The Withdrawal Method

BEING LIKE BULLS

IT TOOK THREE weeks in a row of no one coming in before the place really got to me. My parents' old shop had always been full of stuff that, even back when we still got tourists through, I couldn't imagine anyone would ever want. Junk. Everywhere, piled up on shelves or hanging from display racks, all with more or less the same tacky logo splashed across the front in neon script: Niagara Falls, Ontario. It might have been gradual, building up over time, or it might have just been that something snapped. But suddenly everything my eyes landed on — the coffee mugs, the key chains and pencils and snow globes, the T-shirts and sweatshirts and jackets and hats, the daytime postcards with the water flowing green and frothing white over the edge, the sunset postcards burning orange, the nighttime postcards all purple and blue — came needling back into my brain. Simply put, the place was a museum of crap. So I got my jacket on, closed up, and drove over to CanAm Tower.

Dave and a new girl I hadn't seen before were out in the parking lot having a smoke. They both had their uniforms on, navy blue jumpsuits stamped with the CanAm logo: the stars and stripes and maple leaf styled into a yin-yang sort of thing. Cross-border solutions, it said along the bottom. Their belts dangled various paraphernalia: flashlight, walkie-talkie, nightstick.

The nightsticks Dave and I used to joke about — until one morning just before dawn he caught some pickers trying to drag an old fridge out of the pit and bashed one of them into a coma. The guy had been from one of the camps out in wine country and for a while things got pretty dicey: while Dave's victim was still in hospital a few of his pals snuck into town one night and beat two American pit workers to near death. CanAm responded by equipping its night security with tasers and instructions to zap first and ask questions later. But the picker came out of the coma and things settled down. Instead of being reprimanded, Dave was just put on the day shift at the top of the tower, told to radio in if he saw anything suspicious.

I came across the lot, waving. Dave nodded back. "Busy day?"

"Right," I said. "Something like that."

The girl — her nametag read Kaede — was plugging her nose with one hand and smoking with the other. She was young, mid-twenties or so, and when she grinned at me I was surprised to find myself grinning back. Looking away, I scratched at my elbow through my jacket. "Cold out today," I said.

Dave turned toward me and I could smell the liquor coming off him in waves. Nine thirty in the morning, so this was probably remnants of the night before. Lately I'd been staying in, reading magazines and falling asleep by ten. "Kaede," he said, in a weird, slow voice, "this is my good friend Aagyapal."

"Paul's fine," I told her, eyeing Dave.

"Hi, Paul," she said, fingers still pinching her nose, breathing smoke through her mouth.

Then she checked her watch, took one last drag, smiled again at both of us, and wandered off down the street, flicking her butt over her shoulder. It spun there on the pavement in the wind, sparking orange, until a bigger gust snuffed it out.

"Cheery girl," I said.

"Japanese," Dave whispered. He punched my shoulder, seemed like he was about to say something else, paused, and eventually added, "But totally speaks English fine." Kaede moved off in the direction of Rainbow Bridge until she was out of sight.

I shivered. "Mind if I come up? Some October. Feels more like January."

We shot up the tower in the elevator, the view spreading out beneath us. In the observation room Dave sprawled on the couch in the corner while I gazed through the south-facing windows over that end of town. It was empty, nearly derelict. Nobody along any of the little avenues that used to be so full of tourists, nobody down the end of the boardwalk where folks would line up to watch the river come crashing down over the edge, nobody at the coin-op viewfinders tilted on haphazard angles from the last time — months ago, now — that anyone had fed a loonie in to spy on what was happening below.

"Those fuckers were hogging the pool table again last night," Dave said, stretching. Then he laughed. "I feel like my old man — 'Send them back to their own country."'

Way down below, two bulldozers plowed their way through a heap of trash. A group of workers followed, shovels at the ready. "It's not like it's their choice to be up here, man," I said.

"What do you mean?"

"I mean, they work for the same company you do; they get stationed wherever they're told. Even you, right? They could have you over on the American side. But you're here."

"Thank Christ for that," Dave grunted. "Pauly, you should try to get on with security. They're looking for people right now — I guess the pickers on both sides are getting pretty out of control again. But a little guy like you they'd never make work nights. You'd be on days like me and Kaede and you wouldn't have to do shit."

"And I'd do what with the shop? Sell it?"

"Oh, fuck. Here we go. How long have we been going through this shit with you, man? There's got to be a point where you just let go. And what about money?"

"Don't worry about me and money." Dave didn't need to know that my parents had stashed enough of their income away that I could go right through to a doctorate without a dollar in loans. He'd have thought "trust fund" and then I would have heard it — especially now that I was living off their hard work and not going to school.

The diggers and bulldozers kept working, shifting the garbage around, moving it into the compactors. The sounds drifted up: the grumble and growls, the grinding of trash packed into neat little squares, the buzz of generators, and the steady drone of trucks moving single file in and out of the pit, dumping their loads and then heading out to fetch more garbage.

THE NEXT DAY I drove down to the store, pulled up into that familiar spot out front. Above loomed our sign, paint flaking; the G of Gold had peeled off in the past year and I'd never bothered to replace it — so now the family business was called Canada _old Souvenirs. I caught myself sighing as I got out of the car, my standard reaction to thinking about the day ahead: sitting there, waiting in vain for the chime of the doors opening.

Leaving the Closed sign turned out, I took my spot behind the counter. Dust had settled over everything, the gleam of figurines and paperweights hidden under greyish fluff. I thought about cleaning it off, going around with one of those feather things. But what was the point? Quickly the feelings from the day before began to rear up again, as sickly and shame-soaked as a hangover.

