Trader

by Charles de Lint

  I start up the stairs to her apartment and knock on the door, but there’s no answer there, either. I wish I’d taken a pen and some paper from my own place so that I could leave a message. I hesitate, trying to decide if it’s worthwhile to go around by the fire escape and in through the kitchen window again to get one. But then, from below, I hear footsteps on the stairs.

  Devlin, I think. But I’m not so ready to meet him now. I’ve got some things to work through first. It’s not just getting my life back anymore, but what would I do with it if I did? There has to be some point to the way we live, doesn’t there? But the anger’s back, smoldering in my chest. I want to hit something again—preferably Devlin. I clench my hands into fists, then force them open. Force myself to steady my breathing.

  Where’s this anger coming from?

  Same place as the sudden depressions—I’m sure of it now. Residues of Devlin bleeding through into my own personality. Does that mean he’s getting more easygoing? More boring? Falling into routines?

  I decide to wait here on this landing until he goes into my apartment. A confrontation’s due, but now’s not the right time. I need to think. I need to talk to Bones, I guess. He’s the only one who seems to know what’s going on.

  But the footsteps don’t stop at my apartment. A momentary panic hits me. I want to hide, but there’s no place to go. Then I see it’s Nia’s mother coming up the stairs. She looks terrible, like she hasn’t slept in days. Worn down with worry. I knew Nia was wrong. I knew nobody’d stepped into her mother’s head the way Devlin stepped into mine.

  She notices me and gets a wary look that confuses me until I realize she’s not looking at her neighbor, standing here outside her door, but a stranger.

  “Ms. Fisher?” I say, pitching my voice low. Calming.

  She makes a decision and comes up the rest of the way. Or maybe she’s simply too tired to be afraid.

  “Whatever you’re selling,” she tells me, “I’m not interested.”

  I step aside so that she can get by me. She pauses in front of her door and leans against the wall, but makes no move to fish out her keys and unlock the door. I don’t blame her.

  “I’m not selling anything,” I tell her.

  She’s dead on her feet. Dark shadows raccooning her eyes, shoulders, her whole body, sagging.

  “Whatever you want,” she says, “this is not a good time. I’ve just spent the night sitting in the hospital, waiting to hear if a friend’s going to make it through the night, on top of which my daughter’s suddenly taken it into her head to readjust her life so that I’m not in it.”

  “I understand. That’s part of the reason why—”

  She doesn’t give me a chance to say my piece. “So could you please just go,” she says. She’s not making a question of it.

  “I’m here because of Nia,” I say.

  She studies me for a long moment, looking more carefully this time— trying to figure out where I fit into her daughter’s life. I don’t know what she sees, but at least she’s listening now.

  “I just wanted to let you know that she’s okay.”

  “Who are you?”

  “Nobody. Just a friend. I ran into her in Fitzhenry Park.” She doesn’t say anything, so I go on. “She’s convinced that you’re not really her mother anymore—that there’s someone else in your head.”

  Now it’s my turn to study her, but her only reaction is one of tired disbelief.

  “Do you realize how ridiculous that sounds?” she says finally.

  You don’t know the half of it, I think, but all I do is nod.

  “I know,” I say. “I told her the same thing myself. But she...” I hesitate. “I know none of this is my business. I’m just telling you what she thinks.”

  “And what does she think?”

  “Well, she saw you with a woman...kissing her...and...”

  My voice trails off.

  “Is that what this is all about?” she says. She shakes her head, the weariness settling over again. “Well, it’s my own fault, I suppose.” It’s like she’s forgotten I’m here. She’s looking past me, into the stairwell, thinking aloud. “I should have talked to her. I should have told her. But where do you even start with something like this?”

  I hold my peace, wait for her to finish. Her gaze finally focuses back on me. “Will you be seeing her again?” she asks.

  “It’s likely. She’s taking care of my dog for me.”

  That pulls a vague smile from her. “She always did want a dog. I just didn’t think it would be fair, living in an apartment the way we do.”

  “I used to feel the same.”

  She nods. “Well, could you tell her to come home? Or at least ask her to call me? I know we have things to work out, but her running away isn’t the answer.”

  “I’ll tell her.” I hesitate a moment, then add, “I’m sorry about your friend.”

  “My friend...?”

  “The one you said was in the hospital. I hope everything works out.” She nods again. “Me, too.” The tiredness leaves her eyes for a moment. They flash with an anger I recognize. “We were just out looking for Nia and this guy stabbed her.” Her gaze pins me. “What kind of a world are we living in where this kind of thing can just happen? Casual, random violence. Julie gets stabbed and it doesn’t mean anything to anyone except to me—trying to make sense of it—and Julie lying there in intensive care, fighting for her life.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “He wasn’t,” she says. “The guy that stabbed her. He just took off and ran, but he wasn’t sorry. What does that say about the way we live?”

  “I don’t know.”

  I really don’t. Except it reminds me that no matter how bad you’ve got it, somebody else has always got it worse. It’s not exactly a comforting sentiment.

  “You should get some rest,” I tell her. “I’ll give Nia your message.”

  “Thank you.”

