Hummingbird

  Back home, I attacked the walls and floors with a stiff brush. I disinfected the bathroom, dusted the furniture, and finished the laundry. I organized everything I hadn’t thrown out and fashioned traps for the remaining fruit flies out of funnels of paper and baited glasses. Finally, I unwrapped the rat trap and carried it into the kitchen. I braced myself before opening the cupboard, half-expecting the rat to launch itself at me, but found only savaged food containers and piles of little brown turds. I swept it all out, put the trap down, smeared the catch with peanut butter and slammed the cupboard door. The sun was coming through the window at a low angle, painting everything gold. An entire day had gone by. Too tired to put sheets on the bed, I collapsed on the bare mattress, the events of the past twenty-four hours settling around me—the revelation on the machine, the imagined storm—and as I returned to the face of the man in the truck, I realized who it was he’d reminded me of. He’d looked exactly like my father.

  I opened my eyes and found Dad frowning down at me—not a mental projection of the person he used to be, but his actual self, occupying physical space. I smelled his sour breath, felt his hand on my arm.

  “Dad?”

  “You okay?” he asked.

  I tried to sit up, and he eased me back down.

  “It’s all right. You were just having a nightmare.”

  “I was?”

  “Sounded that way.”

  I lay back and he smoothed down my hair, an unusually tender gesture. “Big week coming up. New teacher. New grade. It’s normal to be nervous.”

  “No,” I said. “It wasn’t about school. It was …” I looked at Dad, a hot pain stabbing my chest. “Something happened to you. I dreamed you’d died.”

  “Oh yeah?” He laughed. “Do I look dead to you?”

  I shook my head. But the truth was, he didn’t look quite alive either.

  “It was just a dream,” he said.

  I nodded. “Okay.”

  Mathilda came into the room, wagging her tail as she padded over to the bed.

  My clown nightlight cast a weak glow from one corner of the room. Dad’s eyes were heavy, like he’d been drinking. I wondered if he’d been looking at his magazines again—catalogues, I assumed, of ladies he was thinking about marrying (although I couldn’t have said why they weren’t wearing any clothes, or why the poses they struck made me feel like going to the bathroom). He adjusted my covers, then stood back, his face in shadow.

  “So what happened to me?” he asked. “In your dream?”

  “I’m not sure,” I mumbled.

  “Come on,” he said, with what felt like forced levity. “You must remember something. You said I’d died. How did it happen? How did I die?”

  In the dim room, he looked very old. I struggled to keep my eyes open, blearily gazing at the clown light. “You were …” The dream was fading, but I still had a hold on it. I could almost see it, shimmering under the surface of my consciousness. But before I could pull it out, the dream pulled back, dragging me down with it into darkness.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Once I’d set the apartment in order, the chaos of my life settled. The natural rhythms of the building returned. The clock made sense. I still thought about Jasmine and Kim, but my father’s death had put the situation firmly into perspective. A few days after hearing my sister’s messages, I phoned her in New Zealand, claiming to have been away, and she completed the picture for me, explaining how Dad had kept his diagnosis to himself until the last week of his life, how the cancer moved more quickly than even the doctors had expected, as if he’d made the conscious decision not to fight. She’d flown home to be with him at the end and said that he’d been heavily drugged, swimming through different periods of his life, speaking to her as if she were people he’d known in the past—a teacher, his mother, his wife.

  “Did he talk about me?” I asked.

  She hesitated. “Well … no. But he wasn’t exactly himself. Anyway, we need to talk about his estate. There wasn’t much. A bit of savings and the house. Dad wanted us to split everything evenly between us.

  “So I own half a house?”

  “I thought we could rent it out,” Eileen said. “Until we decide what to do with it. I know someone in town who can deal with the tenants. You’ll get a monthly cheque. You won’t have to do a thing.”

