Midnite Moving Co

 

Ten minutes later, with much less suavity than he normally showed, he was at it again.  Jesse kept fending him off and George kept trying to understand just what it was that could have happened to him to make Jesse so different. Jesse switched tactics, and threw himself across the front seat onto George. He did so in the expectation of three things.

1. George wouldn’t grunt or make any noise.

2. Whatever George did with his body would not match what Jesse saw with his eyes.

3. Jesse, no matter how hard he threw himself at George, would emerge unhurt.

George, who could sense Jesse was winding up for something but did not know what, fell back, said, “Oof!” and prevented Jesse’s head from hitting the inside of the passenger window with his hand.

“What are you doing?” George said in irritation.

“Sorry,” Jesse said automatically, and shoved himself back behind the steering wheel again. Jesse was surprised, and not surprised.  George sounded like a man who’d gotten the wind knocked out of him, so scratch that. He couldn’t say that what he saw, heard and felt was mismatched, although it seemed that George got a little blurry.

“You can predict what I’m going to do next, right?”

George didn’t answer right away.

Then he said, “You are one of the hardest people to read I ever met, even though your body language says you are an honest, open person.”

“You didn’t answer the question,” Jesse said.

“My people are not fond of the inquisition as a social form.”

“My people are not fond of evasive clownbags,” Jesse said.

“If I promise not to mock you, or laugh, or bring it up again, or tell anyone else, will you tell me what happened?”

“If you tell me why you want to know, when you generally don’t give two shits about my personal life, will I promise to consider it? I doubt it,” Jesse said. 

“Why is it so important?” George shrugged. “Idle curiosity.”

“Nope,” Jesse said.

“Nope,” George repeated blankly. “I’m telling you to your face it’s idle curiosity!”

“And I’m telling you to your face you’re lying, though I know I can’t prove it,” Jesse said, triumphant.

George looked at Jesse, frowned, and said, “Fine. Why do you think I’m asking?”

“Because you want to predict my behaviour,” Jesse said. “And did you just admit you were lying?”

“No,” said George.  Jesse smiled his three-cornered toddler smile and looked away.

“It’s okay, George,” Jesse said. “I know you can read minds.”

“No,” George said, with suppressed fury, “I can’t.”

“You can read something. C’mon, George! — you can smell human blood at 30 paces behind two doors! — what other tricks have you got up that fancy sleeve of yours?”

George threw open the passenger door so hard it nearly came off the hinges, slammed it so the truck reverberated and swiftly walked out of sight.

After about ten minutes he returned, got in and sat down. He stared directly ahead and didn’t speak. Jesse counted to thirty.

“Never saw you lose your temper before, George,” Jesse said.

“I don’t like being called a liar,” George said.

“Even if it’s true?” Jesse asked softly.

There was a short pause.

“Especially if it’s true,” George said.

“You’re obviously not like other people, what with your upbringing and your funny clothes and all,” Jesse said. “Do you know how strange you are?”

“Compared to what?” George asked. He almost sounded despairing.

“Just about everyone,” Jesse said. “But I like you, so it doesn’t much matter to me.”

There was another pause. Then, as if he really couldn’t help himself, George said, “What happened to you?”

Jesse said, “You’re not going to like it.”

“I know that already, from how resistant you’ve been.”

“Er, no. You sure have a high opinion of yourself. It’s because you’re an atheist.”

“How would that make a — oh, you’re kidding,” George, for once, looked nonplussed.

“Yup. Met a god. But that’s not the best part,” Jesse said.

“You did not meet a god,” George said, voice dropping into incredulity.

“Just one way of putting it.  The technical term is theophany.”

“If you think Lark turned into a god in front of you, you’re crazy.”

“Oh, it’s far worse than that,” Jesse said. “I was the god.”

“Humans have the most incredible capacity for self-delusion,” George said. “Every time I think I’ve plumbed it, the bottom drops out yet again.”

“While he was passing through,” Jesse said, as if he hadn’t heard this, “He told me to keep a very close eye on you. He specifically told me that you don’t belong here.”

George appeared to lose the power of speech. He looked at Jesse, his brown eyes stricken, and then got out of the truck again. He didn’t come back for half an hour, said nothing, and hardly spoke during the move.

