Читать книгу Circle of Stones - Suzanne Alyssa Andrew - Страница 10

Nik does his best painting after midnight. That’s when his three roommates sprawl out on the second-hand sofa. Ilana and Kendall begin fooling with each other’s long, stringy hair. Aaron watches them and paws at Ilana, his girlfriend, while he tells all the same stories — the semi-fictional ones that begin, “one night when I was totally high” or “one night after I took shrooms.” That’s the part of the evening when everything used to happen. But the girls are a shadow presence. Interlopers. Distractions. And Aaron is absorbed in their games. Now Nik goes into his room, locks the door behind him, and paints Jennifer.

The girls didn’t bother Nik as much when Jennifer was still around. Jennifer used to be a regular at the Rumble Shack. She was a revolutionary. A force. She was the one who named the apartment, which reels and sways because of its rail-side proximity to the SkyTrain. She was a dance and choreography major: rapid and restless. He could draw by the light of her eyes.

She was the only girlfriend Nik ever let call him Nikky, like his family does. The only girlfriend who made him feel simultaneously comfortable and panicked. The only girlfriend he clung to while they were sleeping, the only one he brought a glass of water to after she woke up. Jennifer was the only girlfriend who mattered.

Nik has had a lot of girlfriends. He has to think hard to remember all their names. Jennifer is the only one who reverberates in his mind. Like part of her lives there.

Nik paints Jennifer one body part at a time. A dissection. Conjuring Jennifer whole is too ruptured. He dabs black paint on a white canvas. He is painting Jennifer’s right eye, the brown one, except each segment is detached from the rest, as though the eye is glass, slowly shattering. He has already sketched the retina, cornea, iris, lens, and blood vessels in pencil. This is a more literal rendering than the one of Jennifer’s blue eye, which Nik depicted as a cobalt smudge in a glass of water. He is planning to paint her optic nerve next.

On the other side of the door Aaron is banging on something and shouting. Nik turns his iPod on, inserts earbuds. Ambient electronica pours in. Jennifer’s right ear was one of his first paintings in this series. It fills an entire wall in his room, as though her auditory canal is a giant snail shell. Big enough for Nik to curl up and fall asleep in. He gazes at the ear mural and sips a ration from the bottle of Crème de Cacao his grandmother gave him. At four in the morning Nik realizes he might as well keep painting and stay up for his nine o’clock class. He has one amphetamine left.

During Cultural Theory, Nik draws the bridge of Jennifer’s nose in his notebook. He writes the due date for his next assignment beside it. The only reason he is passing this course is because Jennifer was helping him write his papers. That was something they used to fight about.

“It doesn’t make sense that I need to know how to write in art school when all I want to do is draw and paint,” he would say.

“It’s part of the business,” Jennifer said, which made Nik feel agitated.

“I shouldn’t have to explain what my art is about,” he said. “People should see it and feel it.”

She always sighed and told him to think realistically about his career. She said that what everybody always said about being an artist was true. You need to have more than talent. She believed in fame and success, sacrifices and selling yourself. Nik would analyze the curvature of her bottom lip as she spoke, or the philtrum groove underneath her nose. Then he’d get back to work. He began to think Jennifer would always be there to do the writing. But then Jennifer started talking about taking big risks. The importance of growing and changing. He didn’t know what she was planning, or what she wanted. It scared Nik enough to cut his reading week break short and return to Vancouver. He wanted to hold her in his arms and keep her there, safe. He had promised his grandmother he would look after her. He replays in his mind how much his grandmother’s hands shook, how her voice quavered when she asked him. It wasn’t like her to get emotional — she had always taken care of him — and her frailty startled him. His agreement made him feel, for the first time, like a man. But what his grandmother was saying was there was a right way to be in the world. He didn’t ask her how. He felt like part of his promise was to figure it out.

Late one night, a few days after he returned from the island, Jennifer laid out her tarot cards on Nik’s futon mattress. He didn’t want his cards read again, but she said it was time to tell her own fortune. She piled her thick, dark hair onto the top of her head and fastened it with two chopsticks. She sat cross-legged at the foot of the futon and adjusted the placement of the cards with delicate arms. Nik watched her wrists. The precise movements of her nimble fingers. Jennifer closed her eyes and said an incantation in Hindi, a secret verse from the aging mystic who sold her the deck in Gastown. She told Nik it was a very good sign that she never saw the mystic’s street stall there again. Nik reclined on the bed and kept still so he would not disturb the cards. He was hoping for a long rumination. A detailed story about the two of them that would make his head prickle as Jennifer told it. Then affectionate kisses. Instead, she said “Hmmm.” Nik looked at the cards, with their fantastical, airbrushed images, but the symbols weren’t obvious. There were cups, wands, and strange medieval figures. He didn’t know which card Jennifer was perplexed by. Nik anticipated a riddle. A new special little game they’d play, then answers. Instead, Jennifer put the cards away into their purple velveteen pouch and lay down. Nik felt a new, unspecific distress take shape, sculptural in the corner of the room. He fell sound asleep with his arms around her.

