Blackout Odyssey

by Victoria Feistner

  “Keep moving,” the bodyguard yelled down.

  “I know,” I replied, intending a snapped retort but it came out slurred.

  The main floor was deserted. The strings of lights were out, the only illumination coming from outside, through the big windows that lined the wall facing Bloor. Yellow and flickering as the marquee danced through its pacing, it was barely enough to outline the corners of displays. I crashed into one, spilling discounted socks. Then another, a cascade of tea cups shattering across the uneven linoleum. I pinballed from one display to another, until I reached the cashiers’ desk. I had to slink under the chain that dangled across the aisle, blocking me from the exit. The sign—Next Cashier Please—scraped across my back, the cracked plastic fizzing and hissing.

  Five feet to go. The air was as thick as off-brand toffee. The plaster Elvises watched me force myself to the door, head swimming.

  The door was unlocked. I stumbled out onto Bloor. The sun was where I had left it against the fake-matte-painting of a sky. I realized all the buildings themselves were cut-outs, like in an old western, props of plywood with no substance behind them. Flat. I looked up at Honest Ed’s and it too was painted plywood, the wood grain visible. All except the light bulbs; they were real. Tiny bulbs, flashing their eternal dance. Each one alive. One winked at me.

  I slipped off the curb and twisted my ankle, landing in a clatter with outstretched palms. Everything swam around me, colours blurring and smearing. The curb at least felt solid. I took off my shoes. My tights were ruined anyway and there was no broken glass or dog shit in this Potemkin world. Holding my shoes in one hand, I stumbled along the yellow line of Bloor to the streetcar, still half in the intersection, its door open, waiting.

  Leaning against the door frame, I asked the driver: “What did you used to be?” My voice still slurred.

  She glared down at me, her face in shadow, but clearly appalled at my rudeness—what a question to ask!—and I held up my hands in surrender. “I’m so sorry. That just came out of nowhere. It’s been a long day and I had a lot… I had just the one—it was a weird drink.” I climbed the steps of the 511 Bathurst streetcar, slightly surprised that it wasn’t made of cardboard or scrap wood, like a go-cart.

  A cough. I stopped, holding onto a pole for support, looking back. The driver pointed at the fare box.

  “Oh right. Sorry. Sorry!” I staggered back, fished the token out of my pocket, sending my phone flying, but I scrabbled and caught it with thick fingers that wouldn’t bend. “Sorry!” I deposited the token and the door closed. The driver rang the bell, and the streetcar rumbled into life.

  I had never imagined I’d be so relieved to hear a streetcar’s familiar clang. But such are dreams. Was I dreaming or was I drunk? I couldn’t tell. Falling into one of the single seats, I leaned my head against the cold glass. Only this afternoon I’d been on a bus doing the same, and the deja vu was like a thick blanket that draped over my consciousness.

  I breathed on the glass and traced a heart in the condensation, with D.M. in the centre, and then I closed my eyes.

  9.

  Dylan

  You didn’t mean the invitation to turn out like this. Camila told their immediate neighbours but she also mentioned it to the landlady and her husband, and they got their wires crossed and thought it was an open invitation to everyone.

  Now people you’ve only met once or twice while getting the mail are on your patio. You’re pretty sure that woman in the corner who is setting up candles runs the weird girly health food store next to the actual health food store. To be fair, you haven’t gone in; the angel dolls in the window put you off. But she brought candles and the couple who run the health food store brought grass-fed steaks and veganaise-dressed macaroni and they’re sharing greens with everyone, even though it’s made out of that stuff you’re pretty sure decorates salad bars.

  Camila brought food that she worried would spoil, and the Aldermans brought theirs too, and everyone’s brought drinks. So it’s not like you have to worry about feeding anyone. You brought out the potato salad since the mayo worried you most; it was well received.

  The bike guy from downstairs is doing his best to chat up Camila while explaining at length why he has all these paper plates left over; you can tell Camila doesn’t quite follow, but she’s trying to look interested while at the same time catching your eye as you hand a towel to someone you don’t know who spilled beer over their shirt.

