Chapter One

Chapter One

            “Carville!”

            The shout raced through the department store, bouncing off walls and over priced flat-screens before launching an assault on a pair of ears near the back of the stores. Those ears, quickly overwhelmed by the superior force, sent an urgent message to the brain which responded by lurching from its restful state. Max opened his eyes and immediately regretted it. The light from a nearby monitor seared his retinas and some noxious odour was venturing up his nose. His dark hair fell over his eyes in an insistent manner, and his lanky body creaked as he stirred.

            “Carville! I want you in my office now!” Max swept his head from left to right trying to locate the source of the reveille. Quickly he settled on a direction and rose from his prone position on a deck chair. He shuffled forward, stifling a yawn and fighting a losing battle against rogue follicles and praying with great fervour that the source of that smell was not, as he feared, himself. A brief time later saw him knocking on the door of the store manager’s office looking, if anything, even more dishevelled then before.

            “Come in.” Said a stern voice from within, and he did so, closing the door gingerly behind him. As he sat down in the stiff wooden chair that was offered to him, he attempted to force his body language to convey a subtle combination of penitence and respect. One of the men across from him, wearing a manager’s uniform reacted to this display by leaning forward, like a lion spotting a limping gazelle. He quickly righted himself, like a lion that had realised that his would be prey was the gazelle equivalent of syphilitic, and didn’t want to take any chances. The other man, short, bald and dressed like a customer, simply appeared mildly perturbed.

            “Max, I called you in here to discuss your recent job performance.” Said the manager. A demeaningly cheerful nametag on his shirt would inform the careful observer that not only was his name Charles but that he would be glad to offer assistance, if only they would ask. “I’ll be blunt. It’s been terrible. You’re routinely tardy, unfocused, unhelpful. Your sales of big ticket items are nonexistent, you bathe irregularly and you appear to be, at this very moment, remarkably hung-over.”

            “Surely my current state of post-inebriation speaks to my good character.” Max said, attempting to outflank his conversational adversary’s interpretations. “Anyone feeling like I feel now, who nevertheless refuses well-earned sick leave deserves neither rebukes nor stern discipline, but accolades for his dedication to this store and possibly increased monetary compensation.” Max was aware of how risky this gambit was, but his attempt at meekness has failed to ameliorate his boss’s anger. Now, he decided, was the moment for boldness.

            “Shut up Carville.” If anything Charles seemed even more irritated. “You may be incompetent, abrasive, obnoxious and a little bit stupid, by nevertheless I would`ve felt guilty about just firing you; it would`ve been like sending a new born calf into a minefield. So, against my better judgement I decided to give you one more chance; a full performance review. I said to myself, ‘If he does well, I just might not fire his a*s.’”

            “That is absolutely fascinating, Charles.” Max said in what he was sure was a reverent tone. His chin now rested on his upturned palms and he gazed at the manager with wide eyes.

            Charles continued through clenched teeth, “That customer service portion of the review has now been completed by Oscar. I had Oscar here to pose as a costumer and perform the review, the results of which we are about to hear.”

             “Well,” Said Oscar, “I first approached Max three days ago and expressed my interest in purchasing a blow dryer. He brusquely informed me that he was on his break. I returned fifteen minutes later, by which time his break should have ended, only to be rebuffed once more, by the same excuse. At no point did he give any indication that he recognised me, despite our having worked together for almost a year.” This happened three more times in the space of an hour. With each exchange he grew progressively cruder before storming off.”

            “In my defence, nobody’s at their best when they’re drunk.” Said Max and immediately regretted it.

            Charles’s anger was swift and fierce. “Are you saying you were drunk, here, in my store?” He exclaimed.

            “Uh... Oscar, you said you were here three days ago?”

            “Yes.”

            “Well, sir, I’m afraid I can’t answer your question.”

            “Why the hell not?”

            “I can’t remember Tuesday. I’m just drawing a blank on the entire day.” Max responded, as a satisfied, Cheshire smile crept across his face, a peculiar inversion of the storm that appeared to be brewing on his Manager’s.

            “Finish your damn report Oscar; I want to get this over with.”

            “Right, well, after Mr. Carville had stormed off I decided to give it one more try. I eventually tracked him down to the section of the store selling ladies underwear. What he was doing there I won’t dwell on suffice it to say he had never been assigned to work in that part of the store, nor should he ever be allowed near it again. Once more I asked him where I might find a blow dryer to which he responded, and I quote, ‘What’s your problem man? What do you even want with a blow dryer, baldy?’ He then spent the next several minutes trying to construct a pun with my name and variations on the theme of hairlessness, including ‘Baldscar’. As I recall he eventually settled on ‘Oscarlopecia’. Setting aside any considerations of literary quality I found this offensive and Mr. Carville’s tenacity was, frankly, disturbing. In summary, based on Mr. Carville’s complete incompetence and dereliction of duty I am forced to recommend his immediate termination.”

