by Sheena Kamal
If she’s alive.
A sad old husky wails at me from the window as I drive away from the animal hospital and rescue facility in the old Honda I found in the yard. I’d walked him, let him roam around with me in the clinic unencumbered, and left him with enough water and food to last until whoever is out on emergency calls returns. A sign on the window says that the hospital isn’t open on weekends except for emergencies, but they had left the spare keys to the Honda in an office drawer.
And technically, I haven’t lied to Seb about the hospital or being west. West is relative to a fixed point that I chose not to mention.
I think about the road I’m about to take, and wish in vain for the damp air and overcast skies that I am most comfortable with. Endless rainy days and soggy streets are usually nobody’s first choice, but they are a far cry ahead of what I’m headed toward now. To more snow.
6
Bonnie, that’s who she is.
She’s even said it out loud a few times, her words weak, scratchy and alien in this place. She hasn’t heard another voice since she’s been here, nothing but the birds in the trees, calling to each other. Fallen twigs and branches have made her a decent enough barrier to her new home. Enough to keep most of the chill out, and the larger animals, but Bonnie knows that it is foolish to rely on sticks for protection. They won’t keep away any creature that truly wants to get inside. But here, sheltered and alone, drinking from a nearby creek, Bonnie finally feels some measure of safety. Not from the four-legged animals—she isn’t stupid—but two-legged ones at least.
She wants her mother and father but they wouldn’t even know how to begin to look for her. The last thing she ever told them was a lie. She didn’t even say goodbye to her mom, she remembers that clearly. Lynn, that’s what she’d taken to calling her lately. Not even Mom anymore. Lynn was in the kitchen with a cup of coffee, waiting for Bonnie to come down. There was a single place set at the kitchen table with a stack of pancakes. They ignored each other as Bonnie ate, but when she turned her back to put her plate in the dishwasher she could feel Lynn’s gaze roving over her. This was not unusual. Lynn preferred to look at her when she wasn’t watching, but when Bonnie turned, Lynn was staring at the cup in her hands. For more than a year now, she hadn’t been able to meet her daughter’s eyes.
But Bonnie has another mother. She even wrote her a letter once when she was twelve, though she didn’t have an address to send it to. That letter took her so long to write that she remembers each word, remembers them because she’d thrown away draft after draft. She’d spent hours composing it and in the end threw the final letter away with all the others. But she knows what she’d written.
Dear Mom,
I know you don’t know me. My name is Bronwyn, but you can call me Bonnie. I like music and sports, but that’s about it. My parents (the ones that I live with) are Everett and Lynn. They’re not so bad, but they just don’t understand. Like, nothing. They just don’t get it. People always stare at us. Sometimes I don’t want to go out with them because I can’t take all the staring.
You never looked for me, but I looked for you. I don’t know why you gave me away, but I’m sure you had a good reason.
I don’t blame you, okay? I just want to talk.
Your daughter,
Bronwyn (Bonnie)
And then she had scribbled her email address and phone number at the bottom of the letter, just in case.
Bonnie is glad that she threw away that letter. It was full of lies, anyway. She never really liked music or sports and she sure as hell blamed her real mom for giving her up. Who wouldn’t? The only one who understood her was Tommy, whose dad walked out on him and his mom when he was just a baby, but Tommy’s so far away now that it might as well be another planet.
She closes her eyes and goes to sleep. Curled up on her side, her cheek pressed against the dirt, she doesn’t hear the quiet footstep move closer. She doesn’t see the eye pressed against a hole in her makeshift barrier. She doesn’t see the person step away, mobile phone in hand.
Part III
1
Some things are just too easy for the fabulously wealthy.
