Chapter 1 - Arrival

Nineteen floors above Vancouver in the Sheraton-Landmark Hotel, Mark hadn’t had enough to drink to not climb from his balcony to the other. And Jay wasn’t stopping him. Of course, Jay wasn’t doing it himself, either, though.

It was too easy – Mark was over the concrete and steel barriers between their balconies and suddenly he was in someone else’s space. The windows on either side of the glass door into somebody else’s room were covered by curtains, but the glass door in and out of somebody else’s room was unfettered. One light in the room belonging to someone else was on, the lamp next to the bed. The person or persons who roomed there must’ve left relatively recently – at least at the point where they knew they wouldn’t return until after dark and wanted to have a light on when they returned.

But why? Mark asked himself. When you came back to an empty hotel room, you just turned on the light as you entered the door. You didn’t need to keep a light on to help you navigate in the dark – like you might need to in your own home – until you could hit the light switch.

Maybe it was to discourage burglars. Hah!

It was almost 10:30 at night – time to either go out and find some nightlife, or actually get some sleep for the next day. The two boys had spent the hours since they arrived in Vancouver looking for the former, and decided on the latter. From their view up on their own balcony, Stanley Park was a dark void off to their left and, if they leaned out far enough, the 1986 World’s Fair was still aglow to their right.

Maybe someone was still in the room – in the washroom, perhaps. Mark ducked back behind the curtains and peeked back through the door glass. He knew no one was in the major portion of the room, he’d seen that vacant just by looking in the first time. But from what he could tell, the washroom door was open and there was no light coming out of there. This room was the symmetrical twin of their own, all the same stuff but backwards, the washrooms on the same wall for the convenience of plumbing. Nope, no one was inside the room.

Spying was one thing. Could he break in? That was another. He didn’t want to actually “break” in, didn’t want to shatter the window or shoot the lock off a door. If he’d seen someone, or a shadow, he’d have shot back across the barrier with the ninety-meter drop and made up an excuse if someone came out to see if there really was an intruder. Some excuse such as, perhaps, he had to get his towel back, which had been drying on the balcony and blew over with a breeze, and him being young and stupid, just went to get it back.

The lock on the door was the same as on their own room’s outer door: a simple flip-up/flip-down arrow right at the handle. Mark pounded the butt of his fist on the doorframe at that spot and saw, sideways through the glass, the arrow-thing move. He pounded it again and it moved again. He pounded three more times and the arrow dropped. Mark grasped the outside handle to the door of someone else’s room and slid the glass door open.

“All too easy,” he said to Jay, in a Darth Vader voice.

“Are you actually going in?” Jay asked, a bit apprehensive.

“I think I have to, now.” Mark stepped into the hotel room rented by someone else and looked around.

* * *

Earlier, Mark and Jay had arrived off the Greyhound from Seattle and took a cab to the hotel on the west side of downtown Vancouver. They’d thrown their bags in their room, changed some money with the desk clerk, and gone out to explore. The first direction they traveled brought them to the beaches south on the peninsula, and to a small store there to buy some smokes.

After Jay had bought his pack and exited, he was hit up for a smoke by a bearded young man, perhaps only a few years older than himself. He started up a conversation with the guy and his two friends; he was just the guy Jay wanted to meet.

“You want Canadian cigarettes or American?” Jay still had a few Newports left, so he gave the guy a choice.

“American!” the guy rejoiced, as if there were no comparison, that making another choice would be silly.

“Dude.” Jay shook him a Newport from the pack and took one for himself. The guy lit his smoke, and then Jay’s, with an Expo 86 lighter. “Hey! We’re going there!” Jay said, pulling back from the flame. “Is that, like, official? They give those away?”

“It was free to me,” exhaled the bearded young man. “This guy gave it to me, but I’ve been there. Place is rad!”

Mark came out of the shop, spotting Jay addressing and chatting with the lineup of three guys. He didn’t like the looks of the guy Jay was talking to. Was he trouble or…? Heck, he thought, if not for the beard it might be Jay himself, dark hair just as long at the collar.

Mark packed his cigarettes: twenty cigarettes, twenty taps of the pack on the back of his hand. He didn’t know if that actually did anything for the smokes, maybe it did something back in the 40s before they invented filters, but he did it anyway because that’s what you’re supposed to do. He tore open the foil and cellophane from the pack and remembered to look for a trashcan. By the door, of course. Clean city.

The small convenience store was near the beach, on the conveniently-named Beach Street, kind of a walk-up place. Mark thought it was a bait shop, at first. The entire area looked lonely, but it was a gray day, threatening rain. There were people walking the path along the beach, but nobody out sunning, or swimming.

“Hey, you got a dollar?” the guy asked Jay.

Of course that was next, Mark thought. Jay held his cigarette in his mouth to free up his hands. “Yeah, I can help you.”

Mark was at alert, watching Jay’s back. He looked around himself and at all those near Jay. Which one was going to make his move when the money came out?

No one. No one did.

Jay offered a one-dollar Canadian bill to the guy who took it with a nod of the head and a smile. “Aren’t you going to ask ‘Canadian’ or ‘American’?”

“Not this time…” Jay kind of smiled back, what with the cigarette still hanging from his lips. There was no money to put back – he had only taken out a single. “Catch ya later, bro.”

The guy waved at him as Jay turned and caught up with Mark. “They have your Players?”

“Kind of,” replied Mark. He held up a white & blue pack. “I asked if she had Players and she goes, ‘You mean John Player and Sons?’ and I’m like, ‘Sure,’ and this is what I got.”

“I asked her for a good menthol. These are probably like Newport or Salem, I hope,” Jay said as he showed Mark a green and white pack of Cravens.

“Craven? Doesn’t that mean ‘cowardly’?”

“Yeah – that was one of Mrs. Goz’s vocab words!” Both Mark and Jay had had the same English teacher Junior year of high school, though a year apart. “But the package is green, and that’s like menthol, and Newport and Salem are green, so, like… yeah.”

“What was up with the bum? You’re a soft touch.”

“Kev? Aw, he’s a nice guy. I’m just checkin’ on where to score some doobage.”

“And…?”

“Not here,” Jay said between drags. “Or at least not now.”

