The Glass Harmonica

by Russell Wangersky

  Other bodies would be more difficult.

  There were always full-face photos for the bodies found in Toronto subway stations—slurred, smeared faces that looked as if, when death had come, gravity had immediately taken on a new role, one of trying to work up a successful disguise. An expression of gravity—Brendan tucked that thought away, a bad joke he didn’t want to admit he’d made, even to himself.

  And each individual body was a small but crucial story all by itself.

  Witnesses had seen one man walking purposefully out across the ice, had watched him fall through and not even try to swim. By the time rescuers reached him, the man had died in the cold water, his only identification a worn leather bracelet on his left wrist. Lit brightly for the photograph, the bracelet was now stretched flat, and you could see the faint black tracery of some sort of pattern that might have been pressed into the leather and stained dark when the bracelet had been brand new.

  Outside the house, the winter wind was blowing again. Brendan looked outside, looked at the matte black of the trees flat against the sky, the street lights bouncing off the low clouds, the houses across the backyard cut into simple planes of light and shadow.

  And then he was thinking about Albert Carter’s dark blue house, hearing the wind outside and thinking it had been the same kind of February night a couple of years earlier when the fire trucks had shrieked up the street to the address where Carter’s house had simply collapsed, like a tooth missing in an otherwise healthy jaw, its roofline shrugged down like a dropped shoulder, splintered clapboard blown right off the front of the house and into the street as if there’d been some kind of quiet explosion inside.

  The firefighters had inched into and through the house, slipping jacks and wooden cribbing up under sagging beams until they found Carter, crushed in his own kitchen beneath the weight of a packed second-floor bedroom, and in his mind’s eye Brendan imagined that it must have looked like something out of The Wizard of Oz, Mr. Carter’s legs sticking out all haphazardly from underneath a wardrobe and a bed and the ruckled-up carpet from the room above.

  Word on the street was that the inside of the house was even more bizarre than people had expected, even for Mr. Carter: the workers who finished the demolition the collapse had started talked about rooms with their doors nailed shut, about beams sawn through and glass bottles filled with gasoline lined up along shelves on the verge of toppling into the deep V that had been the very middle of the house.

  “Only luck the whole place didn’t explode,” Chris Wheeler had said.

  Wheeler had been hired on as a casual labourer by the company that was cleaning up the remains of the house, and walling up the neighbour’s row house that Carter’s place had pressed against on one side. Wheeler had been hired simply because he had strong arms and a strong back, and because he was standing across the street and watching when the crew arrived, a work crew short of hands, as always. And as he talked to Brendan about the state of Mr. Carter’s house, the group of other workmen shook their heads slowly, as if every one of them could see what a time bomb the place had become.

  “It should’ve caved in years ago,” Wheeler said. “He had tons of paper upstairs, tons of it. He must have kept every letter he ever got. And there were piles and piles of notebooks all over the place—took me half a day just to pitch them all out into the Dumpster.” Brendan wasn’t sure how much of what Wheeler was saying he should believe.

  He turned away from the front window and went back to the computer screen, to a man found in a subway station by the cleaners after the line finally shut down, a man found wearing four T-shirts, and with one index finger deformed by an old injury. There were carefully posed photographs of the finger that were obviously taken well after death, the hand wrinkled and wet-looking, with a sheet tucked cleanly under and around the wrist so that it all looked like some bizarre kind of trophy.

  Then he opened the file for a body “found in a sewer on Lansdowne Avenue.”

  “Lighter, package Rothman’s Mild, $11.57 in change, chewing gum and TTC tokens,” read the man’s pocket contents. Brendan wondered if there really was any way to end up in a sewer by accident, and he had a nightmare about that later, a simple nightmare where it was dark out and he was up to his waist in water, looking up at a street light through the closed metal grate of a storm drain.

  How could so many people just be lost, he thought, lost without anyone really looking for them? There were teenaged girls described as “probable homicides,” other bodies “presumably involved with gangs” with garishly tattooed torsos that should be easily enough remembered by anyone who had ever touched that colourful skin. But how could you lose a nineteen-year-old daughter and not keep looking for her forever? Brendan thought. So much different from a nineteen-year-old son, and then he stopped and wondered why.

  And finally, one night, Brendan found Case #2006026.

  That just could be Larry, Brendan thought, squinting to look past the cheap glasses frames, trying to find a familiar order in the twisted features in the photograph. The mouth gaping open, lips bent downwards in an unnatural curve, but that could just be the result of the last few moments of life, and the rough-and-tumble of post-mortem. He had been found out past the end of the King Street subway platform, in behind the thin rungs of the Employees Only gate. In late January, when the cold wind would be whistling down the tunnels and sapping the heat right out of him, even worse because under him was only heat-sucking concrete, Brendan thought.

  It really could be him. It really could.

  And it wasn’t hard to believe at all.

  And that had Brendan thinking about the pictures in an entirely different way. What had Larry been thinking about, Brendan wondered, just then, when he died?

  What sort of thoughts had been circling around in his head? Was he wondering whether things might have turned out differently? Was he thinking about who was to blame for where he ended up? Or was he more concerned about how cold he was, and how sleepy the cold was making him?