I looked at the photograph of my parents taped to the cash register, something that usually kept me going. It'd been taken the day they opened the store and stuck up there shortly thereafter. In the picture the two of them stood out front, my mom in a sari and my dad in his turban, the new sign shiny and bright above. Later they laughed at how arbitrarily they'd named it, the naive, immigrant enthusiasm of Gold, and the photo captured exactly that in their faces: eagerness, trepidation, hope.

I'd been born a few years later. We never had many problems. Mostly people found us charming, maybe a little perplexing, this polite Sikh family hawking Canadiana. The honeymooners would come and ooh and ahh at our shop full of kitsch, or there were the tour groups who went nuts for our novelty T-shirts. You could just imagine them parading around back home in their new duds like they were something special, someone worldly. But we sold the same things to everyone. Each tourist who came to the Falls had the same experience: pay too much for parking, look at the water, buy something shitty, load back onto your chartered bus, and go home. There was nothing special about it.

The register itself was an old, clunky thing. We'd never modernized to digital for some reason, and whenever we rang up a sale — as I remember sales, anyway — the thing dinged and clunked as we filed the cash away. Without a second thought, I punched the drawer open, peeled the picture of my folks off the register, and stashed it in the cash drawer, banging it closed. Maybe Dave was right, I thought. Maybe it was time to call it quits, sell the land to CanAm, finish school with the money.

There was a knocking sound then — I had this crazy idea that it was my folks from inside the register, begging to be set free, before I realized someone was at the front door of the shop. I hopped the counter and saw that it was the new girl, Kaede, uniform on, looking very official.

"We're actually open," I said. "Just haven't turned the sign around yet."

She nodded, that big goofy smile splashing across her face. I'm not a big guy, but I had to look down at her: she was maybe five feet tall, with broad cheekbones and a little bob haircut streaked with gold. Her grin exuded a warmth that I'd nearly forgotten could exist in people.

Kaede stepped past me, started moving through the store. She had a camera strapped around her neck.

"Any trouble?" I asked. "With security, I mean?"

"Hardly," she said, and kept looking around. Was she actually shopping?

From one of the racks, she picked up a pen with a little Maid of the Mist boat that went sliding up and down the stem when you tilted it. She pointed it at me like a sword, cocked her head in an inquisitive way. "How much?"

"Honestly, when they closed, every tourist shop in town unloaded their stock on us. We've got a warehouse full of this crap. Take it. Take whatever you want."

Kaede shot me a quizzical look. "Yeah? How about if I take some pictures?"

"What? Of this place?" I laughed. "Knock yourself out."

The lens cap came off and she was at it, snapping away, doing little knee bends and leaning back to get certain angles. When she turned toward me, though, I put my hand up. "Whoa."

"Oh, sorry. I didn't — "

I forced a smile. "No, you know. Just didn't have a chance to do my hair."

She capped the camera. "Gotcha."

"Hey, can I ask you something? What the hell are you doing here? In Niagara Falls, I mean. I know you're in our shop because it's totally amazing. But to come all the way from Japan to work guarding a garbage dump — I don't know, seems a little weird."

"Paul," said Kaede. "I'm from Calgary. My parents are Japanese, and I taught English in Tokyo for a bit, but — no, anyway, I'm here mainly for a project." She held up the camera. "I'm a photographer. Back when the Falls were here, people took thousands of pictures, but they're all the same — the water, the boat-ride, whatever. I want to document the way it is now, for an entire year. The people who live here, their homes, their jobs, and what's become of all the old sites — Marineland, especially."

"Marineland? There's nothing there."

"Exactly. And CanAm gives me a place for free, and I can shoot on the job, so…"

"So you'll be here for a year?"

I felt like I should add that I'd be around, that I could take her out to Marineland sometime, whatever. But I'd forgotten how to do this sort of thing. My last attempt at romance ended with me humiliating myself with some German backpacker, a big horsy woman down for one night from Toronto. We'd met at Dooley's and gone back to her hotel. But it'd been a bust. The machinery didn't work, I guess you'd say; I ended up sneaking off as soon as she passed out. And that had been months ago now.

Kaede was making for the door. "Hey, Paul — can I askyou something?"

"Um. Sure."

"Am I ever going to get used to the smell? It's awful."

"Ha, yeah," I said. "Give it a couple months."

She shook her head, said something about getting back to work. At the door of the shop, she paused. "Your friend Dave said something about a bar? Do you ever go there?"

"Dooley's?" I thought of the German. "I used to. Not so much any more."

"Dave invited me tomorrow night. You should come. I haven't got a phone yet, but why don't you drop by my place beforehand? We'll go together."

AFTER SPENDING AN hour trying to find my going-out shirt, I headed up to Kaede's apartment off Lundy's Lane, in the back of the old Econo Lodge. She was waiting on the steps, cycling through the images in her camera. On the walk down to Dooley's we went around to some of the old tourist stops so she could take a few pictures in the dusky light. Most of them were boarded up; the few that still had their windows intact had been converted to housing or CanAm offices.

"Find it depressing?" I asked.

"No," she said. Click, click. "More interesting."

We took a little detour to Clifton Hill, stopping in front of what used to be the old Guinness Museum. While Kaede snapped away I explained how, at first, the place had been turned into a nostalgic retrospective. "They filled it with interactive displays and old videos about the nutbars who went over in barrels, and there was a little working model with water rushing over the side and a pair of headphones to listen to the actual sound of it, recorded way back when."