The next morning when Nik awoke, Jennifer and her cards were gone. Her resin-scented dance bag was gone. So were her high-heeled boots. She left everything else: her black ruffled scarf, her cellphone, her book bag made from recycled rubber, her red candles, the collection of aromatherapy oils she carried around in a red satin box. He assumed she had gone to an early dance rehearsal and didn’t want to wake him. He was upset she didn’t wake him. He wondered why he didn’t hear or feel her leave. How she’d slipped from his arms. He was angry at himself for not waking. She didn’t come back that evening or the next.

He couldn’t text or call her — she didn’t have her phone. He wasn’t sure why she left so many of her things behind. The sculptural feeling grew and darkened. Nik called her roommates but they said they hadn’t seen her either. They said she owed rent. Nik was confused, and with every day that passed, he became more afraid. He spent as much time as possible in his room waiting for her. He kept her cellphone charged. He went to the Vancouver police station to file a missing-persons report, but without Jennifer’s help he had difficulty filling out the forms. He would draw her face in the margins and have to start again. It took two weeks before Nik understood Jennifer was not coming back.

On the way to his afternoon Anatomical Drawing class, Nik slips his hand into the leg pocket of his black military-style cargo pants and feels for Jennifer’s cellphone. He always carries it with him in case it rings.

It hasn’t yet. For awhile there were text messages about dance rehearsals and classes. Nik deleted them. Then they stopped and he wished he hadn’t.

After class Nik buys a coffee at the stand outside. He’s been putting almost all of the money his family gives him into his Jennifer Fund, a savings account devoted to Jennifer-related art supplies — and now his one-man search. His stomach lurches, but he doesn’t have enough change left over to buy a sandwich. Hunger is the cost of not being convincing enough to the police. He was told he was not a spouse or a relative. His story was questioned. Nik doesn’t know who Jennifer’s relatives are. She told him she wanted to live completely in the present. That success depended on now. She never talked about her past. When he was with her, Nik didn’t think of his either.

Nik thuds up the rickety back stairs to the Rumble Shack. The third-floor light is still burned out and in the dim he has trouble getting his key into the lock. He puts his ear up to the rough wooden door but doesn’t hear anything. There’s always music when his roommates are home. Kendall practises bass. Aaron broadcasts erratic noise loops from his computer. Ilana, who somehow figured out the Wi-fi password for the neighbours downstairs, hosts an Internet podcast from her bedroom. The key finally slips into place.

Nik flicks the light switch and snaps the door shut behind him. The apartment reeks of cigarette smoke and something stale and rotten. Unwashed dishes, old garbage, and uneaten takeout remains are the norm in their grubby kitchen. Nik leaves his boots on, steps on a dirty blue hoodie left on the hallway floor, and over a broken canvas frame that’s had its painting kicked through. He strolls into the living room and turns on the overhead light. There’s a half-melted, oversized candle on the paper-strewn coffee table. On a long piece of dowel stuck into the candle is the rigid body of a dead rat.

Nik knows Aaron is responsible. Not for the catching, or perhaps even the killing. Aaron doesn’t make things happen. But certainly for the retrieval. And the reclamation. Aaron’s performance art is always convenient. Or lazy. Nik wonders what grade the rat will earn.

The decomposing rodent is what smells rank. Nik grabs his silver Zippo. He lights a stick of Ilana’s incense. Then another. And another. The sticks fit into gaps in the high, cracked baseboards and into the splintered grooves of the smashed bookshelf. He slips two into the knife-gouged frame of the old wooden TV box.

Nik retreats to his room. The metal chain and padlock with which he secures his door while he’s at school has been busted open. Again. There are ashes on the floor and his blue-and-green-striped duvet is bunched up in the corner of his futon, as though somebody slept there all afternoon. The thick navy drapes he sewed himself to block out natural light are open. Nik prefers working in artificial light. Otherwise he can’t see the dancing shadows that keep him company while he paints — miniature Jennifers whirling in his periphery the way she used to revolve and writhe onstage. He shuts the drapes and reaches into a punched out hole in the drywall behind his dresser. His paints and graphite pencils are still there. The Crème de Cacao is, too.

