Blink & Caution

by Tim Wynne-Jones

  “What’re you doing?”

  “I shouldn’t have come,” she says, pushing past him.

  “Yes, you should have,” he says, his voice rising. “You should have come months ago.”

  “It’s no use,” she says, shaking his hand off her arm.

  “You can’t go, Kitty.”

  “Watch me,” she says.

  For a big guy, Wayne-Ray is still quick on his feet. He gets to the door before her.

  “You don’t want me here,” she says.

  “Are you crazy?”

  She stamps her foot. “Yes!” she says. “Haven’t you been listening?”

  Then she starts beating on him, punching him, trying to heave his massive frame out of the way. He doesn’t even try to fend her off, just lets her go at him with all she’s got, while he bars that exit, like beyond the door was some sacred shrine she planned to desecrate. And all the time he’s saying, “Ah, Kitty. Ah, Kitty. Ah, Kitty.”

  Finally, there is nothing left in her — not one precious joule of energy, not one swear word. He guides her back to the couch, his hand cupping her elbow like she’s some old lady he’s helping cross the street. He gets her sitting down, then kneels, laboriously, and slips off her sneakers. When he’s sure she’s not going to bolt, he goes into the bedroom and comes back with a pillow and a blanket. He tries to coax her to lie down, but she won’t. He tries to unzip her jacket, but she slaps his hand away. Puffing from the ordeal, he finally backs off.

  He leaves and comes back a moment later with his guitar. He sits in the easy chair and starts playing a ballad she should recognize but doesn’t. She covers her ears until he stops.

  “Hate me!” she says.

  “What?”

  “Hate me, Wayne-Ray. It’s the least you could do.”

  “No,” he says.

  “I’m not going to ever get over this.”

  “I know,” he says.

  “It’s never going to go away.”

  “I know.”

  “And don’t you dare tell me I’ve got to be strong.”

  “I won’t.”

  Which is when she screams. She screams so loud and so long that somebody downstairs thumps on the ceiling. Then she stops.

  “Sorry,” she says.

  “It’s okay,” says Wayne-Ray. “Them and I don’t get along, anyway.”

  She chuckles. It’s a sad little excuse for laughter. More like a white flag of surrender than anything else.

  She doesn’t lie down so much as fall over. She drags the blanket out from behind her and haphazardly flings it over her aching body. When she is next conscious of anything, the apartment is plunged into darkness and she is sore all over, as if someone has been using her as a punching bag.

  Some time later, she senses Merlin hovering over her. Without letting him know she’s awake, she makes her face as ugly as she can. She hopes there is enough street light in the room for him to see just how ugly she is. She hopes he finds the spittle drooling from the corner of her mouth truly disgusting. She lets herself sag into the springs of the couch, disguising any shapeliness she may possess. She even manages to snore in a most unappealing manner. Meanwhile, her hand searches under the covers for Anna. She was reading it before bed, wasn’t she? If worse comes to worst and he tries anything, she’ll be ready.

  Step one: a Russian classic to the face.

  Step two: a couple of handy long-necked beer bottle empties, applied one to either ear, as if she were a cymbal player in the orchestra and Merlin’s head the crash site of the symphony’s climax.

  But then she’s not sure if there really are any beer bottles on a coffee table in front of this couch, or whether that was some other couch, some other place. So confusing. So many couches. Such a long day. And Anna is nowhere to be found. So it seems that only her ugliness can save her now. How lucky she is, she thinks, to be so deeply, profoundly ugly.

  “‘Everything is finished,’ she said. ‘I have nothing but you. Remember that.’”

  The words came to her, but she had no idea why. No idea who “you” might be.

  You call Alyson from a pay phone a block west of the squat. You wrote her cell number down on your arm before you ditched the BlackBerry. You phone her on a ten-dollar phone card. It’s eight o’clock. She answers with this annoyed voice, but you aren’t upset. It’s just that her caller ID doesn’t know you.