  You take the wet towel back and head inside. Someone is on your couch, nursing their kid; that’s not a sight you expected and so you have to do an awkward dance into the kitchen while staring at the ceiling.

  Part of you is freaked out by all the people in the apartment, but part of you is enjoying it, too. It’s a weird sort of social occasion: it feels like a holiday, only there’s no ceremony, etiquette, presents or restrictive traditions. And you can’t remember the last time you went to a party where you didn’t know a sizable chunk of the people. Maybe school.

  Camila’s thrown off the bike guy and followed you in. She rests against the kitchen island, unperturbed by the breastfeeding stranger. “Do you know all these people?” she asks, picking a left-over piece of potato chunk out of the bowl.

  Mallory hates it when you speak Spanish in front of her, knowing she can’t follow anything but the basics. But then, she’s not here. “No, I don’t,” you answer Camila’s question, scraping plates off into the garbage. “I am not sure how this happened. But I don’t mind.”

  “It’s fun,” she agrees, although that’s not what you said. “A street party.”

  “Except in my house.”

  She laughs, though you didn’t mean it to be funny. She’s leaning fairly provocatively against the island, that kind of effortless, unaware-of-it sexy, at least until she starts biting at a hangnail. That’s less charming.

  You go back to scraping plates and clear the sink. “Heard from Carlos?”

  “No,” she says with a pout. “He’s off to visit someone’s family in the hills for the weekend, I forget where he said. He’s going to call on Monday.”

  You’d be worried if your fiancée was taking off for rural parts of Ecuador, but she seems nonchalant. “It’s only Thursday.”

  “Takes a day to get there. And there’s no phones.”

  “None?”

  She shrugs, then resumes chewing at the hangnail, and you realize she’s only pretending to be nonchalant. She is worried. But she obviously doesn’t want to talk about it, so you don’t. Instead you throw her a second towel. “If you’re going to hang out in here with me, then you can dry some dishes.”

  She looks surprised, but catches it, and laughs. “Those that don’t work don’t eat.” She says it in her very slow and accented English and then laughs again. “But in this apartment, maybe it’s eat first, work second.” She’s pleased to be telling jokes in her new language, already tackling the pile of soapy dishes.

  Shrieks and playful screams from outside, so you drape the towel over your shoulder and poke your head out the open door.

  A pigeon landed on the picnic table before leaping back into the air to dodge flapping hands and flicked paper plates. The pigeon circles around and then lands on the patio railing, near Bike Guy From Downstairs. You could almost swear the pigeon is staring at you, but then, pigeons are too stupid to stare in one direction at once. It coos and ruffles its feathers before settling in. Right there on the railing.

  “Think it’s rabid?” someone asks, mouth full.

  “I don’t think birds get rabies,” someone else answers. You don’t know either of those people.

  “That’s really gross,” a third person chimes in, a person you’re vaguely aware of as living nearby. “Maybe it’s sick or something? Maybe we should call the animal shelter or something.”

  “Animal shelters don’t care about pigeons.”

  “Sure they do.”

  “Not in a blackout. Their phone is probably down. Mine is.”

  Any
way, things are fine. You head back inside, and the pigeon follows you. It flaps right behind your head, startling you and everyone else, circles the apartment once, and then lands on the sideboard.

  “Shoo!” You flap the towel at it. This is all you need, bird shit to clean up. “Shoo! Go back outside!”

  The pigeon cocks its head and then very deliberately pokes at a picture frame.

  You stop your shooing motions, confused.

  It pecks again, delicately. It’s a photo of you and Mallory from last summer at a friend’s wedding. It’s only pecking at Mallory’s face, the same spot each time. It’s staring at you, you’re sure of it, as if it’s trying to tell you something.

  You step closer, leaning in, when suddenly a towel flies over your shoulder and onto the pigeon, which flaps, stumbles, and falls off the side table in a heap, tangled in the towel. Camila steps past you to scoop the pigeon up, carefully carrying the whole bundle out onto the porch. A flick with one hand to throw the bird into the sky. It falls for a moment then recovers and flies away, disappearing between two buildings, gone from view in a blink.

