Six Degrees of Freedom

by Nicolas Dickner

  After an interminable minute, the lock gives. The sound of the cylinder turning, the latch sliding free, is music to Jay’s ears. She swings around to give Horacio a triumphant look, but there is no one in the parking lot.

  Jay steps inside and locks the door behind her.

  It’s dark. The opaque windows allow only a fraction of the wan November light to get through. Jay feels as though she is submerged in an abandoned swimming pool. She listens. Not a sound. There’s a thick odour of dust, oil and paint.

  She turns on a tiny flashlight and sweeps the beam over the reception area. It could easily be mistaken for a museum of industrial ethnology. Business cards covered with a fine layer of dust litter the counter, and one corner is dominated by a half-empty peanut vending machine. A 2003 Shell calendar hangs on the wall, with the pages torn out until November. Nothing of interest behind the counter—the drawers and shelves have been emptied. In the toilet, the air freshener stick deodorant has shrivelled to the size of a jujube but still gives off a faint scent of cherry.

  It’s hard to believe the place has been used recently, but the floor leaves no doubt: the dust is criss-crossed with footprints. Jay shines the flashlight directly on the counter. The surface must be covered with fingerprints and genetic material. The human body crumbles and scatters data around, but Jay is not equipped to collect eyelashes or fingerprints, and she can’t avail herself of the RCMP labs or databases. What she is doing here is akin to a pastime. Some people build boats inside bottles; Jay tracks feral containers.

  Holding her breath, she moves on to the garage.

  First observation: there is ample room here for a forty-foot container loaded onto a trailer. Finding an industrial space like this in Montreal must not be easy. Most containers are moored to outdoor docks, which should still allow access to the contents without a person being seen. So why stash Papa Zulu away in a garage? The staff of Rokov Export obviously wished to be especially discreet.

  Along the wall is a large steel workbench strewn with screws, bits of electric wire, an empty grease tube. Some construction debris is piled up in a corner of the garage. Now Jay notices the cardboard boxes stacked against the wall, marked Pommes du Québec—Quebec Apples. She flips over one of the boxes. Empire.

  Jay reels a little. The excitement makes her head swim. She shuts her eyes. After three deep breaths, she regains her composure. Her brain shifts into high gear.

  She starts by cataloguing the debris. She notes a dozen folded-up apple boxes showing signs of wear, probably salvaged from the trash of a wholesaler or at the Jean-Talon market. The scraps of wood are many and various. Ditto for the scrap metal: sheet metal, rods, copper piping and a number of parts from an indeterminate electrical appliance. However much she examines this trash, she’s unable to figure out what it means. Alongside the heap are some rolled-up plastic tarps splattered with white and black paint. They must have done some cosmetic work on the container, changed its serial number.

  Jay scrutinizes the rest of the shop. She immediately spots, hanging on the wall, a hook scale like those used by butchers to weigh carcasses. Under the workbench, someone has stowed a long watering hose. There’s also a red plastic jerry can with some liquid still sloshing inside it. Jay unscrews the cap and brings her nose closer to the opening. Gasoline.

  She can see signs of DIY activity here and there. Nails, screws, sawdust. She picks up a grease tube. Empty. As she puts it back on the workbench, Jay notices a red stain on the tube. She looks at her thumb. The nitrile glove has a three-centimetre-long incision and is smeared with blood. She must have cut herself on a piece of scrap metal. The wound is oddly painless.

  Jay looks around, trying to recall where she might have put her hand down in the past few minutes. She rummages in her pockets hoping to find an old tissue. Nothing. And her thumb is bleeding more heavily. Large drops fall on the floor, leaving red ideograms imprinted in the dust. The wound is starting to burn.

  “Shit, shit, shit.”

  She runs to the washroom, holding her arm up. Next to the toilet bowl, all that’s left is a cardboard tube with a shred of paper clinging to it.

  “Shiiiit.”

  Gripping the flashlight between her teeth, she removes the glove as gently as possible to avoid splashing and wraps it around the cut. And, wouldn’t you know, it had to be her left hand. She wipes the drops of blood off the floor with her sleeve, carefully inspects the surrounding surfaces. Apart from the grease tube, everything looks clean.