  Brendan looked at the telephone, sitting in a pool of light under the lamp. There was a 1-800 number on the web page you could call if you had “any information as to the identity of the deceased.” The file number was repeated at the bottom of the page as well, so that no matter where you were on the web page, the number would be right in front of you, ready to read over the phone, impossible for you to lose your place in the filing cabinet of the dead.

  But then . . . But then there would be police officers, Brendan thought. Police officers and questions and more questions, and maybe even tests.

  Fingerprints.

  Dental records. DNA.

  Brendan moved the mouse back and forth across the screen, looking at the face, at the white sheet pulled up right to the man’s neck, a sheet that looked as if it was carefully hiding whatever horrors were going on beneath it.

  That could definitely be Larry.

  He looked at the picture again, tried to imagine the face on the screen involved in some normal action, like talking on the phone.

  Or smiling.

  Or even just breathing.

  Not only could that be Larry, Brendan thought, it had to be Larry.

  And that would make it all simpler.

  He clicked the website closed.

  No need for all that, he thought.

  Larry was dead, just dead, and that was the end of that.

  And any secrets Larry thought he was lugging around with him, well, that was all just dust now too.

  2

  McKay Street

  ROBERT PATTEN

  JUNE 30, 2006

  NO, I’M NOT TIRED . Just crippled. Remember?

  It just seems like it’s never going to end—every sunny day the same.

  Here he comes again, around the corner with his little jogging shorts flapping like a flag. Does he think I like being out here, with some thin white hospital blanket with blue stripes tucked tight in around my knees like I’m the kind of formally made bed th
at drill sergeants bounce quarters off of?

  I can look down and see the tips of my toes sticking out from under the blanket, right there, in some kind of pure white specialized elasticized socks that are supposed to help keep my blood from pooling down there and pulling the skin of my feet tight like sausages—and does he think there’s anything to like about that at all? Like there’s one single scrap of good in it anywhere?

  Because there isn’t.

  “You should be glad you’re still alive,” people were fond of telling me at first, back when there used to be plenty of visitors in my room, visitors who mixed those easy words with the strange sort of compliment, “You’re one tough guy—other people would have been killed outright.”

  Like I don’t ever wish for that.

  How much simpler would that have been, to have just died out there? I’ll tell you: two simple paragraphs in the newspaper, and then forgotten. It would have been plenty simpler.

  But enough blubbering.

  It was bad enough that the nurses had us on the clock, trundling us out to the exact same place every single day, but it was even worse that he was like clockwork too, two-fifteen every single damn day, the clockwork goddamn Energizer Bunny, always running smoothly, always lifting one hand for that short little half-checked saucy wave.

  Two-fifteen, time to wave to crippled Robert, hop-skip-jump and buddy was on his merry way. I could have broken his fucking wrist for every single wave. Once, I would have been able to do just that. Now I can’t even pull my stupid white-socked feet back in under the blanket so no one can see they’re so damned clean that it’s obvious my feet haven’t touched the floor since someone else bent down to put those socks on.

  He probably just lives around here somewhere, trundling by the Miller Centre as part of his regular run around the lake. Quidi Vidi Lake is just down below us somewhere, walking trails and sports fields, not that I’ve seen any of that recently. It’s probably just his regular running route, and it’s not like it’s anything he’s trying to do to get under my skin or anything.

  But he does. Get under my skin, I mean. And that’s not the worst of it.

  Four times now—and I’ve counted, believe me, I’ve counted every single time—he’s gone by here with his wife or girlfriend, whatever the hell she is, not too much more than half his age and drop-dead gorgeous, long straight brown hair right down over her shoulders on its way to her ass, long-armed and long-legged, and you can tell by the way she moves just how limber she is. I know it’s not polite to say about anyone, but she’s the kind of woman you can’t help but look at and wonder what she’d be like in bed. And they’ve got the stroller and the baby with them, both of them with their hands together on the stroller’s handle, if that isn’t enough to make you goddamn sick. And I’m pretty sure I knew her for years back on McKay Street, back when she was a neighbour from well down the street and her name was Jillian George. And she could always be counted on to be looking over your shoulder at the bar to see if there was a better-off guy coming in the door behind you. I guess in the end there was, all things considered. Seems to have done all right for herself, running around with him. You can tell she’s got it all worked out.

  I can almost imagine what his life is like. I can even hear him saying it. “I’m working the hours I want to now, no more rat race. I’ve checked out, just doing a little consulting work on the side, two days a week at the business school.”

  Right.

  No long, tiring drives heading out behind the wheel to Goobies or Clarenville or Gander to make sure that everyone has the kind of stock and promotional material they’re expecting. No daily grind, putting on a smile for every one of the hundreds of store owners whose mouths pull down every time they see you pulling onto their lot, clearly thinking, “No customer here, just someone else selling me something.” And I can’t be buying bottled water at every single store, just to make them feel better about it. Christ, I bought all that water, I’d be pissing my life away. Literally.

