Had Erik’s plans been detailed, they would have amounted to:
1) Go back to sleep after the alarm goes off for Ray.
2) Wake up around 11.00-ish, and bask in the pleasure of not having to worry about any more exams.
3) Lounge in the bed for another fifteen minutes or so, enjoying the lack of pressure and the quiet empty apartment.
4) Shower, then have leftover won ton soup and coffee for breakfast. Or the other way around.
5) Call Dustin and borrow car to make a trip downtown to finally get rid of the stack of overdue library books.
It wasn’t much as far as plans went, but Erik had liked it when it had lain quietly in his mind. It had gone smoothly, too, until he got to the part where he was calling Dustin and found the phone busy. It had continued to be busy thirty minutes later, so Erik had been forced to resign himself to loading up his backpack with twenty odd books and making the trek to the library himself.
The walk to the downtown branch of the Saskatoon library wasn’t a hard one. It was long, but, despite a lack of athletic finesse in most other fields, Erik could usually manage to walk from point A to point B without permanently injuring himself.
Usually.
It had been hot, though, with noon mid-April sun that had Erik almost-wishing for a winter that had lasted until the beginning of May. Still, he’d managed to get to the library, sneak in, dispose of all his books, and sneak out again without being forced to confront the hefty fines the books he had taken out around the end of February had earned him or without getting himself killed. He’d used some laundry money to buy a slush, which had kept him from passing out from dehydration or heat exhaustion, but hadn’t really helped keep the sun off. He hadn’t been desperate enough to take off the flimsy plastic lid and dump the icy contents over his head.
Straw in mouth, backpack still hanging empty from his shoulders, all he wanted to do was lie on the couch. He wasn’t even sure if he’d be up to playing videogames; he might have to resort to watching some incomprehensible and bad French dub of an equally bad American movie on the French channel. For some reason, that was the only channel he and Ray had been able to intercept since the upstairs neighbour had either found out Ray was stealing cable from him and yanked some integral wire, or moved out. He was hot and tired, and entering a smoke-filled apartment was not the best way to punctuate a day that was supposed to be the epitome of relaxation.
“Ray! What the fuck are you doing?!”
“Working. Ninja work.” Ray’s words had an abstract quality to them – he was concentrating on something else. Something that was in the kitchenette.
Erik waved his hands in front of his face. The smoke wasn’t really thick, but it was annoying, and thick enough that the smoke detector should have been blaring. But the only sound that wasn’t coming from the kitchen came from the computer: Ray had put a CD on, something that, for once, didn’t leave Erik with the impression that the computer was swearing at him in Italian. Something familiar with a heavy techno beat in the background and limited vocals. It would have been refreshing, if it weren’t for all the damn smoke. “What did you do with the smoke detector?!” he yelled over the music.
“It’s still there, Thor, don’t worry. You can’t sell a smoke detector on the black market.”
Far from reassured by Ray’s casual words, Erik stalked into the bedroom and peered up at the ceiling. The smoke detector was still there. Mostly. One side had been pried open and wires were dangling down from the hole, some of them neatly snipped so the bright copper wiring was visible from the white plastic casing. Erik spun on his heel, hit his knee on the dresser, and stalked to the kitchenette to loom over Ray’s shoulder. “You murdered the smoke detector!”
Ray, dressed in a plain black T-shirt and black jeans, which was what he described as casual ninja at work wear, looked up from the stove, eyebrows lifting over innocent brown eyes. “I didn’t murder the smoke detector. Jesus Christ, Thor, you’re so over-dramatic.”
“There’s bits dangling out. Lots of bits. You cut wires. It looks pretty damn dead to me.”
“The smoke detector,” Ray said coolly, “is temporarily comatose. I promise, it will make a remarkable recovery before the next inspection.”
Reluctantly, Erik accepted the promise. Ray had dismantled a lot of things in the apartment before. He’d actually broken one of the windows a few weeks prior to exams, and they’d spent several days with a garbage bag duct taped over the hole. But every time, somehow, through his own weird, underhanded ways, he’d gotten it all fixed with minimal fuss. The maintenance people had never heard a word about it. If Ray said he would fix the smoke detector, the smoke detector would be fixed.
Eventually.
Erik just hoped they wouldn’t burn to death in their beds before Ray got around to it.
Shaking his head to rid it of the sudden grisly vision of a very charred apartment, Erik focussed on what Ray was doing that had created the need to temporarily incapacitate the smoke detector.
On the counter there was a large bag of fresh-smelling muffins. There was a mixing bowl filled with something black and creamy, and a large wooden spoon sticking out of it. And there was Ray, in his casual ninja gear, with a frying pan in one hand and a blackened spatula in the other. Rolling around in the frying pan, along with a lot of the dark stuff from the mixing bowl, was a muffin.
