Afterward, he trudged through the snow to take his clothes to the laundromat on Davie Street. He was cycling through four sets of Costco-purchased shirts, pants, and undergarments and was careful not to spill anything on them. Unlike other hotel residents, he neither wore a paper bib nor showed up at the restaurant-lounge in stained T-shirts. When he returned from the laundromat, he would stay in the lounge for a drink with Oishi or Tso, both of whom, he noticed, began to look wan and tired in the Christmas lights. Tso had recently helped a friend deal with her father’s death. Oishi was negotiating the terms of his divorce as he returned to work. Two drinks later, Siddhu would be in his room in his underwear, practicing the yo-yo for a few minutes until he couldn’t keep his eyes open. Then he stretched out on the bed like a snoring starfish.
He had never lived alone, never gone an entire week without seeing his parents or spent more than a couple of nights away from his wife. This should have felt novel. Instead, the absence of these oppressive forces weighed on him. He should have felt lightened. He felt cheated.
A week earlier, a team of paramedics had rushed into his hotel room, led by a night clerk. One paramedic began to pull him out of bed. He screamed until they realized their mistake—they’d been meant to remove an infected hotel guest from the floor above. Ever since, he could not sleep for more than two hours before getting up and vigorously washing his hands.
He often arrived at the GSSP office wishing he could go to sleep, but then his brain perked up at the urgency of the stories he needed to tell. Horne-Bough offered no direction. He was busy speaking to international news outlets about the disease or was in conversation with his lizard-like tech guys. Why was he so obsessed with being surveilled? Horne-Bough seemed happy with Siddhu’s coverage—and his discretion—and even presented him with a gift: a life-insurance policy should he contract the infection while working. Siddhu had been looking online for coverage the previous week and felt buoyed by the synchronicity.
There were so many stories to telclass="underline" Siddhu could write about the disparity of infection rates between income groups that had flattened as the disease spread throughout the city but had since re-emerged. He could unpack the disagreements between provincial and federal agencies that led to delays in relief payments for locals whose incomes were decimated either by illness or quarantine. He tried to touch on these issues. And then there was the silence in City Hall surrounding the Mayor’s leave after his personal scandal and his subsequent refusal to resign. He avoided that one, and thankfully a colleague continued to poke at city officials.
As usual, people contacted Siddhu for publicity. Cleaning services touted their effective, environmentally friendly decontamination policies. Therapists wanted to be profiled on their trauma-counselling services. Even Rieux cornered him to write a story.
“In case you didn’t read my email, I am starting a sanitation league,” the doctor announced at their coffee shop. “Infection rates are too high in this area.”
“About that,” Siddhu answered, digging into his pocket to pay for his Americano, “I meant to reply. It didn’t fly in the story meeting.” That last part was a lie. “One question: Isn’t that the city’s job, sanitation?”
“Everyone in City Hall is preoccupied. Government acts too slowly. It’s up to private citizens to respond,” Rieux said. Siddhu saw an impatience in his rhetoric that reminded him of the nineteen-year-olds he’d known in university who wore neckties to class and read Ayn Rand. “More people will die than necessary.”
Rieux told him that he’d lead his sanitation squad on weekends and evenings and already had two volunteers. Siddhu was tired enough as it was. He thought of people like Rieux—inexhaustible and determined—and believed it must be fear that drove them. Not fear of disease or dying; Rieux was chasing something else away.
Siddhu left it at that and returned to work. His young employer texted him from the rooftop to come up and discuss a story. Siddhu grabbed his coat and scarf and took the two steep flights of stairs with dread. Even the cold and snow hadn’t persuaded Horne-Bough to find another place to conduct his private meetings. Instead, he installed a heat lamp under which he huddled in a fur-lined parka and fingerless gloves while vaping. Siddhu stood under the lamp as if it was an umbrella.
“I wanted to discuss your performance,” Horne-Bough said.
Siddhu, his boss explained, had been providing comprehensive coverage of the spread of the disease. He had proven himself worthwhile on that end. His contact list and pedigree were also assets. But he hadn’t broken any news. He had yet to generate the kind of excitement that drove web traffic and earned subscriptions.
“I’ve been doing what I thought was best,” Siddhu said. “We haven’t had any real story meetings.”
“We don’t do those.” Horne-Bough half-shrugged. “You’re new here, but I don’t want you to get surpassed,” he said. “So that’s why I’ve come up with a story idea. I want you to conduct the first interview with Romeo Parsons since his scandal.”
Horne-Bough had already been contacted by the PR company that the wealthy mayor had hired privately. “I insisted that you, as our senior writer, be the one to speak to them,” he said. “There was push-back, but we kicked the shit out of it.” He presented Siddhu with a contact number on a scrap of paper. “Can you set something up?”
Siddhu nodded and took the number. He already had a story to cover that night.
Early in the evening, Siddhu took a car2go to the edge of the Grand-view Highway until he reached a set of electronic roadwork signs placed a few blocks before the spotlights, fences, and guard towers. They were typical roadwork signs that warned drivers of a stoppage ahead and asked them to take an alternate route. They were like trigger warnings that cautioned locals who wanted to pretend that nothing had changed to avoid going farther.
He came to the foot of the guard tower. Between the towers, guards with rifles on all-terrain vehicles patrolled the length of the fence. On the other side, coming into the sealed city, was an unloading area where the freight of a fleet of eighteen-wheelers was being inspected by men with machine guns. A Canadian Armed Forces captain, who wore a pair of binoculars around his neck, stepped out of a door. Siddhu held up the lanyard with his ID, but the army captain didn’t bother to look.
“You’re the reporter,” he said. “You missed all the fun.”
Siddhu was invited into the guard tower where he was given a bullet-proof vest. The army captain was a reservist who lived outside the city in Chilliwack. He wore light fatigues and stood about as tall as Siddhu—a few inches past six feet—but, when they shook hands, the officer’s hand enveloped the reporter’s. He told Siddhu he’d been stationed here since the outbreak began.
The eighteen-wheelers brought basic food items, medical supplies, and fuel into the city. The officer’s job was to make sure that nothing was being smuggled in or out. Alcohol, hard drugs, and luxury items had been confiscated while he was on duty. “Even in a quarantine zone, some people can’t live without their $25,000 watches,” he said. “We do a good job catching their middlemen.”
“But why has the black market been thriving?” Siddhu asked. “You can still buy all these goods through connections—or online—if you have enough money.”
“We have our theories. Smuggling doesn’t occur through trucks or trains—we handle that. The airports have been closed. It exists only by boat,” he said before he seemed to notice the voice recorder in front of him. “That was off the record.”