by Sheena Kamal
Brazuca steps into the room, putting some distance between him and Grace, who looks about ready to spontaneously combust. “Tell me about what you gave her. Did you know?”
“That she would die? Of course not. It’s not something I do often, by the way. Clem just didn’t trust anyone else and I owed her a favor. She knew I had contacts. But I told her this time would be the last for a while. Her habit was getting out of control and it wouldn’t stay hidden if she kept going like she was. Then Bernie would get involved and I’d be in shit. Like I am now, I guess.”
“Where do you get your supply?”
“Wait,” says Grace, turning to Brazuca. “Is that why he sent you? This is about the drugs? For fuck’s sake! My sister is dead!”
Priya glances toward the door. “Seems like you two have some things to sort out.”
Brazuca moves closer to her, making sure to exaggerate his limp. It’s a cheap ploy, but he’s not above using it when it suits his needs. “Maybe we should speak in private.” Which, he realizes now, is what should have happened from the start.
Grace crosses her arms over her chest. “I wanna hear this.”
“No,” says Priya. “You really don’t.” Then she walks out, holding two designer handbags. One of them, presumably, her own.
Brazuca throws an apologetic glance at Grace as he follows her sister’s dealer out, leaving her much the same way that he found her. In the middle of a room, lost and grieving.
He catches up to Priya at the elevator, not bothering to disguise how fast he can move when he really wants to. And only for short spurts of time. “I can’t give you a name,” she says, as he reaches her side. “You understand, don’t you? Bernie won’t but you’re a more reasonable person. I can tell just by looking at you.”
“I think he really loved her. It’s more than just the macho bullshit this time. I can’t go back to him with nothing.”
She nods, understanding. They are all accountable to someone. The elevator doors open and she steps inside. “You a drinking man?”
“Not anymore.” Not since Nora tied him to a bed and poured rum laced with painkillers down his throat. Which he supposes was officially a relapse, but really can’t be considered his fault. He had underestimated her and paid the price for it. He’d felt a bit like a whore then, too, he remembers. It seemed to be a common theme in his dealings with women.
“That’s too bad. There’s a bar in Gastown that I hear is really good. They’ve got those fruity cocktails with umbrellas in them. The Lala Lair.”
The doors close.
Brazuca considers going back into the condo to help Clementine’s sister sort through expensive shit and deal with her grief. On second thought, he presses the down button. He has a job to do, after all, and as much as he wants to attribute his conversation with Priya about getting a drink to his sex appeal, he suspects that she had a different motivation. She told him what he needs to know, in the only way that she felt safe.
As for Grace . . . well, he hopes she got what she needed from him.
8
I wait for Simone in the backstage area of a tiny craft beer lounge that moonlights as a drag club on Tuesday evenings. There are sequins and tassels everywhere. I feel like I’m in a harem girl’s gaudy nightmare, waiting for the pasha to come have his way with me. There is a drag queen in the small dressing room I’m sitting in, applying thick liquid eyeliner with the precision of a surgeon. She ignores me completely as she steps into her high-heeled boots and saunters out the door. Seconds later Simone walks in, covered in body glitter and wearing something lime green that is more tank top than dress. It reminds me of the time that we’d first met at an alcoholics’ support group. She’d been wearing something similar, possibly in hot pink.
“You haven’t been coming to meetings,” she says, when she notices me sitting near a rack of accessories and bright scarves.
“I know.” It would upset her if she knew I was going to other kinds of meetings. But in my defense, I can hardly keep track of my own issues. How can I expect her to?
She kicks off her heels and sits at the dressing table, rubbing her stockinged feet. “Or answering my calls.”
“I don’t like talking on the phone.” Ever since last year when I’d washed up on the shore of Vancouver Island, after my daughter, Bonnie, had been kidnapped, I have been avoiding Simone and her perceptive glances. She is fond of talking about feelings. Mostly hers, but she’s also occasionally interested in mine, too.