It’s just as well, Mark thought. At nineteen, he was legal for alcohol here, why push the international drug thing? Jay was only eighteen, but could probably get away with drinking so long as a place didn’t card him. Mark ran his hand through his blond hair, over the top of his head and back to his neck, where he stopped to grip his neck muscles a few times, trying to work out some of the stress of travel.

He looked at his friend, nodded an unspoken understanding, and lit up a Player. He tucked the pack and his Super Bowl Champion Chicago Bears lighter into the pocket of his faded blue denim jacket. He also had gotten his lighter for free, but as a premium for buying two packs of smokes.

They took the beach path as far as they wanted to, which wasn’t that far. The beach was more pebbly than sandy, more moms with strollers and people on bikes than teen babes in skimpy bikinis with music and coolers filled with ice-cold beverages and Pringles. The late afternoon summer sun, peeking briefly through the clouds, was pretty as it made its way a little lower towards the horizon, still many hours from sunset over the bay. So, it was a good walk but they didn’t run back to the hotel for swim trunks and towels. Or maybe they’d just hit the wrong spot. Back home in Chicago, if you’d gone to 12th Street Beach, you’d be disappointed if you were really looking for the action and sand of Oak Street Beach. Either way, today was kind of cloudy, maybe rainy, and a little cooler than you might expect in the middle of summer, but that’s weather. Or maybe it was just Vancouver.

So here it was, an international city, just waiting for them to take it over! So much to see, so much to do… probably. Hell, what was there to do? Mark checked the time on his fancy Omega Seamaster wristwatch his dad had gotten him for graduation the year before and they started heading back up Denman toward the street they’d started on.

“Heading back by the hotel?” Mark asked Jay, looking at their tall hotel reigning above this section of the city, and getting closer. “We’ve seen that way,” he reminded him.

“Well, Expo is the tourist trap… We’ll go there tomorrow, that way we can start the day there. It’s probably gonna take a little while to, like, see it all.”

“What’s supposed to be the regular fun around here?”

“I don’t know.” Jay was going to add ‘I don’t live here’ but that was kind of too obvious a statement. “This main hotel street has stores and stuff.”

“Man, I don’t wanna buy anything. Maybe a souvenir at the World’s Fair, but, you know, I don’t want to go shopping.” Back in Seattle, visiting Jay’s mom and her husband, they’d taken a day roaming down by the piers on Puget Sound. Jay had spotted a place called Pier 1 Imports and was certain it would have exotic things, maybe food or candy from other countries or something, and made Mark go in to shop. Turned out it was just a furniture and knick-knack-crap store that they had a chain of all over the country. Jay was embarrassed then; the piers all had numbers: pier 60 had fresh fish, pier 55 had boats for hire, why wouldn’t pier 1 have something cool?

“So, let’s head back to the hotel,” Jay offered. “We can check out the pool or the gameroom, if they got one. Sometimes in the lobby they got a stack of flyers that tell you what there is to do, and stuff, and boats and horseback riding and shit. Or maybe just ask the desk guy if there’s a pool hall around here.”

They had reached the street corner at Robson. The light was green to cross, but Mark stepped back out of the way. He looked out at the traffic, beyond it. They drive on the right side of the street. It’s not so different.

Mark looked down the street as far as he could. Looked like any other city’s big street. A little cleaner, maybe. Nothing was jumping out and shouting ‘Hey! Mark! Jay! Over here! We got fun over here!’ Mark wanted to be outside, or in the water, or someplace where they could forget what brought them out there.

“Check it out, what would we be doin’ at home, back in Chicago?” Jay asked. He threw down the remains of his smoke and crushed it out. “We’d shoot pool, hang out at someone’s house, go bother our women, take them out to a club or to the show…” Jay stopped, got quiet.

“If we still had friends to do that with,” Mark reminded him. Their eyes met. They’d avoided talking about it the entire time in Seattle, but it found its way here.

Jay pulled out a pack of matches and lit a new cigarette. When you have nothing to do, smoking gives you something.

“Alright,” Mark gave in. He kept looking at the corner across the street to the north. Not looking at anyone crossing the street, just the direction. Something told him that was the way to go, but he also had some feeling pulling on his right shoulder, telling him to go east. East was the way back to the hotel and, further on, the World’s Fair, so of course they’d head that way, eventually. But it was something else. Something beyond that. Maybe he had to go north to go east. Who knows…

Mark’s instincts had been off this year. The entire purpose for this trip out west was to get his head back on after a horrid New Year’s breakup and a year at community college instead of finding his way to a proper university. Then there was trying to rebound. And some idiot he’d beaten up. And the girl who helped him, before she left, too. Then the best friend both he and Jay had screwed over and Mark had almost accidentally killed – almost drowned – all over a girl, as usual. The Spring from Hell.

Mark knew Jay was making sense and they headed back toward the Sheridan. Then something did jump out at them, with yellow letters on a black background, practically shouting Hey, Mark! Hey, Jay! Come in here!

It was the BC LIQUOR STORE. Not Miska’s Liquors, not A-1 Liquors, not Uncle Mel’s Tap Room, but an actual British Columbia government-sponsored liquor store. Somewhere, a choir of angels sang. The boys stopped dead in their tracks and glanced at each other, mouths hanging open, Jay’s with his cigarette stuck to his dry bottom lip, hanging precariously as if it, too, couldn’t believe it.

“How did we not see this before?” Mark asked the air. Back home in Chicago, Mark still had two years before he could legally purchase alcohol, having to find those places that cared more about making a sale than checking IDs.

Jay responded, still staring, “We turned down a different street to get to the beach. We haven’t seen this block. Let’s get some supplies.”

There was no need for further discussion. Jay tore off the lit part of his smoke and crushed out that bit near the door, saving the rest behind his ear for later. They opened the door and entered.

Inside, it looked like any other liquor store they’d ever been in: grocery-store-style shelves of product, low enough to see over, or for clerks to see them; big signs on the walls and windows advertising brands and prices; standee cards from breweries and distillers with female models holding cold, sweating bottles of whatever.

“Sure, first chick we see here and she’s made of paper,” Jay grumbled, noticing a blonde on a poster for Black Velvet Canadian Whiskey. “But she’s my favorite. I want to hang her on my wall,” he said almost robotically. He next stopped in front of a cardboard standee. “I am so going to marry the St. Pauli Girl one day. She’s my favorite. I want to hang her on my wall.”

