Toronto Noir

A bout of regret by Michael Redhill

Distillery District

It’s bad news whenever a policeman walks into your bar, but it’s worse when you’ve been having an affair with his wife. Katherine and I had been seeing each other for so long that I didn’t really ever think about her husband anymore. He was in the background, like a great-uncle, and for the last couple of years we’d stopped being careful, he was that regular in his work and in his habits. To listen to Katherine, all they had left in common was the marital home. He probably had affairs too, was how she saw it, and she believed a series of unspoken arrangements kept the balance in all of our lives. But if that was true, then what was Leonard Albrecht doing at the back of my bar, squinting at one of the old photographs behind glass, like he was thinking of sitting down for a plate of calamari and a beer?

The Canteen was the name of my bar, a name I borrowed from the original saloon that stood on this spot, more than 150 years ago. I’m down a side street in the Distillery District, one of Toronto’s oldest unwrecked neighborhoods. For a lot of years in this city, all the most interesting neighborhoods — at least the ones with a story to tell — have been taken over to build condos, but this corner of the city was so unpopular, so out of the way, that they left it alone. It stands at an angle to the shore of Lake Ontario, close enough to drink its waters, but far enough away from the city’s old wharfs that the only business done from its docks was its own. Until fifteen years ago, the distillery was a miniature city unto itself (complete with its Victorian cobblestones and cramped walkways) that churned out whiskey, rum, and during WWII, acetone. I’d never met anyone who’d been behind its locked gates, and tucked in behind the monstrosity of the Gardiner Expressway, it was all but inaccessible. But it was industrious for an invisible, unloved corner of the city: It was still putting out rum when it closed in 1990.

Some smart business types thought it might make a decent tourist destination and started cleaning it up a few years after it shut its doors. I got in on the ground floor for what was a lot of money five years ago, though now I couldn’t buy a chunk of cobblestone to paint my name on for that kind of cash. I’ve since made back what this place cost me and I’ve parlayed its status as the original distillery bar into a couple of lucrative sidelines. In general, I’ve been lucky in business. And up until now, it seemed, in love too.

Albrecht was meandering toward the bar where I was polishing glasses, getting ready for the lunch rush. It was 10 in the morning on an overcast September day. Bartenders are supposed to be good people-readers, but the truth is, you don’t need any skills to read a person who’s come into a bar to drink alone, and those are the people who like to talk. The movie cliché is wrong, though: Most of the people — men, usually — who sidle up to a bar to unburden themselves aren’t suffering from heartache. Half the conversational openers I hear are some variation on, “Fucking Leafs, eh?” and I can tell you that, after a while, all those suckers pining over the Stanley Cup or the World Series trophy make you hungry for a story about love. Just once I’d like some stubbled broken heart to sit down at my bar and say, “The day she walked into my life was the day my life ended.” Or something like that.

My point here is that I had no idea what Albrecht was thinking, although I’m pretty sure he knew what I was thinking, since he was giving me time to notice him. I don’t know the first thing about cops, but I gather from watching movies that they can figure out a lot from your body language. I just stood there trying to polish glasses in as unguilty a way as possible, but for all I knew, the angle of my arm was telling him I’d been sleeping with his wife for nine years.

He gave me a smile and a little wave when he saw me looking at him. “Nice place,” he said.

“It’ll do.”

“Mainly tourists?”

I stared at him for a second. The small talk was supposed to show me he was in complete control. “It used to be,” I said finally, “but the locals have found it.” The sweat from my palm smeared the glass I was cleaning and I had to start over. “It’s about fifty-fifty now.”

He nodded appreciatively, looking around a little more. “I live over by Queen and Bathurst,” he said. “I go into the Wheat Sheaf sometimes. But I work out of 51 Division, five hundred meters from here. You’d think I’d have had cause to come in before now.”

“I guess we keep our noses clean,” I said.

“I usually work nights, so you must. Or we would have met by now.” He pulled out a stool and sat, ran his fingertips over the old, burnished wood on the bar. He had massive, thick hands. I knew what he looked like from the pictures in his house, and I knew he was a big man, but in person he was considerably more imposing. There were a couple other surprising things about him too: His face was warm and his eyes soulful. He had a huge gourmand’s nose. If I hadn’t been on guard, I might have taken an instant liking to him. “This bar and the Wheat Sheaf,” he said, “they must be about the same vintage, eh?”

“About that. 1830s or thereabout.”

“I just love these old places,” he said. “Nobody really cares about them, though. If they’re in the way, down they come. Lucky this spot wasn’t of interest to anyone.”

I had to smile. He was playing me perfectly. I put the glass into the overhead rack and took another one out of the rotary washer. I decided it was time for him to make his point. If I had any say in the matter, I wanted this over before there were customers to deal with. “Listen, officer,” I said, “the lunch rush is coming in soon. Is there anything I can help you with?”

He seemed to shake the cobwebs out, like he just remembered he was on business, and drew a wallet out of his inside jacket pocket. He flipped his ID open to me. “Sorry, I slip into reveries I guess. Detective Inspector Leonard Albrecht,” he said. “Don’t worry, I’m not here on licensing business.”

“I figured as much,” I replied, keeping my eye on him.

“You’re Terry McEwan?” I nodded. “You got any unhappy ex-employees?” I thought about that for a minute. What the hell could one of my ex-employees have told Leonard Albrecht about where I went in my off hours? I said that there were none I was aware of. He opened his notebook. “Do you remember a Deborah Cooper?”

“Yeah. She served tables here this summer. She was seasonal, you know? I hire them in June and cut them loose after Labor Day.” A glimmer of something began to surface in the back of my mind. “What did she say?”

“Well, she came in last week to complain you were running an illegal after-hours club here.”

“Yeah?”

“Is it true?”

I tried not to show my pleasure at his line of questioning. How do you like that? I thought. Leonard Albrecht shows up in my bar not to blacken my eye for having an affair with his wife, but because he’s pulled duty to look into my underground activities. Someone up there had a very black sense of humor. “It depends what part you’re asking me about. The ‘illegal’ or the ‘after-hours.’ ”

He tilted his head at me minutely, like a huge parrot. “From that I take it’s a yes to the after-hours part, but you’re of the opinion that you’re not doing anything wrong.”

“It’s a private club, detective.”

“You charge money?”

“It pays the servers for their time.”

“I see. And there’s nothing leftover for you. So you’re basically volunteering your time, right?”

He had me there, but I couldn’t come up with something to counter him with. I was thinking of how I was going to tell Katherine all of this. You’re not going to fucking believe who walked into my bar this morning, was what I was already saying to her in my mind. I could see the dread and curiosity in her eyes, the way she’d say, NO! when I told her, like there wasn’t a chance I could be telling the truth. We’d be sitting on the couch, two glasses of wine on the coffee table in front of us, and I’d tell her and she’d slap me on the arm, her eyes wide — Get out! — and then she’d be laughing hysterically with her hand over her mouth. I heard her in my mind as if she were standing right there at the bar in front of me. Oh, how awful! Her mouth pursed in delighted horror. You poor, poor thing! I was almost of a mind to draw this out as long as I could.

Except I had a problem now. Leonard Albrecht was real.

“You still with me?” he said.

“Sorry,” I replied. “Am I going to need a lawyer?”

“It depends.”

“On what?”

“On whether you’re straight with me or not.”

I processed that for a moment and it dawned on me that if the man was as much a student of history as he’d said he was, he might be interested in what was below my bar for more than just procedural reasons. “This was a worker’s bar,” I said. “Mainly Irish. They opened it and ran it, but management told them what hours they could keep, what activities were allowed. I guess running a bar on the grounds of a distillery has its challenges.” Albrecht smiled. “Anyway, I guess some of them didn’t like being told their business. They secretly dug themselves a basement and they did what they liked down there.”

“Which was what?” asked Albrecht.

“Music, dancing. The occasional cockfight. And there was a boxing ring.”

“That’s what she said.” He looked down at his notes. “Cooper. She said there was fighting.”

“Is that the illegal part?”

“Oh no, it’s all illegal. Selling liquor in an unlicensed room, holding a sports contest. Both are pretty bad, but the two of them together are really bad. You sell tickets to the bouts?”

I saw Gillian and Henry, my lunch staff, come in through the side door. They shot me looks and disappeared into the kitchen. “We only have three or four fights a year.”

“You sell tickets?”

“Yeah,” I said, starting to think maybe I shouldn’t have felt so smug about Albrecht’s reason for visiting me. Maybe an accusation and a fat lip wouldn’t have been as bad as this was starting to look. “Listen, I didn’t really know—”

“You knew,” he said. “Let’s not go down that road.” He stood up. “Show me.”

“Is there any way we could do this when the bar’s a little quieter?”

“Your people can handle the first rush. You’ve got other business. Let’s go.”

When Alan Kravitz handed me the keys to the place, he held one of them up, a rusty, old-fashioned one. “There’s a little storage space under the bar, might be useful to you. Be careful, though, the floors are rotting and I don’t know how strong the beams are.”

The first time I went down there, I brought my cook with me to see if he thought it would be a good place for a fridge. “Christ,” he’d said. “You could dry salami down here.”

We’d walked through the small, dark, dusty room with two flashlights and a pair of long sticks, pushing crates aside with them. There was a disgusting stained cloth lining one of the walls, and I guess Kravitz hadn’t brought a stick with him when he first investigated because I used mine to pull the cloth away and found a door behind it. It lead in to an enormous room with a broken-down piano in it, a bar, a stage, and a tattered old boxing ring. There were some forty chairs arranged around the room. We’d shone our beams into the cold, lightless place and looked on it with genuine wonder. Under the bar was a log with a record of bar sales and admission fees and the like, and we saw that there hadn’t been a soul in that place for eighty years. “You thinking what I’m thinking?” I asked the cook.

“You’ll need another license,” he’d said.

“Or not.”

It took two years of secretly refurbishing the place to get it up to scratch. I tried to keep as much of the old grandeur as I could, but the piano had to be replaced and the boxing ring recovered, although the ropes had survived and so had two of the turnbuckles. If I could find anyone to fight in the place, they’d have the chance to get knocked silly against a turnbuckle that had dimmed the lights on some Irishman a hundred years earlier. Katherine had been the first person outside of the bar I’d shown the finished room to. “Wow,” she’d said. “I’m not the only thing you’re doing on the side.”