  She leans back against the wall. All at once her morale has collapsed, overcome by the cold and her exhaustion. She looks despondently at the clues scattered around the huge shop. Did she really believe she could single-handedly do the work that would ordinarily require a whole team of technicians? Through the grimy windowpanes she discerns movement, hears the muffled sound of an engine in the street. She abruptly comes back down to earth. It’s time to clear out.

  It’s only as she is about to exit the shop that she notices the trash can.

  It’s an oversized, battered blue steel drum, so nondescript as to be practically invisible. Jay lifts the lid and discovers a bulging garbage bag. She folds back the plastic with her good hand. Papers, remnants of fabric, wrappers. Jay considers her bloody hand. No use hesitating—her mind is made up.

  She knots the bag and sets about extracting it from the drum. The bastard won’t budge—too stuffed, too heavy. She tips the drum over on its side with a solid kick and tugs the bag horizontally, but it’s no use—the drum slides along too. She jams her foot against the rim and pulls the bag with all her might. The plastic stretches, tears in a few places, but the bag finally yields with a sucking sound.

  Jay catches her breath. She is sweating. She dreams of a bathrobe and a café au lait.

  She hauls her booty across the room like a carcass, leaving an incriminating trail in the dust. Before going out, she pauses long enough to glance around the neighbourhood. No one in sight. She loads the bag, heavy and full of promise, into the van. She half smiles at the thought that her prediction is coming true: here she is, a bag lady.

  A minute later, the garage is deserted and the van already far away.

  THE FIRST SNOWFALL OBLITERATES THE MONTÉRÉGIE region, blanketing Mr. Miron’s Datsun and the fields spiked with stubble, erasing the US border, capping the For Sale sign Robert Routier has finally planted in front of the Baskine house.

  Through the living room window, Lisa watches the snow-laden sky come down. She can just barely make out the silhouette of the maple tree twenty metres from the house.

  It’s been two weeks since Éric went away. Anker starts in his new position right after Christmas, and Isabelle Le Blanc wanted to cut short the melodrama. Lisa refused to accompany them to the airport, and the whole thing ended with the grace of a wrecking ball.

  A short time later, Robert put the final touch on the Baskine house: the painstaking restoration of the built-in bookcases, which, with their fresh coat of varnish and cut-glass doors, lend a princely aspect to the living room. Robert outdid himself.

  The very next day, after enjoying a rare lazy morning and a third cup of coffee, and planting the À vendre par le propriétaire / For Sale by Owner sign in the yard, he immersed himself in the real estate listings in search of his next site. When questioned, he swears it will be a less ambitious project, without financial hurdles or surprises, probably a good old bungalow.

  As they wait for a buyer to materialize, father and daughter clean up and shiver (the furnace has been put on standby to save on heating oil). While Robert thrusts the vacuum cleaner into every nook and cranny on the upper floor, Lisa mops the floors downstairs. She finishes in the living room with a series of leisurely meanders and stands back to contemplate the end result. Gleaming wood and the smell of vinegar and latex paint. The bookcases are magnificent, and Lisa catches herself picturing them filled with books. There would be a huge armchair near the window, with a reading lamp. And a fire crackling on the hearth.


  She goes to empty her pail in the large porcelain sink in the kitchen. As the floor juice spirals down toward its dark destination, Lisa looks at the pantry door. She thinks about the secret passage hidden in the house’s entrails, sealed under plaster and paint, forever inaccessible. She recalls the trace of lipstick on the rim of the glass and the piles of Life magazines.

  She wonders if it’s snowing in Copenhagen.

  She immediately dismisses the question. She has no idea what Danish winters look like and has no wish to find out. She’s been in denial since October, refusing even to consult the page on Copenhagen in Wikipedia. Who the hell cares about that backwater of neurasthenic Vikings!

