by John Farrow
‘He’s coming to see me.’
‘Why you?’
‘It’s you he wants to see, but he can’t find you today. Where have you been?’
‘Driving around. An errand. Are you lying to me?’
‘Lying is not something I do. I don’t have the knack. Stick around, he’ll be here soon.’
‘Joe Ciampini?’
‘Him.’
‘Why …?’
‘Stick around. Find out.’
‘No, I’m going.’
‘Where can you run to, Arturo? You killed the daughter’s husband.’
‘I never did.’
‘Cops think so. Mr Ciampini agrees. Who told him that? Must be the daughter, and she was there.’
‘This is crazy. Savina would never say that.’
‘Sure she would, if maybe she killed him herself. You see? But I don’t accuse her. Joe Ciampini is coming to talk about you. Stay. Talk with him yourself. Accuse his daughter to his face yourself.’
‘What kind of advice is that? Ezra, that’s insane.’
‘I might be an old man, but I don’t want to die this young. The truth I will say to Mr Ciampini. What else?’
‘Ezra! This is nuts! What am I supposed to do?’
‘Run,’ Ezra told him.
‘Run?’
‘Fast. Best option, run far. The police have your fingerprints in dark blood. If you are innocent – how can you be? – it will come out. If you are guilty – how are you not? – you will be hunted down like a dog with rabies, foaming at the mouth. You decide.’
Maletti was standing, his head in disarray. ‘I’m getting out of here,’ he said. ‘Can you help me?’
‘I will try to smooth things with Mr Ciampini. Best I can do. But he’s not an easy man to convince. It is the right choice, running. That’s what I would do if I was you, except I would never be so stupid to be you – sleeping with the boss’s daughter, then shooting her husband dead.’
‘I didn’t do that, the shooting.’
‘That matters? No one will believe you. Run, Arturo. Where will you go?’
‘I got a friend. He has a place in town. He’s out of town.’
‘You have the key?’
‘He has mine, I have his. In case.’
‘Hiding is the same as running when you do it right. That is true.’
Maletti beat it out of there, fast.
Satisfied that he had no customers, Ezra Knightsbridge consumed a butter biscuit. Then he got on the phone.
‘Is he in?’ he asked the man who answered. He told him who was calling.
He waited. A different voice said, ‘Ezra, not a good time.’
‘My condolences.’
‘You heard?’
‘Why we should talk. My place. At your convenience, Mr Ciampini.’
The pause was appreciably pregnant. ‘Keep a light on,’ the man said. ‘I’ll be down after dark. No sooner. Maybe later.’
‘Thank you, old friend,’ Ezra said, and they both hung up.
He wasn’t sure how this next meeting would go, but he was sure that Arturo Maletti was a dead man. He was not the one to do the killing. That was something to arrange. The sooner the better. If Quinn was to live, Arturo Maletti had to be sacrificed. A good end to a bad life. Simple.
Ezra tidied up his space to prepare for his visitor.
Nun Stories
(A cluster of stones)
The boy who called himself Leonard cracked her heart open. He spoke of matters that confused her, enlightened her, inflamed her. A story he told reduced her to pulp. She shed her skin.
From Leonard, Quinn gleaned essential knowledge about Ezra Knightsbridge. He revealed that Ezra kept young thieves in tow. ‘Hard to say how many.’
Being one of a crowd was off-putting. As if she’d been led into a cabal unwittingly, the doors locked behind her. Of course, she should have known. Ezra knew her parents. He knew thieves. He collected loot. The shock, then, was that he nurtured a youthful clientele; and as his crooks aged, he cast them adrift. She felt duped, but did it matter what designs he had on her, what plans he nurtured? Probably not. After Dietmar, she was probably done with stealing.
Leonard spoke of his own career as a small-time pusher. A separate education for Quinn. ‘I’m called a pusher, but who do I push? People phone me. They want what I’m selling. My biggest problem is sorting through customers to finger the narc. Like tugging on Santa’s beard to see if it’s real.’