Nik gives a silent toast to modern dance in Jennifer’s memory. To rapid choreography, he thinks. And its unpaintability.

He takes a sip from the bottle. He hangs up his leather jacket. The hook is a blackened old door handle he found once in the recycling and stuck into the wall. He lights a couple of Jennifer’s candles — the red one still jammed into the old wine bottle and a squat, round white one in an old jar. He watches candle flames flicker in glass, closes his eyes, sees Jennifer. Then, ritual complete, he’s ready to paint. He picks up a tube of red ochre and begins rubbing it on the wall with his fingers, adding a red teardrop earring to the ear mural. Red smears appear on his faded black T-shirt beside old dollops of aquamarine. Nik can’t seem to keep any of his clothes clean.

“I gather you saw the rat,” says Ilana. She’s leaning on the doorframe, an enormous paper cup of coffee in her small hands.

“Revolting.” Nik shakes his head, but doesn’t allow himself to glance away from his painting. “I never know what I’m going to come back to here.”

Ilana sits down cross-legged on the floor at his feet, letting her short black skirt twist up to her hips. She shifts her knee so it grazes Nik’s calf. He finally looks at her. Ilana’s intentionally ripped tights reveal glimpses of freckled skin. Her eyes are puffy and red, but she always looks like she’s been crying, so he doesn’t mention it.

He doesn’t understand the things Ilana always talks about to Kendall. Something is always wrong. Everything wrong is dramatic. She receives frequent, upsetting phone calls. Nik thinks she should stop answering her cellphone and go to class. Nik doesn’t know what she studies. Ilana never seems to do homework, but she has a student card. He saw it once, after Aaron dumped the contents of Ilana’s purse out onto the living room floor and emptied her wallet of cash. Two hundred and fifty dollars. Nik remembers thinking that was a lot of money and wondering where she got it. He remembers Ilana shrieking first, then smirking. Ilana’s reactions never make much sense. Nik doesn’t trust her. He watches her absently pick at her chipped and bitten burgundy fingernails. He turns back to his mural.

“I like your room.” Ilana’s boots clatter and clunk against the floor. “It’s better than mine. Stinks like paint, but I could always open a window.” Nik tries to find the perfect angle with his brush to add more shading. He wonders what angle Ilana is working on him.

“Hey, what’s this?” Ilana says, arching towards the bottle of Crème de Cacao Nik left at the foot of his easel.

Nik tries grabbing the bottle out of Ilana’s reach, but she’s too fast. She grips it with both hands, tips her head back and chugs it. Nik snatches the bottle back and she sputters, coughing liqueur spittle down the front of her torn black sweater.

“That’s mine,” Nik says, wiping the rim with his shirt. “Don’t tell Aaron I have it. It’s for drinking slowly.”

“Of course, Nikky,” Ilana says. “I do keep secrets from my boyfriend, you know.”

For a moment Ilana is silent. She picks up her coffee cup and cradles it close to her chest. Nik sighs, daubs paint onto the mural, and then stops. He wants another colour, but doesn’t trust Ilana with the hiding place. He feels rigid when Ilana watches him paint. He can’t think of what to say to make her leave. It bothers him that she is calling him Nikky. Like Jennifer did. He stares at the canvas, raises his paintbrush to it, stops again.

Ilana sneaks up behind him and licks his elbow. The surprise warm wet dries instantly. He tries not to respond, thinking ignoring it will make her stop, but she reaches up under his shirt and scratches her nails up his back.

Nik shivers, then starts to sweat in confusion. Ilana is barely over five feet tall with protruding bones and a flat chest. Childlike and tiny enough to break. And she’s Aaron’s girl. Her arms encircle Nik’s waist. Her hands press onto the front of his pants.

“Come on, you know you want me.” Ilana’s voice is breathy. “I like this kind of secret.” Nik spins around to face her. Her mouth is smiling, but her eyes aren’t. Her hands seize on his belt to unbuckle it. He pushes them away. She leers and grabs at the wallet tucked into his back pocket, but it’s attached to a chain connected to his belt loop. Nik has no words. Ilana is directing one of her dramas. He doesn’t want to be in it. He pushes at her again, this time with a force halfway between hard and gentle. Like his father would do. Ilana wobbles and takes a step back. Nik steps back too, establishing what he hopes is a safer distance. He turns to the canvas, breathes its wet-paint smell. Ilana gasps. There’s a clatter and thunk as Ilana fake-falls to the floor. He doesn’t see her slam her hand down on the hardwood and adjust her hair around her face as she lays her head down on it. He looks, startled, thinking she hit her head. Her eyes are closed, her mouth open, her body still. But her eyeballs are still fluttering under her closed eyelids, her long, fake lashes twitching like trapped spiders. Nik sees she is waiting for him to react, for rescue, and for her scene to play out. But he doesn’t feel it. He can’t do it. Instead there’s a familiar lurch. Anxiety like a black wave.

