Trader

by Charles de Lint

  “Do you care for him?”

  “Yes. I guess.” Tanya sighed. “I don’t know. I thought he was interested in me, but now I’m not so sure. I think he just wants to be friends.”

  Jilly smiled. “I don’t know which of the Riddells is worse when it comes to relationships, Geordie or Christy. You’d never guess they were so deathly shy about meeting women from the way they are the rest of the time.”

  “Well, that’s hopeful.”

  “If it’s what you want,” Jilly said.

  “I guess that’s the thing I have to work out first,” Tanya said. She sighed again. “You think what I should do is get comfortable with myself first, don’t you?”

  Jilly shook her head. “I think you should do whatever feels right for you.”

  “I feel so whiny. So needy.”

  “Everybody feels like that sometimes.”

  “Nobody else seems to. To me, everybody else seems so together. They’re all creative and productive.”

  “You shouldn’t compare yourself to other people,” Jilly said. “All that does is get in the way of being yourself.”

  She fished around in her pocket and came up with a few bills and some change. She laid the money on the table and then stood up.

  “What you need right now is to get away from it all,” she said. “Give yourself a break from thinking about Zeffy and Johnny and Geordie and everything else that’s cluttering up your life.”

  “Easier said than done.”

  “Why don’t you come back to Sophie’s with me and watch this movie?”

  Tanya shook her head. “I don’t want to intrude.”

  “Oh, please. Sophie’ll probably stay in her studio all night and I’d have to watch it on my own anyway. Talk about focused—sometimes that woman gives a whole new meaning to having a one-track mind.”

  “Has she got a show coming up?”

  “Um-hmm.” Jilly smiled down at her. “So what do you say>”

  Tanya stood up to join her. “I’d like that,” she said.

  The film was better than Tanya remembered it. Of course, the first time she’d seen it she’d been with Johnny and he’d hated it. The only thing worse than a foreign film, he liked to say, was a foreign film with subtitles. Watching it with Jilly was a whole different experience. She sat beside Tanya on the sofa in Sophie’s living room utterly engrossed from start to finish and then wanted to immediately watch the whole thing all over again when it ended.

  True to Jilly’s prediction, Sophie had been impossible to pry from her studio. She looked up from the painting on her easel when they came into the high-ceilinged room she used for a studio, and gave them a quick grin before returning her attention to the canvas to add a dab of paint here, another there.

  “We have the film,” Jilly said, holding the video up in her hand. “We have the machine, waiting in the living room, and we have the time.”

  Sophie stepped back from the easel. She pushed an errant lock of curly hair from her forehead and sighed.

  “I feel so rude,” she said, “but I really need another hour or so on this.”

  Jilly turned to Tanya. “What did I tell you?”

  “Like you were never running late on a show,” Sophie said.

  “This is true. But woman can’t live by work alone.”

  Sophie laughed. “This one has to—at least until I get this finicky bit done. Why don’t you guys go ahead and watch the film? I’ll join you when I’m done.”

  Jilly started to nod, but Sophie was already focused on her painting again.

  “No problem,” she said. “But first we’ll do a little tour for Tanya since she’s never been up here before. Don’t worry,” she added when Sophie looked up. “We’ll be quiet as mice.”

  “Quieter,” Tanya said.

  “Mmm,” Sophie murmured, head bent, hair falling back across her brow as she started to mix a new color on her palette.

  “That means yes,” Jilly translated.

  Tanya was entranced with the paintings that lined the walls—bright, vibrant oils on canvas that, while plainly cityscapes and character studies, were all larger than life, more imbued with Sophie’s personal vision than being faithful renditions of their source material. Colors pulsed, outlines ran into each other, perspectives seemed to owe as much to a child’s view of the world as an adult’s. But there was still a maturity in the work that was impossible to deny, a sense of spirit and a connection to the real world and its concerns for all the liberties she’d taken in her depictions.