I poured her a Scotch and we toasted the future. She’d been at almost every one of the bar’s traditional music nights and boxing matches since we opened. Now her husband was standing in the middle of the room.

“Cooper didn’t do it justice,” he said.

“She was only down here once. She told me she wasn’t comfortable working off hours, even for the money I was paying.”

“Expensive to keep a secret?”

“Obviously not expensive enough.”

He walked into the room, turning slowly to take in all the details. “Looks pretty authentic.”

“I had pictures of nineteenth-century saloons to guide me. I did a lot of research. This wasn’t the only speakeasy in Toronto in 1850.”

“But it’s the only remaining one.”

“I think it must be.”

He walked among the round zinc tables toward the stage. “There’re wings?”

“Dressing rooms too.”

“Wow,” he said. “These the original floors?”

“No. They were a mess. We did these ourselves. We kept as many of the old nails as we could salvage, though. Some of it’s original.”

He walked across the front of the stage to the corner of the room where the boxing ring was. For matches, I had four men simply lift the ring and bring it into the middle of the room, where we’d arrange the chairs around it. You could break it down and put it away, but I liked the look of it, menacing and lonesome, in the corner of the room under a single light. He stood beside it, wiping his hand over the canvas. “You got a champ?” he asked me.

“Ernie Paschtenko. Russian kid. He fights out of the Cabbagetown Club, but someone brought him down to us and he’s been fighting friendlies here for a couple of years. His record is ten and one.”

“You do some training here too?”

“A little.”

“And who judges the bouts?”

“I do, with a couple of the regulars.”

“Nice,” said Albrecht. “A whole secret world, huh?”

“Until now.”

“You fight?”

“I spar once in a while, but no. I don’t got much of a chin.”

Albrecht pushed one of the ropes up and threaded himself under it onto the canvas. For a big man, he was lithe. He stood in the ring, testing the platform. “I tell you what,” he said. “I know a good thing when I see it. I’ll write this up back at the station house and say everything’s in order. But you got to promise that you’ll get a license for down here. I can’t help it if someone less inclined to see the charm of this place stumbles onto it.”

You have to do a certain amount of diminishing the missing corner of the triangle to feel in your right mind when you’re cuckolding a man. Leonard Albrecht hadn’t deserved an atom of it. He was good people, but it shouldn’t have surprised me. He’d once loved Katherine. I wondered if there was a way I could make it up to him without his knowing what I was doing. “I’ll get a license then,” I said.

“That’ll mean inspections, McEwan. So you have to put this ring away when it’s not in use. And you can’t charge admission anymore.”

“Okay.”

“You got any kind of records for your sales?”

“Somewhere.”

“Get rid of them. The day you get your license is the day this place officially opens.”

I crossed the room to the ring. “I’m grateful for this,” I said to him. “I’d be happy to put you on the list. You know, for matches and other things.”

He was pretending to fence with an invisible opponent, dodging blows, feinting left and right. “That’d be great,” he said. “I could slip in if I get a quiet shift some night.”

“You ever box?” I asked him.

“Naw, just a student of the sport. I don’t understand people who say it’s all brutality, though. It’s the most basic contest there is. Man against man, a duel of honor. My wife hates it.”

No she doesn’t, I thought. If Leonard Albrecht was planning on coming to matches, though, she wouldn’t be seeing any more fights in the basement of The Canteen.

I watched him up there shadowboxing, and my heart went out to him. He had no idea what his wife was made of. And he was so lonely in his work that he was willing to let a complete stranger off the hook if it meant being a part of something. I went to the cabinet behind the ring and got out two pairs of gloves and headgear and held them up. “You want to see what it feels like?”

He came over and leaned on the ropes. “And let you knock my block off? How do I explain that back at division?”

“We’ll take it easy. You’ll like it.”

He thought about it for a moment, then smiled and took off his jacket, tossing it over the corner as I stepped into the ring. I laced him up, but he waved off the headgear. “If I wear that, you’ll feel free to hit me.”

“It’s safer with it. Just in case.” I didn’t want to clock him accidentally, but he didn’t want to wear the gear. I tossed both protectors over the ropes. “Rule one: Keep your chin down. Tuck it into your lead shoulder, since you’re going to turn a little on an angle to me, give me less body to punch at. It’s natural to want to lift your head, but it’s the worst thing you can do. You got to protect both your throat and the button.” I touched the point of my chin with my glove. “And keep your hands up,” I told him, as we faced off. “Protect yourself and stay outside, you know what that means?”

“Keep back from you.”

“That’s right. Because you’re the bigger man here, you want some range. You want to keep me out from where I can work under your defenses, you understand?” He nodded. “And keep your eyes loose, like you’re trying not to look at me, but see my eyes and my chest and shoulders all at the same time.”

He nodded again, and we started circling each other, moving around the ring. He kept his hands up pretty tight to his face, but I could see him watching me between his gloves. There’s a lot you can learn from watching the fights, and he’d gotten it down pretty good, feinting away from me, keeping his head moving. I threw a couple of light jabs at him and he dodged them, returning punches when I was out of position and even connecting a couple of times, light jabs to my hairline. “That’s good,” I said, “you’ve got some ring sense.”

“You’re moving pretty slow.”

I started circling a little more aggressively, coming in when I sensed an opening, but he knew when to step out, break away. It was enjoyable. I’d sparred with Paschtenko, but that kid could knock me upstairs if he wanted to, and most of the time I spent in the ring with him, I just stayed away as much as I could. This was different, and in an odd way, it was a little intimate, like the beginning of a friendship. It was strange to have the man’s body in front of me, that body I had betrayed indirectly, at both a physical and emotional remove. This body so well known to Katherine. I suddenly felt grateful that he was not shirtless, that there was no more of the raw animal in front of me. I let us go a couple more minutes, connecting a few times, taking a semisolid punch or two to the kidneys from him. If he got into shape, he might have something, I thought.

I stepped back. “Well, officer, I should probably get back upstairs.” I’d lowered my gloves, but he was still moving toward me. I was completely open for the punch he threw, but I managed to slide away from it; he would have tagged me right on the chin. I batted his glove away. “Whoa,” I said. “There’s the bell.”

“Sorry,” he said, dropping his hands.

“Good instincts, though. Get yourself a trainer, you could put some tiger in that tank of yours.”

He picked his jacket off the turnbuckle, folded it over his arm. I stepped out and tossed the equipment back into the cabinet. “When’s the next bout?” he asked.

“Two weeks. You got a card?” He reached into his wallet and handed me one. He was sweating lightly. “So this is all going to stay on the QT?” I asked.

“Yeah, as long as you do what I say.”

“License, no ticket sales.”

“Get rid of your records.”

“Right,” I said.

“And one more thing.”

I snapped the light off over the ring. “You were never here, right?”

“Yeah, that. And stay away from my wife.”

I had my back to him and I froze, waiting for the blow, but it never came. “What did you say?”

“You heard me, Terry. We’re giving it another try and I want you to keep your distance. I’ll let you know if it doesn’t work out between us.”

I turned slowly to face him. “Jesus Christ,” I said.

“I know.” He slipped an arm into his jacket. “You seem like a nice guy and I’ll be happy for her if we can’t get our act together. As long as you go semi-legal here, you should both be fine. But for now... you know.” He offered me his hand. After a second I took it.

“Look, I’m...”

“I’ll be seeing you, Terry.”

He released my hand. I felt it drop, dead, to my side. “See me where?”

“Here,” he said. “That Cooper girl really did swear a complaint. I’m glad she did. This is the coolest thing I’ve stumbled across in fifteen years.”

He went out the door without another word.

I turned off the rest of the lights and locked the doors. Upstairs the first wave was being seated in the bar. Gillian came over as soon as she saw me. The look on my face, I guess. “Jesus... was that guy from the commission?”

“No. He was a cop.”

“Oh fuck,” she said. “Is everything okay?”

“For now. But he warned me I could lose everything if I don’t clean up.”

She breathed out heavily. “Anything I can do?”

“Serve lunch,” I said. “What else is there to do?”

We did forty covers for lunch and another seventy-five at night. An average day in The Canteen. I looked him up online once I got home. He’d been an Ontario Golden Glove between the ages of sixteen and twenty-five. A heavyweight. He hadn’t won a single belt, but my guess is he didn’t want one bad enough.

I never heard from Katherine again, but after a few months, he started to show up at the fights. I said hello, but I let someone else serve him. Life is full of TKOs. You might think you’re still standing, but there’s the third man, waving his arms, and it’s all over.

For Steven Heighton and Michael Winter

Brianna South by RM Vaughan

Yorkville

Bri blackout! What happened to

Hollywood’s “Baby girl”?

— Toronto Sun, September 12, 2008

The following excerpt from Brianna South’s diary was obtained by the Sun from unnamed sources, three days after her shocking disappearance. South, the controversial seventeen-year-old star of last summer’s breakout comedy, All the Nice Girls, and the upcoming live adaptation of the ’80s cartoon series Pulsar Girl, set to close the Toronto International Film Festival on Friday, left her room at the Four Seasons Hotel in Yorkville on Wednesday evening for an unscheduled outing. South’s family have arrived from Fort Worth, Texas, and will make a statement later today. Police have released no further information.

September 4

Ugly. Okay, not the nicest thing to say, I know, but who said, “It’s not mean if it’s true”?

Probably somebody who came to Toronto and stayed a whole week in a room my grandmother would like, with thirty-six French TV stations and no hot towel rack and the worst warm walnut salad I’ve ever had, that’s who.

I’ve been outside exactly three times — from my hotel room to the service elevator to a town car to a raw food restaurant, then back, then to a TV station in an old factory that smelled like a hot dog cart, then back, then to a boring movie from Mongolia they showed in an opera theater.

Jayson said I should see it, or just be seen seeing it, or at least walk into the theater. Like I understood any of it anyway, like I understand Mongolian funeral rituals and polo. I hate polo. Then it was back to the car, back up the service elevator, back here. It’s so ugly. The view is of a museum that looks like another old factory, but with a bunch of bent aluminum siding sticking out of it, like a giant ugly metal rock. I think it’s supposed to be art. I hate my life.

Later

Nobody likes my film. I can tell, because they won’t shut up about it. If it was good, they’d be all calm and quiet.

I don’t even remember the Pulsar Girl cartoon, and I’m in the “target market” for the movie. Newsflash, idiots: Girls don’t go to comic book movies.