  “Alyson,” you say, “this is Blink.”

  There is a pause — long enough to wonder if you just made a very big mistake.

  “Who?”

  “I phoned you about —”

  “You!” she says. “But why aren’t you —?”

  “I ditched the BlackBerry. But the cops should find it soon. I didn’t like chuck it or anything.”

  There is another pause. And you look around you as if maybe the GPS on that thing can stick to a person even when he’s unloaded it.

  “Why are you calling me?” she asks.

  It’s a good question — a complicated question. It has something to do with a picture of a girl on a lawn overlooking a lake.

  “Hello?”

  “I’m here,” you say. “I’m calling because I want to explain what I saw.”

  “You said my father left the hotel with some people.”

  “Yeah. With. Not abducted or nothing.”

  “So you didn’t see the footage?”

  “Footage?”

  “The CCTV footage from the hotel. Closed-circuit television? It was on the news.”

  “No way,” you say. “What about it?”

  She pauses. It’s quiet right now down at Trinity and Front, which is where you are standing, shivering a little. You can hear her swallow.

  “There was duct tape on his mouth,” she says. “And around his wrists. And the men were all in balaclavas.”

  “In what?”

  “Those ski masks that go right down over your whole face.”

  “Not when I saw them,” you say. “Honest to God.”

  “They were holding him tightly by the arms. Real rough and kind of pushing him down the stairs . . .” She says it like she’s trying to convince you.

  “All I’m saying is that it didn’t look like that kind of shit was going down.”

  You don’t say more, because maybe you are crazy and this is all a crazy dream. Then she is crying.

  “Alyson.”

  “What?” she says, angry, sniffing hard. “And how do you know my name?”

  She’s not thinking clearly — who can blame the girl. But get to the point, Blink. “There was three guys in the video, right?”

  “Were,” she says angrily. “There were three guys.”

  “Okay, ‘were.’” Jesus. “Could you tell from the video that, like, one of them was a big dude, real tall and, you know, big like a bear. And one was real wiry, and one was short but built like a brick shithouse? Could you tell that from the pictures?”

  She sniffs again. “Yeah,” she says. “I guess. Yes.”

  “The little one, the brick . . . Well, his name is Tank.”

  There is dead quiet at the other end of the line.

  “You got their names?”

  “Just his.”

  She laughs, like you said something funny, but it’s just this nervous thing, because there is nothing funny about her voice. “What’d you say your name was?”

  “It doesn’t matter. I just wanted you to know that what I saw didn’t look like . . . didn’t look bad. Unless they tricked him or . . .” You shut up because you’re ruining it.

  “Blink,” she says. “Was that what you said? Is that your name?”

  Now it’s your turn to keep quiet.

  “Blink, we need to talk.”

  There. Was that what you wanted, you reckless, greedy boy?

  “About what?”

  “If you know stuff —”

  “I don’t know squat. All I know is what I saw. These guys were with him. They were talking together. And they busted up the ro
om — sure — but there was no yelling or anything. I was right outside the door practically.”

  The pause again, but this one is stiff and listening.

  Then you figure out how to describe what it was you saw, the thing you want to say to her. “Your father was not their prisoner. That’s all I’m trying to say.”

  There’s no sound at her end.

  “You’re lying,” she says. “You are one of them.”

  “No way.”

  “Yes, you are. You’re telling me my father abducted himself ?”

  “That’s not what I said.”

  “Yes, it is.”

  “Hey.”

  “This is so wrong, what you are doing. This is none of your business. What are you? Some freak who gets off on other people’s misfortunes?”

  “No! No way.”

  “Liar. Why are you phoning me? What do you want?”

  Ah, there’s the thing. What do you want, Blink? What’s in this for you?

  “You want something,” she says, as if she’s read your mind. And then while your head is reeling, she hangs up. The line goes dead. And the coldness of a late autumn night rushes into the phone booth.

