Strangers Among Us

by Kelley Armstrong

  Rick hadn’t gone to Emily Carr. Green Lady, he used to tell her, earnestly mixing adhesive in their basement apartment, woke the neurons in his brain. He’d stay up all night studying and reading and making big slurries of smelly papier mâché. He spent their money on wire to make the armatures and flour to make glue. Karen wouldn’t have thought it possible to burn through a check buying flour, the cheapest of all possible supplies, and he probably wouldn’t have, if it weren’t for the infestation. One day when she went to close the big twenty-five kilo bag of flour Rick had left open, she was greeted by the tiny smiling faces of countless little white wriggling worms. She didn’t want to see what they turned into after they pupated, so she dumped the flour out in the alley, under the surprising winter-blooming hollyhocks, the uncollected pumpkins planted by forgetful guerrilla gardeners, caved in now and covered with the slightest dusting of snow.

  Rick told her she was hallucinating.

  “Hallucinating the faces, Rick, but not the worms.”

  She remembered looking at his sculptures and wondering whether she should drop in on Thelma and ask if her mother could get her a job at the call centre; she could work in the evenings after school. It might work except she already got so tired. Algebra seemed especially strange when they’d dived the night before, never mind the regularly scheduled day-after exhaustion. Maybe if she’d had a nutritious breakfast more often, she could’ve concentrated. Maybe if Rick had cleaned up the apartment now and again.

  And that smell. It had rained for months on end and Karen told Rick she thought the half finished sculptures were rotting instead of drying out.

  Smell pulled you back like nothing else. Was it just the Vancouver damp? Mould was supposed to be so very bad for you.

  Mould. The smell had come from mould. But it wasn’t mould in the walls.

  Gathering up the laundry after school one afternoon, she’d lost her footing and fallen into an unfinished orca sculpture, and the ghastly smell had suddenly been everywhere. Enveloping her, touching her, clothing her. The smell was like Syd’s hands. It gave her the same feeling of shocked humiliation, as though the mouldy whale was raping her, as Syd, technically, hadn’t. There’d been a knock at the door then; the landlord asking for the check.

  “I thought Rick paid it,” Karen said, looking down at the smelly goo on her sneaker. Syd’s smell was suddenly still on her too, in spite of all the baths and showers she’d had in the interim. But there it unarguably was: the smell of lavender oil and alcohol and cheap cigarettes, intermingled with the smell of rotting papier mâché—a smell not entirely dissimilar to the smell of normally drying papier mâché but more sour, more vile, more loathsome, more Syd-like.

  It was as if Syd’s hands were still under her shirt while she waited for Thelma to come home, while she waited for Syd to notice he was crazy and offensive and stop.

  While she waited.

  While the landlord stared at her, smelling that smell.

  Karen finally said, “No, Rick didn’t give me the rent.” Greenies always said one shouldn’t spend too much time thinking about such bullshit, and the truth was, chronic divers were forever having their hydro cut off. Even in the rare instances when they had the money, they often forgot to pay.

  Maybe welfare had found out she wasn’t at school much anymore. She’d been cut off and that was why there was no money for food; it wasn’t, as she’d thought, that Rick had spent it all on art supplies. Karen wasn’t sure. She stood there blankly looking at the landlord, just as she’d sat there blankly while Syd felt her up.

  Neither moment had any intention of ending; worse yet, they were merging. Maybe they’d go away if she swore at them. Karen was tempted, but she didn’t. Both the landlord and Syd remained where they were. At least the landlord’s hands weren’t under her shirt.

  The landlord stood staring at her goo coated foot and then he turned around and shut the door on her in a final sort of way, more or less as she had done to her mother that night. Karen sat down on the unmade bed and cried. She was afraid of being charged with welfare fraud.

  Perhaps she cried, then as now, because she hadn’t eaten or maybe because of the overpowering smell of mould and of Syd’s breath which still, even now, clung to her.

  Mouldier even than the mould.

  They were given their eviction notice two days later.