But you can’t tell them anything, they’re all fags. Only fags would make that movie. Everything is so funny to fags, stuff nobody else thinks is funny. Jayson said, “It’s already a camp classic” in the restaurant — he thought I wasn’t listening — and that is the fucking kiss of fucking death. You can’t make a cult movie. It just happens. Even I know that, but you can’t tell fags anything.

I hate Jayson. He leads me around like a dog. It’s his job to get me the best interviews and the best articles and so far all he’s done is drag me in front of people for show, not to talk. Nobody talks to me. They talk around me. I’m beginning to figure out that the whole point of this film festival is to just show up. I could be dead and they could drag my body from party to party and I’d still be the biggest news in town.

I mean, even Melanie Griffith got a newspaper cover, just for doing her own grocery shopping. She hasn’t made a movie in years, but the whole stupid city freaks out because she can pay for a braised chicken all by herself without a helper.

Okay, that was mean. I’m hanging around Jayson too much. I sound like a fag. I really, really need someone to talk to. I could be dead and nobody would notice.

September 5

He called again, just ten minutes ago. I’m too excited. I shouldn’t be this excited. I don’t know how he got my room number. Everything is supposed to be secret — where I go, where I stay, where I eat, where I shit (especially where I shit). But he found me. Hotels are cleaned by ex-cons, like Mom says, so it’s no surprise. What’s a few fifties up here — like, eleven dollars at home?

He is so smart, it scares me. He says he found forty-six minutes of Pulsar Girl on YouTube. He says it’s good, the flying looks real. I feel a little better.

[The remainder of the page is covered in drawings of hearts, vines, and what appears to be the same word, perhaps a name, repeated nineteen times. The word or name has been scratched out. Forensic textile experts hired by the Sun were unable to read the word.]

2:30 p.m.

I told Jayson to fuck off ten minutes ago. Fuck, that felt good. I should have done it before, like on Day One.

He wants me to go to this party in a science museum, a fundraiser for stem cell research. I told him I don’t believe in using unborn babies to cure varicose veins. So he said I didn’t have to pay to go, they only want me there for PR, so I wouldn’t really be supporting anything I didn’t believe in if I wasn’t paying. That’s Jayson logic.

I mean, I know I don’t act all Christian, but I do love Jesus and babies. And my parents would kill me. So Jayson says, “SharLynn Kashante Jefferson is going,” like that is supposed to make me all jealous or nervous or scared. SharLynn is okay. She’s nice and, okay, she is pretty, but come on — she’s on a stupid hospital show, with, like, four other black girls. And, I mean, really, only my father watches hospital shows.

So I told Jayson to fuck off. It just came out. Fuck. Off. Now he probably thinks I hate SharLynn, or that I’m racist. I don’t care, I don’t care, I don’t care. I mean, I don’t think they even get her show on TV up here.

He will be so proud of me when I tell him what I did. He says I have depths inside me, strengths and energies and powers I don’t even know about yet. He says I am all diamonds inside.

September 6

Worst breakfast press conference of my life.

I felt like this tree, this skinny, dry tree, like the kind that used to grow in the back of our first house, behind the gravel pile. Garbage trees, skunk wood, Dad used to call them. You just cut that kind of tree down because it’s no use. It’s a weed with pretensions, Dad said. So you cut it down.

That’s the way they treated me. Cut, cut, cut, cut, cut. One guy from France asked me about Iraq, if Pulsar Girl could stop the war (!!!!). Like I’ve been to Iraq, or even Europe. So that’s all I could think to say: “Never been there.” They laughed, mean laughs. Jayson just sat there. He said his microphone wasn’t working. He fucking lies so much. Every word.

I lit all the foxglove-scented candles he sent and turned on Canadian MTV — which is, of course, in French, but at least the music is American — and I got in the bathtub and filled it really slow. He says foxglove is a medicine flower and the Irish call it Dead Man’s Thimbles. Doesn’t sound all that healthy to me, but he’s the expert.

We connect over things like that. I mean, he’s an expert in old things, in legends and stories, and I’m an expert in acting. The first time he wrote to me, I have to admit my Creepy Guy Radar went off a bit, because his handwriting was so girly. But I kept reading (because, okay, I was bored on the set), and he wrote that he thought All the Nice Girls was really a remake of the Story of Rachel and Leah, who are sisters in the Jewish part of the Bible. I looked it up.

I really am a lot like Leah, the “barren” woman, which I think means she was deaf. I mean, I’m not deaf, but I do sort of drift off a lot, and I am “tender-eyed” too, like the Bible calls Leah. I have a good heart, and I’m way, way too nice. And I’ve been overlooked all my life.

He’s coming.

[The remainder of the paragraph is illegible. Forensic textile experts hired by the Sun believe the page was scraped with a nail file or the blade of a sewing scissor.]

Now it’s 7:30 and Jayson was supposed to be here at 7 to pick me up. Another hospital party, for kids with bone cancer, or inside-out organs or bugs in their blood — something gross, it’s always something gross.

I will not hug the really messed-up ones. I told Jayson — no hugging and wipes, bring sterile wipes. He never listens.

This afternoon he was in here, going over my dresses for tonight, and I turned away to look out the window because A) I didn’t want to look at him because I hate him, and B) because there was this beautiful red bird on the window ledge. Bright red, and big, big as a cat.

Jayson said it was a Pope bird or a Thorny Cross bird, or another churchy name, like he knows anything, and after it flew away (actually, it really just sort of fell off the ledge, I hope it’s okay!!!), I caught Jayson fucking around with my phone, my private phone with all my addresses and numbers.

I said, “What are you doing?” and he clicked it shut like it was nothing to invade my privacy. He said he thought it was his phone, no bigs. But his phone is blue, and mine is tangerine. Jayson wonders why I don’t trust him.

I’ve decided I don’t care that I don’t know what he looks like.

Well, okay, I care a little, and I have an imagination, because I’m an actor — but if he’s really ugly or old I really don’t care.

I’ve met every good-looking man in the world in the last year and the big secret is all good-looking men are exactly the same. They’re like men’s dress-up shoes: They come in black or they come in brown, they have pointy ends or they have square ends, and that’s that for choices.

I’m so bored with “beauty.” I can look at any big actor now and I can tell you in ten seconds which trainer he uses, which diet he’s on, where he gets his facials, who fills his pecs with saline, or his dick. It’s like math, like algebra — squats plus tensor bar plus Nevada mud bath plus coffee enema three times a week equals one shower scene in your next movie. Do the same math five times and eat raw lamb for twelve days and you get a sex scene too.

I mean, if I can figure this out after two movies and one season on 7th Heaven, when I was like nine, why can’t the public figure it out? It’s amazing that people don’t just start shooting celebrities, just for fun, just to see how quickly the producers can grow a new one, like starfish legs.

I don’t think I’m unreplaceable. I don’t think I’m special, or like a part of history. No fucking way am I doing “art.”

Maybe college would be fun. I’d like to get drunk and throw up all over myself on a cute guy’s front lawn, like my friends back home do every weekend. Nobody worries that they’re “out of control.” It’s totally expected, totally acceptable behavior. I mean, Jayson even took the mini-bar key. “It looks better,” he said.

Better to who? The maid? Jayson is so controlling. And I pay him for it. That’s fucked.

He told me his name today.

Okay, it can’t be his real name, probably, but it’s still a name.

Azrael.

He said it was Jewish for, “He who makes the lasting peace.”

It’s beautiful, even if it is fake. Fake and beautiful are the same thing anyway.

Twenty-nine hours till he arrives. I’m excited, more than I should be. I should be excited about, like, one hundred other things in my life, but he’s the only mystery I have left. Once you’ve spent seventeen hours hanging from a green wire pretending to be scared of the end of a mop that’s supposed to be a giant lizard alien head, most of the surprises are gone out of life.

I mean, I could get pregnant, that would be new. That would be news too. Brianna and Azrael. What would the tabloids call us? Braz? Anra? Briel? Brianna and Azrael. Brianna and Azrael.

Please, God. Please, God, let him be cute. At least cute.

No, forget it. Sorry, God, scratch that. I am such a C-U-Next-Tuesday. I don’t care. Azrael can have three heads and a harelip on all three mouths. He’s a listener. My listener.

“He who makes the lasting peace.”

Ten minutes would be enough for me.

Fuck, Jayson’s here, at ten to 8:00. Nice and late. Off we go to pet the zombie kids. I wish I had some gloves — those long kind, up to the elbows. I could pretend it’s part of my outfit.

September 7

Needy — people are so needy.

If I had terminal cancer I would just want to be left alone.

I wouldn’t want balloons, or slides I couldn’t slide on, or an ice cream cake I couldn’t eat anyway — and especially no fucking thank you would I want fucking Mr. ET Canada Ben Mulroney signing my IV bag!!!

I mean, Jesus Christ!!! Why didn’t he just sign the kids’ foreheads so they can all be buried with his autograph? That guy is like an animatronic dinosaur at the Tar Pits — he moves his head, he opens his mouth, he moves his head in the other direction.

Best moment: Mulroney corners me while this girl who can’t stop moving her head is getting her face painted like Spider-Man (because he figures nobody can hear him over the girl going umma umma umma) and he asks me, all “real” and sweet and concerned, if I want to talk about Pulsar Girl and why I’m fighting with the director.

Please, why would I fight with a director after the movie is done? What’s the point?

I smell Jayson’s stale CK One all over this. Maybe that’s the new sell talk for the movie — Brianna’s tantrum. Somebody has to be blamed, and it’s never the director because here’s another big secret: Directors are pure profit. You can work a director till he’s like ninety-five, as long as he can point at the actors and mumble.

The sad part is, the kids were really excited to see me. I don’t get it. Maybe one of them, maybe two, has ever even seen me in anything. But Somebody Special was there, and that’s all that mattered.

I kind of think that if I only had a few weeks to live, I would consider myself the most Special person on earth, as a survival strategy. I would let all my animal instincts take over, become totally selfish and full of self-love, even self-worship. I would save every breath for me.

September 8

Azrael sent me the most beautiful plant. I wonder if I can take it back on the plane?

It’s an orchid, I think. There’s no real roots, just a ball of hard wood underneath this cloud of green spongy stuff that looks like a pot scrubber. The flower is navy-blue, or purple, I can’t tell. It’s huge, the size of two grapefruits, and it smells like dish soap, but salty. That part I’m not liking so much.