  The squat stands on the northeast corner of Cherry and Front. It’s a tired brick building — must have been an office once upon a time. The windows are all boarded up; the inside walls are falling down, smashed in. Wiring hangs from the ceiling like exposed guts. There’s a vacant lot across the street surrounded by a barbed-wire fence, and you’ve never been able to figure out what it was they were keeping in or keeping out. On the southeast corner, there’s a building sheathed in heavy plastic like it’s been wrapped up. Like it’s a mummy, a dead thing; your place is next. The whole area is under construction. The Distillery District. Used to be they made whiskey down here. Now they just make money.

  There’s this grate over a basement window in the back corner that looks solid enough, but you can move the whole thing, drop down into the window well, and then put it back in place over your head, like you were locking yourself in jail. Then you find your way to your corner of the building with a lighter, making sure not to step on anyone. You’re sharing the place with ten or fifteen people; it varies from night to night. The number of rats is higher.

  You don’t sleep so well, Blink. The wind comes pounding at the boarded-up windows of the squat like a wrecking ball. There’s no heat, no light. And winter is out there somewhere lacing on his skates. This place is coming down. You knew that all along, but you didn’t think that meant it was going to fall down all around you. That’s what it feels like tonight.

  Another condo will go up in its place. That’s all that grows in this part of town — condos — thousands of them all along the lakefront. Like all the poor people just upped and left town, and a tribe — a whole army — of rich people moved in from who knows where to take their place. You shiver in your Sally Anne blanket. You didn’t even change out of the BBU. No need to keep it clean anymore. Your breakfast days are over. Everything has changed. You pull on a ragged hoodie over your once-fancy duds, but you still shiver.

  Somebody upstairs clumps across the floor, and you swear at them loudly and then cower in your blanket, waiting for the guy to come down and beat the tar out of you.

  The night passes but just barely, with a D– for taking so long.

  You head out as soon as it’s light, looking for somewhere warm. You sit in Balzac’s down in the Distillery District. You can afford to today. You’re rich. You get yourself a big coffee and a Danish. You buy a paper, like you’re a real person.

  The story is front-page. Nothing you don’t already know. If Jack Niven has been kidnapped, there’s no ransom note yet. It’s all speculation. There’s a picture of him in his tie and jacket and his trimmed beard. Respectable.

  “Whodunit?” says the headline in the Sun. A spokesman for the Algonquin First Nations says it isn’t them.

  “We have our arguments with Queon Ventures,” says Chief Myra McIsaac, “but we plan on settling those disagreements legally and peacefully. This is not the way we do things.”

  Indians? You think of the Moon, the Snake, and the Littlest Hulk. Were they Indians? Were they militant environmentalists? That’s another theory. You never saw a militant environmentalist. What does one look like?

  You sit staring off into the coffee-scented air, still trying to shake the frost out of your bones. You’re rich. That’s what you got out of yesterday: five hundred and sixty dollars. Should have been six hundred, but you paid forty for your ticket to enter the weirdness. And what have you got left, Blink?

  Four hundred and forty-two dollars and fifty-four cents. That’s what’s left of yesterday.

  You head downtown, find a Future Shop on Dundas. You hang out in there, watching the televisions. You’re definitely looking worse for wear. Everything about you is kind of dragged out and night stained, except for your new well-fitting shoes. The folks in the store watch you closely, like you might lift something. Why aren’t you in school? Maybe you should scare them and buy an iPod. Make them smile at you, Mr. Money Bags and all. But you aren’t there for an iPod; you’re there for the news.

  And there is news. You can watch it on any of a hundred screens, some as big as your mother’s sitting room. You just can’t hear the sounds, like the words are a secret.

