Trader

by Charles de Lint

  “Sure, but—”

  “I don’t have anything like that. I don’t have this desire to do or be anything. Everybody I know has their niche; what they do defines them. You’re a musician. Jilly’s an artist-slash-waitress. Zeffy’s a singer-slash-waitress. Me, I’m just a waitress. I don’t do anything except cheer on my friends. And the reason I don’t do anything else is because there’s nothing I want to do. Nothing I want to be. I mean, I want to be something, I want to do something that gives my life some meaning, but I come up blank whenever I think about it.”

  “You used to act, didn’t you?”

  “But that was something my parents wanted me to do. I didn’t choose it for myself. Or maybe I did, eventually, but it was after they pushed me into it. They were certainly expecting more from me than becoming a wet dream for B-movie aficionados.”

  She sighed and then fell silent. Geordie didn’t say anything for a few minutes. They watched the tourists snapping pictures, the bums sleeping, the food vendors along Stanton Street packing up their carts. At one point a stray dog came sniffing its way along the curb and they both tracked it until it went out of sight around the corner. Finally Geordie turned to her.

  “I heard something when we played up on the rez last year,” he said. “One of the guys asked an elder why the Kickaha never gave up. You know, they’ve been taking all this shit for decades, but they just soldier on. The elder doesn’t even have to think about it. ‘We have our instructions from the creator,’ she says. ‘So long as there is one to sing, one to dance, one to speak, and one to listen, we don’t give up.’”

  “That’s lovely, if a little Carlos Castaneda,” Tanya told him. “But I don’t see how it applies to my situation.”

  Geordie shrugged. “It was just what you said about cheering on your friends. ‘One to listen.’ Do you have any idea how rare it is to find a person who can do that well? Most people are too busy talking, or waiting for a break in the conversation so that they can speak, to appreciate what they’re hearing.” He smiled. “And I’m using conversation as a metaphor here for any kind of dialogue, be it music, art, dance, theatre. Or a good conversation.”

  Tanya returned his smile and this time she didn’t have to work at it. “So you’re saying I should make a career out of being a good listener.”

  “Not at all. I just don’t think it should be underrated. Career’s a whole different thing. If you’re serious about wanting to figure out a way to express yourself, my advice would be to stop worrying about it. It’ll come to you when it’s ready. Or you are.”

  “Or not at all,” Tanya said.

  “Or not at all,” Geordie agreed. “But I don’t really believe that. Everybody’s got something. Everybody has a need to express themselves creatively. The trouble for some people is that the opportunity to experience what’s available just never arrives; if you don’t know about something, then you can never acquire the skill to utilize it.”

  “I suppose,” Tanya said, the doubt plain in her voice.

  Geordie sighed. “I’m not really doing much of a job cheering you up, am I?”

  Tanya pretended to think hard, scrunching up her brow theatrically and rubbing her chin with a thumb and forefinger.

  “Nope,” she said. “I still don’t feel cheered up.”

  Though actually she did feel better. Nothing was resolved. Her problems hadn’t gone away. But Geordie was always good company—as easygoing as Jilly, in his own way—and it was hard to brood around him.

  “Well, you know what I do when I get depressed?” he said.

  Tanya shook her head.

  “This is a new thing,” he told her, “but it works for me. I go over to Fitzhenry Park and have my fortune told.”

  “Do you actually believe in that kind of thing?”

  “Not really. But I like the ritual of it. You know, the laying down of the cards, the throwing of the coins, whatever.”

  “I’ll have to give it a try.”

  “In the meantime,” Geordie said. He jingled a pocket heavy with the change he’d earned busking with his friend. “I’m feeling rich. Do you want to go somewhere and have a tall cool glass of something cold?”

  “Only if you promise to regale me with sparkling conversation—I’m a very good listener, you know.”

  “So I see. Sarcastic, too.”

  “I think sincere is the word you were looking for.”

  Geordie smiled. “That, too. Now come on before I change my mind and ask some other depressed waitress to share in the bounty of my hard-earned coins.”

