re, red, mud, drum, rude, reed, deer, me
‘BLECH, I’M DRENCHED,’ said my mom. It was Saturday and we had just come home from buying fruits and vegetables on Broadway at the Golden Valley, where the woman who runs the place always tries to give me a free candy but Mom always refuses. We’d been caught in a rainstorm on the way home, and Mom got the worst of it because she wasn’t wearing her rain jacket.
When she went into the bedroom to get changed and I started putting away our groceries, there was a tap at the door.
‘Can you get that?’ Mom called.
Now I was still pretty sure Cosmo had been pulling my leg about killing a kid, but as a guy can never be too careful, I grabbed the closest weapon – a mesh bag full of oranges – and quietly approached the door, asking myself if I really thought I could thwart a killer, armed with citrus fruit.
I couldn’t see anyone through the gauze curtain of our window. ‘Who is it?’ I said, in a deep voice.
‘Soula.’ It took me a moment to remember that Soula was Mrs Economopoulos’s first name. I put down the oranges and threw open the door. ‘My brother has slaughtered a lamb,’ she said. ‘He gave us half. We’d like to have you to dinner tonight.’
Mom and I hardly ever ate red meat. Mom had ‘moral issues,’ and besides, it was beyond our budget. I, on the other hand, loved red meat. My body craved it. But what if Cosmo had been telling the truth? What if he snapped again and made me his next victim during dinner? Was it really worth risking my life for a few helpings of lamb?
The answer was obvious. ‘We’d love to,’ I said quickly, before my mom could dream up an excuse. She’d just come out of her room and I could tell from the look on her face that she was thinking hard to come up with one.
‘But, Ambrose, don’t we have—’
‘Nope. We have nothing planned. Nothing.’
Mrs E smiled. ‘Great. Come at five-thirty.’ Her smile wavered slightly as she added, ‘You’ll get a chance to meet Cosmo. He’s really a good boy.’
Despite being a killer, I thought, as Mrs E left the apartment – even though I didn’t really believe him. But when we arrived for dinner, Cosmo was nowhere to be seen. Mom handed over a jar of her homemade apple chutney, which I secretly called upchuck-ney because it tasted awful.
We made small talk for a while in their living room and I admired their plate and spoon collections, which hung on one wall. They’d put on their gas fireplace and it was bright and cheerful, despite the continuing rain outside. Mr E poured Mom a glass of their homemade wine. I got a glass of Coke, and I was grateful that my mom didn’t launch into her speech about pop having no nutritional value whatsoever, which would then morph into her speech about the corporatization of the world by companies like Coca Cola Ltd.
When we sat down to eat in the dining room, the table was set for five.
‘Is Cosmo joining us?’ I asked.
Mr E shrugged apologetically. ‘With Cosmo, you never know.’
‘You must be glad to have him home,’ my mom said, and I could tell she was going on a fishing expedition.
But all Mr E said was, ‘Yes, happy.’
‘He’s a good boy,’ Mrs E said, for the second time that day.
The food was amazing. Barbecued lamb and roasted potatoes and this special spinach dish that actually made me like spinach. Mom couldn’t resist asking if everything was peanut-free. By now, this seemed a bit insulting, but Mrs E cheerfully reassured her. Mr and Mrs E even politely took a spoonful each of mom’s chutney and told her it was delicious.
I was admiring the big chandelier that hung over the table when we heard the front door open.
‘Cosmo? You want some food?’ Mr E called out.
No one answered. I caught a glimpse of Cosmo’s back as he headed down the hall. Mr and Mrs E shared a quick, worried glance, and I could tell from my mom’s tight smile that she was feeling uneasy. Then Mr E picked up the platter full of lamb and asked, ‘Who wants seconds?’
To which I naturally replied, ‘Me.’
After dinner, Mr and Mrs E ushered us back into the living room. Mr E poured my mom an ouzo (a Greek liqueur that smells like licorice) and gave me another Coke, while Mrs E brought out a tray of homemade pink and white meringues.