It was smoking.
“If this is your latest way of dealing with exam stress, I want money to crash at a hotel until your exams are over.”
“Don’t be stupid, Thor. This has nothing to do with exams. I am fine with the exams.”
“You threw Russia: Death of a Superpower out the window an hour before you wrote your global poli sci final.”
“If you had to read a book in which a guy named Wexford-Higgins talk about how the falls of the Soviet Union was inevitable and how the best thing for all Russians would be to emigrate to anywhere else in the world and let their entire country be used for nuclear testing, you’d want to throw it out the window too,” Ray said defensively.
“You concussed someone out walking their dog!”
“They were probably in league with Wexford-Higgins.”
“Both of them?”
“Dogs are a lot smarter than you might think, Thor.”
Erik pinched the bridge of his nose. Talking to Ray during exams made his brain hurt more than talking to Ray when they were both drunk. “If this isn’t some weird new manifestation of exam stress – and the whole Russia-hating dogs thing isn’t really helping your argument – what the hell is it?”
“You know Susan next door?” Ray asked, tossing the burnt muffin from the pan and into a waiting mixing bowl, this one empty and dry.
“Yeah,” Erik confirmed warily, not sure where this non-sequitur was going to take him. “The crazy one. The one who thinks we’re gay. The one who tried to get us evicted. How could I not know Susan?”
“You do have a tendency to be oblivious to the obvious, Thor,” Ray said, beginning his assault on another muffin. Then he thrust a piece of white paper, splattered with black spots from Ray’s pseudo-cooking, in Erik’s face with a solemn command: “Read it.”
Eyebrows raised, Erik skimmed the paper. It was a plain advertisement like the ones that were found all over the campus and King Place. It had an ugly layout, with bad clipart, but there was nothing remarkable about it. “It’s for a bake sale. So what?”
“She’s having a bake sale. To raise money for her church.”
Erik’s eyebrows rose further. “And . . .?” he prompted, because he knew it was expected of him.
“Outside! Right now! Not even a block away from here!”
“So? Ray, bake sales are one of those things church-people just do. They read the Bible, they sing Bible-songs, they bake Bible-cookies and try to sell them. So they can buy more Bibles.”
Ray looked away from his muffin, briefly, to glare at Erik. “It’s not the point. She’s reaping profit out there, taking money from innocent people, all so she can buy more paper to put verses about sodomy on our door. But she’s not going to get away with it.”
“Didn’t you say she wanted you? Haven’t you been saying that for months. Since, like, October. Every time she puts something on the door, or you cross paths with her in any way, you say she wants you.”
“She doesn’t. She’s evil. Pure evil, and her attempt to take money from the innocent people of Saskatoon in exchange for evil baked goods must be stopped,” Ray said fiercely.
Erik’s face split into a grin that pulled a little at the burnt skin over his nose. “You hit on her and she shot you down, didn’t you?”
Ray gritted his teeth. “Pure. Evil.”
“More like the first sane thing she’s done,” Erik said, leaning on the fridge. His sides shook with laughter.
“She’s evil,” Ray insisted, “and must be stopped. There’s only one way to do it: we have to fight her on her own territory.”
“You’re already on the crazy part of her territory,” Erik pointed out as he slid closer and closer to the floor, still shaking as he tried to suppress another fit of what was quickly becoming giggles.
“We’re going to set up an opposing bake sale.”
“That,” Erik said, his voice still filled with the occasional tremula of laughter, “is the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard.”
“It is a plan that cannot fail,” Ray persisted.
“Dude, she’s selling cookies and brownies to raise money for a church. You’re . . .” Erik looked up from where he was now sitting on the floor, legs doubled up so his knees were level with his ears. “You’re planning on selling burnt muffins and using the money to . . .?”
“I was thinking me and my recently nineteen-year-old self could go and buy some more beer.”
“You have beer money. You are drowning in beer money. You had beer money before you could technically buy beer!”
“It’s a worthy cause.”
“Are you thinking about this at all? Selling cookies for a church versus selling burnt muffins to buy beer. You’re Catholic. Surely you can see the logic flaw in all this!”
Calmly, Ray tossed another burnt muffin into the dry mixing bowl and passed the bowl to Erik, following by bowl full of creamed blackness. “Slice and butter the muffins, Thor. If we don’t get our asses in gear, they’ll be done by the time we’re out there.” Selecting another muffin, he added, “Did you know the top of your head looks sort of red?”
