his lunge at Croft, like he’d just woken up from a nap.
“Because you attacked one of the customers,” I explained. “Those assholes are only ones who didn’t run screaming out the door.”
“‘Customer’ my ass, goddamn little punk! Sorry, bud. Coke, bud. They oughta give me a medal.”
So about twenty-five minutes later, a pair of Mounties came strolling through the doors.
“Here they come,” I said. “They got your medal, Gord.”
06/01/09, 11:32 p.m.
And now I find myself starting to panic a little, for a couple of reasons.
Because I just told you another whole slew of stuff about Gord and reading it over I can see that I still haven’t got to the heart of the thing. I can feel you still aren’t getting it — my father is coming across to you the same way he came across to my Jesus-freak girlfriend all those years ago — as a foul-mouthed but mostly harmless “character.” The same kind of creature I must have been to you and Wade and Kyle when we all started hanging out — a shape in the distance; a figure on a screen, behind Plexiglas. You lean forward, no matter how dangerous the guy’s antics might become — no matter how much he shrieks and sweats and bares his teeth — knowing he can never touch you, ultimately. You can watch him and see him and go home and think about him, even be disturbed by him a little. But it’s not like he can ever step off the screen, or out from behind the glass, and blunder his way into your life.
That, as they say, is entertainment.
It’s weird because I’ve held this stuff in my head for so long, been so consumed and convinced by it, but when I pour it out onto the page, into you, it emerges as this completely different thing, like juice turned to cider, or cider to vinegar — I’m not sure which is the better example in this case, but my point is: it’s the same thing but it’s changed. It’s not worthless — you wouldn’t necessarily throw it away as a result — but it’s changed, and now you have to figure out what you’re going to do with it, because this is not the end result you had in mind.
The other thing is, after feeling the whole time I’ve been writing you like I’d rather shove both hands beneath a lawn mower than write about the Icy Dream, about five seconds into it I realized I was enjoying myself.
And finally, I know I vowed to keep you away from Sylvie, but I’m starting to figure out that if I keep digging into this, it’s inevitable that my shovel has to scrape against my mother’s coffin at some point.
So what do I do then?
Do I do what you did? Do I yank Fred Astaire from his mausoleum, force his cold, dead fingers around a can of cola, put on some music and waltz him round the graveyard, calling, Come one, come all?
06/02/09, 12:01 a.m.
How about you just trust me when I tell you she was perfect? Can’t we just take that on faith and move on? How would you feel if your mother died? Well, that’s how I felt, even three years after we buried her, when I was nineteen and you and I became acquainted with each other. Maybe you even know what I’m talking about — for all I know, your mother has passed on too by now. So think about how that felt and get back to me. Was it bad? Okay, well it was bad for me too. It’s never good, obviously. But it was worse for me — I don’t care what happened on your end of things — it was worse for me and we both know why.
It’s important we get this right, Adam, the story of Gord and Sylvie. It’s important because you presumed to write a book that featured you-know-who. Let’s just go with the name I came up with earlier, let’s call him Danger Man: a terrible guy who performs a terrible act. An act with a flat-out crappy outcome, an act that is shocking and horrible — but also, here’s the kicker — inevitable. Why inevitable? Well, it’s built into the character’s DNA, you see. They don’t call him Danger Man for nothing. According to his creator, the guy has an “innate criminality” swimming around in there. A born thug, born bad, born to lose. It’s fated: the guy’s a biker