His note says the flower represents “purity risen from offal” and that the flower has “cleansing powers.” That explains the smell.

I asked Jayson what “offal” meant, but he just went all faggy on me and waved his hands around like I just farted. He says the flower looks like something you put on a coffin. He would know.

September 9

Another fight with Jayson.

He wants me to do a breakfast television show tomorrow, at 6 a.m. It’s a total waste. People who watch television at 6 a.m. don’t go to the movies, because either they are senile and stuck in a home, or because they have to go to bed at 5 p.m. to get up for 5 a.m.

It’s a total waste of time. I mean, maybe I’d do it for Good Morning America or Today, but Canadian breakfast television? Why don’t we just set up a webcam in my room and beam pictures of me to Yakistan, or wherever? It would amount to the same at the box office.

So, I said no. I am allowed to say no.

Jayson freaked, really freaked. He screamed crazy stuff at me like, “I know more about you than you know,” and, “I’m the reason you’re here.” Over and over. I walked into the bathroom and shut the door. So he stood there, right outside the bathroom door, close enough to hear me piss, and I think he was crying!!!

I came out after, like, twenty minutes (because I was bored and that bathroom is beyond ugly), and he was standing by the window, perfectly still. Calm as a sunflower, like my grandmother used to say.

“What have you got to wear if it rains?” he says. What a psycho.

I sent him to get me some new makeup, which I do not need, to get rid of him. I think I’ll “forget” to pay him back.

I hope you can get Google Maps in Canada. I have to find out where Leslie Spit is (I know, eewww, gross name).

Azrael says it’s the most private place in Toronto — a beach with trails and tall grass and flowers and, I guess, the ocean.

That tells me two things: One, he is from here, which is too bad because I hate long-distance relationships, and two, he is not interested in publicity, he doesn’t want to be Mr. South.

He just wants to meet me, like a person, the way people are supposed to meet — without some Jayson or whoever in the middle, some fixer or arranger or scout or manager or protector.

I am so bored with being protected. It’s not natural.

I mean, if I can’t figure out who my friends are on my own, how am I going to make it to, like, twenty-five?

I’ll get eaten alive.

Midnight shift by Raywat Deonandan

University of Toronto

Over here,” Meera said, taking Yanni by the hand and dragging him down a freshly mopped corridor.

It stank of ammonia, an antiseptic nasal assault that held a warped erotic appeal for some among the stethoscope and lab coat set. Meera drew Yanni’s mouth to hers and tasted his youth, inhaling his masculine scents and flavors.

“Slow down,” Yanni whispered. “And be quiet. Someone will hear!”

“Wimp,” Meera chastized, running her dark hands under Yanni’s loosened shirt. “There are only two nurses on this floor, and they’re both at the station.” Yanni still hesitated. “Besides,” Meera continued, “maybe you want to get caught?” She grinned in her devilish way and pinched his nipple, pushing Yanni against the sterile white wall.

He was yielding to her touch, soft clay beneath her willful hands. Meera pressed him against the sign that read, 2nd Floor, Rheumatology. The irony was not lost on her, as they strived to express an act of guileless youth in a place of broken agedness. The odors of imposed sterility, the colors of bureaucratic lifelessness and joyless dull lights — these were tokens of a philosophy that pushed aside the ardor of youth, the mystic charms of sex, and dirty, musical physicality. It was as if she and Yanni were consecrating the lifeless drywall with their hot, staccato breaths, all the time mildly aware of the clicking heels of the midnight nursing shift a hallway away, and of the almost imperceptible groans of the elderly patients swimming in their beds, wracked by dreams impossible for naïve, young medical residents to comprehend.

They clutched each other in that particularly desperate way, with each muscle seemingly both shocked and delighted that it had been recruited to such a pleasant purpose, and melted into the slow rhythm of human intimacy. The barren hospital corridor seemed less foreboding now that their eyes became accustomed to the darkness. At the end of the hall, a small window was open, letting in dull sounds from University Avenue below: a rushing stream of honking taxis, whooshing motorcycles, traffic lights hooting and chirping for the blind, and the chatter of the occasional passersby.

“Come on,” Yanni said, spinning from the wall and dragging Meera by her stethoscope. He pulled her into one of the empty patient rooms and onto a bed. The tightly tucked hospital sheets were a cliché, one that made them both chuckle as they gave up trying to get under them. Then they heard a noise.

“Who’s there?” It was a man’s voice, weak and desperate.

Yanni sprung to his feet, letting his open shirt fall back into place. “I’m Dr. Rostoff. This is Dr. Rai. Who are you?” Meera clicked on the room light, revealing an elderly man in the room’s secondary bed. “This room is supposed to be empty.”

“Manoj Persaud,” the man said, looking pleadingly at Meera, perhaps finding solace in a face as brown as his own. Yanni snatched the man’s chart, flipping through the long paper sheets with guilty annoyance.

Yanni frowned. “Meera, he’s supposed to be in the Latner Centre.” He whispered: “Palliative care.”

“I know I dyin’,” Manoj Persaud said weakly in a slight Caribbean accent. “Na need fo’ whisper.” He pulled himself to a sitting position on the bed, revealing striped pajamas and furry pink slippers with bunny ears. Meera smiled at the sight. “One a dem volunteer give dem to me,” Persaud said, gesturing to the slippers. “When I dead, you can tek ’em.”

Meera sat next to the strange man and started with the usual doctor routine: the pulse check, the penlight in the pupils, an examination of the mouth and tongue. Persaud pushed her away. “What you doin’, child?” He coughed blackishly. “I said I dyin’. You go find somethin’ new fo’ kill me faster?”

Yanni dropped the file onto the bed and sighed. “Mr. Persaud, you are eighty-eight years old and suffering from several very serious medical conditions. I don’t know how you got to this floor or this room, but we have to get you back to the Latner Centre right away. They can take care of you better. We just don’t have the facilities...”

“Boy,” Persaud coughed, “I come down here because he comin’ for me. He go get me sometime soon, but he cyaan do it now. Na now. He got fo’ wait till me ready. I got fo’ hide, just fo’ tonight. Just until me can tell somebody m’story.”

“Who?” Meera implored, stroking the old man’s face and feeling cold, wet fatigue. “Who’s coming for you?”

Persaud’s eyes widened and his jaw dropped. He leaned forward and beckoned her closer. The room seemed to darken then, with the hum of the old ceiling fan fading into the ether, and a taste of slightly stale honey upon the air. “Yahhhm,” Persaud said, in all solemnity. “Yahhhm come fo’ me.”

Yanni frowned, but Meera motioned him back. “Yama,” she explained. “The Hindu god of death.”

“Yes, Mr. Persaud,” Yanni said. “I’m sorry, but death is coming. For all of us. For you sooner, though. I’m sorry. Which is why it’s important—”

“Shut up, boy,” Persaud said sharply to Yanni, then turned to Meera, cupping her heart-shaped face in his spotted hands. “You undahstand, right? Yahhhm come fo’ me, fo’ tek m’soul. And dat’s all right, child. Dat’s all right. Is okay. But na now! Na right now! Not before me can tell you why Yahhhm come fo’ me personally.”

Yanni pushed his hand through his thick blond hair and sighed again. Typically, rheumatology rotation didn’t involve psychiatric consults, but the midnight shift was famous for its many exceptions. And psychiatric issues were certainly not unknown to downtown Toronto hospitals. He reached for the phone by the bed, but Persaud intercepted with his skeletal hand.

“Boy. Please listen.” Persaud’s eyes were those of a doomed beast, pleading upward from the abattoir floor. “Yahhhm is comin’ here. Tonight. Right now.” His eyes slowly drifted to the hallway, to the open window at the end. Instantly, from the street below, there was a loud smashing noise, followed immediately by the sickly sound of bending metal and the unmistakable screams of humans in distress.

Yanni and Meera raced to the window. From the other end of the hallway, the shift nurses were also running to windows, so loud was the noise. Down below, like a report from the evening news of any unnamed metropolitan center, a scene of traffic horror unfolded. Two delivery trucks had collided and were blocking traffic on all six lanes of University Avenue, sprawling across the pedestrian median and had even knocked down one of the ghastly statues that usually stood watch. One truck was on fire, and police and fire engines were miraculously already on the scene. No casualties could be seen through the press of onlookers, who continued to stream in from nearby Queen Street, likely drawn by the sounds of disaster; but no doubt the emergency room below would soon be pressed into duty. It was an excellent ER, Meera knew; one of the best in the country. Still, a part of her wondered if she should rush down to help.

Persaud coughed loudly and beckoned them to the bed. Meera came back to his side. “Yahhhm,” he said, as if in explanation. “Death comin’. Na got too much time. Got fo’ tell you m’story first!”

“Look at all the people down there!” Yanni called from the window, amazed by the flow of late-night disaster voyeurs descending on this otherwise unpopular street. “I know it’s a horrible thing, and I hope everyone’s all right, but what a show it must be on the ground!”

Persaud stroked Meera’s face then fondled her stethoscope. “You so young to be among we so old. And dis,” he indicated the end of the stethoscope, “dis does give you comfort? You med’cine cyaan stop Yahhhm when Yahhhm want fo’ come.” He grinned an awful toothless grin that slitted his yellowing eyes and widened his gaping nostrils. But there was nonetheless something attractive and familiar about him. “How old you be, child?”

Meera said nothing.

“Is okay,” Persaud said. “No need fo’ answer. You daddy dead, right?” She nodded, almost zombie-like in her silence. “Is okay,” he soothed. “We all got fo’ dead. Is okay.” Meera’s face hardened. Whatever slight spell the strange old man had cast on her was now fading, chased off by the invocation of her father’s sacred memory.

“Dr. Rostoff is right,” Meera said. “We have to get you back to your room. Then we’d better go to Emergency to see if we’re needed.”

Persaud’s lips tightened and he studied her carefully. He turned to Yanni, who was still bewitched by the scene of carnage on the street. “You, boy! Tell me you see Yahhhm.”

“What?” Yanni, annoyed, waved Persaud away. He kept looking through the throngs on the street. To a man, each was enthralled with the heroic acts of firefighters hosing down flaming trucks and pulling bodies from crushed vehicles. But there was one...

Persaud called to Yanni. “You see him, na? Tell me!”