Nik coughs. He doesn’t want to be like his father. He thinks finding Jennifer will make him different. Heroic. He leaves Ilana there, grabs his sketchbook from his milk-crate nightstand and begins sketching the lines of her tall black leather, high-heeled boots. They look like the ones Jennifer used to wear. Nik thinks Ilana must have stolen them.

Nik glances down at Ilana’s face. She has sharp features: her nose is slightly crooked, he notices, and she has a cut on her lower lip. Ilana opens her eyes and sits up, her elbows turning awkwardly backwards as she rests on them.

“You’re sketching me?” she says. “God, Nik, you’re sick.” She stands up and skulks out of the room. Nik looks at his sketch. It’s not quite right. Jennifer’s dancer’s calves curved more underneath the leather. He scrapes a fierce X over the drawing with the flat edge of his pencil. He shuts his door quietly and wedges a wooden chair against the knob. Then he sits down on the floor and pretends he’s talking to Aaron, who used to be his best friend.

“What the hell was that?” Nik whispers.

“She’s crazy,” the old Aaron would have said. “She’ll be outta here soon though, so don’t worry about it.”

Nik misses Old Aaron, who had a lot more sense than Aaron has now. When Nik moved to Vancouver from the island, Aaron’s was the only ad that caught his eye on the student housing website. It read: RAMSHACKLE ROOM! CHEAP AND UGLY. It meant Nik didn’t have to worry about wrecking the place with paint. Not like his mom’s house, where Katya, his mom’s new girlfriend, now runs the place with hotel-quality precision. White towels. The end of the toilet paper roll folded into a point. Nik always remembers his promise to keep Katya a secret from the rest of the family. Something to do with support payments from his dad. He always goes along with his mom’s lies. But he’s still relegated to the basement when he visits, like his mom’s dogs to their kennel. When his mom and his dad lived together his mom put up with a lot more disorganization. Nik has fond memories of his messy childhood home. There were so many places to hide when his parents fought. Nik used to disappear like a magic trick and lose himself in epic drawings. His adventures in vanishing make the raggedy apartment seem tiny now in comparison. Nik looks around his room. He feels like a rabbit in a hat. The Jennifer mural and paintings are growing, squeezing the walls closer and crowding him.

When Nik moved into the Rumble Shack, it was completely empty. It felt spacious that way. He and Aaron scavenged furniture from the curb, garage sales and thrift stores. They hauled it all home on their skinny shoulders. The older the furniture, the heavier it was. Aaron helped Nik mod his leather jacket with spikes and stitch punk patches to his pants. They did screen-printing in the living room, creating irreverent designs with corporate logos and raucous, symbol-splotched T-shirts they sold at school for beer money. Hardly anyone ever bought anything with the upside-down golden arches on it, but big pink skulls and anarchy A’s were popular. They had three prolific months.

Then the girls arrived. Ilana wrapped herself around Aaron one night at a dive bar in Gastown. Nik had returned from the bar with a fresh pitcher to find her sitting in his seat. She drank more of their beer than she should have, stayed over, moved in. Kendall appeared shortly after. Ilana rented her the unheated back room without asking. Ilana did a lot of things Nik didn’t like. New Aaron watched Ilana like she was television. He often provoked her. He’d speak to everyone else except her, then smother her with attention. Or host parties at the apartment without inviting her, then accuse her of crashing them. New Aaron quit screen-printing, but not beer-drinking. New Aaron was more interested in Ilana’s well-stocked purse pharmacy than design, but didn’t bother asking who funded or supplied her pharmacopoeia.

Aaron still does most of the talking. That hasn’t changed, but the details of his stories are exaggerated with each telling. It keeps Ilana and Kendall entertained. It irritates Nik, but pointing out the errors only leads to more exaggerations. And mocking. Except now there’s an unfamiliar hostility beneath Aaron’s jests. Nik hears stories turn into lies and sees Aaron’s expression shift. He watches the two girls drape themselves over the furniture as though posed for a photo shoot. Ilana in something revealing and black. Kendall in gothic Anne Rice–inspired dresses. Both wear sly illusions: the clothes that appear shiny and dramatic at night are shabby in daylight.

One night when all the roommates were at a noisy goth industrial club, Nik saw Kendall glare at one of the cage dancers. In place of her usual disdain, Kendall’s eyes registered jealousy. Nik turned to look at the dancer. He didn’t shift his gaze for the rest of the night. His roommates left without him. The DJ stopped playing music. Jennifer exited through the Employees Only door. Nik stared at the closed door.

