Six Degrees of Freedom

by Nicolas Dickner

It takes her almost an hour to empty the contents of the bag onto the floor. The various piles and sub-piles get organized into little neighbourhoods, move beyond the living room and colonize the corridor. As she takes in the scene, Jay strikes a conqueror’s pose, arms akimbo. She is the Citizen Kane of garbage.

  As far as receipts go, the pickings are slim. The oldest date back to June 15, the most recent to the first week of October. Everything was paid in cash. Not a single credit card number to sink her teeth into. The receipts point to a large-scale project: lumber, screws, rivets, soldering rods, compressor and spray paint gun. All told, Jay counts three dozen hardware invoices totalling several thousand dollars. She tries in vain to imagine an object whose construction would require such a diverse collection of material. It could be anything. She feels as though she is trying to put together a three-dimensional puzzle without knowing what purpose it serves, what it looks like, or even exactly how big it is.

  Jay focuses on food-related clues. True hunters track their prey by way of its food and excrement. Size, texture, distribution: the least turd betrays its maker. Jay stacks Tim Hortons cups, examines pizzeria and supermarket bills, compiles the wrappers of chewy caramels.

  After a long while, she reaches an unlikely conclusion.

  She can hardly believe it, but the facts are unequivocal. The pizzas are never bigger than twelve inches and are invariably Hawaiian. The bills show just one size of coffee, medium, double cream, and always the same BLT sandwich. The menus and sizes recur without the slightest variation.

  One person.

  There was just one person at 230 Gibson Street.

  One person shut up in that garage for the whole summer in order to build a secret device inside Papa Zulu.

  All at once, the trash around Jay takes on a different colour. This isn’t the collective testimony of a group but the story of one single life: intimate, detailed, yet abstract. Jay sets aside the least significant pieces of detritus. Tissues, greasy rags, an old toothbrush that was used to clean something filthy. No clues as to the gender, age, appearance or ethnic origin of this mysterious individual. At most, it can be inferred from the BLT sandwiches that this do-it-yourselfer was not a jihadi.

  Jay feels as though she is listening to the monologue of someone whose self-expression comes not through Morse code or semaphore but by means of a garbage bag—a modern mode of communication if ever there was one. She would give anything to get a glimpse, if only for a fleeting instant, of that person’s face.

  The bag is empty now and flat as a punctured balloon. Jay is on the point of putting it in the recycling bin when she feels a strange object in the folds at the bottom of the bag. She turns it inside out like a sock and, amid a shower of crumbs, a camera crashes onto the floor like a brick. A sliver of plastic flies under the couch.

  Flabbergasted, Jay scrutinizes the Canon PowerShot, which looks as though it has been through the war in Afghanistan. The lens cover is open like the eye of a dead animal. She instinctively squeezes the power button, but the camera is unmoved. Inside the battery compartment, an unknown hand has removed the memory card.

  Jay points the camera at herself, examines the black pupil of the lens. It sends back her image, bulging and perplexed.

  THE MONTHS SLIP AWAY LIKE a sigh, and Lisa is transformed. What for a long time was believed to be a contextual sadness soon turns out to be her true personality—along with a few grams of maternal anxiety, interspersed with the paternal propensity for self-destruction.

  Otherwise, everything stays invariably the same; daily life has taken on a greyish cast since Éric’s departure. The two confederates have patched things up, which is better than nothing, and now they Skype at least once a week. In the absence of the minutiae that lent a bland sort of charm to evenings at the Domaine Bordeur, their conversations take on more depth and substance.

  While Lisa’s life marks time, there’s plenty of action on the far side of the Atlantic. The first thing Mrs. Le Blanc did was to cook up a half-sister for Éric; little Lærke Høj-Le Blanc is already six months old and equipped with a sharp pair of incisors. What’s more, the expanding Le Blanc family have significantly raised their standard of living since arriving in Denmark, having traded the shabby trailer next to a strawberry field for a comfortable cottage near an arm of the sea. Éric now has a gabled room in a nineteenth-century attic, where he divides his time between intensive Danish lessons and a few programming contracts. That he was able to make a go of it so quickly boggles the mind. Still, Lisa suspects—even if the question remains off limits—that he’s busy keeping his mind off something by working.