  You see the CCTV footage that Alyson told you about. It’s on CNN every few minutes. Those shadowy men lumbering down the painted-white concrete staircase, disappearing — like they’ve been burned up — in the too-bright daylight of the door to the outside. They show it again: Niven with his hands duct-taped in front, his mouth taped shut. They show it again, and there’s the Moon — you recognize his gut. And there’s Tank; he’s got the briefcase now. That big shiny briefcase. The Snake’s got his sleeves rolled down covering his tat. The briefcase — was that where the headgear came from, the duct tape? They show it again: those knitted faces and Niven, his hair all mussed up, like he’s been pushed around. His white-as-snow shirt torn. It wasn’t when you saw it. About the fifth time you watch it, you notice the little CCTV clock in the corner of the screen: 7:16 AM.

  And then there is a talking head and the words “Breaking News” tracking along the screen along the bottom. The next thing you know, there’s another video and it’s Jack Niven again, but now he’s the talking head — larger-than-life. He’s sitting looking out at the camera, and you think, they found him; he’s been rescued. It’s over. You move up close to the screen, but there’s no sound, so you just have to imagine what’s going on. It isn’t long before you realize he has not been rescued. This is not TV footage from a studio. It’s jiggly and jerky with a bright light in his face making him squint. He’s got a Band-Aid on his forehead. Behind him there is a wall of chipboard. Nothing else. His mouth moves; his pale blue eyes try to stay calm. His eyes don’t look like water off the Bahamas anymore, and the skin of his cheeks is not golden in the harsh light.

  And now the newsman’s talking head fills the screen, saying whatever it is that is happening, and every hair on his head is in place.

  “Can I help you?” says a voice behind you.

  It’s a worried-looking salesman — you’re standing way too close to the screen — a Pakistani guy with a turban and not much hope of getting a commission out of you.

  “No,” you say. “Just looking.” And you leave. “No, you can’t help me,” you say as you push open the door, but you’re just talking to yourself now.

  You kick around the city as the clouds gather. Someone kidnapped the sun and is asking a big ransom. That’s what was happening in the breaking news videotape. Those people want a billion dollars maybe. Something like that.

  When you think she might be awake, you phone Alyson.

  “I’m sorry,” you say. “Don’t hang up.”

  You cringe, waiting for her to swear at you, but she doesn’t speak at all.

  “I know what you think,” you say. “It’s not true. I’m not one of th
em. I don’t even know who they are. I saw something on TV, though. This morning.”

  You stop, not sure where you’re going with this.

  “I’m sorry I yelled at you,” she says. And her voice sounds semisweet, more like the girl in the picture in the short white dress.

  “It’s okay,” you say. “You must be real scared.”

  She doesn’t answer right away.

  “I saw your dad talking on TV, but it was in a store and there was no sound. So I don’t exactly know what’s happening.”

  She clears her throat. “It’s an organization that calls itself SPOIL.”

  “SPOIL?”

  “It means ‘Stop Polluting Our Injured Land.’”

  “Oh.”

  “Is that all you can say?”

  Suddenly she sounds testy, or maybe she got as little sleep as you did. And then you realize that she’s frightened. The abduction was real, whatever it was you think you saw.

  “So do they want, like, a lot of money?”

  “No,” she says. “They want my father’s company to drop its claim on the Millsap Lake property. Do you even know what I’m talking about?”

  “Yeah, sort of.”

  “Blink,” she says. You listen. She’s switched back to semisweet. “I need to talk to you.” Her voice is quiet. Somehow you get the feeling she’s walking herself somewhere, walking from one room into another. Yes. A door closes and the sound changes. She’s outside.

  “What?”

  “You told me you saw my father leaving with those men and he wasn’t tied up and they weren’t wearing hoods, right? Is that what you said, or was I dreaming that?”

  “Yeah. I mean, no — you weren’t dreaming it.”

  “So, explain to me about the hotel room. Did you see the room?”

  “Yes.”

  “And?”

  You take a deep breath. You feel this story welling up in you, like you can’t hold it back one more minute. “Okay. Here’s the thing. I live on the street.”

  “Where the Plaza is?”