Yanni was silent. But he kept his eye on this one special man on the street, this one man who was not watching the carnage. Instead, he was looking up, directly at the window from which Yanni now peered.

“Describe he!” Persaud ordered. But Yanni remained silent. The watcher continued to stand apart from the crowd, his hands in his jacket pockets, locking eyes with Yanni. Yanni’s fingers yellowed as they gripped the windowsill more tightly than was comfortable, but he snorted dismissively at the watcher.

Meera gazed over at her friend and colleague, and was at a loss. She was torn in many directions, ripped apart like one of the vehicles in the street. Competing responsibilities and desires jockeyed for priority. Yet the balance of her focus remained on the strange old man in the bed next to her.

“You is Indian,” Persaud said. “You go undahstand. Dat is why you been sent fo’ hear m’story.”

Meera shook her head slowly. “Mr. Persaud...” She paused, knowing that further appeals to him to return to Palliative Care would be met with stolid refusal. And with the emergency outside, it was unlikely she would find sufficient help to move him against his will; not without sedating him.

She fell into his gaze, so sad yet intense. His yellow fishlike eyes bent into that sad configuration, and the spotted skin on the sides of his face drooped in its losing struggle against time and gravity. He looked so familiar, so sadly familiar. “I’m not Indian,” she said. “Well, I’m of Indian descent; but I was born in Kenya and grew up here in Toronto...”

“Doesn’t mattah,” Persaud said, shaking his head forcefully. “You is Indian. Like me. I was born in Guyana. Never been to India.” His accent seemed to be thickening as the evening progressed. But Meera had no trouble following. His gravitas commanded complete focus and understanding. “Never been to India,” he said again. “Don’t know m’caste or m’daddy’s caste. But I is a pandit just the same. One priest of God!”

Meera reflected, was tempted to smile. Her own father, whom this man so wished to resemble, had hated religion. He had refused to raise his children with religion, had thrown his wife’s idols from the home, and had famously quipped, “When things go well, we thank the gods. But when things go to hell, we blame everybody but the gods! What bullshit is this?” Yet in the end, even he had asked for a priest.

“You were a pandit in Guyana?” she asked him.

“Yes,” Persaud said. His face darkened and his eyes deepened. The sounds of the street seemed to retreat then, isolating Meera alone with the old man, cushioned from Yanni, the window, and the rest of the world. “I is a pandit now, and I was a pandit then.” He paused and stared at her meaningfully. “I was a pandit of Kali.” He spat the last word.

Again Meera smiled. “I didn’t know Kali was so popular outside India.”

“Kali be another face of the same God,” Persaud said, screwing up his own wizened face in mock dismissal of her seeming ignorance. “Goddess of blood, she. Goddess of glorious bittah red wine that pump in we veins. She scare the white people, na. But we know: She be a mama just like any lady. We respect Mama. We respect Daddy. And when you is a slave or servant in the cane fields of Guyana — back when the white man tek all you history, all you possessions, all you beliefs, and give you Jesus Christ instead — when you is a slave or a servant, you need cling to you mama and you daddy with greater force!” His gaze intensified, as did his hold on Meera’s hand. “Because dat is all you got, in the end. Dat is all you got.”

It was then that Meera noticed Yanni was being uncharacteristically quiet. She looked to him and saw only his back, with his untucked plaid shirt whipping in the wind from the window. “Yanni,” she asked, “are you all right?”

“He’s just staring up at me,” Yanni replied. He continued to look down into the mêlée below, red and yellow flashing sirens reflecting off his expressionless face.

“Yahhhm,” Persaud intoned. “Tell dis old man, please, boy. How the god of death look? He tall? He old or he young? How black is he face? When he come, I not go see he. He go tek m’soul and I not go see he face.”

Yanni replied without intonation, only fact. “He’s about twenty-one, five foot eight, but quite heavyset, wearing a white-and-blue University of Toronto jacket. And he’s blond... and white.” Persaud jerked at the last. “Maybe he’s just catatonic. Or in shock. All he does is stare up at me; at this window. Maybe he needs a doctor.”

Meera squeezed Persaud’s hand, then stood up. “Yanni,” she said, “it’s time we went to work. Let’s send for a wheelchair to take Mr. Persaud back to Palliative, then you and I had better report to Emergency. You think?”

Yanni detached himself from the window and scratched his head. “Sure, M. Let’s go.”

“Wait!” Persaud bellowed. “Listen! All me need is ten minute. Just listen a m’story fo’ ten minute, then you can do what the hell you want fo’ do. Yahhhm go come before ten minute. Just listen a m’story, na. I got fo’ tell somebody before me dead, or Kali go cuss m’soul.” He stared at the two of them for a good long couple of heartbeats. “You want she fo’ cuss m’soul? No? Good. Come listen, na.”

Yanni made an odd dismissive noise and returned to his post by the window, voyeuristically surveying the crowd. Sheepishly, Meera moved back to Persaud’s side, an imploring look in her eyes. “Okay,” she said. “Tell me. But then we have to take you back to your own room.”

And Manoj Persaud launched into his tale...

It was years before Guyana had obtained its political independence from Britain. The decades that had passed of slavery for the blacks, of near genocide for the natives, and of indentured service for the Indians had bred a thirst for release from the chains of colonial rule. With each layer of Europeanness painted atop this weather-beaten Asian and African tapestry came a strengthening of its foreign matte, a calling for connections to lives and philosophies left centuries and fathoms away. African animism, sporadic puddles of voodoo, the naturalistic magics of the scattered native tribes, and the myriad faiths smuggled from India all found fertile soil in this wet chasm of discontent. Amongst the Indian immigrants, the cult of Kali was revived and flourished.

In the telling of the tale, Persaud gurgled and his words took on a distant tenor. “Goddess Kali,” he whispered. “Omnipotent power absolute. She be the origin of cosmos and spirit. Deity of time, eternity and source of all energies. Kali bless us and we triumph over evil, destroy rogues and knaves, expel inauspicious souls, and repel demons.” He focused on Meera again, slowly intoning, “She be knowledge. She be bliss.”

Meera felt the dying man’s pulse again, worried for his stress. She opened her mouth to speak, but Persaud covered it with his quivering hand. “Let me finish, na. You got fo’ undahstand. The white man, he afeared o’ Kali. He think she be demonic, wit’ blood and scariness. But dat is fo’ he. Kali is we mama. She be the female face of God, the angry mama who does protect she pickney, she children. We is she children. It is — what you say? — a metaphor. We weak before the white man, so we need one strong image of we mama fo’ protection. You see?”

Meera nodded. And Persaud continued his narration...

Manoj Persaud had been a priest at the temple of Kali, where scores of devotees came weekly, sometimes daily, to offer obeisance to the mother goddess. In exchange, they received stable employment, healthy children, enough food to last the month, or whatever else it was they prayed for. It was Persaud who interpreted the omens and prodigies, who interceded between mortals and goddess. It was Persaud who interpreted the lost ways of obscure India to the subcontinent’s forgotten and wretched Caribbean progency.

But tensions were mounting as demands for political independence grew louder on the streets, in the newspapers, the rum shops, and even within the temples. “And one day,” Persaud said, “dem came fo’ talk wit’ me.” Six men they were, regular devotees of Kali, some even Persaud’s relatives. They abased themselves before the priest and asked for a special puja, a divine way or ceremony, for Kali to guarantee and accelerate Guyana’s impending independence.

“I tell dem fo’ pray and fo’ make sacrifice to Kali, like dem always do, wit’ coins, food, and fasting,” Persaud said, a sense of both sadness and horror growing behind his eyes. “But dem say dem want something extra. Something more. Fo’ Kali. Fo’ big big magic.”

The younger Persaud had watched his devotees with growing unease, as the full extent of their petition came to be understood. For a boon of this magnitude, one affecting a whole nation of people, the old ways would have required a human sacrifice. But modern times employed modern methods, with pumpkins standing in for human heads; or the use of human effigies constructed of flour and mud, slashed with razor-sharp machetes. Persaud presented these tamer options to his petitioners.

“But dem know the magic,” he said with growing weariness. “Dem know the sacrifice, how the sacrifice must be aware. It must know it own fate and not be acting to stop the cutlass.” Only then would the magic work, when the ultimate unseemly price had been paid. Only then would Kali grant them their wish.

Meera grew pale with the unfolding of the tale. Like a journey taken on a cloudy morning, its horrifying destination was rapidly becoming clearer as more steps were taken. Persaud’s face was pleading, almost desperate with apology. “No,” he said. “I not want fo’ do dat! I tell dem. Dis pandit does not hold wit’ dem old ways!”

But he had to tell them something. If he just sent them away, who knew what atrocity they would enact? Perhaps they would kidnap some poor fool and murder him sloppily in their own homemade Kali puja, accomplishing nothing except creating misery for all involved — and offending God in every way possible.

“So I tell dem,” Persaud said. “I tell dem: It must be a white child. Dem must kill one white child.” He sat back against the wall, grinding his gums, waiting for Meera to react. But there was only silence.

Meera regarded him with a strange detachment, struggling to balance horror with pity and disgust. She felt herself slide backwards, her hands near her face.

Persaud leaned forward again. “Undahstand! You got fo’ undahstand! Where dem stupid boys go find one white child? We never see no white pickney. Only white man wit’ he gun, he whip, and he stick. Where dem skinny brown village boys go get one white child? I been tryin’ fo’ save dem, see? I been tryin’ fo’ prevent dem doin’ some damn stupidness!”

Persaud’s eyes exploded into tears. They rushed like torrents down his cheeks and into the sides of his huffing mouth. His breathing was shallow and forced, wheezing at times between bouts of fitful, pathetic wailing.

“I been tryin’ fo’ mek dem task impossible,” he whispered into the tissues Meera was using to wipe his face.

“But it wasn’t impossible,” Meera asked cautiously. “Was it?”

At that, Persaud reached into the front pocket of his pajama pants and pulled out a crumpled, yellowed piece of newsprint. Meera took it and unfolded it. On the top it read, Stabroek News, Georgetown, Guyana. The date was 1961. It was a story about the disappearance of the baby daughter of the overseer of a sugar cane plantation in rural Guyana. Her name was Helen and her surname was seemingly Dutch. There was no photo, but Meera assumed the girl was white.

“My God,” she said aloud. “They found one.” Persaud nodded and sobbed. “But how can you be sure they killed her? Or that they were the ones who killed her?”

