He went away and came back with a needle which he stuck into my ankle, tut-tutted a bit more, and duly wandered off.
Whatever it was that he pumped into me soon made me drowsy and I began to fall asleep. Through half-closed eyelids I saw what looked like the Jolly Green Giant approaching, but it was only a very large ward orderly. He pushed the gurney slowly down the corridor and the gentle repetitive motion soon sent me blissfully off to dreamland.
6.
MOTH TO THE FLAME
Present day
“You got away then.”
“Yup, no jail time, not even an arrest. Just several weeks on crutches. Are you disappointed?” I asked her.
She looked flustered. “No, of course not. I’m glad about it. I’m just sorry that you had to go through so much.”
I stretched out my leg and rotated the ankle. “If you’re real quiet, you can hear the bones rubbing together.”
She ignored that. “What did you do afterwards?”
“Well, as you might remember, I owed thousands in student loans and didn’t have a penny for my final year. And, my little fundraiser hadn’t worked out.”
“So what did you do?”
“I dropped out.”
I could tell that surprised her. I’d been a pretty committed student. “You didn’t finish?”
“Nope, I got a job and started paying down the loans. Only took about a million years.”
“What did you work at?”
Why was I allowing her to interrogate me like this? After I’d finished my story I’d expected to be cursing her and storming off. Now I seemed to have stumbled into a live performance of ‘Twenty Questions’. I wasn’t particularly proud of my employment record and had no intention of mentioning the stints in Safeway and Starbucks. “I took a job at a jewellery business for several years, learned the trade, thought it was what I wanted to do. But I moved on, ended up where I am now.”
I’d set a deliberate little trap. Did she know where I was working?
“Where’s that?” she asked.
“Volumes Books, at the corner of Cambie and Broadway.”
“You like it there?”
I shrugged. “It’s not bad.” Again, I wasn’t going to tell her about the ongoing friction with my boss and the threatened layoff. “Anyway, there’s not much else I can do with three quarters of an arts degree.” A thought occurred to me. “Did you finish your philosophy degree?”
“In another city.”
“Top of the class?”
“You must be joking. I was never that good. Just a regular degree.”
“Come on, you must have got at least an Honours, you were really into it. I remember you going on about Hegel and stuff. Didn’t understand a word.”
She laughed. “You just nodded as if you did.”
“That’s right.” It was an unplanned moment of levity in an otherwise serious discussion. I killed it. “So fill me in on what came next.”
For the first time I detected uncertainty on her face.
She looked at her watch. “Michael, we’ve been talking here for ages and that guy behind the counter is getting sick of us hogging his best seats. There’s somewhere I have to be soon. Can we meet again – talk some more?”
“Is there any point?”
“I think there is. This has been on my conscience for ten years. Seeing you today has enabled me to explain myself.”
“So we’re done then.”
“No, I’d like us to become friends again.” I must have looked sceptical, as she quickly added, “It’s possible, you know. Maybe I can answer your last question and tell you what I’ve been up to.”
Ten years ago I’d have replied with a cutting remark and turned my back on her. But I kept looking at her face – so beautiful, perfect, and flawless, with the look on it of earnest concern, whether genuine or fake – and felt old urges stirring. I’d vented a lot and now I wasn’t sure what I should say or do next. In the end, I found myself trying to think of something funny to say just to keep the conversation going, but concluded that it wasn’t a good time for humour either.
“OK,” I said flatly, “Where do you want to meet?”
“Can you come to my place, maybe tomorrow? Say, four thirty?”
My shift ended at four o’clock. “Sure. Where do you live?”
“Here, take this.” She fumbled in her bag and gave me a small card with her name, address and phone number printed on it.
She got up and I followed her out. On the sidewalk she turned and smiled. Before I knew it she planted a quick little kiss on my cheek. Then she walked away without looking back.
I stood there, her card in my hand, watching her slim legs disappear around the corner. So much emotion had been compressed into the last hour or so. Eventually I placed the card in my wallet and walked towards the nearest bus stop.
Did I still hate her? Maybe. I was no longer sure about that. I’d liked the kiss, and her apology seemed sincere enough. It had been an unusual day, one that I had thought about many times but had never anticipated turning out like this. She’d brought up a complicated turmoil of emotions inside me and I felt like a conflicted mess. My palms were sweating and not just because of the hot sun, my heart was beating fast and I needed somewhere quiet to do some thinking.
I could have just gone home to my bachelor apartment, but here I was at the bus stop and a 99 B-Line coach was approaching from a block away. I got out a yellow ticket and waited, not really knowing where I was going to go.
The concertina-style bus was half empty and I took a single seat on the left side behind the driver. My mind was still full of Emma, and we crossed the busy intersection at Cambie Street without me really noticing it. I pulled the cord for the next stop and got out at Broadway and Main.
I crossed at the lights and walked half a block to my favourite bookstore, Pulp Fiction. Even with my ‘generous’ (to use old Barnes’ description) Volumes staff discount of ten whopping per cent, I still could buy three ‘used’ books at Pulp for every new one at Volumes. And, the three ‘used’ books would probably be in new or nearly new condition. That’s why I rarely left Pulp without having spent whatever money I happened to have in my wallet.
