Three Years with the Rat

by Jay Hosking

  I skulked out of work early to courier the grant application to Ottawa overnight. The courier service was on Bloor, just a couple of streets east of John’s apartment, and so I thought I should check on him before heading home. The light in the second bedroom window was on when I arrived at his doorstep. John’s shadow occasionally passed across the wall, as though he was examining something from many angles. I buzzed at the door, hands stuffed in my sleeves from the cold, but he didn’t answer. His silhouette continued to flit in the window and after a few minutes I was irritated enough to shout up at the window from the street.

  Eventually my yelling caught his attention. He crept up to the windowsill, backlit and ominous, posture rigid. When he finally recognized me, his shoulders relaxed and he disappeared from the window. I stared into the sushi restaurant storefronts. Both were full of happy, smiling, warm people I resented. The entrance to the apartment building opened enough for me to squeeze through, but it seemed as if John was hiding behind the door.

  “Sorry, I thought you were someone else,” he said.

  There was a plaintive sound in the stairwell, and as we ascended it became louder and more urgent. When John opened the door to his apartment, the source became clear: one of the rats was shrieking in their cage. Little Grace was in the corner and raised up onto her back two legs. Her front legs were outstretched like arms and her teeth were bared as if to say, Stay away from me. She looked terrified of everything and her fur stuck out in all directions. Buddy crawled into a plastic tube and shuffled the bedding around in nervousness, and Little John kept his distance. I tried to pick up Little Grace but she was too jumpy to grasp.

  John claimed to have no idea what was wrong. We watched a little TV but the worried sounds from the cage were too distracting. I saw light filtering out from under the door of the second bedroom. John noticed my glance.

  “Still too early,” he said. “I’ll show you when I’m done.”

  I left the apartment after thirty minutes.

  A few days later, Little Grace was dead. John called me, his tone utterly flat. I assumed that part of his grief was due to losing Grace again, in some symbolic way, and so I rushed over. He had Little Grace laid out on the classified section of a newspaper and the dead rat looked almost camouflaged. There seemed to be nothing wrong with her, only that life had somehow drained out of her and left her rigid and frozen in a snarl. John was inconsolable, his gaze blank, absent. His inky hair had grown shaggy since the summer and he tugged at it with knuckly fists. I told him that it wasn’t his fault.

  “It’s actually looking hopeless,” he said, resigned, grim, matter-of-fact, utterly unlike himself. “I can’t get anything right these days.”

  Eventually I convinced him to leave the apartment for a walk. We brought his arrowhead shovel and buried Little Grace in the park just north of his apartment. The earth was hard and dry with the coming frost.

  We stood in the dark with our hands behind our backs and had a moment of silence. John’s broad shoulders hung heavy and low.

  I have no idea what I’m supposed to say, I thought, and from that a memory bubbled to the surface of my consciousness. “John?”

  “Hmm?” he said.

  “Did Grace tell you about when she and Nicole got into it? Over some quote?”

  He made a small, strangled noise.

  “What the hell were they so worked up about?” I asked.

  He made that sound again, a little louder this time. It was a chuckle. He told me, “Grace’s pride. God, she was an obstinate woman.”

  We shared a small moment, a smile, a sideways glance in the dark.

  “They were fighting over a Camus quote,” John said. “Nicole was pointing out an epistemological concern to Grace.”

  “I have no idea what the hell you mean,” I said.

  He turned to face me. In poor lighting he appeared more like his old self: broadly framed, defined cheekbones, healthy and strong, handsome. He tried again.

  “Essentially Nicole was saying, by way of Camus, that you can have all the information about a given system but still not have any understanding. I can describe what the colour red is like to someone who can’t see, how it’s different from blue and green, how it’s the colour of sunsets and blood and love. But that blind person, despite having so much information, will know nothing of what redness really is.”

  I remained silent. He cleared his throat, dug at the hard soil with the toe of his boot, and continued.

  “The same is true about science. I can collect all the data in the universe, but at some point I won’t be able to comprehend how all the parts form a whole. My brain, my biology, limits my ability to understand.”

  We turned and walked away from the little funeral. Somehow it felt as though the air was even colder in the park, away from the illumination of the street lights. We were both silent until we reached the sidewalk heading south, back toward John’s apartment.

  He said, “There are just some things that are outside of comprehension, even if we can quantify them. At some point, science becomes magic. Do you understand?”

  I made a sound in my throat, noncommittal, and asked, “So why was Grace so angry?”

  Though his face was heavily shadowed by the street lights, I could see a grim smile.

  “Because Nicole was right,” he said.

  —

  It was less than a week before the next death.

  In that time, I didn’t hear from John once, and instead concerned myself with patching things up with Nicole. I avoided talking to her about the rats, if only because I knew the piercing and accurate words she would use about John. Finally, though, I made my way back to his apartment, this time on a grey weekend afternoon. I tried a combination of buzzing and shouting from the street to get his attention, but I couldn’t tell if it was working: he had completely covered up the window of the second bedroom from the inside, effectively making it an impenetrable grey splotch of glass on the side of the building.