"And what was that like?"

"The real sound? It's weird, I can't really tell you. I mean, I know what noise waterfalls make, I just can't remember exactly what it was like here — like if we were standing in this spot, what we'd be listening to. Or if we could hear anything at all."

She stood looking at me with the camera in her hands, waiting for more. But I just said, "Let's go," and started walking again, leading us through Victoria Park. With the overcast sky darkening, the shadows of the trees stretched and deepened.

"Is it true I shouldn't walk around here alone at night?" she said.

"Well, after dark you get garbage pickers coming down from Welland or Fort Erie and that. There have been some problems."

"But I'm security, Paul." Her hand brushed mine, sending a ripple of heat up my arm. "If I was working nights these are the people I'd have to deal with, right?"

DOOLEY'S WAS RUN by its namesake, a salmon-coloured, tubby little Newfie who had opened the place back in the days of happy tourism. When asked about keeping it going while everyone else went under, Dooley would shrug and give his standard answer: "Folks gotta drink."

The place was split into two gloomy rooms: one featured a pool table ringed with stools; the other side had the bar and a few booths. The clientele practised a similar division. Guys like me and Dave, locals from way back, stuck together, while anyone else — especially the Americans who'd been stationed up here — went to the side of the bar where we weren't. Every now and then one of our guys would get a few drinks in him and start to feel sore, "accidentally" spill a beer on someone's lap and have to take it outside. Not me, though. I've never been a fighter.

Dave and everyone else were set up in the booths, empty pitchers lined up on the table. Our crowd were folks who went to high school together and had stuck around, most either working public service or jobs with CanAm. Dooley had sold the jukebox since it only caused fights, so there was no music, just the clicks and clacks of pool balls being knocked around in the adjoining room, subdued conversations filtering through wafts of blue smoke from Camels or Marlboros bought at the duty-free.

Kaede and I got chairs and added them to the end of the table. I started going through introductions when Dave slammed his beer down and stood up. His eyes blazed. "I don't know what the fuck you think you're doing, Pauly. I mean, nice of you to honour us with your presence for once, but if anyone was invited here tonight it sure wasn't you, you fucking sellout."

"Dave," I said, my hands raising in defence. "Easy, man, I'm just-"

Then the rage was swept away with a wink. "Shit, man, I'm just pulling your chain. Nice shirt." He turned toward the bar. "Shots for my man Pauly here, Dooley! Line'em up!"

Dooley came around with beakers of Canadian Club for me and Kaede: cheers and down the hatch. And right into the beer, mugs filled and pushed sloppily in our direction, half of it splashing onto the floor.

"To new friends!" screamed Dave, and everyone clinked glasses and drank.

Getting drunk at Dooley's was purposeful, steady. Conversations were two or three lines traded between big swallows of Moosehead or Blue. Dave's cousin Lisa asked me, "How are things at the store, Pauly?" and I said, "Shitty," and everyone took a big gulp of their pints. But then there was Kaede, right beside me. I turned to her while everyone else sat working away at their beers in silence, wondering how she'd fit in.

"So," I said.

Kaede lit a cigarette. "In Japanese 'so' means once, before, ever, never."

"So?„

"So what," she said, blasting smoke out the corner of her mouth. "Let's get wasted."

Within an hour we had managed just that, chatting, trading drinking stories from our school days. We got closer, her leg against mine. "Are you glad you came out?" she asked.

"Sure. It'd be better if the bar wasn't in Niagara Falls, but whatever."

"You've been back here how long?"

"Six years. Since my mom passed away. My dad and I ran the store for a year, and then one day at work about a year later a blood vessel popped in his brain. Right in front of me."

"Oh, Paul," said Kaede. Then, slowly, "Your parents never saw the Falls dry, then."

I shook my head.

"Would they have stayed, do you think?"

I wasn't ready for this question. I picked up my beer, then put it down. Kaede just sat there waiting for a reply as if she'd asked for the time or directions. Finally I just said, "I don't know."

Then we heard a shout. Dave was in the face of some guy at the bar with a full pitcher in either hand. I didn't recognize him, but he had about four inches on Dave, and the guy beside him, whom I'd also never seen before, was even bigger.

"I heard you, asshole," Dave was saying. "You called my buddy a coon."

"Koontz, dickwad. I said Koontz."

"Dude, we've got a friend named Koontz," said the other guy, stepping in. "He's in the other room if you want to meet him."

Dave kept staring at the first guy. "Pauly!" he yelled. "This guy called you a coon."

"A what?" I had to stop myself from laughing.

Kaede grabbed my leg. "Did he just say'coon'? Does that even apply to you?"

Dooley came flapping out from behind the bar. "Outside, lads, outside!" he hollered, and shooed them out the doorthe two bewildered strangers first, and then Dave, already rolling up his sleeves. A bunch of our guys followed. The pool room went silent and then a crowd poured out the door as well.

"Jesus," I said, turning to Kaede. "Sorry you have to see this."

But she was already standing. "Come on, Paul! Fight!"

Out in the parking lot the bigger guy was pointing to a Jeep with New York plates. "Dude, look at the fucking tags." Dave wouldn't, but I did: KOONTZ. "This is his car. Can you see?"

Dave stood face to face with the other guy. "I don't know who the fuck you think you are, coming up here and acting like you own the place."

