by Exile
Once the clients had left, I took a shower and checked my messages. There were a number of requests for sex that night, so I tallied up the best bids and e-signed the contracts. Before the car-sharing services had adopted self-driving vehicles, there was a decent buck to be made as a driver at night, since I had inherited an old Toyota. I had done some space-monetizing as well, but as the neighbourhood got dodgier, I found it harder to attract bids, and the bids I did get? I didn’t like having to sleep with my gun and security-anxiety like that.
But I’m an optimist. I always believed a guy could get by. Given my cash flow and lack of skills, there were always messages inviting me to seek my fortune overseas, and sure, I thought about it all the time. All of my friends had left for “Little Canadas” in West Africa or the Indian subcontinent, or China – doing call-centre stuff, or even some factory work. You could still be labour if you were willing to live friction-free, and the truth was, they did make it sound awfully tempting sometimes.
It’s just that…I love it here. I love Prince’s Island Park, especially in the fall. Riley Park. The Reader Rock Garden. Places my dad took me as a kid, so I guess they make me feel good by reminding me of him. Because of him, those places feel like parts of me, in a way. The smell of the dead leaves on the ground; the sound of the wind through the trees; the way the boughs of the trees arch over the promenade at Prince’s Island and make a kind of tunnel. I guess there are nice places anywhere, but it wouldn’t be the same. Visiting a nice park isn’t the same as visiting a nice park your dad took you to, after the plague had taken your mom, and it was just the two of you hanging on.
Sometimes I’ll just go down late at night and sit on one of the benches and look at the stars, feel the cool breeze on my cheek. You see a place at night that you usually only see during the day, and it’s like travelling to some other country. You don’t really have to leave to experience that.
That particular night though, I was all business. Four fucks was hard work, even with the pills. I wanted to keep my ratings up, of course, and the best time to get a review was right after climax, so I had to be on. Physically, it’s not that difficult, but mentally? That’s the challenge. Being engaging for people; being present; being playful. Everybody pays, but they want it to feel like they haven’t paid, you know? They want that old connection.
There’s always a buck in fighting or fucking, and I was getting a little old for the former. I could still handle myself, of course, but the risk-reward just didn’t make sense. Winning’s great, but even if you win, and you get hurt, it’s expensive to get fixed up. I understood why people stuck with it though. There’s always a buck in meatiness, things that involve flesh. People will pay to hear that thumping sound of a fist pounding at a belly; that tight-lipped hiss of agony. They want to be close enough to smell the sweat and see a guy or girl’s eyes roll back when their body gives up. They want to see the quit. And some people I know get intoxicated by being in the fight, like a buck earned that way is worth more than a buck they could earn some other way. I understood those folks, but I wasn’t one of them. Not anymore, I wasn’t.
Three women, one guy. Two of the women were regulars. One of those regulars was a financial type, and she was rough – almost like being in a fight. Always left me with bruises on my face and claw marks on my back. But a great place she had – high-rise apartment with a city view – all those lights stretching out in the darkness. Her bedroom wall was like a solid sheet of one-way glass, so it was like screwing in the sky.
When we were done, I handed her my phone and said: “If you wouldn’t mind.”
She smiled and gave me four out of five stars. Wrote that I could “take a licking and keep on ticking.” In the neon-blue light of the display screen, her eyes seemed solid and dark – like pellets or beads. Like the eyes of a mamba.
Right now, I’m playing a “baseball” variant of balero. If the block skips off the dowel, it’s a ball; if the dowel goes in, it’s a strike. I strike guys out more than you’d think.
Like I said, I’m good at it. Mexican good.
It hits me as I go to a two and two count that I’m probably going to have to leave. Maybe not tomorrow, but soon. The money’s gone – my dad’s money, that is. He’d sold off his dollars and gotten in on crypto currencies before the real panic buying started, which kind of made us rich for a while. Stretched it out as long as I could – monetized everything I could think of just so I could stay in place, but…
Three and two.
