Meera stared at the pathetic old man, suddenly aware that she was watching death creep over him, consume him cell by cell. It was an oddly emotionless observation, one that shamed her and pushed her back into her professional demeanor. Only then did she notice that Yanni was standing behind her, his hand on her shoulder. “You heard?” she asked him.
“Yes,” Yanni said. “It’s a city of immigrants, you know. Everyone’s got secrets and stories from some faraway place. We’re supposed to start fresh when we get here, no? Let’s take him back now, okay?”
But Persaud was not done yet. “Boy,” he said weakly to Yanni, “Yahhhm comin’ now. Go and see.”
Yanni slitted his eyes in annoyance, but returned to the window nonetheless. He rushed back to report to Meera: “It’s true. The fellow who was watching me is gone. I think he might have come into the hospital!”
Persaud’s face contorted then. With surprising strength, he locked his hand onto Meera’s arm, hurting her slightly. “Yahhhm comin’!” he gasped. Meera could sense the otherworldly terror that possessed Persaud, but could do nothing for him. She tore his grip away and began sifting through the room’s supplies, searching for a sedative.
From the empty hallway came the unmistakable sound of approaching footsteps. These were not the steps of the nurses, who wore sneakers or delicate high heels, but of a large man in boots. Meera’s eyes met Yanni’s and the young man leapt to his feet and to the door, just in time to intercept a blond youth in a blue-and-white University of Toronto jacket. “You!” Yanni barked at him. “Visiting hours are over. You’re not supposed to be here.”
“Sorry,” said the young man, looking about the room sheepishly. “I’m with the student paper. I saw the light coming from the window and thought it would be a good place to get an aerial photo of the accident.” He pulled a camera from his jacket pocket and showed them.
“You’ll have to leave. Sorry.” Yanni pushed him back into the hallway and toward the exit. “See?” Yanni called back to Persaud. “Not the bloody god of death!”
But, of course, Persaud had already expired. His lifeless body lay sprawled atop the bed, like a grotesque skeletal clown bedecked in striped pajamas and pink slippers. His final expression was not that of an old man placidly accepting his final rest, nor that of a holy man content to meet his god. Rather, it was a pose of profound terror and worry, with crevices of skin radiating around his open mouth and his gaping yellowish eyes. Thankfully, Meera was not reminded of her father. He had had the good grace to slip from mortality with silent dignity, his worldly tasks completed, and with no important words left unsaid. But, she judged, not so for Manoj Persaud.
“I thought telling his story was supposed to bring him peace,” Yanni said.
“I don’t think he told us the whole story,” Meera explained. “He said they brought the girl’s body to him. But he didn’t tell us that she was still alive at the time.”
Yanni slipped his hand into hers. Meera stretched up and kissed him on the cheek.
“Hey,” she whispered. “Midnight shift is over.”
Can’t buy me love
by Christine Murray
Union Station
Union station. 6 o’clock. Commuter-throng in the basement concourse. Head-numbing fluorescent lights, the terminal as garish as a 1950s office space. I breathe in the odorific confluence of fast food and rubber-soled shoes and scan the room for a free bucket seat, preferably one with a view of the overhead screen. Train’s not up there yet, so I’ve plenty of time.
I locate a seat between two average-looking drones. The lady to my right ruffles her newspaper back and forth like a perturbed swan beating its wings. She gives me a peripheral going-over and crosses her legs purposefully, cinching her ankles together. To my left, a mid-forties businessman reads from a men’s magazine with a semi-naked brunette on the cover. I recognize her — young actress, former child star. She’s on her knees, legs apart, back arched, blouse open above the navel.
There’s something attractive about Union’s retro décor. Its generic quality makes it easy to ignore. You can see the people for the trees, so to speak. Not like new terminals, where you can’t see the people for the gleam off all that stainless steel. Different story here, from the dude engrossed in “Real-Life Sex Injuries 101”; to the lady now methodically folding her newspaper into accordion-style strips; to the platinum blonde with long silver nails standing at the bay of pay phones dead ahead. She’s wearing a neon-green mini-dress, rollerblades over her shoulder. Cradled by her neck, the phone seems too large for her childlike head, the black receiver as oversized as a clown’s shoe — a clown’s phone.
I’m not a perv, but let’s face it, I’ve nothing better to do than to watch neon roller girl over there. I’ve already visited the magazine store, bought a cinnamon bun. I have a coffee in my hand that’s so Ibiza-hot I could spill it on my crotch and sue for damages. It was sunny on the walk from the office, but the smell of autumn left my nose lightly frosted. I’d bought the coffee to keep my hands warm. I hadn’t decided whether to drink it or not, but now, out of boredom, I flip the sip-lid, snap it into place.
The talk went well today — better than expected. “We like what you’re up to, Chris,” Darrin had said. “Want the whole team to follow your lead. Show them how you’re doing it. Get them to reinvent the fucking wheel.”
The wheel was ad copy. I’d come up with a new approach I liked to call ad absurdum. Only, I didn’t come up with it; loads of writers were doing it already:
“Say a product is new and improved,” I’d explained today, clicking through slides. “So, you write New and improved on the packaging, right? Trouble is, there is nothing more dusty and hum-drummy than writing New on a new product. What to do?... What you need is to make up a new word. Trick is, you’ve got to make it sound like other words, using known prefixes and suffixes, so that your audience understands it right off the bat. No sense speaking a language they don’t understand, see? It can be as easy as adding — tastic to the end of word, as in Tastetastic! Or as tricky as launching a frying pan around Halloween with the words, Terrifry your food!
“Think about it,” I’d concluded, leaning over them. “Edutainment might be a word in the dictionary now, but it didn’t used to be. We need to harness the power of hybrid words. If we trademark them, we could actually own our own language — and just think of how advert-ageous that would be!”
That was the kicker: the big finale. Then it was handshakes and nervous laughter all around, and a lot of, “Ad absurdum, eh? I like it, I like it.”
Roller girl leans forward, her breasts perform a tandem sunrise over her low-cut dress. They suggest a shape not unlike two small champagne glasses — the kind designed after the bosoms of Marie Antoinette. Aristocra-tits.
I don’t mind small breasts. My rack is small too, and they’ve served me well with the ladies, although I usually wind up with larger-breasted girls.
Roller girl looks over. Probably felt me staring.