There was some sort of idiotic retort, something in response from Dave, and then they were swinging at each other. Our buddies circled around to hold the other Americans back, saying, "Let them go, just let them go," while Kaede, a foot shorter than everyone else, was hopping on tiptoes and craning her neck. "I can't see! Paul, what's happening? I can't see!"

Dave got a few shots in, but the other guy was just too big for him. A few seconds later he grabbed one of Dave's punches out of the air, like picking fruit from a tree, and hauled him in. Dave took a solid elbow to the chops and then a big left hook came swinging around, the crack of his jaw releasing an empathetic gasp from the crowd. Then our guys were diving in — although now the Americans were holding them back to let their buddy go for it.

"You didn't miss anything," I told Kaede. "It's over."

Kaeded slumped beside me. "Why didn't you tell me what was going on?"

"Oh, come on. I hate this bullshit. You want to get out of here?"

"I guess so," she said, turning to me. "But where do you want to go?"

IF DURING THE daytime it was a ghost town, N.F. at night was more of a graveyard. We tottered through the empty streets, Kaede clinging to my arm with her nose buried in my shoulder, the world swimming up underneath our feet. Those buildings that weren't boarded up loomed, their windows black and empty, on either side of the street. Drunkenly I tried to focus on the road ahead, one step after the next. Everything was a muddy fuzz. But when something went scuttling by in the shadows, my brain snapped to attention.

"What?" Kaede said. "What was that?"

"Nothing. Just keep moving."

"Paul," she said.

I looked straight ahead and took her hand. "Let's go," I said.

But there was someone following us. I could hear whispering from the shadows: up front, then behind, off to the left, then the right. I thought about Dave, losing it on that picker on the American side, smashing the poor guy's skull in with his nightstick. Over a broken fridge.

We stumbled along a little faster, the clopping of our footsteps echoing all the way to the end of the street. "It's not far," I said. "Maybe you should get your keys out now."

At the door to her housing block, Kaede struggled with the deadbolt while I watched the street and listened. The shadows seemed to shift and ripple. I strained to tell if the wisps of voices I heard were real or imagined. And then I saw something that looked like a child rise up from the ground at the end of street, as though it were getting to its legs from all fours. Kaede's keys clattered on the lock. The shape stood there, facing me, unmoving — a dark blot hovering in the shadows of the next block.

When the door finally opened, I nearly pushed Kaede over to get inside.

"Is it one of the pickers?" she asked.

Her eyes were red from booze, that usually perfect bob all askew and wild. I didn't say anything, just put my hand on the small of her back. She reached up and wrapped her arm around my shoulder. Together, we wobbled our way down the hall to her apartment.

"You should stay here," she said, letting me into her place. "You know, just in case."

"Sure," I told her. "What, on the couch?"

"No," she said, reaching past me and locking the door. Her arms looped around my waist, her face turned up at mine so I could smell the sweetness of booze on her breath. When she spoke again the words were slow. "My bed's much more comfortable."

THE NEXT MORNING, while I was struggling to ignore a pounding headache and find my socks amid the mess on her bedroom floor, Kaede lay in bed piecing together the night before.

"There was a fight, right? Did you start it? I feel like it was your fault, for some reason."

I threw a pile of shirts to one side, only to discover a pile of pants.

"Or was it because of something you did? Man, I was so drunk."

"That's what happens when you drink, I guess. Imagine that."

She was silent for a minute. I could feel her watching me as I went rifling through her stuff. "Paul, do your friends always fight for you?"

"Jesus, Kaede," I said, kicking my way through laundry and books. "You've got no idea what you're talking about. And I don't know how you expect to get any sort of project done when you can't even keep your bedroom in order either. Look at this place. It's like a twelve-year-old got her own apartment."

She sat up in bed. "Get my project done? Excuse me?"

"Yeah, you know, the one where you come rolling into town, taking pictures of people's homes — like we're animals in a zoo or something. These are real lives, Kaede. We're not just something for you to leech off."

"Oh, give me a break. At least I'm doing something, Paul. Look at you, rushing around to get your stuff together so you can go sit in your parents' store where no one ever comes."

I froze. A million things went through my head to scream back at her for this. I pictured myself grabbing fistfuls of her stuff and whipping them around the room. But I was not the type of guy to lose it. I breathed, looking away. Very calmly, I peeled my jacket off the back of her desk chair, made my way in silence down the hall, and quietly closed the front door on my way out, walking sockless in my shoes all the way across town to work.

Maybe half an hour later Kaede showed up in her uniform, breezing in through the front door while I was going through some paperwork. She browsed absently through the postcards, moved a few things around on the shelves, not acknowledging me until she held up a maroon and gold Canada sweatshirt to her body. "What do you think?"

I had no reply, just made a note on the page I was working on and turned to the next.

"You guys are so tense."

I flipped through the pages as though I were looking for something.

"In Japan they have places for people like you, for businessmen."

I glanced up from the files. I was a businessman now?

"To blow off some steam," she said, coming toward me. "Shops where people buy a ticket and they can smash things."

"Shouldn't you be at work?"

"People go nuts for it. Apparently it's a huge release, destroying all these delicate things — china, crystal, glass. They just smash the shit out of everything."

"What do they use?"

She clasped her hands together and swung them, whistling.

"Baseball bats?"

Kaede nodded. "And whatever else — tire irons, swords, you name it."

"Swords?" I struggled not to laugh. "People pay to do this?"

"Lots."

