Trader

by Charles de Lint

  “Of course I’d care. I’m just too trusting for my own good. But I like the look of you, so what the hell.”

  “I’ve been busking...” Zeffy began.

  He shook his head. “Play it wherever you want. Treat it as if it’s your own while you have it. Like I said, it’s not getting played anyway. I know you’ll be careful with it.”

  Careful? Zeffy thought. She didn’t know if she’d be able to play it she’d be so worried.

  “Maybe I should just take my guitar with me today and I’ll come back next week.”

  Trader smiled. “What do I have to do, take an oath to swear it’s all right? Stop worrying so much. It’s an old guitar.” He took it from her and went over to his workbench with it. “Let’s see if it’ll fit in your case. There. A perfect fit.” He laid her Yamaha down on the counter and closed up the case. Swinging it down, he turned and handed it to her.

  “But—”

  “I hate to seem pushy,” he told her, “but I’ve still got a mess of paperwork to get through before I can call it a day.”

  Zeffy had to give in. “Thanks,” she said, accepting the case from him.

  “No problem. I’ll have yours ready for you next week—say Wednesday?”

  “Okay. I’ll take seriously good care of this.”

  “I know you will. Say, where are you playing this weekend? Maybe I’ll drop by and check you out.”

  “The YoMan, Friday and Saturday night. I’m opening for Glory Mad Dog.”

  He nodded. “If I can make it, I’ll be the guy wearing the T-shirt that says, ‘She’s playing my guitar.’”

  “I wouldn’t need that to recognize you,” Zeffy said. “If you come, I’ll buy you a drink after my set.”

  He gave her a look that she would have taken for a come-on if they were in a bar, but here, in his shop, she couldn’t take it seriously.

  “I’ll hold you to that,” he said.

  A few moments later she was out on the street, walking back toward Lee, the Trader guitar a surprisingly light weight in her case. She felt so stupid for even considering Johnny’s story with any seriousness. What could she have been thinking of? But it wasn’t only Johnny. Jilly was almost as much to blame, too, egging her on the way she had. Zeffy planned to give both of them a piece of her mind the next time she saw them, though with Johnny, never again would be too soon.

  No, scratch that, she thought. First she’d make sure he paid Tanya what he owed. Then he could drop down a hole and be lost forever, the smug bastard. When she thought of how he must be laughing at her right now, it made her feel a little crazy. She wanted to track him down and shove his stupid carving down his throat. But no. She’d be mature about all of this. She’d wait to see if he had the nerve to show up in Fitzhenry Park again tomorrow and then she’d do it.

  11 LISA

  Lisa didn’t allow herself to lie down and try to get some sleep until they finally heard Trader leave his apartment. They listened to him go down the stairs, check his mail, then finally open the store.

  “We’ll take turns staying awake and keeping an eye on him,” Julie said when Lisa still hesitated.

  “You’ll wake me if anything happens?”

  Julie smiled. “I’ll wake you in a few hours even if nothing happens,” she said. “I’ll be wanting to catch some sleep myself by then.”

  Which only made Lisa feel guilty all over again.

  “Oh god,” she began. “I feel so bad about dragging you along through all of this.”

  “Don’t.”

  “I’m trying not to, but it’s hard. You should at least have the first sleep.” Julie laid a finger against Lisa’s lips. “Hush,” she said. “Right now, you need it more than I do. I’m something of an insomniac, so I’m used to operating on next to no sleep.”

  “Really? What keeps you up?”

  “If I knew that, I guess I wouldn’t have the problem,” Julie said. “Now go on. You’re almost asleep on your feet as it is.”

  It was true. Lisa was exhausted. She had a headache to go with the dry itchiness behind her eyes. Her mouth tasted terrible and every one of her limbs felt as though it had a ten-pound weight attached to it. She could barely drag herself into her bedroom and didn’t bother to undress once she had. Instead, she lay on top of the covers and turned her face toward the wall, away from the bright sunlight that made it through the window’s drawn curtains. She thought she was too tired to sleep. Lying there, she listened to Julie close the apartment door. She heard the shower go on and fell asleep while it was still running.