“She gets a lot of attention, that one,” the bartender said to Nik while shoving dirty pint glasses into the industrial dishwasher. Nik nodded. Stools were stacked on tables, a mop was splattered into a bucket of filthy water and smeared across the sticky floor. Nik waited until Jennifer re-emerged from behind the door, wearing skinny jeans in place of PVC hot pants and fishnets. She smiled at Nik.

The next afternoon, as Nik strolled through the living room in his boxers to get Jennifer a glass of water, Old Aaron spoke for the last time. “She’s so hot,” he mouthed. Ilana was sitting next to Aaron on the sofa, but she was painting her nails and didn’t look up as the words floated over her head.

After that, what happened at the apartment didn’t matter as much to Nik. He let it rumble, spending as much time as possible with Jennifer, while Old Aaron disappeared entirely, absorbed by nightly parties and Ilana’s games.

Nik tries to sleep, but he can hear his roommates talking about him in the living room. Kendall says, “Oh my God,” and Aaron says, “That bastard,” and Nik knows Ilana is twisting everything into something convoluted. Nik gets up, lights a candle under Jennifer’s cobalt eye, and is suddenly thirsty. He steps out of his room into a sudden silence. A circle of stares.

“Hey.” He tries to act casual on his way through. In the kitchen he has to wash a glass before he can use it. He takes his time, pouring dish soap droplet by droplet. He lets the water become hot enough to turn his hands pink. Then he fills the glass, watching soap bubbles billow over the edge. Nik swings the fridge door open and grabs the water jug. It’s full. For once. On his way back to his room he holds his glass of water in front of him like an excuse. His roommates are draped across the sofa, limbs sprawling.

“I can’t believe you assaulted Ilana and pushed her down just for looking at your paintings,” Kendall says. “She probably has a concussion.”

Nik is almost at his door. He turns around, faces the stares, opens his mouth.

“You’re messed up, dude.” Aaron lights a joint. Ilana is lying down, her head in his lap. He pats her lightly like a cat, but holds the joint out of her reach. “Don’t ever touch my little girl again.”

Nik looks at Aaron, expecting a wink or a nod of understanding.

Aaron looks away.

Ilana’s eyes are still red. She sits up, glares at Nik, and scratches at the runs in her tights. Nik notices the dead rat is gone and wonders what they did with it. Its stench still lingers underneath whorls of cigarette, pot, and incense smoke.

“I think we should talk about what’s going on here.” Kendall reaches a long, black-gloved arm over Ilana and toward Aaron for a drag. He hands it to her. “We could call the police, you know.”

“Ya, we could.” Ilana watches Kendall inhale, deep, like a vacuum. “But we won’t.”

“We won’t.” Kendall nods and exhales at Ilana in agreement then hands the joint back to Aaron. “But we could.”

“Wait — no. Kendall, this story isn’t right,” Nik says, still staring at Aaron. “Why are you even getting involved?”

“Because I live here and I don’t want a violent freak in my space, that’s why.” Kendall rolls her eyes and tugs at the trio of piercings across her bottom lip.

“Yeah. All you do is paint and act like an asshole.” Ilana wriggles back onto Aaron.

“I hear you have a huge secret stash of good booze.” Aaron crosses his arms in front of his chest, flexed forearms hovering above Ilana. “You always used to share. I share with you.” Aaron’s speech begins to slur. His head nods slowly forward then jerks back up again. “I think I’m entitled.”

Ilana pets Aaron’s thigh to get his attention. “Nik is obsessed. He can’t seem to get over the fact that Jennifer the skank dumped him,” she says.

“Are you even sleeping?” Kendall asks, but doesn’t wait for Nik’s answer. She turns toward Aaron and Ilana, shoulder angled to cut Nik off from the conversation. “I think he’s becoming a toxic presence here.”

“Jennifer is missing,” Nik says.

“She left you, Nik,” Ilana snarls. “She walked out.”

Aaron’s head nods forward again. He jerks awake and offers the joint in Nik’s direction, but Ilana grabs it. Nik takes two steps backwards.

“You haven’t seen her, though,” Nik says. “Nobody has. I don’t want her to become a circle of stones.”

Ilana and Kendall exchange looks.

Nik thinks about the park by his grandmother’s condo.

Aaron laughs. “What the fuck are you talking about? Aw man, I’ve got the spins.”

“Oh, baby.” Ilana shifts to make room for Aaron to lie down. “What did you take? I told you to be careful with my stash.”