I stood there looking around the shop at my stock, wondering. But Kaede acted first. She grabbed a snow globe from the shelf. "Let's smash this."

"Whoa."

"Come on, aren't you mad at me?" She winked. "Won't this be a good release?"

I paused, she let out a frustrated huff, and before I knew what was happening, she hurled the thing against the tiled floor. It shattered, sending its contents — an igloo, a snowman, a couple of evergreens, a handful of white confetti — flooding outwards on a wave of murky water and broken glass, leaving half the cracked globe rocking back and forth on its side.

"What the fuck are you doing? That's our stock!"

But she just handed me another one, giving me a look like, Come on.

"Kaede."

That look again.

I took the globe from her hand, felt the dust that had accumulated on the smooth glass, weighed it, then dropped it beside the other one. It bounced harmlessly, rolled a bit, and came to rest against the counter. Kaede picked it up, looked at me with a frustrated expression.

I sighed, took it from her. "Okay," I said, "fine."

When the globe exploded I honestly felt something, a rush, as though a floodgate inside me opened up when the glass bulb split and spewed its contents all over the store. I looked up at Kaede. She smiled, already handing me a paperweight in the shape of Horseshoe Falls. This I hurled at the ground, laughing, screaming, "Motherfucker!" Ceramic shrapnel sprayed up as it hit. My body was buzzing. I put my hand out, greedy for more.

Kaede took another paperweight from the shelf, juggled it from one hand to the other, then put it back. "We need to save things for other people."

THAT NIGHT KAEDE made me spaghetti at her place. Over dinner we planned the whole thing, settling on twenty dollars a person — all my friends could afford, I figured — and decided that a week would give us enough time to get everything ready. Kaede made it clear that we had to be very specific in the area we allotted each participant. Otherwise, she advised me, there would be mayhem. "In Japan there are very strict rules. Do you think we need to do the same?"

I thought of Dave. "Yeah, that's probably a good plan."

When dinner was done I offered to clean up, but I'd only washed two dishes before we were peeling each other's clothes off right there on the kitchen floor. She pushed me down and climbed on top, hands running up my chest. In the light I noticed her face: a weird half-smile played at the corners of her lips, as though she were trying not to laugh. I scooped her up and flipped her around, wedging myself between her legs.

She went rigid.

"Kaede — is something wrong?" My pulse quickened. I'd been too rough, too creepy.

"Um, sort of." She looked uncomfortable. "It's just that — well, these tiles are really cold. I know it's boring, but can we just go to my room?"

After we'd finished, chatted each other to sleep, and then rolled away to opposite sides of the bed, I woke up in the middle of the night freezing. In need of clothing, I stumbled in the dark into the kitchen to retrieve my boxers and T-shirt. On the walk back to the bedroom I stopped at the living-room window. I'd forgotten that strange shape, that kid, whom I'd seen the night before. I stood for a while gazing out into the night. But there was nothing, no sign of any movement or anyone skulking around in the shadows, no kids or adults or anyone to speak of.

Back in bed I lay there on top of the sheets staring at Kaede's back, curled away from me. I spooned up behind her, wrapping an arm around. Whether she was asleep or not she looped her fingers through mine and pulled me even closer. It was good, comfortable, but every time I started fading into sleep I'd hear noises from outside. I'd snap awake and lie there, hugging Kaede, imagining that little shape scuttling around the building, bursting up out of the night with its face pressed to the window. I didn't fall asleep until the first light of dawn began to crack its way through the curtains.

I SPENT THE NEXT day going around telling my friends about Kaede's idea — our idea, I suppose. At first they just raised their eyebrows and laughed, but when they realized that the invitation was serious they were quick to sign up. Lisa and Colin were a bit more reticent; there was almost something sympathetic in the way they agreed to come.

"Are you sure this is something you want to do, Pauly?" Lisa said.

"Sure as sure. Just go nuts. Like bulls in a china shop. It'll be fun."

Colin shook his head. His folks had been friends with mine; I wondered if he was thinking about what they'd make of the store smashed to bits. But then he just smacked me on the back and said, "Well, Dave'll be happy. At least a paperweight won't fight back."

Eight people confirmed, all old friends. A hundred and sixty bucks isn't exactly a fortune, but it was a lot more than I'd make trying to sell the stuff. And everyone seemed to be genuinely excited — both for themselves and for me.

Until the big day a week later, Kaede and I spent every night together; if she could work her security patrol so it swung past the store, she would, hanging out until she thought the CanAm folks might wonder where she'd got to. She had the day before the big smash-up off work, so I surprised her with an impromptu trip to Marineland. Nearby was the warehouse space where I kept everything the other souvenir shops had passed along to me, so we decided to go by there as well.

We parked on the main road about halfway between the two places and hit the warehouse first. The place was like an airplane hangar, full of junk. Kaede poked around taking photos, kneeling to snap the boxes full of knick-knacks, getting up close to shoot the postcard racks and shelving units teeming with relics of a place that no longer existed.

"After we get through everything you've got in the shop, we'll restock it with this stuff."

"For who?"

But she just raised the camera to her face and took my picture.

Then we walked back past the car and on to Marineland, where we hopped the wall by the front gate. It was another chilly, grey day, and the few trees that still sprouted from the cement walkways were leafless and lonely-looking. I took Kaede down to the old killer whale tank, where we crossed over to the stage and sat, dangling our legs above the empty pool. Everywhere the blue paint was flaking, the muck of rotten leaves clinging to the corners in brown clots.