             For the first time in the meeting Charles seemed calm, satisfied even. “Well Carville, what have you got to say for yourself?”

            Max paused, and for a moment appeared to be considering the question with a serious look on his face; then he cracked a smile, and a giggle bubbled up to the surface. “Hah, ‘Oscarlopecia’. Classic!”

            “You’re fired Mr. Carville. Now get out.”

 

            Max wandered the mean streets of Halifax alone and destitute; a vagrant with no discernable human or material connections, answerable only to himself. He was truly alone, excepting the strangers who passed him by; and the intensity of the late September sun beating down on him. He looked at his lost job, not like a belay line tethering him to the cliff face; that job had been shackles around his ankles and cuffs on his hands. He was tasting freedom for the first time in months! Accompanying this reverie was his iPod, alternating between Bob Dylan and Bruce Springsteen.

            The atmosphere this narrative, teetering so precariously between the purest self-indulgence and outright delusion, was so powerful that it actually became self-sustaining. Even after he snapped out of, some three hours later, it continued on; an incorporeal, nomadic ambience, stopping only to turn the odd aspiring accountant into a garage band front man.

            In its wake stood a dismayed Max, rapidly shedding any notion of an immaterial existence and replacing it with a column of red numbers; tuition, rent, food, textbooks, beer and gas they were called. They, and others like them, towered menacingly above a small cowering figure Max knew to be his bank balance. He knew that little fellow didn’t stand a chance, not without serious reinforcements.

            “I need Giovanni.”

 

            “I need help.” Max said this while sitting in a well padded recliner in the center of a dark, musty, disorganized apartment. For the second time that day he attempted to manipulate his body language to his advantage, this time to appear suppliant, this was no easy task in so comfy a chair.

            Across from him, one arm draped over the back of a tattered, floral print sofa, the other guiding a cup of tea to his thin mouth sat Giovanni.  He was a tall, olive-skinned man with an aquiline nose and neatly combed dark hair. “Please, explain for me your predicament.” Giovanni spoke in a delicate fashion, with a light English accent he had developed in boarding school.

            “It’s like this. My bank account is very nearly empty, I just lost my job and if my rent check bounces next week I’ll be out on my a*s before I can blink. My car is next to worthless, even if I could find a buyer it may not be enough.”

            “In short, you reek of desperation, you’re destitute and in need of a loan. So you come to me. Interesting. Why not go to your parents.”

            “That is definitely not an option. To them I’m just credit risk who raids their fridge during the summer.”

            Giovanni’s eyebrow rose suggestively at that last comment; although what exactly they were suggesting wasn’t entirely clear. Perhaps he found Max’s cynicism towards his home life intriguing, maybe he considered an elegantly raised eyebrow a rare and beautiful thing and relished the opportunity to employ it. “But why me, dear Max. Surely you have some friend who would float you a loan until you get on your feet, and as you can see I myself am by no means living the luxurious lifestyle of one with income to dispose of.” He gestured grandly, indicating the rest of the dingy room, as though trying to draw the eye away from his well groomed and well dressed self.

            “Everyone I know is in the same boat I am; they’ve got bills to pay and limited cash flow. Asking one of them for cash would like searching for charisma at a Liberal party convention, humiliating and unrewarding. Whereas you, well, what can I say except that your associations are well known; in truth they’re infamous on campus.”

            “I hope you aren’t suggesting any impropriety on my part.” This was uttered in a bored tone, like a writer typing worn clichés for the thousandth time.

            “No, of course not. But I thought you might know someone who doesn’t burden themselves with credit checks or paperwork, who, if the customer is suitably desperate, can work miracles.”

            “You want to me to direct you to a loan shark? You, a white, middleclass university student from some backwater Maritime town wants to get mixed up in that sort of dangerous, not to say illegal, sort of business.”

            Max seemed visibly relieved, he hadn’t been certain until now that he and Giovanni had been on the same page and now that he was he was determined to ignore the warning in Giovanni’s words. “Yes, that’s exactly what I want.”

            “Are you sure about this? Wouldn’t you rather I just found some psychopath who would pay you a couple grand for the privilege of breaking your legs? No, I can see you’re set on this choice, so that leaves only one question. How much will you be wanting?”

            Max had been prepared for this. His hand darted to his pocket and slowly withdrew a slip of paper. This he slid across the table between the two men like a curling rock, and one which warranted ginger handling on account of being filled with grenades. Giovanni snatched it up with an exasperated sigh and exaggerated irreverence and read it. “That much, eh? You’ve got some gambling debts you aren’t telling me about?” Before Max could respond Giovanni continued, “No, there’s no need to explain. You’re reasons, your problems, they are your concern. My only involvement in this is as a middleman, a facilitator.”