They helped a woman after her roommate’s brother had drunkenly assaulted her in her sleep. The roommate was convinced it was the client’s fault, and the client was heartened that she didn’t have to listen to the same crap from the guys loading the truck.

Normally George came back with Jesse to drop off the truck. When they’d offloaded into the client’s parents’ place in Abbotsford, George said, “I’ll find my own way home,” and got out of the truck.

“Are you sure?” Jesse said, appalled.  “It’ll be a hundred bucks at least for a cab!”

“It’ll be worth it,” said George. As he walked away from the truck, Jesse watched him in the rear view mirror, and saw him vanish into thin air.

“Gotcha,” Jesse said blankly. He returned the truck, took a cab home, and did not sleep.

Jesse, who knew he was not imagining things, wondered if he’d ever see George again.   Apart from former clients, there was nobody else in town who could identify him. He’d never been to George’s apartment.  If George decided to vanish, there’d be nothing to show for it but a couple of anecdotes and a Fortean-scale mystery and whatever money he’d managed to make.  He could try running down the antiquities part of George’s business, or see if anybody in the poly group had more of a line on him.

Getting out in Abbotsford, though. For George to have been that angry and that disgusted, that he didn’t even want to ride back into town with him, was almost scary.

He felt like he’d broken George. It hadn’t seemed possible.  Now it did.

But George, true to what seemed to be his nature, reappeared for the next job, free of comment or insult, and he waited until he had all of Jesse’s attention to apologize.

“I’m very proud,” George said. “I like to think I know everything and when I don’t I can be quite obsessive and angry and …”

“Humiliated,” Jesse said.

George didn’t argue.  “I’m sorry for worrying you and I’m sorry I kept harassing you about your personal life.”

Jesse briefly considered George, and what he’d said. “You couldn’t worry me, at least about your physical health. I was worried that you’d fired me without notice.”

“Very well,” George said, “I’m sorry about that too.”

“I for one am sorry I saw you disappear,” Jesse added.

“You didn’t see that,” George said, and there was a thread of some other mood than dismissal. 

Mmhmm, thought Jesse.

“Oh, I’m not saying there’s not a rational explanation,” Jesse said with a calmness he didn’t feel.  After all, if he was right, there was no telling how George would respond. “Quit squirming, I know you’re not human.”

“Of course I’m human,” George said, in a tone that implied that any other suggestion was ludicrous..

“No, you really aren’t,” Jesse said.  “Ya see, one of the things about my childhood is that my mother gaslighted me about damned near everything, but my aunt and sister prevented me from completely losing my mind, and my keen observation, especially when I’m sensing I might be in danger.”

George gazed at him, motionless.

 Jesse continued. “I have no idea why a puka or magic sasquatch or temporarily embarrassed vampire would want to live in Vancouver —“

Here George tried to interrupt, but Jesse wasn’t having any. “— And whoever you are, you’re certainly welcome here, seeing as how you appear to be performing heroic tasks to make fat stacks.”

George quit trying to interrupt, with a sharply exhaled sigh.

Jesse continued. “I don’t really care what you are. All I care about, and all I’m ever gonna care about, is how you behave.”

“So I could be a vampire or some kind of magical creature and you’d be okay with that,” George said.

“I would be as accepting as I could manage, and as curious as I could get away with. I find it interesting that I had a massive cognitive reset and you could immediately tell, but not what happened. So I know you’re not spying on me.”

George made a noise.

“Anybody who has the power of invisibility can spy on people.  Humans find it almost impossible not to spy if they have the capacity. Do you?”

George thrashed in his seat quietly.

“I do spy on people,” he said. “But I don’t spy on you, because anything I want to know about you I can ask, and you’ll tell the truth.”

Jesse grinned. “Not everybody does.”

“You have no idea,” George said in a voice that seemed to have blown in with an arctic outflow.

“Shit! Of course I do.”

“And you’re prepared to never know what I am.”

“George,” Jesse said cheerfully, “I get the impression sometimes that you don’t know what you are. And you keep talking about people who don’t exist, like your ‘mate’ and Michel.”

George chuckled.

“Oh, I assure you, they’re real. In fact —“ George said. He pulled a phone out of his pocket and checked it. Jesse shot his eyes over it; even upside-down he could see it wasn’t George’s usual phone, and the lettering on the text was Greek. If George kept multiple phones, he definitely had a double life. He remembered what George had said once, offhandedly.