They perused the beer brands, reminding themselves that their usual stuff was now in the imports aisle, the domestic brands were now the Molsons and Labatts and… Grizzlies?

In Seattle, at Jay’s mom’s place, they’d been indulging in the local brew, Rainier Beer. Back home in Chicago, they’d usually get some Old Style, or Michelob Dark – a current favorite. Then they spotted Old Style, but it was different. It was a domestic. It was a Canadian Old Style. Different can, same stuff? It was an instant buy to find out.

Mark looked around for something – and realized that this BC Liquor Store was not just like any other liquor store they’d ever been in. Something was missing. He walked up toward the sales counter where two young college guys in black aprons were chatting.

“Hey, do you guys have a refrigerated section in here?” he asked, expecting them to point somewhere he’d overlooked and then he would hit himself in the forehead as he thanked them.

Instead, one Canuck looked at the other, chuckled wryly, and said, “Not in this province!”

Mark looked to Jay. It was at this point that Jay truly understood that he was in a foreign country.

* * *

At the BC Liquor Store, they’d wound up buying a bag of Doritos, two Jos Louis snack cakes, and two six-packs of the Old Style, figuring they would have to chill the cans in the washroom sink under a ton of ice and drink them later, which is exactly where they left the first sixer (only one would fit in the sink) while they went downstairs.

The hotel, it turned out, did not have a swimming pool, but it did have a spa – in other words, a hot tub and sauna. The boys decided to try it out; if nothing else, it would be like taking a shower after the bus trip from Seattle and they could go to look for fun again, refreshed. They’d brought swim suits for the non-existent pool, or the lonely beach, so changed and headed down.

There was only one other person in the hot tub – a woman reading a paperback novel, an empty white wine glass next to her. She’d acknowledged the boys when they arrived, but soon departed with the loss of her solitude. Jay joked that she was just so excited checking out their competitive swimmer bodies that she just couldn’t take it.

Mark had a thing where he imagined himself deep underwater in his blue swimming pool, like a meditation technique, to shut out the world and calm down, and the warm water helped. They relaxed for a spell before the itch to move on got to them, too.

It was after what families would consider the ‘dinner hour’ back home, so Mark suggested they look for a place to eat and get them moving in the right direction of actually doing something. Given the opportunity to change from the clothes they travelled in on the Greyhound from Seattle, the boys found something a little nicer. Not ties and jackets, but something a little more just-in-case-we-meet-someone. Still, Jay couldn’t get away from his usual over-shirt look, but ditched the flannel for a solid blue button-down that he didn’t button, over a tight navy t-shirt. Mark chose a black button-down with his khakis.

Mark joined Jay out onto the balcony, getting a good look at the mountains to the north. A bit of city, then some water, then the mountains. “The mountains are pretty,” he noted. “Green. Not just rocky crags. Full of life.”

“Looking out from above is cool, but…” Jay shrugged, “it’s mostly tops of buildings and air conditioners, like looking out a plane window. Rooftops.”

“But the mountains are pretty,” Mark repeated.

They heard the glass door of the room next-door slide open. At first, Jay’s impulse was to jump back into their room, like ‘Oh no! No one should see us out here! We shouldn’t be out here when someone else is!’ But then it hit him – why the hell not? It’s not like you had to take turns enjoying the air and the view.

Mark didn’t even flinch.

“Oh!” said a lady who was just as surprised as Jay at seeing someone else outside. “Hallo!”

Mark waved and smiled, still leaning over the railing.

“Tegen wie praat je?” asked a voice from inside.

“Twee jonge mannen,” answered the lady.

Very shortly after, a tall man with sandy hair and a puzzled look on his face stepped outside, as well. “Twee jonge…?”

Mark, having picked up on the accent, tried, “Guten abend.”

“Ah, ben je Duitser? Spreek je Duits?”

Jay was quiet, and looked to Mark, since he started the whole language thing. “Nein,” Mark shook his head. “Only enough to tell my grandfather what I want to eat, I’m afraid.” He made an exaggerated apologetic look to his face, unsure if the others would understand his English, but they would get the idea that he did not really speak German.

“You are American, then, isn’t it?” said the lady. “Nice to meet you.”

The gentleman threw his hand over the balcony wall. “Cor Doornbos.”

Jay, being closer, took the man’s hand first, shook firmly, and repeated the greeting back to him, “Cor Doornbos.”

The man looked at the lady, dumbfounded, and laughed. “Imagine that! We travel 8,000 kilometers across the world, and I meet someone with the same name as me!”

Jay was confused. The lady clarified. “I am Mirjam Doornbos.” She extended her hand.

Jay took her hand, next, and exhaled a laugh; he got it. “I thought that was a… greeting – never mind. I’m Jay.” He briefly considered messing with them and saying ‘I’m Jay Doornbos,’ but decided against it. He’d play nice. “And this is…”

“Mark,” Mark said, taking the extended hands in turn. “You are here from Germany?”

“No,” Mirjam told him, “we are Nederlanders, but speak German if you do.”

“So, not guten abend, but…”

“Goedenavond,” Cor corrected, “Slight difference,” then he chuckled, as if it were quite funny.

“Are you going to the Expo?” For some reason, Jay said that slowly and distinctly.

“Not tonight,” Mirjam answered. “We have a dinner date with friends, but…,” she looked to her husband, “I’m not sure they have arrived yet?”

“Geen bericht van hen,” he shrugged. “We arrive separately. Everyone will meet at the restaurant until we are all present. My industry made a conference here during the Expo so we can have fun when not in those meetings. Tonight is just for fun, though, isn’t it?” He chuckled again and squeezed his wife; this guy liked to laugh.

“Are you going tonight?” Mirjam asked Jay, then also looked to Mark.

Mark noticed her eyes shift upward slightly, noticing the scar above his right eye. He could always tell when they noticed his flaw, when people looked straight at him and then they weren’t, a slight concern in their faces. It wasn’t a bad scar – it was thin and only about an inch long, starting at his eyelid and cutting through his eyebrow – but it gave his eyebrow a sharpness, a contrast to his all-American blond good looks.

“I don’t think there’s enough time left to enjoy Expo tonight,” Mark shared his frustration. “We wanted to go to the beach, but…” He pointed to the sky. “And then it got late, so we’re trying to find what the city has to offer.”

