Croft had long ago perfected. Chaisson just reached up under his T-shirt to scratch his belly more aggressively.
“Chaisson,” I said, leaning forward and speaking low. “Fuck off, okay? We ask once and then we call the cops. New policy.”
Before he could protest, I turned my back and went to make his sundae. The unfortunate thing about a fast-food franchise is that food prep happens in view of the counter. So you can’t secretly gob on a random asshole’s sundae, for example, just before adding the hot fudge, should the spirit move you to do so.
Croft would’ve known I was full of shit about the cops, but I was hoping Chaisson wouldn’t. Croft had long ago intuited how much pleasure Gord derived from these encounters — that my father would never hand the fun off to the cops. That’s what kept Croft coming back — he’d found a new playground, complete with willing playmate.
I stuck a spoon into the bulge of ice cream and shoved the sundae across the counter at Chaisson.
“Go.”
“All right, man, Jesus,” said Chaisson, dipping his head to tongue the tip of his sundae like it was a nipple. His lips came up chocolated. He pawed a booklet of napkins out of the dispenser as I looked on in disgust.
Maybe I shouldn’t have made my disgust quite so manifest. Maybe that’s all it would’ve taken to defuse things.
As it stood, Chaisson shot me a look of resentment — a look of hurt feelings, almost — as he slouched out the door and into the parking lot, where Croft made a great show of having not seen him in ages. He spread his arms wide, welcoming his long-lost friend into his smoky circle.
I looked at the clock. 8:12. Forty-eight minutes ’til closing time. The restaurant was dead as it usually was at this hour and Gord had already begun cleanup. I could hear him wrestling with the inventory somewhere deep in the kitchen’s bowels. Good. I just had to make sure he stayed in back, away from the windows.
I was just about to turn and yell that I thought I’d get started mopping the floors out front when I noticed a blaze of ice-blue in my peripheral vision. I glanced out the window again and what do you know. Gord in his ID smock had appeared in the parking lot and was striding with great purpose toward Croft and his entourage.
He had taken the garbage out early, I suppose, and heard the voices, caught an acrid whiff of smoke. And what I should have done then was, I should have called Bill Hamm. He had left his card, and I had even made a point of scotch-taping it on the wall beside the phone. I should have proven Bill Hamm wrong, shown him what a good, law-abiding boy I was, proven once and for all exactly who the raving Rankin was in this establishment.
So why didn’t I?
Because I was only fifteen fucking years old, Adam. I ran outside to help my father.
Things were already underway. The dicks out front at the Legion were silent and leaning toward us like pointer dogs on full-bodied alert. Chaisson was holding his sundae out before him, taking slow deliberate bites to demonstrate the unquestionability of his status as a food-buying patron of Icy Dream with therefore every right to be on the premises. Croft was smiling happily, leaning against the open door of his Escort and explaining to my father that he possessed every intention of going into the restaurant to place a food order, it was just that he had paused to speak with his good friend Collie Chaisson, who had recently emerged from doing same. Loitering, Sir? Wouldn’t think of it.
“And what about that goddamn smoke I’m smelling? What about illegal substances being consumed on my property?” demanded Gord — Gord who was pretty much one giant, pulsating tendon at that point.
“It must’ve been those guys who just left, Sir,” answered Croft, referring to the skids who had booked it at the sight of my father stalking toward them in his ice-blue smock and paper hat. Croft recently had switched to calling Gord “Sir,” when it became apparent the insincere use of the word drove him even crazier than “bud.”
“That’s not even the point,” I said as I jogged over to the group of them, taking my place in restraining-distance behind Gord. “The point is you’re banned, man. You’re not supposed to be here one way or another.”