‘That would be a problem.’
‘Strange thing, every pusher in this city is known to the cops. They could round us up. Only they don’t. Nobody cares. Soft dope is soft crime. Problem is, it’s hardened up.’
‘Meaning what?’ Quinn asked.
Leonard explained, ‘Used to be, we had our own sources. Grow-ops and import connections. The lines between suppliers and retail were wide open. Multiplied a thousand times over, small-time business is a big business waiting to happen. Who, do you think, could turn it into a big business?’
Not a difficult question. ‘The mob?’
‘The biker gangs, especially, once they took an interest. They’ve been coming after street dealers, forcing us to drop our old supply chains, adapt to the new. The “new” means the mob. Guys who resist enjoy three months in Montreal General to mend their broken bones. Their broken brains don’t heal. Their spirits? Forget about it. Get caught a second time and it’s six to nine months of hospital time and probably a lifetime of hobbling around. Some tough guys thought they could defend themselves. They bought guns. It got interesting. You think nobody is arrested for simple possession, but suddenly we have exceptions. Bikers advise the cops who to arrest. The guys who irritate the gangs are picked up off the streets, and when they’re free they either come out in a box or run with a wolf pack themselves.’
‘Not good,’ Quinn concurred. He seemed plugged in. She saw the world as Leonard portrayed it, as a battle between the young, the free and the loving, against the dictates of an evil regime. The evil regime – part gang, part police – won every battle. The young and the free now served villainous masters. Dawning on her was the notion that she might not be immune to a similar trajectory.
‘Used to be I bought and sold among friends,’ said Leonard. ‘All cool. Now I sell to friends and shit-bags, both. Nothing I can do about it. Instead of supporting an alternative sweet lifestyle – mine – I pay for mob bosses to sail the Caribbean. Thanks to my labor, nude girls bring them drinks and braid their short hairs.’
The sadness of his plight guided them into toking up. She thought he’d come on to her and plotted an escape that might not offend him. But if ardor moved through his bloodstream, perhaps the dope eased him off that thrum. They settled into talking.
Quinn, high, went first. Her life as a kid. Her daddy was a reformed crook, her mom passed away. ‘I shouldn’t say it like that. She died. She’s dead. She lives in a box in the ground. Correct that. She doesn’t live anywhere.’ She dabbed a tear away. The dope eased her into a realm she rarely inhabited. What was usually a hollow of grief became a cavern of sadness.
Leonard started in on his own story. Overwhelmed by an emotional slurry, Quinn’s defenses against an inner sorrow were annihilated. The beer, the dope and the story dismantled her dismay.
He had been raised by nuns, in an orphanage. Bad enough, it struck a chord because Quinn felt so attached to her own deceased mother that she could not imagine a childhood without that connection. Or, she imagined it too well and was mortified by the prospect.
The story grew more troubling.
‘The nuns demanded that parents who gave up their kids at birth agree to baptize them into the Catholic Church. Most had no problem. Others who had a problem went along with it anyway. Some moms – or if the moms died in childbirth, the dads or another relative – said no. A small minority, but more than people realize.’
‘You were one of those kids?’
‘One of a number, so to speak.’
&n
bsp; He appeared to be faltering. He was distant, carried away on the drift of marijuana, lured also to darker recesses of memory.
‘Why “so to speak”?’
‘If our birth mothers refused to let us be baptized, we weren’t permitted to have names inside the orphanage.’
That edict hung in the air. Inexplicable, yet tempting her to comprehend it.
They smoked. They drank beer.
Leonard was sitting on the floor, his back supported by the low sofa behind him. He let his head loll onto a pillow. Quinn was on the floor also, cross-legged, yogi-style, slightly upraised upon a cushion. The music coming in through the window from a neighbor’s transistor was obscured by a gently whirring fan.
Her voice quiet in the stillness of the room, Quinn finally asked, ‘How could you not have a name?’
‘The kids who weren’t baptized were given numbers.’
And that was not all.
