by William Bell
“Certainly,” he replied. “Take a few days, more if you like, and let me know. But remember, we may have a chance to help someone.”
I stood up. “Okay.”
But he wasn’t finished. “And—not that this should affect your decision—I’d be able to pay you more than last time. You did well then. You held up your end of the bargain. That’s a rare quality in a person.”
Sure, I thought.
“See you later,” I said.
TWELVE
THE TROUBLE WITH THINKING about things is that most of the time it’s impossible to turn off the flow of ideas. Curtis’s proposition churned away in the back of my mind all evening. I polished off a new James Lee Burke, but even reading about the violent escapades of Robicheaux and his pal Clete couldn’t capture all of my attention. I went on line and searched the local library’s catalogue to see if I could find a Captain Alatriste story I hadn’t read yet, but had no luck. I had to settle for a movie on TV, but it was boring so I went to bed.
Sleep was a long time coming. Sometime during the night I was awakened by the sound of a door closing at the back of the house. I sat up and eased out of bed and stood listening. The back door led from the downstairs hall into the garage. It was kept locked, and I thought I had the only key—on a hook inside my kitchen cupboard. There was no movement above in Fiona’s place, or below in Rawlins’s apartment.
My bedroom window looked onto the fenced yard behind the garage. I peered out. There was no moon and the space was a pool of darkness. Nothing moved. I padded into the kitchen. The rear window was directly above the garage roof but allowed a partial view of the driveway, faintly illuminated by the street light across the road. There was a car parked there.
A figure in dark clothing and a baseball cap that hid his face came around the far corner of the garage, where there was an access door. I thought I had the only key to that one, too. When he opened the car door the interior light didn’t come on. He slid into the driver’s seat and closed the door quietly. The car started up, backed out onto the street and glided away. Only when it was almost out of sight did the headlights come on.
Chang had told me that the two downstairs rooms were used occasionally on a short-term basis. He had said that I should pay no attention if anyone turned up there. In other words, mind my own business, like Rawlins said.
But that didn’t stop me from creeping downstairs, stealing along the hall past Rawlins’s door and turning the handle on the entrance to the garage. It had been relocked. I stood in the shadowy corridor for a while, close to the doors to the two rooms. There was someone in the unit nearest the garage.
The car returned and left twice before first light. By the time I headed off to work in the morning, both rooms were occupied. As far as I could tell by lying on my kitchen floor, ear to the hardwood, the new guests were young women who spoke nothing but Chinese.
I never laid eyes on them. If Rawlins or Fiona noticed their presence they never mentioned it. Obviously Chang had the same understanding with all three of us. The women stayed four days, without, as far as I knew, leaving their rooms, then disappeared one afternoon when I was out looking for Ninon.
It was a little weird having transient boarders sneaking in and out of the house, dropped off and picked up by cars with their headlights turned off. It was like living over a bus station where only ghosts came and went. On Saturday Chang called and, after politely asking me how I was doing, requested that I go downstairs and clean the rooms thoroughly: wash the bedding, sweep the floor, toss the garbage, scour the bathrooms. All as soon as I could. He then, also politely, reminded me to ignore the guests’ visit.
“Don’t worry,” I told him. “A deal’s a deal.”
I searched the park every day at least once but I didn’t see Ninon all that week. Nor did I hear from Curtis. I plodded through my daily routines—calisthenics, breakfast, work, a long run—every day, enjoying my freedom from school, practices, games and meeting other people’s expectations. On Saturday I ran along Bayview on my way back home, filmed with sweat, hungry and thirsty, looking forward to a shower and a coffee. I climbed the long hill out of the Don River valley, caught the light in time to cross Bloor and ran across the bridge under the anti-suicide fencing. On the Danforth I slowed and then stopped and looked at a window display that caught my eye every time I passed.