“Go to a club? Find some pretty girls?” the lady suggested and smiled.

“That’s the idea!” Jay agreed.

“I wish you all the success,” Cor nodded and went back in his room. Mirjam bid them goodnight with a wink and then she, too, was back inside.

“She’s right,” Mark knew. “We need to find where the girls are.”

“Other than at Expo?” Jay went back inside, taking a swig of his somewhat-chilled Old Style.

“Do the local girls go to Expo, or avoid it and hang out – where?” Mark looked off to the east, again.

“Dude, look here,” Jay called. “There’s a ‘Vancouver’ book in the nightstand.” He showed Mark a book with a cover that promised fireworks over Expo 86. Jay opened the book, The International Guide: Vancouver, noting the red-letter warning on the bottom: “This book is the property of THE HOTEL, please leave for future guests. THIS PUBLICATION IS NOT TO BE REMOVED FROM THE GUEST ROOM. For your copy, use the reply cards in back of book.” – which meant that people must steal it a lot. Jay would make sure to take this one as a souvenir.

“Are there any restaurant listings?” Mark asked, closing the balcony door.

“Yeah, pretty sure. Bunch of shopping ads, that’s what it really is. Fur coats, plates, vases…. Who would want to come here for that stuff?”

“Some people, rich women. Maybe Mrs. Doornbos.” Mark looked at himself in the mirror over the desk, deciding whether to put on after shave.

“Cor Doornbos to you, too,” Jay waved to the air. “I mean… seriously… it’s Sylvester Stallone in a big gorilla fur coat. With a hood.” Jay turned the book to show Mark the ad.

“That reminds me. We haven’t seen Cobra, yet.”

“Found the food places. Where are we? What street again?”

Mark grabbed the Greetings folder from the desk top, filled with a nice letter from the management, a room service menu, two postcards, a pen, and some stationary. Most of that would go home with Jay, too, as souvenirs. The address for the Sheraton was on the stationary. “We’re on Robson.”

“Okay, found that.” Jay noted all the red dots on the map. “Well, all this really tells me is that there are a bunch of restaurants all around us. Lots of Chinese places, lots of seafood…”

“All right. Whatever. I just don’t want to spend everything we brought before we even get to Expo tomorrow. Let’s just find some local haunt or a pub with people to talk to, order the blue plate special, and then sit with a cup of coffee for an hour and no one will hassle us to leave.”

On their way out, in the hotel lobby, Jay actually did find a wooden display of ‘What’s Doing in Vancouver!’ leaflets. He grabbed about fifteen different ones and shoved them in his pocket. “For dinner conversation.” As soon as he was outside, he lit up a Craven. He’d been smoking a little more since school let out; when the swim team season ended, he’d bought himself a ‘drunk pack,’ but now it seemed he was enjoying it. He promised he’d quit before he got to college, though. Maybe. It depended on whether he made the swim team at the University of Washington and became a Huskie.

It was still light out, and would be for some time as it was the end of June. Their hunger had finally given them a purpose to all their wandering around. Robson Street was busy, likely the local rush hour that would taper off sometime soon. It didn’t look like a particularly social street, though, more like for those furs and plates stores. There were restaurants, but nothing that said This is the one! at a first glance. There was a salmon shop, but it wasn’t a restaurant, really – more of a market. They’d already been to a wild fish market in Seattle at the piers where the fish-mongers literally threw the fish across the store. Crowds gathered for the spectacle, and it generated more sales. This Canadian place was much more polite.

At the corner, that same corner from before, they stopped again. “Let’s cross the street, head that way this time,” Mark motioned with his chin north, toward the mountains, opposite the direction they’d gone earlier on their wanderings. He wanted to go the direction that called to him earlier.

They crossed at Denman and kept going. The first larger street they came to was Alberni; they turned right onto the tree-lined avenue, and something finally said This is the one! A couple of doors in, there was a dark restaurant called The Horse & Carriage. Almost directly in front of it was an actual horse and carriage waiting for someone to want a ride around the city. You could smell two things: the horse, and the grill from the restaurant. The grill smell was preferable.

“Is this a restaurant or the place you sign up for the ride?” Jay asked, looking around at the signage.

“I don’t want a ride, but I think we’ve found the place. Looks like a pub. I need a beer. A cold one, that is.”

“They got a menu in the window?”

“Doesn’t matter. I can smell a good burger cooking. This is what we want.” With that, Mark opened the door and they finally left the street, and horse, behind.

The place was long and dark – greens, browns, blacks, and brass, but lit well enough you didn’t need a flashlight to look at the menu. The big window didn’t bring in a lot of light, at least not then. A long bar and stools filled out the right side, and two lines of tables and booths on the left. There was that awkward pause when you enter an establishment and look around to see if you should wait for a hostess or seat yourself.

The bartender called, “Hello, fellows! Come in… please. Lydia will be right here.” And she was. Or she would be. Mark could see a girl coming down the aisle from the rear of the place. Dark hair, glasses, a green apron pretty much hid the rest, though it promised a good figure the closer she came.

“Hi,” Lydia said, making direct eye contact with Jay and then Mark, neither of whom could look away, a warm smile growing on her face.

Her looks weren’t striking, but attractive enough to make one wonder why she was hidden in here. She looked about twenty years old. Her brown hair hung shoulder-length, tied back for work, but you knew it was longer when released. She was pale, and her nose had a little ethnicity to it – from where who knew. Her brown eyes were locked behind a pair of glasses that looked natural on her, even sexy in a studious way. But she had a talent of giving that come hither look that would make a stranger follow her anywhere – to a train, a bedroom, or a restaurant table.

She didn’t move right away, standing there as if they were there to see her rather than get a table. She broke her own hypnotism and turned away, and might’ve said, “Come with me,” or she might not have, but she started walking toward the rear of the place, and the boys followed as if by magnetism.

She pointed ‘up and around’; a set of two steps led to a raised level of tables, and Jay and Mark floated up them, taking a seat at the third table in. An iron fence on the main aisle side kept them from falling off the 40cm drop, and that’s what Lydia rested her elbows on while waiting for them to be seated. Two menus appeared.

“Welcome to The Horse & Carriage. My name’s Lydia.” She wore no badge on her apron. “Can I get you something to drink while you look over the menu?”