  The party-goers give Camila a cheer and she smiles and winks at you over your shoulder. You slap your towel back over your shoulder and clean up all the junk that fell over in the commotion.

  It’s silly, but it really does feel like that bird was trying to tell you something. But it’s just your imagination. Mallory’s probably waiting for the subway to come back on with her coworkers while out on a patio or something.

  You set the frame back upright and wash the dishes.

  10.

  eHarmony

  The clang of the streetcar jolted me awake. I sat up, surprised that I’d even been asleep, that the streetcar had moved and I hadn’t noticed. I wiped bleary eyes and rubbed my face. The heart on the window was gone, long faded. The lights overhead blinked out, then on; outside was rock face covered with bolted, swooping cables. Rumbling under my feet. Queens Quay terminal?

  Union Station. Maybe GO trains were working? I could take one westbound—I didn’t have any money—I hadn’t gotten a transfer—but I was still inside the TTC system. But I’d have to leave the TTC to get a GO train. The GO was on the honour system, wasn’t it? What was more honourable than getting people home in an emergency?

  Except I suspected it wouldn’t be that easy.

  We pulled into a tiled bay along a curved track, nestling against the platform. “Last stop,” called out the driver, her voice husky and low, like a blues singer. She got up, changed the sign on the front of the streetcar, and lightly skipped down the steps, obviously expecting me to follow her. Putting my shoes back on, I left via the rear entrance. As I alit the last step onto the tiled platform, the doors shut behind me. We weren’t at Queens Quay or Spadina Station. Normally the station name was etched into the walls, but these pale gray tiles were blank. I turned to the woman to ask where we were, but she was gone. I was alone, and the doors of the streetcar were closed behind me.

  There was only the one exit, leading to a long hallway covered in more gray tiles. Each careful step of my heels against the ceramic retorted like a shotgun, making me wince. The floor seemed clean enough, so I took my shoes off again, wiggling my toes against the cold freedom.

  Overhead fluorescent lights lit the way like daytime. It could be any time. I was underground and I don’t know how long I’d slept for. Half an hour to Union usually from Bathurst, assuming normal traffic and frequent stops, and not taking into account coming from another dimension.

  Plus, this really didn’t look like Queens Quay. There were no signs, emergency intercoms, garbage cans, anything that might be found in a regular TTC station.

  The cold tile soothed my feet. I didn’t feel thirsty anymore, or, indeed, hungry. My head wasn’t swimming, my back didn’t itch. I stopped to wiggle my fingers, deliberately testing whether I still had a body: I did.

  But I felt nothing. Not even the air on my hands from my breath.

  Perhaps that should have been disturbing, but after all the accumulated aches and pains of the day, it was liberating. No longer having mass meant I could pick up my pace, swing my arms and march. I felt great.

  The hallway at Queens Quay would have curved to end in stairs up to Union Station, but this corridor kept straight until it dissolved into a dot on the horizon, all the tiles identical and pristine.

  A fluorescent light overhead flickered and died. I tilted my weightless head to look up. A loud buzzing as it flared into life again and I winced, throwing my hand in front of my face.

  When I looked back along the corridor, the hallway now ended in a gray door. Stainless steel, with safety glass windows, and the little panels that meant ‘push to swing open’.

  So I did.

  The space beyond was immense, soaring upwards in a coil, a spiral of endless corridor. The coil had no upper limit, instead fading into something akin to daylight, but dimmer. Farther away. The floor was cracked and pitted asphalt and it was covered in plants in tubs. Tall, waving plants in rows, their spiky five-fingered leaves instantly recognizable. Powerful lights were set along the perimeter, hard to look at. I sheltered my eyes with my fingers.

  The circulating air was heavy and musky, almost to the point of having a taste. Mindful of my university dorm days, I tried not to breathe too deeply. “Hello?” I called.

  Some of the leaves rustled. “About time.”

