imagined it all — I imagined a rectangular army of Constable Hamms kicking in the Temple door and throwing you guys to the ground. Poor Adam, glasses flying across the room. Kyle, pleading in handcuffs, fearful of his future political career. I imagined Richard — who in reality that same army had to have been watching pretty closely all along — being dragged in for questioning, his whole half-assed druggie empire crumbling in one raw night, Goldfinger’s with a padlock and sign: Closed until further notice. My imagination went wild with the possibilities, scrolling through every worst-case outcome there could ever be for you, my friends, my sullied associates.
Needless to say, I wasn’t all that keen to learn the real truth, but all and all it constitutes a pretty big question mark to be carrying on your back for the rest of your life, wouldn’t you agree?
Speaking of cops at the door — I expected it myself any day, every day. I travelled all over the country doing the kind of work that didn’t require identification. Shit work, that is. It was easier to do in those days, there were a lot more of the kind of construction projects that happily paid under the table and didn’t ask questions. I even — this is kind of embarrassing — worked under an assumed name for a while, which I was not very good at. I’d tell the boss my name was Joe Smith, and then after a day or so of ignoring everybody calling me Joe, I’d explain that my nickname was actually Rank, and would they please call me Rank.
Which is to say, if the police had been looking for me, I may as well have been walking around waving a Come and get me sign.
And I kind of think I was. I dropped the assumed name pretty quickly, got tired of working shit jobs for crooks like Richard, so pretty soon I was signing my own name to EI forms and rental agreements.
Come and get me! Come and get me!
But as a nominal precaution, I kept moving around. This helped me to feel safe but had the additional merit of preventing me from making any more close friends. I would not be making that mistake again. I read the papers from out east. I watched those true crime shows about unsolved murders and criminals at large. Nothing about Goldfinger’s, nothing about a goon of a bouncer with a juvenile record wanted for questioning. Nothing about anybody dying under suspicious circumstances.
Nothing about it, ever. Not a trace, not a word. Can you blame me that I stopped believing in it, Adam? That the world seemed so eager to accommodate my most urgent, desperate wish? There was nothing I could do about Croft, or Sylvie. That stuff was on the record, written in stone — it had repercussions is what I’m saying — sent ripples throughout the cosmos. I had been on my way to living a certain kind of life and those two incidents blew me completely off course; made me the man I am today, whatever kind of man that is.
But what happened at Goldfinger’s — it was like it hadn’t happened. Which is exactly what I wanted it to be like but couldn’t dare hope. For a long time, I didn’t let myself believe that such could be the outcome. It was uncanny. It was miraculous.
It could only be, I realized, the gods, at work, again.
Which meant I couldn’t trust it. So I moved again, for what had to be the fifteenth time, this time to Ontario, knowing as I crossed the country in what had to be the fifteenth U-Haul that somewhere up there a bunch of jerkwads in togas were drawing their heads together, snickering down from their gilded cloud and just waiting for the moment I relaxed. Waiting, maybe, for me to find a wife, have a couple of kids, buy a house, set up a hammock in the yard, kick back, breathe the fragrant summer air and tell myself: I’m happy.
And only then, of course: the knock on the door.
So I didn’t. I refused. I was not going to even make the attempt to gear my life toward such an obvious outcome. I would show those bastards — I would be lonely. I would live in basement apartments. I would be broke. I would render myself repugnant to the opposite sex. I would drink! I’d be one of those smelly, belching assholes that hangs