Blink & Caution

by Tim Wynne-Jones

  Captain Panic is at work. He isn’t happy about the incident at the train station. It confirms his most terrible fears about you. He doesn’t want you to think about what might be possible. He only ever wants you to reflect on how stupid you are.

  Shhh, you hear another voice inside you whisper. An Irish voice. You aren’t stupid, not a bit. Forget the fact that you are heading into what has all the outward signs of being some kind of trap. You are not blind. You told Alyson you’d be arriving by bus at four. Not by train at eleven. That’s how un-stupid you are.

  The train rolls on into overcast and leaves the lake behind. There are fields and woodlands, cows, an occasional barn, a silo. Then a glimpse of a highway to your left, clogged with cars heading west toward the city.

  You close your eyes but fight off sleep. Fall asleep now and who knows where you’ll end up? You rake your hands through your hair, catch a whiff of yourself, examine your fingertips, shake your head in sorry disbelief. There wasn’t time for shopping this morning, let alone a cleanup. And now there’s no chance of that. You have enough change to use a pay phone. That’s it.

  Keep on keeping on, keep on keeping on, keep on keeping on, keep on keeping on, keep on keeping on. Keep on keeping on. Keep on keeping on. Keep on keeping on.

  The rhythm of this train.

  There is a newspaper abandoned on the seat across the aisle from you. You pick it up, sit back down, stretch your feet out.

  There have been developments in the case of the missing mining magnate. A Toronto man has been picked up for questioning. You have a pretty good idea who that might be.

  You imagine Stepdaddy being rounded up by the cops with the BlackBerry in his pocket. But the smirk you had ready for this item doesn’t quite make it to your face. Where did this little act of revenge get you? It turned around and bit you — that’s what.

  Let him go, Blink. Let Stepdaddy go. It’s time to stop thinking about what you don’t want in your life. Look up, out. There’s the lake again. The sunshine that was glinting off the water so sharp it made your eyes hurt is gone now, and you can see rain out there on the horizon. You’ve never seen that before — rain a long way off. It’s coming your way.

  You turn your attention back to the paper. There are more serious developments. The protestors are calling for a mor-a-tor . . . a moratorium on uranium mining. You don’t know what that is, Blink, but you’re guessing it isn’t a prize. Behind the people with their protest signs, there’s a fence festooned with even more signs. There are Porta-Potties and trailers. Some kind of buildings beyond that. A tower. Flags flapping but not of any country you recognize.

  You get up and head down the car toward the restroom, swaying with the train, worse than any streetcar. You try to wash up a bit in the tiny room. Then you head back up the car and stop in your tracks.

  April is in the seat next to yours.

  She’s got her feet up, underneath her. She’s staring right at you. She holds out her hand, curled in a fist. Then she opens her fingers to reveal your money.

  You sit down beside her tentatively.

  “There’s two hundred and ninety-four dollars,” she says, dumping the cash into your hand. “And fifteen cents.” She drops a nickel and a dime onto the bills with her other hand. “I owe you sixty bucks. And close your mouth, why don’t you; you’re collecting flies.”

  She turns to look out the window. You close your mouth. You look down at the ragged bills in your hand. Then she turns back to you with a snarl and closes your fingers around the cash.

  “Hang on to that,” she says. “People can be so wicked.”

  What are you supposed to say, Blink? Thank you? What are supposed to do? Punch her face in? She’s looking out the window again, her arms folded tight around her. The light you saw in her eyes earlier is not there anymore. It was something she put on for her performance. Her mouth is turned down, hard. Her eyes are puffy. Her skin tired. She looks as if maybe somebody already punched her face in, though there are no bruises there that you can see. She looks entirely different from before, her hair for one thing. There had been all those hair clips.

  “My name is Kitty,” she says. “Not April.”

  You get up to find another chair.

  “Sit down,” she snaps. “Or I’ll steal your money again.”

  You sit. You look forward. She’s stashed your newspaper in the pocket on the chair in front of you. You should just take it and move. There are lots of seats in this car. Who knows what she’ll do next?

  “I’m sorry,” she says.

  Her hands are resting on her legs, her fingers curled a little bit as if she’s holding a couple of hand grenades. Then, as if she notices you looking, her hands relax, though the fingers are still curled. Now they look like the strong, weary hands of a fighter. The trainer has just pulled off her gloves and unwrapped the tape from her knuckles, but there’s no feeling in her hands. You used to watch the boxing with your father on TV. This girl’s a fighter, you think. But what fight is she in? What round is it?

  “I don’t live in Vancouver,” she says very quietly, without looking at you. “I’m not going home. Somebody rolled me last night for every cent I had, which is why I hit on you this morning.”

  You used to go to confession when you were young. That’s what Kitty is doing. She’s confessing her sins. You wonder why. You don’t trust her, but what more can she take from you?

  “Well?” she says.

  “Well, what?”

  “I told you my name; what’s yours?”

  She’s looking at you square in the face. “Blink,” you say.

  A sly smile cracks her lips. “Good name,” she says, before turning away again. You hadn’t noticed until then a fat paperback on her lap. Now she opens it and looks as if she’s reading.

