Watcher (5 page)

“Uh, what?” Tack said in a doomed voice.

Lynn turned her red, swollen eyes toward Tack like he was her only hope. “The worst part was that Conor didn't even
know
what I was feeling!”

More sobs. More nose-honking into Kleenex. More wild-eyed looks from Tack.

“Didn't you
tell
him?” Tack asked. Another rookie mistake.

Lynn looked incredulous. “Oh, that is
so
typical,” she said bitterly. “I shouldn't have to tell my own boyfriend these things. I shouldn't have to explain the difference between when I'm mad and when I'm sad. If our relationship was solid, he would know without being told.”

“Oh,” Tack said. I think he was catching on that the less he said, the better.

“I don't know why I get so upset over these things,” she said, her shoulders convulsing. “I think it's because I'm just too sensitive sometimes.”

“Nuthin' wrong with that,” Tack assured her.

“Am I so terrible to want to have the kind of relationship where two people are so in sync with each other that they know each other's thoughts and feelings without being told? Is that so
wrong
of me?”

“Course not,” Tack told her. His face told me he meant it. He didn't think she was wrong — he thought she was nuts.

“But I'm to blame too,” Lynn said sorrowfully. “Maybe not as much as Conor — but in a way, what happened is my fault too.”

Tack stayed silent. I mentally gave him a gold star.

“Because I,” — sniff, sniff — “Well, I shouldn't say the things I say. I say
terrible
things to Conor when I'm hurting, and I know that, even though
he
hurt
me
first, he didn't
mean
to. I have to learn to let it go.”

“Well, you know, nobody can do right every minute,” Tack consoled. The error alarm in my head went off like mad. I mentally snatched the gold star back.

“So, you think I
was
wrong —” Lynn lifted her chin and looked right at Tack, looked at him like she was taking his measure, the way guys do to each other when they're about to mess it up.

“No, no. Not like that, you know.”

“Come on, be honest. You think
I
messed up! You think it was wrong of
me
to get upset at
Conor
after he was just, like,
totally insensitive
to my feelings.”

Tack did what he should have done right from the beginning. He threw up his hands, shut his mouth, and backed off.

It didn't take Lynn thirty seconds to see that she'd lost her opponent. As I knew she would, she whirled on me.

“What am I going to do?” she moaned, deflating from the bitter disappointment that the argument, that had seemed so promising, hadn't materialized after all.

“It'll be okay,” I said in a monotone. I was determined to shut her down as fast as I could. Maybe Tack would pick up a couple of pointers.

But Lynn had already moved on. She looked at me with her eyes all sad and pleading and said, “Do you think that maybe you could, you know, talk to him?”

It almost always came to this moment, and when it did, I'd refuse in such a way that Lynn
knew
there was no negotiating. I'd make it totally clear that nothing she could say or do would change my answer — I simply could
not
be swayed, pressured, or pestered into it. Except, I always was. No matter how determined I'd start out, she'd wear me down.

So, this time I thought, why not take a shortcut and just do it?

“
No way
,” I said. Because I still had to live with myself.

An hour or more later, after I'd given Conor a call and humiliated myself once again, after he'd sighed and told me to put her on the phone, after they'd talked and patched things up and she'd left, I turned to Tack.

“Man,” I said, embarrassed that he'd seen my sister make me do something against my will, “Look what you got me into!”

“Don't be blamin' me!” he said indignantly. “It ain't
my
fault your sister's crazy.”

And you know what — he was right. That wasn't his fault.

chapter six

A
few weeks later we were adjusting to school being out for the summer, and talking, as usual, about finding jobs. When we passed by The Singing Cane (the store where I'd bought the bong a few years back), Tack suggested we go in and see if Rodney might happen to be looking for someone to work. We're always trying to make a few bucks, but in this case I think Tack really just wanted to check out what was new in there.

We went inside and looked around a bit while Rodney talked to a customer — a woman around my mother's age. I heard her saying she wanted to buy something unique for a friend's housewarming.

“Something a bit daring,” she explained. Her voice dropped to a whisper. “I was thinking Rastafarian.”

Rodney, complete with his “Jamaican” accent, humoured her as she giggled like she'd just said watcher something naughty. He led her to some overpriced stuff that was no more Rastafarian than I am. The display was made up of items they probably sell to tourists in Jamaica, the kind of things that look — but aren't quite — representative of their actual culture.

The commercial stuff he stocks at The Singing Cane is cool but it's missing the peaceful focus of the whole Rastafarian philosophy. You'd have to look hard at Rodney's merchandise to find even so much as a hint of, you know, ‘One Love.'

Anyway, the lady bought a wooden carving — ebony with bright slashes of colour on it — the kind that hangs on the wall. She seemed happy with it and I figured that, along with a unique present for her friend, she'd probably have a pretty good story worked up about the store and the Jamaican guy who'd waited on her. I guess that gave her her money's worth, one way or another.

“Hey, guys.” Rodney turned to us once she'd hit the sidewalk. “What's goin' on?”

“Just hangin,'
mon
,” Tack said, hiding a smirk. We tried not to ride Rodney too hard about the act but it was impossible to resist a small jab once in a while.

We yakked for a bit and then I brought up the subject of jobs.

“I'm not making enough money to hire regular help yet,” he said, shaking his head. “Sales are okay, but there's a lot going out, too. Operational costs, you know.”

