Blackout Odyssey

by Victoria Feistner

  Squints swivelled around, blinking with confusion—as the bewildered travellers bore down on him, holding out their paper transfers, asking endless questions in broken English. Only a few yards away, the shuttle bus’s back doors were closing. I wrenched myself free, then took off at a sprint.

  “Hey!” Squints shouted after me. Then: “Head Office wants to talk to you!” but yet another regular bus was already disembarking, spewing even more confused commuters into the overcrowded concourse.

  I wove around and through them, ignoring the stabbing pains in my heel, arm, and shoulder, before leaping onto the shuttle bus, twisting around to yell, “You tell Head Office to go fuck themselves!” just as the front doors closed.

  I leaned on the glass, breathing hard. The driver stared at me, confused. “What the hell? You all right?”

  “Yeah,” I said smoothly, running a hand down my blouse, trying to breathe normally. “Some crazy person tried to attack me. But I’m okay.”

  “You sure?”

  I nodded, vigorously. The driver craned around me for a second, but then shrugged and gestured for me to move away from the door. There was an empty seat near the front and I lurched towards it as the shuttle bus pulled away from the curb.

  I fell into the seat, peering out the window, spotting Squints at the edge of the terminal. I gave a jaunty wave. He responded, rather curiously, by making his hand into a mock phone, ranting into it, purple-faced, while shaking his other fist. I flashed him my middle finger and then leaned back, still breathing hard but starting to relax, the pain in my shoulder ebbing.

  At least I had a seat to Kennedy.

  3.

  Dylan

  You glance at the timer on the oven, forgetting that it’s out, its retro hands frozen at 4:13. Part of the reason you leased this apartment was the gas stove. One, the cooking is simply better, but two, it’s usable if the power goes out. Maybe not the pilot lighter, but that’s okay, there’s matches.

  The oven, of course, is a different story. Thankfully the roast was well on its way to being done, and if it stays in the well-insulated oven—provided you don’t forget and open the door—it should coast the rest of the way. Maybe it’ll be still rare in the centre but you can just give Mallory the end pieces. She won’t mind. She seems to prefer boot leather to properly cooked.

  The potatoes can be boiled on the stove-top instead of roasted, that’s fine.

  All that’s left is the balsamic for the vinaigrette. It should have been easy enough for Mallory to pick up on her way home, the grocery store is en route from the station, but she didn’t call back.

  You glance at the stove-top clock, blink, and then reflexively check the DVD player. Right. No power there either, not even a blinking 12:00.

  Watches. Where’s your father’s old watch?

  It’s here buried in your sock drawer. You should probably clean that out one of these days, but on the other hand, you don’t care. It takes thirty seconds to root through a drawer. What’s the hurry? You find the watch between two balled socks. Golden clunky ’70s style garbage that you’d never wear—ever—but it’ll do for now.

  Papa gave it to you thinking you’d be really pleased—and you were, but there was no way you could explain that it wasn’t the watch you liked, it was the memories. Getting to sit on the couch with Papa after he came home from work while dinner finished cooking. You’d play with the watch and its intricate links and listen to him complain about customers or brag about a good sale, one arm around your shoulders, the other with a glass of rum.

  Mallory told you a similar story once, about the clock on her grandmother’s mantle. She was allowed to wind it when she visited, it was a grown-up responsibility that they trusted to her, and she was only seven, and she remained proud of that for years until she found a similar clock at a garage sale and realized that it was both incredibly easy to wind and also had a hidden battery back-up. You’d both laughed, the dishes cleaned, second round of drinks, she told the story really well, you could practically see her face as she realized she’d been lovingly duped all these years.

  Clocks and watches. Time and memories.

  You asked if she’d bought the clock as a memento because at the time you didn’t know Mal as well, you didn’t know that she wasn’t particularly sentimental about stuff. For her it was all about the story, the anecdote that she could fashion from it to be carried in the back of her mind, ready for an opportunity; for you it was about holding the object and losing yourself in that singular moment, reliving it.

