CHAPTER 16

I get out because I can’t pay the right amount. So here I am standing in front of a car dealership. Plastic flags, rows of cars that all say BEST DEAL on their windshields. Clearly, they can’t all be telling the truth. But one of them is. One of these cars is the best deal — but which one?

Well, I don’t care. I don’t drive.

The bus driver calls something at me. I don’t hear what she says because a bell starts ringing from up the street.

Bong, bong.

The bus driver closes the doors and the bus drives past me. I follow it. It’s going to Ruby’s school.

The bell keeps ringing. Not a school bell. A school bell doesn’t go Bong, bong. This is a bell from a clock tower. It’s telling me the time. I can’t see the time. I can only hear it. Bong, bong, bong.

I count the bongs. Is it really thirteen o’clock? The bell keeps ringing. And ringing. After a minute or two it stops being useful. Time sounds threatening.

Bong. Bong. Bong. Bong. Bong.

I put my hands over my ears, but I can’t block the sound.

Bong. Bong.

I hurry after the bus. Main Street is the name of the street. My feet pound on the pavement. My heart pounds in my chest. My ears pound to the sound of the bell. I can’t help counting the bongs. It’s getting late — twenty-seven o’clock. Lele! Way past my bedtime.

I hurry past an antique store and a car rental and a lawyer’s office, past a white guy with a grey beard and a brown guy with a black beard, past babies in a stroller with no beards at all, past a No Parking sign and a Detour sign and a Stop sign and one of those triangular signs with an exclamation mark in the middle — what do they want you to do, pay attention? — and signs with arrows pointing in different directions.

I hurry. And then I stop, as suddenly as an alarm when you shut it off. My attention is redirected. In other words, I get distracted. I forget about how late it is and pay attention to maybe my favourite smell.

Do you like pine trees? Rose bushes? The seashore? Rain on hot pavement? Newly cut grass? Me too. These are all great smells.

Gasoline? Not bad.

Woodsmoke? Firecrackers? Pretty good.

But none of these smells compares to food, especially if you’re hungry. I wake up every Sunday morning with a lifted heart and smiling face, because I can smell cinnamon buns. I once followed the Tempting Tandoori food truck for ten blocks around the West End of Vancouver. And I wasn’t even hungry.

There are lots of great food smells. Bacon and chocolate and bread? Oh my. But the best smell of all — the winner and still champion for me is … ratatatatatatatatatatata (that’s a drum roll in case you’re wondering) atatatatatatatata — frying onions.

It doesn’t get any better than frying onions. Quite apart from how good they smell in the moment, frying onions call up so many brilliant memories. They are a key ingredient in one of my favourite days of the year. They are excitement and sunshine and freedom, the heaven-in-a-weekend of the fall fair. Anything can happen there, and sometimes does. At a fall fair, you can ride the Monster-Gyro-Spinner until you and Gale scream yourselves hoarse and everything falls out of your pockets. You can see a fat man in Bermuda shorts lose his Blue Jays cap to a gust of wind, chase that cap all the way across the midway, missing it time after time after time, only to have the cap finally come to rest underneath the back end of a police horse who is at that very moment taking a serious poop. You can try to knock over enough bottles to win the giant stuffed panda. And try again. And again. And again.

Actually, I’m wrong. Some things can’t happen at a fall fair, and that is one of them. You can’t win the panda.

Anyway, frying onions are why I stop running. Their rich, sweet smell sidles out the laneway on my right and whispers to me.

Hey, Gus, say the onions. We’re here for you.

They have a friendly whisper.

Come this way, Gus, say the onions.

Am I scared? Nope. Onions are comfort, not fear. Saanich College can wait until later. The onions are right now.

The bongs have stopped. I guess it’s 113 o’clock. I turn off Main Street to follow the onion smell.

Good for you! say the onions. Keep going!

I walk down a windowless lane with sooty brick walls. Dumpsters to the left of me, dumpsters to the right of me, dumpsters in front of me, and a thin strip of blue sky with seagulls overhead.

Here comes a turn. I can almost taste the onions. They must be around this corner. I’ll head to Saanich College after I’ve eaten a hamburger with onions. Or a cheesesteak with onions. Or a sausage sub sandwich with onions. Or onion rings. Mmmm. My mouth fills with sweet liquid.

I hurry around the corner, but there are no onions. Not yet. Another stretch of laneway. More bricks and dumpsters.

The smell whispers, Come on, come on.

I trot along, turn left, then straight, then left again. The lane is taking me farther away from the main road. No signs of life except for those bewitching onions. I head toward them the way the compass needle swings to point north, the way the daisy turns its face to the sun. They are all I can hear, all I can smell.

Almost there, they say.

One more turn.

Then one more.

Then a last one.

I have no idea where I am. The laneway comes to a dead end.

You think this is going to go badly, don’t you? Why are you walking down this alley, Gus? you ask. Do you have rocks in your head?

(Sorry — you probably don’t say that. It’s one of my dad’s expressions. I don’t think he understands anatomy.)

Anyway, you’re right. My detour down the laneway does not end well. I do not find onions. I find a gang.

That’s what they look like, anyway. Three tough guys and a tough girl sitting around a big cable spool on its side. Maybe they’re a barbershop quartet. When they see me, they stand up, scowling.

“What are you doing here?” says the guy with a snake tattoo coming out of the neck of his shirt.