“And now you want me to look into your father’s background, is that it?” Off goes the dress. The tightly muscled body underneath it is an advertisement for the aesthetic value of body hair removal. “I got your message yesterday, Nora, but you’ve been such a bad friend to me that I’m not sure I feel like helping you out this time. You said you found a veterans’ organization for the marines in Lebanon? Maybe you should go through them,” she says, knowing full well how I feel about talking to strangers on the Internet about anything other than sex.
You wouldn’t know it by looking at her, but Simone is something of a computer security expert. She has her own small operation, which she runs as her alter ego Simon, and seems content with living under the radar in gold lamé stilettos. I don’t offer to pay for her help because I suspect that it would go badly for me. So I wait while she carefully removes her wig and makeup and dresses in a plain tracksuit over her opaque stockings. The only thing that’s left of her drag personality are her long painted nails, which she uses to scratch lightly at her scalp after she’s pulled the pins for her wig out.
“Sorry,” I say, summoning a smile. “Let’s talk about you.”
She grins and leads me out of the room. “I was hoping you’d ask. I’m dating this new guy, Terry, but he’s still got one foot and half a nut in the closet. It’s been a beautiful nightmare.”
I cringe at the mental image this conjures and wonder, not for the first time, why when you ask someone about themself in a general way, they see this as an invitation to annoy the crap out of you with an update on their love life. But this is Simone, so I’m more indulgent. “Anyone would be lucky to have you.”
“Even you?” she asks, her voice teasing. I hold the back door open for her and she winks at me as she walks past.
“Especially me.” It’s true. Who wouldn’t want a computer security expert as a lover? On second thought, I understand Terry’s dilemma. There is nothing she couldn’t find out about you if she wanted to.
“And what would you do when I took off my pantyhose and showed you my dick? Could you handle a man like me?”
The question stumps me. Ever since she introduced herself to me as a woman, and one that could sing the hell out of “Single Ladies” at that, I’ve never thought of her as a man. I’m not sure if she really wants me to. Even in sweatpants, without her wig, her hair cut short, and no makeup on her face, she is the most delicately feminine person I’ve ever met. She laughs. “Don’t look so shocked. Anyway, you’re not butch enough for me.”
I’m unexpectedly offended. If the alley we’re standing in wasn’t so filthy, I’d be trying to peel myself from the floor. Not butch enough? How dare she. I consult my female energy, which is as dubious as it has always been. Not butch enough. Huh.
“I’ll look into your father, Nora. You know I will. But I can’t get started on it for a couple of weeks. Is that alright?”
“Yeah,” I say. “I’m taking a trip soon anyway, so email the details when you can.”
Her face lights up. “That’s new. Going somewhere exciting?”
I shrug. “I hear a bit of international travel is good for the soul.”
“It’s Detroit, isn’t it? You’re going to Detroit.” Then she sighs and links her arm in mine. “Come on. Walk me to Terry’s place. You can tell me all about how your sobriety is coming along.”
It’s a cloudy night and the smoke hasn’t quite lifted yet, so I convince her to catch a cab instead while I take the bus back to the town house. As I rea
ch the front walk, the light blinks on my phone. The light only blinks when I get a message on a particular app I’ve installed so that I can communicate with Bonnie, the daughter I gave up for adoption sixteen years ago. That she knows who I am is a result of as spectacular an administrative fuckup as there could have been. Welcome to Canada, land of famous bacon, maple syrup consortiums, and egregious clerical errors. One that resulted in Bonnie’s original birth papers falling into the hands of her adoptive parents when she was born. Maybe some exhausted office grunt messed up. Maybe it was his first day at work, or maybe the days numbered into the hundreds. Could have been a middle finger to the system on his very last day. The reason that Bonnie’s file slipped through the cracks no longer matters because she now knows who I am.
Not only that, she’s also got my phone number.
We never call each other. Never hear each other’s voices. We only exchange photographs via this app, to avoid incurring extra charges on our mobile plans. The picture she sends this time is of her foot in a stirrup. It’s always her foot somewhere and I’m left to assume the rest of her body is, too. She is okay because her foot is. I suppose I’m meant to glean from this that all of her, her whole, is still going about the business of life. Right now getting a pelvic exam, for instance.