  The idea of anyone other than Dad living in the house felt strange, but it was a twenty-hour drive from my apartment, and I could think of nothing better to do with it. I hung up, feeling both relieved and ashamed to have gotten off so easily. I was deep in debt. The inheritance couldn’t have come at a better time, as if my father’s death had been brought about for the sole purpose of rescuing me financially. I tried to summon tears, but we’d been apart for so long that I could barely remember what he’d looked like. What memories I had were unclear, distorted by the dread I’d always felt in his presence, not of what he might do, but of what he might be thinking, his features eclipsed by the insurmountable force of his disappointment in me.

  My sister was able to forward me part of the inheritance, and I paid my overdue bills and reconnected to the internet, navigating to my email account, where I found messages from my agent and publisher, but nothing from Kim. I thought about having a drink, and gently pushed the craving away. The secret to quitting, I’d found, lay in taking pleasure from deprivation. I punished myself with three sets of push-ups and crunches, then lay exhausted on the floor, looking over at my bookshelf. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d actually read a book. I went over and ran my hand along the spines, feeling the old flicker of anticipation, the almost pornographic allure of climbing into another person’s head. I shut my eyes and selected a book at random, carrying it over to the sofa without looking at it, wanting to experience the first page without preconceptions. But the moment I sat down, a distinct noise came from the kitchen, the whisper of fur against wood. I looked back at the cupboard under the sink. The fruit flies might have gone, but the rat was still with me. I’d been checking the trap multiple times a day, seeing nothing but the locked garbage can, a bottle of bleach, and the turds the rat left behind, as if to mock me, or punish me, for depriving it of its steady diet of trash. Every time I swept out its droppings, rage would spike through my head and I would picture myself destroying the animal in outlandishly violent ways—taking a knife to it, a hammer, a bat. Crouched in front of the open cupboard, I would shine a light into its ragged hole and threaten it through clenched teeth, daring it to come out and face me.

  The rustling stopped. The instant I returned my attention to the book in my hand, it started up again, louder than before, as if the rat were not only watching, but deliberately taunting me. I stared at the silent cupboard for a full minute, then threw my book aside, strode into the kitchen, and tore open the door. I slammed the bottle of bleach in front of the hole and returned to my spot on the sofa. Before I’d read two words, the sound returned, more of a gnawing than a rustling this time. I went back and thumped around under the sink, thinking the noise would scare the rat away for a little while at least, but the gnawing started up again the moment I shut the door. I jabbed a fork down into the hole, splashed bleach all around it. If I’d had something explosive, I would have shoved it in without hesitation. For the better part of an hour, I sat cross-legged in front of the open cupboard, my book forgotten.

  “Come out,” I commanded. “Come out!”

  But the rat had finally gone away. Across the room, my laptop beckoned—an open portal to distraction. I went over and googled myself, finding a smattering of reviews of The Pole, most of them damningly ambivalent. I opened a new page and searched for adult webcams, my self-control unravelling. A pop-up ad for a dating site obscured the search results. I started to click it away, then paused, knowing enough about the internet to know that these advertisements were tailored to my specific needs and desires. They were trying to sell me something they thought I might use. I touched the link and a stylized pink and blue yin-yang fi
lled my screen. After I’d entered some basic personal information—age, location, credit card—the site invited me to browse through profiles of female members. Of the several dozen women in my area, only five were online, none of whom had profile photos. The youngest, Miss Bliss (Female, 19), sent me a cluttered shorthand of numbers, letters, and symbols, suggesting we meet that very night. A low buzz of fear ran up the back of my head. I ignored the message, sending tentative hellos to the other four women, but received no reply. I was just about to log out and return to my hunt for Jasmine when a new user came online, going by the name Twice Shy (Female, 28). Seven years younger than me. Unlike the other active users, Twice Shy did have a profile photo, not of herself but of a majestic white unicorn head. The photo gave me pause, but I sent her a message anyway, ignoring the notes from Miss Bliss piling up in my inbox. After a minute, a notification appeared on my screen:

  Twice Shy wants to chat with you now!