Three gleaming scooters stood there, as if waiting for me to pick one out, mount up and roar off into the distance. I had wanted a motorbike since I was about ten, one of the sleek, wickedly fast brands on the Grand Prix circuit, with their streamlined cowlings and fat rear tires and exotic foreign names. Nowadays I was more realistic. I’d settle for one like the green Italian model in the window, a stodgy, 150cc, practical scooter—used, not new. Someday, maybe.
I began to jog again and soon turned the corner onto my street, smiling to myself. I had a driver’s license, courtesy of Bai and Chang, but I didn’t know how to drive—a car or a scooter. But the real obstacle was money. I didn’t have enough for lessons, let alone a scooter.
I had vowed that once Bai had given me my new identity and a place to live and a job, I wouldn’t ask for anything more. The whole point in becoming Julian Paladin was to be someone new and to be in control of my life. I wouldn’t go back with my hand out. I’d work for what I got. So I needed a job that paid more and gave me more hours.
In a way I wished I could agree to Curtis’s scheme. I’d be able to bank enough cash to afford some extras. I decided I would keep working for him, but I’d draw the line at searching for runaways.
After dinner I rode the subway downtown and walked to Grange Park. It was a sultry evening and the air lay like stagnant water in the streets. The hot weather had brought people out of their buildings and into the park, and there was lots of activity of both the lazy and energetic kind. Shuttlecocks arced back and forth over the grass, Frisbees sailed past benches occupied by late shoppers resting their feet, parents chatted while kids played on the grass. I took a stroll around the grounds, looking for Ninon, and approached a clutch of black-clad, white-faced kids lounging under a tree.
“Hey,” I greeted them.
A guy with a spiked mohawk replied, “Hey.”
The rest of the group made a show of ignoring us.
“You seen Ninon around?” I asked.
“Who?”
“Sorry, I thought you might know her.”
“ ’S’kay.”
I moved on, sat on the end of a bench where a boy and a girl wearing school uniforms stared dreamily into the distance.
“Hey,” I tried again.
The guy, a stocky redhead, turned in my direction. Even in the soft light of the evening I noticed his pupils were so dilated the irises had almost vanished.
“Hey,” he replied, then let out a high-pitched giggle. The girl, who had been staring at the music player in her hand as if she couldn’t figure out how it got there looked up, slowly focused on her friend and giggled even louder.
“Hey!” the boy said, and off he went again.
“Straw!” exclaimed the girl.
“Grass!” they pealed in unison, laughing so hard I thought they’d choke.
One last try. There were two black guys playing chess on the same table Ninon had been using when I found her writing in her notebook. They were dead serious, staring at the board while a double-faced chess clock ticked away between them. I watched them play. I’d seen them in the park before, once as part of a tournament. The taller of the two had three furrows etched across his brow, giving him a scowly look, which worsened as he nudged a black piece forward one square and slapped the stem on his side of the clock.
His opponent picked up his knight in his long fingers and thumped it down.
“Checkmate.”
“Man, I give up,” his opponent grumbled.
“Pay up, then give up.”
Money changed hands and I saw my opening.
“You guys seen Ninon today?”
&
nbsp; The winner looked lazily toward me, jamming his wallet back into his jeans. “And you are?”
“A friend.”
“A friend with a name?”
“Julian.”
“Ain’t seen her for a while,” he said, turning away.
His opponent was setting up the board for a new game.
“Do you know Ninon?” I asked, my words falling between them. “Can you tell me where I can find her?”
“You’re white this time,” the winner said to his friend, resetting the clock.
And Curtis wanted to pay me to interview people?
THIRTEEN
A FEW MINUTES AFTER I got home I heard a knock on my door. Fiona was standing in the hall, wringing her hands, her face flushed. She was wearing her nurse’s uniform.
“Julian, thank God you’re home,” she gushed. “I hate to do this, I really do, but, really, I need to ask you a huge favour, I’m in a tight spot, just got a call from Trish, she’s my daycare lady down the street, I think I told you about her, only she’s had a bit of an emergency with her own wee one and she can’t make it home for about two hours and—”
The flood of words stopped; Fiona took a breath.
