Terry and Jimmy Round Lunchtime
• Kevin Brunt
It really is kind of bewildering, planning to kill a friend of yours. Try it for a minute. Pick a friend and plot their death. It is really important to understand that I really like Terry, but the man has to die.

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I have a special friend. Actually I have two, now. My one friend is named Terry. I’ve known him for many, many years now and if I had to pick one person that means the most to me in my life, who has the most influence over what I do and where and how I do it, it's Terry. Oh by the way, Terry is my student loan. I just got back from overseas and moved to Ottawa to look for work, to a house on Wellington Avenue not too far from down town. It’s a good location and I’m with friends so I don’t think that I did too badly on that front. Having somone like Terry hanging onto my back makes finding a job something of a challenge. Anyway, the other day I was just getting my ends together when Terry and this other guy came over to the house. Terry had this guy with him, someone he wanted me to meet. Now this new guy seemed nice enough but I could tell right away this was the kind of guy you didn’t get rid of quickly. His name was Jimmy. Jimmy is the work that I was looking for.

The plan in coming to Ottawa was to shake Terry loose for a little while, but he followed me here. Terry has followed me from one side of this country to the other and then he followed me to the other side of the globe and back again. You could say that all my life has become is trying and failing to get away from this guy Terry. Now here he is on my doorstep. You have to understand; I’m not surprised, I just was hoping for a little more time, that’s all. Not that Terry can just come on over anytime he feels like; we do have a bit of an agreement for space. I guess that this was a special circumstance. What made me all the more nervous was that I was, at that moment, working on a new plan to get rid of Terry. And this plan was a little more fanatical than others that I’ve tried.

Like I said, Terry came over to the house to introduce me to this friend of his, Jimmy. I opened the door to his round smiling face and immaculate brown hair framed in a fantastically expensive looking suit. "Good morning Kev," he said to me. He just stood there saying nothing else, Jimmy standing right behind him. He was standing so close behind Terry that I almost couldn’t make out his sharp pale features cased under his black hair stiff with product. "Hey there guys," I said getting more than a little uneasy at their being here, I’m not ashamed to say. I was looking for Jimmy and Terry found him first. And I really needed to find Jimmy first. Don’t judge me too harshly on this but Jimmy is a hired gun and I was looking to hire him to execute Terry.

I didn’t always feel this way about Terry. There was a time that he was my best friend. The first time I met Terry was at the end of high school. That would be, let me see, nearly eight years ago. They took us all out of class one day nearing the end of it all and bused us off to the factory where they manufacture young peoples futures. The tour itself wasn’t really any different from the chocolate factory or box factory that they took us on before. There was the excitement on the bus, the hopes of making out with the girls in the dark on the way home, the free samples at the end of the tour and the begging for the over -priced cash grabs from the gift shop.

After the tour of the factory was done, a nice lady and man from the bank sat us down in a dark room with one wall that was almost entirely one window. We all sat down, I remember being very nervous because there were kids from all the other schools in town there. I was nervous because you never saw these kids except in very special circumstances. Like a basketball game, or at the movie theater, or down at the river buying bootleg kegs of beer from the smugglers out of their boats. All three very stressful for a young bright-eyed youth staring boldly into the future like I was. "Trust me!"

The nice man and woman were speaking from the centre of this crescent moon of chairs that they had sat us down in. They were so clean and big and well dressed, and I bet rich, that we couldn’t help but be impressed. I bet that guy got all the ladies. I remember the talk being very long and very boring and I don’t think that I would have made it to the end of it if it wasn’t for the guy sitting in the chair next to me. This was Terry; this was how we met. He introduced himself to me and it wasn’t long before he was voicing a vernacular into my ear the likes of which I had never heard before. It wasn’t long before I stopped listening to the man and woman speaking and only listened to Terry. And boy, oh boy did I like what he had to say. I think that it is fair to say that I liked Terry straight away. He told me about my future and what it held for me.

I looked at the factory that I was sitting in and started looking at it again for the first time. I saw what this place could do for me. I was going to be educated and become a productive, respected, rich member of society. I was going to fly away from the armpit town that I grew up in and become better than everyone that I grew up with. All I had to do was go and get educated, it wouldn’t be hard, and I deserved it. "Didn’t I?" The bank people passed around the papers and we filled them in with gusto. "Your parents already want you to do this. You don’t really need them here. Do you?" I signed the papers without thinking. I had already thought this all the way though. I just had to go get educated, which was really no big deal seeing as it was what I wanted to do in the first place. "Wasn’t it?"
I was obviously a mistake. I mean for Christ’s sake! "Was it? Really?"