  But then, doesn’t everyone try to keep their mind off something?

  Lisa is certainly of an age prone to mood swings, but, more to the point, she’s of an age to borrow Dad’s Dodge to go help out Mom, who has to “move an item that’s too big for the Yaris”—a thinly veiled allusion to the Sunday trip to IKEA.

  After mill No. 2 was shut down, Josée Savoie lost no time getting hired elsewhere. Nowadays she makes moulded plastic car parts. Her dignity and buying power have remained intact, together with her visits to the two-tone temple on Cavendish Boulevard.

  Robert magnanimously agreed. He doesn’t need the van. He is going through one of his lean times, between projects, during which he spends his afternoons in the garage honing blades while listening to jazz on an AM station from the US.

  It took Lisa quite a while to grasp the extent to which her father hates IKEA—the knick-knacks and the furniture and the hex screws with heads that seem scientifically designed to tolerate a specific number of turns, not one more, and that get chewed up as soon as you venture to take apart or reassemble a piece of furniture one time too many.

  Back when Robert and Josée still lived together, the winding aisles of the Cavendish IKEA witnessed many an altercation. Robert suffocated the moment he crossed the threshold, whereas Josée thrived inside the store like a lotus in bloom. When they got to the escalator, the couple went into passive-aggressive mode. The shopping inevitably ended—more often than not in the rugs and cushions department—with a full-blown shouting match. It would have been possible to summarize the enormous mistake this relationship amounted to by drawing their respective paths on a map of the store: Robert advanced in long, straight lines, like a tank, with minor swerves near the shortcuts he was itching to take; Josée proceeded in curves and loops, twisting back-and-forth movements punctuated by a thousand pauses. Meanwhile, seated at one end of the cart, Lisa manhandled the merchandise.

  The scene was repeated every Sunday, fifty weeks a year. Toward the end, Robert, fuming, refused flat out to set foot inside the store. Two months later, the relationship fell apart. Since then, Josée has remained convinced that IKEA was the cause of their breakup. This narrative is one of the little fictions that help her to hold on—and who is Lisa to contradict her mother?

  Which is why, on this rainy Sunday, with the parking lot overflowing in every direction, Lisa is hunting for a spot big enough for the Dodge. She must be at least three kilometres from the store. In fact, she’s no longer sure—strictly in terms of the land registry—that she is still on IKEA property. The airport really does seem very close, and Airbuses are hedge-hopping above the cars.

  The store appears to be crowded and Lisa regrets not having insisted on coming early in the morning, before it opened. Of course, her mother would have refused—the stampede atmosphere is an integral part of the experience. It’s not enough to engage with her contemporaries; she needs to collide with them. Shopping at IKEA is an intensely civilizational activity—or perhaps, on the contrary, one deeply rooted in the vestigial insect within us. In any case, Josée Savoie likes her IKEA overcrowded.

  At the escalator, Lisa is instantly struck by the indefinable scent of the place, a composite fragrance in which one’s nose struggles to distinguish wood, resin and varnish, cleaning products, oil, vanilla, cinnamon and glue, solvents, flame retardants and a faint note of beeswax. A pleasant
scent, comparable to the aroma of gasoline or a new car, and no doubt carcinogenic. Lisa wonders if the smell was synthesized by a chemist somewhere in a lab. IKEA No. 5.

  Their mission, Lisa and her mother’s, involves purchasing a new bookcase to replace the black Billy that stood in the corner of the living room, apparently still in good condition the last few times Lisa visited Huntingdon.

  “What exactly is the problem with your old bookcase?”

  “The problem?”

  Lisa waits for the rest of the answer, but her mother doesn’t deign to elaborate. That is her answer: just “The problem?” Though, come to think of it, Lisa isn’t even sure she heard an interrogative inflection, so she’s unable to determine if her mother wants her to specify the meaning of problem, or if this is the beginning of an answer or even a whole answer, or if the general ambiguity of the pseudo-answer isn’t ultimately part of a general strategy of jamming the airwaves. The old Billy most likely does not have a problem.