  I borrowed some of your clothes,” Julie said when she woke Lisa later. “I hope you don’t mind.”

  A heavy fog clouded Lisa’s thoughts as she dragged herself up from a heavy sleep. Her gaze was turned in Julie’s direction, but could barely focus on her.

  “Nia?” she asked.

  “Nothing yet. And your neighbor’s still in his store. I just checked.”

  Lisa sat up slowly. She looked at the bedside clock and saw that it was almost three. She’d slept for six hours, but it felt as though she’d only just closed her eyes moments ago. The taste in her mouth was worse, but her headache had subsided. The fog was starting to clear and Julie came into focus. Lisa thought Julie looked much better in the borrowed sweatshirt and black jeans than she ever had herself.

  “You should’ve woken me earlier,” she said. “You must be exhausted.”

  “I stole a few catnaps,” Julie said.

  “I guess you really don’t need much sleep, then, because you look terrific.”

  It was true. Sitting there on the side of the bed, Julie had never looked better. She seemed rested and alert, the casual clothes suiting her—as did the lack of makeup. They gave her a softer look and made her more appealing than ever.

  “The shower helped,” Julie said. “I can’t tell you how much better I felt after having it.”

  Lisa believed it. The way she was feeling at the moment, she couldn’t get into one quickly enough herself.

  “Well, I’m about to find out,” she said.

  She swung her feet to the floor so that she was sitting beside Julie. The sudden proximity made her feel self-conscious and she quickly rose to her feet.

  “You should try to get some sleep now,” she said.

  Julie shrugged. “I’ll try lying down, but I don’t think it’ll help.”

  Lisa didn’t know why she was feeling so shy. She’d known all along that she was attracted to Julie, that at some point there would be more to their relationship than dinner and the long, sweet kiss they’d shared before walking hand in hand through the Market’s streets to the apartment last night. She’d known, was even looking forward to it with a mixture of emotions evenly divided between nervousness and anticipation. But right now...there seemed to be an electric charge in the air, a sexual tension that she didn’t quite know how to deal with. She grabbed her bathrobe from where it hung behind the door and was about to flee into the hall, only pausing in the doorway because Julie had called her name. She looked back to see Julie stretched out on the bed, the sweatshirt riding high on her midriff.

  “Call me if you need someone to scrub your back,” Julie said.

  Lisa swallowed thickly and gave a quick nod before she escaped out into the hall. She closed the bathroom door and leaned against it, tried to concentrate on evening out her breathing.

  A cold shower, she told herself.

  Stripping quickly, she started up the shower, then found she couldn’t face the idea of cold water. She adjusted the temperature until clouds of steam rolled up, fogging the mirror. One foot in the tub, she hesitated, looked at the closed door. She took a deep breath, then stepped over to the door and cracked it open.

  “Julie!” she called, then quickly slipped into the shower before she lost her nerve.

  It was two hours later, while she was lying spooned up against Julie in the bed that she suddenly thought of Nia. She sat up, clutching the sheet against her breasts.

 
Julie turned and regarded her through heavy-lidded eyes. “What’s wrong, sweetheart?”

  All Lisa could so was shake her head. Tears welled up in her eyes and slowly traveled down her cheeks.

  “Oh god,” she finally said. “I...I’m such an awful mother. I’ve just...just been lying here...we’ve been...” She swallowed hard, tried again. “It’s like I forgot I even had a daughter.”

  Julie sat up and reached for her, but Lisa wouldn’t let herself be comforted. All she could think of was Nia, how the most terrible things could be happening to her right now, and here was her mother, not even thinking of her.

  “What...what was I thinking?” she said. “This...this is so wrong...”

  She got up suddenly and hurried from the room. Collecting her robe from where it still hung in the bathroom, she put it on and went into the kitchen. There she sat at the table, the tears still fogging her sight. Her blurry gaze settled on the phone and she willed it to ring. Her chest was so tight she could barely breathe. She held the bathrobe closed tight at her neck, trembling with a chill that wouldn’t go away because it came from inside.