  The fire’s gone from her eyes and she’s using the wall to keep herself upright again. I’d like to give her a hand, help her inside and put her to bed, but I know the best thing I can do right now is give her some space and leave. So I do. I don’t hear her door open until I’m almost on the ground floor.

  It’s brighter outside than I feel it should be—like coming out of a matinee and the afternoon sun surprises you. I stand there blinking, adjusting to the light as the foyer door closes behind me. It’s not just the relatively poor light from inside the hallway. I’m carrying a piece of Lisa Fisher’s darkness with me now as well.

  What kind of a world are we living in where this kind of thing can just happen?

  I wonder if the world’s getting worse, or if we’re just paying more attention to the shadows.

  There’s no answer for me, out here on the cobblestoned street. No answer to my own dilemma either. So I start walking back to Fitzhenry Park, hoping I’ll be able to find an answer there. Wondering if Bones will even talk to me after the way I laid into him earlier. I have bridges to mend with Nia, too. And Buddy. I promised him I’d never walk out on him and look what I’ve done. Dumped him on Nia and just took off, ready to commit some of that violence that Lisa Fisher was railing against. If I’d had Devlin in front of me at that moment, I’d’ve been just like the guy that stabbed her friend. I wouldn’t have felt sorry either.

  What does that say about the way we live?

  I feel tired then, soul-tired, as though I’ve taken some of Lisa Fisher’s weariness as well as her darkness out into the street with me. I want my life back. I want to negotiate my freedom. But I’m not even sure what any of that means anymore.

  I pay no attention to my surroundings as I make my way out of the Market and walk downtown. The crowded sidewalks could belong to another city entirely. Some strange alchemy allows me safety as I navigate streets against the light, walk unaware into oncoming traffic, oblivious of the car horns and angry cries of the drivers. I’m so busy looking inside that I see nothing of my walk back to the pa
rk, not the store windows, not the cabs and buses and cars, not the passersby, not the presence of the man who stole my life as he follows me.

  You’d think I’d at least be aware of him. But I’m not. Not until it’s too late.

  28 TANYA

  When Tanya finally ran out of words, she turned from her view of the river to look at her companion. She didn’t see the disbelief she’d expected. Didn’t even get the sense that Geordie was simply humoring her. Instead, he smiled, then leaned closer so he could put his arm around her shoulders. An unfamiliar self-consciousness swept over Tanya. She felt like a teenager again. It was like one of those rare times that she’d finally managed to escape her parents’ attention for long enough to sneak off with a boy. Those liaisons never lasted very long—in retrospect, why should they have, they were all so young, both she and the teenaged boys who paid court to her.

  She felt the same awkwardness with Geordie, but she hoped this would be different. It already felt different and not simply because Geordie was so shy and everything was moving at a far slower pace than she was used to in a relationship.

  “If somebody told me the kind of story I just told you,” she said, “I’d be having real serious thoughts about getting cozy with them.”

  “Why’s that?” Geordie asked, his voice slightly muffled. His cheek rested against her head and he spoke through her hair.

  “Because it’s so crazy.”

  Geordie drew back so that he could look at her. “Crazy weird, or crazy impossible?”

  “Both. I mean, really. How can you take it all so matter-of-factly?”

  “I’ll tell you the truth,” he said. “I’ve never been that comfortable with the wild and wonderful side of life that most people don’t even think about, little say see. But if you hang around with someone like Jilly as much as I do, you end up having to accept it. When you’re with her, the thing waiting for you around the corner is never what you expect it to be.”

  “Really?”

  Geordie nodded. “And if Jilly wasn’t enough, there’s my brother Christy. I’ve been denying their more fanciful notions for most of my life, but there comes a time when the weight of their convictions gets to be too much and you have to give in.”

  Tanya gave him a considering look. She’d only ever browsed through one of Christy’s collections of urban folklore—and that was for the giggle it gave her, not because she took any of it seriously.

  “And besides,” Geordie went on. “Once or twice I’ve seen an odd thing myself. Nothing that couldn’t be explained away if you really worked at it, I suppose, but when you start to put them all together...”

  “But flower fairies and talking pigs and—what was that one with the crocodiles?”

  Geordie smiled. “I think it was a subway conductor.”

  “Isn’t it all pretty far-fetched?”

  “Very much so. But people swapping brains isn’t?”

  Tanya sighed. “Okay. But still...”

  “I’ll admit it,” Geordie said. “Both Christy and Jilly tend to mix up strange occurrences with things they’ve only imagined. But that doesn’t mean that some of what they talk about isn’t true.”

  “Such as?”

  Geordie shrugged. “I don’t know. I think the whole thing boils down to the idea of conceptual reality that they both hold.”

  Tanya gave him a blank look.

  “It’s the idea that things are the way they are only because enough people have agreed that’s the way they are. Their reality might be far different— it’s only our consensus that gives them their current appearance.”

  “Do you believe that?” Tanya asked.

  “Well, on some levels it makes a certain amount of sense—mostly late at night, I’ll admit, when everything feels different anyway. Or at twilight, when things shift around simply because of the light.”

  Tanya shivered. “I’ve never liked that time of day.”