  The IKEA is even more labyrinthian than usual. The ongoing expansion has upset the customary geometry of the store. Here and there, plastic curtains block the way, masking aisles that have been put in or are in the process of being put in. Josée Savoie stopped finding her way in the IKEA after she broke up with Robert. She is no longer afraid of getting lost: she wants to get lost. Going astray constitutes a mystical act. To stop seeking one’s way is to stop desiring.

  In the bookcase section, she scribbles on her shopping list. She notes the product codes and their location in the warehouse, aisle and bin, she wavers between pale pink and ultra-gloss red, gets the code wrong, grumbles, erases and holds the product label out to Lisa.

  “Could you read out the numbers for me?”

  Lisa does as she’s asked. The litany drags on. One label for the Billy, another for the glass door and still another for the little low unit. The lead breaks. Lisa spots a pencil dispenser nearby. All those pencils, like bullets in a machinegun magazine. Somewhere in the depths of IKEA there are gigantic boxes containing millions of minuscule brown HB pencils with flawlessly sharpened leads. The lubricant of capitalism is made of graphite. Josée changes her mind about the colour five times, comparing light walnut and imitation birch. Each colour has a different code, which must be transcribed, struck through, underlined.

  “What do you think? Walnut or birch?”

  “Dunno.”

  “Come on, make an effort. Burgundy, maybe?”

  “Do you know why IKEA furniture has names and not just numbers?”

  “Hmmm. No idea.”

  “Ingvar Kamprad was dyslexic. He found it simpler to use a system with names.”

  “Who is Ingevar Kamprate?”

  “The founder of IKEA.”

  “The founder of IKEA. Who knows this kind of stuff?”

  “I had a school project.”

  After filling out, copying and tearing up three shopping lists, they finally have to think about getting out of the maze. The two women look around. It seems to Lisa that they are Hansel and Gretel in the middle of a medieval German forest. The arrows have disappeared from the floor and the information on the signs is contradictory. In every direction, all one can see are series of living rooms and offices, as if the rooms of hundreds of houses had merged into a single vast domestic magma. The store is a subduction zone: the real sinks beneath the showroom as though beneath a tectonic plate.

  Lisa stops in front of a vase with a Cretan motif. “We already came this way.”

  “No.”

  “I’ve seen this vase before.”

  “There are several like this in the store. I saw two or three of them.”

  “I think we took a shortcut in the wrong direction.”

  “You think?”

  Her mother plunks herself down on an ottoman bearing a Picasso-style bull, and reconsiders the vase. For a few seconds she tries to see it as a geodesic beacon and not a consumer item. So much for that idea. She writes the code down on her list.

  In the end, they find the exit purely by chance. They collect the boxes at the warehouse and head toward the cash registers. The scene is straight out of Ellis Island. The immigrants, pushing their loads of lamps, rattan baskets, chairs, drawers, mirrors, line up in front of the counters, beyond which stretches the promised land. Bunches of items lie abandoned: candles, packs of clothes hangers, cushions, wineglasses.

  Outside, the weather wages war. As Lisa runs to get the van, mammoth drops of rain explode like grenades.

  —

  Forty minutes later, Lisa gets down to assembling the new bookcase and its elegant patented glass doors. Her mother brings her a screwdriver, which Lisa waves aside.

  “I already told you. IKEA uses Pozidriv, not Phillips.”

  “It’s the same thing.”

  “It’s not the same thing.”

  Lisa takes out of her bag the sockets she borrowed from Robert, and her mother retreats before getting another exhaustive lecture on the evolution of the screwdriver through the ages. Anyway, she has to check on the slow cooker. On her way to the kitchen, she switches the TV on to create a tapestry of sound.

  Lisa lets out a loud sigh and focuses on the assembly guide. Ten steps, thirty pieces. She was hoping for something more complicated. In the background, the LCN news channel presents a story on Black Friday, which has just drawn to a close. When the Walmart in Long Island opened that morning, the surging mob almost demolished the glass doors, and a man was trampled to death. On the screen, customers can be seen storming towering stacks of Wiis and iPhones.

