The Liquor Vicar Read online

  But its coffee shop had been famous for its fabulous pies, displayed on a revolving wire rack. He remembered the tub-shaped soda fountains that circulated Orange Crush, his favourite, in a tantalizing show. The interior was painted a disquieting mint green, but at the time, he’d loved it. All the kids would stare in the windows as they walked by.

  On the south corner was the beer parlour, which had used to be For Men Only. It had a long bar made of locally harvested lumber — fir, most likely — lovingly built by hand long before the days of such luxuries as power sanders and routers. Every joint had been crafted by some guy with a chisel, a sharp eye, and a steady hand. Whoever he was, here’s hoping he’d gotten the very first pint ever poured there.

  Vicar had once snuck in underage. He remembered having a draft at that old bar, out of a tapered glass that featured an imperial crown and a white plimsol line. The brass foot rail had been grimy, and the face of the bar down near the floor was scarred by thousands of boots. They’d eventually torn out that old beauty, for some inexplicable reason, and replaced it with a more modern, unlovely horror of neon and steel.

  Vicar had always had a romantic notion about being a barman. Not some airborne-mug-dodging saloon keeper, but a true barman in the civilized tradition — the kind of barman who was loved by all and would fill every regular’s order from memory as soon as they set foot upon the premises, ready to slide the correct pint neatly into their outstretched hand when they approached the bar. What a gesture of respect. What a feeling of comfort and reward to the customer. Do that for a man once, and he’d come back a thousand times.

  If only he could create a pub with a homey feel, where everyone would truly want to go; warm and welcoming, a safe, womb-like haven. No fights. No glass or potted palms. Dark wood, nooks and cozies, pictures of our heroes, maybe: a shadow box containing their medals or trophies or diplomas or photos in which they held up a gargantuan salmon. No shit beer, only heavenly nectar selected with care, with no allowance given to the shortcuts of economy.

  After five minutes of dreaming, Vicar deliberately dropped the subject. The fifty thousand he suddenly found himself with wouldn’t even be enough for a down payment. The land alone — yikes! Nothing shy of a miracle would allow that dream to come true.

  ---

  It was bucketing down, as usual, but Vicar enjoyed leaving a movie theatre on a rainy night.

  “What did you think?” Jacquie asked Vicar.

  “I think that if you installed a device on her mouth that filtered out whinging, no sound would have come out of her at all.”

  “Ahh, so you loved it,” she replied dryly.

  “Sorry, Jack. I just never had much patience for romcoms. So forced. Unrealistic. Do women actually fantasize about scenarios like that?”

  She glanced at him. “Well, in a way, yes. At least it’s better than those things men watch. Judo-chopping jet planes and kicking Jeeps. Double the Van Damage — you know, so violent. Infantile. Rom-coms may not be your cup of tea, but at least they’re feasible.”

  “Right, well, my fantasies are somewhat different …” He leered cartoonishly at her cleavage.

  “Oh, you caveman!”

  She laughed and playfully slapped his arm. Vicar trusted that she knew he was joking. He was always gentlemanly to her, in his own rustic way. Anyway, few men could stand movies like that. Even the guys in the cast had probably been retching during filming.

  “I put that cheque in the bank,” he said.

  “I hope you’re going to do something with it other than pay bills.”

  He chuckled. “Oh, yes, my dear. I put it in my savings account, where it will gain one percent per annum, and I will be a millionaire around the time our robot overlords take control of the planet.”

  “Mmm,” Jacquie agreed. “Money’s not worth what it used to be anymore.”

  Vicar turned to her and smirked. She was much younger than he. If she only knew.

  They drove in silence until they rolled up to Vicar’s house. He parked right next to her car.

  “You’re coming in, right? Nightcap?”

  She pretended to be coy. “I suppose I could have a cup of tea.”

  “Do you wanna have a sleepover?” he asked boyishly. “I have popcorn.”

  She cackled and opened the car door.

  Vicar led the way to the house and stopped short in front of the door. It was slightly ajar. “I’m sure I locked the door before we left.”

  Jacquie squinted. “I can’t recall.”

  Vicar raced back through his recollection of their departure. He’d been talking to Jacquie, who, if he remembered correctly, had been putting on lip goo. He must have gotten sidetracked and left without locking the deadbolt. Also, the doorknob was sometimes a bit balky.