  After a while she became aware of Julie leaning against the doorjamb. Looking up, she saw that Julie had put her own clothes back on. Lisa had no idea how long Julie had been standing there.

  “Do you want me to go?” Julie asked.

  Her voice was softly pitched. Lisa couldn’t hear the hurt in it that she saw in Julie’s eyes.

  “I...I don’t know what I want,” she said.

  Julie nodded as though Lisa had just explained everything. Maybe she had, Lisa thought. She just didn’t understand any of it yet herself.

  “Neither of us was thinking straight,” Julie said. “In some ways, we couldn’t have picked a worse time. But you know, sometimes it’s at a time like this that we need to be close to someone else the most. You didn’t do anything wrong.”

  “I know. Or I guess I know. It’s just...what if while we were making love...what if right at that same time some sick bastard was hurting Nia?”

  “I don’t have an answer for that.”

  Lisa nodded. She grabbed a tissue from the box on the table and blew her nose.

  “Nobody could,” she said finally. “I’m just so messed up right now that I can’t think straight. I—”

  The phone rang, rattling them both. Lisa stared at it, unable to answer. All day she’d waited for it to ring and now she couldn’t pick it up, couldn’t face the possibility of her worst fears being realized.

  It rang again. Two more and the answering machine in the living room would pick it up.

  Lisa looked helplessly at Julie. “I can’t pick it up,” she said.

  Julie nodded. She left the doorway and took a seat at the table. As she reached out for the receiver, Lisa put her hand over Julie’s.

  “Don’t hate me,” she said.

  The hurt hadn’t left Julie’s eyes yet, but she slowly shook her head. “I couldn’t if I tried,” she told Lisa.

  Then she picked up the phone, cutting off the fourth ring.

  12 NIA

  This was no way to live, Nia thought.

  She was sitting on a bench at a bus stop on Lakeside Drive, a few blocks west of where the cedar and pine bluffs of Fitzhenry Park fall into the lake. On the bench beside her was the crumpled wrapper from a tuna-salad sandwich on a French roll that she’d just finished eating. The pair of gulls that had been keeping her company, pacing back and forth on the sidewalk in front of her, hoping for a handout, finally gave up and went looking for more likely pickings.

  Nia took a sip of bad takeout coffee and wished she were anywhere but where she was. Or at least not feeling so alone. She missed her mother. She missed being able to talk to Max. She missed being able to listen to some decent music. If she were doing it over again, she’d pack herself some real necessities: a sleeping bag, changes of clothing, her Walkman and some tapes, a few books. More money.

  She had twenty-five dollars left and was hoarding it against the future when she’d need it more—much as she’d like to at least buy herself something to read right now. She had a couple of hundred dollars in the bank, but she was afraid to withdraw any of it in case the thing that was pretending to be her mother was having the bank watched. The same went for all of her regular haunts. She had to avoid them all. Which only left the parts of the city that she either didn’t care for, or that were too dangerous for her to feel safe in.

  What she should really do, she’d realized, was leave the city. Make a new start somewhere else. But the thought of that terrified her. The idea of an outlaw life might seem like fun when you were sitting in a café, listening to, oh say, Miles Davis on the sound system and reading Kerouac. The reality wasn’t anything like she’d imagined it would be for the simple reason that the writings of the Beats and their like couldn’t prepare a person for what it was really like to be on the streets, living the gypsy life, unfettered and free. Right. As if.

  So far, the reality hadn’t even come close to the romance.

  The reality was she was dying to take a shower and change her clothes. She was lonely. She felt lost. She was scared. The sun would be setting in a few hours and she couldn’t bear a repeat of what she’d gone through last night. But as things stood, she had no other choice. The very act of having run away had left her with no options beyond what she was doing now. Or taking TAMP up on his offer to get her into The Rhatigan.