Persaud laid back against the headboard of the bed, spent. His face glistened with tears and sweat and his head now resembled a desiccated brown skull. He seemed to be aging before Meera’s very eyes. Unexpectedly, he smiled in that dejected but resigned way that the elderly sometimes do. “I know,” he said, “because dem bring me she body. Dem wanted fo’ know if it been done right, according to the old ways.” He breathed sporadically now. “And I told dem yes. Yes, it been done good, according to dem damn old ways. Yes.”

Meera stared at the pathetic old man, suddenly aware that she was watching death creep over him, consume him cell by cell. It was an oddly emotionless observation, one that shamed her and pushed her back into her professional demeanor. Only then did she notice that Yanni was standing behind her, his hand on her shoulder. “You heard?” she asked him.

“Yes,” Yanni said. “It’s a city of immigrants, you know. Everyone’s got secrets and stories from some faraway place. We’re supposed to start fresh when we get here, no? Let’s take him back now, okay?”

But Persaud was not done yet. “Boy,” he said weakly to Yanni, “Yahhhm comin’ now. Go and see.”

Yanni slitted his eyes in annoyance, but returned to the window nonetheless. He rushed back to report to Meera: “It’s true. The fellow who was watching me is gone. I think he might have come into the hospital!”

Persaud’s face contorted then. With surprising strength, he locked his hand onto Meera’s arm, hurting her slightly. “Yahhhm comin’!” he gasped. Meera could sense the otherworldly terror that possessed Persaud, but could do nothing for him. She tore his grip away and began sifting through the room’s supplies, searching for a sedative.

From the empty hallway came the unmistakable sound of approaching footsteps. These were not the steps of the nurses, who wore sneakers or delicate high heels, but of a large man in boots. Meera’s eyes met Yanni’s and the young man leapt to his feet and to the door, just in time to intercept a blond youth in a blue-and-white University of Toronto jacket. “You!” Yanni barked at him. “Visiting hours are over. You’re not supposed to be here.”

“Sorry,” said the young man, looking about the room sheepishly. “I’m with the student paper. I saw the light coming from the window and thought it would be a good place to get an aerial photo of the accident.” He pulled a camera from his jacket pocket and showed them.

“You’ll have to leave. Sorry.” Yanni pushed him back into the hallway and toward the exit. “See?” Yanni called back to Persaud. “Not the bloody god of death!”

But, of course, Persaud had already expired. His lifeless body lay sprawled atop the bed, like a grotesque skeletal clown bedecked in striped pajamas and pink slippers. His final expression was not that of an old man placidly accepting his final rest, nor that of a holy man content to meet his god. Rather, it was a pose of profound terror and worry, with crevices of skin radiating around his open mouth and his gaping yellowish eyes. Thankfully, Meera was not reminded of her father. He had had the good grace to slip from mortality with silent dignity, his worldly tasks completed, and with no important words left unsaid. But, she judged, not so for Manoj Persaud.

“I thought telling his story was supposed to bring him peace,” Yanni said.

“I don’t think he told us the whole story,” Meera explained. “He said they brought the girl’s body to him. But he didn’t tell us that she was still alive at the time.”

Yanni slipped his hand into hers. Meera stretched up and kissed him on the cheek.

“Hey,” she whispered. “Midnight shift is over.”

Can’t buy me love by Christine Murray

Union Station

Union station. 6 o’clock. Commuter-throng in the basement concourse. Head-numbing fluorescent lights, the terminal as garish as a 1950s office space. I breathe in the odorific confluence of fast food and rubber-soled shoes and scan the room for a free bucket seat, preferably one with a view of the overhead screen. Train’s not up there yet, so I’ve plenty of time.

I locate a seat between two average-looking drones. The lady to my right ruffles her newspaper back and forth like a perturbed swan beating its wings. She gives me a peripheral going-over and crosses her legs purposefully, cinching her ankles together. To my left, a mid-forties businessman reads from a men’s magazine with a semi-naked brunette on the cover. I recognize her — young actress, former child star. She’s on her knees, legs apart, back arched, blouse open above the navel.

There’s something attractive about Union’s retro décor. Its generic quality makes it easy to ignore. You can see the people for the trees, so to speak. Not like new terminals, where you can’t see the people for the gleam off all that stainless steel. Different story here, from the dude engrossed in “Real-Life Sex Injuries 101”; to the lady now methodically folding her newspaper into accordion-style strips; to the platinum blonde with long silver nails standing at the bay of pay phones dead ahead. She’s wearing a neon-green mini-dress, rollerblades over her shoulder. Cradled by her neck, the phone seems too large for her childlike head, the black receiver as oversized as a clown’s shoe — a clown’s phone.

I’m not a perv, but let’s face it, I’ve nothing better to do than to watch neon roller girl over there. I’ve already visited the magazine store, bought a cinnamon bun. I have a coffee in my hand that’s so Ibiza-hot I could spill it on my crotch and sue for damages. It was sunny on the walk from the office, but the smell of autumn left my nose lightly frosted. I’d bought the coffee to keep my hands warm. I hadn’t decided whether to drink it or not, but now, out of boredom, I flip the sip-lid, snap it into place.

The talk went well today — better than expected. “We like what you’re up to, Chris,” Darrin had said. “Want the whole team to follow your lead. Show them how you’re doing it. Get them to reinvent the fucking wheel.”

The wheel was ad copy. I’d come up with a new approach I liked to call ad absurdum. Only, I didn’t come up with it; loads of writers were doing it already:

“Say a product is new and improved,” I’d explained today, clicking through slides. “So, you write New and improved on the packaging, right? Trouble is, there is nothing more dusty and hum-drummy than writing New on a new product. What to do?... What you need is to make up a new word. Trick is, you’ve got to make it sound like other words, using known prefixes and suffixes, so that your audience understands it right off the bat. No sense speaking a language they don’t understand, see? It can be as easy as adding — tastic to the end of word, as in Tastetastic! Or as tricky as launching a frying pan around Halloween with the words, Terrifry your food!

“Think about it,” I’d concluded, leaning over them. “Edutainment might be a word in the dictionary now, but it didn’t used to be. We need to harness the power of hybrid words. If we trademark them, we could actually own our own language — and just think of how advert-ageous that would be!”

That was the kicker: the big finale. Then it was handshakes and nervous laughter all around, and a lot of, “Ad absurdum, eh? I like it, I like it.”

Roller girl leans forward, her breasts perform a tandem sunrise over her low-cut dress. They suggest a shape not unlike two small champagne glasses — the kind designed after the bosoms of Marie Antoinette. Aristocra-tits.

I don’t mind small breasts. My rack is small too, and they’ve served me well with the ladies, although I usually wind up with larger-breasted girls.

Roller girl looks over. Probably felt me staring.

No. Her eyes are glassed over, seeing through me. She curls her tiny nose up and wrinkles her chin, as if suppressing a sneeze. Her nostrils grow wider, as though she’s stopped breathing. Then she gives a tiny snort and pulls her lips back, revealing a pair of sharp incisors. She doesn’t want to cry, but two droplets spill over. Oh, she sees me now. Her black pupils swell into focus. She sees me and glares, spinning around to face the bay of phones.

Must be a telephone breakup. Crap boyfriend. He’s probably cheating on her too, or at least she suspects it. Although maybe not. Girls being cheated on usually go for the jugular, play the hysterical card. They don’t even try not to cry.

She hangs up the phone and half turns her head. Funny, I don’t remember hearing her say boo into the phone. It’s like she just took it, whatever it was.

The lady and the businessman stand up. Two trains boarding, mine included. Roller girl’s sitting down, legs tucked underneath her, crying a little more obviously now. Platform 3B, ten minutes to departure. Oh what the hell, I guess I have time.

“You okay?” I say to the top of her head.

“Please,” she says, pushing her hair back, looking up. Her makeup is smudged from here to last night. “What?” Her words are heavily accented.

“Do you need help?”

She shakes her head.

“Should I leave you alone?”

She squints her face up. Her eyes are light brown, babypoo brown.

“Do you have a problem?” I say slowly, idiotically. “Do... you... need... help?” I make a futile gesture with my hands.

She looks down, wipes her nose childishly, and then starts, as though she has an idea. Craning her neck to see behind me, she leans out, taking in the concourse from left to right. I check the time. Seven minutes to go. The train on track 3B is westbound to Oakville...

“If you’re okay, I have to go catch the train now, it’s just, you seemed upset...”

“I go train,” she says quickly. “You go?”

“Mississauga,” I say. “Clarkson. You?”

She nods her head. “Yes!” she says, smiling with a mouthful of tiny white teeth, all crooked, but sweetly arranged. “Take me?”

“Train is going now,” I say. “You live in Mississauga, going there?”

“Yes, train. Sauga.”

“I go now,” I say, adopting her caveman speak. “You want come?”

She swings her knees around, tight skirt clinging to her thighs, and stands up awkwardly. Flash of black panties, porcelain skin. The rollerblades come off the floor with a clatter.

We hurry across the room to the escalator. I step aside to let roller girl go up first. She keeps glancing back, as though she’s trying to catch me at something. Maybe she’s realized I’m gay. Some women are like that, as though you’ll automatically find them irresistible. She must think I’m watching her ass the whole way up. As it happens, she wouldn’t be half wrong.

We get to the platform, the hulking green double-decker in view. She hesitates.

“You’re sure you want the GO train?” I ask. “Not subway? Underground? Metro?”

She shakes her head emphatically.

“Clarkson,” she replies, smiling a little.

“This is the one,” I say, stepping past her into the train. The doors have started beeping. She scoots in behind me. I lead the way upstairs and locate two window seats on the half-level. We interrupt the pair sitting on the aisle. I don’t get train-sick, so I let roller girl have the forward-facing side. She pulls her skirt down as far as it will go and sits, offloading her purse and rollerblades between our feet.

The train starts up, slow and clunking. I lean my head on the window frame and close my eyes. I’m about to settle into my commuter-nap, when I hear roller girl gasp. She pushes her body back into her seat, away from the glass. I look out onto the platform, but there’s just some guy there, overweight and wearing a too-small suit buttoned over his paunch. He’s out of breath, brown comb-over flapping in the breeze like a question mark above his head. He gives the train a hard stare, heads back downstairs. I look over at roller girl, but her eyes are closed now, lips thin, as though she’s holding her breath.