  He entered, and upon finding the house completely undisturbed, blew off his concerns. He just wanted to get his coat off and fire up some snacks.

  Jacquie kicked off her shoes and flopped down on the couch theatrically; a huge cloud of dust billowed out in response. She grimaced and put her hand over her nose and mouth.

  “Good lord, Tony. Don’t you have a vacuum cleaner?”

  “It wouldn’t be so bad if you didn’t body-slam it,” he retorted over his shoulder as he turned the corner to his bedroom.

  “Well, you can certainly afford a fancy vacuum now,” she quipped.

  Vicar was met by a dark figure standing two feet in front of him. He was so frightened that he yelped, jumped back violently, lost his footing on the slippery hall runner, and fell backward onto the floor. He cracked the back of his head on the tile and lay there, disoriented and moaning.

  Jacquie leaped up. “Tony? Are you all right?” She saw him lying dazed on the floor and dashed over. “Oh, my God!” She ran her hand down the wall to the light switch and flicked it on. There before them stood a woman clad only in black stockings, a garter belt, and high-heeled shoes. Jacquie let out a terrified shriek. “Who are you?” she screamed.

  The nearly nude woman, totally unabashed, provocatively slid one arm up the door jamb, looked icily at Jacquie, and replied, “Who are you?”

  Jacquie turned to Vicar, still incapacitated on the floor, and demanded accusingly, “Who is she?”

  Walleyed, his bell still ringing, he gargled something unintelligible.

  Jacquie rounded on the woman again, incensed. “You get the hell out of here!” she yelled.

  The woman just sneered. “The Vicar is mine.”

  Now Jacquie snapped back to Vicar. “How long has this been going on?” She was suddenly a dangerous wounded animal.

  Now beginning to gather himself, Vicar addressed the nude invader. “Who are you?”

  Jacquie climbed over Vicar’s supine body, screamed, and launched herself at the naked siren, her fists flailing. The woman fell back against the wall, and Jacquie tripped over Vicar’s legs. She went down, and the intruder leaped cleanly over Vicar. A split second later, Jacquie was in pursuit, springing onto the intruder’s back.

  Vicar hefted himself up on one elbow and watched the tackle in fascinated horror. He winced as Jacquie shoved the intruder into the potted plant that she’d insisted his house needed. He’d told her he didn’t want any damn plants in his house, but he couldn’t have foreseen this reason. The terracotta pot plunged into one of his beautiful studio monitors. The speaker crashed down into an unceremonious heap with an eruption of potting soil, ceramic, and metal, the woofer fairly exploding out of the cabinet. The entire corner of his living room was torn asunder, decorated with randomly scattered spears of mother-in-law’s tongue.

  Jacquie slowly got up, only to duck as the woman fired a high heel at her from close range. It arced over Jacquie’s lowered head and nailed Vicar right in the gut. He grunted, glad it hadn’t hit him a few inches lower. He couldn’t imagine having to explain to the ER doc that his jewels had taken a death blow from a hurtling fuck-me shoe during a home invasion by a naked woman. They’d have put him in a rubber room.

&
nbsp; Now both were standing, grappling for advantage. This dangerous unidentified woman had height on little Jacquie and twisted her over hard, but Jacquie wasn’t about to go down without her pound of flesh. She brought her knee up into the stomach of the exposed woman while viciously yarding on her short, spiky hair, and they both fell, taking Vicar’s Martin D-35 down with them, blasting the guitar to flinders in the process. Then an entire wall unit collapsed, burying them in a heap of fossils and tchotchkes. A Texas mickey weighing at least sixty pounds and filled with twenty years’ worth of pocket change narrowly missed Jacquie’s head and detonated in a frightening starburst of silvery shrapnel. Amid the utter destruction and chaos, Vicar began to appreciate the main theme of this bizarre scenario. Before him was a no-holds-barred, full-on wrestling match between two women who were, from what he could tell, fighting over him. This was most assuredly a first.

  Jacquie laid such a licking on the interloper that she was soon sprawled, starkers and unconscious, on the living room floor, covered in glass, nickels and dimes, and one ironically positioned Barenaked Ladies CD. Vicar retrieved the CD from its resting place, took a prolonged gander — which elicited a growl from Jacquie — and then covered the woman in a blanket.