I nodded to the owner at the checkout counter, passed the ‘New Arrivals’ section and made my way into the cool depths of the store. My eyes roamed across the philosophy section and I thought of Emma. Then I stared at the crime fiction shelves opposite, my gaze fixing on half-a-dozen ‘Parker’ heist novels by Richard Stark, and thought of myself ten years ago.
I plonked myself down on a small wooden stool. Okay, so I had never exactly been Raffles the Great Cat Burglar. I’d done something very exciting and rather clever a decade ago, something that had gone disastrously wrong through no fault of my own. And, I’d been damned lucky to get out of without getting caught. Since then? A succession of dead end jobs.
Why had my life turned out like this? There was a big alive world out there but something inside me had died ten years ago and I’d gone from doer to watcher. Now there seemed to be the possibility of getting that excitement, that aliveness, back. But could I trust this woman? Was she trying to manipulate me? More to the point, did I really care if she was?
This wasn’t providing the calming distraction I’d intended.
I strolled around some more, idly browsing, my mind barely registering the titles of the books I took down, flicked through, and put back. Eventually I found myself in front of a bookcase labelled ‘Local Interest’. Once again, my eyes scanned the titles without really registering any words in my brain. I pulled out a book without knowing what it was and looked at the front cover.
A Traveller’s Guide to Victoria and South Vancouver Island.
I found the nearest stool, sat down and looked in the index for a place outside Victoria called Oak Bay, flicked to that section and looked at the pictures. It brought back vivid memories of ten years ago when I’d discovered things about Emma that she’d never revealed to me an
d still didn’t know I’d found out.
7.
CURIOUSER AND CURIOUSER
Ten years ago
I missed the local TV and newspaper reports about the ‘Break-in at Museum Warehouse’ and never got around to looking them up afterwards. Of course I wondered what had happened to the loot-filled backpacks, but I assumed that Emma had taken them. Thinking about that left a bitter taste in my mouth so I tried to put it out of mind. I was seriously crocked for the foreseeable future and, at least during the first few days, pumped full of painkilling drugs. Checking up on news reports about my failed exploits didn’t seem like a priority. I was way too depressed about it, about Emma, and about my physical state to have any interest in wallowing in post-heist details.
Anybody can get used to crutches with a little practice. Say, about six weeks. In fact, I’d just got the hang of them when I tripped over the edge of a hospital doormat one day on my way in to see the physiotherapist. That set me back a bit. Say, about six weeks. I was twenty-one years old and felt like fifty-five.
I was also broke and thousands of dollars in debt from student loans. For a time, maybe all of ten seconds, I considered getting back on the saddle and planning another heist. Then I realised that that’s the part I really liked – the planning – it was the doing that wasn’t so much fun.
Sure, I’d nearly pulled it off before my precious loved one, or ‘the bitch’ as I now thought of her, had betrayed me. But as I replayed that night over and over again in my head, the realization of all the other things that could have gone wrong sent shivers up and down my spine. It was completely unlike me to take those kinds of serious risks, the sort with consequences that could be adversely life changing. Yet I’d been the one taking the lead, right? Well, maybe.
As the days and weeks went by I began to feel better about it. I was proud of the immaculate planning I’d done and the sheer ingenuity I’d displayed in figuring out a way into the building, not to mention my quick thinking in getting out of it again. The adrenaline had been pumping through me and I’d felt truly alive for the first time in my life. I’d finally discovered something I excelled at, which is not to say that I had the slightest intention of attempting any similar venture ever again.
After the first few days when she failed to show, Emma’s continuing absence from my life wasn’t as big a shock as might have been expected. I called her many times, of course, then called all the numbers of her friends that I could remember or look up. Everyone said she had vanished. Her stuff was gone from her room and someone else was living there now. That’s what they told me. I had no reason to doubt them and didn’t bother to go over there and confirm it for myself. Deep down I knew it was true.
Looking back at our relationship, I could now see signs that I’d ignored before. A lot of university couples shacked up together, but Emma didn’t want that and I was okay with it. In reality we’d just been good friends who hung out together a lot. Now I severely doubted that we’d even been that.
I spent a lot of time lounging around in my apartment, with my gammy leg propped up. That’s what you tend to do when every upright movement necessitates grabbing two long pieces of wood and stuffing them under your armpits. Most of my remaining few dollars went to a pizza delivery man with a heavy Indian accent.
Even when the physiotherapist moved me on to a stick I still didn’t get around much. One day, after pizza, while doing my best Hitchcock movie impersonation – staring mindlessly out my rear window at the even dingier apartments across the street, hoping I’d spot a Raymond Burr lookalike wielding a spade – an idea came to me.
I knew exactly what I wanted to do when I was mobile again.
*
To cut a long story short, I took a ferry over to Vancouver Island to track her down. My hunch was she’d gone back there and was staying with her parents.
All I knew was that they lived in Victoria, which is a small city but not so small that you can just go knocking on doors. By now my money was almost all gone and, even by staying in the cheapest hostel I could find, I could only afford a few days there. So I had to think and act fast.
