The Dawn Patrol
Chapter VII
Russell lives in a small apartment in Burnaby. It’s a block away from the congestion of Kingsway, and close to Boundary Road — the border between Vancouver and Burnaby — just a short walk from the park and Deer Lake. He says he moved in three weeks ago, and apologizes to me for the mess.
It’s one of those old, three story wooden buildings, built sometime in the late sixties — where the stench of damp, threadbare carpets in the hallway masks the smell of pot seeping out through every other door — as if the occupants don’t care, or are too stoned to think anyone will know the difference. The ceiling in the lobby is water-stained, most of the light fixtures are broken — some of them hanging down on exposed wires — and there are holes in the walls near the beat-up elevator door.
“Welcome to the seedy side of life,” Russell laughs, pushing his apartment door open with a shouldering lurch — because it sticks sometimes, he says.
“Jesus, Russ,” I say, and he hits a light switch as he moves forward through the kitchen. I stand at the doorway, looking around and taking it all in. One bathroom, one bedroom, a closet in the narrow hallway leading into a combination living room/dining room. The kitchen is a walk-through. There’s an old stove covered with dirty dishes; the counter has stacks of newspapers in three piles, pizza boxes with empty cigarette packages sprinkled around, empty Kokanee beer cans. The air stinks of beer and stale cigarette butts.
“Hey, didn’t I see this décor in a brochure for some high-end apartments in Surrey they were looking to build?”
“Are you crazy?” Russell laughs, hitting a second light switch in the small dining room area. “The rats are bigger on this side of the bridge.”
“You don’t have any curtains,” I point out.
“I don’t mind; I like the view,” he smiles. “The ski lights, you know, up on Seymour and Grouse? Look,” he says, turning the dining room light off again. I stand by the sliding glass door and look out at the mountains.
It’s impossible to tell where the mountains end and the sky begins, but I can see the lights on the slopes and the lights of the city glowing off the clouds. It reminds me of coming in on the ferry from Victoria at night and looking at the glow of the city before you even see it cresting the horizon.
The small apartment is reflected back at me by the glass door, and all the empty boxes and cluttered confusion of moving day are eerily back-lit by the tiny light above the stove in the kitchen.
“What’s it like in the daytime?” I ask, turning my back on the scene and looking at the room.
“Pretty much the same, only lighter,” Russell smiles, turning the light back on in the kitchen. “Hey, it’s nothing like the view you have — I mean mountains, ocean, Mt. Baker, who needs it right? — but it’ll look nice once the snow comes."
“The thing I notice about living in a place like this is that you sort of take it for granted once you get used to it.”
“I hear ya,” he says with a nod. “Sort of like the fancy houses in Hollywood.”
I look at the mess of broken-down boxes scattered around the floor. There’s a small kitchen table with two weary chairs under it, both chairs holding Pic-a-Pop crates full of PLAYBOY and PENTHOUSE magazines, various ROLLING STONE, and HIGH TIMES — even some old MAD magazines. The table’s covered with more newspapers from unpacking whatever glasses or dishes he has. There’s a black garbage bag against the wall full of crumpled up newspapers. A black velvet painting of a matador and a bull leans against one wall; he has three lamps, two of which aren’t plugged in, but the floor lamp is, and his dishes are lined up against the wall — none of them matching. There’s a large orange garbage bag stuffed with clothes sitting on a worn out couch and broken armchair, and I notice the coffee table doesn’t match the end table he has between the couch and chair.
Russell takes the Captain Morgan, the ice, and ginger-ale as soon as we walk through the door, telling me to toss whatever’s on the couch onto the floor and try to make myself comfortable. I grab an old PENTHOUSE magazine and begin flipping through the pages while he makes drinks for us.
“You got an ashtray?” I ask.
“I thought you quit?”
“I did. But now I want one.”
“Use a plate,” he says from the kitchen. “There should be one on the table.” I hear ice dropping into the glasses and the ginger-ale hissing as he opens it while I look for the plate. I find it under the table.
“How strong?”
“Make it a double — at least a double. Half and half’d be better,” I say, looking at the all-too familiar pictures in the magazine as I search my pockets for the cigarettes I bought. I find the cigarettes and toss the magazine on the table as I begin unwrapping the cellophane. The date on the cover of the magazine stares up at me and I pick it up again, nodding to myself: 1982.
I must’ve read this issue at least a dozen times over the years.
Russell comes in with the drinks and puts them on the table. I toss the magazine to the side and sit back, looking for the matches I picked up at the store. I reach for my drink and put my feet up on the table as I light my cigarette. Russell sits on the edge of the couch, elbows on his knees, his body tense — looking as if he’s on edge instead of on the edge of the couch — and I toss him the cigarettes.
“No coasters?” I smile, looking at the water stains on the table.
“I’m going for a new look,” he says. “I want to collect as many water-stains as I can. I figure, hell, in ten or fifteen years — after I’ve made a few designs — I’ll be able to sell ‘em as Modern Art. Maybe sell ‘em to one of those high-falutin’ Hollywood friends of yours? New York’s a gimme,” he adds with an offhand wave as he takes out a smoke.