  Rick insisted Green Lady would fix things. She was magic, mistress of synchronicity, of providential solutions appearing as if out of nowhere to solve even seemingly insoluble problems.

  “Why didn’t Lady help us before?” Karen dared to ask. “We’ve never seen her, not even once.” Green Lady was an aquatic goddess vision who appeared occasionally to divers. Rick and Karen had been waiting a long time.

  “Because we didn’t ask for her help before we dove,” Rick replied, the perfect logic of it creasing his face into a delighted elven grin.

  Green Lady’s hair. There had been so much of it.

  They’d gone walking after their dive, thinking they’d resurfaced and it was safe to do so, oddly not exhausted as was usual, and saw her hair emerging from the sewer grates. It was made of weeds. Living weeds; dead weeds; grass with clumps of mud in it; bits of stones and seashells and the tiny legs of crabs’ shed exoskeletons.

  And really a lot of garbage.

  Karen sat down on the street and plucked bits of broken glass and bits of Styrofoam, bits of plastic bags, bread tags and surprisingly many tiny oval fruit stickers out of the goddess’s hair. The Styrofoam was the worst. Of course it didn’t decompose, but why did it have to convert to pellet form? There were beads and beads and beads of it stuck in Green Lady’s rampant hair, flowing now, not just along the gutters but over the curb and along the street.

  Karen sat there for what felt like hours, cleaning Lady’s hair. It felt like stringy mud in her fingers, muddy and slimy and maybe some of those clumps weren’t mud at all. Her hair was coming up, out of a storm grate, after all, and the recent storms had wreaked havoc with the city’s plumbing. Karen understood suddenly that the mould from the rotting carcass of orca and the smell of Syd’s breath and Syd putting his hands on her all stemmed from this simple undeniable fact: they hadn’t looked after Lady’s hair, hadn’t kept it clean.

  Rick sat down beside her, crying and threading the condoms and syringes out of her hair, careful, so careful not to stick himself. In no time they had a big heap going. Rick doused it with lighter fluid. They burned it, burned all the garbage that had been stuck in Green Lady’s hair.

  “Thank you for helping,” Karen said.

  “I wouldn’t even have seen it, if you hadn’t pointed it out,” Rick said. “It was here all the time, her filthy hair. She was begging us to clean it for her. I’ve walked past it a million times and never even dreamt it was there. Maybe now my life can change.”

  “How come we see the same thing at the same time, anyway?” Karen asked.

  “That always happens on Green,” Rick said.

  “But we resurfaced hours ago,” Karen said.

  “Maybe this time it’s real,” Rick said, “Maybe it’s the next level.” He pointed at Lady’s hair, which, now it was clean, began to move, sparkling and shining and flowing down the sidewalk, an endless green wave, smelling of beauty and the sea.

  They stood there, holding hands by the little fire of burning plastic which made a worse smell, Karen had to admit, than Syd’s breath and mouldy papier mâché put together. But at least they were getting rid of it at last, the pollution in Lady’s beautiful hair and in their own souls, it felt like. And then they heard sirens.

  “Let’s go,” Rick said, and still holding hands they ran down alleyways only he knew. Hiding in the unused entryway of a brick building, they waited and waited for the cops to find them, but they didn’t.

  The phone rang the second they got in the door to their basement flat. Rick talked for an hour. It was his friend Shadow, long distance from Toronto.

  The Green thing was catchin
g on. There were people who went dancing after they did Green; Green visionary art was needed to hang in the clubs. The sea creature sculptures were perfect; Shadow would introduce him to the club owners. But of course Rick was good; Shadow knew that. He’d always been talented. Those drawings he’d done in his binders at school instead of his chemistry; they’d been amazing: hauntingly beautiful and sad and masterfully drawn. “Greenstyle.” It was clothes too; maybe Karen could get into that, or she could work in Shadow’s gallery and clothing store, Green Magic. They could live upstairs.

  Rick got off the phone and stared at Karen. “I told you so.”