  She grimaced. Too bad he couldn’t have been a nice guy, but true to course, the only boys she ever seemed to attract were the weirdos. Computer geeks, Beat nerds, way-cool guys like TAMP who make her skin crawl. Where was Christian Slater when you needed him? She’d even take him with a monkey heart, like in that movie Untamed Heart. Maybe because of the monkey heart.

  Setting her Styrofoam cup down on the pavement by her feet, she pulled her knapsack onto her lap and dug around in it until she found her address book. She started to flip through its pages, discouraged for the first time in her life at how few entries there were in it. You’d think after sixteen years of living on this planet she’d have more people than this in her address book.

  Most of the entries were useful in their normal context, but worthless to her present purpose. Doctor, dentist. Her mother’s number at work. Max’s at home and in the shop. The number for the poet’s co-op that she’d always meant to join, but somehow never did. Some record and book stores. Which left...

  Angie.

  They’d been best friends up to about four years ago, when Angie discovered boys in a big way and suddenly had no more time for Nia. Nia had acquired her own interest in boys, but it never took over her life the same way as it had Angie's. Maybe it was because Angie attracted nicer guys, though Nia didn't think jocks were much of an improvement over the ones that always came her way. She hadn’t talked to Angie in months and, really, this didn’t seem like the right occasion to renew their friendship. At one time they could have shared anything, no matter how implausible, but now...How could she even start to bring up her problems without feeling like a complete flake?

  Deirdre.

  Moved away two years ago when her parents divorced. Nia didn’t have a new address or number for her.

  Chas.

  Nia pictured him in her mind, tall, skeletal thin, black shock of Goth hair, skin so pale it was almost white. They’d gone out on one date, which had been such a disaster that she hadn’t spoken to him again.

  The other names were all the same, each had an unhappy story attached to it, some reason she couldn’t call them.

  She sighed and was about to close the book, when she remembered one last number. She turned to the second-to-last page. The seven digits written there in ballpoint seemed to leap out at her from the field of white surrounding them. She’d gotten that number from her mother’s private papers while her mother was at work one day. Carefully copied it out years ago, just the number, no identification needed, like she’d ever forget who it belonged to, but she’d never used i
t. Never had the nerve. She’d had the need once, when she was younger, but not the number. Once she did have it, the passage of time had turned need into anger and there didn’t seem to be any point anymore.

  Daddy dearest.

  She supposed she must have talked to him at some time in her life— she’d been five when he walked out on them—but she couldn’t remember. Couldn’t depend on memory to even tell her what he looked like. The only reason she knew was because she’d come across a wedding photo tucked away in a book, the one picture she knew of that had been spared her mother’s purge of everything to do with him.

  She couldn’t blame her mother—it wasn’t as though her father had ever done anything to make her think better of him than her mother did—but something made her keep the photo all the same, made her hide it away, taking it out only when her mother wasn’t around and she was feeling depressed. She didn’t know why she bothered. It never made her feel any better. Morbid curiosity, she supposed. A prop for playing make-believe and what-if.

  Like now. What if. What if he came through for her now where he never had before?

  Her father’s phone number continued to fill her field of vision, her entire world reduced to seven digits and a swell of conflicting emotions that made her chest feel too tight. Partly fear, she knew, but if she was being honest with herself, she had to admit it was partly anticipation, too. She didn’t even know if he’d talk to her, but what did she have to lose? Only her pride, and she’d gladly give up a measure of it to spare herself another night alone on the streets. And who knows? Maybe he’d changed. Maybe he’d been wanting to talk to her himself, wanting to tell her he was sorry, but like her, he couldn’t get up the nerve, was afraid she’d hang up on him before he even got the words out.

  There had to be some good in him. Even her mother must have seen some, or why else would she have married him?

  Okay, Nia told herself. Stop rationalizing this. Just do it.

  So she stuffed the address book in the pocket of her jacket, collected her knapsack, sandwich wrapper and coffee, and headed down the block to the phone booth she could see by the entrance to the park. She dropped the wrapper in the garbage can on the way, dug about in her pocket for a quarter when she reached the booth. Once she was inside, she folded the door closed behind her, dropped the quarter in the slot and punched in the number before she lost her nerve again.