  I knew that I would be charged for activating the live chat feature, but I also knew that if I failed to accept the invitation, I would spend the rest of the night wondering if I’d done the right thing. The exchange would be completely anonymous. The fee wasn’t that high. I pushed the green accept button and a chat room opened, where Twice Shy appeared to be waiting.

  Hello, she typed.

  Hi, I wrote back.

  Her cursor blinked, before the next message came. How are you?

  Not bad. I slid my free hand down the waistband of my pants. Yourself?

  I’ve been better.

  My hand stopped. This was going in a different direction than I’d hoped.

  What’s wrong? I asked, out of politeness more than anything.

  People suck.

  I nodded at my screen. Yes, I agreed. They do.

  Why is that? Twice Shy asked. Why are people so horrible?

  That’s a good question.

  I’ve decided to give up on them. I’ve taken a strict vow of solitude. You do realize you’re on a dating site.

  Online doesn’t count. Besides, I’m only here for the penis pics.

  I laughed out loud, then typed lol for her benefit.

  I’m serious, she wrote back. I’ve been collecting them for years. I only take the unsolicited ones. I have nearly five hundred so far.

  Wow. Um … why do you do this?

  It’s an art project. I print them out on my printer.

  Really?

  Really. I’ve filled nearly a whole album. And not a small one either. One of those great big wedding albums.

  Do you show this book to company?

  I never have company, remember?

  Right. I inched my free hand towards my waistband again, uncertain how to take all this penis talk.

  I’m surprised you haven’t sent me one already, she wrote.

  I was thinking about it, I joked.

  Were you?

  No!

  It’s nothing to be ashamed of. It seems like the standard greeting these days.

  You’re telling me you wouldn’t find it strange.

  Not at all.

  That’s bizarre.

  Actually, it’s perfectly normal for male primates to display their genitals in certain social situations. One might argue that it’s abnormal to conceal them.

  Interesting perspective.

  Are you very lonely? she asked.

  I looked up from the screen, startled by the abrupt shift in direction.

  Yes, I admitted.

  Do you want to talk about it?

  At this point, I committed to the keyboard with both hands, opening up about everything I’d been going through, from the breakup with Kim to my father’s death to the rat that lived under my sink. I told Twice Shy about my paranoia, my isolation, my blocks of missing time, and she sounded genuinely interested. More than that, she sounded like she understood. When I started talking about time travel, she wrote, We should get married.

  I could feel myself smiling foolishly.

  Or at least go for coffee? I ventured, my heart beating a little faster.

  Where do you live? she asked.

  Close to downtown.

  What?

  I hesitated, then typed: Bank.

  A long pause came on her end. What direction does your window face?

  My body went rigid. Up to this point, it had been a harmless game. I hadn’t intended to reveal my true identity to her or anyone else. She had no idea what I looked like, what I did for a living. I still had time to sever the connection, to stop whatever was about to happen. I half-shut my laptop, then opened it again and typed: South.

  After another long silence, she wrote, Go to your window.

  I peered through a crack in the curtains at the low-rise across the way, not seeing anything unusual. Then, beyond the low-rise, in one of the taller buildings in the distance I saw a square of light going on and off repeatedly

  When I got back to the laptop, I saw that she’d written, Do you see me?

  The cursor blinked, awaiting my reply. Yes.

  I have coffee.

  I made it down to the lobby without running into anyone. Outside, the street was quiet, the sky an unusual shade of yellow, a fine mist dampening my face and clothes. The light blinked in the sky at regular intervals, like a beacon on a lighthouse. I walked towards it, zigzagging through the streets, occasionally losing sight of the building, but always finding it again. Two blocks away, I stopped and counted windows, then counted again, concluding that her unit was on the west corner of the sixteenth floor. I crossed the street to avoid the grub-like form of a person cocooned around a heat grate. A man appeared behind me, weaving down the sidewalk. I had the feeling that these elements were being strategically dropped into place, forcing me towards the increasingly ominous face of Twice Shy’s apartment building. The front door was propped open with a battered tennis shoe. I intended to walk right past, but a second, glowering man stepped out of an alley in front of me. I ducked through the apartment entrance, passing under dim fluorescents to a pair of elevator doors, one of which appeared to be permanently out of service. The glowering man followed me into the building. I frantically pushed the up button, wishing I’d thought to remove the tennis shoe. The elevator door jerked open and I leaped inside, noting the distinct odors of piss and old vomit. The man lurched across lobby, staring at me with red-rimmed eyes. I jabbed at the number sixteen, and the door slid shut on him.