  More surprising to Tanya was how tidy both Sophie and her studio were, especially in consideration of the apparent looseness and abandon of her approach in the finished works. There was some paint on her smock where she wiped her hands, and a little on the drop cloth under her easel, but otherwise everything was remarkably under control. Tanya had been to Jilly’s studio when Jilly was working and there seemed to be paint everywhere—from Jilly’s hair, face and hands, to every surface, likely and unlikely, within a six-foot radius of her easel. Ironically, Jilly’s paintings were incredibly precise, high-realism for all their fantastic content, while Sophie’s were almost Impressionistic, capturing the essence of her subjects rather than their details.

  But their opposite takes on art became a real strength when they collaborated on a piece, creating a fascinating tension between their disparate styles. In the same way as their different ways of thinking, Sophie’s tidiness set against Jilly’s casual scruffiness, seemed to draw them closer as friends, the one complementing the other. It was something like her own relationship with Zeffy, Tanya realized, the dissimilar focus of their personalities adding a spark of extra interest to those things that they did hold in common, except unlike the rest of them, she didn’t bring a creative element to her relationship with Zeffy. No, she just complained, while Zeffy soldiered on with her songs and her music and still found time for Tanya’s problems.

  She really did owe Zeffy an apology, she realized.

  Sophie joined them for the second viewing of the film, becoming as engrossed as Jilly had been from the first few frames, shushing Jilly every time she started to effuse over a camera angle or the soundtrack. Tanya wanted to stay awake, but her eyelids kept drooping, the long day finally catching up on her. She meant to get up and go home a half-dozen times, but ended up falling asleep in her corner of the couch, waking stretched out on it and covered with a blanket the next morning with no time to go home and change before she had to go in to work.

  20 LISA

  The remainder of Lisa’s night dissolved into a confusing blur of half-remembered images that she could only put in a vague semblance of order. Punchy from being up for almost forty-eight hours now with next to no sleep, she sat on an uncomfortable hospital chair, elbows on her knees, clutching a Styrofoam cup of cold coffee and staring down at the linoleum between her feet. It was almost dawn and quiet now—far quieter than it had been in the ER when she’d arrived at the hospital, doggedly following the paramedics as they wheeled Julie into the crash room.

  A nurse had stopped her and steered her toward a chair before she could join the trauma physicians that convened around Julie’s gurney. He knelt in front of her, asking her questions that she couldn’t focus on. All around them was chaos—a constant bustle of movement and noise that made her feel dizzy.

  "Can you hear me? Where were you hurt? Can you...”

  She strained to see what was happening in the crash room, but the door closed, cutting off her view. The nurse touched her knee.

  “Miss?” he tried again. “Can you tell me where you were hurt?”

  Finally she understood what he was saying. It was the blood, Julie’s blood that was all over her hands and arms and jeans. He thought she’d been hurt, too.

  “I—I’m okay,” she said. “This...” She couldn’t say the word. “It’s not mine.”

  The nurse stood up and called a female colleague who took Lisa into a washroom so that she could clean up. When she returned to the ER
, they wanted to treat her for shock, but she refused, insisting instead on seeing Julie, on knowing how she was, what were they doing to her. Before she could get any answers, the door to the ER opened again and the emergency unit was suddenly so busy again that she was left alone. Paramedics had brought in two gunned-down teenagers, flanked by the policemen who had shot them. One of the boys was in a wheelchair, the other lashed to a backboard in a high neck brace and black traces, incongruously reminding Lisa of Frankenstein movies and Egyptian pharaohs.

  Later.

  She filled out forms for Julie, putting herself down as next-of-kin, shivering at the reminder of how critical Julie’s condition was.

  Later.

  Someone brought her a coffee. She sipped from the Styrofoam cup, not even noticing how hot it was, how bad it tasted.

  Later.

  Detectives spoke to her, took down her description of the Taxman, asked her to come down to the station to go through the mug books. She promised she’d go in the morning, though she couldn’t understand how they would need any more than she’d already given them. How many people looked the way the Taxman had in this city?

  “You’d be surprised,” one of the detectives told her.