From then on Terry and I were fast friends. He would sit in the chair next to mine as I did the hours of homework that I needed to do to feel worthy enough to go to University. He would help me out if he could, but what it was that Terry was really good at was whispering in my ear all the wonderful things that I most liked to hear when I started to tire. He kept me going and I really don’t think that I’d have gotten into school without his help. And I guess, for that, I will always be grateful.
I got in, finished high school and got really drunk with Terry. Then I worked all summer at an insipid grease pit restaurant on the highway for minimum wage. I saved up all my money and with everything that Terry gave me I had almost $12,000. I was so happy. By the end of the first year I had passed all my courses, picked a major, signed up for the next year, decided which way my entire life was going to go, developed a borderline drinking problem and spent every cent of the money. $12,000 gone. Poof!

But was I worried? Hell no, I had it all figured out. So it went on that way for years. And at the beginning of my fourth year of school I was staring down the barrel of $35,000 in debt, graduating in less than a year and having no means of paying the money that I owed back to the people Terry worked for. Not doing what I liked anyway. This worried me, but I figured that I must have just misread the numbers. I had to have made a mistake. So I called up Terry to talk it over.
"What’s the prob Kev," Terry said to me over a couple of beers that he said were on him, but I knew that I would have to pay for them eventually. "Well Terry, I’ve been going over things in my head and I don’t think that I can make it. I mean I’ve been going to school like you said and doing what I wanted to do, just like you said and …" I don’t know why this part was so hard for me. I looked into his eyes and I just was not getting the buddy feeling from him anymore. Terry was in business, this whole time apparently and his business was Me.

As I sat there looking at him I got to feeling angry and more than a little stupid. "Terry’s on my side. Terry’s always been on my side. This is getting silly," I said to myself before continuing. "Terry the thing is this, I’m graduating in less than a year and I don’t think that I can get a job making the kind of money I need to pay your people back doing what I’ve spent this whole time learning how to do." I laughed a little and took a big sip of my beer right in front of Terry’s static face. "I figured that I made some kind of mistake because of what you said …"
"I never said that," Terry said cutting my chuckle and me off.
Without another word he downed the rest of my beer and walked out of the bar without paying. It was a shock but as it turned out I was wrong. Terry never said that. He said a lot of things very close to that, but as far as "that" went Terry was entirely innocent of any manner or kind of "saying?" Not even once, be it in proverb or axiom or adage. He sent me a document the next day proving it to the contentment of the law. I figured that this was entirely my fault, of course. But to be honest I don’t really see how. I was only doing what I wanted, what I deserved and that was what I was supposed to. I find that the world is often quick to forget what I deserve.

I kind of stopped liking Terry around that point in our relationship.
"Come on out," Terry said turning as if to leave. "Let’s get some lunch." And our camaraderie has just fallen off since then. So you could understand that his showing up at my new house in my new town with the guy that I was trying to hire to kill him in tow was very low on my, ‘Great ways to start the day’ list. And I had such a great pot of tea steeping, a second flush Darjeeling gone to waste. Damn.
"Come on. My treat," he said with Jimmy smiling.
"His treat, sure," I thought to myself as I pulled on my boots and grabed my jacket and walk out the door in between the two of them. "This will be going on my bill for sure."
We go down the stairs and get on the sidewalk for a little bit before we turn a corner onto Wellington. The bar we’re going to is just a few blocks down Wellington from the place that I’m staying. On the way I try to tell Terry and Jimmy that I can’t stay long. "I’m looking for work you know. I’m really excited about this one, I think I’ve got a real shot." No pun intended. At this Terry and Jimmy both laugh out loud and tell me that Jimmy is the very job that I’m looking for. I know this already and Jimmy knows this already, the only thing that I don’t know is what does Terry know. "Is he on to me?"

Now, just for the record, I want to tell you what Jimmy was supposed to mean to me. Jimmy was supposed to free me, free me of my dependent relationship with Terry. "Jimmy was supposed to set me free." I would have done anything that Jimmy wanted, as long as Terry ended up dead. Now, I’m not a violent person. It was just that Terry and I were supposed to be working together towards some great goal. A goal tht was what I wanted, what I deserved but a great goal none the less. But the truth of it was; I was working for Terry and through him working for the people that Terry works for. And I could see no end to it.

So, you can imagine, Jimmy’s showing up here at my doorstep while I was looking for him with Terry got me thinking that Jimmy was not at all the friend and partner that I thought him to be. The thought of the both of them here, together at my doorstep looking to do me a favour is just the kind of thing that makes me want to run away at full speed screaming and pulling out my own flaming hair out by the roots by the handfull. But I know from experience that that kind of behaviour gets me nowhere. "What do they know about each other?" How did they get together? "What are their plans for me?" Have they gotten the law involved?