My people speak medieval Greek as a common language.  Keeps people out of our business.

“Michel is here. He should be joining us for the move,” George said, and put the phone away.

“What?” Jesse said. He’d been fantasizing that George was the last of his kind, making up imaginary colleagues and friends so that he wouldn’t sound so lonely.

“Yeah,” George said.  He brightened. “Michel and I have a complicated history.  He tried to kill me once – it was more like several attempts over one short span of time — but we got over it pretty quick.  Now if I have a close friend in this world, it’s Michel.”

“You also have a mate,” Jesse said.

“True, but one relaxes with friends, and one never relaxes with Kima, there’s too much at stake,” George said, almost to himself.

“You’re trying to get her pregnant,” Jesse said, “You’ve mentioned that. Isn’t that relaxing?”

“Whatever you do,” George said, trying to laugh but not managing it. “Don’t say that to Michel, I’ll never hear the end of it. Mating is not relaxing.”

“You’re doing it wrong,” Jesse said thoughtlessly.

Whatever bad temper George had vented was not coming back. He laughed merrily and said, “Definitely, definitely do not not say that to Michel. He’s only here in town for Kima.”

“He wants your mate? And you’re okay with that. Are your people poly?”

George laughed again. “In ways yet undiscovered by humans, I suspect.  It is unusual, and socially suspect, to have long-lived attachments.  My parents did.” Abruptly he stopped talking. Like Jesse’s mother, George’s mother was a sore subject, although he’d been evasive about why.

Jesse tried to work out how having romantic feelings was socially suspect, when every critter on earth with a spine had some variant on romance.

“So you’re asexual,” he hazarded. “As a rule.”

George wagged a finger.  “Don’t start.”

“Okay. But —“ said Jesse.

“Don’t start.”

“One more question.”

“I don’t promise to answer it.”

“Your people call themselves something,” Jesse said. “I just wanted to know what it is.”

“We call ourselves many things,” George said. “But I tell you what,” he added, pursing his lips for emphasis. “You can ask Michel when he comes by.” He changed the subject with an emotional clang like a jail door closing.

Jesse let all thoughts of conversation drop as he started asking himself what Michel would be like.  He expected, as one does, someone much like George in appearance and manner, thinking that two of George would be something to see, like finding out there are two sets of Niagara Falls, or two moons orbiting the earth. Perhaps not two moons; that seemed too remarkable even for George.

So he was expecting someone about five eight, with sharp, vaguely eastern European features, Edwardian clothing and Old World savoir-faire in manners and expression.

Jesse was sitting up in the cab of the truck when Michel got out of the taxi. Michel looked directly into Jesse’s eyes, and smiled an evil, knowing smile, as if he knew not merely what Jesse was thinking, but the full measure of how silly he was for thinking that he, Michel, could be anything like that little squeaker, George.

“Holy fuck,” Jesse said.

“Impressive, ain’t he?” George murmured.

The person approaching him stood just under two meters tall and was wearing stained blue coveralls, as a professional mover would. His black hair had been shaped into a mullet, which increased his height with something resembling an afro on the top, and fixed his resemblance to a motorcycle club member with a long wild horsetail at the back. He walked like someone who had carried more heavy loads, been in more mosh pits, told more tall tales and courted more fine women than anyone in the world, and that he’d as soon punch your lights out as share a jug of beer.

George had mentioned that Michel had lived in Montréal for a long stretch, but didn’t mention that he’d picked up his accent there. Michel sounded like a Canadiens player from the sixties, attempting his first interview in English. 

Michel opened George’s door and pulled him out onto the ground, “Weak ass’ little bugger that you are, you have to call on me.” Jesse threw himself headlong across the truck seat to get a glimpse of what was happening.

The two of them thrashed around, first in the street, then in the gutter, then on the sidewalk for a minute, insulting each other the whole time as they writhed and sought purchase, if their tone was a sign. Jesse couldn’t understand a word and reached for his phone to record it.  As soon as he turned on the phone George laughed, and Michel said, “None of that,” and faster than Jesse could believe, Michel was laughing at Jesse through the truck window and stood with the phone in his hand. George’s hand came up to touch the phone.