“Oh, yes,” Mark smiled. “Words I’ve been waiting to hear.”

“We’ve been living on Rainier Beer for a week,” Jay told her, making sure she understood that he drank beer and therefore must be of age. “It’ll be good to have something else!”

“Rainier?” Lydia picked up, and gave each of them a quick scrutiny. “So, you’re in from Seattle.”

“That gave us away?” Mark looked up from the menu.

“Don’t sell it here. That’s a Seattle beer, and not really on our import list.” Though Vancouver was only a hundred and forty miles away, it felt closer, like it was just down the highway. Which it was, but it was a three-hour ride down that highway. There was plenty of culture cross-over, like TV signals, but not everything, apparently.

Jay smiled at the thought. “Rainier’s an import!”

“So… Labatt’s, Molson, Moosehead… some British…” Mark put the menu down, and gave Lydia the eye. “What’s good local?”

“Could try Kokanee.” She held his eye.

“Is it worth it?” Mark had no idea what she’d just said, but he couldn’t look away.

“Could be.” The corners of her mouth turned up, almost imperceptibly, almost cruelly, teasingly.

“Alright,” he said slowly, turning his head to the side to see if she’d follow him, but he couldn’t avert his own eyes.

She smiled a little wider, as if gaining a victory. She finally dropped her gaze and turned to Jay, who had been watching the exchange like it was a game on TV. It shocked him a little, and he visibly reacted when she hit him with her stare. “And how about you?”

“Um, yeah, Coca… Coca-nutty sounds good.” He had been a little worried about her asking for ID, which she did not. In that minute between being seated, looking over choices, and watching Mark order, he was concocting a story about being 19, but travelling with his passport, not his driver’s license, and that the passport was back with the concierge at the hotel, as required. But he never had to explain. Her look just made him suddenly order as he did.

The ‘coca-nutty’ broke Lydia’s concentration. “Coca-nutty? It’s not pop.”

Mark looked at Jay. “Pop?”

Lydia looked a little confused. “What? They don’t call it ‘pop’ in Seattle? What – soft drinks, instead?”

Mark fessed up. “Actually, we’re in from Chicago, by way of Seattle. Back home, yeah, it’s ‘pop’ on the sout’ side, and ‘soda’ on the north.”

“So, what do you say?” Lydia put her pad down.

“I like to say ‘sody-pop,’ like Yosemite Sam,” he joked.

Lydia stood back, cocked her head to the right to give him a glare. “That’s not an answer.” Her eyes flicked up a bit and Mark caught her noticing his scar. She turned to look at Jay, from just above her glasses, very deep into his eyes. “Two Kokanees. Tell him I’ll be right back.” And she left to visit the guy at the bar.

Jay shook his head. “I think I just lost my virginity again.”

“Calm down, Namor.” Mark used Jay’s swim team nickname from The Submariner.

“I literally have a hard-on,” Jay admitted.

Mark picked up the menu again, tried to look over the offerings, but couldn’t really focus. He and Jay were really just waiting for Lydia’s return, to find out if she was going to hit them with some witch’s spell.

She had gone to visit one of the other tables. There were only three other parties there right then, two guy-girl couples, and a husband-wife-kid combo, and it looked like Lydia was alone on duty, unless there was another waitress in back they hadn’t seen. The bartender had said Lydia would be out to seat them, not one of the girls, so she likely was alone.

When she returned, she had the Kokanees with her. She set down four paper coasters, and a frosted mug and a bottle for each of them. Mark went to pick up his bottle, but Lydia gently slapped his hand away. “I do that,” she admonished him, though she began with Jay’s mug. She found the proper angle to pour at so one gets beer in the mug and not suds, and only righted the glass at the end to create a head. She wasn’t even looking at the pour, but at Jay. Poor Jay was mesmerized.

“Sorry, I just wanted to see the label while… you, uh… poured his,” Mark got out in apology as she started on his pour.

“When I’m done, you’re welcome to.”

“I know it’s a Monday, but is this a slow night?” Mark asked, with a glance in the direction at the other tables.

“Actually, yeah,” Lydia admitted, losing some of her magic. “Expo was supposed to bring all this business to the city, but we’re losing business to all the restaurants at Expo. Any visitors have to not be there, and then have to find us.”

“We found you,” Jay told her, to get her attention back. “There was like, this force, telling us to go this way. You are exactly what I want. I mean,” he floundered a bit, “you – this place – is exactly what I want… what we wanted.”

“You’re sweet,” she softly touched his left cheek with the back of her hand, or was it really a chuck – like a pretend sock to the jaw? “Give you a minute more to look over the menu?”

And she was gone again. Looked like she was giving one of the couples their check.

“Careful,” Mark told Jay. “What are you, fifteen? She’ll eat you alive.”

“Yeah, I need to see how sharp her teeth are.”

Mark looked over the Kokanee label, finally. “A blue label, a snowy mountain sticking up beyond the regular rectangle, it’s a ‘glacier beer,’ brewed here in BC.”

When Lydia returned, Mark admitted that he still hadn’t really read the menu. “But what I want has got to be in there, somewhere. A good burger – we could smell them from outside – with Swiss cheese, sautéed onions, French fries, and a side of mayo.” Jay indicated his order was identical. Lydia had barely left when she reappeared with soup and salad starters.

“That was fast,” Jay remarked.

“I like you guys,” she admitted. “So, what do you think of Kokanee?”

Mark set his beer down. “It’s a decent pilsner. But what’s its story?”

“What do you mean?” She was about to just take his comment and do some business, but this struck her.

Jay piped in and got her to look his way. “Every beer label has a story. Why is Coors the ‘Banquet Beer’? What is Miller ‘High Life’? Back home, we have a beer called Old Style. It’s pure brewed in God’s country. And it has a white can. And all over this can are little pictures in gold, pictures of German life, or something. And when you’re drinking, when you’re drunk, you have to find the picture of the frog. And you challenge someone else to find it, first. And if they do, then you make them find a different one – like a guy standing with his back to you, so it looks like he’s peeing.”

“I see,” Lydia nodded. “We have Old Style here, too, but…”

“But it doesn’t have the same label,” Jay was back on his game. “We bought some today. Yours has a green label with a car, a train, a plane, and an Indian, too, I think. And then there’s this one white rabbit, just sitting in the middle of this green background, this big green field. And we’re like,” he pointed at Mark, “hey, see if you can find the rabbit. And it’s like, no shit, he’s right there!”