  As the elevator shuddered up to the sixteenth floor, I exhaled and leaned back against the car’s fake wood paneling. The digital display above the door was broken, leaving some doubt as to just what floor I’d come to when the doors finally opened. I stepped into the empty hall, feeling that I’d entered the body of a huge sleeping animal. The walls were the colour of uncooked liver, the carpet a muddy brown. I tried to orient myself, heading uncertainly down the hall in what seemed like a westerly direction. A couple was arguing loudly behind one door, a television blaring porn behind another. The door at the end of the hall was open half an inch. I had no idea what lay behind it. I pictured a hulking man with duct tape, zip-ties, and a hunting knife. Obeying an almost suicidal impulse, I gently nudged the door open. Nothing. The interior of the apartment looked shabby but tidy, an empty living space illuminated by a shaded table lamp. I crossed the threshold, smelling freshly brewed coffee. A floorboard groaned under my weight.

  A chuffing noise came from the back room.

  “Quiet!” a woman hissed. Then louder, to me: “Is that you?”

  “Yes,” I croaked back.

  “We’re in here.”

  We?

  I closed the door behind me and followed the voice to a brightly lit kitchen, where a woman in sunglasses was standing beside a large yellow dog. The woman’s long dark hair was brushed forward to conceal much of her face. Her baggy clothes looked like they’d come off a men’s rack. The dog barked once and she made a sharp noise to quiet it. “This is Boris,” she said. “He’s harmless.”

  “Okay,” I sa
id, not moving.

  “I didn’t think you’d come.”

  “Neither did I,” I admitted.

  “I made coffee.” She pointed at the machine on the counter.

  “Just in case.”

  “Okay.” I still didn’t move, wondering if she could see me.

  “I’m not blind,” she said, guessing what I’d been thinking. “I just prefer the dark.”

  “I see.”

  “So do I,” she said, then shook her head. “Sorry, that was corny.” She fussed with something on the counter. Even with half her face obscured I could see she was blushing. “Do you still want coffee?”

  “That would be nice,” I said, disarmed by her awkwardness.

  The dog came over to sniff my crotch as the woman filled two cups and carried them through a second door out to the living room, the apartment having a circular layout. We sat on opposite ends of a small loveseat and Boris settled at our feet. In front of us, a framed poster of a white unicorn hung on the wall—a muscular animal rearing up on its hind legs, steam jetting from its nostrils.

  “I’m Zoe, by the way.”

  “Felix.”

  “Cool.”

  In the silence that followed, I could hear both the argument and the faint sound of porn continuing down the hall. The computer the woman must have been writing on glowed through her open bedroom door.

  “Sorry,” I finally said. “I’m not much of a conversationalist.”

  She ran her fingers through her hair. “That’s okay. Neither am I.”

  The unicorn in the poster looked unsettlingly realistic. I wondered if they’d attached a prosthetic horn to a horse, or added the detail digitally after the fact. “So …” Zoe said after a minute. “Do you want to see my art project?

  “Sure,” I said, wondering if it would involve unicorns.

  “Okay. Give me a second.” She went into the bedroom and emerged with a large photo album. I opened the front cover and felt my face get very warm. I thought she’d been joking about the penis pictures, but here they were, six different cocks on every page of one very thick book. With Zoe looking over my shoulder, I experienced a confused rush of embarrassment and sexual excitement. I started to laugh, but she remained perfectly serious. I cleared my throat and turned the page. The photos were obviously self-portraits, some showing a man’s entire naked body in a mirror, most confined to the genitals.