‘Couples arrived looking to adopt. The kids with names were spruced up to look their best. The kids with numbers were purposefully left dirty and messy, so nobody would consider us. Sometimes, one of us got chosen despite that. I wish I could meet those parents today. I wouldn’t shake their hands or hug them. I’d get down on the ground and kiss their feet. They gave hope to the ones always left behind.’
Quinn experienced a quaking inside her she did not comprehend. As if she was being shaken loose from a mooring, or from herself.
Leonard told her more.
The numbered children were permitted to watch the other children play with toys, but were not allowed to touch a toy themselves. The numbered kids didn’t receive gifts at Christmas. The other kids did. They had to watch them open their presents and play with their new toys. For the Christmas meal, they were fed separately. They got a scrap of turkey, but none of the trimmings. During the year, they were never served dessert. No cake. No pudding. No pie. The other kids, with names, were served dessert. The shoes worn by the numbered children were the shoes discarded by the kids with names.
‘Stop,’ Quinn said, scarcely audible.
‘Sometimes, the kids with names got chocolate bars. We didn’t. That hurt. Really hurt.’
Children with names constantly instigated fights with the numbered children, and when such a fight occurred the numbered children would be strapped across their palms until they bled.
Leonard was only a few years older than Quinn. This had all taken place while she lived in the comfort of her own home with a loving mother and an all-caring father, a man who had turned his life around to be a proper dad. Quinn’s heart was breaking, not only for Leonard. His story of deprivation highlighted the loss of her mother in ways she never permitted herself to bear. She fell into a funk, missing her mom. She was calling out to her internally, in the way she could imagine Leonard as a child calling out to the night sky for reprieve, for help, for mercy, for love. His suffering was infinitely worse than her own, yet it drew hers to the surface from a deep and entrenched place. As if her mother was rising from the soil to smile upon her again, to hold her again, to say that everything was fine when nothing was.
‘Puberty, what a horror—’
‘Please, stop.’
‘Children with names were taught dances in gym class.’
‘You weren’t?’
‘We were. But with numbered kids, boys danced with boys, girls with girls. The girls didn’t mind so much, except they saw girls with names dance with boys who maybe they were in love with. The girls with numbers cried at night afterward. We could hear them because we were stuffed in the same end of the orphanage. The boys cried, too, except we were quiet about it.’
Quinn’s breathing grew troubled.
‘Some days, priests visited. The numbered boys got it the worst.’
‘Stop!’ Quinn said sharply, and this time Leonard obeyed.
Later, he said, ‘I never told nobody before. Not everything like that.’
They smoked.
Later, he said, ‘When we see each other, us numbers, on the street – we’re all doing shit – we don’t talk. It hurts too much to see someone.’
Later, he said, ‘When kids with a name see us, they want to spit on us. They don’t, but they want to. They may not be doing so great themselves, but they were taught to despise us. Like it’s in their DNA. I reckon they’re really despising themselves. Their complicity. Although maybe I only want to think that way.’
‘I feel complicit,’ said Quinn. ‘Having been happy as a child.’
‘Why do you steal?’
She didn’t answer.
Later, after they’d been quiet, she asked, ‘Who named you Leonard?’
‘I did. When you turn sixteen you get the name you were born with and they kick you out. I ran away when I was fourteen. They don’t recognize my existence, so won’t tell me my name. I took Leonard after the poet from here. The singer.’
She didn’t know who he meant but nodded as if she did.
‘I figured it might get me girls.’
‘Did it?’
‘Hard to say.’
‘What’s your last name?’
‘I don’t have one. Someday, I’ll get a lawyer. Get a complete name. An official identity. Right now, I don’t exist.’
‘What’s your number?’
‘I won’t tell you that. I won’t say it out loud. Don’t ask me to write it down.’
‘Good. Never say it.’
‘I won’t,’ he vowed.
‘I have to go now,’ Quinn said. She was falling apart. She felt spaces in her body, black holes in her head.
‘OK,’ Leonard said. He couldn’t move he was so stoned.