Four and two: walked a guy. That’s what happens with anxiety. Anxiety creeps in and the balero picks up on it, like emotional seismic.
I take a deep breath, let the balero block dangle and spin like a plumb line, letting the string unwind.
I think about tomorrow – Thursday.
Thursday’s my operational catch-up day. I do a little grocery shopping for the clients who are coming back on Friday. I work out. I do laundry, manage bills online. I often do routine maintenance and landscaping around the complex, whatever the condo manager has listed. Anybody in the city can jump in and make a buck on that. That kind of thing is first-come, first-serve, so time management’s critical. Thursdays I’m usually up at four-thirty a.m., taking an amphetamine to get a jump, but that’s going to be hell today. I don’t look at the clock when I can’t sleep, because then I’d never sleep, but I know it’s already past midnight. Four-thirty’s coming on like a freight train.
I quick-tug at the balero, trying to surprise myself – access some part of me that isn’t worrying. Dowel click-skids off the wooden head: ball one.
“You gotta be nimble, Cal,” my dad used to say. “The second you think you’re safe – the second you believe something’s solid – that’s when they get you.”
He never said who “they” were, but eventually I figured it out. “They” is always “us,” just people. Point is, it’s always somebody. Everybody’s got a reason, even if they don’t mean to get you in particular. If you’re in the wrong spot at the wrong time, the getting happens. That’s why you keep moving.
Dad got killed in Baku – where the Russian oilfields are. Just a regular audit team updating some downstream numbers for some company, when a mob rushed the refinery. Old story for Baku: working conditions are sub-human, and the Russians have never really gotten comfortable with foreign ownership of their resources. And Russian mobs fight – they don’t scatter and panic like others do. Saw it on the news – not my dad actually getting killed – but the riot itself, the flames, all the running around and shooting. I saw how it must have been for him.
I went down to Prince’s Island that day. It was just an instinct, a reflex. Like when you get kicked in the stomach, you double over, because that’s what your body does. Being in the park was as close to my dad as I could get – I could almost feel him again. I imagined him and my mom walking hand in hand, smiling at me. Spent that whole day there, just being. Being and wishing.
Funny thing was, a few days later, sorting through boxes of my dad’s things, I found the balero. I’d forgotten I’d lost it, had no idea why he’d had it, but it sort of felt like – maybe not a wish come true – but something to do with my wishes at the time. Like the cosmos saying, “We can’t give you back your folks, kid, but there’s this.” Or maybe it was just my nervous system seeking out something it needed. However it happened, the toy helped, it really did. Still does.
Hits me, that soon – very soon – I may never see Prince’s Island Park again. I’m not going to live in Calgary anymore, not going to be an Albertan, or a Canadian anymore. I’ve given it everything I have to stay, but I’m out of gas. Out of moves.
It’s not like I’ll be leaving a place; it’s more that I’ll be leaving myself behind.
I’ll become a ghost.
Man, if you could put your hand on my chest right now, you’d feel my heart slamming against my ribs. That’s not just worry I’m feeling. Not just anxiety. It’s bone-deep dread.
I feel the weight o
f the balero and focus on it like I have a million times before in the last few years. It’s real, so I’m real. I hold the dowel gently, but firmly, allowing for the free action of my wrist, elbow, shoulder. I dip my knees, because the key to balero is in your legs; I take a deep, restorative breath…then I give that string an abrupt upward tug.
Snake-tongue quick I lower my hand, and twist it so that the dowel points upright, allowing the block to settle into place. That’s the key: amateurs try to swing the block up and around, like a pendulum, but that never works. You pull up sharply, then adjust quickly, with the slightest possible movement of your hand. Let your body do the work. Your whole body.
Feels like time stands still when you’re playing balero, if you’re doing it right. That’s probably what makes the memories so vivid: the game removes the in-between time, makes you feel like you’re there again. If you could play it perfectly – really perfectly – you’d be everywhere you were before, all at once.