  ---

  Within a couple of minutes of her arrival, Con-Con was piecing together the fantastic tale. Eyes wide, she was doing her level best to stay professional. As she assessed the undeniable evidence of a shocking amount of violence, she wanted to double over in laughter at what would have been a bizarre happening even in San Francisco’s Tenderloin. Here in Tyee Lagoon, the incident was as hard to believe as a Sasquatch driving an Uber.

  Con-Con got the strange woman up off the floor and put her in the back of the cruiser, wrapped in a blanket. She was holding a Kleenex to her profusely bleeding nose, and her stockings were a torn-up disaster. Con-Con got an eyeful of the goods as she manoeuvred herself into the car. What a treacherous, blazing-hot mess, she thought.

  She took Jacquie’s statement, talking with her quietly, calming her down, and getting her an ice pack for the growing shiner under her eye. Jacquie was bashed up pretty good, but she’d apparently knocked this devious Amazon for six. Vicar’s little cottage was a complete ruin. He muscled an overturned chair back to its feet, collapsed into it, and surveyed the carnage.

  At the entryway, Con-Con said, “I think I’ve got the picture, Jacquie. I have to ask Tony for a statement, too. This is one of the weirdest calls I’ve ever made.” In low tones, she muttered, “I gotta admit, though, she has one helluva rack.”

  Twenty-One / Goodbye

  Yellow Brick Road

  Serena was tall and shapely, with a classic figure like Anita Ekberg. Her ample, high bosom was lavishly displayed and magnetic to the eye. Her posture was stately when she was of a mind to play that role, and her look was imperious, devastating, or come hither, depending on her rapidly vacillating moods. In a tank top, she elicited wolf whistles; in a cocktail dress, she stopped a room cold. She could be icy or intimidating or dripping with sweaty animal heat. Even with a broken nose, she was stunning.

  While she spent the night in detention, the Mounties treated her like a movie star who’d gotten a parking ticket. And when her minions bailed her out next morning, the two cops on duty bade her a cheery farewell, both grinning like schoolboys.

  Serena’s gang were more flunkies than companions. All male, all maintaining that they were just her friends while hiding their erections, every one of them slavish, hovering around hopefully.

  She sashayed to the microbus, uncaring of the chaos she’d created — bent, in fact, on producing more. She vowed to avenge last night’s insult and to bag the Vicar, to boot. She was not accustomed to being refused, let alone to harsh rebuke of the sort that little bitch had doled out. She would pay severely; Serena would have her revenge and her deeply satisfying reward. The Vicar was hers — she would be his consort. Perhaps this one will guide me, she thought.

  “Hey, Serena, whaddya gonna do to her?”

  This from Andy, the yappy one who was constantly trying to insert himself into the centre of events.

  “It’s going to be worse than what I did to that investment banker in the Maserati.”

  They all laughed in cruel agreement, but even the coldest of them also shuddered at the thought of the unspeakable damage her sharp teeth had done during that awkward front-seat tryst. Ghastly, just ghastly. More than anything, Serena was crazy. Those eyes, those spinning wild eyes. You could practically see Mel Brooks falling into their counter-rotating spirals. Considering the high anxiety her presence invariably induced, that seemed only right.

  She had no idea why, but she just knew she was a chosen one. She was sure she had been born great, and she was waiting impatiently for everyone else to notice. Heaven help the person who stood in her path.

  She was known for inexplicable tangents, visionary “missions” that few others would have recognized as anything but lunacy. However, she worked them as if they were critical acts in an epic tale of her ascendance to great heights, from where she would survey her kingdom while her followers recounted her story again and again. Her little altar boys could practically feel truth unravel as she cunningly manipulated random events and moulded them to suit her own narrative. She specialized in seeking out the suggestible.

  The more reckless the exploit, the better, but her antics mostly just added to her criminal record: breaking and entering, stalking, petty theft, assault, vandalism. She spray-painted ghastly statements on any flat surface; incited violence in crowds, even at shrubby folk fests; and performed a catalogue of crazy stunts based on her twisted sense of what she called her “destiny” and the intricate fantasy that was her inner life. She had quite a pile of restraining orders for a woman of only twenty. To her, they were a bit of a status symbol, like medals to a soldier. She instinctively knew how to use her beauty to nefarious advantage.