  “Okay. I’ll be down first chance I get.”

  She would have promised them anything, just so that they’d leave her alone for now.

  Later.

  Julie was wheeled out of the crash room, on her way to the surgical theater, and Lisa followed, was stopped, argued until she was allowed to wait in a hallway outside, alone now, everything seeming so hushed after the ER. Trying to stay awake, dozing.

  Later.

  “Miss?”

  She jerked awake. A young doctor stood in front of her, the right sleeve of her jacket spotted with blood.

  “Your friend’s been taken to intensive care,” the doctor told her.

  Julie was alive. She was going to live.

  “We’re still listing her as critical,” the doctor went on, “but she has a very good chance of pulling through.”

  “Can—can I see her?”

  “I’m afraid not. Only the immediate family are allowed.”

  “But...” Lisa hesitated, then plunged on. “I am family. We’re...a couple.”

  The doctor nodded sympathetically. “I see,” she said, and gave Lisa the necessary directions.

  Later.

  She was only allowed in the room for a few minutes, but it was enough to give her hope. She watched the rise and fall of Julie’s chest, touched her cheek with fingers like feathers, leaned forward and whispered, “Don’t die on me now.” Kissed her gently on the brow.

  She didn’t argue when the nurse came to tell her she had to leave, but went without protest to sit in another hall. And waited some more. Dozed. Couldn’t sleep, because she kept seeing the Taxman’s face, the knife plunging into Julie’s back, and would start awake, a fine sheath of perspiration on her brow, her shirt clinging to her chest and back.

  After a while, she went in search of another coffee, found a machine and fed it change. Returned to her vigil, sipping at the coffee until she forgot about it and it went cold. The dawn found her there, staring at the floor, her mind a numbed blur until suddenly she sat up.

  Nia, she thought.

  She’d forgotten she even had a daughter, little say that Nia was still missing. Setting the cold coffee on the floor, she went looking for a phone and called home. She let it ring four times. When the answering machine answered, she returned the receiver to its cradle and slowly made her way back to the hall outside Julie’s room.

  She couldn’t deal with Nia, why she’d run away, why she wouldn’t come home. Not now. Not when Julie needed her.

  21 MAX

  Despite the raucous bird’s chorus and the constant squabbling of the gulls by the lake, we all sleep in late this morning—even Buddy. Making beds under the cedars was a much better choice than dozing off on the rock the way I did the other night. I don’t feel nearly as stiff today. I let Nia sleep while Buddy and I make our way down to the lake. I wash up and he has a drink. By the time we get back to our campsite, Nia’s up and we talk about breakfast, settling on getting something from the food carts at the entrance of the park.

  I feed Buddy before we go, then stash away most of my stuff so that I don’t have to carry it around all day. The food gets wrapped up in a plastic shopping bag and I hang it from a tree with the rope Bones gave me, out of sight. All I’m taking with me is Bones’ knife and the knapsack to carry my finished carvings and raw materials to make more. I turn the knapsack over in my hands. Damn thing looks even more garish in the daylight, but what do you do? I don’t even try to defend it when Nia makes some crack about it.

  We get coffees and muffins with the last of the money I made yesterday and have breakfast on one of the benches before following Palm Street south to the phone booth where I found Nia last night. I can tell she’s tense—she doesn’t want to be doing this, that’s obvious—but she puts on a good front, drops in her quarter, dials her mother’s work number. After the buildup, it’s kind of anti-climactic when the receptionist tells her that her mother isn’t there. All she gets is an answering machine at their apartment. She doesn’t leave a message.

  “So now what do we do?” Nia asks.

  It’s going on eleven. I touch the knapsack hanging from one shoulder.

  “I’m going to stake out a spot where the craftspeople are selling their stuff,” I tell her. “This woman said she’d lend me a doth, help me make things look a bit more attractive.” I pause when I see Nia’s only half-listening. Still thinking about her mom and I can’t blame her for that. “You’re welcome to come along.”