For a strange second it seemed as if having wrestled, they would now dance. The phone rested between Michel’s hand and George’s, as they stared each other down.

Abruptly, Michel tossed the phone at Jesse.  It described a perfect arc and landed in his jacket pocket.

“That was bracing,” George said, smiling fondly at Michel.

“I’m doing this before I go see Kima,” Michel replied, furrowing his monobrow. “Allons-y, I got girls to bang, places to be.”

“Uh,” Jesse said.

“I texted you the address,” George said.

“When?”

“Just now.”

Jesse looked at his phone.  Between the time he’d pulled it out to record the fight and the time Michel had tossed it back to him, George had texted him.

While he was wrestling on the ground with Michel.

“Uh,” Jesse said. “How —“

“Really Jesse,” George said, amused. “Have you never heard of multitasking?”

“Never touch the stuff,” Jesse said, fighting to maintain his dignity with a witty response. “It hurts your ability to concentrate.”

Michel said something, probably in Greek.

“English only,” George said. “Jesse’s a good man, very hard to fool.”

“Thanks,” Jesse said, with genuine gratitude.  Having extra help is great, but not if it means you have to listen to two other people giggle and pass notes in a language you don’t understand.

“That so?” Michel said, not impressed.

“I know you aren’t human,” Jesse said, tired of being the butt of this asshole’s rough humour.

Michel wordlessly turned to George.

“He guessed,” George said, shrugging.

“Timing’s the pits,” Michel said.

“No, not really,” George said. “Kima isn’t pregnant yet.”

Michel gave a shrug that seemed to span the roadway. “If you say so, cuz.  C’mon, let’s go, my balls are itchy.” He dashed around the side of the truck and hopped in next to Jesse.  Jesse felt his weight, and warmth, and realized that whatever the hell they were, they were quite different from each other.  And yet friends. And relatives.

Indecorously, inauspiciously, Jesse’s friendship with Michel had commenced.

The next midnight move was a tough one.  Morag, the client, was a woman in her mid-forties, short and dark and with an intense gaze that reminded Jesse of a squirrel staring you down at a bird feeder. Her ‘unqualified ongoing disaster’, as she referred to the job, wasn’t a case of moving some boxes between two points, but of locating, corralling, crating and moving almost one hundred domestic and farm animals from a hoarder’s property in Langley, to be distributed at the six different drop-off points in the Lower Mainland where animal lovers were prepared to take on at least some of the evacuees.

With his normal cold efficiency, George treated the Langley hobby farm move as a logistical challenge; for Jesse it was two shifts’ worth of PTSD flashbacks, mixed with the kind of molten, angry misery that sensitive souls feel when faced with the horrid evidence of extended cruelty.

Michel came along to help deal with the scale of the task, which dwarfed anything they’d previously attempted. Jesse heard a lot of colourful Québecois slang the first night. After a while, even Michel fell silent.

Legally, Morag had no claim on any of the animals, and had been escorted off the property twice by the local RCMP. With a voice like a glass-cutter, she outlined the stupidity and laziness of the officers who had seen the hoarding situation and done nothing, not even press ten digits on a cell phone to get the BCSPCA involved.

“Why didn’t you call the SPCA?” George asked, pointedly.

“Because my sister’s name is still on the title to the property,” Morag said furiously.  “So she gets dragged into the legal crap and all the fines and what-not. And now that son of a bitch is out of town — he didn’t even get somebody to come in and put down food.”

“How many crates will we need?”

Morag said, heavily, “All of them.” George shrugged.

“A number, please,” he said.

“Fifty,” Morag said. “We can get two or three cats into each carrier, and probably some of the animals have died.” With a great sigh, she added, “I have no idea what we’re going to do about the pony, the horses and the cow. They’re pretty beat up from being in the paddock with hardly any shelter, and two of them don’t even have bridles so we have to get that sorted out, and god knows how we’ll get them into the truck.”

“I can do that,” Michel said.

Jesse said, “I’m not understanding why this move has to be at night.”

Morag made a growl of disgust. “The next door neighbour is an animal hoarder too, although her animals are in better shape. She drinks herself to sleep every night around nine so if we move fast, we’ll be history before she staggers out of bed in the morning. During the day she could see us from the window that looks onto the east side of the property. She’d call the cops fast as lightning as soon as she saw me.”