  He’s probably a lawyer who chucked it all in at fifty to live the better life, new wife, new kid, new focus away from court and clients. Sold his share of the law practice, just doing a little commission work for the government since he’s been pitching a few bucks into the right political kitty all these years. Working himself back into the kind of shape he was in when he was in college and playing varsity something. Got his time down below what he could run when he was thirty.

  And what a sweet deal that must be, starting all over with all the mistakes smoothed right over, with plenty of cash and plenty of spare time to be thoughtful, chockablock with all the brand new good intentions you didn’t have a chance to have the first time around.

  And what do I get to do? Not even have the good intentions. No starting over here.

  If I ever do get back on the road, I’ll just be flogging potato chips again and counting the long, slow days, the endless unrolling pavement on the way to an underpaid retirement. Hell, I can’t even reach the wheelchair brakes and release them, even if I’d like to just let them go so I could just goddamn well roll straight out into the speeding, merciful traffic.

  How fair is this? I want to yell at the guy. You get the girl, I want to shout, you get the girl and the life and I get the goddamn moose.

  118A Cavendish Street,

  Victoria, B. C.

  FAITH MONAHAN

  JUNE 15, 2006

  FAITH hung up the phone, thinking about Vincent and the idea of moving across the country to a cold place she’d never been, to a neighbourhood that Vincent had always talked about as if he were trying to explain the detailed inner workings of a circus freak show. And she was trying hard to imagine what Vincent’s face looked like without giving in and going to look at a photograph.

  It was like a secret proof, something she wouldn’t tell anyone else. If she could just remember his face all by herself, just draw it up there in her memory, she told herself that it had to be real. If she was able to just hold it right there in her head, then she really did love him. And he must really love her.

  Half the time, she hated that little game, and hated herself for playing it. The rest of the time, she clung to it desperately, like it was a talisman that kept her safe. It had been over a month since he had gone back east after his parents died on the same day.

  When it happened, their boss, Mr. Latham, had been fine with Vincent going—“Go ahead, sort it out, bud, take as long as you need”—but Faith knew Latham’s patience was fading fast now. It was heading for August, the height of the landscaping season, when everything was growing like mad and had to be raked or clipped or cut, and they were already shorthanded because Larry Hayden, Larry-who-had-replaced-Vincent, had put a stone rake right through his foot, up through the bottom of the sneakers he wasn’t supposed to be wearing on the job in the first place. She had told Hayden about the workboots when he’d been hired on, that he would need to have a pair, steel toes and instep, and he’d said he’d get some as soon as he had his first cheque, that he travelled light and didn’t have that kind of money yet.

  She also told Larry that he was only going to be kept on until Vincent came back, and he’d had an answer for that too. “I knew a Vincent once,” he’d said, thoughtful. “Friend of my brother’s.”

  He said he didn’t mind short-term work, either. “It’s good to keep moving,” he said. “Sometimes staying somewhere familiar is as much a prison as the real thing, even without the bars. You could ask my brother Brendan about that.” He looked out the window in the office, as if gathering in that the trees and open air were still there. “History’s a great thing, but it likes to bite you on the ass.” Then he looked at her. “Sorry, miss.” The way he said it reminded her of Vincent.

  Larry was quite happy to be guaranteed only a few weeks’ work, even though the foreman liked him, even though the foreman said he always worked hard right through the day, right up until the day he stepped on the rake. Faith liked Larry’s face every time she saw it, t
he way it was always smooth and untroubled, as if any kind of pain simply swept right over him without actually touching his skin.

  Larry told Faith that, when the rake had gone into his foot, he’d felt the individual tines scraping along the bones of his foot like chalk on a blackboard. “Like a sound, but really a feeling instead,” he’d said.

  The doctors had spent hours cleaning the five separate puncture wounds, washing the holes and talking about “anaerobic bacteria” and infection and “necrosis” while Larry leaned back on the smooth white plain of the hospital bed, leaving long stains of dust and sweat behind him like he had created some kind of rank amateur Shroud of Turin. Larry told her the doctors had said “the only way it could have been worse is if you’d let someone bite you.” They’d told him there were more bacteria in the human mouth, “but only a few more than you’d find in good old Saanich topsoil.”

  And she’d had to go in and tell Mr. Latham they were short of workers all over again, that Larry had a doctor’s note for three weeks and he’d really be gone for every bit that long. Larry had already told her he was going to get in his camper and go up the coast, and she could just hold his insurance stubs until he was back working because there’d be no one to take them out of the mailbox while he was gone anyway.

  “Your boyfriend say when he was going to be coming back?” Latham asked when she told him about Larry, peering out over a wasteland of invoices and other scraps of paper on his desk with his sad-sack face drawn up all in long flat planes.

  “Not yet.” When he heard the way her sentence fell off at the end like a small wave breaking over itself before it could reach the shore, Frank Latham almost regretted asking.

  Almost. “Well,” Latham said, “when you’re talking to him, tell him we sure could use him here.”

  Back in the apartment, Faith slid the phone onto the counter and went into the living room to look at the photograph again anyway—“just a refresher,” she told herself, and wondered just when it was that she’d gotten superstitious.