This got Lydia’s curiosity. “Fine, Chicago boys... I need to see this.” And she left the table again. Actually, it was to check on the family and the other couple, and let Jay and Mark start eating. Jay could see her talking to the bartender and she soon returned with a bottle of Old Style. The bartender started singing, much to the delight of the family.

“Tony says there’s no Old Style game,” she shook her head.

“No, probably not here, the rabbit is too damn easy to find!” Jay stabbed his finger at the green label and hit the rabbit on target. “Tell him if someone can’t find the rabbit, he has to stop serving them!”

She actually did tell him, and he waved a sarcastic ‘thank you’ back at Jay.

The soup and salad went down fast. While waiting for the burgers, Jay pulled out the leaflets he took from the hotel lobby. “Okay, let’s see what we got.” He smoothed them out as he went through them. “See Gastown with a steam clock? The Sea Festival is coming… after we leave, apparently. Skiing in Whistler… wrong season. Granville… whatever. Vancouver Art Gallery... cool. Museum of Anthropology…”

“Art Gallery could be cool.”

“Yeah, yeah… Stanley Park has an aquarium and a zoo in it… and a seawall you can walk on. Expo 86 – the World’s Fair… didn’t know about that one. The Sea Bus! And the SkyTrain. And the Sky Ride. Sound like superheroes.”

Mark picked up the last few. “Oh, SeaBus is a commuter thing. Could be a fun ride, though. SkyTrain takes you to Expo, but not from here.” Mark read further on the Sky Ride. “It takes you up a mountain. That could be cool. ‘If the weather is right, you can see the lower mainland right up to the American border and even the Olympic mountains.’”

“Yeah, but like Rainier, only if the weather is right. There’d be nothing today,” Jay reminded him. “You were lucky. Rainier was out all last week. We’ve had some good weather visiting my mom. Normally, when I come out here…”

“I would never know the thing is hidden most of the time,” Mark realized. “But now we got clouds. Do you know the weather back in Seattle?”

“Nah,” Jay dismissed. “Here’s a sea plane we can tour on. The boat to Victoria – that’s an island – that’s pretty cool. Takes all day, though. Capilano Suspension Bridge – this looks really cool!” Mark took that one to look at. “Oh, and here’s the real beach around here, I guess, Kisti…Kistil-lano? Doesn’t matter… if it’s gonna stay cloudy or rain.” Mark took that one, too.

Lydia arrived with a tray. “Okay, boys, clean up, give me some room.” They moved the leaflets and were treated to a couple of tremendous-looking burgers. “You guys ready for another beer?” Mark nodded while he spread the mayo and assembled the lettuce and tomato. A second Kokanee appeared for each of them shortly after Lydia walked the young family to the door and thanked them.

“Okay, so you didn’t hear the Kokanee story you asked for,” she said when she returned to them.

“Good! What’s the mountain? Is it a real one?” Jay wanted her to speak to him.

“Yes, it’s called Grays Peak, and it’s on Kokanee Glacier.”

“Hence, a ‘glacier beer,’” Jay looked at the subtitle on the label. “But what does Kokanee mean? Local Indian tribe?”

“Good guess,” Lydia was leaning on the railing, getting comfortable. The other couple were nursing drinks, dinner over, not going anywhere; no one else had come in, yet. “No, it’s a kind of salmon. But here’s the thing that kicks your frog down the street. There’s a sasquatch.”

Both boys immediately dropped what they were eating, or carefully put it down, rather, since it was really very good. “Okay, Lyds, you have our attention,” Mark promised.

“You know what the sasquatch is?

“Bigfoot, yeah. He fought the Six Million Dollar Man.” Mark was serious.

“Okay, he’s on the label, and you have to find him. He’s not on the box, mind you, but he’s in different places on the bottle, depending on what label you’ve got.”

Both boys picked up their bottle and began searching.

“If you can’t find him, then I guess I’ve served you too much,” she chided, using their own argument against them.

“Are you making this up?” Jay asked, not wanting to look the fool.

“No, he’s really there, but he is tiny. And when you find him, you’ll be disappointed that he’s not all scary, but he’s there.”

Mark set his bottle down to get back to eating. “Don’t take the bottles away when we’re done. We’ll need to study these.”

“Bring home a bottle to show everyone,” Jay joked.

“You want an Old Style bottle, too, for the rabbit?” Lydia poked fun at him.

“We already did today at the BC Liquor Store,” Mark announced the name with heroic fanfare. “Got some on ice back in our hotel room. You guys don’t have a refrigerated section in the place, so we had to buy it dry and chill it.”

“Yeah,” Jay piped in, “we’re like, do you have cold ones? And the guy is like, ‘Not in this prahhh-vince!’”

“We do have some odd liquor laws here,” Lydia admitted. “You can’t just drink a beer without some food. On Sundays, we’re one of the only places you can do that – with a 25¢ choose plate, you buy a plate of chips or an appetizer, and then you can have your three beers or whatever you want. Otherwise, no.”

“I like the drinking age, though,” Mark said between bites. “In Illinois, it went up to twenty-one. So, I can drink legally here, but when I get home, I still have to wait two more years.”

“You can join the army at eighteen, but can’t get a drink,” Jay groused.

“Doesn’t stop us…” Mark muttered.

Lydia got comfortable on the railing. She had no other customers to wait on, really, so she was staying with her boys. “So, you guys are in for Expo, right?” Lydia kept the conversation moving, but got off the liquor law rant.

“Yeah,” Jay was working on his fries and mayo. “My mom lives in Seattle, or… you know, this one town, and I’m visiting for a couple of weeks, and I get to bring a friend so I don’t go crazy.”

Mark waived. “I’m the friend.”

“Hi, friend,” Lydia kissed the air.

Jay caught that. Mark could see Jay’s wheels turning, trying to figure out a way to get a kiss, or even an air kiss, of his own. It was strange. He and Jay had many girlfriends over the years, but Jay was really going beyond his normal cool self. Jay’s life was usually “no bag,” as he put it; or like the guy in Fast Times at Ridgemont High, wherever Jay was, that’s the place to be. It was almost funny to Mark to see Jay try to impress Lydia.

