Gordy's Got a Problem

Chapter 1: The ProblemLeo Faraday, who was not a Leo by birth sign, and who considered himself to be as far from lion-like as one could get, was doing his best to keep an eye on the little yellow Miata to the right of him while, at the same time, trying to pull off a winning game of I-don’t-see-you. Three times Leo had granted that son-of-a-beach eye contact and the man had used every opportunity to pounce into Leo’s lane like he’d received permission to do so—only to immediately swing back into the middle lane, hopping back and forth as if any second aliens were going to open a VIP lane in the sky, and he had to make sure he was in the right lane to use it. The Miata had managed to gain zero metres of ground over any of the other cars inching along the 401 but had done an amazing job at risking everyone’s bumpers throughout the process, all the while increasing the potential of making the traffic they were already stuck in ten times worse. Leo had no idea what he would do to the man or his little yellow car if that happened. Leo was having a terrible day. It wasn’t the worst day of his life, hadn’t even hit the top ten, but it was fair to say that if it kept getting worse in the exponential proportions that it had been, it could possibly peak at eleventh. Duration was making things harder, and only the gods knew just how long the day was going to continue. In the past twenty-five minutes, he’d travelled less than twenty kilometres. He could have walked faster. For that matter, he could have crawled faster. He would have said that traffic was being an absolute b***h, but then he would be being far nicer to traffic than it deserved. What should have been a forty-some-minute drive from the shop in Brampton to his apartment in the city was now clocking in at an hour-twenty. Most Fridays he could deal with the fact that it took a little longer to get home. After all, he had chosen to live in the city when a lot of the people he worked with had opted for basement apartments in the suburbs. He’d chosen that option because he’d found a not-too-small apartment, on the sixth floor of a mostly okay building, that was only an Uber ride away from everything a young, single guy wanted from the weekend: pubs, clubs, live music, and the waterfront. Except he wasn’t feeling so young these days, even though he was pretty sure thirty-two wasn’t supposed to feel old, and he hadn’t seen a full weekend in months. The ones he had seen, he’d been too tired to do anything but slug-slide between the bedroom and the couch. Six-day workweeks were hard. The seven-day ones were killing him. Not being able to enjoy the city but paying extra for all the perks of living in the city was not only pointless, it was downright foolish. He knew without a doubt that things would seem a lot less dramatic if he could just get some rest. Time off would be great, but he’d settled for a long, deep, dreamless sleep—the kind of sleep where a body was so far gone it took three or four tries to actually wake up. The very thought of it made his eyelids feel like they were ten times heavier than normal—a dangerous sensation for bumper-to-bumper traffic—but sleep hadn’t been the relief it should have been for a while now. For nine years, Leo had lived in his apartment, and for eight years and eleven-plus months, neither sleep nor peace had been an issue. The domestic disagreements were few and far between and they had a tendency to fizzle out as quickly as they began. The kids in the building usually ran out of hooting and hollering juice by dusk, and most of the time the homeless people walking past the building preferred to mumble as oppose to scream. His upstairs neighbour, however, was going to be the death of him. In a move that defied both common sense and consideration, the Miata took Leo’s one-second pause to zip back into the outside lane, and it was only by the grace of all things good that Leo got to his brakes in time. He swallowed every curse his mind was throwing at him and gripped the wheel tighter than he needed to. He didn’t pound on it, or punch his dash, or make any of the gestures he so desperately wanted to. It wasn’t worth the energy he’d expend, and calm was one of those things that once one lost their grip on it, the process of gathering the reins back up became daunting. He could literally see his cut-off and the only thing he wanted to focus on was getting off the highway. From there he’d decide on the next step. As his father always said, “One step at a time will eventually be a whole journey.” That phrase had been running through his mind like a ninety’s pop song all day, but that was the case with most of the new-age, spiritually-freeing, flower-power mantras his parents shared with anyone that would listen. Once they got in your head, it was almost impossible to get them out. There were many places he could go from where he was. The park, for a run; summer nights in Toronto were too quickly gone not to take advantage of them when they came along. Or the diner, for a well-deserved, so-big-you-need-both-hands-sized burger complete with fries. He could grab a couple of beers or a bottle of wine, sneak up to the roof, and watch the neighbourhood go dark. There was also a text from his best friend Jeff, as yet unanswered, asking him to come out and watch their other best buddy Fig play an open-mike session at Lola’s. Which would be cool, if he wasn’t ready to fall down from exhaustion, and if he didn’t know for a fact that Fig wouldn’t see the stage until at least nine but probably closer to ten or eleven. So, he could go. He probably should go. There was only about a four percent probability that he would, though. After all, he was expected back at work tomorrow morning for eight. Probably Sunday, too. Then Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday… “Kill me now,” Leo grumbled. Except even as the words left his mouth, he could hear both his parents talking about life choices, taking steps toward happiness, and retaining responsibility for the paths on which we walked. It was all said very positively—they weren’t the type for negative reinforcement—but it was still hard to hear. Even when he was the one thinking it. “Everybody else gets to blame everybody else