The Blue Helmet (5 page)

Limping and bleeding, I made my way back home. Once inside the apartment, I tossed my clothes into the laundry and took a hot bath, sitting in the steam, working out a story to tell my father when he got home. Later, I explained that a bunch of guys I didn’t know had jumped me in the park near our apartment. He bought the lie, shaking his head and muttering as he examined my battered face, his eyes brimming with sadness, as if the beating had been his fault. I stood quietly, holding back my anger that he hadn’t been there to help me, that he was never there.

That wasn’t my last fight, but no one bullied me again. Without planning it or even knowing what I had been doing, I had learned my lesson. You had to stand up to them. To everyone. No matter what the odds, never show weakness, always be willing to take them on, never give in. They had to know that it would cost them something, even if they won.

Y
OU DIDN’T HAVE TO
know anything about the restaurant business to see that Reena was never going to make a lot of money. She opened three times a day, with periods in between when the doors were locked. The morning shift offered coffee, muffins and toast and donuts, fried egg sandwiches and omelettes. Lunch meant salad, soup of the day, and a variety of sandwiches. Dinner was a choice between the two dishes that Reena decided to cook that day. The menus were chalked on a blackboard above the coffee counter.

She made a huge pot of soup in the morning, using vegetables that I chopped up and whatever meat was left over from the day before, adding spices that she shook out of jars without labels.
She made the sandwiches to order, standing at the wood block in the kitchen, her hands a blur, a cigarette dangling from the corner of her mouth. If the customers noticed the odd hint of ash in their food, they never complained.

She and I ate our meals in the kitchen, except at night, when she sometimes invited me down to her apartment for a snack.

Reena didn’t talk much about herself. I barely remembered her from my childhood—just the one extended visit when I was little and my mom was still alive. My father never mentioned her until the day he packed me off to live with her like a bundle of used clothes you’d ship to a charity. And she didn’t pelt me with questions about myself. Maybe my father filled her in on what a failure and lost cause I was, maybe not. She didn’t seem to care.

Which was just fine with me. If I had to admit it, I’d say I didn’t mind living with her at all. I liked her. As long as I did my work, she left me alone. I didn’t have to go to school or answer to anybody. I liked the fact that I was earning my keep, even a little extra. I was saving up to buy a used
TV
for my room. True, I had an axe hanging over my head—Sergeant Carpino’s threats—but I decided to let that go for a while. All that had
happened back home. There was nothing back there for me, anyway.

I was emptying the dishwasher, my face bathed in steam, while Reena cut chunks of beef—the dinner menu, she announced, was beef stew or nothing, she was too tired to put two choices on the menu that day—when the phone rang.

“I’ll get it,” she said, wiping her hands on her apron. Behind me I heard, “Hello. Oh, hi, Doug. Yeah, he’s right here.”

I shook my head, mouthed No, and lifted a stack of hot plates to the shelf.

Reena held her hand over the mouthpiece. “At least say hello to him,” she said. “He—”

I headed for the door. “Come on, Lee,” she insisted. “Do me a favour.”

Muttering to myself, I took the phone from her.

“Hello.”

“Hi, Lee. How’s it going?”

His voice was friendly, casual, but forced. In the background I heard the whine of a pneumatic wheel gun, the hiss of a hoist, a clang.

“All right.”

“Reena tells me you’re doing real good at the café.”

“I guess.”

“That’s great. Glad to hear it.”

Silence. Reena rolled her eyes, waved her hand as if to say, I give up.

“Things are working out okay, then.”

What did he want me to say? Yes, father, you can put your guilt back on the shelf? You threw me out but it’s the best thing you could have done for me because now I’m happy and content and life is wonderful?

“I’m fine,” I said.

“That’s good, so—”

“Not that you give a shit.”

There was another, longer pause.

“Well,” he said, his voice flat, “I guess I better get back to work. I’m in the middle of a tune-up.”

“Don’t let me keep you.”

He hung up without saying goodbye.

She was one of the regulars—meaning she turned up a few mornings a week, sat in one of the booths with a coffee, and nibbled at a fried egg sandwich while she busied herself on her laptop. I figured her for a student at the high school up at 18th and Birmingham, or maybe the college.
She had shoulder-length black hair with a tight wave in it, light brown skin, and dark eyes.

The first day I saw her, I went to bus her table, even though all she had was a plate and cup. I plunked down my plastic tub and picked up her plate. “Another coffee?” I asked.

She looked up from the screen and gave me a wide smile. “No, thanks,” she said. “Better not. You the boss?” she asked playfully.

“No. I’m the hired help.”

“You don’t even rate a name tag?”

It took me a second to catch on. “Lee,” I said.

“Well, Lee,” she said, draining her cup and placing it inside the tub. “Don’t forget this.”

I stepped back as she wriggled to the edge of the booth and stood up. She was my height, well built, and she smelled lemony. She closed the laptop and shoved it into her backpack.

“See you,” she said, shouldering the pack, and she was out the door before I could get her name.

So the next time I saw her, on a rainy morning a few days later, I worked my way toward her booth, collecting cups and plates and cutlery, wiping down the tables. She had finished her sandwich, but the coffee stood beside her notebook, three-quarters full, a skim of cream on top. She was wearing a tight pink sweater
and black denims, and in profile she was enough to stop the breath in my throat.

“How’s it going?” I said, taking her plate.

“Not,” she said, reversing her pencil and erasing some numbers from the page. “Know anything about periodic tables?”

“The only tables I’m familiar with are usually covered with dirty dishes.”

She laughed, sat back, and tossed the pencil down.

“It’s not fair, you know,” I said.

“What’s not fair?”