Like a regular ski resort where there’s a road that you can drive your Bugatti right up to the door on, tip the valet to park it for you, and then walk inside to enjoy a hot beverage before hitting the slopes. No, because that’s too simple. That kind of ski resort is only for your garden-variety millionaires. If you’re truly wealthy, you’ll go to the ski resort that is referred to as “the Chalet,” which only allows you to shuttle in from the nearby private airport for personal aircrafts, helicopter in directly, or, alternatively, have your driver take you to the bottom of the road where a hotel vehicle awaits you. Because your Bugatti will not get you past a treacherous access road reserved only for shuttles and hotel staff that must necessarily be live-in or fished from a nearby town. The only way they could make the resort harder to get to would be to surround it with a moat filled with dying peasants.
I pull into the small town near the base of the access road with a sore body, throbbing headache, an ankle that is probably permanently sprained (if not broken), and a shoulder that’s possibly dislocated from my jump out of a moving vehicle. And, to boot, I’m dressed for a wet Vancouver climate and not for a place that holds the record for highest snowfall in the country two years in a row. My poor rain gear simply can’t take the pressure and has frozen on my body, not even able to muster up a wind barrier.
I park the caretaker’s Honda in front of a diner, in between the two cars already parked there, one of them a repair truck, and shiver my way to the front door. All noise is sucked into a vacuum as soon as I enter. The woman behind the counter pauses her coffee making to stare and the two middle-aged male patrons turn to get a good look. The men are in thick jackets and snow pants and the woman is bundled up in a red woolen sweater.
“You the new cleaner?” one of the men asks, sliding off his stool. “For the big shindig?”
“Ah . . .” I want to nod, but all I can manage is to stand there making unintelligible sounds through my chattering teeth.
The man frowns, taking this as an affirmative. “They usually hire younger, with bigger . . .” He trails off, then looks to the lady behind the counter for support.
“Tits?” she ventures.
“Hair?” offers the other man.
“Both?” I say, when it’s my turn. I’m slightly warmer now, and actual syllables are manageable.
The man shuffles his feet and mutters something inaudible in reply.
“What was that?” I say loudly. “I couldn’t hear you.”
“I said, I’m heading up there just now, I’m night maintenance supervisor, so if you want a ride . . . that car ain’t gonna make it on this road, especially without snow tires, lady.” He glares at the Honda. “What the hell were you thinking driving that thing up here? I’m Carl, by the way.”
I take this as some sort of apology for the insult to my tits and hair. He’s not exactly the finest physical specimen himself.
“Carl here gets his foot in his mouth at least twice a day, honey, so don’t take him too serious. He’ll be all right to take you up,” says the lady behind the counter.
“You really ain’t gonna make it in that old shitpile. No offense,” says the other man.
I turn to Carl. “You’re not going to kill me and dump my body somewhere in the snow, are you?”
Carl, bless his simple heart, turns bright red. “Of course not!” The question is so outlandish that there’s no way he could have fabricated that kind of indignation within mere moments of hearing it unless he was telling the truth. Part of me acknowledges that even if those were his intensions, I would still take my chances for the ride. There’s a horse man on the mountain that might know a little something about Bonnie’s disappearance. Or at least why WIN Security is so concerned about it.
The lady behind the counter giggles. “Carl,” she says, shaking her platinum blond curls.
“Killing somebody and dumping them in the snow.” She smirks and goes back to wiping down the counter.
“Come on,” says Carl, downing the rest of his coffee and heading for the door. “Lucy from HR said you weren’t gonna make it today after all, but I thought I’d wait around just in case.”
I park the Honda out back and then follow Carl to his old pickup truck, outfitted with winter tires. We start up the mountain in silence, my favorite kind of companion.
2
Carl wasn’t kidding about the road. I thought the highway to get here was bad, but this access road is a sight to behold . . . or would be, I’m sure, if I could see more than a few feet in front of me. What I do see is enough to make me grip the armrest between us like a lifeline.
He doesn’t speak much during the treacherous drive that seems to wind its way up and around the mountain. To make matters worse, it starts to snow and our visibility is now limited to just in front of the headlights. Carl puts on a country radio station and hums along while I think about renewing my faith in a higher power. But it seems selfish to invoke one only when I need it, so I put all thoughts of faith behind me and breathe a sigh of relief when a building rises up in front of us, lights blazing, illuminating the dark valley around it. Carl parks around back.