This is as real, and as solid, as I’m ever going to be: my mind and body in perfect harmony, here in this place, at this time. I’m in a groove now, throwing strikes.
I’m just going to play balero, and hold the morning off forever.
LESS THAN KATHERINE
Claude Lalumière
I ask the two detectives if they want tea; when they rang the doorbell, I was about to pour myself the first cup of the day. “Herbal,” I warn them. I try to avoid caffeine now – it makes my heart palpitate; my doctor says it’s my imagination, but I don’t believe her. I can’t resist the temptation unless I keep no black tea or coffee in the house. The cops each mumble something that I take to mean no.
I invite them to sit on the couch while I fetch my cup. They wait for me to come back to the living room, set my cane down, and settle in my armchair before they say anything.
The older cop, a man who looks to be in his early fifties, corpulent but not fat, with powerful hands, unruly hair, and a trim beard that tries too hard to make him look trendy, launches right into it. “Mister Cray, where were you last night, from nine to midnight?”
It’s been thirty-odd years since I was last interrogated by a detective. I am gripped with an intuition that this is somehow about Katherine, but it can’t be. Not again. I made sure of that.
“I go to bed every night by ten. I was here. Before you ask, Detective Logan: I was alone, and I can’t think of any way to corroborate my alibi.” At the word alibi, the two detectives exchange a glance and a nod, and I chide myself for using so charged a word. “I mean, if I need an alibi. You still haven’t said why you’re here. You can understand that it would make anyone nervous to have two police detectives show up on their doorstep first thing in the morning.”
Logan nods to his junior partner, a short-haired brunette in her mid-thirties with a stern mouth but kind eyes who was earlier introduced as Detective Mahfud. She says, “When did you last speak to your daughter?”
“Katherine?” So it is about her. I don’t have to lie. At least, not yet. “Katherine and I aren’t close. It’s been…I don’t know, three or four months? She came over for dinner one night, unannounced. Getting over a breakup. I didn’t pry. I was happy to see her. I so rarely do.” Maybe that was too much. Only give answers to what they ask, I remind myself. Don’t volunteer information.
Detective Mahfud raises her left index finger. “Rupert Shaw.” She uncurls the next finger. “Svend Patrickson.” She uncurls a third finger. “Teddy Atkins. Do any of those names mean anything to you?”
I want to lie, but then I’d have to remember that I’d lied, in case they question me again. My mind isn’t nimble enough to trust with things like that anymore. “Yes, yes, they do. But please answer my question. Why are you here? Has something happened to Katherine?” I ask that knowing in my gut that’s not quite why they’re here. Katherine is not the one something has happened to.
Detective Logan takes over. “Sir, these three men were found murdered last night. For formality’s sake, tell us how you know their names.”
“You already know the answer, clearly. They’re some of Katherine’s past boyfriends. The only times I see her are when she gets her heart broken. So I remember the names of the men responsible for sending her here crying. I’m always a little grateful to them. They never seem like particularly bad men, although I’ve never met any of them. I know my daughter’s not easy to love.” Again, I’m revealing too much. When did I stop being able to control what I say? Is it decrepitude or loneliness that makes me blather so much? Probably both.
I’m not so addled yet that I can’t hold up at least a minimal pretense. In a frightened tone, I ask, “Do you think Katherine’s in danger, too?”
“Sir,” Logan answers, “we can’t locate your daughter anywhere. We compared the contact lists of the victims’ phones, and hers was the only name that appeared on all three. She’s not at her apartment, and her workplace says she’s on vacation. She’s not answering her phone. Any idea where she could be?”
I suspect there’s only one place she can be. I answer, “No.”
Detective Mahfud asks if I remember the names of any other ex-boyfriends. My memory has become both erratic and unpredictable, yet a half-dozen names rise to the surface of my awareness. I list them for the detectives.
Logan’s gaze probes me. “You know, by this time, most people would have asked us how the men were killed.”