  “Brent,” you say. “My real name is Brent.”

  “Hey,” she says, glancing at you. She looks pleased, and it lights up her face, if only for a second, as if knowing your real name meant something to her. Then she turns back to her novel.

  You sit stunned for another moment and then search out the piece you were reading in the Globe and Mail. It’s an opinion piece about how some people are “seeing red” over the protest; some people are talking about “Indians on the warpath.” Some people are calling the kidnappers no better than terrorists.

  “This is not how we do things in Canada,” said another guy, a spokesman for whomever. “These people and their never-ending land claims,” said an unidentified grouch. Then there’s an editorial from the Aboriginal Justice delegation, and this guy’s talking about how peaceful and respectful the blockade has been so far. How the Provincial Police have been taking “the high road” in this whole business. They’ve been using the Major Events Liaison Team — MELT, for short — and all you can figure is that the cops are playing it cool. Nobody’s getting his head busted. The writer says that, bottom line, no Indian would be crazy enough to do something like abduct a CEO when there is so much public support for the way they’re handling this thing.

  SPOIL? Who are they? The whole thing is very suspicious. None of the other environmental groups has ever heard of them.

  You put the newspaper down in your lap with a sigh. What is the truth of it?

  You turn to your companion. Her finger is on the page, and she’s sounding out a word. You look: Che-fir-ovka. She snatches the book to her chest. “Do you mind?” she says.

  Now you can see the cover of the book: a woman’s face against a dark background, ghostly clothes, downcast eyes, sad, full lips.

  “The names are all in Russian,” she says. “Mostly I just skip over them, but when there’s a new character, I sort of try to get it into my head.” She grimaces, grunts dismissively, then reluctantly opens the book again.

  “Why do you keep reading it if you don’t like it?” you say.

  She doesn’t look at you. “Because it was my brother’s favorite book in the world.”

  Oh, you think. A flock of questi
ons come to mind, but the questions are too jittery to land near such a grumpy girl. So you turn the pages of the newspaper, looking for something else on the story, your story, although it crosses your mind how odd this is — you and this girl reading together on a train. It reminds you of Granda and Nanny when you used to stay with them. When things started getting bad at home. Sometimes they would sit, just like this, in their living room, each in a chair, Nanny reading a novel and Granda reading the paper. You steal a glance at Kitty’s face, all concentration now. You smile to yourself and return your attention to the news.

  Oh, Blink, my smart friend. You have read more these last couple of days than you ever did in your life. Your brain is hurting from all the information in your brain box, flapping around trying to find someplace to roost, like pigeons scattered by a dog.

  You close the paper again and watch the storm roll in. The train moves inland again, so that the lake is just something you catch, a V at a time, between the hills. You miss it already — that huge lake. In all your walking along Queen’s Quay or out by the docks at Cherry Street or even out on the island when you took a ferry out there once, for no particular reason, you never knew how big this water was, how wide. And leaving it now feels as if you are leaving the last bit of your home behind. But then home kind of skittered out from under you, anyway, didn’t it?

  You stare out at the lake, the summer sun sitting hot and heavy on your sunburned shoulders.

  “Ah, there you are, lad.” It’s Granda’s voice, out of breath. “We were wondering where you got to.” The water laps against your bare feet. You cross your arms on your skinny chest. “Nanny has made shepherd’s pie,” he says. “Your favorite, Brent, unless I’m much mistaken.” You sniff, wipe your nose.

  Granda joins you on the sand. It’s a long way down for an old man.

  “They just need some time, boyo,” he says after a moment, his voice as gentle as the breeze. “Your folks are just going through a bad patch — that’s all.”

  She puts down her book, her eyes tearing from tiredness. The hour of sleep, two coaches back, took the edge off her weariness, but she feels as if there are months of sleep to catch up on, years.

  She told the boy her name. Her real name. It was a gesture — a down payment on the money she owes him. Strange, she thinks, in seven months with Merlin, she never once revealed her real name. That first night they met, when he was taking her to the party, he told her he was Merlin and asked what her name was. Guess, she told him, which is when he came up with Lalalania. They were in a freight elevator in some warehouse — not Drigo’s place, some other warehouse where people lived, as if in the parts of Toronto she knew, people were things you kept in warehouses. The elevator arrived at the third floor. He lifted the gate, and they stepped out.

  They passed a door with a yellow sign that said

  CAUTION: THIS DOOR MUST BE KEPT CLOSED.

  Caution. It became her name right that moment, and now she has left it behind. If Toronto had been her own personal hell, then where was this train taking her? Well, wherever it was, it was taking Kitty Pettigrew. She had dared to tell someone — a skinny street punk — her real name. She has thrown Caution to the wind, she thinks, and laughs. Then she turns, and the boy, Brent, is looking at her expectantly. He’s kind of sweet, she thinks, looking into eyes, which are so vulnerable, she wants to kiss them and hold his head to her chest, the way her daddy once used to do, a million years ago when she was not a murderer. A lifetime ago.

  “So, where are you really going?” says Brent.

  “Away,” she answers. He looks puzzled. “I’m not going to somewhere,” she says. “I’m running away from something.”