  In the kitchen, Josée stirs the boeuf bourguignon. There’s the clatter of the spoon and the lid of the slow cooker, the sound of the drawer sliding on ball bearings, followed by the distinctive pop of a wine bottle being uncorked. After a minute, Josée leans against the living room doorpost holding a glass of Pinot. Lisa thinks about the drug interactions but says nothing. After all, her mother is stable. Consistent, dull, sometimes annoying, but stable.

  “How is your father?”

  Lisa wrinkles her nose without taking her eyes off the diagram. She needs twelve 118331 screws, which she counts out and sets aside, and sixteen wooden 101351 dowels. Why the question about her father? Her mother rarely asks after him, and when she does, it never sounds genuine, more like the product of some internal calendar than spontaneous interest. On the television, the subject is the possible worldwide shortage of helium, which apparently is not a renewable resource. “Are birthday balloons an endangered species?” the commentator asks in a part tragical, part amused tone of voice.

  “Papa is fine.”

  Sixteen 101532 metal pins and twelve 119081 tightening washers.

  “He’s fine. He seems a little tired. I get the feeling he doesn’t enjoy remodelling houses as much as he used to. He’d like to stop, but…”

  Lisa’s gesture makes further explanation superfluous. Robert can’t stop. He’s in a financial and moral trap. Eighteen 101201 nails and a wall bracket. All parts accounted for; she can start to assemble.

  Her mother takes a sip of wine, her gaze clouded over and a vague smile on her lips. Post-shopping empty-headedness: better than lithium.

  THERE ARE ONLY TWO (2) years, three (3) months and four (4) days left to count down—five (5) days, considering the workday hasn’t officially begun yet. It’s 8:53 a.m., and Jay turns on the used Nokia she has just acquired at an Indian shop under an already forgotten alias. She is busy adding credit using a calling card when Laura arrives in the Enclave.

  “Glad to see you survived your virus.”

  Jay raises a jovial thumb and Laura immediately notices the bandage.

  “Hurt yourself?”

  “Cut myself in the kitchen.”

  Laura puts on a pained expression and starts up her computer. “There’s news about Papa Zulu.”

  “Already?”

  “A lot happened over the weekend.”

  “They found it in Long Beach?”

  “The container never arrive
d in Long Beach. It was transshipped onto a China Shipping Lines vessel. It crossed the Pacific, no port of call, and was probably off-loaded in Shenzhen between Thursday night and Friday morning.”

  “Same method as always?”

  “Same method as always, confirming what you said on Friday. Rokov could not have infiltrated the ports of Montreal, Caucedo and Panama. That would be insane. So the only other possibility is a hack.”

  “Which would be just as insane.”

  Laura shrugs. Jay realizes she is still holding the Nokia in her hand. She crosses her arms to remove it from Laura’s line of vision.

  “It’s strange, though. Papa Zulu is moving farther away from the US, yet the CIA is still interested.”

  Mahesh enters the Enclave and jumps right into the discussion. “Since when does distance make a difference for the CIA?”

  “Good point.”

  “Laura is getting you up to speed on the Papa Zulu case?”

  “Seems the gap is shrinking.”

  Mahesh fills his coffee machine; it’s going to be a long day.

  “It won’t last, if Shenzhen refuses to collaborate. In three or four days, Papa will be anywhere within a radius of two thousand kilometres.”

  “If the container actually leaves Shenzhen.”

  Jay has just hit a nerve. There is no indication the container was (or will be) transshipped toward another port, yet dozens of investigators are basing their work on that very assumption.

  Laura shrugs again. “At any rate, Papa Zulu may not have been off-loaded there. We’re still waiting for confirmation from the port authority. The Shenzhen government is probably trying to work this out internally. Either that, or they don’t want to get involved at all.”

  Jay shakes her head. “I don’t get it. The Shenzhen government? I thought Shenzhen was a sort of free zone?”

  Mahesh makes a familiar gesture drawn from his repertoire: please direct your question to Laura Wissenberg. The subject in question rolls her eyes.

  “I’m not an expert in Chinese geopolitics.”