Trader

by Charles de Lint

  “There’s only another week on the shoot,” Tanya told him. “I need something to get through all this shit Castledore’s putting us through. After that, no more.”

  Kenny could only sigh. “Whatever,” he said, and went back to planning the camera tracking for the next scene.

  If she hadn’t liked him, she would never have listened to him. As it was, she’d listened, then gone ahead and taken the road to hell anyway. Kenny was still in the business—she saw his name roll up on the credits from time to time, A-list movies now instead of the low-budget cheapies he’d been working on when they met. She wondered if he was still as disappointed in her as he’d been at the end of the shoot, wondered if he even thought of her anymore.

  “Let me tell you something,” he’d said the day they were all packing up to go home. “You work on the tech side and no one cares how crappy the product is, you’re just doing your job. It’s the talent that takes the flak—the talent and the directors. The more of this shit you do, Tanya, the more you’ll be typecast and the harder it’s going to be to get work on a decent picture. You’ve got to believe in yourself. If you don’t, who’s going to do it for you? You’ll look back in twenty years and realize you’ve never had a good part. I’ve seen it all too often.”

  And it was true. She’d dropped out of the business, but Alan Clark was still playing the lead in knockoff quickies, most of them for the direct-to-video market now, shooting budgets of a couple of hundred thousand tops, forget an ad campaign. It was harder still for a woman. Once the body started to go, there were a hundred fresh new ones to take its place. She didn’t know how Clark could keep at it, year in, year out, with nothing to show for it but a series of bad films, each one a little more pathetic than the one before. She knew he was still a womanizer, but sometimes she wondered if he still had a habit, and if he did, how he fed it. You didn’t get rich making B movies—unless you were a producer.

  She didn’t know where she’d be if she hadn’t got out when she had. The drugs hadn’t come with the territory; they’d only made it more bearable. But she’d taken the habit back home with her, ran through her bank account and was starting to sell off her belongings when Zeffy finally twigged to what was going on and moved in with her, made her go cold turkey and stayed right there with her, through all the shit.

  Zeffy.

  Tanya sighed. Zeffy was always there for her, wasn’t she, and maybe that was what the argument had really been about. Not so much that Zeffy was always there, but that she needed Zeffy to be there.

  She took a last drag from her cigarette and ground the butt under her heel. Turning from the window, she continued down the street, stopping this time in front of a video-store window. What the hell? she thought and went in, heading straight for the “Action Films” section. She browsed through the titles until she found it, Sisters of the Knife, still available. The woman on the cover painting didn’t look much like her—amazing how under that tiny little T-shirt, her breasts defied gravity the way that they did—but when she turned it over, there she was on the back photo, third bimbo on the left.

  “Reliving old glories?”

  Tanya started at the voice. Looking up, she found herself face-to-face with Jilly, who was standing on the other side of the rack of films.

  “Hardly,” she said. “I was just thinking what a good decision it was to get out when I did.”

  Jilly came around to her side of the rack.

  “Yeah, well, it wasn’t that great a film,” she said, “but it wasn’t your fault. You were good, it was just the script that sucked.”

  Tanya held up the video package. “You’ve actually seen this?”

  “Sure. Gotta support our friends, don’t we?” She smiled. “I’m even going to buy some of those greeting cards that Wendy’s writing, though don’t tell her I said that.”

  “She’s showed me a few of them,” Tanya said. “I think they’re pretty good.”

  “Of course they’re good. But I have to tease her about something. So what do you think of this?” Jilly held up the film package she was holding, Kieslowski’s Rouge, with a profile of Irene Jacob on the cover set off by a swirl of surrealistic reds in the background. “I’m taking it over to Sophie’s. We loved Bleu, but neither of us liked Blanc—at least not the ending. It seemed so misogynist.”

  “I didn’t like it either.”

  Jilly nodded. “So we never did get around to seeing the third film, but everybody keeps saying that Rouge is as good as the first one, so I don’t know. I thought we could give it a try.”

  “Well, it’s better than this,” Tanya said, tapping the cover of the film box she was holding. “Actually, it’s wonderful. If I could have worked with directors like Kieslowski, I’d probably still be doing films.”

  “So what made you give it up?”

  “Remember Susanna Moore?”

  Jilly nodded. “She was in all those B-movies. What about her?”

  “I didn’t want to end up like her, in my forties and still playing those kinds of roles.”

  “But there’s no reason you’d have to. I wasn’t just saying it, Tanya. You were the best thing in that movie. I didn’t believe in any of the other characters, but I believed in yours and it really creeped me out at the end when it was just you and that horrible man in the building.”

  “Alan Clark.”

  “I’ve never liked him.”

  “That's because you’ve got taste.”

  “But I did like your work,” Jilly said. “Why didn’t you go on? I mean, seriously. I’m sure you could’ve gotten into better films.”

  Tanya shook her head. “I developed too many bad habits.” She hesitated, then added, “Or maybe I should say, one bad habit and that was enough.” Jilly nodded. “Tell me about it. Been there, done that. I wish now I’d been a little smarter, but nobody was going to tell me what to do about anything.” She gave Tanya a rueful smile. “It’s amazing the stuff we’ll do to ourselves, isn’t it? I’m surprised any of us survived adolescence.”

