by Sheena Kamal
“Making some life improvements?” I say, holding up the chart.
He smiles, ignoring the distance between us, as though it is a matter of mere physical space. But as the seconds pass and the distance now expands to an abyss, he sees there’s nothing between us but distrust and a single orgasm. “Something like that. What are you doing here? I thought you left to go work with Crow.”
“What are you doing here? Thought you worked for WIN Security.” The security firm that was hired to find my daughter, Bonnie, after she’d gone missing. Hired by a corrupt family they were in the pocket of. I’d been alerted to her disappearance by her adoptive parents, which set off a chain of events that led to my near-drowning.
“Needed a change after last year. You haven’t answered my question.” He steps into the room. My shoulder still hurts like hell from when I was shot last year, but with physical therapy I have been able to mask my limp, from an ankle injury that never quite healed. For the most part. But Brazuca hasn’t been that lucky with his own gimpy leg, a result of a gunshot wound back when he was a cop. Or maybe his injuries aren’t just physical. I blame his victim mentality.
“I’m looking for Stevie.”
“Warsame is on assignment,” Brazuca says, which explains Stevie’s silence. “Want me to get a message to him?”
I don’t need Brazuca for that. If I wanted to get a message to Stevie, I would do it myself. But what I have to say can’t be communicated via electronic means. They haven’t created keyboard characters that could encompass it. “I’m gonna be gone for a little while. I need someone to check up on Seb.”
He doesn’t ask where I’m going and I don’t offer any more information. “What’s wrong with him?” he says finally.
I tell him about the cancer and the failed treatments. “Leo doesn’t know,” I add, when I’m done. “I can pay you to do it if Stevie can’t.”
“Why does everyone think I need money all of a sudden?” he mutters, running a hand through his hair.
I shrug. It might have something to do with his wardrobe, which is several years outdated and, frankly, not tight-fitting enough for the modern man, but I don’t mention it. The male ego is a fragile thing.
“How often?” he asks.
“Every few days. The dog walker I hired will do a daily check.”
He frowns. “You’re not taking Whisper with you? You know what, never mind. I don’t need to know.”
I walk past him, careful to avoid any accidental brushing of our bodies. The last time we touched I had straddled him and poured liquor down his throat, knowing full well that he’s an alcoholic. I’ve never asked for forgiveness for this. Nor will I ever. I had been able to discern lies before the events of last year, with everyone other than Brazuca. His lies had hurt the most, because I hadn’t seen them coming. Maybe I hadn’t wanted to. I won’t make that mistake again.
“Krushnik isn’t going to like this,” he says, as I reach the door.
“You can tell him if you want.”
But we both know he won’t. It’s not our secret to share. Leo will find out eventually and we’ll have to face him when it’s time. For now we agree to keep silent. Another illicit understanding, another man. I seem to be stacking them up these days.
It occurs to me to ask him something, because he is nothing if not observant. “Did you see anyone watching the building when you came in? Who maybe didn’t look quite right.”
“This is the Downtown Eastside. No one looks right here,” he says, looking at me like you would a crazy person. Of which, in the city of Vancouver, the DTES is their muster point. It’s mine, too. The destitute, the addicted, the people with demons—we flock here because it is often the only place that will have us.
I nod. So much for his powers of observation.
On my way to the car, I see a group of people huddled around a prone body on the street. I can’t help but scan their faces to see if the veteran is among them. He’s not, so I turn to the spectacle unfolding. A man is crouching over a woman, speaking to her in a soft voice. She’s unresponsive. He takes an intramuscular needle from a kit at his side and draws up a dose of liquid from a marked vial. Then he plunges it into her thigh. There’s a gasp from the crowd. Clearly from someone who’s not from around here because this is an everyday occurrence in these parts. I don’t wait to see if the woman on the ground wakes up from the naloxone shot. There are enough concerned citizens around and, besides, I’ve got enough problems of my own.
When I return to the house, Seb is in his office with his head pressed against the desk and Whisper at his feet, staring at me with accusing eyes. For a moment my heart stops beating, but then he wheezes in a shaky breath. I am not a large woman, but lifting him requires little effort. He is like a pile of bones in my arms, held together by fragile connective tissues and weak muscles. I lay him gently on the couch and take up my post in the armchair.
Leo has absconded with mostly everything but the books. If he’d known how much Seb needed them he would have taken them, too. But he didn’t, so they are still here and when Seb is well enough we reference them as we talk through his memoir. He speaks and writes while I listen and make my own notes, or I write when he doesn’t have the strength. We only work in this room and we check all our extra baggage at the door. Everyone needs to have a sacred place, and this one belongs to the three of us. Watched over by the tattered books that have meant something to him over the course of his life.
I am no academic, but Seb’s books have been a revelation to me. Nothing moves me like the poetry of Césaire, the political writer from the French colonies who spoke of people’s unwillingness to challenge their worldview. How easy it was to cast ideas away, as if swatting a fly.
