Trader

by Charles de Lint

  The connection was made so quickly that she was caught off-guard. The woman on the other end of the line said, “Hello. Hello?” She sounded annoyed, impatient.

  Nia cleared her throat. “Um, could I speak to Dan, uh, Dan Caplan, please?”

  “Hang on.” The woman didn’t bother to cover the mouthpiece as she called for him. “Hey, Danny. It’s for you.” Beat. “And it better not be that waitress at Bruno’s or we’ve got some unfinished business to clear up, you hear me?”

  Nia wished there was a bench inside the booth, something, anything to sit down on. She was all flushed and her legs felt weak. Leaning her forehead against the glass, she tried to take slow breaths to still the sudden drumming of her pulse.

  “Hello?”

  The voice was nothing like she’d expected. Higher in pitch, almost a boy’s voice.

  “Um, hello?” she managed.

  What did she call him? Dad? Father? Mr. Caplan? Dan?

  “Who is this?”

  “It...it’s Nia. I’m...” Your daughter, she wanted to say, but the word wouldn’t come out.

  “Nia who?”

  “Your...” She swallowed nervously. “Your daughter.”

  “Jesus,” he said. A long pause followed.

  “Are you still there?” she asked.

  “Oh yeah. Well, this is a real blast from the past, isn’t it? Christ.” Another pause. “So why are you calling?”

  “I...I’m in trouble. Mom’s not—” Herself, she was about to say, but he broke in.

  “Yeah, well now that you bring her up, I thought your mother and I had an agreement about this.”

  “I don’t know what you—”

  “So you’re in trouble, huh? How old are you, kid?”

  This wasn’t going at all the way she’d imagined it would. She’d never expected a lot—sitting at home, looking at the wedding picture, trying to envision how it might go. She’d always had this little hope that maybe he’d be interested in hearing from her. She’d been prepared for him to refuse to speak to her. But this. It was like she was some salesman, interrupting his dinner.

  “Sixteen.”

  “Sixteen already. Well, then you’re old enough for a little advice from your old man, kid: You’ve got a problem? Work it out.”

  “But...but I’ve got no place to go.”

  “Ran away, did you?” He gave a humorless laugh. “Can’t say’s I blame you. But you’re not moving in on me.”

  “It’s just that—”

  “And your old lady’s going to be hearing from me—you can count on that. We had a deal.”

  “But—”

  “Don’t be calling this number again.”

  And then he hung up.

  Nia slowly moved the handset from her ear. It took her two tries to hang it up, the black plastic clattering against the metal hook until she finally got it right. A long time ago, she’d promised herself that if she ever did call her father, no matter what happened, she wasn’t going to let it upset her. She wasn’t going to cry. But she slid down the glass side of the booth now and huddled on the floor, arms wrapped around her knees, tears streaming.

  There’d always been an ache inside her, a pain born of not knowing why he’d left them, of being afraid that it had been her fault, that she was somehow to blame. The fantasy had been that it could be fixed. Sometimes she’d been able to pretend that it had all been a misunderstanding and one day, in the right place, at the right time, everything would get worked out. Things would be good again. He and her mother wouldn’t get back together or anything—she wasn’t that naive. But there’d always been this possibility, almost a promise, that when she finally talked to her father, he’d tell her how much he’d missed her, how much he regretted not having been there while she was growing up.

  All that was gone now. The only thing left was the pain. And it hurt, it hurt so much. It shouldn’t. It wasn’t as though she’d ever really believed in the fantasy. But until she made the phone call, it had been possible, if not likely.

  Now there was nothing left for her to hang on to. Nowhere for her to go. She had no father, she had no mother—at least not one she could recognize. Who knew where or how far her mother’s soul had been thrown when the monsters took over her body?

  The realization made the tears come harder.

  13 ZEFFY

  I don’t believe this,” Tanya said.