  “How could you know—”

  “Nobody had to tell me,” Jilly told her. “All I had to hear was the way you said habit and I knew what you were talking about.”

  “But you...you’re so...”

  Jilly laughed. “What? Perfect?”

  “Something like that.”

  “Hardly,” Jilly said. “I survived by the skin of my teeth. It was pure luck that I ran into some people who cared enough to help me through some really bad times.”

  “Like Zeffy helped me.”

  “Did she? I’m not surprised. She’s good people.”

  Tanya nodded, feeling worse than ever about their argument.

  “You look like you need someone to talk to,” Jilly said. “Do you want to go for a coffee?”

  “What about your movie with Sophie?”

  Jilly smiled. “She was painting when I left to get it. She’ll never notice if I’m late getting back. So what do you say?”

  “I’d like that.”

  “Let me go pay for this and we’ll see if we can’t find a place that’s not too crowded.”

  17 NIA

  Finding the real Max didn’t solve anything, Nia realized. If anything, it made her feel more confused. It was so strange looking at him, listening to him speak, the familiar mixed with the alien, the way his really being here in another body made the world feel out of kilter, the ground no longer sure, or even safe, underfoot. The stranger with his dog didn’t look at all like Max, but he spoke like Max, sat like Max, even knew things that only Max would know. She believed he was Max, so she let him comfort her, grateful for the human contact, but still felt unbalanced because he didn’t look like Max and the voice murmuring awkwardly in her ear was all wrong.

  Finally she pulled away from him. Leaning back against the glass of the phone booth, she stared at him, trying to find something, anything, one known landmark in those unfamiliar features, but there was nothing she could anchor on.

  “I
t...it’s really you...isn’t it?” she asked again.

  Her voice echoed in the booth. It sounded distant, as though she were speaking down a long tunnel.

  “I know,” he said. “It’s too weird to seem real, isn’t it?”

  She nodded. “Really weird.”

  “I’d offer you a Kleenex or something, but I don’t have either.”

  “’Sokay.”

  She made do with the sleeve of her shirt until she remembered she still had a napkin left over from when she’d bought her sandwich. Pulling it out of her pocket, she blew her nose, then let him help her to her feet. Slipping his arm under hers, he started toward the park, the dog following at their heels. They walked in silence, Nia needing the support of his arm more than she’d thought she would.

  “I...I guess this is sort of like a date,” she said after a while.

  She tried to make a joke of it because she felt that if she didn’t laugh, she’d start crying again.

  Max glanced at her. “I hope you’ve had better.”

  “Not really.”

  It was true. And that made her want to cry all over again. Shit, Nia, she told herself. Grow up already.

  “Where are we going?” she asked before the flood of tears pushing up against the back of her eyes broke free.

  “Down by the lake. Buddy and I sort of have a little campsite there.” This was better, she thought, having something to talk about that didn’t deal with either of their problems. She could concentrate on the conversation, use it to keep from breaking down again.

  “Buddy being the dog?” she asked.

  When she spoke his name, Buddy’s ears perked up. She leaned over to pat him, but he cringed away from her.

  “He’s not really used to people being nice to him,” Max told her. “Give him a little time to get to know you.”

  “Where did you find him?”

  “He found me.” Max hesitated, then asked, “What were you saying about your mother?”

  Wrong question, Nia thought as her chest clenched up tight. She swallowed thickly.

  “Tell...” She cleared her throat. “Tell me about what happened to you first.”

  “Okay.”

  They were down by the lake now. Nia clambered up the rocks behind Max and Buddy until they came to a flat granite outcrop, backed by a dense cedar thicket, the lake spread out before them on the far side of one of the park’s paths and a stretch of stony beach. Sitting down on the rock with Max, she watched while he fed Buddy and had his own supper, telling him she’d just eaten when he offered her some. She grimaced as she watched him eating cold spaghetti out of a can. She’d have to be a lot hungrier before she’d eat that, she thought.

  While he was eating, the last of the day leaked out of the sky, blurring their features. It was easier to talk to him then, the indistinct shadow shape sitting across from her who could be anybody. And she was getting used to the voice now.

  She listened to him describe what it had been like, waking up in somebody’s else’s body, about what a lousy guy this Johnny Devlin was, how he’d been evicted from Devlin’s apartment, how he’d slept in the park last night, here on this same outcrop, and this was where Buddy found him.

  “I think he’s what’s been keeping me sane,” Max said. “Knowing that I’m looking out for him, having him to talk to. Just his company. It kind of takes a bit of the edge off of what’s been a truly bizarre experience.”

  “I know,” Nia said. “I’ve been wanting someone to talk to ever since I took off from home yesterday afternoon.”

  Max shook his head. “I don’t get it. How did things get to this?”

  “It’s hard to explain.”

  She shrugged, but the movement was lost in the dark.

  “I know you and your mother have been arguing a lot lately,” Max said, “but it’s not like you to run away from your problems.”

  “I guess. It’s just...”