Last week, before the smoke from the northern fires drifted down, I took Whisper to the rocks overlooking the ocean. We had some time to kill while Seb was at the hospital. We stayed there for a long time, long enough to see the circle of life played out in front of us. Just above the waterline, at the edge of my field of vision, two birds of prey circled a certain place in the water. Every now and then one of them made a dive. They called to each other, and the more time that passed, the tighter their circles got. I could only sense what they saw. That the creature in the water, a stray duck perhaps, was getting tired. Its reflexes were slowing. The inevitable was waiting to strike.
It reminded me that disaster swoops down and grabs hold when a creature is at its weakest.
Alone, with two hungry mouths to feed and the knowledge that a woman’s love is a powerful thing, but not as powerful as the void it leaves behind when she’s gone. Up until that veteran, whose name I didn’t even think to get, showed up I had thought my father just couldn’t handle the stress.
But now I think of Césaire, and a suspicion lodges in my mind. The idea, he’d said, an annoying fly. Buzzing in my ear. Telling me there’s more to my father’s death than I’d allowed myself to consider. Upending my worldview.
7
Brazuca is immediately forced to reexamine his biases about kept women as he steps inside Clementine’s condo. Whatever bordello he’d been expecting, this isn’t it. There is nothing frivolous about this place, besides the cost of living in a condo overlooking English Bay. There is a cozy, warm feel to it, and though the furnishings aren’t cheap, they aren’t ostentatious, either. Someone with very good taste made a home here.
Soft afternoon light streams into the living room, where Brazuca finds a framed photograph of Lam with his arms wrapped around Clementine. They’re overlooking the waters of Deep Cove in North Van, where the Burrard Inlet and the Indian Arm fjord meet. Brazuca has never seen Lam look as happy as he does in that photograph, smiling into Clementine’s hair.
There’s a noise from farther in the apartment. He turns away from the picture, passes the elegant kitchen, and pauses at the bedroom door. “Hello?”
A young Chinese woman glances up at him, sweeping a strand of hair off her brow and tucking it back into her messy bun.
She’s wearing sweats with the University of British Columbia logo and is sitting on the floor surrounded by piles of clothing, shoes, and handbags, looking completely lost.
What strikes him is that she doesn’t seem to be overly surprised to see a stranger here. Or concerned for her safety, for that matter. They stare at each other for a moment, then she gestures toward the bags. “Do you know what a designer handbag typically costs?” she says, finally. “Of course you don’t. I can tell by the way you dress. You’re not one of my sister’s regular boyfriends.”
Brazuca is amused, despite himself. He crosses his arms over his chest and leans against the doorframe.
“Thousands of dollars,” she continues. “There must be at least fifty thousand dollars’ worth of handbags in this room alone. What am I supposed to do with these things?”
“We should pool our resources and sell them together. We’d both be rich.”
“These labels sell themselves. And I’m not sure what exactly you’d be contributing, whoever you are.”
“Jon Brazuca,” he says, deciding not to offer a hand. The wary look in her eyes tells him to stay where he is. “A friend of Clementine’s asked me to stop by.”
She stares at him and he is tempted to step back at the sudden fury in her expression. She gets to her feet. “You mean Bernard Lam? She OD’s and he’s furious, isn’t he? His plaything is dead.”
“I don’t think Clementine was his plaything.”
“Let’s get one thing straight,” the woman says, jabbing a finger at his chest. “I don’t know why she wanted to be called by that god-awful stripper name, but she was born Cecily Chan. She was an English lit major before she dropped out of school to model. She was a person, with a family that loved her.”
Brazuca puts up a hand, a gesture for peace. He had a great-aunt by the name of Cecily and understands well why a woman under the age of forty would rather be called anything else. “Okay, I got it. She was loved. I never said she wasn’t.”
Her face falls. She kicks aside a purse that could be worth more than he made in a month. “I’m sorry. I’m not myself. I hate this. My sister is dead, and all she left behind is a bunch of expensive shit that I’ve got to deal with now.”
He goes to the kitchen and puts on the kettle. A few minutes later, she pads after him with a cardboard box full of designer handbags and drops it next to a pile of boxes already in the living room. Then she takes out a bag of loose leaf tea from a cupboard she can barely reach. Together they make a pot of fragrant jasmine tea and sit at the dining table overlooking the bay.
The room grows dim as the sun sets over the water, but neither of them bothers to close the blinds or turn on the lights. Sometimes he is reminded how beautiful this city is. Why he chose to live here in the first place. He’s so lost in his thoughts that it takes him a while to notice that she’s staring directly at him. Probably has been for a while now. “I’m Grace,” she says.
“Grace. Do you have someone who can come help you sort, um, Cecily’s stuff?”
“No, not really.”
“Your parents, maybe?”
She shakes her head. “As if they’d ever step foot in here. She and our parents had a falling-out a few years ago. She said she wished they were dead. They told her they could be dead to her, if that’s what she wanted. Then she left and they never spoke again. They refused to come to the service when she died because that asshole paid for it. It was just me and some of our cousins. I don’t think she had many friends left, toward the end.”
Brazuca looks at the cardboard boxes piled in the living room. “Okay, well, maybe I can help move some of this stuff. Where do you live?”
“We live in Richmond . . . Oh, don’t look at me like that!”