“Nuffin.” Aaron clutches at his forehead and moans.

Nik sees Ilana’s eyes turn mean and retreats to his room, pushing at his door to close it, shut them out.

“Hey, asshole,” Ilana yells after him. “Get help or get out.”

Nik runs his hands through his hair so many times it stripes in a rainbow of paint. He gulps from his glass of water. His hands shake and he shudders, thinking of his grandmother, and the fact that Parkinson’s is hereditary. If Jennifer were here she’d set them straight about Ilana. She’d explain for him, like she did in his writing assignments. He paints a red X on the back of his hand for not standing up for himself. When he tries to calm down and daub red and purple onto the blood vessels of Jennifer’s right eye, the apartment rumbles and the paint bleeds into a smear. Nik kicks the baseboard along the wall with his steel-toed boot. His toes crash into steel, stinging.

“Ilana’s lying,” he says, talking to Old Aaron. “But I can’t prove it. I don’t know how.”

“I know,” Old Aaron would say.

“I have so much to deal with right now and Ilana makes everything worse,” Nik says.

“I trust you, dude,” Old Aaron says reassuringly. “And I’ll talk to her, so don’t worry about it. Maybe it’s time for her to go. Make it you and me again, like old times.”

“Does that mean you’ll help me find Jennifer?” Nik says.

But even he can’t imagine Old Aaron understanding why he needs to find her.

He drops his paintbrush. It lands on top of his boot, splattering red over the skull and crossbones he and Aaron had silk-screened over the toe in glow-in-the-dark paint. As the paintbrush clatters to the floor, Nik drops onto his futon. He clutches the duvet his grandmother gave him and thinks of the island. He could have stayed. But he knows he wouldn’t have been content playing video games with his high school friends. Working somewhere part-time. He wishes his mother had never taken him to see an Emily Carr exhibit in Victoria when he was a kid, and then unwishes it. He wishes he’d never answered Aaron’s ad. Or let Ilana and Kendall move in. Then he unwishes that, too. If he hadn’t, he might not have met Jennifer.

Dry air rasps in his throat. He feels lightheaded when he stands, but shrugs the feeling off as hunger. He needs to walk. Think. He takes his leather jacket from the closet, blows out the candles, and leaves, locking his door behind him — not that it will prevent anyone from snooping. No one’s left in the living room. He hears Aaron retching in the bathroom and music coming from Kendall’s room. Outside, fine rain coats his hair and sticks to his face. If he keeps going, he stays warm, so he walks and walks. Lights blur and dance through the raindrops. Aside from a few men hefting boxes out of delivery trucks he doesn’t see anyone else on the street. The city feels empty. Vacant enough that if Jennifer was in it and he walked far enough he’d see her. He’d find her. An image of the Granville Street Bridge appears in his mind like a tarot card. He imagines he’s drawing the bridge, lifting it up by the point of a pencil to let a tugboat and barge through. He looks at his hand, but he’s not holding a pencil. He walks toward the bridge. When he reaches it, he touches the cool metal railing. It feels admirably solid. It’s real. A boat sounds its horn in the harbour, bellowing like his father. His mother was always a foghorn. Repeating everything, low-voiced, her words crawling into his ears and up under his skin.

He drops to his knees and reaches into his inner jacket pocket. He pulls out a dollar-store scrub brush and a small spray bottle filled with soap and water. He squirts and rubs grime away on the pedestrian side of the long concrete barrier separating sidewalk from traffic until the name JENNIFER appears.

“Where are you?” he says out loud. “How can I find you?”

He adds more soapy water to the J, making it bigger and more stylized. It was Aaron who introduced him to reverse graffiti, as a way of tagging without having to worry about getting caught. It’s not illegal to clean something, even if doing so leaves a name or a design. Once, early in first term he and Aaron reverse graffitied a crashing Zeppelin on a long, blank exterior wall at BC Place Stadium. It was Aaron’s idea, but Nik did most of the work while Aaron took smoke breaks.

“I need to gain perspective,” he kept saying, as Nik rubbed with the brush until its bristles were splayed, his knuckles raw from scraping concrete.

Remembering this, Nik imagines asking Old Aaron, “Do you really want to be an artist?” He can’t think of what Old Aaron would say. It doesn’t matter what New Aaron’s long-winded spin on it is now. Clearly his real answer is “no.” It makes Nik wish he had more artist friends. He feels like the only one.

A fast-moving car splashes a spray of puddle water near him. Nik stands and looks down the full length of the pedestrian lane crossing the bridge. He could reverse graffiti a whole message for Jennifer here.

