They cannot imagine, most of these men, that they could have had anything at all in common with Derek Rae, as he lay under his bridge, or stood on the corner of Parliament and Jarvis, trembling with the impending traffic and the bad chemicals in his body, looking for a girl who would accept money to perform a temporary rescue. But these men are linked to Derek now, all of them equally marked.
This is not Derek’s only tie to the city. Among the bleeding ghosts of his mind there are recent memories. He remembers, yes he does, the girl with fishnet stockings, who touched him and gave him her sickness. He remembers his sweet small sister, his one love, her face streaked with black as if she were part of some archaic drama, spotlit in darkness.
And there is another memory, one that Derek himself does not recognize as part of this pattern.
There are many transient pains in Derek’s life. He is weak and withdrawn and passive, most of the time, and he has been beaten on the streets for saying strange things, he has been robbed of his disability cheques on several occasions, his nose has been broken. He does not expect much better from the world, and he doesn’t think much, or for long, about all the small terrors and abuses. But he has not forgotten, not really; it’s only that he has no idea of the role that he played, and there is only one person who could tell him, and she is someone he certainly will never speak to again.
Falling
I
‘No, but I think monkeys are more morally superior than people,’ Zoe was saying. ‘Because monkeys don’t use like landmines and stuff, do they?’
‘Unless they were really horrible monkeys,’ said Tasha, and then they were at the park.
But there was no one playing soccer, no one their age at all, only a few old people walking their dogs along the grass, and a man on a bench, a skinny dirty man, talking to himself.
‘Well,’ said Lauren. ‘This is pretty random.’
‘Was that guy here before?’
‘Yeah, he could seriously creep you out.’
‘We should just go to the mall. It’s getting too cold.’
A woman with an apricot poodle walked by, glancing with disapproval at the girls’ shortened skirts. The man on the bench moved one hand in the air, frowning and muttering.
‘Maybe I should go home and write my assignment anyhow.’
‘Oh!’ cried the man on the bench, suddenly, loudly. The girl turned, startled. He lifted his head and stared around the park. ‘Once upon a time there was a little girl,’ he said, his eyes fixing on them suddenly. ‘Yes. Once upon a time there was a little girl.’
Zoe’s hands flew up over her mouth and she moved backwards. ‘Oh my God!’
The man dropped his head again, and his voice slid down, a low constant murmur, a rhythm rising and falling.
‘Oh my God,’ Zoe repeated, her eyes wide. ‘That was so scary.’ The girl opened her mouth, but only a small noise came from the back of her throat. She folded her arms around herself, sickness pitching up in her stomach. Lauren touched her arm.
‘That was really bad,’ said Tasha.
‘They shouldn’t allow it,’ said Lauren, with a little nervous frown. ‘They shouldn’t let people like that even be in the park. He could be seriously dangerous.’
‘This is not fair. This is like, this is like he’s stealing the park nearly.’
The man’s face was full of hunger, lost and empty. Adults and their needs. What they wanted. The geography teacher’s damp hand on her thigh.
‘Pervert,’ she muttered, feeling the sting of tears at the edge of her eyes.
He said something again. He said something about a girl.
She hated him.
‘Hey!’ called Lauren, raising her voice, putting an arm around the girl’s shoulder. ‘Get out of the park! We want to walk here without being harassed!’
It wasn’t clear if the man heard her. He lowered his head and shook it from side to side, slowly, and kept on talking.
‘I said get outta here!’ said Lauren, pulling away from the others, walking closer to him. He looked up at her and scowled, as if he were confused, and pulled his shoulders in.
‘But about the sodium hypnothol, it’s not that simple,’ he muttered. He was chewing his lower lip, it was soft and bloody. ‘Because I said to her, you have to look at the system as a whole. It’s a problem of chemicals.’
‘Weirdo,’ said Tasha. She hesitated, then took several fast steps forward, and he shrank away. The girl stepped forward as well. There was another feeling stirring now. That he pulled back from them. That he was afraid. The other girls around her.
‘Excuse me. But you have to look at the system as a whole,’ he repeated softly. He put his hands up to his mouth, his hands were shaking.
‘This is not your park,’ said the girl, her voice abrupt and half excited. ‘Leave us alone!’
‘Yeah. Yeah.’ Megan giggled in terror and excitement. ‘ Why don’t you go home?’
Zoe was hanging back. ‘Maybe we shouldn’t get so near him,’ she said softly. ‘He, he might grab us.’ But somehow that made it even more sick and wrong and thrilling, yes, perhaps he wanted to grab them, probably he did. But he was a little broken weak man, anybody could see that. The girl felt gooseflesh on her arms but her heart was pushing heat through her body, her limbs warm with it.
Lauren moved in even closer suddenly, almost touching him, then darted back. ‘God, he smells!’ she cried. ‘God, mister, you’re so disgusting.’ She grabbed the girl’s arm. ‘He smells like puke.’
The girls were in an arc around him now, just out of reach, quick, feral, power moving between them. The man dropped his head in submission, surrender, and his hands moved into his lap in an instinctive gesture of self-protection.
‘Jesus!’ screamed the girl. ‘Look at him! What a pervert!’
‘God, it’s so disgusting that he’s allowed in the park.’
‘He’s jerking off, he is, he’s getting off on it, the pervert!’
Their bodies lit up like electricity, scared thrilled burning little girls, and without really being conscious of it the girl arched her back and lifted her arms, her smooth white stomach exposed, her long thighs angled.
‘Please,’ said the man. ‘I’m not a bad person. I just need a minute to think. Please.’
‘Sicko bastard,’ said Lauren.
‘Get out, you pervert,’ said Tasha, though of course the man could go nowhere, he was surrounded by their tense wild bodies, could only shrink further back into the bench.
‘Please don’t hurt me,’ he said. ‘Please. I never did the crime. I never did it.’
Megan bent down and picked up a rock. It wasn’t clear if she meant to throw it. Maybe she didn’t, maybe she had no intention, only a thing in her hand. She tossed it from one hand to the other and might have been thinking of throwing it.
‘You have no right,’ said the girl desperately, clenching and unclenching her hands. ‘Being like this. God.’
Megan lifted her hand. It wasn’t exactly a throwing gesture, it was a soft compromise lob, deniable, scared. But the rock struck the man in the shoulder, and he ducked away and whimpered. The girl put a hand across her mouth, the hot flare of excitement in her throat.
Megan bent and picked up another rock. This time she threw harder, and it struck the man’s head, and he lunged away, and when he fell back against the bench there was a gout of blood on his forehead. His arm flew up, and the girl could smell him as he moved, that close to her, and he could have wanted to hit her, or to grab her, or to push her away.