I have no idea what time it is. It could be evening or the dead of night, I can hardly tell.
Carl’s voice intrudes. “We got a team of five day cleaners and two night cleaners. Maria used to be a swing shift, but she quit last week. It’s hell to get people up here to work. Most of ’em stay in the staff quarters ’round back or in town but I only live a couple hours away and my wife don’t like me to be gone all the time. You do your paperwork yet?”
I shake my head. We get out of the car and fight our way through the icy mountain drafts to the service entrance.
“Arright,” Carl says, once we’re inside. He keeps walking, but a blast of warm air hits me and I need a moment to melt. He glances back when he sees I’m not following. “You’ll get used to it, don’t worry. Come on.”
I force my feet to move. They’re clunky, attached to legs that have recently jumped from a balcony and out of a moving vehicle.
“Lucy,” Carl continues, “our HR gal, she’s off today, so I’ll get you a key and a uniform. You can talk to her in the morning when your shift is over. You know, they usually don’t start new people on the night shift but, hey, guess they gotta make some adjustments when the corporate people book the whole place.”
“Corporate people?” I ask, following him down a long hallway to a small office at the end of it.
“For some big meeting. VIPs and all that. Bought the whole place out, if you can believe it, though, to be honest, it ain’t such a large place. I think they use that to jack the prices up. All the people who can afford to stay here are VIPs but management’s been tearing their hair out for this weekend. Helipad on the roof’s had traffic like you wouldn’t believe. And everybody’s got their own security, which usually ain’t so much of a bother all the way up here.” Carl has become a real chatterbox once he got out of his truck, and the extra effort seems to have tired him out. He rummages through a wardrobe off to the side of the room and pulls out a pair of black pants and a black monogrammed shirt.
“Bathroom’s just across the hall there. Why don’t you clean yourself up a bit and come back when you’re ready. I’ll have a key programmed for you by then. Oh, and is that all you got?” He nods to my backpack.
“Yes.”
“Well, we can store that in here for the time being. No sense wasting time in the staff quarters right now. Shift starts in about ten minutes. They, uh, prefer the ladies have their hair pulled back.” The last sentence was uttered with Carl staring at a point somewhere to the left of my shoulder.
A minute later, glancing into the bathroom mirror, I see the problem. Matted on one side, like a rat’s nest on the other, and looking like it would scare away even the most industrial of combs, my hair has seen better days. It takes me a full ten minutes to wrestle it into a bun. After that, I wash in the sink and apply two fresh coats of deodorant. A girl can never be too prudent when it comes to deodorant. Then I put on my new uniform. It’s made of warm, soft material. A lot nicer than my clothes, that’s for sure. I make a mental note to keep them once I get out of here.
Carl is already changed by the time I walk back into his office. He has noticed my limp and the tender way I hold my shoulder. He’s too much of a gentleman to say anything about it, but I can tell what he’s thinking. Lucy must be desperate to hire someone like me. Carl, however, is not in charge of hiring, so he shrugs it off and moves on. He hands me a key card and walks me through the building. I take stock of the most luxurious chalet this side of the Pacific. High, vaulted ceilings, wood accents, and floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the valley below. We move through the lobby, meeting rooms, bathrooms, and kitchens. Tones are warm and soothing but each room still gives the sense of being in a large space. All guest quarters are occupied, Carl explains to me with a shrug, but the day cleaners are responsible for attending to them. Everything but the guest quarters gets cleaned at night.
I ask if he has a guest list with room numbers.
“No, we don’t clean rooms on this shift, remember? Plus, they don’t give us that information. Every morning day shift gets room numbers they have to take care of.”
With that, Carl introduces me to the four floors of guest quarters. All guests have separate elevator cards that will take these fancy people to their designated floor only. Only the first floor of guest quarters is set up like a regular hotel, with fifteen standard rooms. “For the assistants and bodyguards,” Carl explains.