“Like what?”
Her hands are wrapped so tightly around her mug that she seems intent on breaking it. There is a sudden rage to her, maybe because her sister is dead, or maybe because she’s been left to clean up the mess. “Like we all drive sports cars, take violin lessons, and live in Richmond. Like we’re somehow taking over your goddamn city all of a sudden. My mom’s family has been here since the Chinese came over to build the railroad a hundred years ago, and my dad moved here from the mainland when he was a kid. They’re both engineers. We didn’t go and buy up property from under your noses. We’ve got roots here. I’m studying to be an urban planner.”
He shouldn’t be surprised that she’s on the defensive. Housing costs are so high that many blame the influx of Chinese on the astronomical real estate market. Over half the population of the city of Richmond is immigrants, and certain people are uncomfortable with the changing demographic. It is a kind of insidious racism that Brazuca sees seeping through with increasing frequency and he begins to see it now through this woman’s eyes. He feels a sudden tenderness toward her. He reaches over and covers her hands with his. “I never said your family didn’t belong here. I’m really sorry about your sister.”
“My sister, she . . . she let herself be bought and paid for.” She turns her hands over and interlocks her fingers with his. Her voice breaks, but there are no tears in her eyes. “You work with Lam, right? You know what those kinds of women are like?”
There is something unsettling about the way she’s looking at him. He takes his hands away, but doesn’t know where to put them now so just stuffs them into his pockets. “I really just help him figure out problems sometimes. I’m . . . I used to be a cop.”
“But you’re not anymore.”
“No.”
She skirts the small table and pushes his mug aside. Then she climbs onto his lap.
“Grace . . . what are you doing?” he says, wondering if he has it in him to throw a horny, grief-stricken woman off his lap.
“I want to . . . I want to feel like she did. Just for a night,” she says. Then she pulls his mouth down to hers.
Turns out he doesn’t have it in him, after all.
It wasn’t a sexy proposal, Brazuca thinks, much later, as they lie entwined on her sister’s bed. Then again, his proposals rarely are. He has a knack for attracting women who aren’t the least bit interested in a soft touch. His new leaf doesn’t seem to be helping him, even in this. They lie in bed, in the dark, for a long time. Brazuca isn’t sure if he made her feel like a whore, but he damn well feels like one himself. It is so silent in Clementine’s bedroom that neither of them misses the sound of a key turning in the lock. Brazuca catches Grace’s eyes and puts a finger to his lips. He eases to his feet and slides on his jeans. He hears rustling behind him as Grace dresses.
Moving quietly into the hallway, he pauses at the entrance to the living room.
He’s not sure what he’s hoping to find here, but a tiny woman in a fitted pantsuit isn’t it. She’s standing in the middle of the living room, holding a phone in the air. Her entire focus is on the pile of boxes stacked to the side of the room. He watches from the doorway, Grace hovering somewhere in the hallway, as the woman moves to the box with the designer purses and rummages through it. Her dark hair is so long and lustrous that, even though Brazuca has a slippery grasp on the concept of hair weaves, he is pretty sure that this woman has one. Finally, she pulls out a small vibrating phone from one of the handbags and switches off the call from her own mobile.
“You must be the dealer,” Brazuca says.
The woman pauses. She looks at him, saying nothing. He feels Grace’s anger building behind him.
He nods to the phone she’d plucked from the handbag, which is a basic burner, the kind you could find easily and fit with any SIM card. “You used a special phone to communicate with her. Kept your number separate from all her other contacts. Smart.”
She slips the phone back into the bag. When she speaks, her voice is pleasant and girlish. She has a crooked smile, one that’s oddly endearing. “Oh, keeps things neat.”
It’s the reason he came to the condo. He’d wondered why he couldn’t find records of Clem’s dealer on the phone Lam had given him. Clementine
lived a very isolated life, but she had to get her supply from somewhere.
Grace appears in the doorway. “You bitch.”
The woman studies Grace’s face. She is so tiny and is smiling so sweetly that he wants to believe that she’s younger than she must be. Because her eyes are calculating, however, he figures she must be at least a decade older than he’d first thought. “You’re not wrong about that, honey.” She glances from Grace to Brazuca. “Bernie probably asked you to come find me, didn’t he?”
“How do you know that?” Brazuca couldn’t imagine anyone calling Lam “Bernie”—at least not to his face. Lam was a playboy, but there were certain things even he wouldn’t stand for.
“Oh, I know everything about Bernie,” she says, waving a manicured hand. “You must be Bazooka. Clem talked about you every now and then, but only because Bernie must have. She didn’t have much of a life of her own.”
He nods. Bazooka. It’s the nickname he can’t seem to shake. “And you are?”
“Priya.” She sighs. “There’s no use trying to hide it anymore. If you describe me to Bernie, he’ll know it’s me right away. I’m the one who introduced them, you know.”
“Lam and Clementine?”
“Yup. I help . . . facilitate parties for certain elite clientele. Bernie couldn’t get enough Asian pussy. The ones without strings, I mean. And I knew Clem would be good for him.” She deliberately ignores Grace. “Funny how people are. Even here, they stick to their own.”