  That and you couldn’t bear to tell Papa how ugly the watch is. He was being so thoughtful.

  You slip it on and fasten it and it catches arm hair and pulls. God, it’s ugly. But it’s still ticking. You have no idea if it’s correct or not, it might have slowed down. Still, that shouldn’t matter for timing potatoes.

  It’s only when you get back to the kitchen that you remember you have a perfectly good tomato-shaped food timer on top of the refrigerator, coated in dust. Oh well. The detour was worth it.

  4.

  Scrounging for Change

  Normally in the course of a subway delay or ‘unscheduled downtime’, there are replacement shuttle buses on the scene. That’s what happened at Scarborough Town Centre, right? I confidently expected that by the time we reached Kennedy either the subway would be running again or the shuttle bus situation would be sorted out. There might be a lot of people, sure, but they’d have staff organizing and directing the crowd.

  Instead it was pandemonium.

  I slipped off the shuttle bus, wary. Even in the bus loop people were already pushing and shoving.

  “Sorry, folks,” the driver shouted from behind me at the people trying to push their way on while we disembarked. “I gotta go out of service. Gotta fuel up. Can’t reach anyone on the radio at the station.”

  “There’s no gas stations,” someone else shouted.

  No gas stations?

  “Whole city’s down,” someone else remarked confidently. “Just got off the phone with someone in Markham. They don’t have power either.”

  “I just called my brother in Newmarket. They’re down too.”

  Newmarket? Markham? Was the whole greater Toronto area without power? How does that even happen?

  The bus driver shooed me away from the door and I used my presentation case to push space for myself, the gathered crowd reluctantly backing away. But dimly, through the commotion, I realized what those two statements had in common: nearby pay phones. I could call Dylan!

  Fuck. I had no money. Not having any money on me was such a weird concept that I kept bumping into it, like an end table in a hallway. This was the first time I’d had my wallet stolen; I’d misplaced it at home before but never in a public place where its contents could get pilfered. I had no money and I still had to get home.

  I supposed I could bum a quarter off someone, but I really didn’t want to do that. It made me feel unclean, the idea of asking a complete stranger for money. And things weren’t that bad yet. Dylan probably wasn’t even worried. Maybe annoyed that I hadn’t called him back when I said I would, but it was probably fine.

  If the city’s grid really was down, I’d have to take shuttle buses the entire length, and that would take hours. Longer if I had to get off at transfer points and then re-board. And I didn’t have a paper transfer so I’d have to be careful to stay in fare-paid zones. Where to next? The station was a chaotic stew of people pushing, shouting, milling about aimlessly, and/or waving their arms at other people. Some people make like Kermit the Frog at the smallest thing; I don’t get it. But whatever.

  Focus, Mallory!

  Fuck, I was sweaty. Sweaty and hungry.

  Focus!

  Even in heels, it was hard to see past people’s heads, shoulders, and gesticulating arms, so I found a convenient lamp post in a concrete holder and hauled myself up on it to scan the area. Buses kept arriving but few left, and that was causing the build-up. But across the bus loop was a
bank of pay phones.

  I scrabbled back down, secured my presentation case, and began my swim upstream.

  The beating sun overhead and stress of the compressed crowd meant that B.O. hung in the still, humid air, almost a taste more than a smell. Sweat ran down my back like Niagara Falls. I felt disgusting and rapidly running out of my last nerves, but my goal was small: find a quarter; call Dylan before his handset’s battery ran out; reassure him that I would be home as soon as I could. Then worry about how I would do that.

  As a teenager living in a small town, I had had ample time on my hands, and one skill I’d developed from the time period was identifying and scanning key patches of ground where people might drop money and not notice. Since becoming an adult with a full-time job, I was less in need of spare change and so less mindful myself of picking up coins I’d dropped. Circle of life, I suppose. Like a deer carcass fertilizing the woodland soil or something.