But Lydia was bewitching, Mark would give her that. Whenever she came by, they couldn’t take their eyes off her. Now that she was a part of their ‘party,’ she had their full attention. Whether she was actually listening to Jay or just nodding and making waitress-talk, only she knew. But she could wrap him around her finger if she wanted to, Mark was certain.

“So,” Jay continued, “we took a few days away from the P’s homestead to head up here, enjoy the Canadian wildlife, see the Fair,” he picked up the leaflets, “and try to figure out how to spend the off hours before we have to drive back.”

“To Seattle? Or Chicago?”

“Seattle. We’ll be back for the 4th of July. Chicago next week.”

“And tomorrow is Canada Day. This is a week of fireworks – for you, isn’t it?” she asked, leaning on the railing.

“I’ll say it is,” he intoned. Lydia’s position on the rail had pushed up her breasts, and that was just too much for Jay. His eyes moved down, but Lydia dropped her head and caught his attention with the movement, locked his eyes and picked her head back up, Jay’s eyes moving up with her as if attached by a string. “Fireworks.”

“I’m glad you’ll be with me for a couple more days, then. You will come back and see me tomorrow? Won’t you?”

“Couldn’t keep me away.”

She picked herself up off of the railing, smiled, and floated into the back. Mark hadn’t even noticed she had given him the check.

They weren’t quite finished, yet, but now they were able to chow down properly without the danger of talking with their mouths full. A couple more parties had come in now that the hour was getting later, and Lydia had gotten busy again. She did check on them again a couple of times, but no longer had the time to sit with them and really chat.

Jay was taking his time eating, hoping for more attention. Mark took the opportunity to look more closely at the Kokanee labels, again. He wished he had a magnifying glass. “You got to be shittin’ me,” he murmured.

“What?” Jay looked over.

Mark turned his bottle around and pointed at almost nothing on the label. “I give you the Sasquatch.” Mark pointed to a tiny black figure, a 2mm stick figure, atop a mountain cliff.

Jay looked at where Mark pointed, then grabbed his own bottle, noting the black figure was not present in the same place, but now he knew what to look for. “You’re fuckin’…” He looked back up at Mark, who just nodded. “That’s pretty good,” Jay admitted. “That’s their frog, then.”

“If we got a case of this stuff, and brought it to one of Scooter’s basement parties, they’d be searching all night,” Mark laughed. Then he got quiet. If they were welcome there.

Jay started trying to peel the label off his bottle, but wasn’t very successful. He caught Lydia’s eye across the room, where she was working another table, and pointed to the label. “Found him.” Lyds nodded and smiled.

As Mark pocketed an empty beer bottle, he figured the finances of leaving a tip, and wondered if Lydia was truly interested in them, or just very good at her job – making them feel comfortable and appreciated and, in Jay’s case, turned on. Whatever it was, it was worth a ten spot. He went up to pay the bartender and soon they were on their way.

Before they could get to the door, though, Lydia did meet them to say thank you and goodnight. She touched Jay’s shoulder, but as he turned, she grazed his chest, and she whispered, “You will come back tomorrow, right?”

“Try and stop me,” Jay countered. Mark immediately opened the door and they flew through before she could say anything more. Jay silently admired their sense of timing, that bit of drama. They quickly walked around the corner they first turned, heading back toward the hotel. Mark pulled his denim jacket sleeves down, holding his shirt cuffs in his fists.

“Why do you think she came on to us?” Jay was being generous. He really meant himself, but included Mark in on it.

“What shirt are you wearing?” Mark asked him.

Jay smiled to himself. “Yeah, kind of form-fitting, isn’t it, even with a button-down open over it.”

“She could see your swimmer’s bod from the kitchen. Yours more than mine, anyway.”

“Those eyes, though…” Jay had no idea where he was walking.

“I know.” Mark was making sure Jay didn’t walk into traffic. “Easy, there, fella.”

“She’s my favorite. I want to hang her on my wall,” Jay monotoned.

“You want to do more than that, don’t you?” Mark teased him. The thought of how to get a picture of her one could hang on their wall crossed his mind. Did either of them even bring a camera? If they got one, they could do a tourist shot – Hey, take a photo of us with our favorite waitress! Would she actually pose for one with that look in her eyes?

“So, what should we do? There’s still some light.” Jay brought the conversation back to where it started hours ago.

“Well, we could check out Stanley Park – it’s right down the street – see what it’s all about. Is it just trees or is there something to look at? Maybe fall off that seawall. Then head back to the room, have two cold beers, open that bag of Doritos, watch whatever’s on Canadian TV, and…”

“What?” Jay wondered if he was going to say it out loud.

“Depends if you’ve worked off your anxiety about Lyds by then.”

“That’s going to be hard to get rid of. I don’t know about you, but I’m gonna hit the ceiling.”

* * *

The elevator doors opened onto the 19th floor; Mark and Jay exited.

Their trip around Stanley Park wasn’t particularly eventful but it was cool, and at least they did something that was on the list of Vancouver tourist things-to-do. The woods were thick and the lack of mosquitoes was a treat, and the views of the water and the harbor quite pretty, until it was too dark to see there, so they’d cut through the center and headed back.

They turned the hallway corner out of the elevator bank, looking for their room number when they saw two teenage boys – younger than themselves, anyway – come out of the stairway door at the further end of their hall. They looked like brothers, both thin, with dark hair; shorts and pullovers; the younger boy was without shoes, just in his red-striped tube socks and was holding some jar-like things.

Just a couple of kids, guests, exploring the hotel, probably looking for a vending machine or the ice station. The boys reacted to being noticed, but didn’t run away, just the shock of meeting someone in a quiet place.

This would have been of no consequence except that both Mark and the older boy spotted the wallet on the floor at the same time.

The boys were closer and could tell what it was. It took Mark a half-moment more to figure it out. The boys moved slowly, waiting to see which door Mark and Jay were moving toward. Jay pulled out his key, wary of the other two boys, not inserting it until he knew if there was something up, or if they were just going to walk past them.

When they saw Jay slow down at the center door, the older boy quickly bent down and picked up the wallet. Mark saw this. The boy saw Mark see him do it. It was that instant of recognition, of being caught holding the goods. Mark broke and moved toward him.