But instead of my questions being answered we just walked. Jimmy didn’t really talk very much on the way to the bar, he just kind of agreed with everything that Terry said, smiling at me and nodding too much. I found myself calculating, calculating in a situation that I never thought to find myself in. And I found my tools wanting. "You can’t trust Terry, not at all." But that is the beauty of his system; you only have to trust him in the beginning. In the end it really doesn't matter one way or the other. In the end the result is still the same.

It was a pleasant enough walk over; it wasn’t really a long walk after all. The conversation went from music, to politics, to books, to women. Terry and I really share many interest. But this would not last, it never does. But Jimmy’s being here changed things. With Jimmy here it was perilous.

The bar was dark and smelled of smoke, even though there was no one smoking. We found ourselves a table and as the three of us were making ourselves comfortable Jimmy took out a green glass pipe and dished himself a generous bowl of tobacco. No one said anything to him. But everyone noticed. With him working the pipe it soon became tough to catch clear sight through the thick lines and rings of blue smoke coming out of Jimmy’s mouth and pipe. Terry talked all the time. He ordered for us, sparing no expense at my expense.

It is a funny thing really, but Terry, and I’m sure now Jimmy, have a great relationship with my family. My mother in particular loves Terry. She just can’t understand the rift that has opened up between us. "You’re so lucky to have a friend like Terry," she tells me every time I see her. And I see her all the time. "Everyone should have a friend like him. Don’t you understand what he can do for you?" This is always very difficult. It is so, so easy to say the wrong thing and send the woman into a whirlwind of tears. I don’t know what my problem is. This never seems to happen to anyone else.
"I do understand mom, it’s just that I’m not sure that I want him to do it to me," I say gently. "When I finished high school Terry was just the friend I wanted and the world just got better and better the more he was in it. But as I grew up the world just changed and Terry didn’t. The problem is that we both see it, but he doesn’t care. I thought it was all about my happiness and expanding my possibilities, but that was only an incidental byproduct at best." To this she always laughs. "I don’t know where you get your crazy ideas from." Sometimes I think that my mom would rather have Terry as a son than me.

When I first met Terry he was by no means skinny but he has gained so much weight in the time between then and now that I can’t believe that he can still waddle about under his own power. I mean, now, the man is massive. You would not believe his appetite. "What do you feel like eating today, Kev?" Terry says handing me a menu with a huge grin mirrored in Jimmy’s own. Jimmy is better looking than I am. I hate that. I take the menu from Terry with as much good sense as I can manage. I find it best to suspect everything that Terry is trying to give to me. "I don’t really know," I say trying to smile. "I think the Newfoundland Cod, maybe?"
"Fine choice. Very fine," Terry says as he looks over to Jimmy who gives an approving nod. "I think that Jimmy’s going to have the Redwood salad with a balsamic and a glass of white wine. And I will have the veal in mushrooms sauce with red wine." Terry put down the menu and looked at me. "Something to drink?" says the waiter that I never noticed hovering over my shoulder.
"Oh, I’ll have a beer."
"Import or domestic?" the waiter said.
"He’ll have an import," Terry said. "Surprise him."

It is in the time between when our drinks arrive and when our food arrives that I’m most nervous. We just sit and talk. We don’t rally talk about anything in particular; we just talk. Terry and I are a kind of old friends. Our small talk is that same as nearly all my friends that I’ve know for a long time. We talk like we saw each other yesterday even if we have not seen each other in a year. The truth is that I really do like the guy. We talk about books, good commercials on TV, and about how crazy people are to drive rush hour in Toronto. Oh, and we complain about the government. It is here that I am in the most danger of reconsidering my plan. I don’t even notice the waiter coming back with the drinks and I’m taking a big sip nearly twenty minutes into the conversation before I remember that this is the talk that is finally going to straighten men out. Oh, did I forget to tell you, I’m not acting in a way that Terry feels is good for my future. I know this pertains to Terry’s future somehow, but I have not figured out that part of the riddle yet. I can’t figure out why he is putting so much effort into me. "Would it be far more worthwhile to just leave me the hell alone."
When I called Terry up in Montreal, he works there I think, to tell him that I was moving to Ottawa to look for Jimmy he was thrilled. I thought that he didn’t know what my real intentions were. I thought that he thought that it was just as I said. I got my act together and was on the straight and narrow. I wanted him thinking that right up to the moment Jimmy put the bullet in his head. I’ve come up with some really zany schemes to get rid of Terry in the past but none of them worked. Terry has known for years that I’m trying to do away with him, but as long as the bills are paid at the end of the month he seems happy enough.

