When you spend twenty-seven seasons in landscape maintenance, you get to meet a lot of different people. They come, and they go. Some stick in my mind, and Alex is one of them.
Alex was a wild dude in his upper twenties when I first met him, living on the North Shore, just off Lonsdale Avenue, with the highway running just north of their house. Originally from East Germany, Alex’s mother was a cleaner, and his father roamed the back lanes of North Vancouver in a beat-up hatchback, stealing whatever wasn’t chained behind people’s houses and in their garages. Several times, he came close to getting his ass kicked by an angry homeowner when he got caught in the act.
Alex lived in the garage, which didn’t have a washroom. I still remember the cheap painting on the wall of a naked girl in a suggestive pose. It screamed, “Enter at your own risk”. The house had boarding rooms without kitchens downstairs, and it had the feel of a seedy bordello.
Alex had bad friends, consumed a lot of drugs and alcohol, and was known to the police on the North Shore. He would buy a six-pack of beer, sit on the curb right on Lonsdale Avenue and crack one can open. Minutes later, the police would arrive to confiscate the rest of his beer. It was a game he played with his after-tax dollars.
And, like Jenn, the landscaper you met in an earlier chapter, Alex was a really good worker. He had good lawn care and finesse skills and helped me out. We maintained ninety percent of a new neighbourhood in Port Moody, which was a big job. When he was on, he was dependable.
When Alex showed up at work one day with a naked, life-sized doll he purchased at a thrift store, we used it to pull off a massive prank. We stuffed it into our coworker’s mower bag and watched him mow. Eventually, he had to stop to empty his mower bag, and when the naked doll fell on top of his tarp, he had the fright of his life. Then, minutes later, he was totally embarrassed when a little girl walked by and asked her mommy why the doll was naked.
Alex also liked to party, and he tried to mask his hangovers with cheap cologne. We soon caught on to his habits. He also frequented bad places, like Vancouver’s downtown East Side, which is populated with struggling, homeless people.
It was after one of his visits to Hastings Street that Alex came to work super happy, sporting a huge grin. So, I had to ask, but the answer severely tested the limits of my imagination. It turned out that Alex got great oral sex from a beautiful girl for $5 and an ice cream cone. Then he casually mentioned that she was in a wheelchair. Jesus. I couldn’t picture a beautiful Hastings Street sex worker in a wheelchair. To this day, I can’t.
A few years later, I moved on to work for a municipal parks department, but we stayed in touch on the phone. I had become a father and couldn’t really hang out with a guy known to the police. Alex was still Alex. Then, suddenly, his mother got sick and died of cancer. And the bad news piled on because sometimes life is like that.
Alex’s father suffered a stroke and was hospitalized. Sadly, Alex didn’t have good friends for support. He called me on a Wednesday evening about his father. He was clearly distressed about his father’s condition and chance for recovery. My one regret is not being more positive about his father’s chance of making a full recovery.
Two days later, Alex overdosed at home and died.