We said sure, like we knew all about operational costs. Then Rodney mentioned that there was a place nearby where he thought they might be looking for help, and suggested we check it out.

Turned out he was talking about a bakery that was just a few doors down. It didn't seem likely that they'd be all that interested in either of us, since we knew nothing about baking, but we went in anyway.

Behind the counter stood a girl who looked to be pretty close to our age, but I'd never noticed her around school. That was odd because she definitely wasn't someone you'd miss. She was gorgeous, with dark hair and eyes and glowing skin. In my side vision, I saw Tack straighten up a bit — kind of push his shoulders back and tighten up his gut.

“Yes?” she said shyly, after a quick glance at us.

“We're looking for the owner,” I said. Tack confirmed this by smiling and nodding and smiling some more.

“Yes. My aunt. You will wait one moment please.” She turned and went through a doorway into a back room. Tack let out a barely audible moan as she disappeared out of sight.

“I am Dunja Jankovich.” The announcement came with the arrival of an older woman — the aunt, we presumed, although there was no resemblance that I could see. The young girl came back out behind her but didn't look in our direction again. Instead, she bent down and began arranging pastries in the glass display cases.

“We heard you might be looking for help,” I said.

“You work in bakery before?” she demanded. Her eyes were narrowing, like she saw something sinister in us and thought maybe squinting would help her see it better.

“Not exactly,” I said stupidly. I realized that sort of implied that we'd done something related to baking but there didn't seem to be any way to correct that without sounding like an idiot.

“You have résumé?” she asked next. Of course we didn't, since the whole job search had started on impulse.

“Uh, ma'am?” Tack said suddenly. “We thought maybe we could, uh, volunteer for a few weeks. If we learn good, you hire us.”

“You work for nothing?” She grasped the idea pretty fast for someone whose English seemed a bit shaky.

“Yeah, for free. So you can see if you want to hire us.” Tack offered a huge smile.

“H'okay. You start on Saturday morning. Come early. Five o'clock. I see how it goes.”

He told her we'd be there like she'd just hired him for a twenty-dollar-an-hour job. I was too stunned to say a word.

We were out of earshot of the place before I found my voice.

“What, exactly, did you think you were doing back there?”

“What? With the volunteering?” Tack seemed genuinely puzzled.

“Of course
with the volunteering
.”

“Be a good chance for, you know, on-the-job-training,” he said without looking at me.

“Might be, but that's not why you decided to offer
our
services, is it, Tack?” I looked hard at him but he stayed focused on the sidewalk. “It's because of the girl, isn't it?”

“C'mon, man. It ain't that way,” he protested.

“No? What way is it then? Tell me — exactly what was the force that drove you to tell Dunka that
we
— and by the way,
I'm
not doing it — would spend our Saturdays, starting
at five in the morning
, making cakes or whatever it is we'd be stuck doing?”

“Dunja,” Tack said.

“Huh?”

“Dunja, not Dunka.”

“Whatever.” It didn't take much brainpower to see he was trying to avoid the real issue. Well, I wasn't letting him off that easy.

“Didn't seem like a big deal,” Tack said at last. He looked embarrassed but his voice was defiant.

I shook my head but I didn't say anything else. I figured he'd got the message: he'd let his thinking get skewed by the girl and we both knew it. And, suddenly, I wasn't mad anymore. There was no point in pushing it any further.

We walked in silence for a ways, until I actually started feeling kind of sorry for coming down on Tack that way. I mean, it's not like we'd signed a contract or anything.

And I know what it's like when you meet someone who really hits you hard like that. It throws your brain totally out of whack.

I got thinking about that and had to admit there'd been a few occasions when I'd done really dumb things over girls myself. Not that we need to get into details.

“Okay, I'll go a couple of times, but that's it,” I said after a while, like we were still right in the middle of talking about it. Pretty generous of me, I thought, letting Tack know that I understood and was, you know, there for him.

“Cool,” he said, like he was granting me permission. No sign of appreciation.

I let that go, too.

There was a time when I let
nothing
go, but I've mellowed out a lot since I started looking at life differently. Basically, that goes back to the last time I went to court.

The sentence — a year of supervised probation — had sounded like a joke to me. I figured: big deal. I'll have to show up in some geek's office once in a while and say that I'm staying out of trouble. So what?

Of course, that was before I met Andrew Daniels.

chapter seven

H
e'd been in court the day I was sentenced, though I'd never have pegged him as a P.O. I'd noticed him earlier, sitting near the front, scribbling on a lined pad, and had figured him as a reporter having a slow day, or maybe a law student doing some kind of assignment.

After my sentence was passed, I was told to have a seat until the recess and to see my probation officer, Mr. Daniels, at that time so he could have me sign some papers before I left. That was when he turned and caught my eye and made a gesture that told me he was the guy the judge was talking about. I think my mouth fell open.

I'd had an idea in the back of my mind about what a P.O. would look like, and he definitely wasn't it. He hardly seemed old enough, for one thing. I mean, most of the people he'd be dealing with had to be a lot older — and tougher — than him. I could just picture him telling some scarred and muscle-bound thug what to do. Someone like that could crush him with one finger.

There was more than that, though. He looked so, I dunno, laid back and unconcerned. You'd think someone whose job was to try to get criminals to change their ways would be harsh and fierce — ready to come down hard and fast on anyone who messed up. Daniels had an air about him like he couldn't care less who broke the law or how often.