How old is she? I wonder. With a body like that, could she be a day over eighteen?

We roll out of Union Station, past the CN Tower, heading west along the highway. I never would have moved to the burbs, but when my parents gave me their condo by the tracks, it seemed stupid to look that gift horse in the mouth. My folks had planned on retiring there, so it’s fully loaded: two bedrooms, two bathrooms, huge closets, and walking distance to everything. It’s so convenient that when they decided to retire to B.C., to be closer to the grandkids (knowing full well they weren’t getting any munchkins out of me), I couldn’t think of how I could say no.

Roller girl’s head lolls forward, her legs slightly splayed. I take off my jacket and lay it across her lap. I don’t know why I’m protecting the modesty of a girl who chooses to wear a dress like that, but I feel a whole lot better after she’s covered up. She doesn’t stir, and I don’t think she’s faking. Her hands are half-open, limp. Hands don’t lie.

I wake up around Port Credit. Roller girl smiles. She’s pulled my jacket up to her chin and curled her arms behind it. My mouth is dry. I fish an old bottle of Evian out of my briefcase, peel my tongue off the back of my teeth, and take a swig, swishing the lukewarm water around like mouthwash.

“Next stop,” I say. I rotate my finger once forward to make sure she understands.

“What name?” roller girl says, furrowing her eyebrows. “What. Is. Your. Name,” she says with the emphatic diction of an ESL class.

“Chris,” I say, trying to look pleased. I’m still asleep. “Yours?”

“Magda.”

“Nice to meet you, Magda,” I say, speaking slowly. I reach out to shake her hand. She smiles.

“Yes,” she says. Her hand is small, but not soft. She must work, I think, although how she can do anything with those nails is beyond me. Maybe they’re acrylic. “Nice you,” she says, to the rhythm of a gentle shake. “Nice. To. Meet. You.”

We let go and look to the window. After a minute, I stand up and Magda hands me my jacket. She scoops her blades and bag off the floor and shimmies down the stairs behind me. Magda holds onto the passenger pole, swaying. I wonder who her friends are — maybe cousins? I imagine a gaggle of leggy blondes on the platform, waiting for Magda. Meet friend, Chris? I should be so lucky. No, it’ll be a short walk back to the condo, followed by a half-hearted root around the freezer. I wonder if there’s still some lemon sole in there. Fishtastic, I think.

The train pulls into the station.

“This is it!” I smile at Magda, pointing ridiculously.

We wait for the doors to open and step out. Magda keeps pace with me along the platform. Too bad, I was sort of hoping to lose her in the crowd. I walk to the edge of the Kiss-n-Ride, then turn to say goodbye. Cars wait expectantly like so many famished pigeons, edging forward to collect their passengers before moving away.

“Goodbye, Magda. Nice meeting you. You wait here, yes?

For your friends?”

“No friends,” she says.

“Don’t worry, your friends will come.”

“No friends,” she says again. “You friend. I go with you.”

“Whoa, Magda, what are you talking about?”

“Go with you, Clark-son.” She’s not smiling anymore, she’s holding onto my arm. “Chris, friend.”

“You can’t just come with me.”

“Please!” she says, eyes wide, tugging at my arm. A couple walk past and pause, looking on.

“Aw shit, Magda, no. You can’t come with me. No,” I say, untangling my arm. “Sorry. No.”

She edges her lower lip forward, eyes even wider.

“Sorry, Magda. Goodbye.” I turn around. Don’t look back, Chris, keep walking. But I hear the clattering of her rollerblades as she follows along behind me.

“No friends, Chris,” she says. “No house.”

I turn around. “Why did you take the train, then?”

“Go with you!”

I turn and keep walking, but I only manage two steps before looking back. She’s got her hand on her head, face crinkled up in panic. I feel like such a prick.

“Fine!” I shout to her. “Okay? Fine. My house.”

“Yes,” she says, “Please, yes. Thank you!”

“But anything funny and I call the police, all right? You know, police?” Yeah, call the police and say what, exactly?

Magda nods, wipes her face, and pushes her hair behind her ears. We set off. As we exit the parking lot and turn onto the sidewalk, a red minivan leads the pack. It inches by, then speeds up and turns a corner.

Magda keeps her mouth shut, probably sensing that I’m pissed off. I’d already done my bit. Now she’s on her way to my house? We turn down the nondescript drive that leads to my condo. I enter the punch code, unlock the lobby door, and hold it open while Magda wriggles past. She waits for me at the elevator. We don’t meet anyone in the corridor. I’m glad. With an average age of seventy-five-plus, Magda’s outfit could set off a string of heart attacks on my floor.

I leave her standing in my living room and go to the bathroom, locking myself in. Just calm down, I think, this isn’t a crisis. All you have to do is feed her, put her to bed, and then find some charity hole on the Internet you can deliver her to in the morning. She’s just a kid. It’s one night. Whoever she’s running away from, she probably just needs to think things over before going back. I take a few deep breaths; watch my face in the mirror. My skin looks tough, wrinkled. How the hell did I get to be thirty-eight?

I’ve calmed down and am up to my elbows in the freezer, trying to decide between salmon steaks or lemon sole, when the switchboard buzzer rings. I pick up the line. I can hear the shower going — Magda must be getting clean.

“Hello?”

“Hello, I’m sorry to disturb you, but I’m wondering if you could help me?”

“That depends.”

“Look, my car won’t start, and wouldntchaknowit, my cell phone’s dead too. I need to borrow someone’s phone to call my wife and the CAA. I’ve rung a whole bunch of buzzers. Would you mind coming down to help me out? Bring your cell phone, if you’ve got one, and we can make this quick.”

“Has anyone else picked up yet? I’m sort of in the middle of cooking and—”

“Thanks, I’d really appreciate it. You won’t believe the kind of day I’m having.”

Click.

Well thanks a lot, buddy; you wouldn’t believe the sonofabitchofaday I’m having too.

I wash my hands, grab my cell, and call the elevator. I don’t bother to tell Magda — she’s still in the shower, and at this point I don’t want to see any more of her than I have to. The elevator picks up two college students from the second floor, and Carl and Jenny are already in the lobby downstairs. Geez, this guy really did push all the buzzers.

I see Mrs. Fitzgerald from 3G outside, babbling beside a red minivan. She waves and I go to join her, but my hand freezes on the door release. It’s the comb-over man from the train platform, coming around the minivan. He points at me and smiles, saying something to old lady Fitzgerald that I can’t hear. The sweet thing laughs with one hand over her mouth, looks back at me, and then continues muttering away.

Comb-over waves at me to come outside. I raise my hand to decline, and back away. I tell Carl and Jenny that I’ve left something cooking on the stove. This is too weird. I take the stairs to the second floor. I can see the red van from the stairwell window. Comb-over has climbed into the driver’s seat. He tries the ignition and, when the van starts up, raises his hands in a dumbfounded expression. Fitzgerald laughs. Comb-over shakes his head for a minute, then waves goodbye. He gives the building a final once-over, and drives away.

I’m pretty shaken up. Could this guy have followed us all the way from Union? He would have had to go to every station and watch the passengers unload. And why the broken-down car — if he were looking for Magda, couldn’t he just ring all the buzzers and ask if she were home?

Not if Magda didn’t want to be found.

When I get back upstairs, Magda’s changed into one of my old T-shirts: a smiley face with a bullet hole through the forehead. She must have rooted through the bathroom chest of drawers. She smiles and slides onto one of the stools by the breakfast bar. She’s beautiful without makeup, a real Barbie doll. Damn. I clear my throat and leave the room, fish my old bathrobe out of the closet, and hand it over. If I’m going to figure this out, I need to be able to concentrate. She puts the robe on and I start getting down to the business of cooking dinner. I always think best when my hands are busy.

Okay, so if this comb-over guy showing up here is just a random coincidence, then there’s nothing to worry about, right? But if he followed us from Union and saw Magda come in here with me, and if, let’s say, he’s used this prank to find out my name, he’ll be back. Either way, I’ve got to figure out what’s going on, and fast.

Sorting this out would be easy enough if Magda could actually talk to me, but with her English...?

“Magda, are you in trouble?”

“Thank you, Chris,” she says, indicating the bathrobe.

“Where are you from?”

She shakes her head. She doesn’t understand.

“Polish? Hungarian?... Romanian? Russian?” Nothing.

I go into the bedroom, find my laptop, and bring it to the kitchen. I connect to the wireless and search for free online Polish translation.

“Magda, Polski?”

She laughs, nods her head. “Yes, Polski.”

Oh god, lucky break.

I start typing. There was a man here looking for you. I click on Translate and show her the screen. Her smile dies on her face.

“Type,” I say to her. “Type in Polski.”

I gesture at the keyboard. She two-finger types and pushes it back at me. I click Translate.

— He (it) is a bad man.

I take a deep breath.

— Why is he a bad man? I write.

— He (it) produce I make bad thing with people.

— Why did you get on the train?

— It ran away from bad person.

— Should we phone the police?

— If I call police, he (it) will kill me. He (it) will kill my family. He (it) say that owe money. I must pay. If sufficient amount pay him (it) money; he (it) will leave me sole. I make bad thing with people to produce sufficient money.

— How much money does he want?

She shrugs her shoulders. She’s hugging her knees up on the stool, rocking back and forth.

— What should we do? I type.

She shakes her head. “Don’t know,” she says out loud. She types something and clicks the mouse.

— Hide away?

Oh crap.

I get up and turn off the rice burner and pull the fish out of the oven. It looks and smells like fish, so it’ll do. I empty a bag of pre-washed mixed greens into a bowl with some cherry tomatoes and pour out a half-finished bottle of white wine into two glasses. Liquid courage. We might even be able to manage a little dinner conversation.

By the time I sit down at the table, Magda has typed another message for me.

— I understand you like girls.

I look up at her. She runs a finger along her lips. Then types again.

— I like girls too.

I smile awkwardly and give her a thumbs-up sign. Then I hand her a fork and a plate of fish. I’m not going anywhere with those thoughts right now.

After dinner, we settle on the sofa with bowls of ice cream and I switch on the TV. I bring the laptop in there too, in case there’s something we want to say to each other. I give Magda the remote. She settles on one of those stations that play nonstop makeover shows. It seems not much is lost in the translation — she cackles right on cue with the purchase of an ugly shirt and tie.

It’s after midnight and Magda is doing the last of the dishes when the phone rings.