"So what did this used to be like?" she asked, shooting the tank with the flash on, then off.

"I used to come here every summer with my parents. The whales were the best, the way they splashed around, how it looked like they were smiling. We always sat up close on purpose, because the orcas would do these backwards flops that'd spray up into the crowd. Then we'd walk around, get cotton candy or something, and dry off in the sun."

Kaede pulled out a pack of cigarettes from her purse and put them down between us, took one for herself and lit up. After a few drags, she took the cigarette out of her mouth, leaned in, and kissed me on the cheek. "Paul, this is going to be so good. You feeling okay?"

I nodded at her cigarette. "You smoke the way my mom used to, like every drag is the first one you've ever taken in your life."

"Shut up!"

I faltered for a second, looking at her face — the incredulous expression in her eyes, faking hurt — and then went in. Her mouth parted and I felt her tongue. Then she was at my neck, I was at hers, our hands were everywhere. After a while I started laughing. "Man, this is the sort of shit I used to do in high school: sneak into abandoned parks and make out."

"Is it good?"

"Yeah," I said, leaning into her. "It's good."

ON THE WALK back to the car, I took Kaede's hand, swung it happily. The sun had started setting, but there was no sunset — no colours, no light. The clouds just started shifting to darker shades of grey and the world under them began to fade in their shadows.

We reached the gate and, holding her camera, I helped boost Kaede up. She straddled the top of the wall and then dropped down, out of sight, on the other side. While I was draping the camera around my neck I heard her call out, "Paul! Paul, there's someone over here."

I thought instantly of that dark shape in the street our first night together, rising from the ground like something feral. "Hold on," I said. My hands were shaking as I scaled the wall. "Kaede, where is it? Kaede?"

"It's in the trees. There — there, I saw it move again."

Perched on the top of the wall, I looked down at Kaede, standing there at the bottom. Across the parking lot were the woods, the evergreens thick and dark, the maples and birches bare with their empty branches clawing in the wind at the darkening sky.

I scanned the trees. "Where is it?"

"It was there," Kaede said, pointing. "I saw it move between the trees. I think it's watching us. Who is it, Paul?"

I dropped down from the top of the wall. My knees had turned to jelly and I crumpled on landing, turning my ankle. "Fuck," I said, wincing when I stood. "Come on, let's go."

With Kaede supporting me, we made our way toward the car parked around the bend. Both of us kept our eyes on the line of trees on the far side of the road. I couldn't see anything. "Are you sure there was someone in there?"

"Yeah, of course I'm sure. There was someone watching me."

Then the car was in view, up on the soft shoulder where we'd left it. My ankle was killing me; I moved stilt-legged on it at a trot while Kaede hoisted up my weak side. "If there was something in the woods, it's gone. We probably scared it off."

Kaede just kept scanning the trees. "It was small," she said, "like a kid."

We got to the car and, leaning against the door, I struggled with the keys. I was so focused that I almost didn't notice what someone had scratched into the paint on the hood, the letters two feet high. My stomach did a backflip. I slammed my fist into the windshield.

"What?" Kaede said, but then saw where I was looking. "Oh, Jesus. Who would do that?"

Shaking, I opened the door and got in. Kaede hopped across to the other side. The word had been written facing inward, so I had to read it from the driver's seat. I hit the power-locks, then sat breathing behind the steering wheel. "Okay," I said, and started the engine.

Just as we were pulling away there was movement up ahead in the woods. With all the streetlights out it was hard to tell, but it looked like something was coming thrashing toward the road through the trees.

"There!" called Kaede, pointing through the windshield.

Then it was out of the woods, a small shape scampering along the gravel shoulder. A kid. In a panic, I pressed down on the accelerator and laid on the horn. But the kid kept coming, and instead of fleeing back into the woods it burst onto the road, hands up as though to stop the car. I honked and sped up, the motor roaring.

"What are you doing?" Kaede screamed.

At the last second I tried to veer out of the way, the tires screeching as I cranked the wheel, but it was too late. The fender hit the kid at the waist, flinging him up onto the hood. He smashed against the windshield and, as I slammed the brakes, rolled back down into the street. At the moment of impact my headlights shone right into the kid's face: he was maybe ten years old, the eyes not so much wide in terror as they were with something enraged, something desperate.

I STOOD OUTSIDE the hospital with Kaede, watching her smoke. It was close to three in the morning, but I felt almost unnaturally alert. Kaede, meanwhile, had withdrawn. She wouldn't look at me. Every time I tried to touch her she shrugged my hand away. And as soon as each cigarette was done, she lit another — now on to her second pack of the evening.

"He's going to be okay," I tried again. "You heard the doctor."

Kaede shook her head, ashing onto the ground.

"They'll find his family. These people all live around here, they all know one another."

Nothing. Not even a glance in my direction. I wondered if she could sense in my voice the doubt that, even if they could track the parents down, they'd care enough to come in to pick up their son. I'd heard about the way the pickers lived — like animals, apparently. And these were people with decent jobs only three years ago. It's amazing how quickly human beings can degenerate. I looked back at Kaede, standing there shaking her head. I'd had enough.

"Oh, come on, would you? He ran right into the road. What was I supposed to do? You think I wanted to hit him? You think this is how I wanted to spend my night, at the fucking hospital, talking to cops and doctors and nurses and whoever? Jesus Christ."

"Right," she said.

"Listen, there's no sense hanging around here. Do you want a ride home?"

"No," she said. "I'm going to stay for a while. I need my camera from your car."