Erik sighed and reached for a knife. After a moment’s hesitation, he grabbed the blunt butter knife instead of the large cleaver, and went to work.
Sitting on the floor by the table Ray had borrowed from Sarah and Erik had been forced to carry for a block, along with the bag of bagged-up black muffins, Erik wondered what bothered him more. That Sarah had been willing to let Ray steal her kitchen table for this stunt, that Ray had actually managed to organize the stunt in a way that only made it seem slightly insane instead of totally insane, that Ray actually seemed to be attracting the attention of supposedly sane people out enjoying the spring air, that Ray was selling his damn burnt muffins, or that Ray had managed to find a megaphone somewhere.
They had set up across from Susan’s table. Susan’s table did not look like it had been stolen from someone’s apartment; it was a plain, neat, normal looking plywood table on shaky metal legs. Susan’s table was not covered with burnt muffins shoved into plastic bags and tied off with black twist-ties; there were neat parcels of cookies, fresh pies, slices of cake, biscuits, buns, brownies, Nanaimo bars, and, yes, muffins of the not-burnt variety. Susan’s table did not have a crazy guy in black standing with one foot on the table yelling enthusiastically into a megaphone; there was just Susan and another girl, a sane looking one with shoulder length black hair and rather confused hazel eyes with which she was staring at Ray, and, by association, Erik.
She had a nice smile of complete and total, but very polite, bafflement, though.
Susan, on the other hand, was glaring daggers at Ray, although Erik supposed that could just be because she recognized her and Sarah’s kitchen table, and was wondering how to get Ray’s dirty shoe prints off it, if it were ever returned.
“She looks pissed off,” Erik said, during a lull.
“She does,” Ray said, turning the card on which he had printed “NINJA MUFFINS” in surprisingly attractive letters, with some symbols scrawled underneath, much smaller, that Erik supposed could be Japanese for “ninja muffins”. He grinned evilly and, after tapping his megaphone with the card once or twice, put the card back down where anyone walking past could see it.
“Think she’ll kill us?”
“She wouldn’t dare risk martyring the men of noble Ninja Muffin.”
Erik snorted laughter into his knees. “You are such a moron.”
“The unbelievers all say things like that, at first,” Ray agreed, his voice dripping with sadness. His eyes were still focussed, gleaming diabolically, on Susan.
“Where’d you get all this stuff, anyway?” Erik asked, pulling up a blade of new grass and putting it between his lips. He stopped watching Ray watch Susan, and turned to look at their apparent competition as well.
“You were there when we got the table from Sarah. Angel of a girl. She understands the true path to salvation.”
Erik snorted. “The other stuff, idiot.”
“Muffins came from the bakery. Butter came from the grocery store.”
“What butter?”
“What did you think the stuff you were putting on the muffins was, Sigurd?”
Erik shuddered.
“Black dye also came from the grocery store. Bags and twist ties, hey, behold the marvel of the grocery store.”
“And all the bowls and the frying pan and things?”
“From the cupboards under the sink? God, Thor. Pay attention.”
“When did we get a frying pan?”
“Part of the load of junk your little brother brought with him that time he crashed with us.”
Erik thought to how they had left the frying pan: sitting in a sink half-full of cold water, completely black, its surface thickly caked with layers of burnt and re-burnt muffin crumbs. “Collin’s going to kill you,” he observed, not unhappily. “I can’t believe you’re getting this to work.”
“Provide people with a show, Thor, and they will come. We’re a damn sight more interesting than the Bible girls.”
“They are lacking a megaphone and raving lunatic,” Erik agreed, leaning against a leg of the table and trying to whistle with the grass.
“They’re providing a horrible show,” Ray agreed, and absently opened a bag, taking out a burnt muffin half and eating it.
“That’s disgusting.”
“Carbon’s good for digestion.”
“It’s carcinogenic.”
“But good for digestion,” Ray countered. Erik rolled his eyes, but Ray didn’t notice because at the same moment Susan got up from her chair, said something to the other girl, and walked off. Ray tilted his head to watch her go, swallowed his bite of ninja muffin, and broke into an evil grin.
“Wish we’d stolen some chairs from Sarah, too,” Erik muttered, watching his roommate warily.
“Go over and talk to the other chick,” Ray ordered.
“Why?”
“I want to know where Susan went. Maybe she’s giving up and’s gone to find some strapping yet evil young men to help her take the table back.”
“Maybe she had to go to the bathroom. I’m not going to bother that poor girl. Haven’t we done enough to annoy them?” Erik asked plaintively.
“We’re not annoying them. You’re just going to go and inquire. Casually. Politely.” Ray’s grin turned, briefly, into an encouraging smile.