for their shitty lives,” he mumbled. He looked at the Miata, now a car’s length ahead of him in the far left-hand lane, directing his comments at it. “Why not me, hmm? How about I blame you, you yellow-car-driving, unbelievably annoying jerk?” While he hated the idea of just going to the apartment and sleeping—relinquishing his dissolving youth to sleep, living out his life for the sole purpose of getting up and going to work—there was no doubt that his credit card statement would be more than appreciative of the continuing overtime. If his damn truck hadn’t needed that damn alternator last month, and if his hydro bill hadn’t climbed sixty percent in the last three years for no good reason, and if gas prices weren’t so high, then maybe he could have told work exactly where they could put their weekend shifts. But it had, and they did, and they were, and that was life. So, instead of the diner, he pulled into a Subway when he was free of the highway and picked up what the sarcastic side of his mind pointed out would be the only item of notable inches for him that night. He had barely pulled into the parking lot of his apartment building when his littlest neighbour, Samir, made a run for him. Up the overgrown hill that was the “garden area” of the entrance, down onto the cracking asphalt of the laneway, and up to the side of his truck without a concern in the world. Leo had experienced his share of near heart attacks when the boy had first started pulling that move, and more than once he’d told the kid how dangerous it was. Neither Samir, nor Samir’s mother, seemed to care about that particular danger, however, so Leo had stopped trying. Now he knew to watch for the dark-haired disaster-waiting-to-happen. He dreaded the constant turnover in their building, knowing one day, sure as sugar, some new hotshot was going to pull into the parking lot without being quite so cautious and Samir would be no more. Or any one of the twenty-odd kids that gathered down there to play, because the other kids weren’t much better than Samir. They’d had a playground once. And an actual garden with actual flowers. Garbage pails that got emptied. Walkways that were maintained and cleared of snow. But space was valuable, litigation too damn likely, and labour too expensive and/or difficult to keep. Such was the world these days. “And if you keep thinking s**t like that, you’re not just going to feel old, you’re going to make yourself old,” Leo mumbled as he lowered the window and shifted the truck into park. “Leo, Leo, Leo!” Samir sang, extending the vowels each time so that his name sounded like it was thirteen letters long instead of three. “Leo, guess what?” Leo leaned out to peer at him. “You won the lottery and you, me, your mom, your auntie, and every one of your buddies are moving to the Bahamas?” “Ha,” Samir snorted the sound as much as he spoke it. His lips were that weird colour of pink turning blue that kids got when it was getting too cold to be out in short sleeves and not quite late enough to go inside, but too close to being late enough that no kid wanted to go inside for a jacket and risk getting told to stay in. Leo reached for the seat beside him. “You want my jacket, Sam? You can bring it up to me tomorrow sometime.” Samir shook his head. “Someone’s in your spot.” He’d said “spot” with enough of a spit that Leo could tell he was hoping for drama. A good shout off between neighbours was pretty entertaining to a bunch of kids too young to venture far enough away to find actual fun. “What do you mean?” Leo asked, even though he knew exactly what Samir meant. It wasn’t the first time and it wouldn’t be the last someone had ignored the numbers on the parking spaces and grabbed his empty one. That’s what happened when your parking spot was too close to the entrance. Samir wiped his nose and pointed with the same slicked-up hand. “You know what. Number eight. Your parking spot. That white car with the throwing star on it.” He looked at Leo, eyes sparkling. “You gonna tear them up?” Leo frowned. “Uh, no, Leo. I’m not going to tear up anyone or anything. Where do you even learn stuff like that?” He waved Samir away. “Back on the grass where it’s safe, please. You sure you don’t want my jacket? You look like you’re freezing. Shouldn’t you be going in for supper?” Samir shrugged but backed up a couple of steps. “Nah. Momma and Auntie are visiting with my grandma. Grandma’s boyfriend says they sound like a bunch of old hens.” He jumped over the curb to the lawn, tucking both hands into his armpits and waving his elbows. “Cluck, cluck, mother fu—” “Uh-uh-uh!” Leo shook his head, glaring, and closed the window. Most of the time Samir was a good kid, but he definitely had a rotten streak. Maybe all kids did. He drove past his own parking spot, the spot with the white Mercedes sitting in it, and pulled into one of the visitor’s spots along the right side of the lot, even though parking there as a tenant was a no-no. He stopped to grab a picture of the Mercedes in case the property manager tried to raise hell over his choice of parking and realised at the last minute he’d forgotten his sub in the truck. He walked back, cursing, even though it took only a couple of minutes, because apparently the day had no intention of getting any better regardless of where he was. As both elevators were in use, Leo didn’t bother to wait. He took the stairs two at a time and told himself that would make up for shirking the gym. He kicked off his work boots at the door but carried them to the balcony. It was a tiny, uncomfortably crumbly thing, just under a metre deep and about twice that lengthwise. It was all he needed, though—somewhere to air out his work boots and look at the street while he ate. In the ever-growing metropolis of the city, six stories weren’t high enough to see that far, but it was high enough to get him up and away. To get his face into the wind and breathe fresh air, to get his ears out of the bustle and listen to doves or pigeons or whatever-the-hell-birds were trilling out their evening devotions from the roof, and for several long minutes there was only him, his sandwich, and heaven. It was peaceful. Too peaceful. With less than half his sub eaten, his eyelids had already started to close.