‘I wouldn’t…’ he started to say, but stopped himself; of course he had no idea what he would have done, and it would be stupid to pretend he did. He felt the whole shape of the past trembling in his mind, like a picture turning animated, in jerky stop-motion. Susie at the pay phone, up the street from the office, biting her lip. ‘Still,’ he said. ‘Still. You should have told me.’
‘Okay. Maybe I should have. Anyway, I’m telling you now. So you see what I mean? I couldn’t just say, oh, Alex is flipping out, someone else should deal with that. It was just – something I was kind of used to. It’s what I did. It was already what I always did.’
‘Where –’ he started, and then thought that was probably the wrong way to ask the question. He didn’t know how you asked this kind of question. ‘How is he doing now?’
She tore a strip of thumbnail off with her teeth, then seemed to notice suddenly what she was doing and put her hand down on the table. ‘I shouldn’t have brought this up,’ she said.
‘Is it… I’m sorry. I don’t know what you want me to ask.’
‘I just don’t want you to – I’m not looking for sympathy, okay?’ She picked up her coffee cup. ‘Okay, short version. He’s disappeared. But I’m working on it. I’ll find him. It’ll be okay.’
Alex frowned, running the bent stir stick in automatic circles through his tea. ‘I don’t think I’m quite getting this. Have you talked to the police?’
‘You know what? They really don’t want to know. You’d be amazed how much they don’t want to know about, about crazy people. Like you’re supposed to just, like it’s a usual thing to just lose track of them.’
‘How long has he… ’
‘Three months, give or take. After our mother – she had cancer, she died last spring. A little after that, Derek went off his meds, and he, he just got worse and worse, and then he was gone. He’s been on and off the street before, and he hadn’t spoken to either of our parents for years before they died, but he never cuts me off. Never.’
She put the cup down again. ‘He’s my twin, Alex. He doesn’t cut off from me.’
‘You mean he hasn’t before.’
‘Let me tell you. When I went to Vancouver? He phoned me every day. Sometimes three, four times. In the middle of the night, whenever. He’s always – he phones me, he comes to my house, God, I used to wish he would leave me alone. I mean, Derek didn’t break up my marriage, I did that all by myself, but it can’t be much fun having your brother-in-law going through the fridge throwing out all the food that’s been injected with mind-control chemicals. But the point is, Derek does not cut me off. If he has – well, he has, this time he has, and that’s got to mean it’s really bad. I have to find him.’
Alex stared at the table and took a breath. He thought of not saying what came next, what was obvious. ‘You realize,’ he looked up at her, ‘that he could be dead.’
She looked back, not angry, just very concentrated, very precise. ‘Yes. Of course I do. I know that he hasn’t picked up his disability cheques. And it’s not like I have these twin-magic superstitions, like I would automatically know if he died. But if he were dead there would be a body. There’d be an unidentified body of the right age, with the right dental work, and I do have a missing-persons report in. If he were dead, I think I would have found him. I think he has to be alive to hide this well.’ One hand moved back towards her mouth, but she stopped it, and gripped the coffee cup instead. ‘I will find him. That’s not even the part that bothers me. I’m just – honestly, Alex, I’m scared. This is different than it’s been before. I don’t know what sort of shape he’ll be in, I don’t know what to expect.’
Their hands were very close on the tabletop. She wouldn’t ask him for what she wanted. He would have to say it himself. And of course he would say it.
‘I could help you.’
She pinched her lips together, as if this were something she wanted so much she could hardly agree to it.
‘Really?’ she said softly.
‘Sure. I could come with you. I don’t mind.’
‘God, Alex. Thank you.’
‘I mean, if you want me to.’
‘Yes. I really do.’
‘Well. Then obviously.’
He knew he was a bad choice, a foolish complicating choice. He thought of Evvy and Adrian, the people who understood these things, who would have useful ideas. But he knew well enough why she hadn’t gone to them. Evelyn would have been perfect, she would have dealt with it calmly and efficiently and kindly, and she would have done it exactly the same way for anyone, anyone at all who walked through the door. Alex would do this, if he did it, not because it was the right thing to do, but because it was for Susie. Because still, even now, he would do anything she needed.
‘Are you taking pictures tonight?’
They were standing just outside the door of the coffee shop in a raw wind, wondering again what should come next.
‘The weather’s a problem,’ said Alex. ‘It’s harder inside, I mean you have to get permission more inside.’ He folded his hands into his armpits. ‘Look. If there’s some other way I can help – trying to find him… ’
‘You don’t have to worry about that part. Really. I talk to so many people on the street. Somebody’s bound to have a lead on him eventually.’
‘Yeah, just, if I can help, you know?’ He felt the sting of freezing rain on his face.
‘You could do one thing.’ Susie reached into her pocket. ‘The last address I had for him was a rooming house around here, kind of your neighbourhood. You could just knock on the doors there and ask if anyone knows where he went. I mean, I already tried, but not everyone was home, so it’s worth trying again.’ She fished out an old receipt from a bank machine, and pressed it against the wall of the building to scribble an address on the back. ‘Anyway, I was thinking about your photos,’ she went on. ‘Harbourfront’s a semi-public space that’s indoors. We could go down there together if you wanted to.’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Okay, sorry. I shouldn’t interfere.’
‘It’s not that.’ He thought again about what could happen if he touched her, and it was like a wave of vertigo, the abandonment of the rational world. ‘It’s really not that. I’m tired is all.’
‘Yeah. Sorry. I didn’t mean…’ She pressed the button to cross over to the streetcar stop, the car weaving towards them along its worn tracks.
‘Another time maybe?’ said Alex, as she flashed her Metropass at the driver. She was already halfway up the step, the doors sighing closed.
‘I’ll let you know when I find Derek,’ she said.
Alex turned on College and started walking to the west, his hands in his pockets. He only meant to go home. But his route took him past the little church again, and Adrian was standing outside leaning against a tree, smoking a cigarette.
‘Hey,’ he said. ‘I thought you might come back this way.’ He exhaled smoke, rubbing one slender arm with his free hand. ‘I’m taking a break from my duties as hired muscle.’
‘I find it hard to imagine you as muscle.’
‘I’m about as close to muscle as we get around here. We’re the church of the tiny weak saints.’ He reached into his jacket pocket and held out a pack of cigarettes, but Alex shook his head.
‘You know I live just over at Grace? It’s funny I’ve never seen you in the neighbourhood.’
‘We’ve only been at this church a couple years,’ said Adrian. ‘And it’s not like anyone’s standing on the street with a megaphone.’ He dropped the cigarette butt and ground it out with his boot, and he and Alex stood for a minute in the wind.