  “Ah,” he says, looking thoughtful.

  “What?” she asks.

  “It’s the opposite for me,” he says, poking himself in the chest.

  “Oh, yeah?” she says.

  “Yeah,” he says. “I’ve got this plan. I’m going to make some big-time money.”

  She takes his pointy chin in her hand, the way Merlin used to do to her but not so rough. “Well, aren’t you just the smartest thing on two legs,” she says.

  “Screw off,” he says, pushing her hand away. She laughs. “It’s true.”

  She looks out the window.

  “Why are you running?” he asks.

  “Because I killed someone.”

  He dismisses this with a snort. “Yeah, right,” he says. She doesn’t argue. She finds the button to make her seat recline, folds herself up in her chair, and gets to work on those years of rest.

  She wakes with a start, her fists at the ready.

  “It’s okay,” he says.

  She’s breathing hard, gulping in air. “Like you’d know,” she says. She swings around in her seat, scanning the aisle. In her gray eyes, he sees an army approaching. He turns to look, but there’s no one.

  “Hey,” he says, patting her arm.

  He watches her recover, calm down. Watches the danger empty from her eyes.

  “I was afraid maybe you’d snuck off to tell the conductor,” she says.

  “About what?”

  “About me being a murderer,” she says. “The conductor telephones ahead. And there’s all these cops waiting for me once we arrive.”

  He grins. “No way,” he says.

  And now she’s staring at him. “You’re on the run, too,” she says.

  He shrugs, tries to look away.

  She pokes his shoulder. “You are so!” she says. “Tell me.” Her demand is too loud — loud enough to disturb a businesswoman, who turns and glares at them over her reading glasses.

  “Sorry,” says Kitty, waving to her. “My brother here is such a dick.” Then they both sink low in their seats, convulsing with laughter.

  Kitty turns toward him, her face only inches from his. She sniffs. “Is it you or me stinking up the place?”

  He’s about to laugh, but she’s already tugging on his sleeve. “Tell me,” she whispers.

  “Tell you what?”

  “What you did.”

  “You first,” he says.

  She’s about to argue, but she stops, considers his face. “I did kill someone,” she says.

  “Liar.”

  “A drug dealer,” she says.

  “How?”

  “I cut his coke with rat poison and then stole all his money.”

  “Liar,” he says again.

  “The second part is true,” she says.

  “But you didn’t kill anyone.”

  “I did,” she says. “But it wasn’t him.” And before he can ask any more questions, she squeezes his upper arm tight and says, “Your turn.”

  He stares at her. He looks in pain, and she wonders what it is that hurts him so much. Then she realizes it’s her. She lessens the grip on his arm, rubs the spot with her palm. “Poor baby,” she says.

  A flicker of gratitude loosens some of the tension in his face but only reveals to her how much else he is holding in. He is not, she thinks, a boy given to secrecy. She doesn’t prod him. Doesn’t need to. She merely hooks his eyes and reels him in.

  “I kind of stumbled into this thing. Saw something. A big-time con job, as far as I can tell. And don’t say I’m making it up.”

  “Who said anything?”

  He grabs the newspapers from the pocket on the back of the seat and shows her the stories. She reads a bit. Glances at him, then reads some more. He waits patiently.

  “You saw this guy get kidnapped?”

  “Yeah, except it wasn’t for real. The CEO, this Niven guy, was in on it. It’s the truth.”

  He talks. The words tumble out of him in a stream so thick and fast, she has to listen with her whole being. There is no way he is making this up — no way this boy could imagine such a thing. He may be gullible, but he seems to have a pretty good grasp of this complicated story. On and on the story unfolds, and her weariness, while it doesn’t go away, backs off a bit, like crows do from roadkill when a car comes barrelin
g toward them. He is at the wheel of this car bombing down the highway, she thinks, his eyes on high beam. She likes his brown eyes when they will stay still long enough for her to see them. She watches between blinks to catch sight of him again.

  Then he stops, and though she doesn’t say anything right away, he waits for her to speak . . . waits for . . . what? Approval?

  “This Alyson,” she says. She waggles her hand.

  “What about her?”

  She rolls her eyes. “She’s obviously in on it.”

  He gets the victorious look in his eye. “That’s why I’m not going by bus, see? I’m not going to play into her hands. The cops would be all over me. I figured that out, easy enough.”

  She punches him in the arm. Not really hard, but enough to make him wince. “You weren’t listening,” she says.

  “Was, too.”

  She rolls her eyes. “Blink,” she says, “I didn’t mean Alyson was in with the cops. I meant she’s in on the kidnapping thing. She’s lured you up here to get you out of the way. Don’t you see that?”

  “I thought about that,” he says, not very convincingly. “But it’s not going to go down like that. As long as I play it my way and not hers, it’ll be cool.”

  She wants to hit him again — hit him hard. How can he be so naive? But she stops herself. “What’s she offering?”

  “Alyson?”

  “No, Her Royal Majesty Queen Latifah. Of course Alyson.”

  “She didn’t say. But I want a lot.”

  “Yeah, well it had better be.” Then Kitty throws herself back in her seat and folds her arms, shaking her head. “Whoa,” she says.