I left Kaede standing at the door of the boy's room. He'd been shifted from the ►cu to a regular bed. Luckily, all the accident had resulted in was a broken leg, a dislocated shoulder, and bruised ribs. Other than a nasty black eye he hadn't done any damage to his head, which was their main concern.

Even so, the doctors wanted to keep him in for observation for the night. "Still trying to track his parents down," I heard a nurse telling Kaede as I moved away down the hall. "With these cases it can be tricky, though. Could be a runaway or abandoned, just living off garbage and staying in empty buildings. You never know."

THE NEXT MORNING I called the hospital, explaining who I was. By some miracle they had found the boy's parents, part of some sort of squatting commune in an old winery off the 420. With my car in the shop to fix the windshield and buff the scratches out of the hood, I hobbled up to Kaede's place that afternoon to let her know, but there was no answer. As I turned to go home, I nearly ran into a woman coming up the walkway. She wore the CanAm security uniform, seemed to be in her mid-thirties, sort of pudgy; her nametag read, Carol. I guessed that she was American: Dave claims all the women wear white tennis shoes, and Carol sported a pair of gleaming Reeboks.

"You looking for someone?" Carol asked, pulling out her keys. "I'm the super."

"Kaede?"

"The Japanese girl? Pretty sure she didn't come home last night. You her boyfriend?"

"Didn't come home?"

"Listen, pal, she might be gone for good. It happens all the time — you get these foreigners over here looking for work, then they don't like it and bail." Carol looked me over. "You in the market for a job?"

I shook my head. Carol excused herself, moved past me, and began unlocking the door. Watching her fumbling with the keys, my body felt heavy, as though I'd gone swimming in my clothes and was now trudging back onto land. I turned and dragged myself down the steps.

I HEADED DOWN to the store about an hour before everyone was scheduled to show up — it was just gone seven, right around dusk. I hadn't slept the night before and other than my one trip out, I'd spent the entire day at home waiting for the phone to ring. It hadn't.

With my ankle still badly swollen, the walk down there took about three times longer than it normally would. In the parking lot I had a good long look at the shop: the chipped paint, the sagging foundation, the stain of where the G had once been above the door.

As I went to let myself in I noticed a letter tucked into the mailbox. As I pulled it out, a lump collected in my throat, hard as a stone. Inside the store I ran a souvenir letter opener up the side of the envelope and shook it open. All that came out was a photo — no note, no indication of who it was from. Although that much was obvious.

The photograph was of the boy I'd hit, lying in his hospital bed. It was a close-up. Kaede must have gone into his room to take it. He was in rough shape: torso wrapped in bandages, right arm in a sling, left leg up in traction. He was asleep, one of his eyes ringed with a deep purple bruise.

I was furious. My foot bearing down on the accelerator had been an accident, the wrong reaction to the situation for sure, but certainly not purposeful. Forget what he'd scratched onto my car. I didn't get angry. I wasn't that kind of guy. What kind of monster would try to kill a kid?

I went to throw the picture out, but then reconsidered, instead stashing it in the cash register underneath the one of my parents. At some point I'd look Kaede up in Calgary and send the thing right back to her: fuck you.

A few minutes later the first of my pals arrived with their respective smashing tools — two baseball bats and a shovel. As more people began to show up, I got busy administrating the ensuing chaos and forgot what had happened the night before. But then, once things were set up, my friends stationed in their various assigned positions around the store, it all came back. I wondered if the kid had gone home yet — or to whatever approximation of a home his parents kept. And I wondered where Kaede had gone to: maybe she'd moved into the pickers' commune out of solidarity, or maybe she was already sitting on a plane over the Prairies, looking out the window thinking what a monster I was and what a mistake she'd made with me.

Dave was the last to arrive. He seemed fidgety, eyes darting back and forth, obviously anxious to get going. "This is where you'll be," I told him. "From those figurines down to the ashtrays — see how it's taped off? Try to stick to your area."

"Gotcha." The guy had found a cricket bat somewhere, and he was weighing it in one hand against one of the CanAm security nightsticks. Finally he tossed me the bat. "Going with old faithful. But you can use that, if you want."

With everyone there, my friends had gone quiet. Gone was the bemusement that had greeted my invitation; even Lisa and Colin seemed resolute and focused. As per the instructions Kaede had helped draft, each person had on long pants and a shirt, eye protection (interpreted as everything from swimming goggles to an Itech hockey helmet), and gloves. People had exactly one minute to destroy anything they wanted in their allotted space. That was it. After sixty seconds they had to stop.

I rested Dave's cricket bat against the wall.

"Let's start this thing!" yelled Lisa. People laughed, which was good.

"What's the deal, Pauly?" said Dave. "Are we gonna bust your store up, or what?"

Everyone laughed again, but there was impatience in it. My thoughts kept zipping between Kaede, the boy, my parents, and back to Kaede. And my car, what had been written there — why had a little kid wanted to do something like that?

Dave caught my eye, and I could tell he knew that something was up. "We don't have to do this, Pauly," he said. There was a murmur of agreement from around the room.

"No," I said, nodding. "I'm good," I said.

PRETTY MUCH THE entire store was destroyed. The minute rule went right out the window as soon as the first display of figurines smashed against the floor. Even from where I gazed on from the periphery, it was impossible not to get caught up in things — the explosions of crystal and glass, the cracking of wood, the shelves crashing down in an avalanche of kitsch. But beyond the vague, vicarious thrill of voyeurism, I didn't feel anything. I'd expected to be flooded with sadness, or relief, or nostalgia, or catharsis. Instead, all I did was watch.

