wouldn't feel guilty about leaving a bit early to get to the 4:30 yoga class.

• • • •

No surprise, but Switch's place turns out to be a shit-hole. His meth lab slash apartment is in the basement of his father's house on a bad section of Childress Road. The house is old and falling apart and feels damp and cold inside. Even before we're down the stairs the reek of chemicals hits me. Like the stale piss of a thousand cats, it makes my eyes water and my nose sting. But there are other smells mixed in. It's hard to know where the various chemical stenches give way to the stink of rotten wood and moldy drywall and odours that may be emanating from Switch himself, his filthy-looking unmade bed and his dirty clothes piled in heaps on the floor. I wasn't expecting scented candles and rose petals but this is hard for even a street kid to take. I position myself roughly in the middle of the room, hopefully a safe distance from chemicals and contaminants. My hands are buried deep in my jacket pockets and I suppose I look a little stiff and uncomfortable. Meanwhile, Kodi and Switch are totally fine with it all and talking away like old buddies.

Switch, whose real name according to Kodi is Tim—totally doesn't suit him—is older than Kodi by maybe five or six years. He has long, messy hair parted at the side and falling over his face and he holds his head at an angle to keep the hair out of his eyes. He looks like he doesn't get outside much, at least not when the sun is shining. He has a habit of tacking this nervous staccato laugh onto the end of a lot of his sentences, the way other people would add "eh" or "ya know", but it isn't really a laugh at all, more like he just says the words "ha ha ha". This is just one of his many quirks.

Despite his weirdness and his sketchy choice of occupation, Switch doesn't have the look of someone who has made an absolute wreck of his life. In fact, he gives off a sense of pride and satisfaction like someone totally successful. Switch, in this miserable little drug lab in his father's basement, is doing exactly what he wants to be doing. It's strangely almost admirable.

"It's a super-sweet batch," he's now saying excitedly. "You'll see."

"Last one was OK," Kodi says.

"Just OK. But this is, like, amazing! Not just the best shit I've ever cooked. It's the best shit I've ever even tried, ha ha ha!"

Switch is a little taller than Kodi, but skinnier. He's awkward and ungainly where Kodi is athletic and self-assured. What they have in common is nervous energy, so as Switch speaks he moves excitedly, arms flailing out unpredictably, head always at that odd angle, while Kodi is all tight, twitching motion. It's an odd dance, and there I am standing totally still, one eye on them and one on the meth equipment, half-expecting either them or the lab to explode at any second.

Kodi likes Switch cuz he knows Switch is gonna keep it honest and not put anything weird in our meth, like cathinones or fucking fentanyl, but as a "lab" Switch's production setup looks anything but scientific. Two old doors are laid end-to-end across some rickety wooden supports. The doors, their surfaces covered in abstract patterns of unhealthy-looking dark stains, hold a seemingly random assortment of different sized and shaped containers: cans, bottles, jars, pots and pans, etc. At the back there is a row of big plastic pop bottles—Diet Pepsi, Orange Crush and Canada Dry Ginger Ale—holding not pop but various liquids in stomach-turning shades of yellow and brown, some with a build-up of evil-looking sludge in the bottom. There are burners and tools that remind me of high school chemistry class, but these look like they've been even more harshly treated than the badly abused equipment back at Sa-Hali Secondary.

I'm thinking about this disgusting mess in front of me and trying to make it jive with the blissful feeling of control and happiness that I get from meth. Really would have preferred not to see all this. It's like touring a slaughterhouse after you've eaten a nice steak. I mean, I know it's a drug, and a bad one, made with toxic and volatile things you really shouldn't put in your body, but seeing the actual ingredients and tools of the trade is making me queasy. Stuff is seriously nasty. I've heard stories of meth cooks getting badly burned or blowing themselves all to hell. Seeing this place, I'm not surprised.

Right then a noise from upstairs makes me jump.

"Shit. Your dad!" says Kodi to Switch, quickly scanning the room as if looking for either a weapon or a way out.

"Relax!" says Switch. "He's cool with it."

Kodi's still suspicious. "Your Dad knows about this?" he says, pointing at all the meth stuff.

"Yeah, totally. He's part of the business. He buys a lot of my chemicals for me. It's good, cuz we can split purchasing all the shit you need, like the propane, brake fluid and battery acid. If one person tries to buy too much of that stuff at one time it'll send up flags with the store owners. They'd be, like, 'Meth!' and call the cops on you, ha ha ha."

OK, that makes sense, but ugh. Battery acid? Don't think we covered that in my Foods and Nutrition class. So Switch's Dad is in on it? Great that he supports his son's career and all, but that's a little messed up if you ask me.

"Plus it's his house," says Switch. "So you know, win-win, ha ha ha!"

"Win-win," I repeat, sarcastically.

Kodi shoots me one of his patented death looks and I just shrug and frown back at him but keep quiet. Battery acid build-up in my system is making me a little peevish I guess, but I know better than to push it too far.

Kodi turns back to Switch. "So if your Dad's all right with it, how come you don't make more? You totally could, right?"

"Yeah, but I want to stay small," Switch says. "You have to. You get big and pretty soon you attract attention. More volume means more chemicals and shit; buying more chemicals means people notice and the cops are gonna get interested. Plus you really don't want to compete with the big producers. They're out there, and they don't exactly welcome the competition, ha ha ha. I got a visit from some bikers last year. Two fat dudes in black t-shirts and black leather ride up on Harleys and jump me on the street one night. True story. They kept on calling me 'Steve'—that's not even my name—and asking me shit about Ecstasy. I've never made E in my life, but yet they knew I was a producer. It's like they were sent to mess me up but they didn't have their facts straight or something, ha ha ha! The message was pretty clear though: like, don't move in on their territory."

"But you stayed in business anyway," I point out.

"It's what I do, man," says Switch earnestly, as if brewing up street drugs is some noble pursuit and his one true calling in life.

"Don't worry about me..." he goes on.

"Oh I won't," I say, again with the sarcastic tone.

I can't help myself. Switch and his whole life are really bugging me right now. I hate this business, and I hate the fact that I'm part of it. This time Kodi's dagger look actually makes me flinch, as if his eyes launched actual daggers at me. Switch continues, oblivious.

"I'm not super stoked about getting punched in the head by bikers again, but I know the boundaries. I know how big I can let my operation get before I become a threat to them. And yeah, it's basically none, ha ha ha! I mean I'll cook enough meth for myself and a few of my good friends—maybe earn a little income just to get by—but I'm not out there trying to grow my market or get rich or anything. And, well, so far, they haven't come back, you know?"

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— D.B.