  The last time she saw Éric, he was packing his personal effects. The bulk of their possessions had been boxed, stacked in a container and shipped out. One bonus: in all the commotion of the move, Mrs. Le Blanc ended up writing off her PowerShot as lost. Despite the massiveness of the move, Lisa took note of signs suggesting the situation might only be temporary: several pieces of furniture as well as all the dishes and cutlery had been stored in Varennes. Isabelle Le Blanc wasn’t quite burning her bridges. Lisa and Éric tried to convince themselves that the exile would last no more than a year, at most two. That Mrs. Le Blanc would hate Copenhagen. That her balloon would burst and she would come back to earth, that the wind would shift…and other reassuring aeronautical metaphors.

  Éric took comfort in at least one thing: the famous Anker turned out to be a truly nice person. The slightly shy fellow was smart and partial to good beer, pretzels and late night epistemology. No sudden stepfatherly squalls—chalk one up on the plus side.

  Then, all at once, the discussion turned into a quarrel. Just like that, in less than a minute. Lisa can’t even remember what the subject was—just a mundane burst of steam. A valve yielding under pressure. Slamming the door, she stormed out of the sanctuary, and they didn’t get a chance to make up before he shoved off.

  Since then, she has been getting sporadic updates. According to the latest report, the fool wasn’t even homesick; he had just changed rooms, after crossing the five-thousand-kilometre corridor of the Atlantic, as though it were floating amid the cumulonimbi and puffs of sedatives. The budgies, at least, had had the decency to die. The trip had disturbed their migratory patterns. The poor little creatures remained disoriented for days before succumbing one after the other within the space of seventy-two hours.

  She finishes emptying the pail into the sink, wrings out the mop and comes back to the living room. Stationed in the doorway, holding the vacuum cleaner, her father surveys the premises. She steals over to stand beside him. Sheltered under the massive door frame, they seem to be waiting for an earthquake.

  Lisa sighs. “We could celebrate Christmas here.”

  “Here?”

  “In the living room. We could decorate it, put up a tree.”

  “There isn’t even any furniture.”

  “We’ll eat on the floor. On a tablecloth.”

  “A Christmas picnic?”

  “We’ll make a big fire in the fireplace.”

  Robert opens his mouth to articulate one or two of the dozen counter-arguments that come to mind, but he holds back. He gives her a long look, his Lisa, who handled this absurd project like a real trooper. He wraps his arm around her shoulders and squeezes a little too hard.

  JAY TAKES A SCALDING HOT SHOWER, changes the bandage on her thumb. Pyjamas, coffee—real coffee—English muffin with lots of butter. The garbage bag sits regally in the middle of the living room, but Jay makes an effort not to look at it. She is prolonging the pleasure. She looks out the window as she eats her English muffin. The first snowflakes are falling in Montreal. She brushes the crumbs off the table and makes herself another coffee. The first one didn’t count.

  Then she goes to sit on the sofa with her legs crossed, the steaming cup perched carelessly on her knee, and contemplates the bag.

  She thinks back to an old discussion with Horacio, a recurring discussion, actually. Her former stepfather was especially picky about the garbage that went out of their residence. It was not enough to empty the trash cans into a green bag and then dump said green bag on the street corner. Each piece of trash had a status, an impact, a meaning. According to Horacio, some pieces of refuse had to be burned, some finely shredded, whereas others needed to be thrown into the sea at night under a new moon. He arranged the contents of his bags as meticulously as a visual artist preparing a major exhibition at the Guggenheim.

  Horacio Mejía Guzman Retrospective

  Treinta Años de Basura—Thirty Years of Trash

  Jay was skeptical, but her stepfather insisted on inspecting every single bag that left his house, a cigar jammed between his molars.

  “Nunca te olvides de Abimael Guzmán, Pequeña. El cabrón no cuidó su basura.”

  This Abimael Guzmán—no relation—was his preferred example. When he was captured, the leader of the Shining Path was holed up in a suburb of Lima above a dance studio suspected for some time of serving as HQ for the senderistas. The police kept an eye on the apartment but dared not take action. For a year, they inspected the garbage. In the morning, a fake garbage truck operated by fake garbage collectors would drive along the street and pick up everyone’s bags. Once the truck turned the corner, the studio’s trash was delivered to the offices of the national police. The investigators could easily see that the amount of trash was at odds with outward appearances. The director of the studio claimed she lived alone in the apartment upstairs; the bags, however, contained the refuse that a small commando might produce.