Thanks for the update.
I send her back one of Whisper that I’ve saved for this purpose. She shows me her feet and I show her my dog and this is what our relationship is. Photos of our lives, but at a distance and masked by melancholy filters.
Inside the house, I find Seb awake and in the office, poring over his latest draft of the memoir. We have just completed his Kosovo chapters and touched on his marriage, back when he was trying to pass as heterosexual. He’s always been one hell of a writer, but this book is so emotionally charged that I had to put it down after I’d read his last pages.
I’m worried because he still won’t talk about his latest hospital visit. That’s how I know it’s bad.
“I don’t have to go, you know,” I say to him, after I’ve come back from my walk with Whisper. We haven’t seen any signs of the veteran since our impromptu conversation in the park. He has vanished into the night and has taken my equilibrium with him. Still, I was uneasy on our walk and Whisper impatient so we turned back halfway through our usual route anyway. She doesn’t like staying away from Seb for very long anymore. At the moment she is lying at his feet, idly licking the rug he has buried his toes in.
“Yes, you do. I need to be alone for a bit, anyway.”
“You sure you don’t need me?”
He shrugs. “It’s mostly done. You did a great job with the research and organization of this, Nora. I’m glad . . . glad for your help.”
He can’t quite meet my eyes.
When dogs know that they are dying, they’ll find a comfortable spot and lie there until it’s their time. There is no self-pity in their eyes. They don’t fight what’s coming. It’s their people that become fraught with anxiety at the idea that their loved one is about to die. But for the dog there is only a kind of peaceful resignation.
About an hour later I come back into the office. Seb is on the couch with Whisper curled up at the other end, still at his feet, anchoring the thick blanket that covers him. Because he’s asleep, I take his thin hands in mine and squeeze them gently. He returns no pressure. Whisper’s tail thumps twice, but she refuses to get up. Probably because she senses that I’m leaving them. That my heavy knapsack at the door is a sign that I’m abandoning the pack in its time of need. Even though I’ve reached out to Brazuca and left instructions—and some extra money—for the dog walker, I still feel guilty. As I look at them, I add fear to the mix.
What frightens me is that she seems as peaceful there on the couch as he does.
But I can’t stay any longer. I have a plane to catch.
9
Outside the clinic, Bonnie stares at the photo of the dog on her phone. Whisper is, as always, looking directly at the camera, slightly bored. A silver BMW pulls into the lot. Bonnie slings her backpack over her shoulder and walks cautiously to the car. She gets in, but is careful not to look at her mother. Lynn doesn’t say a word until they leave the lot, but Bonnie has an idea of what’s coming. Her mother’s shoulders are set with tension. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I was just gonna take the bus back but I forgot my pass.”
“You didn’t answer my question. Why didn’t you tell me you were pregnant?” asks Lynn, who thought that Bonnie was adjusting just fine to life in Toronto and the only thing she really had to worry about was a mild red cedar allergy Bonnie had developed last year.
Bonnie shrugs. It was an easy procedure, simpler than she’d thought. It’s like her insides had been scraped raw, but the cramps were no more painful than usual. “I thought I could handle it, is all.”
Lynn deliberately doesn’t look at her daughter when she speaks next. “You thought I’d judge you,” she says softly. “Because of everything I went through to adopt you.”
Neither of them says it, but it’s in the air. Because Lynn could not have children. Because Bonnie is the result of an assault against her biological mother. Because Bonnie had a choice where Nora didn’t. And someone to drive her home from the clinic afterward.
Lynn pulls onto the side of the road. The unusually warm weather this fall is starting to break. Toronto is cooler now, but not cool enough for snow. Rain splatters the windows as they stare straight ahead, not daring to meet each other’s eyes. She puts her hand over Bonnie’s and squeezes it lightly. “I would never judge you, sweetheart. Never. It’s your body, your decision. Okay?”