  “Really? I’ve always felt it was magical. Comes from having read too many fairy tales and folk stories, I suppose.”

  “If it’s magical,” Tanya said, “then it comes from the darkest part of the wood.”

  “Sometimes you have to go through the wood—if you want to get to the other side, that is.”

  “Face your fears.”

  Geordie nodded. “Something like that. If you want to view it as metaphor instead of literally. But to get back to this idea of consensual reality, to take it the step further, if you have someone who—for whatever reason—can see beyond, or happens to stumble out of that agreement we all have, then who knows what they’ll experience?”

  “Except is it real?” Tanya wanted to know.

  Geordie shrugged. “Who knows? To them it is. And when it comes to matters of the mind and heart, sometimes that’s more important: not what a thing actually is, but what a person perceives it to be.”

  “So this business with Johnny and Max...where does it fit in?”

  “That’s something you’ll have to ask them.” He smiled. “Or Jilly.”

  Tanya remembered Jilly’s excitement when she’d told her about all of this back at the café. Tanya had been so relieved at the time to have someone to talk to about it that she hadn’t even thought to question Jilly’s easy acceptance.

  “Maybe a better question,” Geordie said, “would be, what do you think?”

  “I don’t know. I just wish it would all go away. And I really wish I hadn’t had that fight with Zeffy last night. I feel just terrible about it.”

  “She’s a good person,” Geordie said. “She’ll understand.”

  “I don’t know that I deserve a friend like her. It must be so hard living with someone like me who gets so easily depressed.”

  Geordie laughed. “That’s funny. She said the same thing about you to me once.”

  “When?”

  “We were talking about finding time to practice and she was telling me how when she’s playing in her bedroom, she loses all track of time and you end up doing most of the cleaning and cooking and stuff around the apartment.” He smiled. “Which is when she said, ‘I don’t know what I ever did to deserve a friend as patient as her.’”

  Tanya returned his smile. “I guess we suit each other.”

  “I guess you do.” Geordie hesitated a moment, then added, “So what are you going to do?”

  “Apologize to her the first chance I get.”

  “No, I meant about this other business.”

  Tanya leaned back against him, snuggling close.

  “I don’t want to think right now,” she said. “Not about that—not about anything. I just want it to all go away.”

  His arm was comforting around her shoulders, the light weight of his cheek against her head something she felt she could hold up forever.

  “Problems never go away by themselves,” he said. Before she could comment, he added, “But that doesn’t mean you can’t take a break from them.”

  “That’s what I need. A little breather.”

  “Take as long as you like,” he said.

  What she’d like, Tanya thought, was for him to kiss her. Not a big production, but she wanted that closer contact. And if he was too shy...

  She drew back a little, and turned her face to his. Only inches separated them. He blinked at her, making her smile, then they both moved forward at the same time, noses bumping, lips meeting. This was another familiar awkwardness for Tanya, something she felt she’d experienced maybe too many times in the past, but right now it felt like the first time and that had never happened before.

  “Mmm,” she murmured. “You’re a good kisser.”

  He smiled. “You’re just saying that.”

  There was no way to answer that accept to simply kiss him again.

  29 ZEFFY

  Thank god, you’re here,” Jilly said when Zeffy and Nia came into the café with Buddy in tow. “Susan’s on her way in, but we are seriously understaffed today.”

  “But I didn’t come in to...” Zeffy’s
voice trailed off when she realized that Jilly was here all alone on a lunchtime shift. “Where is everybody?”

  “Sick. Putting together their love lives,” Jilly said. Her smile wasn’t able to hide her weariness. “Who knows? But I could sure use some help.”

  “You’ve got it,” Zeffy told her.

  As she went to put her guitar behind the counter, Nia and Buddy trailed along behind her. Jilly joined them briefly to exchange an empty water pitcher for a full one. Her gaze touched the dog, then rose to Zeffy’s face.

  “What’s with you guys today?” she asked. “First Tanya’s smoking in the kitchen, now you’re bringing a dog in. Kitty’ll have a fit if any of this gets back to her.”

  Zeffy nodded. “We’ll tie him up outside,” she said, but she was already speaking to Jilly’s back.

  Half the tables in the café had customers, many still waiting to be served, and the front door opened on a group of four. Jilly was handling it with her usual good humor and charm, but while the customers probably didn’t notice, Zeffy could tell she was feeling a little frazzled. The foursome seated themselves.

  "Would you mind taking Buddy out back?” she asked Nia. "We’ll talk to Jilly about this other stuff after the lunch rush.”

  “But what about Max?”

  Zeffy hesitated. The front door opened again and a couple walked in. They looked around, then chose a table along the far wall, craning their necks to read the specials board hanging above the table once they were seated. The soup of the day was “Chicken Hurry”—obviously Tanya’s handiwork. Zeffy smiled briefly before turning back to Nia.

  “I can’t leave Jilly to deal with all of this on her own,” she said. “Johnny, Max, whoever he wants us to think he is—he’ll keep for a couple of hours.”

  Nia didn’t look at all convinced. Zeffy felt sorry for her—for both her and Buddy, who was so obviously a walking bundle of nerves—but what could she do?

  “I really think something bad’s going to happen,” Nia said.