  For months, gloved police officers analyzed the slightest Kleenex thrown away by the studio’s occupants. There was no room for error. In the end, it was a tube of cortisone ointment that convinced them Guzmán was hiding out there. The fearsome terrorist was known to be afflicted with psoriasis.

  “¡Fíjate!” Horacio said as he sorted the contents of the house’s trash cans. “They had armed units stationed throughout the country, were responsible for thousands of deaths, threatened the police. They came within a hair’s breadth of toppling the government—and it was a tube of cream that was their downfall.”

  Although Horacio was not particularly fond of Abimael Guzmán, he insisted: esta historia lleva una lección, Pequeña. There’s a lesson to be drawn from this story. Take good care of your garbage.

  Years later, sitting in her living room, Jay catches herself coveting a jumbo-sized garbage bag with a greedy smile on her face.

  She drains her coffee and gets down to work. She delicately unties the knot and fends off the temptation to split open the bag and spread the contents over the floor. The rubbish is packed inside the plastic in chronological order, with the most recent trash on top, the oldest at the bottom. Even the humblest garbage displays a coherence that commands perhaps not appreciation but at least respect.

  Jay starts extracting the artifacts one at a time, sorting them as she goes. The contents, compressed under their own weight, immediately expand. In short order, Jay must divide them into little piles that soon surround her on all sides, like the shifting model of a boom town.

  Right from the very first layers, she thinks she has hit the jackpot: a reservation voucher from Park’N Fly for three months’ worth of parking, from October 11 to January 11. Someone has obviously gone abroad. The voucher bears no name, no credit card or licence plate number. Maybe the plane ticket will show up deeper in the bag.

  While she is busy analyzing a handful of chocolate bar wrappers, the doorbell rings. She glances at the clock. Who in the world can be dropping by at nine o’clock on a Sunday morning?

  Before she has a chance to press the buzzer, there’s a key rattling in the lock. Mr. Xenakis’s face appears at the bottom of the staircase. He waves his hand as if to greet her, but no, he stands aside to let in Alex Onassis and his seventy-two teeth, followed by a young couple, potential buyers. Even at this distance, Onassis smells of toothpaste.

  “Hel
lo, we’re here for the visit.”

  “Visit?”

  No time to protest—the group is already on its way up the stairs. Jay retreats to the living room, in the middle of which sits what could hardly be taken—even with a great deal of imagination—for anything but a garbage bag in the process of being dissected. Behind her, Onassis has begun his pitch about the space and light and the building’s exposure, while Xenakis examines the new light fixture with an approving air. Too late to conceal anything at all.

  Onassis swerves to the left—“…spacious bedroom…”—as Xenakis scans the room, distractedly jiggling his set of keys. His eyes land on the garbage bag surrounded by mounds of rubbish classified into concentric circles. Pointing at the mess with the key to the apartment, he attempts to utter a word, a sentence. The horror, the horror. Jay acts nonchalant.

  “I threw a cheque in the garbage by mistake.”

  Looking dubious, Xenakis stretches his neck, thereby emphasizing his natural likeness to a giant Galapagos tortoise. At a loss for words—in Greek or any other language—he shakes his key in a way that suggests all this must be cleaned up before…Too late. Onassis and the young couple step out of the bedroom and plant themselves in front of the scene.

  “And here we have, uh…”

  Onassis skids sideways, as if having trouble negotiating an icy curve.

  “…the living room. The living room and its skylight.”

  He continues to skid (not altogether inelegantly) toward the back of the apartment, where the visitors pretend not to see the soiled dishes, the dirty dishcloth, the empty pizza boxes. They leave after three minutes and forty-five seconds. Xenakis brings up the rear. Just as he is about to go downstairs, he glares at Jay, who waves back cheerfully.

  “Come again!”

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