We sat on the crinkly couch and pretty soon the adults got into a big discussion about real estate prices in Vancouver. Mom was complaining that she’d never be able to afford to buy here, which I thought was ironic, and maybe even hypocritical, because the truth was, we couldn’t afford to buy anywhere on what she made, and that is not a complaint, just a fact. Mrs E was saying they’d bought back in the late seventies, when things were more affordable. It was kind of boring, so I drifted. I ate a second meringue, pink this time, and washed it down with Coke. Then I thought about the words you could make from ‘Economopoulos’ (monocles, compels, compose, clomps, clumps, columns, consume, coupons, pounces) and had just come up with couples, when I suddenly let out an enormous and totally unexpected belch.
‘Ambrose!’ my mom said.
‘I’m sorry. Really. It was the Coke,’ I said, which made me realize that I really, really needed to pee. But I knew the washroom was down the same hall that Cosmo had disappeared down, and I might run into him. I held it for as long as I could, and I even thought about making a dash for the bathroom at our place, but I couldn’t see how to explain that. So, finally, I excused myself and bolted down the corridor, past another spoon collection hanging on the wall and into the washroom.
I locked the door, then I peed for what felt like five minutes straight. I did some other stuff, too, because when you’re not used to eating a lot of meat, it sometimes doesn’t digest that well.
When I left the washroom, I saw him. He was in his room, at a desktop computer. It looked like he hadn’t bothered to redecorate since he was a teenager. The walls were still covered with Guns N’ Roses posters and one practically life-size poster of Pamela Anderson, which hung over his bed.
I stared at Pam for a while, which made me feel tingly, then I tried to see what was on his computer screen, but his back was blocking my view. I don’t know why, but I wanted to see what he was looking at. Well, I sort of do know why: I was hoping he was looking at pictures of naked women, maybe even naked Pamela Anderson. Even though I didn’t really believe he’d killed a kid, I figured he wouldn’t try to murder me with his parents and my mom down the hall, so I walked into the room.
What I saw on the computer screen was disappointing and surprising all at once. He was in the middle of an online Scrabble game.
‘You play Scrabble?’
Cosmo almost jumped out of the chair. ‘Jesus Christ. Don’t sneak up on people like that.’
‘I play Scrabble, too.’
‘That’s great.’ But he didn’t say it like he meant it. He turned back to his game.
‘I’m quite good.’
He didn’t answer. I could see him staring at his letters: GINWXAQ. Eventually he placed the word ‘WING’, using ‘ING’ from his own letters and attaching them to an existing ‘W’. The ‘G’ was on a double word square, so it got him sixteen points.
‘Huh,’ I said.
‘Huh? What does “huh” mean?’
‘Nothing.’
‘Has anyone ever told you you’re annoying?’
‘Yes.’
‘I bet you drive your teachers nuts.’
‘I don’t have any teachers right now.’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘I don’t go to school.’
He turned away from his screen and looked at me. ‘What do you mean, you don’t go to school? Everyone goes to school.’
‘I’m homeschooled. Well, correspondence schooled.’
‘Correspondence schooled. In the middle of Vancouver. Where you’re surrounded by schools.’
‘I used to go to a real school till last month.’
‘What happened?’
‘Three guys tried to kill me.’
Cosmo laughed. It was clear he didn’t believe me. ‘Too bad they didn’t succeed.’ He turned back to his game.
‘Did you start to play Scrabble in jail?’
‘That’s none of your business.’
‘I’ve played with my mom since I was eight.’
‘Great. Now look, I really need to concentrate on my next turn.’
That’s when his opponent laid down ‘ZOOS’, with the ‘Z’ on a triple word score square and the ‘S’ at the end of Cosmo’s ‘WING’, getting a total score of fifty-one points.
‘Damnit,’ said Cosmo.
‘You should’ve played “WAXWING” on your turn instead,’ I told him. ‘It’s a type of bird. You had all the letters. It would have given you forty-four points instead of sixteen, and you would’ve blocked your opponent’s shot at the triple word score.’
Cosmo stared at me.
‘You kind of handed him “ZOOS” on a silver platter,’ I added.
That’s when Cosmo threw his Official Scrabble Dictionary at me and I yelled – because it startled me, not because it hurt – and Mom came running into the room. Even though I said everything was fine, she thanked Mr and Mrs E for a wonderful evening but said that she had to get me home to bed, which was embarrassing because it was only eight o’clock.
Down in our apartment, I could hear shouting from upstairs, then the front door slamming. Cosmo’s Camaro screeched out of the driveway, and I was pretty sure he hadn’t finished his Scrabble game.
Which was probably for the best because he was obviously getting slaughtered.