Just prior to the bank holdup, I'd been taking stock of my life.
Cabdriver--and I'd funked my age at that. (You need to be twenty.) No real career.
No respect in the community.
Nothing.
I'd realized there were people everywhere achieving greatness while I was taking directions from balding businessmen called Derek and being wary of Friday-night drunks who might throw up in my cab or do a runner on me. It was actually Audrey's idea to give cab driving a shot. It didn't take much to convince me, mainly because I'd been in love with her for years. I never left this suburban town. I didn't go to university. I went to Audrey.
Constantly, I'm asking myself, Well, Ed--what have you really achieved in your nineteen years? The answer's simple.
Jack shit.
I mentioned it to a few different people, but all they did was tell me to pull my head in. Marv called me a first-class whinger. Audrey told me I was twenty years too early for a midlife crisis. Ritchie simply looked at me as if I was speaking in a foreign tongue. And when I mentioned it to my ma, she said, "Ohhh, why don't you have a bloody cry, Ed." You're going to love my ma. Trust me.
I live in a shack that I rent cheaply. Not long after moving in, I found out from the real estate agent that my boss is the owner. My boss is the proud founder and director of the cab company I drive for: Vacant Taxis. It's a dubious company, to say the least. Audrey and I had no trouble convincing them that we were old enough and licensed enough to drive for them. Mix a few numbers up on your birth certificate, show up with what appears to be the appropriate license, and you're set. We were driving within a week because they were short-staffed. No reference checks. No fuss. It's surprising what you can achieve with trickery and deceit. As Raskolnikov once said: "When reason fails, the devil helps!" If nothing else, I can lay claim to the title of Youngest Cabdriver in these parts--a taxi-driving prodigy. That's the kind of anti-achievement that gives structure to my life. Audrey's a few months older than me.
The shack I live in is pretty close to town, and since I'm not allowed to take the cab home, it's good walking distance to work. Unless Marv gives me a lift. The reason I don't have a car myself is that I drive people around all day or night. In my time off, the last thing I feel like doing is more driving.
The town we all live in is pretty run-of-the-mill. It's past the outskirts of the city and has good and bad parts. I'm sure it won't surprise you that I come from one of the bad parts. My whole family grew up at the far north of town, which is kind of like everyone's dirty secret. There are plenty of teenage pregnancies there, a plethora of shithead fathers who are unemployed, and mothers like mine who smoke, drink, and go out in public wearing Ugg boots. The home I grew up in was an absolute dump, but I stuck around until my brother, Tommy, finished school and got into university. At times I know I could have done the same, but I was too lazy at school. I was always reading books when I should have been doing math and the rest of it. Maybe I could have got a trade, but they don't give apprenticeships out down here, especially to the likes of me. Due to my aforementioned laziness I was no good at school, except at English, because of the reading. Since my father drank all our money away, I just went straight into work when school was done. I started out in a forgettable hamburger chain that I don't mention, due to shame. Next was sorting files in a dusty accountant's office that closed down within weeks of my arrival. And finally, the height, the pinnacle of my employment history so far.
Cab driving.
I have one housemate. He's called the Doorman, and he's seventeen years old. He sits at the flyscreen door, with sun painted onto his black fur. His old eyes glow. He smiles. He's called the Doorman because from a very early age he had a strong penchant for sitting by the front door. He did it back home, and he does it now at the shack. He likes to sit where it's nice and warm, and he doesn't let anyone in. This is because he finds it hard to move on account of the fact that he's so old. He's a cross between a Rottweiler and a German shepherd, and he stinks a kind of stink that's impossible to rid him of. In fact, I think that's why no one but my card-playing friends ever enters the shack. The initial stench of the dog slaps them in the face, and it's all over. No one's game enough to lengthen their stay and actually walk all the way in. I've even tried encouraging him to use some kind of deodorant. I've rubbed it under his arms in copious amounts. I've covered him all over with some of that Norsca spray, and all it did was make him smell worse. During that time, he smelled like a Scandinavian toilet.
He used to be my father's, but when the old man died about six months ago, my ma shifted him onto me. She got sick of him using the patch under her clothesline.
("Anywhere in the whole backyard he could use!" she'd say. "But where does he do it?" She'd answer the question. "Right under the bloody clothesline.") So when I left, I took him with me.
To my shack.
To his door.
And he's happy.
And so am I.
He's happy when the sun throws warmth on him through the flyscreen door. He's happy to sleep there and move on a forward slant when I try to shut the wooden door at night. At times like that, I love the hell out of that dog. I love the hell out of him anyway. But Christ, he stinks.
I suppose he'll die soon. I'm expecting it, like you do for a dog that's seventeen. There's no way to know how I'll react. He'll have faced his own placid death and slipped without a sound inside himself. Mostly, I imagine I'll crouch there at the door, fall onto him, and cry hard into the stench of his fur. I'll wait for him to wake up, but he won't. I'll bury him. I'll carry him outside, feeling his warmth turn to cold as the horizon frays and falls down in my backyard. For now, though, he's okay. I can see him breathing. He just smells like he's dead.
I have a TV that needs time to warm up, a phone that almost never rings, and a fridge that buzzes like a radio.
There's a photo of my family on top of the TV from years ago.
Since I hardly ever watch the TV, I watch the photo once in a while. A pretty good show, really, although it gets dustier every day. It's a mother, a father, two sisters, me, and a younger brother. Half of us smile on the photo. Half don't. I like it.
In terms of my family, my ma's one of those tough women you couldn't kill with an ax. She's also developed a bit of a swearing habit, whic
h I'll tell you more about later.
Like I said, my father died about six months ago. He was a lonely, kind, quiet, hard-drinking deadbeat. I could say that living with my ma wasn't easy and it drove him to drink, but there are no excuses. You can make them, but you don't believe them. He was a furniture deliverer. When he died they found him sitting on an old lounge chair still inside the truck. He was just sitting there, dead and relaxed. There was still so much to unpack, they said. They thought he was sitting in there bludging. His liver gave out.
My brother, Tommy, has done most things right. He's a year younger than me and goes to university in the city.
My sisters are Leigh and Katherine.
When Katherine got pregnant at seventeen, I cried. I was twelve then. She moved out of home soon after. She wasn't booted out or anything like that. She left and got married. It was a big event at the time.