  “I’ll follow you anywhere,” Tanya informed him. “So long as it’s to someplace air-conditioned.”

  She lit a cigarette and stood up.

  “Can I have one of those?” Geordie asked.

  “But you don’t smoke.”

  “I know. It’s just to be companionable.”

  Tanya shrugged and passed him the pack.

  “Do yourself a favor,” she said, “and don’t ever start hanging around with junkies.”

  He gave her an odd look, but she didn’t feel up to elaborating. She’d shared enough confidences for one day.

  13 MAX

  The second time Devlin shuts the door in my face, all I can do is turn away and stumble back down the hallway. The vertigo that hit me earlier returns with a rush and I have to sit down on the steps leading up to the Fishers’ apartment on the third floor. I bow my head, pressing my fingers against my temples. The spinning starts to slow down, but I can’t seem to lose the nausea that’s churning in my stomach. A headache throbs dully behind my eyes and my breath’s gone short. I start to feel claustrophobic, as though the walls are pressing in and there’s no air in the hallway, but I can’t muster the small amount of energy it’d take to get up and leave the building.

  A part of me realizes that it’s another panic attack, I just have to ride it through. But identifying the problem doesn’t alleviate it. I want to lie down, right here on the dusty floor, but that’s the step too far, even with how I’m feeling. I’ll be damned if I’m going to sprawl out in my own hallway like some derelict alcoholic with a hangover.

  So I sit here on the steps, curled in on myself, the weight of my upper body and head supported by my knees. I concentrate on breathing normally and try to quiet the wild pounding of my heart, but all I can think about is, why’s Devlin so resilient? How come he can handle it all so well? What made him pick me for this switch? How did he pull it off and how can I force him to turn things back to normal? Are things ever going to be normal again?

  I have no idea how long it is before I’m finally able to get to my feet again. I stare at the front door of my apartment, but I can’t face another confrontation with the man who’s stolen away my life. I feel too drained. Instead, I just turn away and start wearily down the stairs. When I reach the landing between the first and second floors, I think I hear a door close up on the Fishers’ floor. I take a look up past the banisters but there’s nothing to see. I think of going up to talk to Nia, but I know it’s not a good idea. What could I possibly say to her? Devlin’s right. No one’s going to believe me. I can hardly believe it myself.

  But I’m not going to make the best of a bad situation.

  I continue down the stairs, pausing on the street outside to look up at the windows of my apartment. The air feels so clean as I draw it into my lungs. It steadies me, puts some strength back into my muscles, clears the nausea and dulls the throbbing in my head.

  This isn’t over—not by a long shot. But first I have to regroup. Calm down. Work out a plan of action. I study the windows for a few moments longer, but there’s no sign of Devlin looking back down at me. As I’m about to turn away, I think I see a curtain move in a window of the Fishers’ apartment, but when I look more closely I can’t see anyone there either.

  Forget it, I tell myself. No one can help you. You’re on your own.

  What I have to do now is go back to Devlin’s apartment and figure out a way to raise some
money. Because if this situation doesn’t get resolved quickly, I’m going to have to live on something. I won’t be able to get access to my own assets—not without committing what the rest of the world would consider a crime. I’d just be taking what’s mine, but everybody else, seeing me as Devlin, would consider it theft. The teller at the bank would think I was forging my own name. I can’t even use a bank machine, because my bank card is upstairs in the apartment with Devlin. I could wait for him to leave, but I’d have to break in and risk arrest. Only Devlin—his own finances in ruin—has access to my assets now.

  Fine, I think. Devlin may be broke and up to his ears in debt, but he still has an apartment full of stereo and video equipment that I can try to sell.

  The thought wakes a twinge of guilt in me but all I have to do is remember the smirk on his face and his smug declaration, From here on out, every night when I go to sleep I'm going to take a moment to concentrate on maintaining this new status quo.