“—and my shift starts in twenty minutes and I really, really can’t afford the time off because it’s an extra shift and it means overtime and I need the money, so would you, could you look after Roger for me?”
“Me? But—”
“Trish will be home as soon as she can to pick him up. She won’t be long.”
“Fiona, I don’t know anything about babies.”
“Aye, but he’s asleep. If he wakes just give him his milk, it’s all ready for him in his cup on the kitchen table, and put him in the playpen and—”
“But I might do something wrong. I might hurt him.”
“Ach, you’ll be fine. Please, Julian.”
Ten minutes later I was in Fiona’s place—which smelled of dirty diapers and fish and chips this time—and Fiona had sprayed me with instructions that streamed from her lips into one of my ears and out the other as she spun out the door like a uniformed dust devil.
I put my head around the door to her bedroom, feeling like an intruder. The room was more like an oversized closet, with space for a single bed—unmade—Roger’s crib, and a rug and a small dresser against the wall between them. Roger lay scrunched up, his bum in the air, a bubble at the corner of his mouth, breathing deeply.
I made myself a cup of tea and sprawled on Fiona’s lumpy sofa, afraid to turn on the TV and wake Roger. Instead, I thought about Ninon. Should I give up on her? One thing was sure: my search method wasn’t working. I had been with her twice since the Van Gogh exhibit last March; once when she happened upon me on McCaul Street, the other in the park where I was looking for her. In other words, once by blind chance and once by design, and even the second was mostly luck. Fate and planning were tied.
My mistake, I decided, was in dropping by the park once a day for a few minutes, a system that was statistically ridiculous. To boost the odds in my favour I had to spend more time there. A couple of hours, say. That was what I’d do. And if I was lucky and met up with her again and she took off without giving me a phone number or some reliable way to contact her, I’d give up on her. Maybe.
A murmur came from Fiona’s room. I sat up, spilling cold tea down my shirt, and held still, afraid to make a sound. The murmur became a babble. The crib creaked. The babble shifted to a jabbering flow of non-words and the creaking intensified.
“Mama?”
I got up and crept into the room. Roger was standing in the crib, tiny hands clutching the rail, shaking the crib gleefully and talking a language only he understood. Then he saw me and shut down, his eyes widening in fear. And he bawled.
It took ten minutes of reassuring noises from me before Roger calmed down. I picked him up out of the crib and carried him into the other room and turned on the TV. When I put him in his playpen he threw back his head and howled some more.
“Okay, got it. No playpen.”
I grabbed his plastic milk cup, with the kiddie lid that allowed him to drink without spilling, lifted him up again and sat on the couch with him after tuning the TV to a late afternoon hockey game. Roger drained the cup in no time, burped mightily and within a few minutes was fast asleep, his head on my shoulder.
The players were forming up for the third-period faceoff when I heard a key in the lock and the door opened to reveal an attractive, thin black woman with a baby in her arms. She looked at Roger and me.
“Awwww,” she said.
Starting Monday I went straight to the park after work, postponing my run until later. I planned to stay for two hours each day. I read, watched a few chess games, walked around the block. It was boring. I sat and pretended I was doing surveillance for Curtis, singling out a person or couple and trying to draw conclusions about them from their clothing or actions. I made a dash to the restaurant and after Mrs. Zhu asked, “Eat in or take out?” I’d leave with a carton of whatever fried noodle dish was on the menu that day. She never let me pay.
“Mr. Chang say no,” she reminded me firmly. On my second visit she commanded, “Not call me Missus. Call me Mama Zhu.”
On Friday I was sitting on a bench between two chattering nannies, each with one hand resting on the handle of her stroller containing one sleeping kid. I had put in two and a half hours of the “Find Ninon” game and I was fed up with it. I was hungry and on edge. Grumbling to myself, I was leaning over, packing up my stuff and fishing in my pack for a subway token, when a shadow fell across the ground at my feet. I looked up.
It was Ninon. She had a talent for unexpected appearances.