            “So you’ll help me then?”

            “Yes and no. I won’t be directing you to a loan shark, their rates are exorbitant and in the likely event that you can’t make a payment I find myself being partly responsible for a maiming. I don’t want that. Instead I’ll put a call in to a friend of mine who needs some rather delicate work done. You’re young, fit; you should be working for a living, not putting your life into the hands of some usurer.”

            “Hold on a moment!” A note of worry tinged his exclamation, Max’s face contorted to match. “What kind of work are you talking about?”

            “Well, I can’t say for sure, except that it is likely to be labour intensive and time consuming. On the plus side, he pays up front, and the risk of crippling injuries is far lower than it could be, given the alternatives.” Giovanni crossed his legs and stared intently at Max, as though he could wrestle from him a desirable response with his eyes. And who’s to say he couldn’t.

             “If that is the case then I have to accept.”

            “Sure? Now’s your last chance to back out. Once I’ve made my phone call, Amir will think of you as one of his men, at least until your debt to him has been paid.”

            “I’m sure.”

            “Excellent, he’ll be in touch.”

            Max stood to leave, but paused, “What exactly are you getting out of this.”

            “A finder’s fee, Mr. Carville.”

 

            An hour’s passing saw Max, still sweating from his walk in the midday sun; fling himself with abandon onto his couch. Beside him lounged a tall man in his early twenties; his fingers flailed violently on a controller and a small headset curled around light brown hair and a strong jaw. The television screen, the sole source of light save for a tiny amount of sunlight that managed to sneak around the edge of the blinds, showed a Russian Nationalist, armed to the teeth and seizing violently as he flew through the air in a large explosion.

            “Hey, Nathan.” Max said, groping for the switch on a nearby lamp.

            “Goddamn rocket w***e!”  Nathan shouted into his headset, before dropping it to the couch. Beside it he laid the controller; the screen now displayed a series of numbers, Nathan’s face showed anguish and what sounded like jubilant Japanese was radiating from the discarded headset. “Hey Max. Why’re you home so early? I thought your shift went until six tonight.”

            “Not today it didn’t.” Max had given up trying to find the switch, and had instead sought out the fridge in the adjoining kitchen, seeking the warmth of its interior light, and the coolness of a beer bottle on his skin. “You want one?”

            “It’s like, one in the afternoon.” Replied Nathan starting another game. Max nodded and grabbed another beer before reprising his status as couch observer. “So what happened, man? Ah, thanks.” He took a drink and blew a hole in an American soldier.

            “I got fired.”

            “F**k man, that’s awful.” In the background a mine detonated, in the foreground an enemy combatant was being stabbed in the face. “What happened?”

            “A few days ago I turned up for work wasted; the same day some sort of performance review was happening. And today I was a bit hung-over.” Meanwhile Max`s hand had picked up a scent; it hounded a bag of nachos across the floor before dragging them back to Max and a delightfully salty doom. For the nachos that is, Max would likely suffer nothing worse than hypertension.

            An inferno engulfed the screen, and Nathan returned the controller and headset to their rightful place; on the ground between his feet and a wet towel. His faced showed not the anguish of someone who was just killed by a friendly airstrike. His face was calm, he was smiling gently and his posture suggested that only a few feet and an instance of time separated the two from a comforting hug. All in all, Max was just about ready to flee. “Man, Max. We have got to talk. You can’t keep living like this. Ever since Kateryna dumped you’ve been in a rut. I know you liked her, I get it. I’ve been there too, but you have got to get over her.”

            Max glared at Nathan and said nothing, instead took a drink.

            The television glared at them both and said nothing, instead it was turned off.

The lamp was flicked on and seemed delighted by the whole business.

            “Don’t give me that look, you know I’m right.”

            The look changed from angry and defensive to surly. “What look?”

            “Don’t be childish; I’m trying to help you. You are unemployed, the school year has just begun, and I can’t imagine was your little bout of depression will do to your grades. You need to find a job, desperately; you should start looking, now.”

            Max decided to derail this pseudo-intervention before it gained any real traction, and to do it, he would need logic. “I don’t need a job, I need cash.”

            This tactic worked about as well as you’d expect, Nathan remained undeterred. “What’re you going to do, rob a liquor store? Deal drugs? Mug some old lady? Or maybe you’re going to sell your body and then reinvest your gigolo profits into collateralized debt obligations. I know it can’t be one or three; you wouldn’t go for anything that carried even the remote possibility of having to run somewhere. Probably not option two either; you failed chemistry and almost every Econ course you’ve ever taken. And it can’t be four because Goldman Sachs sort of ruined that for everybody.”

            “I hadn’t even considered most of those.”