  He’s stolen my life. His arrogance demands payback. At this point, whatever I have to do to get my life back, up to and including the use of Devlin’s meager assets, is simply fair game. And I refuse to allow myself to feel repentant while doing so.

  So I start the trek back to Devlin’s apartment. I cut straight back across town this time and make it to the building in just under an hour—half the time it took me to make the trip out earlier today. But I’d been operating under a cloud of loss and confusion then. It’s different now. I’m no happier about how things stand than I was when I first discovered what had been done to me, but at least the confrontation with Devlin has proved one thing to me: I’m not crazy. Impossible though the situation is, at least now I have no doubts. It’s real. I can stop questioning my sanity and get on with the job at hand. I can stop simply reacting to what’s thrown at me and initiate my own countermoves.

  When I reach Devlin’s building, I take the steps up to the apartment two at a time. That’s one thing to be said about Devlin, I think as I fish in my pocket for the keys. At least he kept himself in shape. I’m not even winded.

  I pull out the keys, insert the one for the apartment into the lock and try to turn it. Nothing happens. Confused, I try the other keys on the ring, one after the other, but none of them work.

  Now what’s going on? I tested the keys before I left the apartment for this very reason. They have to work. Unless...unless someone has changed the locks while I was gone...

  My heart sinks as I remember the state of Devlin’s finances. What if along with all those other unpaid bills, he hasn’t been paying his rent either?

  My hard-earned optimism fades. I take the stairs back down again at a slower pace, searching for the superintendent’s apartment.

  14 ZEFFY

  Zeffy left the café and headed for home as soon as her shift was over, worrying about Tanya, but feeling a little apprehensive as well. God knew she loved Tanya, but Zeffy wasn’t sure she had the strength to deal with another of her roommate’s depressions. She knew it was a totally selfish thing to be thinking, but she couldn’t stop herself. Whenever Tanya’s life went downhill, Zeffy’s ground to a standstill as well because she used up all of her energy in support of her friend.

  She couldn’t afford that right now. Not with this gig coming up. A real gig, mind you, not some floor spot at one of the folk clubs, but one with her name up there on the posters as well as that of the headlining band. She passed a couple of the posters on the way home, stapled onto telephone poles, and smiled every time she saw it: Zeffy Lacerda, her name listed right under Glory Mad Dog’s and the words “opening act.”

  She wanted to be hot that night. She knew her material forward and backward, but she was still practicing hard every day because she was determined to pull off the perfect show. Glory Mad Dog had a good following in the city, plus they were being courted by a half-dozen record companies. The club seated five hundred and it could easily sell out. If she did well, all kinds of doors could open for her after this weekend. Better gigs. Maybe her own following of faithful fans. God, maybe even her own contract, though she knew that if that ever happened, it was still a long way down the road.

  So she couldn’t blow this show. She’d wasted far too much of her life as it was—all those years that she’d played only for herself, too scared to ever think of seriously making a career out of it. Sitting in her room, writing her songs, practicing, dreaming about being up on a stage somewhere and making it all seem so effortless the way it seemed everybody else could. People had no idea how scared she got, how much nerve it took for her to get up there behind the mike and play her music. She couldn’t do it at all if she had to deal with one of Tanya’s crises at the same time.

  And it had happened before. Nothing major, no big gig like this, but more than once a crisis of Tanya’s had her cancel a gig or not go out to an open-mike night. Hole-in-the-wall clubs, it was true, but still. At what point, she wondered, did you get to live your own life? At what point did you say, No more, I’m doing something for myself this time?

  She sighed. Ah, who was she kidding? She’d never let Tanya down. She’d never let anyone down if they needed her. It just wasn’t in her. She was no saint, but if you couldn’t be there for your friends when they needed you, then what was the point of singing about integrity and supporting one another in your music? It wasn’t like people got into trouble on purpose. It wasn’t like they chose the worst possible moment to have some emergency that they couldn’t deal with on their own.