  So she told him about overhearing his conversation with Devlin in the hall outside his apartment, her own confrontation with the imposter Max, how she’d spent the day wandering the city because she was too scared to stay at home by herself, how she’d run away for real when she’d seen her mom kissing this woman.

  Max seemed to hesitate before he finally said, “You know, just because you saw your mother kissing another woman doesn’t mean that—”

  “They weren’t just kissing,” Nia told him. “They were necking.”

  “But it still doesn’t mean she’s not your mother.”

  “Oh, I get it. It’s real when it happens to you, but not to anybody else.”

  “I’m not saying that. It’s just...what’s so wrong with her, you know, dating a woman?”

  “She’s my mom, that’s what’s wrong. How would I even be here if she didn’t like men?”

  “People change,” Max said.

  “Exactly. Or rather, they’re being changed. I don’t know who’s doing it— aliens or some weird government experiment or what—but they’ve already got two people in our apartment. And how many more has it happened to?”

  “If that’s the case, why didn’t it happen to you?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe I’m too young. All I know is that my mom—my real mom—is wandering around somewhere in the city in another person’s body. Just like you. And I have to find her.”

  A long moment went by before Max said, “Okay. We’ll look for her.”

  “But you don’t believe me.”

  That woke a humorless laugh from him.

  “I don’t think I have much of a right to say that anything’s impossible right now,” he told her.

  “But you don’t.”

  Max sighed. “I tell you how I’m handling this: wu-sei.”

  “Woo what?”

  “Wu-sei. It was the way Janossy used to approach a new experience. It’s a Chinese thing from the Tao Te Ching—the principle of noninterference.”

  “What? Like you don’t do anything and everything magically gets better?”

  The shadow shape of his head moved slowly back and forth. “Not even close. It doesn’t imply not acting, but acting appropriately—only when, where and to the least degree necessary to guide rather than force events to their natural conclusion.” Max laughed. “He even built instruments that way.”

  “So looking for my mom is inappropriate?”

  “No. Looking’s fine. It’s jumping to conclusions, or trying to force things to happen, that’s a problem.”

  “I don’t get it,” Nia said. “How’re we going to get anything done any other way?”

  “Well, jumping to conclusions doesn’t help because it closes the door on other possibilities. For instance, if we’re not absolutely certain that the same thing’s happened to your mother, then—”

  “I told you what I saw.”

  She saw Buddy start nervously as she raised her voice. Max reached out and soothed the dog, quieting him with an absent, natural gesture that Nia found herself envying. If only there were something that could make her feel better that easily.

  “But you haven’t talked to her,” Max said. “You don’t know—you can only assume from having seen one incident that you perceive to be out of character.”

  Nia took a steadying breath before replying. “Okay,” she said. “I’ll try to keep an open mind. So then what?”

  “We could try calling her in the morning.”

  “No way.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because, because...” Nia’s voice trailed off. “Because I’m too scared,” she finally said.

  “If there is somebody else inside her, I won’t let her hurt you,” Max said. “We’ll call from a phone booth and you can ask her something that only the two of you would know...” She sensed his smile more than she could see it. “You know, the way you were testing me earlier.”

  “I had to know.”

  “Of course you did,” Max said. “And tomorrow we’ll do the same with your mother.”

  “And
if I’m right?”

  “Then we’ll deal with it. But let’s not—”

  “I know,” Nia said. “Jump to conclusions.”

  “Now you’ve got it.”

  “I’ll try.”

  “That’s all I can ask for,” Max said. He yawned. “Now let’s try to get some sleep. I don’t know about you, but I’ve had too long and weird a day and I’m beat. You can use this knapsack for a pillow if you like.”

  “It’s okay. I’ve got my own.”

  Last night Max had slept on the rock, but tonight they moved back under the cedars, making rough mattresses for themselves by pushing together heaps of the leaves. It wasn’t home, Nia thought, but it sure beat the way she’d spent last night.

  “Max?” she said when they were both lying down, Buddy snuggled up beside him.

  “Umm?”

  “I’m glad I found you.”

  “Me, too.”

  She lay there for a long time, listening to the sound of the lake and the wind in the trees above. Max’s breathing evened out quickly—long before she was finally able to fall asleep herself.

  18 LISA

  Lisa looked out the passenger window of Julie’s car, unable to take her gaze from the face of the girl sauntering by on the sidewalk. While she couldn’t have been much older than Nia, the girl already had a world-weary, hard look about her. She sneered at Lisa as she went by, but Lisa barely noticed. Her attention wasn’t taken so much by the girl’s clothing—all evening she’d seen variations on the girl’s short jean skirt and combat boots, the bustier with a frayed jean vest overtop—as by her multitude of earrings. There were at least six to each ear, but then she had a pierced lip as well, another ring through her nose, a stud and a plain ring in her left eyebrow, another stud in her right.

  “I guess I should consider myself lucky,” she said when the girl had passed the car. She resisted the urge to turn in her seat, though she did continue to watch through the sideview mirror.

  “How so?” Julie asked.

  “The worst Nia’s come up with so far is to try and relive the old Beat days. Late-night coffee and bebop jazz are a lot easier to take than the way that girl’s mutilated her face. My god, what must her parents think?”