wasn’t a blonde in a corset who called them “lovey.” Why would the alkies stay and talk to Rank? Swap weight-room stories? Compare how much they can bench?
It was only after Ivor approached him on the same matter that Rank started to think perhaps he did require an attitude adjustment.
“Rich,” Ivor said, “is thinking maybe you’re not having such a good time behind the bar.”
Rank hesitated, before responding, in a moment of startled respect for Rich. Rank scarcely ever caught a glimpse of the guy, yet somehow he had managed to attune himself to the mood of his most insignificant staff member.
“No,” insisted Rank. “I really like it, actually.” And in fact, when the place was busy, he did. It was a million times more diverting than standing around with his arms folded scanning the crowd for violence. When things got cooking, three hours could pass in an eye-blink, Rank bouncing back and forth from the bar to the till to the beer fridge, serving a steady stream of hoarse, happy revellers who tipped bigger and bigger as the night wore on.
“Rich says you come off a little tense.”
Rank did his best to clamp down on a smirk. This coming from a man so coked he practically vibrated.
“No, you know what it is, man,” said Rank. “Exams. Stressing me out.”
“Fuckin exams,” commiserated Ivor, nodding as if in perfect understanding, like a departmental chair.
“You know,” continued Rank, “I should be studying, but I gotta work. I need the money for tuition next year otherwise they’ll kick me out.”
It was weird, Rank reflected later, how in the Goldfinger’s environment he was able to articulate the worst thing going on in his life with such a casual air. Of course his excuse was more a version of the truth than the truth itself, but the fact remained he had just confessed something to Ivor that he’d spoken not a word of to his friends, or anyone other than Gordon Sr. He’d spoken it like an afterthought: otherwise they’ll kick me out.
He’d told his friends he needed money for tuition, but that was all, and to them it was a statement so obvious as to be unremarkable. After all, they were students — everyone was living on a shoestring. If he’d said the same to Kyle, with his two professor parents at McGill, Kyle would have responded, Oh yeah, me too man, I’m so screwed for money.
Ivor leaned, placing his bloated forearms on the bar, and then reached up to scratch his entire head, starting with either side of his chin and working his way up and back. It came across as a kind of frantic thinking ritual, so Rank politely stood and waited for it to be over.
When it was, Ivor dropped his forearms back onto the bar where they landed like pair of immense sausages. He looked up at Rank. “You gonna be able to cover it?”
“Cover what?” said Rank, who had become a bit lost in Ivor’s head-ritual.
“Your tuition.”
“Um,” said Rank. “No, actually. There’s no way I’m going to be able to cover it.”
“How much is it?” Ivor wanted to know.
As Rank stared into Ivor’s bulging, frankly inquiring eyes, he understood what the deal was with Goldfinger’s. Ivor felt no shame in asking such a question — as anyone else in his circle would — because such questions were the foundation upon which the establishment he stood in was built. Goldfinger’s was after all about the numbers. Goldfinger’s was a counting house done up as a pleasure palace. Up the hill at the university there was Milton and Heraclitus, Take Back the Night, Evolutionary Biology and the Western Canon. Here, it was Basic Math. It was Economics 101. It was a turquoise fingernail tapping a tip jar.
Rank told him how much.
Ivor said, “Let me talk to Rich.”
Press pause. This is a little break to remind you that Rank was barely twenty years old. It’s all very well to assume he would know better than to invest seriously in those five words: Let me talk to Rich. Words spoken by a criminal about a criminal. Spoken by a man who has a gun about the man who gave him the gun. Bad news all around, yes? Red flags abounding. Well, my friend, you give our hero too much credit. Earlier your humble narrator was riding poor Kyle pretty hard about his naiveté around the subject of Goldfinger’s. About the fact that, as many rumours as Kyle might have heard about drugs and