“Here’s to free enterprise,” I say, toasting his idea.
“I guess it’s the only free thing left, isn’t it? I know there’s no such thing as ‘Free Love’," he adds, taking a drink. “That’s an oxymoron created by women who don’t want to put out. They’ll tell you it’s out there though, just so you keep looking. It’s a conspiracy theory I’ve been working on.”
“And how’s that been working out for you?”
“Not so great,” he says as he sits back against couch and laughs as he light the smoke.
“So what happened between you two?” I ask, deciding the only way to clear the strange tension in the air is to be blunt and ask him about Kathie.
“I guess she just got tired of me,” he says, looking at me with that half smile of his - showing me his lop-sided grin. He takes another swallow of his drink. He puts his finger in his drink and stirs it slowly, the ice cubes clinking in the glass and sounding like wind chimes on the back porch.
“She got someone else?” I ask carefully, studying him, wondering how he’s holding up and how far I can take this line of questioning.
“Oh yeah,” he says, nodding his head mindfully and rocking his whole body forward as he does. “That didn’t take long, did it?” he grins again. There’s not a lot to be smiling at here, I want to tell him.
“But she’s always been pretty outgoing when it comes to meeting people.”
“Someone in her pottery class?” I ask.
“I don’t know. Maybe. Probably. She’s never been one to hang out much in bars you know, which makes it pretty hard when you consider where my interests lie.”
“Yeah, well you never thought about taking any classes with her,” I point out.
“Maybe I should have; if she’d’ve signed up for something interesting, I might have,” he smiles, and then laughs outright. “C’mon, Dan, I’m not fooling anyone but myself if I think you’re gonna believe any of this shit. I was wasting my time down in L.A. Everything was happening up here, back then. Little Mountain Sound, Mushroom Studios; Loverboy; Brian Adams; the Wilson sisters — the Pacific Northwest was rockin’, and I wanted to be a part of it. There were only three music centres that mattered as far as anyone in the business knew: New York, L.A., and Vancouver. This seemed like I was coming home. The traveling was the shits, but the crowds, the girls, and the dope? I was in my element.”
“And then you met Kathie,” I say, dropping my ashes on the plate beside me and taking a sip of my drink. He nods again. There’s a strange silence that seems to follow that statement, an he stubs out his cigarette.
“Fuck this, I’d rather have a joint,” he says. “Then I’ll have my smoke.” He puts his glass down, reaching for a small earthenware bowl under the coffee table. I recognize the bowl right away; he’s had that thing for almost as long as I can remember. He made it in tenth grade Art class. “You wanna smoke one with me?”
“I’d better not,” I say. “That stuff does weird things to me.”
“Yeah, like gets you high,” Russell says with a laugh.
“I’ve never been an advocate of the drug culture. You know that. I tried a bit in school, but didn’t like it.”
"No problem-o," he laughs again. “But ‘an advocate of the drug culture’? I love that. I wanna use that. Can I use that?” He wipes his wet fingers on his pants before sorting through his collection of odds and ends.
“Sure, take it,” I smile. “I don’t have a copyright on it yet."
“I’ll just smoke a half then — I’m sure there must be one in here somewhere — and you’ll get high just breathing it in, advocate or not," he laughs. “Thank God for second hand smoke, I say.”
“Kind of like sitting in the car with Mom and Dad?”
“Never mind that!” he says. “Remember sitting around the kitchen table? Dad, Uncle Jack, Uncle Fred? Mom, Auntie Marg, and Auntie Jen right beside them, puffing away — ”
“And Gramma, too!” I remind him.
“The windows always closed tight and so fogged up you couldn’t see through ‘em because of the water boiling on the stove?”
“The lobster dinners!” I laugh at the memory. “It was always great when Uncle Jack came into town; you could count on one lobster dinner a year. Dad always seemed to make that extra effort to bring him down every November too, and then we’d know: Christmas is just around the corner!” We both say it at the same time, and laugh.
“And he’d be there for Christmas too,” I say slowly. “Mom always made such a big deal out of it — Uncle Jack coming down, I mean. She’d buy the lobsters herself in Steveston, and get gallons of booze. Remember, she always went out with Auntie Marg, or Auntie Jen — sometimes it was her and Angie after Angie learned to drive — but I guess that’s because we were never around very much; at least I wasn’t. She’d spend the rest of the day making those little snacks nobody bothered to eat. She always made the same things too, those asparagus rolls I hated, and those lady finger sandwiches with the pink bread. What was that all about?”
“The Dawn Patrol,” Russell says, finding a roach big enough for him to smoke.
The bond between these two very different men lies vibrating just below the surface, but it is clear to us all the same. You described Russell's new apartment so clearly and in such a multi-sensory way, I knew instantly I wouldn't last a day there. Eeuuw! I have been in that apartment. Beautiful story-telling, Ben.
I could really see this apartment, and I felt the male bonding going on, in which context the Penthouse mag was a nice touch. I used to love MAD magazine by the way! Great stuff, Ben, very atmospheric: I can almost smell the smoke