  “What, what, what?” Karen asked, and so Rick told her all of it.

  “I told you Lady would fix it up,” he said, but not in a mean way, just as if he was a little boy who had finally met his fairy godmother.

  My mother couldn’t take care of me properly. I couldn’t tell her about Syd. Thelma needed him too much and it was too weird, I just couldn’t voice it, and maybe Lady will be our mother now.

  “It’s not even our mothers’ fault,” Rick said, “they did what they could, the world being what it is. Their own lives are so lost after all, lost from themselves, how could they mother us any better than they did?”

  “You knew what I was thinking.”

  “Lady makes that possible,” Rick said, it had to be admitted, a little smugly.

  “I was so mad at Thelma for leaving me alone with him, for not noticing Syd was that kind of guy. She was so starved for anyone who’d be even a little nice to her. He rubbed her poor feet in real lavender oil,” and Karen started to cry.

  “Yes, but now it doesn’t hurt so much anymore, does it?”

  “That’s true,” Karen said, because it suddenly was. “Why?” she asked.

  “Because we have a real mother now.”

  All moments go on forever, Karen thought, not one of them ever ends, either the bad ones, or, more usefully, the good ones.

  She’d never told Rick about Syd, and about her mother before. And he’d been kind.

  It was time to close. Karen, after taking out the garbage which smelled more than a little, locked the street door and turned out all the lights.

  Slowly, she made her way up the stairs, wondering what to make for dinner. She should make rice and vegetables, but she was so tired. Maybe a can of soup. Almost anything, so long as it wasn’t KFC.

  For once there were no dark circles under Rick’s eyes. Still, she looked at her boyfriend’s sleeping form a little reproachfully and said, “What happened to my dreams?” She didn’t ask what had happened to Rick’s dreams, because, implausibly, they were coming true.

  Maybe Karen didn’t believe in Green Lady as much as he did. Or maybe she should figure out what her dreams even were.

  It would beat a lot of the other things she had planned for tomorrow.

  THE WEEDS AND THE WILDNESS

  Tyler Keevil

  “Always this bending process, this landscape gardening to make the mind more attractive.”

  —Henry Miller

  There are vans driving around the city: large white vans without any markings on the bodywork. I saw the first one last week, can still see it in my mind. The paint was so fresh and bright it hurt my eyes to stare. I was standing in the garden, watering my marigolds, when it drifted by—smooth and silent as a shark. All the windows, including the windscreen, were tinted so the driver appeared as a vague and featureless shadow. It’s hard to say what struck me most—its secretive nature or the predatorial efficiency with which it moved.

  In the week since the first one, I’ve seen more and more of the same.

  It’s not the same van—it can’t possibly be the same van—but I’m hard-pressed to spot any difference between them. They are all in immaculate, pristine condition: no spots of rust, no dents or grooves or scratches. The face of the driver is always similarly obscured. I never catch them speeding, but neither do they seem unhurried. Rather, they prowl about the streets with identical, mechanical purpose. What that purpose is I can’t possibly say, but their very existence unnerves me. I can’t help but feel as if this is the start of something.

  These days, I spend most of my time in the garden—if it can be called a garden. It’s more of a jungle, a thriving tangle of grasses, heathers, evergreens, bulbs, corms, perennials, shrubs, ivies, saplings and flowers. This is the busiest time of year. Bluebells are popping open like tiny firecrackers. A multitude of crocuses, daffodils, tulips, and dog’s tooth violets are coming into blossom—splashing the lawn and beds with paint-box colours. The next phase of perennials is starting to emerge: hot red bleeding hearts and gold-petalled leopard’s banes, alongside the delicate blue and pink wood anemones. My shrubs flower early in the year as well: rhododendrons, magnolias, azaleas—the list goes on and on. Yes, my garden is running rampant. As is the case every spring, complaints come to me in the polite manner of neighbourly concern. They ask me: Would you like to borrow my lawnmower, my trimmer, my pruning sheers? Some even offer to do it for me. Since my retirement, I’ve learned that people in suburbia don’t like things to be too different, too wild.