“She may call the cops anyway if she gets up to take a leak and sees the lights,” Jesse said.

“If that happens, I’ll stay and you guys can leave.”

“It’s just theft under, trespass and mischief,” George said. “I’m sure we can handle that.”

“Stealing horses is not theft under,” Morag said. “Not if you’re stealing a trailer to move them.”

“I see your point,” George said, “But unless Jesse voices an objection, it’s a risk we’re willing to take.”

Jesse said nothing. It’s hard not to see yourself as a hero when you’re rescuing critters.

“You’re going to see a place no animal should live inside and no human should ever create through negligence.  I know my brother-in-law’s crazy and not fully responsible, but that doesn’t change the fact that this is going to be really, really hard. I’m sorry, because you are going to be seeing and smelling this for a long time, at least if you’re not mentally ill or a complete fricking sociopath.”

“We’ll manage,” George said soothingly.

“I won’t,” Jesse promised. “But I’ll keep it together for the job.”

When they arrived, the gate was locked.

“Shit,” Morag said. “I didn’t bring bolt-cutters.”

“Michel,” George said.

Morag watched with astonishment as Michel hopped down from the truck, walked over to the padlock and snapped it apart like it was a breadstick, dropping it with a theatrical flourish.

“He’s very strong,” Jesse said. Jesse had not been able to establish what the upper limit of Michel’s lifting capacity was, although it was easily three times what Jesse could manage. If he could tear apart a padlock, he had stronger hands than a human being should have, so it was comforting to know he wasn’t human. During the last move, Michel had been stacking boxes six high and dancing around with them in a hilarity-provoking imitation of a beefy, working class Fred Astaire.

“No shit!” Morag replied, watching Michel with admiration as he opened the gate and Jesse drove them through.  Michel leered at her, and her frown came back.

“That man’s not quite all there,” Morag said.

George and Jesse both laughed. “The part that’s here can lift half a ton,” Jesse said. “And likely has other talents we’ll need before the dawn comes,” George added.

As wrenching to the soul as to the organs of olfaction, their first task was to locate the animals which had a chance to survive.

“Shit,” Jesse said. A couple of cats approached them out of the darkness, mewing hoarsely. Morag turned her headlamp on. They were filthy and one of them limped, dragging a mangled foot. A kitten with a crooked tail, its eyes nearly swollen shut from flea bites, trotted up to Michel, wailing. Fleas leaped off it as he picked it up.

The dogs in the kennel were too weak to get up. Jesse’s heart broke as one attempted to wag its faeces-caked tail. Fleas moved in sheeted swarms in every direction. The whole property stank, but the kennels were an order of magnitude worse.

Jesse moved like an automaton.  Morag had warned them about having gear for the job, and so he had thick gloves and a face mask, which would prevent the larger chunks of torn-off fur and caked dirt, faeces and urine from getting into his nose. His clothes, which he would not wear again — since he would throw them into the trash bins in the back walkway and traipse into his apartment naked before he ever brought them inside, and to hell with the landlady — were covered in dark green one-use coveralls with a hood, and he had waterproof booties, because Morag said they’d need them as well.

Jesse and Michel started the process of moving the dogs. They had put down tarps in the back of the truck at Morag’s insistence to keep the worst of the crap out of it. Michel started staging the largest of the animal carriers at the kennel entrance, carrying eight at a time, balancing them all like a waiter. 

Through a combination of craigslist ads, personal contacts and a couple of very helpful veterinary techs at the closest clinic to his apartment, George had lined up 40 animal carriers.

George and Morag walked over to the house.

George unlocked the front door of the house by pretending to use a bump key and Morag said, blankly, as the door had to be forced by the corpses of five cats, “I’ll cry later.”

“These two are alive, but their kidneys are shot and they’ll have to be euthanized,” George said, finding signs of life further down the hallway.  There were ten more dead cats by the back door.

They found seven live cats in the house and lost count of the dead ones.

“We didn’t need all those carriers after all,” George said. “There are only four here that are likely to recover.  Do you want me to euthanize the ones that won’t make it? The idea of moving them so they can die in relative comfort somewhere else has no appeal.”

Morag’s face crumpled.  Then, thinking of the suffering George meant to end, she said, “Okay, but I can’t watch.” In a stronger voice she added, “I’m taking these four and then getting some air, if there is any in this hellhole. God damn the man!”