  I paced back to the curb, considering where I could get lunch before trying again, but then I noticed a little round man unlocking the entrance to the apartment. I ran back and caught the heavy door before it swung closed.

  The short man barked from the stairs, “You live here?”

  “Friend of John’s,” I said, smiling blindly. My eyes were adjusting to the dark stairwell and I could hardly see. “Just checking in on him.”

  He grunted. “You tell those two: take the cardboard outta the front window. Makes the building look bad.”

  He lumbered up the stairs and disappeared. So he had no idea Grace had been gone since the end of last year.

  I knocked on the door, quietly with my knuckles, then loudly with my palm, and finally I spoke up. “John. John, let me in.”

  There were human sounds in the apartment, then two locks being undone, a chain and a deadbolt, and the door opened for me. He was hiding behind it, out of sight again, and after I entered he closed the door so gently that it hardly made a click into place.

  The apartment looked no less tidy but it had taken on some harsh odour, somewhere between an animal cage and an unclean man. I was standing near the door and sniffing at the foreign smells when I finally noticed the body of the rat on the living room coffee table. Little John was lashed with bright red, and lay flat and horribly still. As I approached the table, I could see long cuts down his flank and across his face, through his fur and down to the skin. Considerable amounts of blood had been drawn for such a small animal. It looked as though someone had tried to sharpen a knife with Little John, and it looked as though it had been very painful. His snout was curled into a sneer.

  I swivelled and faced John. My voice trembled. “What did you do to him?”

  “It wasn’t me.” His voice was hardly more than a whisper.

  “What, are you going to tell me Buddy did this to him? That this was some sort of domestic dispute in their fucking cage?”

  “Obviously not,” he replied, “but it’s
complicated.”

  He frowned and furrowed but something was off. His mood was completely the opposite of when Little Grace died. Here, he showed the faintest hint of satisfaction, an upturned mouth, two smooth lines at the edge of each eye.

  “Are you fucking smiling?” I was shouting again.

  “I didn’t hurt him.”

  “Look at him! Look at yourself! Do you not even remember your breakdown? Can’t you see that you need help?”

  “Despite what you may think, I’m fine,” he said.

  “Just like last winter, right? Jesus Christ, John, what would Grace think if she saw this?”

  He stood erect and stared at me calmly. “She’d probably understand.”

  Without thinking I walked away from the conversation, picked up the rat cage, and wedged it under my arm. Buddy stood on his hind feet and sniffed at me through the bars. I turned toward John and looked at him defiantly. He said nothing. I walked past him, still carrying the cage, and left the apartment without closing the door behind me.

  —

  “Hello?”

  “Danger, I’m at the house right now—”

  “Nicole, shit, I can explain—”

  “—and lo and behold, there’s a rat.”

  “Trouble—”

  “It’s not my boyfriend, mind you, but a real, actual rat in a cage. In my home. Skulking about. Leaving a terrific smell in my personal space. Without even consulting me, you—where are you?”

  “I’m sorry, I needed to—”

  “My last question was rhetorical. The answer is: on my way home.”

  Pause. “I’m on my way home, Nicole.”

  “To get rid of this rat.”

  “That’s the thing—”

  “To get rid of this rat.”

  Pause. “O.K., Trouble. To get rid of him.”

  —

  In the end, Brian agreed to take care of Buddy. I drove up the alley to his apartment, a residential garage converted into an off-the-books living space far west of my neighbourhood. Brian was wearing cut-off jean shorts and a sleeveless T-shirt on the cusp of winter, and he assured me it would be no problem looking after Buddy.

  “Little dude has an awesome existence,” he told me. “Eats, shits, sleeps, flies solo. We’re rats of a feather, man.”

  Still, I checked in every day and spent a little time with Brian and Buddy. For his part, the rat didn’t show any trouble with the adjustment and enjoyed the cheese puffs that Brian fed him while playing video games.

  The rough patch seemed to be passing with Nicole, and I imagined it had something to do with me avoiding John. We went for dinner at Shifty’s a couple times, drinks at the Cuckoo even, and had a nice night or two at home. I hadn’t told her about what had happened at John’s, about Little John and Little Grace, but the window for telling her had come and gone.

  And then near Hallowe’en, I got a phone call from John. Nicole and I were spooning on the couch, watching the type of romantic and tragic film that she loved. I fished around the floor for my phone, and we both looked at the display when I picked it up. Nicole stiffened.

  “Don’t answer it,” she said. “Please.”

  “I have to.”

  “Why? Why do you have to? Please.”

  I pressed the answer button and brought the phone to my ear. “Hi, John.”

  Nicole got off the couch and went into the bedroom.

  “You were right,” John said over the phone, distant. “I’m sorry. I need help. Can you come over?”

  Nicole wouldn’t look at me when I went into the bedroom for a sweater.

  At the apartment that night, John explained what had happened to Little John: how he’d brought the rat back to the lab, how Little John had died there in a hasty experiment. I believed him at the time. He apologized, acknowledged his instability, and stated his need to take care of something, anything, that reminded him of Grace. He swore he would go back to the doctors for more professional help.

  I returned Buddy to John the next day.