  She shakes her head. “I think I’ll find a place to wash up and then walk around for a while. I need to think a little. Maybe I’ll try my...my mom again.”

  “Are you going to be okay?”

  She gives me a brave smile that doesn’t do more than twitch on her lips. “Sure. I’m fine.”

  “Well, you know where to find me,” I tell her.

  So we leave her there and head back to the park. Buddy’s being real good about his collar and the leash. He’s even got a bit of a bounce in his step—except when someone passes us. Then he gets a little schizophrenic—fear swallows the happy puppy—and Velcros himself to the side of my leg. I tell him it’s okay, and I can see he wants to believe me, but I guess old habits are hard to break.

  I glance back once to see Nia still standing beside the phone booth. I feel bad for her and wonder if I’ve been entirely fair with her. Who’s to say what happened to me couldn’t have happened to her mother? It’s not so much that I think it’s impossible. Like I told Nia last night, after what’s happened to me, I’m the last guy to say anything’s impossible anymore. But if this is more than a singular phenomenon, then the rules have changed again and that scares me. Right now, all I have to do is figure out how Devlin worked his voodoo and either force him to fix the problem, or come up with a way to reverse it on my own. But if this is happening to other people, too, if it’s some kind of random event—an act of nature, albeit a supernatural one, instead of the deliberate act of someone’s will—then how will I ever get my life back again?

  I look for Bones when I get past the food carts, but see he’s already busy with some businessman, shaking those tiny bones of his onto the deerskin, reading something in the way they fall. I decide to see if Jenna remembered to bring me that cloth. I’ll connect with Bones later. But then I see a familiar tangle of red hair. I start to smile, but my good humor only lasts until I get close to where Zeffy’s standing. I see the guitar she’s tuning and I go a little crazy.

  22 ZEFFY

  It was going to be a bad day, Zeffy realized as soon as she got up and discovered that Tanya had never come home last night. She stood in the doorway of Tanya’s bedroom and stared at the bed that so obviously hadn’t been slept in. Silence clung to the apartment, an unhappy film of dusty stillness, as though the room
s had been untenanted for years. The empty feeling seemed to promise more trouble to come when Tanya did come home—the need for soul-searching and long talks and everything else that accompanied one of Tanya’s downturns. The weight of it, the expectation of the long hours it would take to work everything through, bore down on Zeffy.

  She didn’t want to be unsupportive. It seemed so selfish. She felt guilty just for thinking of Tanya the way she was, but she didn’t think she could face another round of it today. Because nothing was ever solved. The whole sorry mess would simply rear its head again—if not next week, then in two weeks. A month. It was hard for Zeffy to remind herself of Tanya’s many positive qualities when the bad times rolled in, to remember the kind and generous spirit when it got swallowed by a dark cloud of depression. This morning she could feel a mood settling in on her, a malaise that was set to taint her whole day.

  No, she thought. Screw this. I’m not going to buy into another one of Tanya’s dramas. Not today.

  She returned to her own bedroom, determined to put on a cheerful face to the world. Maybe if she pretended she was in a good mood, some of it would actually rub off on her. Rummaging through her clothes closet and dresser, she found a pair of blue-and-white striped cotton pants, baggy enough to be comfortable but not too clownish, a white T-shirt and a denim vest that she’d bought for two dollars at a rummage sale. She added her favorite high-tops and a touch of lipstick and headed out the door with Max Trader’s guitar, determined to be on her way before Tanya should return to the apartment.

  Once outside, she immediately felt better. It was another perfect day, and instead of taking the subway, she caught a crosstown streetcar so that she could enjoy the weather. Because it was midmorning, she had almost the whole car to herself, sharing it with a young mother and her infant and a pair of old men carrying a thermos and a chessboard who probably had the same destination in mind as she did. She felt sorry for anyone stuck working inside, but then they’d made their choice. She might not have acquired the accoutrements considered necessary for the modern life, but then she didn’t have to work the long hours to pay for them either. Of course to have a guitar like this one she’d borrowed from Max Trader...