It really is kind of bewildering, planning to kill a friend of yours. Try it for a minute. Pick a friend and plot their death. It is really important to understand that I really like Terry, but the man has to die. There is just no way around that. I have to be firm; it’s a bottom line thing. And I know that Terry knows this and I know that Jimmy is here for Terry’s protection not mine, like it was supposed to be.
"So, how’s the search going?" Terry asks as he takes a sip of his wine. "Jimmy is getting lonely you know. Any leads on any good jobs?" He just sat there and smiled as I took a long sip of my beer, stalling. All lies, this is all lies. "I am looking," I said. Terry took another sip of his drink and cast a look of fleeting flirtatiousness to Jimmy who was downing the last of his drink and motioning for another from the waiter. "Yes, the insurance company," he said. "They wanted you. Why didn’t you take that? It would have made me very happy."
I laughed. "I know, I know. It just didn’t feel right."

People have a certain way of responding to laughter, a way of acting to make the other person feel comfortable with the emotional gamble they have just taken. That was not what Terry or Jimmy did. "And just what would feel right, Kev?" Jimmy said looking to Terry who had picked up the butter knife from the table. He started trying different fingerings on the knife spinning and twirling it around his finger like some people do with pens and pencils. I didn’t remember that Terry was that good with a knife. "This was not the first good opportunity you’ve passed on Kev," Terry said. "The people I work for are starting to worry."
"Oh, there’s no need to worry Terry," I said confidently. "I know what it is that I want to do. That is why I took last year off the way I did. I have it figured out now and am on the road to knowing the in’s and out’s of it. I’m done my search and all I need now is time."
"Your writing?" Asked Jimmy letting loose a long offshoot of smoke as he glamorously up-ended his wine.
"Yeah. I want to tell stories. I want to bring a little magic into the world with my words."
"Like this thing you’re doing now?" Said Terry.
"Yes," I say.
"Do you think that the personification of your internal neurosis is a cleaver device?" asked Jimmy.
"Well, actually I do." I say.
"What do you expect to do with this." Asked Terry.
"Well I would like to sell it," I say.
"Do you think that someone would actually buy this?" asked Jimmy.
"Actually I do," I say.
"You don’t think that this could possibly do away with Terry do you?" asked Jimmy.
"Not this alone. I want to do a whole series. I want to purge, or exorcise all of these things from my mind and in the process get rid of Terry," I implored to the two of them.
"But can’t you see the hole you’re digging for yourself Kev," Terry said with a look of real concern on his face. "I know, I’ve seen it before. This is my business. I don’t want to see happen to you what I’ve seen happen to so many other talented young people."
"Well, thank you Terry, but …"
"You know I’m the only one that can help you get rid of Terry," Jimmy said.
"You should have taken the insurance job Kev."
"But how could you get rid of Terry like we talked about Jimmy if you’re working for him?" I ask.
"You know your making yourself worthless faster than most I’ve seen Kev," Terry says.
"Well, like I said, I just don’t know about that Terry," I say. Terry and Jimmy look at each other and both shake their heads. With his eyes closed Terry looks back at me and says. "You’re going to go out looking on Monday and take the next job that is offered to you. You’re going to take it and do whatever they want you to do. You’re going to do that and be thankful for the chance." Then he opened his eyes. They were shining.
"I don’t know guys," I say. "You know where I stand Terry. We were supposed to be partners and you screwed me. It was supposed to be you and me against the world, but you were working for your people the whole time and have strung me up for life."
"What are you telling me, Kev?" Asked Terry.
"I’m telling you that my life is kind of revolving around getting rid of you. And I don’t know how healthy that is."
"Which is what he wanted me for. To put a quick end to things and not have them drag out over years," said Jimmy looking at Terry.
"Is this true Kev?" Terry said gripping the knife in his hand a little tighter. They were both looking at me now and I knew that I’d been set up. Has Terry know the whole time and hired Jimmy out from under me? Or was Jimmy always working for Terry’s people? Have I always been this stupid?
"You’re just not the guy that I thought you were."
"I’ve never kept any secrets from you Kev," Terry said. "Why do you want me dead?" Terry’s smile dripped from his lips as he rested the knife hand on the table next to his plate. Jimmy just sat smoking with pleasure then he said before I could answer Terry. "What if I do kill him for you Kev? What then? You said yourself that your whole life has become getting rid of him? What would you do if he and his people where actually gone?" I stared at him my last thought falling from my mind like boxes out of the back of an open truck taking a corrner too fast. "Can you even picture a world beyond Terry?"
"If Terry was gone I’d be free," I say half convinced at where he was taking me with this.
"What does freedom mean Kev, could you even tell us that? If you could at least tell us that then you could begin to argue that I’m not the one for you."
"I need a partner, I need someone whose own interests and ambitions jive with mine. You know, run along the same vein as mine do." Jimmy kept on smiling and smoking and Terry reached into a pocket under his jacket. I couldn’t see what he was doing. I was just barely holding back the tears. "You were supposed to be working for me and now I see that you’re already working for Terry. I don’t want to have anything to do with you. I went through all this trouble to open up new things for me in my life and the closer I get to working with you guys the farther and farther away those things are. And you know the things that are getting farther and farther away from me are what I want to spend the rest of my life doing. So what I really want from you two is a good reason why I should bother with you or your people at all?"