  Zeffy looked up from the mushrooms she was slicing to find her roommate giving her a sad look. They’d been talking about how their days had gone while preparing dinner: Tanya all excited about Geordie, he was so genuinely nice, how he made her feel interesting just for who she was, but she couldn’t figure out why he hadn’t tried to kiss her yet; then Zeffy telling about her success busking, how much fun it had been, how she’d run across Johnny in the park afterward, what he’d said, it was so weird, how convincing, how nice he’d been. Their conversation had seemed so innocuous to Zeffy, sharing the gossip of their lives, business as usual, until Tanya broke into her story.

  “What can’t you believe?” Zeffy asked.

  “This whole business with Johnny,” Tanya said. “You’ve been on at me for ages about what a loser he is. Yesterday you told me I was crazy to think that the way he was acting was anything but some sick game.”

  “It is some kind of sick game.”

  “Then how come you look the way you do when you’re talking about him?”

  “Look how?”

  Tanya signed. “I don’t know. All starry-eyed, I guess.”

  “Isn’t that a little excessive?” Zeffy asked, trying to keep her tone mild. “The word I’d use is more like curious.”

  Tanya shook her head. “After all the negative things you’ve had to say about him, how can you suddenly be all interested?”

  “It’s not like you’re thinking,” Zeffy told her. Not anymore, she thought. Not after meeting Max Trader at his shop. “You didn’t let me finish. I went looking for you at the café, but you weren’t there, so then I decided to go on to Trader’s workshop and—”

  “You don’t get it, do you?” Tanya said. “This is so unfair. I think something strange is going on with Johnny and it’s like I’m nuts. But then Johnny tells you this bullshit story and you’re willing enough to check it out. I thought I was the one who was your friend, not that loser”

  “He’s not my friend.”

  “Then why were you ready to believe him but not me?”

  “I don’t know. It’s not...” Zeffy shook her head. “Johnny had me going—I’ll admit that—but my visit to Trader’s just proved to me what I knew all along: he’s an asshole.”

  “But you had to prove it first.”

  Zeffy sighed. “What was I supposed to do? It all started sounding so reasonable and then Jilly—”

  “Why don’t you just admit it?” Tanya said. “Despite everything you know about him, you took a liking to Johnny. The impenetrable Lacerda defenses actually came down which proves the point that you can make a mistake the same as anyone else.”

  “When did I ever say I didn’t make mistakes?”

  “Whenever you talk about my boyfriends.”

  “I can’t help your taste in boyfriends,” Zeffy said.

  “Well, thanks for that vote of confidence.”

  “God, will you listen to yourself, Tanya? When have I not been there for you?”

  “We’re not talking about that. We’re talking about how you were always putting Johnny down when I was going out with him, how you just couldn’t understand how I could care about him, but now you’re suddenly all interested in him.”

  Zeffy shook her head. “I don’t want to argue about this.”

  She put the knife down in amidst the mushrooms and turned to leave the kitchen, but Tanya grabbed her arm.

  “Just tell me this,” Tanya said. “What makes me a fool for having loved Johnny, but not you?”

  “I don’t love him. I don’t even like him.”

  “But you were just
saying how you were attracted to him.”

  Zeffy sighed. “Okay. For a moment there this afternoon, yes, I was attracted to him.”

  “So why’s it different for you than for me?”

  “He sucked me in,” Zeffy told her. “Okay? Is that what you wanted me to say? If you’d been listening, you would have heard me saying the same thing half an hour ago, but you’ve been too busy playing that weird game you like to play where you hang on to a guy long after it’s over, hanging on to him even when you’re in another relationship.”

  “Is that how you see it?”

  Tanya looked so devastated that Zeffy quickly shook her head.

  “No,” she said. “Of course not. I don’t know why that came out the way it did. You’re just driving me crazy with this whole jealousy business.”

  “I’m not jealous.”

  “Okay. So jealous isn’t the right word. Let’s say—oh, I don’t know. Possessive after the fact.”