I tried to recollect every mention she’d ever made to me about her home and her family, but failed to come up with much. I did seem to recall that she’d once spoken favourably of Oak Bay, a suburban neighbourhood east of metro Victoria. In the Yellow Pages I found the address of Oak Bay High School and paid it a visit. I made up a story about writing a local history article and they led me to the school library.
There I found two wonderful things: a helpful librarian named Sidney and several shelves full of their school yearbooks. I quickly located the two or three that I was most interested in and went to work, studying the lists of students, each one with a head-and-shoulders colour picture. I reckoned that people don’t change much in three years or so.
Well, except Emma Virtanen. Without too much trouble I soon found her name in the relevant yearbook. Trouble was, I couldn’t believe my eyes.
I wouldn’t call this Emma Virtanen exactly plain or mousy, but she was obviously a little overweight and had a bad case of acne. And when I held the book up close to my eyes I could see thin red lines on the bridge of her nose and under her eyes, where glasses had just been removed for the photograph. My Emma, as I knew only too well, was slim-limbed, had perfect honey skin and twenty-twenty vision. The girl in the school photo had blonde hair alright, and a Nordic or Scandinavian look that might have indicated Finnish ethnicity, but the nose, mouth, chin – everything – were different from those of the Emma Virtanen I knew. It was the difference between the girl next door and a fashion model.
I sat back in the library booth and tried to figure it out. Unless she’d had the world’s biggest, quickest and most successful makeover, this was an entirely different individual. Actually, the more I thought about it, not even plastic surgery could have made them the same person. Which meant that the Emma Virtanen I knew must be somebody else. I searched the yearbook again, but there was no head-and-shoulders picture of my Emma.
There was a blank space at the end of the long columns of photos, with a short list of names in it. I decided she must have been off sick the day the photographer came to the school. It took quite a bit more searching through the yearbook, page by boring page, but I eventually found her in the volleyball team. She was standing in the back row. Same smooth forehead, high cheekbones, sticky-up nose, wide mouth and strong, tapering chin. Same ash blonde hair, worn in her distinctive ‘Mongol’ style – probably the only girl in the entire pile of yearbooks who wore it that way.
The name underneath the photograph was Agneta Nurmi.
*
I Googled both names, of course. It didn’t take me long to find Emma Virtanen. Her sad story came up on screen, front page news in the Victoria Times Colonist for a whole day. Just a couple of weeks after her high school graduation, Emma, the real one, had been the victim of a hit and run accident. Under the banner ‘Oak Bay Girl Dies Following Hit-And-Run Accident’ there was another, somewhat more flattering, head and shoulders photo and brief, but gory, details.
Just before 9 o'clock Tuesday evening on Smythe Ave. north of Strathcona Park, eighteen year old Emma Virtanen was walking home with a school friend when a Jeep came speeding by, mounted the curb and knocked Ms. Virtanen to the ground.
Witnesses say the recent high school graduate was bleeding profusely from the head but managed to rise to her feet again before falling over once more. The injury was so severe that Ms. Virtanen was dead by the time an ambulance arrived. A spokesperson from Royal Jubilee Hospital confirmed that the victim died from head injuries and massive internal bleeding.
The hit-and-run vehicle is described as a dark, older Jeep Grand Cherokee with damage on the passenger side. Anyone with information should call . . .
Blah, blah, blah. It made depressing reading, even now. Out of respect for the real Emma I printed up a copy of the news article and searched for any subsequent updates about the tragedy. The
perpetrator, as far as I could tell, was never identified.
I Googled until I was sick of looking at the screen and had a headache coming on, but nothing came up for Agneta Nurmi. All I discovered was that it too was a Finnish name.
So what was going on here? The two girls must have known each other. Did they hang out together? Share a table in the school café? It seemed possible, maybe even likely, that their mutual ethnic background connected them, or at least their families, in some way. Then, when the real Emma met her fate, my Emma took advantage of circumstances. I could only speculate about why she would do such a bizarre thing. She must have known that it couldn’t be a permanent identity switch. Sooner or later someone from Victoria who’d known them both would have bumped into pseudo-Emma and blown her cover immediately.
I’d now discovered that my Emma, as I still and would forever think of her, had been studying at UBC under an alias. Maybe she did have some compelling reason for doing so, but I’d never know what it was. I wasn’t even sure that I wanted to know. Whatever it was still wouldn’t have explained or justified her subsequent behaviour on the rooftop.
When I got back to the hotel I borrowed the telephone directories in the foyer. Both the names I was interested in were uncommon and I’d no trouble finding them in the phone book. There was a Virtanen listed with an address on McNeill Avenue and a Nurmi along St. David Street. I jotted down both addresses on a scrap of paper. In the Yellow Pages I found an accountancy firm called Nurmi & Associates, on Fort Street, which was within walking distance. I added their address and number to my notes.
Up in my room I sat on the bed and considered my next move. I smoothed out the scrap of paper with my thumb, laid it on the quilt and picked up the phone. As my finger tapped in the number I thought about what I would say.
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