  I paced around the phones, circling around by the entrance closest to the Kiss’n’Ride, eyes glued to cracks in the asphalt, ignoring anything coppery. People in a hurry, you see; that’s the key. Particularly men. Men because they are likely to keep their change loose in their front pockets. Then, when they run for their morning train, they jam their hands in the pockets for their metropass or their wallet, and coins are spilled in the rush. Bills too, sometimes.

  (Since women are more likely to keep things in a purse due to lack of pockets in their garments, they are less likely to spill change without noticing. I myself often have quite the collection of change in my big purse, which of course I wasn’t wearing today. If I had been, I wouldn’t be in this fucking situation, hunting lost quarters like a teenager outside an arcade.)

  I felt ridiculous—and tired, and angry—but my options were: hunt for coins or mill around aimlessly waiting for a shuttle bus that might not exist. At least on the periphery of the crowd it was marginally cooler and much less smelly.

  There.

  A glint of silver. I crouched down and picked out the dime with my fingernails. A whole quarter would have been better but it was a start. There—another dime. Not far off now.

  Across the street was the Kiss’n’Ride, the area where people dropped commuters off in the morning or picked them up in the evening. To my left, past the peeling-painted metal barrier, lay a wide, spacious parking lot, like a field growing glinting windshields. Definitely quarters out there—maybe even a loonie. But if I left the fare-paid area, I’d have the same problem getting back in that I did at Scarborough Town Centre. That squinty red-faced ogre had been really scary, and I didn’t feel like tempting luck twice.

  After a few more sweaty minutes of scanning the ground, I admitted defeat. I had two dimes. Still a nickel short. I sat down on the curb to figure out my next move.

  A group marched across the bus terminal, scattering people in their wake like dogs and seagulls. All dressed alike in expensive black business wear: suits on the men; high-heels and skirt-suits on the women, with unflattering buns and carefully applied makeup even in the sweaty mess of the afternoon. Leather briefcases.

  Lawyers.

  One of them, an older white guy with the shaved head of the recently balding, shook his cell phone in outrage. I couldn’t hear him but his body language and reddening face spoke to indignation. Probably at being delayed by more than thirty seconds; the faces of his colleagues were carefully composed masks. I imagine he was the sort of guy who blew his top over every minor inconvenience, having worked with various Joe Volcanoes in many different offices and careers over the years. One didn’t have to do very much to get caught in their crossfire—especially if one was junior and female—so believe me when I tell you I felt no sympathy, none at all, as I watched him pull something out of his jacket pocket while not paying attention and let a crisp green twenty flutter to the pavement.

  No one else noticed. None of them paid him any attention; one of the women actually stepped on the bill, momentarily spearing it under her heels, causing my breath to catch in my throat.

  No, no, no no no nononono…

  …and she was through the fence.

  Goddammit.

  I looked back at the phones, then made up my mind.

  I grabbed my presentation case, heaved it over the barrier, and slid through. The lawyers were all getting into a car, Joe Volcano still spluttering on about something. They drove away—cutting someone else off as they did so—and I hurried over. The bill just lay there. I swooped down and picked it up before it could flutter away.

  Yes, I was outside the paid zone, yes, I didn’t have a metropass, but now I had a solid twenty. Maybe you’re thinking that I’d go and break it somewhere for change for a phone—but you’d be wrong. You’d be focusing on the small plan when the bigger opportunity beckons.

  I tucked the twenty in my bra strap—I no longer trusted my pockets, and no longer cared about germs; I was rank and tired enough that whatever cocaine was on that lawyer’s money could only improve matters. Straightening up, tightening my ponytail, and thanking the heavens for people with more money than sense, I trotted through the parking lot with my presentation case slung over my shoulder toward the Kiss’n’Ride and the waiting taxis.

  I waved at the closest one, but before I could cross the street, I got sniped by a businessman in a dark blue pinstriped suit, dashing out from the shaded overhang and into the back seat.

