Before I can ask Gimp if he really does still keep piss jugs in his truck like he used to, he passes me the joint. I hesitate. The voice of the cop on the Bloor Street subway platform ebbs into my mind. Tell me your name and what you’re on. Maybe I shouldn’t smoke weed. Then again, I’m home now and on borrowed time. So maybe I should.

Fuck it. Me and Gimp are gonna sit here in his truck smoking a doobie, listening to The Doors, waiting for Shirl Short to come hassle us, just like we did when we were teenagers. Except now, Willy Gimp is hot.

He’d always been kind of cute, I guess. Big green ex­pressive eyes rimmed with long dark lashes. Soft, black, laissez-faire hair that curled when it got too long. Smooth skin. Straight teeth. But he was tall and scrawny. He wore socks with sandals. His skid metal T-shirts had cigarette packs rolled up in the sleeves. He wore jogging pants and had a mullet long after those things were unacceptable and long before they became fashionably ironic. He walked funny. He moved his arm funny. He was a bizarre combination of genius and clown. Nobody was ever entirely sure what to make of Willy Gimp. He certainly wasn’t dating material, by any means. But that didn’t stop me from sleeping with him for most of high school. Not that I ever admitted it.

It started off innocently enough. A pity lay, really. We hooked up at a bush party one night when I was in grade ten, and he drunkenly confessed that he was a virgin. So, compassionate little hussy that I was, I dragged him up to the road and into the back of Allie’s car — the legendary Shaggin’ Wagon — to give him a memorable first fuck. And that was supposed to be the end of that. But a few weeks later, when I realized Trevor Jessome was using me to get back at Allie, I ran to Willy, looking to use somebody myself. When Weasel Tobin broke my heart along with the pointer finger on my left hand, I ran to Willy for some tenderness. When Duke Clarke humiliated me with the Clap for Crow stunt at my graduation ceremony, I ran to Willy before I ran away. In fact, I kissed him goodbye at this very place the night before I left, planning never to return.

But here I am. And here he is now, middle age just beginning to touch and shape him. His hair is delicately salt and peppered. His face is ever so slightly etched and imprinted with the joys and pains of the last twenty years. His chest and arms — even the gimpy one — are still thin, but muscled and defined beneath his snug white T-shirt. Beautiful artwork is inked into his skin, a vibrant and detailed oceanic sleeve tattooed down to his left wrist. Not bad for a forty-year-old pothead mechanic. Perhaps another pity lay might be in order. Assuming he’ll take pity on me.