At one point I guess everyone must have caught themselves: there was a sudden pause, clouds of dust rising all around, and eight people were left looking at one another in an almost bashful way, catching their breath. I'd like to think some sort of mercy instinct kicked in, although I guess there just wasn't anything left to smash.

Dave spoke before I could. "Think that's enough?"

People offered to help clean up, but I wasn't having any of it; they'd paid and I was offering a service. On their way out, everyone shook my hand and told me how great it had been, apologizing if they'd got out of control, offering to pay extra if I needed it. Colin paused at the door and said, "Jesus, Pauly, everyone in the whole town is going to want in on this. Totally amazing. Can I buy shares?"

I was left sweeping up, collecting shards of glass and ceramic and plastic and tin on the big wide broom and clearing everything down the aisles. While my hands trembled and the sweat cooled on my back, I still wasn't sure what to think about the whole business.

I'd been at it for maybe an hour when I heard a car pull up out front. I froze, broom in hand, wondering if one of my pals had forgotten something. Three doors slammed, I heard some muffled conversation from the parking lot, and someone knocked on the door. Through the window, I could see Kaede — with two or three other people clustered there too.

Standing on my step beside Kaede were the kid from the hospital and two other scruffy-looking adults. The man wore sweatpants, the elastics hiked well over his ankles, an old Ontario Hydro parka, and deck shoes. The woman had on an identical parka and a pair of tattered grey leggings. Between them was the kid. He teetered on a single crutch, leaning against his dad. Just like the photo: one black eye, one leg in a cast, and an arm in a sling. The other bandages were gone — or hidden under his clothes.

"Hey," I said.

"Hey," said Kaede. "Can we come in?"

Behind them a taxi idled in the parking lot. The night was cold and their breath came puffing at me out of the dark in clouds. I looked at the man's face, and the woman's, and the kid's, glowing golden in the light from the shop. The smell of cigarettes hung over them like a shroud. All three regarded me with the same expression: a sort of exhausted rage, like caged animals with very little fight left.

"Careful," I said, stepping over the splintered remains of a stack of ashtrays. "We had a bit of a party earlier."

"We know what went on here," said the man, lifting his son. "We want in."

"Bronco wants in," said the woman.

"Bronco?"

"That's me," said the kid.

I looked down at him. While his face seemed tired and gaunt, something in his eyes burned.

The dad strode across the shop and grabbed Dave's cricket bat, still leaning against the wall. "This'll do. Help him over here."

I realized he was talking to me, so I moved beside his son. Kaede nodded at me. Bronco wrapped his arm around my waist and leaned in.

"Careful," said his mom. "He's still real sore."

I moved slowly with the boy across the shop, around the occasional hit of stray trash, both of us with a gimpy leg, one step at a time. With the crutch working on one side and me on the other, Bronco limped along, wincing occasionally, toward his dad. When we got there he placed the bat into his son's hands and stepped away. "Okay," he said.

"What do you want to break, baby?" asked the mother, scanning the aisles. She saw what we all did: empty shelves, debris cluttering the floor, clothing racks smashed to pieces and their contents strewn about and covered in dust. At the back of the shop sat four huge piles of refuse.

"There's nothing left," Bronco said.

My eyes were on the cash register, sitting there untouched on the counter beside the dad — who, apparently, noticed it too. "There's this," he said, tapping it with his fingertips.

"Whoa," I said. "I need that. And it's an antique."

"Look what you did to my son," said the mother, her voice like ice. "Everything else is ruined. What does it matter?"

"No," I said. "It matters."

"Fuck you," said the dad. "Bron, do this one, buddy."

"No," I said. "I said no."

"After what you've done?" yelled the mother.

I was surprised when Kaede stepped forward. "After what he's done? Do you know what your son scratched onto his car?"

The parents looked at each other, then the son. Bronco tapped the bat in his hand.

"Just do it, Bron. Smash this thing." The dad pushed the register onto the floor. The bell dinged and the drawer clattered open wildly as it hit; one of the sides split and the Enter key popped loose, skittering off under a shelf.

The kid hobbled forward. Some response in me clicked and I grabbed the bat from his hand, lifting it above my head and out of reach. "Forget it," I said.

Things seemed to slow down. I breathed, turning to Kaede. The expression on her face was drawn, the lips tight — but in her eyes was something softer, something like an apology. Then they flashed. "Paul!" she cried.

I spun around and realized that the dad was on the move, wordlessly barrelling toward me from behind the counter. In his eyes was the same look that had been in his son's eyes when I'd smashed into him with my car: hunger, fury.

He was on me then, screaming into my face: I saw a mouth jawing away and felt a spray of spittle, the heat of breath, was aware of sounds but not words, not what was being said. Then a hand came flying out of somewhere, smacked me in the shoulder and knocked me reeling backward — right onto my bad ankle. Pain shot up my leg. I tensed, regained my balance, and then stood sure-footed, waiting.

The dad was coming at me again, fists up, and from somewhere I heard other voices — Kaede's, maybe the kid's and the mom's. Something, though, had caught hold of me. I stopped trying to make sense of what was going on. With the dad set to fight I stepped forward, oblivious to the flare of pain in my foot, and cocked the cricket bat, eyes trained on the flat smooth plane of the dad's cheekbone, hearing the crunch of splintering bones even before I started to swing.