“I don’t appreciate your tone, Detective Logan. I’m sorry I’m not following your script.” I use the anger to hide that, yes, I already know.
He says, “They were stabbed.”
Of course.
He continues, “The weird thing is, they were killed at approximately the same time, but they live in three different sectors of the city. It would take at least forty minutes to go from one location to another. They were all killed the same way. Same wounds. Looks like the same weapon. The same killer.”
Detective Mahfud takes an envelope from the inside pocket of her jacket, opens it, and lays down three photographs on the table. I can’t help but stare at the gory images.
“Do these stab wounds look familiar, Mister Cray?”
The detectives know they do. They did their research before coming here.
When the five of us were still a family, we used to spend as much time as we could at the cottage up north. My wife, Jaqueline; our eldest daughter, Katherine; the young twins, Danielle and Denise. Holidays. Weekends. Whenever we could manage to get away. It was only a two-hour drive from the city. Jaqueline had inherited the place from her parents. It was a small one-room cabin that afforded no privacy whatsoever, but we were a close family and the place symbolized the wonder of childhood for her. To hear her say it, she’d spent her entire childhood there, exploring caves and, as a prelude to her later career as an archeologist, dug up old stones and shards and forgotten objects, and dreamt up fantastic pasts to explain her finds. She wanted to instill that same sense of wonder in our children. Jaqueline loved exploring and playing in the woods with the kids.
Starting at age eight, Katherine was allowed to go wander off by herself. It was two years later, the day after her tenth birthday, that she came back to the cottage with the stone dagger. She said she found it in the stream that runs through the property.
In some ways Katherine was very much her mother’s daughter: she, too, possessed a vivid imagination, the products of which she was always eager to share. Unlike Jaqueline, though, whose childhood daydreams had been filled with adventure, Katherine’s mind turned to the grotesque and the macabre. It was all too easy for her to concoct a bloody and murderous past for this rock that, Jaqueline and I assumed at first, time and erosion had shaped into the approximate form of a knife.
“Millions of years ago, a priest used this dagger to prepare sacrifices for the gods of his people,” Katherine said with a grimace, stabbing downward as if an invisible victim lay before her.
Jaqueline responded, “Millions of years? That’s a long, long tim
e. Are you sure there were priests back then?” Academia had made Jaqueline a little pedantic. I could tell she regretted the question as soon as she uttered it.
“Yes! But his people weren’t people the same way that we’re people. They were more like fish, except they breathed air and walked on two legs.”
We always encouraged Katherine’s fanciful imagination.
“Every wound made by the dagger let in a different god. The priests stabbed the sacrifices thirteen times. Thirteen wounds for their thirteen gods. The sacrifices never knew they were chosen. Because the dagger stabbed them from a distance. All the priest needed was to steal something that belonged to the sacrifices, and the dagger would find its victims. The gods swarmed the wounded bodies and ate them from the inside. The priest had to sacrifice all of his people to feed his unquenchable,” she stressed the word, awkwardly trotting it out for the first time, “gods. In the end, he had to sacrifice even himself. Then the gods died, too, because they were no fish-people left to eat. They’ve been dead for millions of years. The knife is still alive, though. Even after all this time. And it’s hungry.”
I ask her, “How do you know all this, Katherine?”
“Because the knife told me. Didn’t you listen to me? I said it was alive. It wants me to be its new priest.” Katherine paused for effect. She was a natural-born storyteller. “The twins will be my first sacrifices.”
She pointed the artefact at her sisters, who were two years younger than she was. Danielle stuck her tongue out and shouted back, “No we won’t! Sacrifice yourself!” Denise, always the crybaby, reacted in character and hid her sobbing face behind her stronger twin.
Jaqueline said, “Okay, Katherine, that’s enough playing with the knife. Daddy and I love your stories, but you shouldn’t scare your sisters like that. You shouldn’t threaten to hurt them.”