George moved through the house and wrung the necks of all the dying cats.

Jesse, who was weeping behind his safety glasses, helped Michel put one stinking, almost lifeless dog after another into carriers.

Only two dozen of the cats and dogs had survived.  One of the horses had been forced into a tight one-legged hobble, and the wound it had caused had gone septic. The other horse and the pony, although they were merely matted coats over sacks of bones, looked more or less fit to travel. The only animal that didn’t seem to be on the point of death was the pig, and Jesse was too sickened to give much thought as to why that might be.

“Georgios,” Michel called as he emerged.

“Coming,” George said.

He saw the horse and sighed.

“I’m afraid I might make it suffer,” Michel said.

“What?” Jesse said in disbelief. “Can’t we save it?” He was still in the comfortable universe of calling a vet when you had a problem with a farm animal.

“I can’t believe the horse is still alive,” Michel said. You could hear its ragged, noisy breathing.

“Jesse,” George said, “The horse has a systemic infection. If we walk away it will be dead in hours anyway; if we transport it we’ll be making it suffer out of guilt and not out of a compassionate understanding of its true condition.” He gestured. “Some room, please; he’s going to fall over.  I’m going to stop his heart.”

George put his hand on the horse’s chest. The horse collapsed, stone dead.

“What did you do?” Jesse said, hardly breathing.

“What I said I’d do,” George said, without much emphasis. Looking at Michel, he said, “Are there any dogs too sick to be moved?”

Michel said, “Not anymore.”

“What?” Jesse whispered.

“Look a little green, kid. Are you gonna be okay to drive?” Michel said. “Don’t have a license but I don’t let that stop me.”

“You drive?”

“Sure, I’m not proud like George here.”

“You’re too proud to drive?” Jesse said asked George in disbelief.

“I’m not responsible for the constructions people put on my behaviour, only for my behaviour,” George said. “But if you will forgive my lapse, I know exactly how I’d behave if the owner of this property were to appear in front of me right now.”

“Me too,” said Jesse.

“Me three,” said Michel. “Mama told me not to kill humans but for him I’d make a very exceptional exception. Let’s get the fuck out of here.” He led the remaining horse and pony out of the barn and up the ramp into the truck. Both beasts promptly lay down. “I’ll stay in the trailer with them,” Morag said, rejoining them. “My headlamp died, can I borrow yours?”

“Sure,” Jesse said, handing it over.  “I’m never going to want to look at anything again anyway.”

“Well, I hope you look at the road, going home,” George said, in that strangely toneless voice.

“If we are leaving, where are we going?” Jesse said.

“Fort Langley. I’ll text George the address.”

“And they’re expecting us at three in the morning?” Jesse confirmed.

“Yes. After that it’s only two more stops, though, since we didn’t get the number of animals we were expecting,” Morag said, “One in PoCo and the other in New West.”

The horse and pony rallied enough to get up and slowly come down the ramp. Morag’s riding buddy Deb burst into tears and put her hand over her mouth when she saw them. “Do they have names?” she gulped.

“Marta and JoJo.”

“I’ll call you, we gotta haul ass,” Morag said. They hugged and Morag got back in the truck.

“The vet’s coming in the morning,” Deb called. “He’s gonna want to know where they came from.”

“That part’s easy,” Michel said. “Some crazy animal rescue type did it, you have no idea who.”

Jesse, unable to help himself, handed over his earnings to Deb. “You’re going to need it for vet bills.”

The drop off in PoCo was for the dogs; New West was for the cats.

It was just dawn when they turned in the truck. To Jesse’s astonishment, George said, apparently to him, “Why don’t you crash on the couch?”

Michel said, “And in the morning I go to Kima?”

“You can go now, if you feel like swimming,” George said.

None of this made sense to Jesse. “I can stay at your place?”

“Sure.”

“Bet there’s no toilet paper. Or soap,” Michel said.  “Humans like toilet paper, they’re actually very fond of it, temporarily anyway.”

George checked. “Yes. We’ll be walking by a 24 hour grocery, so we can get a few things.”

“You’ll have to forgive me for how spartan my apartment is,” George said. Michel said something, probably in Greek, and George said, “There’s a balcony.  I know you don’t sleep indoors.”