They gave no reaction, they both just sat there. A calm came over me and I thought that I might have made my point. "Knowing that what I want is out there and not being able to get it, just wondering, that is no way that I want to live my life."

I jumped as Terry gave a short violent yell and upturned the table before me with everything on it with a loud crash to the floor. Jimmy smiled as Terry sent his chair hard against the back wall taking down a small condiment display with a roar. He took a step towards me pushing the knife clearly into my field of view. I swear that it was just a butter knife but as soon as he started advancing the metal gave off a flicker and the tip was pulled out in thin air like a loose blanket to a sharp fold. With Terry’s next step the re-worked edge grew longer and the blade grew black and the edge silver.
Terry pushed all his bulk against me as I staggered back over my chair. I gave a yelp of panic as he pushed the wind out of me against the wall. His forearm pushed my head back and I felt the burn as the knife cut into my neck. I closed my eyes and could only hear Terry’s fingernail clicking against the knife-edge. "Just who do you think you are, Boy?" Terry said through teeth cemented together, spittle spraying out of his mouth with every vowel. Jimmy took his pipe out of his mouth and stood to take his place behind Terry. "We’ve picked out Jimmy for you, do you know how many people would kill to get matched up with a guy like him?" he said and waited, his eyes searing me. I knew that he wanted me to say something but I could feel the knife cutting gently under my chin along the canyon feeling slice and I couldn’t make an audible sound. I’m sure that Terry thought that I was trying to be a tough guy but the truth was that my bladder and bowels stared to relax and I went blind from fear. I started to shake when I felt the blood dripping down my neck and matting into my shirt collar.

When my sight returned I looked over Terry’s shoulder to see Jimmy nodding. "Now," Terry began. "I don’t care about what you think makes you happy, hear! What I’ve planned out for you is the best thing for you and you get in line and do what you’re told. The people I work for are getting tired of waiting for you to heel. So you get out there and find Jimmy, you do what he tells you and get on with your life. You get on with your life and finish it pronto." Terry leaned closer to my ear and backed the knife up into the flesh of my neck. Almost too soft he whispered. "Hear me, Boy?" And in a moment too fast to live in I was in a heap on the floor.

Terrified, bleeding from my neck, weeping and alone I sat wrecked on the floor for a moment before Terry and Jimmy. Then a tide of relief washed over me as I heard the clicking of their boots leaving the restaurant. I put my hand up to my wound and looked at the blood on my hand as I brought it up to my eyes. From what seems like a huge distance I heard a noise. I looked up slightly to see Terry’s knife spinning on the floor as they walk out the door of the crowded bar. The butter knife. Everyone had watched them leave and watched them attack me but no one seemed to see me. I just sat there in the food and drink and blood and tears, in the mess that I would have to pay for shaking and alone.

I haven’t seen either of them since then, but I know they will come back. Everyday I jump at a phantom Terry or Jimmy in the face of a person I take to be them. None of my family or friends believes my story. Terry called my mother the same day as the attack and sweet talked her. I, sometimes think she’s on his side of this. She calls me up and tells me that I’m being foolish, that in time I’ll see the sense in what Terry is telling me, that Jimmy really is the match that I’ve been waiting my life for and we could be happy together if I would only give him a chance. Sometimes what happened seems so much like a dream that I doubt that it could have happened. But then I think that I see Terry or Jimmy and it all comes back to me. These people are more than I ever thought they could be. And I am so much less than I thought I was. I go through the motions of looking for work but am terrified to really put an effort into it out of fear of actually finding Jimmy. I used to think that I deserved happiness, but the truth may be that it’s a luxury that I can’t afford. More and more everyday I think that I may have to resolve myself to a quiet complacency.

© Kevin Brunt 2002
A writer living and er... not working in Wellington, Canada

email: kevin_brunt@backpacker.com

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