‘Call me,’ he said.
‘I will.’ She pushed back a bit of her hair, this new glossy mahogany, almost natural. ‘I’ll call tomorrow.’
‘Goodnight, Susie-Sue.’
She smiled. ‘I always used to know you were really wasted, when you called me that.’
‘I’m fairly sober right now.’
‘I know.’
There was no good way to leave, but he saw the light turn green and moved quickly, walking almost backwards and waving. ‘I’ll talk to you.’
‘Yes. Goodnight, Alex.’ Then he reached the sidewalk at the south side of College and the lights of the streetcar were arriving from the west, and he turned away, his hands in his coat pockets.
He had reached his house and was putting his key in the door when the red-haired man scuffled up the sidewalk towards him. ‘Excuse me? I hate to trouble you, sir, but I’m being held hostage by terrorists, would you happen to have any spare change, sir?’
‘Yeah, I must have something.’ He rummaged in his pockets for change and found a two-dollar coin.
‘Thank you very much, sir. I wouldn’t ask, only I’m being… ’
‘Yes. It’s all right. How are you doing?’
‘Oh, I’m doing okay, sir. I could be much worse. But I think maybe there was a breakdown in the system a while ago. Like a malfunction, if you know what I mean.’
‘Really?’
‘Yeah, because it was a while ago, I know that, but normally the cleaning systems should prevent that kind of thing. I think the government’s working on it, though.’
‘I expect they are, in their way.’ ‘Because you don’t want that kind of malfunction if you can avoid it.’
‘No.’
‘But I’ll tell you what confused me, sir. What really confused me was when the pretty people were falling from the sky. We need to think about that in an analytical way.’
‘Yes,’ said Alex, suddenly so tired he could hardly stand, supporting himself with one hand on the brick wall of the building. ‘I’m sure we do.’
‘Anyway, thank you very much for the help, sir. Because you’ve got to add it up, you know? And when you get five dollars and seventy-six cents, that’s a very good one, because when you’ve got that you can get a breakfast. I’ll let you go now, sir.’ And he turned and walked away, his ankles collapsing in his ludicrous women’s boots, under the veil of the snow.
II
The Susie year, he sometimes called that time in his life; and he hadn’t thought of it all that often, not recently, but there were pieces of memory, now and then, so bright and clear they were almost like fiction.
He remembered this, waiting in the parking lot behind the newspaper office, Susie and Chris inside, fighting again about something. It was a warm September night, the sky clear, the noises of the street at a distance. He sat down on the hood of Chris’s old car and fished a joint out of his pocket, lit it up and waited. There was a steel band practising somewhere, and pop music leaking out of one of the student pubs, and if you listened to them long enough they gradually melted together into some quite new and original style, full of offbeats and strange harmonies.
He wasn’t sure how long he waited. He never paid attention to how long it took, because he knew that she’d come in the end. That she always did. He’d finished the joint and was reaching for another when he heard the soft thud of the back door, and Susie-Paul walking across the asphalt towards him. His medic-alert bracelet flashed dull copper in the small flame from his lighter.
‘When’s the last time you checked your blood sugar?’ she asked, pulling herself up to sit beside him.
He passed her the joint, exhaling. ‘This afternoon.’
‘You gonna check again soon?’ She took a drag and handed it back.
‘I’m not sure it’s necessary. It was fine in the afternoon.’
‘Check it, Alex. You’re working into the middle of the night. And you know you don’t notice when you’re going hypo.’
‘That’s not even true.’
‘It’s true enough. Jesus Christ. One ambulance ride was enough for me, thank you.’
‘I have no memory of this.’
‘Of course you don’t. You were having a fucking hypoglycemic seizure in an alleyway off Bathurst, for God’s sake.’
‘Oh well. That was like months ago.’ He sucked in the harsh burn of the smoke. ‘Anyway, my brain’s been through lots of stuff.’
She leaned back on the car hood. ‘Chris is such a prick sometimes.’
‘Mmm.’
‘Yeah, well. Never mind.’ She took the joint from him and held it up between her fingers, against the dark sky. ‘So, I got these two press releases today. One was from the police union saying this year’s Our Cops Are Tops parade is on the 27 th. Which, imagine them sending this to us, I just don’t know. The other one was from some of the communists, a talk they’re having about how great everything is in Albania. On the 27th. What this says to me is that a frighteningly large part of the population is actively longing for a police state.’
‘Mmmm,’ said Alex.
‘We could declare a day.’
‘We could what?’
‘Declare a day. You know, like an annual thing. We Want A Police State Day.’
Susie laughed. ‘No, it has to be more obsequious. Please sir, may we have a police state? Please May We Have A Police State Day. We could have T-shirts.’
‘A logo.’
‘Press releases from an untraceable fax number.’
‘I can quote you under an assumed name. You can be Ramona Albania.’
‘Excellent.’
He exhaled slowly, watching a small blue drift of cloud move behind the trees.
‘Hey,’ she said. ‘I have something for you.’
‘Mmm?’ He turned his head towards her as she reached into her shoulder bag and pulled out a tiny origami fish, made from multi-coloured paper.
‘I found it someplace. I just thought you might like it.’
‘Hey. Thank you.’ He sat up and took the fish in one hand, its fragile brightness against his palm. ‘That’s beautiful. Thank you.’
‘Yeah, it’s nothing much.’
‘No, it’s lovely.’ He passed her what was left of the joint and sat with the fish cupped in his hands. For a while he said nothing, breathing the scent of leaves and tar in the air, the night moving like syrup, the slow stoned feeling that everything was surrounded with a penumbra of meaning, secretly connected at some deep level he could almost, almost grasp. She reached out and brushed her hand against his, the light touch moving through his whole body as she withdrew.
And then just as suddenly she was gone, dropping the roach to the pavement, the shades of pink in her hair shifting in the small light as she walked away. Up the street to the pay phone, Alex still lying on the hood of the car, watching her in the aura of a street lamp, glowing at a distance. It was always that quick. He saw her pick up the receiver, dialling someone. Someone else.
You can be sure of the presence of danger, but you can never guarantee its absence.
She cheated on Chris, everyone knew that and presumed that Chris knew as well; there had been someone named Gord, someone else named Mike Cherniak. Not Alex. Never Alex.
Some days she would flirt with any random freelancer or bike courier who came into the building. He could see her turning it on like a power switch, the shimmer, subtle but radiant, the way she brushed back her hair, the arch of her neck. And there wasn’t any purpose to it; the next time the same man showed up she was likely to be absent and distracted, as if she had proved that this was within her power and had no more need of him.
Alex didn’t think that it was the same with him, he thought that there was something different between them, sharper and more actual. But he knew he was probably wrong.