“Yeah, I know. I just didn’t want to get into it. Can we not tell Dad?”
Lynn sniffs. “Why would we? It’s none of his business.”
“Thanks, Mom,” Bonnie says, somewhat relieved. Her father is still in Vancouver, probably still screwing his boss. She no longer blames her parents for their marriage breaking apart—that was little kid stuff—but that doesn’t mean she is any closer to either of them. Especially Everett, who was the parent that she’d trusted the most until she’d found out last year that he’d been having an affair. She had overreacted to the news, in a spectacular way. She had run away to meet her birth father, who had turned out to be a monster. It is a time in her life that she tries not to think about.
“If anything happens, I just want you to know that you can talk to me. That’s all.” Lynn pulls the car back onto the road. “Are you hungry?”
“It’s too late to eat. I just want to go to bed.”
Lynn looks at her out of the corner of her eye as they drive to their condo in the artsy neighborhood of Leslieville, but says nothing in response.
Bonnie has an unsettling feeling that has nothing to do with the clinic—or what had come before. That was a relief, more than anything else. This past summer she had seen her old boyfriend Tommy, who wanted to be called Tom now. It was clear to them both that it was over, but they still missed each other. Bonnie hadn’t planned on having sex with him, but she didn’t regret it. They just weren’t as careful as they used to be.
No, she decides now. She feels a bit tired, is all, but she’s not unhappy about what happened back at the clinic. Her impulse to reach out to Nora had been a surprise, but it’s really Nora’s response that’s bugging her. Nora usually takes her time to reply. To catch Whisper in good lighting and looking at the camera is no easy feat. This photo came much quicker than normal, as if Nora had been waiting for Bonnie to send her something. As if she had been waiting for it and preempted her response.
As they drive home, Bonnie can’t help but wonder why.
Part Two
10
The clouds are making beautiful shapes just beyond my little oval window. The flight so far has been smooth, the plane cutting through these shapes like icing. I could stay up here forever, but the flight attendant’s fuck-me gaze is slowly but surely shifting to fuck-you as I linger over my meal tray. She h
as tried to snatch it up several times and I’ve only saved it by latching on with an iron grip. But if there was a fight to the death between us, my money would be on her. I would never bet against a woman who could wrestle her hair into a bun that uncompromising. A bomb could blow this plane out of the sky and among the wreckage they would find a perfect sphere of hair, still intact, with not a honey-gold strand out of place.
When we land, the U.S. border agent seems skeptical that my reason for traveling here is “tourism” but probably can’t imagine what damage I could do to Detroit that hasn’t been done to it already. From the airport I rent a Chevy Impala and, driving through the city in the late morning light, I can see why he stopped giving a shit. Abandoned buildings everywhere. Run-down streets. People who won’t look each other in the eye. It is a violent shock to my system, especially coming from one of the most beautiful—and least affordable—cities in the world, where so many people want to live that almost nobody gets a chance.
To this. Detroit.
It isn’t hot or smoky like Vancouver was when I left it, but there is something thick about the air here. Something heavy. It smacks me straight in the nose, like a jab that’s come and gone before I’ve had time to react. Or maybe my mind is playing tricks again.
I check into a cheap motel in Midtown and try to get my bearings. I was told that it was in a good pocket of the city, near the university, but the demolished lots on the block tell a different story. The motel itself seems okay and the sheets are clean but in a faded flower pattern that is unbearably hopeful, given the motel’s depressing location. I can’t bring myself to get into that bed but I don’t want to go outside until I must, so I sit with the curtains drawn, in an armchair that might just collapse under the weight of one more ass. I’m living on the edge, though, so I don’t give it another thought.
I dream of a little girl covered in a man’s blood, who slips in it as she opens her mouth in a silent scream and scuttles away. Then I wake up feeling like the city of Detroit crumbled while I slept and most of the debris has fallen on top of me. I have not thought of that little girl in a very long time. And I have never, not once before today, dreamed of her. It’s a good thing that it’s almost evening, and time to pay a visit. So I can push all the happy childhood memories aside for now.