  “You really don’t get it,” Tanya said. “The thing that hurts so much is that you think I’m stupid when I fall for someone like Johnny, but when it happens to you it’s just a natural mistake.”

  “I have not fallen for Johnny Devlin.”

  “Then why did you have stars in your eyes when you were talking about him?”

  Zeffy felt like screaming. Instead, she took a deep breath and slowly let it out.

  “The Johnny I was talking to,” she said, trying to stay calm, “seemed like somebody else entirely. He told me he was someone else entirely. This guy was nice, vulnerable, everything Johnny’s not. Okay? He worked his charm on me and I almost bought into the line he was giving me. But I didn’t. End of story.”

  The look Tanya gave her was pitying.

  “You are so hypocritical,” she said. “And the sad thing is, you don’t even realize it.”

  “I'm hypocritical?”

  Tanya raised a hand between them before Zeffy could go on.

  “No more,” she said, pushing past Zeffy. “I don’t want to hear any more of this.”

  Tanya’s abrupt departure took on a surreal quality that left Zeffy momentarily speechless. As though in a daze, she watched her roommate walk into the living room, pick up her purse and a jacket, then leave the apartment. It was the slamming of the front door that finally brought Zeffy back. She shook her head as though coming out of a daydream.

  I guess I deserved that, she thought. Not all of it, but enough. And really, hadn’t she known it would upset Tanya? Her roommate might be seeing somebody new, but she still hadn’t let go of Johnny yet. And Tanya was right about the trusting business, too. But what had seemed so patently impossible yesterday morning in Johnny’s building had taken on a fairy-tale character this afternoon in the park, a kind of doomed swan-prince-in-peril, frog-under-a-spell quality to which—for whatever reason—Zeffy hadn’t been able to remain immune. Reason had prevailed, only not soon enough for Tanya. Fair enough.

  But by the same token, Zeffy knew she hadn’t done anything wrong. She hadn’t tried to hide anything from her roommate. She’d admitted up front that she’d made a fool of herself, much good it had done.

  Zeffy sighed. She surveyed the kitchen, then slowly went about gathering the makings for dinner and putting them away, rebagging the vegetables, draining the half-cooked pasta and dumping it in the trash. She doubted Tanya would be back and the fight had stolen her own appetite.

  When she was finally done in the kitchen, she made her way into the living room. The Trader guitar lay in its open case by the stereo, Johnny’s carving on the coffee table, holding court in the middle of a scattering of magazines and paperbacks. She wanted to smash the carving—actually had it in her hand and was about to throw it against the wall, before she gently set the little figure back down on the table. Breaking it would solve nothing.

  Turning her back on the carving, she knelt down on the floor beside the guitar and ran her finger across its strings. She’d had such a great time playing it before Tanya had got home. The action was so perfect the instrument almost seemed to play itself. She couldn’t believe the richness of its tone, highs through midrange to bass, the amazing sustain, how every note resonated in perfect tune and harmony to the others. The simplest arpeggio sounded like a small orchestra of guitars. Running through a sequence of bar chords with a pick almost had her double-checking that it wasn’t somehow plugged into an amplifier. It wasn’t simply the volume, but that the chords had such individual and distinctive presence.

  Not knowing when—if ever—she’d actually be able to buy an instrument this good for herself, she was determined to get as much playing on it as she could while she had it. Next Wednesday, when she had to bring it back, was going to come all too soon.

  She let her fingers trail across the strings again. She’d been so looking forward to getting back to it after dinner. But now...She closed the case and went to sit in the bay window, staring down at the street below.

  Mrs. Grambs, from two doors down, passed by, walking her odd little dog Maggie. It looked like a cross between a dachshund and a beagle with the latter’s features and ears, a dachshund’s length and markings. The combination, along with Maggie’s sweet personality, always made Zeffy laugh and want to cuddle her, but tonight the sight of the dog couldn’t even call up a smile. She watched them until they turned at the end of the block, then stared morosely at the empty street directly in front of the apartment once more.