The kid had three options: drop it and back away; turn it over to Mark as if he intended to give it to him all along; or take it and run. He chose to pivot and run for the stairs, leaving his little brother behind.

Mark moved swiftly, didn’t even break into a run, just walked with purpose and caught up with the boy as he tried to open the stairs door. Two things made the kid lose time and his escape: his nerves made him push the door before turning the knob, and noticing his brother encountering Jay a distance behind the advancing man.

The boy in socks didn’t quite know where to go. He was too scared to run like his brother did, and there was this older guy in front of him. He looked toward the corner and the elevator bank as a possible route to escape but still didn’t move. The older guy wasn’t stopping him, though.

“What is that?” Jay asked the kid, probably about twelve. The kid held his hands out and showed Jay. “What is… that from the room service trays?” The kid held a cute and tiny set of salt and pepper shakers and three jars of jam preserves and honey. “Oh, that’s cool,” Jay told the kid. “What’d that guy pick up? Why’d he run?”

The kid didn’t say anything, but both he and Jay started walking over to the stairs door to find out.

The teen had opened the door, but that delay cost him. He went through and was at the second stair down when Mark’s hand was on him, hauling him back up to the landing and turning him, pressing him over the facing railing. “Give it back.”

The kid was faced with the threat above him and the threat of falling thirty feet below him, yet decided to argue. “It’s not yours.”

“It’s not yours,” Mark reminded him and pulled him further out over the drop so that now the small of his back was resting on the pipe. Mark’s other hand was open, waiting.

Jay and the brother appeared at the doorway, both assessing the situation. The brothers’ eyes met, the younger worried, the older wild. The kid made a decision and put the wallet in Mark’s hand. Mark righted the boy and released him.

“You came in through the stairs – you going back up or back down, now?” Mark asked the teen. When he did not answer, Mark looked to the younger boy and told him, “Take him back to your room. You’re in charge, now.”

The boy’s eyes widened at that pronouncement, then looked to his brother, but could not look to Mark since he and Jay had left.

Back at their own room door, Jay asked Mark, “What are you going to do with that?”

The wallet was fat, probably with documents and cards, and a few bills were sticking up from the fold. “It’s a lot of money…”

* * *

Mark, still inside the room that belonged to someone else, came back out onto the balcony. “They don’t have a mini-bar or a coffee maker, either,” he reported to Jay.

He considered the lock on the glass door. He couldn’t re-lock it from the outside. Would Cor or Mirjam be suspicious? Of course, they wouldn’t necessarily think someone had punched it open; it’s not like he took anything, didn’t even disturb their property, just left the wallet next to the television.

“Hey,” he directed Jay. “Check the hall. I’m going through.”

Jay disappeared, then quickly reappeared. “It’s clear.”

Mark went back inside the Doornbos’ room and pulled the glass door shut, then locked it, pushing the arrow-thing up again. He walked through to the hall door, opened it, peeked out to see Jay looking back at him about ten feet away. He found the hallway still clear, then exited the room belonging to someone else, shut the heavy door quietly, and made his way back into his own hotel room on the nineteenth floor.

“Cor Doornbos,” Jay welcomed him back.

“Cor Doornbos,” Mark hailed in reply.

“So…” Jay looked for a debriefing, “no one has a coffee pot or mini-bar. Means what we’ve bought has to last us because tomorrow’s Canada Day and everything’s closed.”

“And we have to get up and get moving tomorrow to find our coffee somewhere,” Mark concluded.

“You really didn’t want to wait for Cor? Give it to him personally?”

“No,” Mark dismissed the idea. “He’ll feel better finding out he left it in his room instead of losing it.”

Just then, there was a soft pop outside, and the sound of a door sliding open, and voices calling “Oooooh.” Mark and Jay went back out to their balcony to find a family – dad, mom, boy, girl – out on the balcony to their right, viewing the fireworks over Expo 86, far down the street. Mark and Jay leaned over their railing as far as they could, trying to see them, too.

The father, an Asian gentleman still in shirtsleeves and slacks, saw them and waved. The kids were in their pajamas. The mom was still dressed, and smiled. “Hello!” she said.

“Good evening!” Mark greeted them back. Jay did likewise. The father pointed at the display beyond them, looked like he was searching for a word, his eyes tight but lips smiling. “Fireworks!” Mark clarified for him.

“Fireworks!” the man agreed. “Expo fireworks!” He waved at the boys to come join them, to view them more easily from their corner-of-the-building balcony with a much fuller view of the city to the east. Mark was over the barrier in an instant with Jay following, this time. The adults made room for the teens, but the kids were still in front, of course.

“We’re going tomorrow,” Jay told the mom, in precise English, making an arcing motion to try to convey ‘tomorrow,’ because everyone understands English so long as you speak it slowly enough…

But the mom did. She made a circle motion, encompassing her family, and agreed, in her fashion, that they, too, were going ‘tomorrow.’

The little explosions of mostly red and white were distant – like a bunch of carnations and firecrackers rather than fiery globes above their heads where you could feel the report on your skin, but they were still fun to see.

They all watched a bit longer, then Jay and Mark conveyed their thanks for inviting them over, and climbed back onto their own balcony. There was a prolonged series of pops off to the east that they could only partially see. The kids cheered. The mother looked back at Jay and said, “Very special!”

Jay agreed.

Mark added, “I hope so.” They returned inside their own room.

“Lights out?” Jay asked as he shut the door.

“TV, still, I think. For a bit,” Mark replied, collapsing into the well-appointed chair by the windows.

Jay shut off the lights but didn’t touch their TV. He took a final swig of Old Style, undressed, and got into his bed.

Some kidnapper movie was ending. The woman shot the guy and set the house on fire to get away. The news and Star Trek were beginning. Mark shut off the set. With the lights off inside, outside was a little brighter, but he couldn’t see the mountains he knew were there. The city was still sparkly, though.

He hoped the next day would be fun. He hoped Expo would be fun. He needed things to get better. Seattle had been a good start, no problems, but quiet. Finding fun would be better.

Mark got up, rolled the Doritos bag closed, killed his own beer, pulled off his clothes, and climbed into his bed.

Jay was trying to be quiet, but was not very successful.

“Thinking about Lyds?” Mark asked him. Jay made a hum in the affirmative. “Do what you gotta do, man,” Mark told him.

Find out what happens next!

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