But somebody’s up ahead on the bridge, heading toward him. When the figure sees Nik, he or she turns around and starts running in the other direction. Nik takes chase, but can’t keep up in heavy boots and a cumbersome jacket. If it were Jennifer she wouldn’t run away from him. Unless, he realizes, he is in danger. He stops for a moment at the side of the bridge, the light traffic whooshing past him. Wind pushes at his damp hair. His pants flap. He puts his hands in his pockets and stares at the moving ink below, experiencing vertigo powerful enough to change his mind. Everyone knows how easy it is to jump off a Vancouver bridge. In the worst possible scenario, Jennifer is lost in the depths of False Creek. If he knew for sure she was gone and not just disappeared, he’d make a memorial for her somewhere in Stanley Park by the sea. Like what he saw on the island with his grandmother, but on a city beach. He’d make it safe, covering it with wire netting so her memory would be protected. Then he’d let the office towers watch over her, as yachts boated past. Maybe he’d even lie down next to her. He’d stay there until time turned science fiction and urban erasure swept over them, obliterating like the tide.

Nik feels his head nod forward. His stomach rumbles and jolts. Someone taps him on the shoulder. He spins around.

What Nik believes happens next is that no one is there. He thinks Jennifer is an electrical current and can be radioactive when she wants to be. He thinks Jennifer is sending him a message. He thinks he’s sitting down comfortably on the bridge. He thinks Jennifer’s message is that she needs him. She’s desperate, in danger. He promised his grandmother. He hears a ringing sound in his ears. Nik believes he is reaching into his pants pocket, palming Jennifer’s cellphone, flipping it open.

“Hello?”

Nik believes he is falling through a large pothole in the bridge. As he drops down toward the inky darkness, he drops the phone. But then he feels something around him, pressing into him. He reaches out and feels fishing net. Something small and hard hits him on the thigh. The cellphone is caught up with him and he grabs it back. Cars rumble on the bridge overhead. Waves crash below. He’s entangled in a spiderweb. It’s a trap.

“Hello?” he says into the phone again, desperate for clues. But no one is there. He puts his hands in front of his eyes. He realizes he can’t see.

Nik waits. Fishing wire presses in harder each time he moves. He tries painting a giant web, but the spider keeps returning. He starts counting seconds and gets to 4,537. That’s when he hears a large splash below. He feels the net sinking slowly down toward the ink and begins to tremble, preparing himself for the icy plunge. He wishes for his grandmother and gulps air, trying to fill his lungs. In the frigid water everything goes silent. He is so numbed by the cold he hears the splash of impact before he feels an abrupt tugging. He kicks and struggles as the fishing net is reeled in and lands with a soft thud on a hard surface. He’s in a boat. A large figure bends over him in the shadows. The person smells like mildew. Something strikes Nik on the head. Everything turns black.

What Nik experiences is not all real. What actually happens is that a large, bald man appears. He tackles Nik and drags him toward a waiting car. He forces Nik into the passenger side of the car to question him, but Nik’s head keeps nodding forward. Every time Nik’s body goes limp the man punches him. Then the man’s cellphone rings. Nik hears the man say hello before falling out of consciousness. The man revs his engine and drives away. He presses down hard on Nik’s back with one thick arm so he won’t be seen with a passenger, and drives with the other arm. The man drives quickly then stops the car in a deserted part of Stanley Park. He drags Nik out of the car, across the beach, and into the frigid ocean.

“Wake up, Nik,” the man says, plunging Nik’s head under repeatedly. “Tell me where Jennifer is. I know you know. I’ve seen you with her before.” The man tries to hold up Nik’s limp body. He slaps Nik on the face then lets him drop back down into the water. The man picks up his cellphone and dials while he watches Nik bob around then begin to sink. “Yeah,” the man says into the phone. “I’ve got him. I don’t know what he’s on, but he’s fucked. Not going to make any sense for at least a couple of days. Probably not worth my time.”

The man sees Nik is starting to struggle in the water. He pockets his cellphone, tugs at Nik’s jacket, and pulls him ashore. He heaves Nik’s body onto a wet log. He punches Nik hard in the face then clutches his bruised knuckles. “Ow, that one hurt.” The man swears, leans down to pick Nik up, then stops. He looks at Nik’s heavy leather jacket. He tries to remove it, but something sharp stabs him in his hand. He leans down and tugs at Nik’s boots until they slide off. He throws both boots into the water like footballs. Hard and far. Then he heaves Nik over his shoulder and dumps him into the backseat of his car. The man looks down at Nik’s wet, thin body. He peers at Nik’s swollen face. He slams the door shut. “Fuck,” he says. “He’s just a fucking kid.”

He gets into the driver’s seat and speeds away.