  Weird. I hadn’t seen him. But then I hadn’t been looking at the interior of the Kiss’n’Ride. I’d missed the light, so I stood waiting. In the time it took for the light to change, yes, another person streaked out ahead of me and took the next cab before I could get there. Fine. There would be more soon.

  Making a snap decision, I abandoned the Kiss’n’Ride area and moved closer to Eglinton Avenue. Traffic flowed smoothly, growing my optimism. Not long to find a free cab now—lots passed by but with their lights off, already bearing passengers.

  But as I waited on the side of the street, that initial optimism began to ebb. Maybe I should go back to the station entrance, see if anyone else was going to Etobicoke, then band together to order a cab and split the fare. I had scrap paper in my presentation case and pens—so many pens—so I could figure something out. Probably. Probably more doable than the crazy idea I had in my head anyway.

  Ready to admit defeat and walk back to the station, I lifted up my case and saw yellow out of the corner of my eye. A cab! He was in the east-bound lane, and traffic was stopped. I waved at him, and he saw me, and waved back through the open window. But there was nowhere he could go.

  Hairs prickled at the back of my neck. I checked over my shoulder and yes—someone was swaggering towards the busy street: another businessman. What was the deal with these guys anyway? Didn’t they understand the time-honoured code of ‘finders keepers’ and ‘I called it’?

  What was I saying—of course they didn’t. These guys thought they came first in everything. Well, not today, buddy.

  I checked both ways (partly habit and partly because I am a sensible adult) and then I launched myself out into Eglinton (a sensible adult who sometimes launches herself into traffic). Business Guy moved to intercept. We’d both scented the taxi (bad metaphor, I admit) and were on the hunt. But I wasn’t going to let him beat me this time.

  Sidling between momentarily idling cars with my presentation case, splitting my attention between the business guy behind me and the traffic in case it started moving—I waved at the cab driver to pop the trunk so I could deposit the bulky case, and then breathlessly slid into the back seat just as traffic resumed, the blockage cleared.

  “Are you crazy?” the taxi driver asked me, bemused.

  “A little bit. How about you?” I tugged down my skirt as it had ridden up while scooting over the back seat, and peered out the back window. Business Guy had vanished. I relaxed. “Been a day. Did you hear that the power’s down all over the city?”

  “I did,” the driver admitted. The traffic light flashed green and he ret
urned his attention to the wheel. “The roads are insane. No one knows how to drive. Stop and go all the way from Pickering, at least. Where are we going today?”

  “As far as twenty dollars will get me,” I replied, pulling it out of my bra. His eyebrows leapt out of frame in the rear-view mirror. A young guy, perhaps new on the job. Certainly didn’t match the picture of the guy on the license hanging over the back seat (twenty years older and about fifty pounds heavier).

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means my wallet got stolen, I have no phone, this is all the money I have in the world.”

  The driver’s eyes flicked back between the road and mine. “How far do you think that’ll take you?”

  “In a perfect world, Etobicoke.”

  He gave a bark of a laugh. “It’s far from a perfect world, miss.”

  Didn’t I know it. So I flashed my watch. “Twenty bucks and a nice watch you can give as a gift to someone.”

  He smirked. “That’s not a valuable watch.”

  “No, no it’s not. But it’s not a junky watch either, and it’s new. I bought it last week. It’s at least worth another fifty. Saves you having to buy your girlfriend or niece or mom or someone a birthday present.” I mentally crossed my fingers.

  He wasn’t convinced.

  I sighed. “Okay. Plan B. I have some money at home. Grocery cash. Not that much, but it’ll cover the rest of the fare. Take the twenty and the watch as a deposit, and I’ll pay you the rest when I get home. How does that sound? Or you can let me off at the next corner; up to you. But you’d be doing me a huge favour, and that’s the sort of good deed that pays forward.” Good deed my ass; he was going to make the fare plus get a watch into the bargain. But it was a watch I’d bought on impulse and didn’t particularly like, so I didn’t care.