  But it was hard sometimes. Especially when you saw someone making the same mistake over and over again. Like Tanya. Maybe she’d managed to stay clean, but the guys she inevitably fell for...It was as though Tanya was doomed to repeat the same bad relationship forever. This business with Johnny Devlin was only the latest installment in a story that had been going on for as long as Zeffy had known Tanya, and Johnny wasn’t even the worst, god help them all.

  What was the most frustrating about all of this was that Tanya was such a sweet person. And a true friend. When she wasn’t trapped in one of her downward-spiraling depressions, she seemed to live her life for other people. You couldn’t find a more supportive friend, always ready to pitch in and lend a hand, the very best company, never complaining except for when some guy dumped her and the blues got way serious.

  But when Tanya got depressed...

  So it was with some trepidation that Zeffy entered the apartment. Worst-case scenario, she’d find Tanya crying. Running a close second, she’d be on the verge of tears because she’d started thinking about all the bad relationships, running them into each other, so that they stretched out in one long unbroken string—which was enough to depress anyone, Zeffy agreed. But she needn’t have worried. She found her roommate in the living room, ironing, an old REM CD on the stereo playing at a low volume. She was singing along with Stipe—off-key as usual, since she couldn’t hold a tune for the life of her, but warbling away happily.

  She broke off and smiled when Zeffy came into the room. Zeffy returned her smile. She dropped her knapsack on the floor and sprawled out on the sofa, relishing that first rush of relaxation after having been on her feet all day. Whenever she worked a full day like this, she renewed the promise, too often broken, to hold firm and only do half days. Tanya finished the sleeve she was working on, then turned off the iron and joined Zeffy on the sofa.

  “Can I guess that you’re feeling better?” Zeffy asked.

  “I suppose I was pretty obvious, slipping out the way I did.”

  “Only to those who love you.”

  “Yeah, well I was feeling pretty down when I left,” Tanya said. “I planned to just come home, but when the bus pulled up by St. Paul’s I had to get out. I hung out on the steps for a while.” She offered up a wry smile. “Feeling sorry for myself, I’ll admit. But then I got to talking with Geordie who’d been busking there earlier and the next thing I knew we were having iced teas on the patio of The Rusty Lion and I couldn’t even remember why I’d been fee
ling so down.” She paused for a moment. “No, that’s not quite true. I knew why, but it just didn’t seem quite so important anymore.”

  “That’s good.”

  Tanya nodded. “He’s really quite the character, isn’t he?”

  “Who? Geordie?”

  “Well, who else are we talking about?”

  Zeffy gave her a considering look. Good lord, could Tanya actually be going for a normal person for a change? Geordie Riddell was one of the sweetest men Zeffy knew, a kind, gentle soul, shy sometimes to a fault, but not in the least a Milquetoast, thank goodness. Like most of her friends, Zeffy liked a man to be considerate, but she still wanted him to have some spunk. Sometimes it seemed to her that this whole PC agenda had taken things all the way over to the other extreme. Instead of having to fend off macho jocks, now you ended up having to jump-start a bunch of wimps. Yuck. A certain amount of shyness could be attractive, but there had to be some backbone there as well. Happily, Geordie had enough of both.

  “So is there romance in the air?” she asked.

  Tanya actually blushed. “Kind of early to say, wouldn’t you think? I mean, he was just being friendly.”

  "Jilly says he’s way shy when it comes to that sort of thing—both him and his brother. It’s a genetic thing.”

  Tanya laughed. “Oh, right.”

  “So you sort of have to make the first move,” Zeffy went on, “because they’ll never do it on their own.”

  “Maybe we could double-date them.”

  Zeffy smiled. “So you are interested.”

  “Well, he’s the first guy I’ve met in forever who seems to be genuinely nice. And he’s certainly good-looking.”

  “Quite good-looking—in a scruffy sort of way.”

  “This is true. He is scruffy, but I’m thinking more that he’s such a nice change from Johnny.”

  “Anything decent would be a change from Johnny,” Zeffy pronounced with great solemnity.