  2006

  WE AWOKE TANGLED in the sheets of our bed. We didn’t rush to untangle. There were smears of fake blood across our sheets, a smudged imprint of my face on the pillowcase. Nicole’s skin was still powdered white and the rouge apples of her cheeks were a mess, but not even day-old clown make-up could diminish her. We kissed.

  “All right,” she said, meaning enough. I moved closer, pressed my lips against her again, and she laughed. “All right! You’re going to be late, and you’re hideous.”

  “We’ve got time.” I writhed around Nicole like the vines on the old Annex houses.

  “No, we don’t. As if your sister needs another reason to dislike me.” Nicole pressed her hands into my face, kissed me once firmly, and rose from the bed.

  “She likes you just fine,” I said.

  She stopped at the door of our bedroom, blotches of make-up and artificial gore dappled across her bare back and smooth legs. She turned her head to look at me, narrowed eyes, smile playing across her lips. It was an invitation.

  I freed myself from the sheets and followed her into the shower. As she cranked the water Nicole said, “She’s always been a bit of a bitch to me. I just wish she’d be a little nicer to you.”

  Under the water we kissed again.

  —

  “Sorry I’m late,” I said. “Had to wash off the Hallowe’en make-up.”

  A heavy red streetcar rumbled down College Street, one of my favourite sights in this still-new city. Grace stood in the entrance of an alleyway off the main street and she was not amused. Her hair whipped in the biting wind and she was bundled in layers of dyed wool and heavy fabric. It was almost noon, but the overcast sky would just as easily have fit the morning or later afternoon. Grace didn’t say anything, only turned on her heels and headed toward a nondescript glass and metal entrance. Embossed on the front window were the words The Centre for Animal Modelling.

  “This is your top-secret facility?” I joked. There was nothing top secret about it. “ ‘Animal modelling’? Beauty queen rats, in a scummy alley around the corner from the convenience store?”

  “Shut up,” she said without turning to me. Her voice nearly died in the wind. “If you didn’t really want to see this, you could have just told me.”

  “What? Of course I want to see it. That’s why I asked.”

  “You’re just not in any rush.”

  “Look,” I said, “I’m sorry I was late. I got caught up.”

  “I bet you did.” Grace brought out a small rectangular pass, a key fob, and the door latch clicked as it unlocked for her. In the alcove, she punched some numbers into a pad and the next door opened. She didn’t look to me as she muttered, “Nicole has that effect on you. She probably even told you to skip this.”

  “On the contrary,” I said.

  We walked into a brightly lit foyer. Grace greeted the security guard with one small, raised hand.

  “This is the prospective grad student I was telling you about,” she said to the guard. Her words surprised me but I gave an empty smile and played along. He grunted some vague greeting to me and took my driver’s licence, but I don’t think he noticed that Grace and I shared the same surname or that we looked similar. His eyes were glassy pinpricks surrounded by puffy skin.

  He escorted us to the change rooms and pointed out the men’s side for me.

  Grace said, “Take off your shoes, put your street clothes in an empty locker, and throw on some scrubs. Don’t let the scrubs touch the clothes. Then grab some visitor shoes from the rack. I’ll meet you on the other side. Got it?”

  I nodded.

  She turned to the security guard and smiled, an invitation for him to leave, but the thinness of her face made the grin unnecessarily severe.

  I did as Grace had told me. She managed to change faster than I did and opened the door from the other side, her hair tied back, the blue scrubs hanging off her bony frame. Standing in the brightly lit corridor, she looked like th
e recently deceased making her way to heaven.

  But most startling were her forearms. They were wrapped with heavy gauze and sealed with some sort of white tape. Along the inside of her arms, the bandage looked sticky or saturated with something discoloured and wet.

  “Jesus Christ, Grace, are you”—I leaned in closer and spoke quietly—“are you cutting yourself again?”

  “What? Oh.” She looked bored by my reaction. “This is just allergies.”

  “To what? A straight razor?”

  She said, “The rats, dipshit. I’m fine. It’s been a long, long time since any of that.”

  We walked down blanched, sterile corridors. Technicians bustled by with racks full of empty cages. Windows along the walls revealed scientists covered in gowns, bonnets, and masks, staring intently at objects too small to make out from the hallway. I could hear the faint hum of air being pushed through fans and pressurized filters. Every turned corner revealed another identical corridor, and I began to feel as if we were walking in circles.

  Eventually, though, we reached the end of a hallway and Grace unlocked a door. Inside was a small anteroom.

  “Suit up,” she said, and in turn she handed me a yellow hospital gown with ribbed cuffs, stretchy blue booties, a translucent blue bonnet, and a pair of blue surgical gloves. All the while she got herself ready, wincing as she slid the gown over her bandaged arms. She taped the wrists of her gloves to the cuffs of her gown, and instructed me to do the same.

  “Grace,” I said, “if you’re always wearing all this, how did your arms get so bad from allergies?”

  She fitted a surgical mask to the bridge of her long nose and pulled the straps around her ears. She handed me a mask and said, “Don’t be so concerned. Their claws can poke right through the gown. You’ll see.”