  I followed the rustling. A guy about my age, perhaps a bit older or a bit younger: he had the hollow-eyed complexion of someone who doesn’t go outside much. Someone who plays a lot of computer games. He snipped at one of the plants, cutting buds. (I assume. I am honestly not an expert in any of this. I simply have friends who are… gardeners. All gardeners talk shop a lot. Even the ones who shouldn’t. Honestly, it’s not a big deal. Please don’t tell my mother.)

  He didn’t look up from his pruning. There was a small green-and-white ONTARIO GROWS fruit basket slung over his arm.

  “Hi,” I said, when it became clear it was up to me to start the conversation; only I didn’t know what to say.

  He regarded me warily, dark bags under his eyes. He looked me over, up, down, and I felt the urge to pirouette. “Not my problem,” he decreed, going back to his labours.

  “I’m sorry?”

  “Probably not enough, to be honest.” His nose twitched and he scratched at it. “Can you smell that? There’s a male bud in here somewhere. I know it.”

  “Is that bad?”

  “Very. It’ll spread pollen and then I’ll get seeds.”

  “I thought seeds were a good thing?” I kept my voice light, knowing full well seeds are not a good thing. (Like I mentioned, I have friends who are… enthusiastic. About ‘gardening’.)

  He sniffed in disdain. “If I was growing strawberries, maybe. As you can see, I already have enough plants. Seeds are useless. And just a hint of pollen’ll halt the THC production in a good chunk of my crop.”

  “Why is that?” I have a good voice for when I want to pretend I’m interested. As I suspected, the man started lecturing, starting at the very basics of plant reproduction while I followed him around the gently waving stalks of cannabis. All that was needed of me were hmms of acknowledgement, supplied at regular intervals, allowing me to keep my eyes and ears open for anything useful.

  Eventually, somehow, he found what he was searching for and began to trim away at the plant. “Why not just take it outside?” I asked. “Remove the problem plant entirely?”

  He paused in his ministrations to stare at me dolefully. “Because I can’t lift the tub by myself. It’s too heavy.”

  I smiled. “Maybe two people can lift it?”

  He stared blankly, skeptical. “There’s no way to get a grip.”

  I held up a finger for a pause, then jogged back through the rows to the edge of the curving walls. There was a grate somewhere along here… I’d seen something flapping. There: plastic sheeting caught on the inside of the grate, probably blown off a con
struction site and sucked in by the fan’s intake. A familiar feature of underground parking garages. Wiggling it loose, I bore it back to the gardener, who stared as if at a dead rat.

  Crouching at the base of the pot, I folded the scrap of sheeting until it was a couple of layers thick and about as wide as the pot, but twice as long. “Here. Tip the pot up?”

  He did, and I shimmied the plastic underneath. “You push,” I explained, “and I’ll pull. Ready? One, two, three…”

  It took a few tries to get the rhythm right, but once we did we could scoot the plant across the asphalt more easily than if we both tried to grip and carry it. He issued directions while I pulled backwards, and together we manoeuvred the male plant out of the row and against the far wall where “they” would dispose of it “later”. I didn’t ask specifics and none were offered.

  “That’s good enough,” he declared, straightening, stretching his back from being hunched. I didn’t hurt at all, since I had no body. “Now the others.”

  We accrued a line of plants, most in bedraggled stages of hacked-off pruning. “You need help,” I said, during a break. “Like an assistant.”

  “Meh. I’m happier down here on my own. Just me and my plants.”

  I knew that self-pitying tone. “No girlfriend, huh?”

  He bristled. “What do you think? Girls who want to live underground just grow on trees? I’m just going to walk into a bar and find somebody weird like that?”

  I sat back on my heels and gave him a frank assessment in return. “That’s exactly how you find weirdos, yes, but it’s not the only way, and there might be a better solution.”

  “Oh? I’m all ears.”

  And so I ended up explaining online dating to someone growing pot in an abandoned parking garage. We sat on wooden lawn chairs—I don’t know why so many of the strange encounters I’d had tonight involved patio furniture; perhaps Canadian Tire gives discounts—while he had a beer. I wasn’t thirsty. I wasn’t anything; it was delightful.