“What’s the event?” Brazuca had never said outright what it was.
“Some kind of annual thing. Asian Partnerships in Holding Hands and Taking Over the Country or something.”
He smiles, but there’s some confusion and anger there. Given the nature of the housing crisis in Vancouver, immigration has been a hot-button issue in this province. Vancouver has become a hedge city where rich foreigners park their assets, drive up housing values, and price out the middle class, all while underreporting their overseas incomes to relieve their tax burden. Some of them don’t even live in their expensive mansions for much of the year, even though they’re the only ones that can afford to live well in the city and have luxuries like a yard. Even though Carl doesn’t live in Vancouver, he might have wanted to at one point, until his bank account balance put him out of the running.
“Damn government lets everybody in,” he continues. Maybe he’s venting, or maybe he’s hoping I’ll take the bait. But I’ve never been able to afford property, prime or otherwise. So immigration doesn’t bother me. Although before Bonnie disappeared, I had been saving for a deposit to move with Whisper into an apartment of our own, maybe something with a balcony.
I just nod like it’s the most interesting thing anyone’s ever said and keep my mouth closed. Carl eventually gets bored of hearing the sound of his own voice and shuts up. He gives me a swipe card to open doors to everything but the guest quarters and I spend the rest of the night cleaning the public spaces. I am not much of a cleaner but I compensate technique with the liberal application of cleaning solvents. Carl has left me with a cart and a to-do list. He’s presumably back in his office, napping, while he has delegated all of the dirty work to me. I’m so tired that I can barely stand, but I haven’t yet figured out how to find which of the WIN partners is here and how I’m going to get to him.
It’s the early hours of the morning and I’m mucking out stalls in the men’s bathroom off the lobby when the door swings open and a man enters. I frown. The cleaning in progress sign is just outside and I’m left wondering why anyone would be down here at this time.
“Cleaning,” I say loudly.
“Sorry, sorry,” the man says, about to back away. He slips a little on the wet floor that I mistakenly mopped first, before cleaning the rest. The ma
n clutches at the sink for balance. I back out of the stall, toilet brush in hand, and our eyes meet in the glass.
Brazuca’s jaw drops, mirroring my own astonished expression.
3
“Do you just wait by bathrooms to surprise me?” Brazuca says finally. It’s taken a minute for the both of us to get over our shock. He’s wearing the same clothes that he had on when we saw each other last, now rumpled almost beyond recognition after a couple days of hard driving. He takes in the hotel uniform worth more than my normal clothes, the neat hair pulled back, and lingers on my face, which is drawn and haggard and irritated by the proximity of so many cleaning solvents. Since I’m standing still, he doesn’t yet notice my sprained ankle.
I open my mouth to speak, but no words come out. Sorry I hit you with a tire iron, interrogated you, threw your car keys into the woods, and left you stranded in the middle of nowhere doesn’t seem to cut it.
“See, no weapons this time,” I say instead.
He eyes the toilet brush in my hand. I put it back in the cart and turn to him, palms up.
He’s not overwhelmed with gratitude. “What a relief,” he replies, rubbing the back of his head. “We have to stop meeting in men’s bathrooms, Nora. It’s getting a little weird.”
“Bridges were better.”
“Safer,” he agrees. “For me, anyway.”
We sigh, almost in unison. I remember the time when we were just silent alcoholics, without weapons and dangerous bathroom encounters between us. Brazuca is no doubt wishing for the time before he agreed to become my sponsor. Sometimes it takes just one bad decision to derail your life. I know that better than anyone.
He puts up a hand. “Before you say anything. Just give me a minute here.” I watch as he splashes his face with cold water, dries it off with a plush hand towel, rolled just so because I’m not the one who rolled it, and places it in the discreet laundry basket near the sink. Frowning, I pick up the towel and put it into my laundry basket. Then I add a clean towel to the stack. Carl was very particular about numbers. The cleaning cart is remarkably organized, with compartments for every little detail.