“This won’t take very long,” says the voice on the line, “if you listen carefully.”

“Hello?” I say. “Who is this?”

“I know Magda is there, and I don’t want this conversation to be even a second longer than need be.” Comb-over?

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I say, buying time.

“Cut the crap. There are these things called phone books, and once some old bitty gives you a name and you have an address, it’s easy-peasy to look a number up. I know you’re in there, and I know Magda is in there too.”

Easy-peasy. I want to laugh. His scratchy voice sounds exactly like a pimp, or at least a bad dramatization of a pimp. Magda looks over anxiously.

“What do you want?” I say.

“I want my employee back, or I want you to pay for her time.”

“I didn’t ask her to come here.”

“That’s of little concern to me. Right now, whether you choose to accept it or not, you are in possession of my property, and you are not paying for its use. So, if you would like to keep her there, you either hand over her rate in cash, or you hand Magda over, understand?”

“And what if I don’t? What if I call the cops instead?”

“Well, then you have made some pretty powerful enemies; enemies who know where you live. And don’t think you’ll be doing Magda any favors either, calling the police. We’ll just recruit her twelve-year-old little sister back in Poland. I can’t wait to ripen that tender ass. Plus, once Maggie’s deported back to Poland, we’ll just pick her up and put her right back into harness.”

Magda finishes the dishes and lays the dishcloth over the tap to dry. She walks over and puts her arms around me from behind. I’m not expecting it, and I shiver a little. She holds me closer and rests her head on the back of my neck. I start to pull away, but then I wonder if she’s trying to hear the phone. I don’t move.

“Look,” I say. “I’m tired. What do I need to do to make you go away so I can think this through?”

“Pay for her. $400 for tonight, and $200 every night after that.”

“Fine.”

“You’re a smart dyke.”

“Yeah. So how would you like the money? I don’t suppose you take PayPal?”

“You’ll be passing through Union Station in the morning?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Go to the pay phones nearest the digital platform sign at 8:30 a.m., all right? Bring the cash in a plain envelope and leave it underneath the third phone, then just walk away. I’ll be watching you. If it’s not the right amount, I’ll drive straight to your place and wait for you to come home. Got it?”

“Yeah.”

“Nice doing business with you, Chris. Enjoy Magda tonight. Just pay extra in the envelope if you’re not through with her. If you misplace the merchandise and she goes AWOL, though, you’re responsible for the full price of the goods, got it?”

“And how much is that?”

“Ten thousand dollars, at least, and that’s if I give you a discount.”

I hang up. Magda unwraps her arms and looks at me, a question in her eyes. I get the laptop and tell her that it’s okay, but just for tonight. She reads the translation, eyes bright. She pulls on my hands and giggles. I tell her that I’m tired and need to go to bed. She puts her hands on my waist and pulls me into a long hug. Then I go to my room with the laptop and shut the door. I plan on researching a place that will help Magda, but I’m too tired to think. I scrunch the duvet up around my ears and fall asleep.

I pick up the cash and do the drop, just as comb-over said. Then I pretend to leave the station, but do a U-turn on Front Street and come back down. I watch the pay phone from behind one of the pillars. A redhead in a Hooters T-shirt and jeans is on the phone. One hand on the receiver, she reaches under the box and slips the envelope into her purse. Is that what Magda was up to yesterday? I shake the thought out of my head. If that were the case, why should she run away?

I’d put $600 in the envelope, to buy us time. I had the savings, and it wouldn’t even pinch. She was still asleep when I left the house this morning. I poked my head into the guestroom. Her full lips were parted, eyelids soft, her hair arranged in spokes, like rays of the sun, over her pillow. I left a loaf of bread on the counter, an econo-sized jar of peanut butter and my phone number at work scribbled on a pad, just in case.

After work, I unlock the door and find her sprawled on the sofa with a bag of nacho chips and the remote. More makeover shows. She’s wearing another oversized T-shirt of mine from the ’80s. Relax, it says, in bold caps. She stands up and gives me a kiss on the cheek.

“Hi, Chris!” she says cheerily. “Laptop?”

I take it out of my briefcase and open it up. She writes,

— How was your day?

After dinner, we curl up on the sofa again, Mag at one end, me on the other. We’ve hit on black gold — a marathon of home improvement shows. Mag giggles when they take a sledgehammer to the walls. During a commercial break, she says my name. I look over. She splits her legs apart, lifting her T-shirt. No panties. My face goes hot. I stand up and walk into the kitchen. She follows behind. The laptop is on the counter. I type,

— I am very tired. I am going to bed.

— I arrive to your bed too?

I shake my head.

The phone rings at midnight again. “I hope you enjoyed yourself,” comb-over sneers. “Now you know the drill. You want her for another night? Just leave the money there, same time, same place. If not, I expect Magda to be standing there instead. Got it?”

“And what if I need to phone you?” I say. “If there’s some kind of problem?”

“Don’t call me, I’ll call you.”

“Hello?”

I turn out the light and settle into my pillow. This whole charade could cost me a fair wad of cash. I’m drifting off again, when I hear the latch to my bedroom door click. I reach for the light. It’s Magda. She’s leaning up against the doorframe, her blond hair tussled.

“You need something?” I say. “You okay?”

She walks over to the bed and climbs in.

“Fine,” I say, “But no funny stuff.”

I put out the light. I’m too tired to argue anyway. I turn my back to her and fall asleep.

I drop the money off and walk the same loop as before. It’s picked up by the same girl, same shtick with the telephone. I wonder what Magda is doing in my apartment. I should get another set of keys made if she’s going to be staying awhile. At least then she could go out. I explained to her yesterday how the auto-lock works. If she leaves, she won’t be able to get back in. She didn’t seem to mind. She’s probably sleeping the day away. I imagine she has a lot of zeds to catch up on.

The phone rings at my desk at noon. “So, you want her until Friday, but what about the weekend?” says comb-over. “I’ll need a bigger wad tomorrow, in that case. It’s Thursday today, you dig?”

“How did you get this number?”

“You must think I’m a bloody nincompoop. So, what’s your deal?”

“How much for the weekend?”

“A grand.”

“What?”

“You heard me.”

“And how much for Magda, you know, outright?”

“Fifteen grand.”

“It was ten grand before.”

“You don’t qualify for the discount.”

“Call me back,” I say. “In an hour. I need to think.”

I hang up the phone and put my head on my desk.

It’s not the money. I have the money. I have over forty grand saved up for the condo I didn’t have to buy. And hell, I could probably get her for ten, if I haggle. Maybe that’s what I should do. I’ll just haggle for ten, and then comb-over will be out of my hair and I can think about this properly. I’m out a grand this week already, so it’s not like the price isn’t fair. What’s a few grand for a person’s freedom? If I buy Magda then I can do what I like. I can get her a key made, and we can just move on with our lives.

I practice my lines until comb-over calls back. I deliver them quickly, in a tough-girl voice: “I’ll give you ten for her, not a penny more, and then you gotta leave us alone.”

“Make it twelve and you’ve got a deal.”

“Fine, twelve,” I say. “How and where do you want it?”

“Same time, same place. Stand there with a briefcase full of cash and a phone in your ear. When my girl comes and picks up the receiver next to yours, you put the briefcase down by her feet. She’ll pick it up straight away, then you say goodbye into the phone and fuck off.”

“Done.”

“Nice doing business with you, Chris,” comb-over coos. “You’re a filthy dyke, but I like you.”

I’m still shivering when I get home. She must see the look on my face, because she turns off the tube and comes right over. The bank asked some pretty awkward questions, but I explained that I owed my parents some cash. It was a convoluted story, but the young thing behind the till handed it over.

“It’s gonna be all right now,” I say, putting a hand on her shoulder. She points to the laptop. I write that I’m buying her from the bad man. I click Translate. She shakes her head, types:

— Again?

I guess the translation isn’t going through right, so I try another wording. She seems to get me this time, because she puts her arms around me and buries her face in my neck. I start to shiver more violently and she grips me tightly. Then she pulls away and kisses me on the mouth, but I can hardly feel it. My lips are dry and there’s a fever of blood in my ears. She takes my hand and leads me to the bedroom. I sit down on the edge of the bed. Magda kneels on the floor. She lifts my left foot, slipping off my shoe. I lie back on the bed. She pulls off my sock and runs a finger along the sole of my foot. I quiver. Then she starts massaging my ankle. Her hands run up and down my legs, under my trousers. She stops and I look up in time to see her pull off her T-shirt. Her body is thicker than I’d imagined, but perfect. By the time she unbuttons my fly, I have no will to resist her. All I can do is let go.

I wake up happy, Magda breathing deeply beside me. I kiss her forehead and slip out of bed without waking her. My laptop under one arm, briefcase of cash in my hand, I’m actually whistling as I board the train. Whistling! The drop is easy. I start shivering when I get to the pay phone, but then I revisit last night, and that settles it. I set the briefcase down next to the redhead. She picks it up, and I say goodbye to the dial tone and hang up the phone. I don’t bother doing the U-turn today.

Comb-over rings at noon. “This is just a courtesy call,” he says. “She’s yours. Enjoy the merchandise.”

“Don’t call here ever again,” I say, relishing the hard shape of the words. I hang up first this time.

After the call, I swing by Darrin’s desk. “You’ve been quiet since the presentation, Chris,” he says. “Thought you’d be ass-pompous with success. Everything all right?”

“Little under the weather,” I say. “Keep shivering. Think I’ve caught a fever-flu. Mind if I duck out early?”

“Knock yourself out. We can live without you today.”

“Thanks, man,” I say, pulling a listless face. “Appreciate it.”

“No sweat. Just be in shape by Monday, all right?”

“You bet.”

I get to the station in time for the 1:43. The pay phone kiosk is empty. A kid walks by and checks all the change slots with his finger.

On the train, I think about Magda. Maybe I should take her shopping for some new clothes. We could go to the grocery store too. I’ve never asked her what she likes to eat, just cooked her what I had in the fridge. What if she hates fish?

I reach the condo by 2:30. I call the elevator, but I can’t wait, so I take the stairs. I think of what to type into the laptop.

You’re free, I’ll type. I’ve set you free! What do you want to do now?

I unlock the door, already picturing her on the sofa, an oversized T-shirt cinched high on her thighs. What will we do tonight?

But she’s not there. I look for a note, but there’s no sign of one.

I should have known better.