Nik wakes up on a front lawn, head sore, body aching and stiff. Confused, he looks around, sees rectangular houses, hears car doors slamming, engines revving. In the distance he can see the coastal mountains. He can smell salt water. He’s still in Vancouver, but in the suburbs. It’s morning. Nik doesn’t know which suburb he’s in or how he got there. He doesn’t realize his boots are missing until he stands. Water droplets trickle down from his still-sodden pants and chill his dirty bare feet. He checks one pants pocket for his wallet, which he still has, and the other for Jennifer’s cellphone, which he doesn’t. The figure on the bridge last night was a clue, but Nik wasn’t fast enough. He couldn’t catch up. He has vague memories of a net and a boat but can’t make any sense of his garbled thoughts. His head aches worse than any hangover he’s ever had. He touches his forehead and looks at his fingers. Dirt. Water. No blood. Nothing gushing.

He begins to walk. Pavement and pebbles stick to the bottoms of his feet, wears them raw. Then he walks on soft front lawns and bedding plants until he gets to a major street. A car horn blares at him and he steps back, cautioned. He’d started crossing the intersection without waiting for the light. Backing up onto the sidewalk, he blinks and rubs his eyes. He locates east from the location of the murky sun and heads in that direction. It doesn’t take very long for him to find a mall.

Inside, the polished floors are cool and soothing on his feet. Many of the stores are still closed, their windows darkened like retail caves. The first shoe store he comes across has an oversized red sign and sells sporting goods. Its fluorescent lights make everything green and surreal. Nik examines the items on a sale rack by the door. He picks up then puts down a pink skipping rope, a sparkly green child’s ball, and an oversized catcher’s mitt.

“Can I help you?”

The voice startles Nik and he drops the mitt with a clatter. Leaning down to pick it up is difficult, his limbs aching, knees unwilling to bend. He looks up and sees an androgynous clerk wearing an all-white uniform that resembles a karate suit. There’s a halo of something bright around the clerk’s face. Eyes that look like two black pebbles in the middle of a white oval. For a moment Nik thinks the clerk is an angel. But there’s an overwhelming stench of dirty salt water emanating from his still-damp clothes. That seems real enough. He puts his hand on his head again where it throbs. This time he feels a crust of dried blood. This discovery makes him dizzy. He grips a plastic shoe rack and holds steady. Now he can see what he’s looking for. His eyes dance up and down the display twice, three times, four times. He points to a pair of black running shoes with a small white insignia.

“Size 12?” he asks. The clerk’s oval face bends forward in a nod. Nik sees eyelids open and close around the pebbles. The clerk hovers, then floats away, disappearing down a flight of stairs Nik hadn’t noticed before. Nik sits on a white vinyl bench and fishes a pair of cheap white tube socks out of the basket beside him. They are too small for his feet, but when the clerk returns, he, or she, bares bright, gleaming teeth. Nik understands this forced smile is relief. The clerk is glad Nik is wearing the socks.

The clerk drops the shoebox at Nik’s feet and then steps back, well out of whiff range. Nik waits for the clerk to say something reassuring or sales-like. Instead the heat vent clicks on, blasting a growling roar. He flips the lid off the box, peers at the shoes inside. The clerk fades out of his periphery.

Bending forward makes Nik’s head ache. It takes him several minutes to tie the laces. At first the shoes feel like Styrofoam — much lighter than his old boots. Nik lifts his feet up and down, one foot after the other, testing how fast and nimble they might make him. He imagines running after the figure on the bridge. With these shoes he could catch him. Or her.

“They look ridiculous,” Old Aaron whispers to him.

“I don’t care,” Nik says out loud.

“I wouldn’t buy them if I were you,” Old Aaron says. “They’re not cool.”

“I need these shoes!” Nik says.

“Don’t waste your money then!” Old Aaron says. “One quick sprint out that door and they’re yours. C’mon, let’s rock ’n’ roll.”

“I am NOT going to steal them,” Nik says.

“I didn’t say you were,” says the clerk.

Nik tries to focus. It takes a minute before his vision clears. He realizes the clerk is a thin woman with short blonde hair.

“If you buy them you can keep the socks,” she says, stepping back even farther. “Although I’d probably let you keep them either way.”

Nik can see her eyes now. They’re brown. And fearful. He takes his wallet from his pocket, tries to smile. The clerk retreats to the cash desk and stands behind the cash register, waiting. Nik pays for the shoes out of the Jennifer Fund. He’s shaking and shivering as he keys the PIN number into the handset. He needs these shoes to be able to catch up to Jennifer’s captors. He needs to work faster to find her. He needs to be able to run.