            “What have you considered then?”

            “What are you, my mother?

            “No, I’m the guy who’s going to have to look for a new roommate once you land on the street.”

            “Frankly the street is sounding pretty good right about now.”

            The argument had resolved sniping back and forth. But Nathan knew what to do, he`d been practising all morning. When faced with a sniper you lob a grenade, or call in an airstrike. You don`t sit there trading shots and waiting to die. He lunged forward and grabbed the beer from Max`s hand, and allowed his momentum to carry him to the window where he yanked up the blinds allowing natural light to flood the room. Max exclaimed at the theft and shrunk away from the light; Nathan used the opportunity to employ his coup-de-grace. A convenient cup filled with water and thrown in Max`s un-protesting face.

            Despite this Max remained remarkably stoic. He wiped the water from his face, stood and turned to Nathan saying, “You sir, are right in every particular and yet you have made a grave error in you assessment of the situation.”

            “What’s that?”

            Max turned his shoulders, and pivoted ever so slightly. “You’ve underestimated the love a man can have for the simple things in life; a lazy, undisturbed afternoon, an un-moistened face, a cool beverage in his hand. A man can grow truly attached to them, very protective, even erratic when they are threatened.” His shoulders unturned and he de-pivoted with great force and speed, his arm followed trailing his fist as an almost incidental afterthought to the whole process. The scuffle that followed was abrupt; Nathan was the much larger man, and the sort who ate protein shakes and asparagus for breakfast, but only after running a mile. Max was similar only in that he would sooner run a mile, or at least try, than eat asparagus or drink a protein shake. Fortunately for him his punch failed to land home, his attempt to put his entire body behind it result in him tripping on a cable and stumbling into Nathan, his punch landing wildly off target and knocking his drink, still in Nathan’s hand, to the floor. He flailed for support, tried and failed to grab hold of Nathan and succumbed to gravity.

            Nathan looked down on Max, pity evident on his face. He knelt beside him and said, “You need help. Desperately.” He held out his hand And Max grasped it, wringing beer from his shirt as he stood.

            “Yes, I needed help standing. I’ll need help cleaning this up. Otherwise I think I’ll be okay.” Nathan opened his mouth, intent on voicing his disagreement, but was pre-empted. “Stop right there. I know you want to chalk this up to Kateryna leaving me, and I don’t blame you for that. You’re a Psych student, you can’t help it. But you’ve got to trust me; it’s going to be alright. I’ve made arrangements.”

            Apprehension dawned on Nathan’s face, “What kind of arrangements?”

            “Don’t look so nervous, I just had a very serious discussion about my future and financial security with Giovanni.”

            “Oh you have got to be joking.” Please, tell me you’re just joking!”

            “What, you think I’m happy about this? You think I wouldn’t be doing it if I thought I had another option?” He brushed past Nathan and entered the kitchen. “Hell, even if I still had the job, and started putting in extra hours I’d be hard pushed to stay afloat.” He grabbed a few pieces of paper towel off a roll before tossing it to Nathan, and began to scrub vigorously at his shirt.

            “That bad, eh? Why didn’t you ever tell me?”

            “Because I knew you weren’t exactly in a position to help. No offence.”

            “None taken. So, Giovanni, you do know that this is what he does. Looks for people who’re desperate for money, who’re vulnerable. Get’s paid to bring them to the attention of people ready to take advantage of their plight.”

            “Thanks for the lecture.” His voice echoed about the confines of the fridge, where Max was searching for another beer.

            “Seriously, man, you’d better be careful.”

            To this Max didn’t even bother to respond. Instead he wandered silently back to the couch and, with the bottle in one hand and the remote in the other, he began flipping channels. He could worry about his life later, Cake Boss was on; all the horrors in the world wouldn’t seem so bad after an hour of Cake Boss.

Author's Note

-Frankly it's more than I expect for anyone to actually read it in its entirety, so if you did just throw it all at me, everything you've got. It's, like, 3,600 words.
-I have seriously mixed feelings about the name Max Carville. I love 'Max' and I really love 'Carville' but put them together and it feels wrong. Like mixing Ice Cream and a steak.
-Also, suggestion for an actual chapter title would be welcome. Even you you got linked here and only read the first paragraph before deciding to fuck off please, at least leave a suggestion. It can't be worse than 'Chapter 1'.

Reviews

[Akujisha]

I think I'd name the chapter "Freedom Tastes Like an Afternoon Beer". I'm glad I had the time to enjoy the chapter, and I wouldn't change much at all because it made me laugh as is. Maybe give a better description of Max, because humor's always better with a vivid picture of the protagonist. Dunno why you keep capitalizing "said". I like the Max Carville name, but if it'll make you feel better about it, throw in a middle name, too...like Max Winthrop Carville.