  But that’s their problem, not mine. I see my garden as a form of personal expression. Maintaining such disarray is a full-time occupation. I reserve evenings for my business dealings (I make a small profit selling organic fertilizers and lawn supplies over the internet) but my days are entirely devoted to my plants. With the countless hours I spend among them, feeding and watering, tending and trimming, it has been impossible for me not to notice these vans. So far, they seem content to go about their business, as I go about mine.

  I would like to make some enquiries on the block. If I weren’t such a coward, that’s exactly what I’d do. But even the thought of it opens a gaping pit in my stomach, brings a sheen of sweat to my back and a hot, allergenic flush to my cheeks. My garden is my refuge. The notion of venturing out, of interacting and engaging with people, unsettles me. It’s nothing serious. I’m simply more comfortable in my own space, with my plants. I suppose that makes me an eccentric. I’m sure that’s what they call me, anyway, behind my back. What of it? Every neighbourhood needs one. I give them something to talk about over dinner. The eccentric and his garden: wild, unkempt, madcap, bizarre, unmanageable.

  Strange how gardens reflect personality. Though I’ve barely exchanged more than a few awkward words with my neighbours in as many years, I feel I know them. I know Mrs. Crenshaw, with her obsessively trimmed lawn and manically pruned hedges—squat and square as slices of frosted cake. I know, too, the young couple on the corner, who neglect their yard for months and then decide to attack it, apropos of nothing, with ferocious zeal. Grass clippings and leaves are left where they’ve fallen, covering a lawn devoid of style, care, or character—like a haircut executed by a drunken barber. And what do I know of Mr. Amonte and his brood? I know the first thing he did, upon moving in across the street, was to drown his yard in a sea of cement. The only lawn he has left is a small plot, about two by six feet, that rests in the centre of the patio like an unkempt and overgrown grave.

  The thought of approaching these people, or most of the others, horrifies me.

  There is only one yard, one person, on the block that I find interesting. Like myself, Jay is something of an anomaly. A weed. A thirty-something divorceé. Her husband was the gardener, studious and conventional. Since their split, she has taken secret pleasure in allowing his carefully tended beds to run rampant. The lawn hasn’t been cut for months. It’s become a raging meadow, filled with knee-high stalks of grass, dandelion heads, snowdrops, buttercup clusters, and chains of Michalmas daisies. Along the perimeter, fierce japonica shrubs vie with smoke bushes and holly trees for dominance. It is a garden to fall in love with.

  I know Jay has gone back to school recently. I see her coming and going, head down, a load of books clutched to her chest. She would be worth talking to, and I’ve had the opportunity on occasion when she’s ordered supplies from me (I offer
her a discount). But whenever I deliver she is as reticent and tongue-tied as me. She’s like a furtive jungle animal hiding out amongst all that foliage. Our very similarities make communication between us difficult.

  It is impossible to say if she’d understand about the vans.

  I’ve developed a system. It is not enough to observe. I must also record, analyze, and assess the nature of the threat posed by these vans. Already I’ve had several breakthroughs. I’ve discovered they come only during the day, during which they pass by no less than two and (so far) no more than five times. There can be no doubt they wish to avoid drawing attention to themselves. Their ultra-quiet engines and alarmingly inconspicuous exteriors are proof enough of that, but today I noticed something far more menacing: the vans have no license plates. Or rather, the plates have been deliberately obscured. They seem to have been coated with some sort of reflective material, which catches the sunlight and cunningly foils any attempt to discern the lettering. There really is no way to differentiate among them. The only reason I can assume I’m seeing numerous vans, rather than the same one over and over, is the sheer number of sightings. They seem to be increasing by the day. Surely it can’t go on like this? Surely—the authorities or somebody—will put a stop to it? We can’t just have these anonymous, impossibly efficient vans cruising up and down the block, the neighbourhood, the city, unchecked. Yet, that’s precisely what seems to be happening.