She had traded the military outfit for jeans and a bleached-out long-sleeved shirt with a row of little flowers embroidered above the pockets. Her hair was loosely gathered behind her neck with a bit of string, her skin pale, her eyes dark with fatigue.
“What’s new?” she said.
“Where have you been?” I blurted, not caring how unfriendly I sounded.
She frowned. “If we’re going to be friends you won’t ask me things like that.”
I stood and shrugged into my backpack. “Are we?”
“Are we what?”
Throwing up my arms in frustration, I snapped, “Going to be friends!”
She took a step back. “We shook hands, didn’t we?”
“Yeah, right. Didn’t mean much, did it? Look, if you don’t want me around you, just say so and put me out of my misery. This is driving me nuts.”
She looked past me at something, then at my face.
“I do want you around,” she said.
Shock displaced my frustration.
“Don’t look at me like I tried to sell you a watch with no hands, okay? Let’s start over.” She held out her hand. “Hi, my name is Ninon.”
I didn’t take her hand. I said nothing.
“And you are?” she urged.
“Confused,” I replied, slipping my hand into hers and holding it for a moment. “And hungry. Do you like spicy food?”
Mrs.—Mama—Zhu’s round, passive face showed no reaction when I showed up at the restaurant with Ninon.
“Eat in, please, Mama Zhu,” I said, beating her to the punch and leading Ninon to a table.
Ninon looked around at the faded prints of tigers and peonies and fish tacked to the drab walls, and ignored the slurps coming from the table behind her, where a man sat hunched over his noodles. She fingered the white plastic film of the throwaway table covering. One corner—the right—of her mouth turned up in an ironic half-smile.
“You know how to show a girl a good time, don’t you?” she said.
“I can recommend the soup. Or fried noodles. Anything else is new territory.”
Ninon studied the card that she’d pulled from between the bottles of soy sauce and chili, then handed it to me.
“Can you help me with this?”
The entire menu was in Chinese.
Fifteen minutes later there were three steaming platters of food between us, all served by Mama Zhu herself.
“She likes you,” Ninon observed when Mama Zhu had returned to her stool behind the counter.
“What makes you say that?”
“I can tell.”
Ninon ate like someone who’d been waiting a long time for a decent meal, and I kept right up with her. We didn’t talk much.
“Fantastic,” she said when we sat back, unable to pack away even one more spoonful of chicken with peanuts, vegetables with oyster sauce, or Szechuan shrimp. “My mouth feels like it’s on fire.”
“Great, isn’t it?”
“Do you eat like this every day?”
“No.”
“Well, thanks for bringing me here.”
“No problem. We can come here again any time you want.”
She looked at her watch. Oh-oh, I thought. Here it comes.
“I have to go,” she said. “But I’m not running off this time. I really do have to be somewhere.”
“And I shouldn’t ask where.”
A smile was her reply.
“And you meant what you said? Before, at the park?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“Okay,” I replied. I gathered what courage I could find and took a deep breath. “Here’s the thing. I think we should spend the day together on Sunday. The weather forecast says sunny and hot. We can go to Centre Island for the day. Lie on the beach. Swim. Chase the geese. Get to know each other.”
“Um—”
Before she could give me her usual vague reply, I cut in. “I’ll be down at the ferry dock at twelve o’clock. I’ll bring lunch. If you’re there, great. If not, I’ll eat all the sandwiches myself.”
Every nerve in my body was firing at once as we left the restaurant and walked along the alley to Spadina.
“Thanks again. See you,” Ninon said.
“Bye.”
I watched her walking south, disappearing and reappearing in the Friday afternoon crush like a faulty bulb flashing on and off. And then, before I knew what was happening, I found myself striding in the same direction. I told myself I wasn’t following. I was just taking an indirect route to the subway. She showed no sign that she knew I was behind her but, to be sure, I took a diagonal to the other side of the street at the first corner. With each cross street that appeared I told myself I would turn off Spadina, but I didn’t.