These things are known. Somewhere, they are known. But they are not to be spoken of.
And up and down the city, people pursued their lives, their own small braveries and defeats; they walked dogs and drilled holes in the street, wiped the noses of other people’s children. At the corner of Bloor and Spadina, just before dawn, a shirtless man pulled out a knife and began to cut his arms and chest, spilling gouts of raspberry blood on the sidewalk, and as the police took him away he spoke of crimes against order, of the subway cars falling apart in rot and atomic disintegration, entropy calling them home.
Later, at this same corner, a woman would stagger and fall, and hives would break out on her face. The panhandlers who sat on the newspaper boxes, blind drunk at ten in the morning, laughed at first, and then watched her twisting on the street, biting her own lip until she drew blood, and one of them ran and pounded his fist on the window of the bagel shop until he saw the waitress pick up the phone to call 911. Then he ran, staggering and falling with his friends, to the park down the block. They lay on the dead grass of the park and laughed again and wept.
In the hospital, the burned man dreamed of paper snowflakes, clean-edged and white and cool, falling to cover his bed. His body a field, extending through space. He lay beneath the blue light of the dream, the taste of dirt and honey in his mouth, and the paper snow filled the concave vault of space, this man his own world in his opiate sleep, the fire on the far horizon.
The first thing Alex thought when he woke up was that he had to make sure Susie was still there; and she was, though she had pulled the covers over her head and was nearly invisible. Of course, it was her apartment, so the chances of her leaving in the night were minimal. He moved closer to her, in the warm envelope of the duvet, running one hand along the curve of her spine and pressing his face into the soft skin of her neck, but she didn’t seem close to waking, and his second and much more rational thought was that he didn’t know what time it was, and he needed to find his insulin kit immediately.
He pushed himself out of the bed with an abrupt silent movement. The bedroom was chilly and dark, a heavy curtain over the window; he found his underpants and jeans near the bed, then crept into the middle of the room, going more by touch than anything else, and located his coat, and the fabric purse in the pocket. There was more light in the hallway. He left the bedroom, easing the door closed behind him, and sat on the hall floor to check his sugar. It was too high for a morning level, and it must have been much higher in the night. That was no good. Not as instantly life-threatening as a hypo, but it was the high levels that did the lasting harm, that set the capillaries overgrowing behind his retinas, that threatened neuropathy, kidney problems, heart failure.
Acting automatically, he calculated his dosage, drew up the clear fluid into a syringe and injected, tucked the used needle back into the kit. But this was a whole new problem; now he needed to eat within the next half-hour, preferably sooner, or his sugar would plummet.
The kitchen at the end of the hallway was small and cramped and rather untidy, but there was a large window looking out onto the backyard and the alleyway beyond. A dirty dish and cup in the sink, a kettle on the counter, a coffee maker; some bits of paper stuck to the refrigerator door, reminders about dental appointments and books due at the university library. Tentatively, he opened the fridge. A bottle of cranberry juice and a carton of milk, takeout containers with noodles and leftover chicken wings inside, part of a loaf of rye bread, a cinnamon bun in a paper bag, plastic-wrapped chunks of havarti and feta cheese, some organic rhubarb jam from a health-food store. On a shelf nearby, a jar of peanut butter and a tin of cocoa. He took the peanut butter down and made himself a sandwich, poured a glass of juice. He would have liked some hot chocolate, but he thought he should cause a minimum of disturbance, he shouldn’t seem to be laying claim to her kitchen.
About ten-thirty, according to the clock on the stove. He sat down at the table and looked out the window into the backyard, chewing the bread and peanut butter. It was a very clear, still morning, the sky a low field of white cottony snow falling slowly. Someone ran along the alleyway with a dog. Looked like a Labrador. Some kind of big dog, anyway.
Floaters. He’d noticed them already, of course, though he couldn’t say exactly when. Sometime after he came out into the light. Floaters, impossible to count how many, dancing like burnt-out novas at the margins of his field of vision. Tiny hemorrhages, the possible forerunners of something much worse; stress-induced explosions of the proliferating blood vessels. He couldn’t let this go on, couldn’t go on doing this to himself. He had to tell her that this was impossible, he wasn’t able to climb into ravines in the middle of the night or crash his normal routines without warning, he had to stop following her everywhere. Even if every minute that he wasn’t touching her was a kind of disaster. Suzanne Rae, his personal crack cocaine.
He was still eating the sandwich when the bedroom door opened, and adrenalin shot through his body so he could barely swallow. She walked uncertainly into the room in a bathrobe, and he couldn’t make out her face when she saw him – she was grimacing against the light, one hand shielding her eyes. She went to the sink, took down a glass from the shelf and ran the tap.
‘I don’t normally drink like that,’ she said with her back to him, and swallowed the water quickly, leaning on the sink.
‘Yeah. I can tell.’
She turned around, biting her lip and frowning. ‘Oh. I didn’t mean to imply…’ She pushed a matted bit of hair from her face. ‘Alex, I’m really glad you stayed,’ she said shakily.
‘I’m sorry about…’ he waved vaguely at the sandwich. ‘I had to eat. I know it’s not very good manners.’
‘Sure. Much better you should just drop dead.’ She walked to the fridge and took a can of coffee from the freezer compartment. He could see her breasts moving under the bathrobe, pale skin half-shadowed and secretive. She fumbled with the can and started to spoon coffee into the machine, and then halfway into the process she dropped the spoon on the counter and put her face in her hands.
‘I’m so fucked up right now,’ she said.
He stood and put his hands on her shoulders, touched the back of her neck. She smelled of sex and stale alcohol, and she had bits of twig in her hair. There was no limit to this.
‘I guess it’s just as well you met Derek. It helps if you know.’
‘I don’t understand everything.’
‘No. Nobody could.’
His skin was goosebumped, without a shirt in this cold room. He closed his eyes so he wouldn’t see the floaters, and crossed his arms under her breasts, holding the warmth of her against him, the curve of her back pressed into his stomach.
‘Tell me something pretty,’ she said.
‘Tell me about one of your places.’
‘I’m not good at describing things. That’s why I take photographs.’
‘But try?’
‘I don’t know. Have you seen the terraced garden in High Park?’ She shook her head, and he felt the movement against his lips. ‘There’s these waterfalls,’ he said, keeping his eyes closed. ‘They built this series of waterfalls and pools down one side of the valley. It feeds into Grenadier Pond. There’s stone bridges over the pools, and this stone pagoda where the ducks live, little brown mallard ducks. And flowers growing in the rocks all down the hill. There’s, well, I don’t know the names of all the flowers. Lilies I know. Some of them are kind of pumpkin-coloured, and others are more yellowy, like, like the inside of a nectarine. And there’s, um, these pale flowers, white with a kind of wash of purple or pink, on long stalks, and the ones like bottlebrushes, bright red and yellow. And green, all this green falling down the rocks, little tiny green leaves and blue flowers, and I think some pine trees? I don’t know if I’m remembering the pine trees or making them up. I guess it’s actually kind of fakey and pretentious. But it’s still nice.’