‘OK,’ Quinn said. ‘I’m going now.’ About ten minutes later she struggled to her feet and left the apartment.
Quinn walked a short distance uphill onto Mount Royal, the city’s largest parkland, with its prominent overlooks. Rolling grassland yielded to forest, hikers sojourned higher up. Quinn wandered serpentine trails. Other hikers were infrequent. Halfway through the maze, and off the trail, she sat upon an immense protrusion of tree root, sheltered by leaves and shrubs and rock. A chipmunk was annoyed and said so, chittering. She laughed. That emotional outburst broke a dam and she wept. She cried for the death of her mother. She had never fully submitted to tears before. Her chest cracked apart. She’d been too young to fully appreciate the grief that befell her at the time. She’d been confused and bucked against the reality. She felt bad for her father as much as for herself and resented the confluence of feelings. None of which she understood or could handle, though she didn’t let them handle her, either. Leonard’s story, the dope, the straits she was in, the beer … She was missing her mom and suddenly comprehended that her mother was no more, that she was dead. She’d said it at Leonard’s house, said it that way for the first time. That her mom was dead. In a box. No more.
Quinn fell off the log of root and curled up and collapsed into a ball in a cavity and wretchedly wept. Her grief took over, she could scarcely breathe, scarcely cry, the whole of her torso aching until she grew worried for herself, fearing she would break. Any glimpse of sky or tree or leaf or soil or stone caused a convulsion, and she descended into fresh torment, gasping, coughing up spittle, breathing too rapidly.
She had no brown bag to assist her, no way to control her hyperventilating. Yet the pain of her body merely underscored the pain in her head, in her heart, in her being. She felt wrecked.
She believed she had wrecked herself. Her mind’s eye veered to Dietmar and his death, and she believed she had wrecked him too. She was responsible. Who would do that? Stick a knife in his chest? Kill him. Oh, his last moments alive, how terrifying! Who would do that? But, also, who would think about taking a sweet boy in Social Studies and turning him into a getaway driver? Who would do that? Who except me? Me. I did that. Deets’s death was my fault.
Thinking of him assisted her to resurface. In believing she had wrecked herself, in believing that she was responsible for Diet
mar’s death, she suddenly comprehended that she had both let herself and Dietmar down and let her father down, which had long been so important. A new dimension appeared as well – she had let her mother down, as if her mother remained a living being. Somehow. Somewhere. Out there. Or way inside herself.
She wanted to go back to Leonard and tell him how much she hated his bad nuns. The aching sweet solace of a mother’s love, which she held night and day in her heart, had been denied him, and she hated that too.
She wanted to go back to Dietmar and say ‘Sorry! I’m so sorry you’re dead because of me! You were an incredibly sweet boy. You have no idea. I could’ve taken a deep dive for you in a major way.’
She felt so lost.
Then slowly she grasped that she was finding her way back to herself. She tracked herself down. She was no longer crying, or shaking, or breathing too rapidly. She felt miserable, in pain and sore, but sensed that she could stand up if she really wanted to, that she could walk out of the woods if she found the path. She was not yet ready to do either, but when the time came she could. She’d haul herself up and go home. Live her life with a busted, blown-out heart. See what that did for her.
Quinn had to laugh at her own spark of sass. In a way, she felt sad to be returning to herself. Broken and annihilated, working through her pain had been real. Life never felt real enough. That’s why she stole. She wanted to say that to Leonard, say it to him now if he was there. She stole in order to feel real. She stole to feel that life was real, that her mother had once been real for her. Only now her mother was dead and that was real, too. Her mother was gone, gone without her, and that would always be real.
She knew that now. Never again would she call anyone a moron for saying so.
Quinn remained in the woods, curled at the base of a broad tree between the huge root at her back and a cluster of stones. She gently clawed at the earth with one hand, tenderly scraped the soil. Then fell asleep in the warmth of the day. A tiny child in an immense wood with the thrum of the city coursing through the rock of the mountain and through the roots and trees surrounding her, and through her veins.
Plant 59