“You’re the one who knows all that church stuff!” Erik protested. “You can talk to her on her in her own language.”
Ray rolled his eyes. He held up a finger. “Firstly, Thor, she’s not an alien. She speaks Canadian just like you. That’s your language, not mine. I can’t do the whole “eh” thing.” Erik made a face and Ray held up another finger. “Secondly, she’s Protestant. Good Lord, Thor, think.”
“I,” Erik said flatly, “have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Well,” Ray said, lifting up his megaphone and dangling it casually from one hand, “I suppose I could go over and talk to her, ask her myself.” He tossed Erik the megaphone, which Erik caught clumsily with both hands while bending back a finger far more than it should have. “You can stay here and drum up business.”
Erik choked. Swiftly, he threw the megaphone back to Ray, who caught it easily with one hand. “I hate you,” he said as he got up, spitting the blade of grass to the ground.
“Be brave, young Sigurd,” Ray said. He thumped Erik on the back. “She won’t eat you.”
As Erik made his way across the quiet street, he could hear Ray murmur “Probably” in a laughing voice. Erik made a face, shouldered the backpack that he hadn’t been given time to dispose of back in the apartment, and approached the table and the girl behind it. “Hi,” he said awkwardly.
The girl looked him up and down with her wide hazel eyes. “Hi,” she answered, just as awkwardly.
Erik rubbed the back of his head. “Um . . . where’d Susan head off to?”
“Back to her apartment. We’re low on change,” she said, lifting one eyebrow quizzically at the question.
And when Susan got to her apartment, she would find a distinct absence of a table. Shit. They were so dead. “Um, look, I’m sorry about my friend,” he jerked a thumb in the direction of Ray, who was getting back on the table and yelling something incoherent into the megaphone again. “It’s exams. They make him a lot crazier than he usually is. I’ll try to make him go away as soon as I can, I promise.”
The girl smiled. It was a smile that was a lot prettier when she wasn’t watching Ray’s ridiculous display in disbelief. “It’s not some kind of weird performance art thing?”
Erik shook his head reluctantly. “No, no, it’s just Ray. He’s just weird.” He eyed the girl and swallowed before holding out a hand to the girl. “And, uh, I’m Erik. I’m not nearly as weird as he is. I just get dragged along with a lot of his stuff. We’re roommates.”
The girl took Erik’s hand and shook it, smiling. “I’m Hailey. It’s . . . interesting to meet you.”
Erik went red. “Yeah. It’s not often that I get to actually talk to someone who’s been subjected to Ray before he drives them totally insane. Um. Is he making things move slowly for you guys?”
Hailey shook her head. “No. He’s actually attracting a lot more people, I think. Everyone’s coming to see who the crazy guy making noise is and what he’s yelling about.” She grinned. “If we weren’t doing well, we wouldn’t be needing the extra change, eh.”
“Yeah,” Erik agreed, watching Hailey’s face. After a minute, he coughed and cleared his throat. “Could I have your number?” he blurted. “And, uh, call you sometime. Maybe go out for coffee? Or, uh, not-coffee, if you don’t like coffee. Tea, or, uh, pop or something. Something drinkable.”
Hailey’s eyebrows rose in surprise. “Um . . .”
“I’ll buy something,” Erik offered hopefully. Belatedly, he checked his pockets and turned up a handful of quarters. Laundry money. He held it out to Hailey optimistically. “Please?”
“Alright,” she said, and laughed.
Erik hoped it was the good kind of laugh that meant he might actually have the slim chance of date and not the bad kind of laugh that meant he was doomed, doomed, utterly doomed. He grabbed a package of slightly squishy Nanaimo bars and smiled hopefully.
After a minute of staring at Erik’s awkwardly hopeful smile, Hailey poked around in the battered cash box that was at her elbow and found a stub of a pencil and a scrap of paper. She scrawled her name and what Erik optimistically hoped was her number on it and exchanged it for Erik’s handful of quarters. “If you do call about that drinking thing . . . leave the crazy guy with the megaphone at home, okay?”
Erik’s face broke into a delighted grin. “Definitely. It was nice to meet you, Hailey.”
“You too, Erik,” she said, smiled, and turned her attention to someone who had drifted over from the fresh crowd that was gathering around Ray.
Pocketing the piece of paper, with a mantra to check the pockets before he washed the jeans running through his head, Erik jogged back to Ray’s Ninja Muffin table, elbowing his way past the small crowd.
“So,” Ray leaned down to whisper in Erik’s ear as he settled back down on the grass, “where’d Susan go?”
“Just left to get change, man,” Erik said, and slid the Nanaimo bars into his backpack before Ray noticed them.