  “Turn right here, Jeet,” she commanded. “Stop at a mall. I need ice for my face and some makeup. And step on it. We don’t have all day.”

  She had the looks of a movie star, but the instability and explosiveness of uranium. She had been neglected and abused as a child; now she left a chaotic trail of scarred and broken men — and a few women — in her wake.

  Twenty-Two / No Garden-Variety

  Johnson

  Jacquie O’s shiner was more than a mouse under her eye; it was a huge swamp rat. The bridge of her nose was split and bloody; both eyes were badly blackened, the right one swollen shut and covered with gauze; and there were scratches all over her face and neck. She wore huge sunglasses sparkling with rhinestones, each lens nearly the size of a side plate, that made her look like Elton John as seen through an aquarium. They were the biggest sunglasses she had in her dresser. A hoodie over her head concealed her face from all but direct examination.

  She followed Vicar into Liquor. Poutine took one look at her and blurted, “What does the other guy look like?”

  “She,” Jacquie grumbled. “She looks a lot worse, and so she should.”

  Poutine’s eyes bulged, and he silently looked to Vicar for explanation.

  Vicar just shrugged tiredly and whispered, “I’ll explain later.”

  Head down, with the flat of her hand visoring her face, Jacquie mumbled, “Ross, can I just go back and make myself a cup of tea?”

  Poutine practically fell over himself escorting her to the staff room with obvious concern. Sometimes that fusty old goat was a real softie.

  He ran over to the store to get her the tea she liked and a couple of lemons. In a club-footed attempt to give comfort, he also grabbed a cellophane bag filled with mass-produced mini donuts from a clearance bin, oblivious to the fact that stale baked goods discovered in a forlorn crate didn’t quite fit the brief as comfort food for the discerning diner, or even the undiscerning one.

  Back at Liquor, an off-duty Con-Con popped in to buy some chardonnay for her mother. When she heard that Jacquie was in the staff room,
she strolled in back and sat down. Vicar ambled over, too, and the three of them recounted the bizarre details of the truly crazy night they’d had.

  “I was so surprised, I nearly crapped my drawers!” Vicar exclaimed.

  Laughing, Con-Con agreed. “No doubt. I can’t imagine how I’d react to that situation.” She winked. Jacquie, who was eager for a change of mood, cracked up loudly. Con-Con’s partner was named Nancy and they had been together for years.

  “Yeah, well, uh, I did notice she had one helluva rack,” Vicar said.

  Jacquie and Con-Con both cranked their heads hard toward him, feigning shock. Jacquie, her one good eye glaring balefully, exclaimed, “Why, you sexist bastard.” Vicar was brought up short and retreated in confusion. As he left they began to cackle mischievously.

  ---

  The afternoon was very slow, and so Poutine clumsily attempted to chat about music. It was a subject about which he knew nothing, while Vicar, of course, was sure he knew most everything. The last recording Poutine had purchased was Highway 61 Revisited by Bob Dylan, likely in the week it was released. This was to say, on vinyl, in the previous century, back when Bonanza had been the toast of prime-time TV and Captain Kirk was still enrolled in flight school. Poutine no longer had a turntable, and his Chevelle was stock, featuring a wretched-sounding AM radio in the dash that still vainly searched, Vicar was convinced, for a Petula Clark song to play.

  “Y’know, they say Bob Dylan’s got that, uhh, perfect pitch, dere …” Poutine gave Vicar a lofty look. Vicar smirked and quickly swallowed his coffee so he wouldn’t spew it out. “Whut? Whut? That’s what I heard,” Poutine backpedalled.

  Too precious about music to simply appreciate his employer’s attempt at amiable chatter, Vicar responded, “Yes, also Ernest Borgnine. And Triumph the Insult Comic Dog. Oh yeah, and Scooby-Doo.”

  Poutine departed, grumbling, and Vicar continued to snicker until the phone rang. It was Con-Con calling from the police detachment. Vicar tensed; he knew that he might still be charged for assaulting Randy the Dickhead, and he’d been worriedly awaiting the pronouncement.