The Hero Next Time: A Novel of the Terribly Acronymed Detective Club (Book 4)

Chapter Fifty-Seven: Sunny, Summer, 2013

Sunny couldn't remember the last time all three men of the reunited Lawrence Street Detective Club were out together without the women of the club, two of whom were original members and now wives of the men, and one of whom was a newer member and Sunny's wife. It had never entered their heads to get together without the women, not the three of them. At least one of Rachel and Lauren seemed necessary to make the group gel; Sunny even remembered agreeing with Al and Lauren, when they'd been on the side of the highway looking for Joe's phone, that in fact Rachel was the seed around which the rest of the group crystallized. It had been true when they were kids, and it was true now. Rachel was currently occupied, however, with Lauren and Tej and their daughters, out for a girls' day, and they had encouraged the men to take their sons out for a boys' day. It wasn't going as successfully as the women might have hoped. 

They seemed to have an easier time when they were kids. Al, Sunny and Joe never failed to occupy themselves if Rachel and Lauren weren't around, usually when they were on their paper route (Sunny and Al usually delivered their papers a little later in the day, just because they were a little lazier in getting up; it turned out to be lucky, because they hadn't set out for their route yet when Lauren came screaming back home, calling for their help in getting Rachel out of the Trybek house.) They had their forts, their Star Wars figures, their sword fights with the vacuum crevice tools, and their cowboys and Indians games, using sticks for guns and spears. Those tools of play weren't available to them anymore; for one thing, they were much older now, and they would have looked juvenile playing with toys, even if there were adult collectors of the very things they played with as kids; for another, cowboys and Indians wasn't an appropriate game anymore, not with the government's acknowledgement of the terrible legacy of colonialism and residential schools. The last thing Sunny wanted to do was perpetuate that legacy.

It was even fine when Joe and Sunny went out on their own as adults. They used to do it a lot more when they first reunited in 2005, and before they reunited with Al and Rachel, but they still got together from time to time without telling Al. They liked to go to Vancouver Canucks home games together. Sunny was a huge Canucks fan, and the Sikh community had all of a sudden jumped on the hockey bandwagon, showing up to games in their jerseys and turbans; there were even Bhangra dancing fans inspiring team spirit in the stands. Joe had a pair of season tickets, and often brought clients to the games, so he saved one of his seats for Sunny every now and then, because Lauren never went with him; she just wasn't interested, especially after Rachel came back into her life. In fact, lately they had gone out more together without Al, with Lauren's full encouragement, and Sunny thought it odd that she wouldn't want Al to go with them so she could have time alone with Rachel and Tej (he only found out later that she was in fact with Rachel and Al whenever he and Joe were out, and that they were enjoying a little adultery together.) He felt guilty not including Al, especially because Rogers Arena was downtown and very close to where Al and Rachel lived at the time, but it still didn't change his mind about inviting him. Al never expressed interest in hockey. He just wasn't sports minded. Sure, he jogged, so he was active, but his interest wasn't in team play.

So, Joe and Sunny had their own dynamic, and somehow they couldn't shoehorn Al into it, because their day at Playland with the boys was almost excruciating.

Again, he only found out later the reason why Joe and Al weren't talking to each other, and why Joe looked itchy and irritated around the smaller man. It was as if he was just looking for a reason to punch Al, but Sunny couldn't explain why that was. 

The three boys didn't seem to have a great time either. Tosh and Ajit enjoyed the rides, such as they were (he remembered the PNE having more rides than this, but Playland during the weeks when the fair wasn't on was a smaller affair,) but Logan was unimpressed; he and his sister Emma were Al and Rachel's foster children. Maybe he just wasn't in the mood to go to an amusement park. He'd just been released from jail without charge after having been picked up near the scene of a homicide with blood on his hands and clothes; they'd only just found out he'd tried to save the life of the man who'd driven him and his biological father to Barnet Marine Park to make an exchange, which had turned out to be an ambush. Maybe he was still in shock from the ordeal, but he expressed no desire to go on the rides, although he did try a few games because he wanted to win a stuffed toy for his sister. He didn't win anything.