  She was going to have to make it up to Tanya. Apologize, but not bother to explain it any more because that, it was obvious from this evening’s fiasco, would only make it worse again. But it was so frustrating. It wasn’t like Tanya and Johnny were still going out together and she was trying to steal him away.

  God, like she’d want anything to do with him again. Just the thought of him made her feel crazy angry. No, if she saw him in the park tomorrow, the only question was, what was she going to hit him with?

  14 LISA

  Lisa hung up the phone, almost regretting that she’d taken the receiver from Julie earlier. Her mental equilibrium was all unbalanced, her emotions in an uproar. Worry was the constant, with relief and anger banging up against each other, guilt underlying them all. It was hard to make sense of anything with that tumult going on inside her. The only thing she was really sure of was that her headache had returned, lodged right behind her eyes once more, two bright shafts of pain that were impossible to ignore.

  She put her arms on the table and leaned her head on them, not sitting up again until she heard the toilet flush and Julie came back into the kitchen. Lisa tried to smile, but could only muster a grimace.

  “Got your headache back?” Julie asked.

  When Lisa nodded, Julie ran some water at the sink and filled a glass. Returning to the table, she offered Lisa the water and a couple of painkillers that she’d taken from the medicine cabinet in the bathroom.

  “I thought it might have,” she said. “Hopefully these will help.”

  “Thanks.” Lisa took the pills, draining the glass before setting it down on the table. “That was my ex,” she added.

  “I kind of figured that. But he had good news, right?”

  Lisa nodded. “Nia called him and she’s okay. She told him she’d run away and wanted to know if he’d take her in.”

  “Well, thank god for that,” Julie said. “You must be feeling such a sense of relief.”

  “I’m happy that Nia’s okay—he’d just gotten off the phone with her, so I know that—but...”

  Lisa pinched the bridge of her nose, pushing her thumb and forefinger up against the headache. The relief was only momentary and it was still too soon for the pills to have started working. Why couldn’t they develop a headache pill that did its magic immediately?

  “The thing is,” she went on, “he never even asked her where she was. All he did was tell her no, she couldn’t stay with him, and for her not to call him anymore.”

  “I can’t believe that.”

  “With D
an, believe it.” She shook her head. “I could just kill him. All he kept going on about was how we had a deal.” Looking across the table, she saw Julie’s confusion. “It’s kind of a long and not very interesting story,” she explained. “What it basically boils down to is when we split up, Dan assumed all our debts on the condition that both Nia and I had no more contact with him. He wanted to ‘close the chapter on that part of his life.’ Frankly, I was only too happy to oblige.”

  “Let me guess—they were all debts he’d run up himself anyway.”

  “No,” Lisa said. “I wasn’t blameless. I was just as happy to spend money we didn’t have as he was. The difference was, I finally came to see the hole we were digging ourselves into and he couldn’t.” She gave Julie a wan smile. “Let me tell you, it was tough, making do on one salary and not allowing myself to use my credit cards.”

  “But you did it.”

  “That’s right. I did do it. Plus I kept my side of the bargain, and that was hard, too. Nia was so curious about her father and just couldn’t understand why she couldn’t just meet him.” Lisa sighed. “A perfectly reasonable reaction. I’d tried to erase every trace of him from our lives, but you know how kids are. They want to know. Happily, by the time she finally started asking seriously, I didn’t even know where he lived, what he was doing anymore...”

  Her voice trailed off. The headache was subsiding a little, but the worry and hurt had swollen to take its place.

  “What am I going to do, Julie? She’s only sixteen. She can’t make it out there on her own.”

  “We’re a little better off than we were,” Julie replied. “We can now rule out foul play. We know she’s not hurt or in the hospital. All that’s left is for us to try to track her down.”

  “The city’s so big. She could be anywhere.”