“You know my name …”

“Eileen,” she offered.

We made small talk for a few minutes while the traffic hissed by on the street outside, the café door opened and closed as customers came and went, the tinkle of spoons and soft rumble of talk around us. I could have gone on like that for hours. Eventually, she looked at her watch and packed up her stuff and left, leaving the fragrance of her citrus cologne behind her.

It went like that for a couple of weeks, and then one Friday she came in earlier than usual, as if in a hurry, and got herself a coffee without ordering anything to eat. While she tapped away at her keyboard, she kept looking toward the
door. I hung back. I had decided to ask her to go out with me and I was working up the courage. There wasn’t much chance, I figured—her a serious student, me a dropout living above a café with my aunt—but I was going to give it a try.

I was taking a break at my booth, waiting for my chance, when a stranger came in. A tall, college type—designer backpack, leather jacket, expensive trainers. Probably had a flashy sports car parked in the college lot. He marched straight to Eileen’s booth, planted his feet, and began to talk. I couldn’t make out what he was saying but his body language was loud and aggressive.

She said something and he grabbed her arm. She shook him off, and this time I heard her tell him “No!”

He clutched her arm again, with two hands this time, as if he meant to drag her out of the booth. I scrambled out of my seat.

“Let her go!” I said.

He turned to me, his face reddened. “Mind your own frig—”

I drilled him in the rib cage, felt my knuckles connect with bone. He grunted in pain, dropping Eileen’s arm, and I shoved him back. His eyes signalled what he would do, and before
he had the chance, I stepped closer and threw two solid punches into his face before he hit the floor. He groaned and rolled over, struggling to his hands and knees.

“Stop! Stop!” I heard behind me, but the words didn’t register. Fists pummelled my shoulders. Somebody was screaming.

“Get up,” I hissed, ready to give him more.

Someone was still pounding away at me. I swirled to face him. It was Eileen, her face livid, her teeth clenched. Why was she hitting
me?
I grabbed her wrists. “Calm down,” I told her, as she yanked free of my hold. “It’s all right—”

“What? You’re going to beat
me
up now?” she yelled.

I became aware of faces at the tables, staring at me as if I was in a cage.

Eileen’s eyes flared, her fists clenched. “What’s the matter with you?” she shouted. “You could have hurt him.”

“But—”

“You think I needed you to save me, is that it, hero? Christ, you’re as bad as him!”

“I—”

She quickly gathered her things, helped the guy to his feet and, after glaring in my direction, helped him out the door.

Reena was not pleased. Later that morning, after she had hung the
CLOSED
sign in the window, she sat me down in the kitchen. “I’m trying to run a business here,” she began.

“He was going to hit her,” I said, cutting her off. “I had to do something.”

“Whether you had to do something or not isn’t the issue,” Reena said, tucking her hair behind one ear. She shook a cigarette free of the pack, plucked it out with her lips, and lit up. “What’s important is how you handled the problem—assuming you had to do anything at all.”

“What else could I have done?”

“Use your imagination,” she said. “But keep in mind what I just said. I don’t run a couples’ counselling service. You tell people like them to take their problem somewhere else. That’s it.”

“Guys like that need a lesson.”

“Lee, think about it. You hit him so he wouldn’t hit her. What’s wrong with the picture?”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

Reena stubbed out her cigarette on the saucer she was using as an ashtray and stood up.

“I got some work to do,” she said.

There were things I couldn’t say to Reena. About the darkness that gushed into my brain like water from a broken pipe. About the compulsion in my muscles, the voice that screamed in my ear to hit and hit and pile up hurt, to keep going until whoever was on the receiving end had collapsed to helplessness. I couldn’t tell her that I knew exactly what she meant. Knew she was right.

Before I got kicked out of school the second time, I had a girlfriend the kids had nicknamed Barbie—her real name was Beth—because she was slender and had long blonde hair framing a pretty face. All the girls envied her and all the guys wanted her. Maybe girlfriend is the wrong word. Maybe it was all in my mind.

We went to the movies one Saturday night, necked through the whole picture. Afterwards, I had it bad. I saw only her. Heard only her. Wanted to escort her to school in the morning, to walk her home at the end of the day. I engineered things so I met her between classes. I called her every night.

We went out a few more times. I began to think she was mine. Thought she wanted it that way. Then one day when I went to meet her after school at our usual place—outside the main
office—she didn’t turn up. I asked one of her friends if she had seen Beth.

“Before or after she got into Freddie Tanner’s Audi?” she sneered.

On the phone that night, Beth’s mother told me Beth couldn’t come to the phone. She had too much homework.

A few days later, I was waiting in the library parking lot across from her house when Tanner dropped her off. I saw his profile through the side window, hair swept back off his forehead, a big ring on his finger, before he peeled away.

I called out to her. She didn’t look happy to see me, but she acted cool, as if it was her brother she’d been out with. She walked across the road and sat on a bench off to the side, away from the library door.

I stood in front of her, hemming her in, and demanded to know why she’d been ignoring me. A toxic brew churned in my guts—humiliation, anger, frustration.

“I just didn’t feel like being with you lately,” she said, as if that explained everything.

“What are you talking about? I don’t get it.”

“Look, Lee, no offense, but sometimes you’re like … like a blanket.”

I felt the tingle in my limbs that sometimes
came before the black rush. “What the hell are you talking about?”

“You’re suffocating me. Every time I turn around, you’re there. I need room to breathe.”

“I thought we were—”

“We were what? We went out a few times. I like you.”

“Then why were you with him?”

“Because he’s fun, that’s why. And he doesn’t hover over me like a demented guardian angel.”

“You’re nothing but a tramp,” I blurted.