Arctic Smoke

by Randy Nikkel Schroeder

  Seri stood in front of the Ship & Anchor Pub at the northern tip of Mission, washed in gently warming air, trying to decide whether to go in early for a beer. She was not much of a drinker, but this evening she felt the need for a bit of unwinding before meeting Rooke again.

  “I’ll show you the kind of subversives I mean,” Rooke had said, earlier in the afternoon. “They gather at a bar in Mission, like flies.” His fascination seemed disproportionate. Seri wondered where the conversation was leading.

  “I hate them,” he had continued.

  “Punks.”

  “Men with long hair. Men with no hair. Men with pointy hats. Surrealists. Musicians. Tall men. People who label things quixotic or foucauldian or kafkaesque.”

  Seri laughed. Rooke didn’t.

  “Ted. Hate is no mandate.”

  He seemed downcast. “They are thieves. Careless. They destroy what isn’t theirs. They have faith and hope. They have plans.”

  “What ridiculous nonsense,” Seri said out loud, remembering.

  “Then come in for a pint,” said an attractive young woman, chain-linked with piercings and tattoos, hand in hand with a straight-up pretty dolly.

  Seri surprised herself. “I suppose I will. Is there a band tonight?”

  “Depends what you mean by a band.”

  “I might call off our project,” Rooke had said, earlier. “You’re right. We have no mandate.”

  “Nonsense,” Seri had replied. “I never said that. Where are your best sources of information?”

  “I have a spy down south, in Lethbridge, named Malachi. He keeps a watch on the subversives.”

  That was more like it.

  “What can I get you?”

  “I’ll have a half-pint . . . no, a pint of Guinness.” Seri wedged herself in a corner booth away from the knotted herds, considered briefly how some watering holes attract a disparate mix of animals. At the dartboards a gaggle of after-work secretaries tipped and giggled, watched closely by a murder of skinheads perched at the railing. A pod of assorted punks and urban vampires drifted from table to table, surfacing periodically to feed on fresh rounds of drinks, circumnavigating goths or hipsters clumped in islands. Young men hived shoulder to shoulder. Old men strung themselves around the bar, ageing monkeys calling out to each other across the canopy. Most of all, there were lots of cats, cats everywhere, observing prey with a languid dissolution, weighing the compulsions of lust against the fragility of image, nursing secrets, fading around their own smiles.

  Seri was a fish out of water. She took a sip of Guinness, and began to order her world with mental notes—ask Rooke how many more nights to book in the hotel. Check into getting a vehicle. Find a local church.

  “Alone, lass?”

  The man was hip-to-hip with her in the booth. He must have been completely silent in his approach.

  “Alone, lass?”

  For a moment she thought it was Rooke, then realized her mistake. “Yes. Excuse me.”

  He stayed fixed against her. “I’m thirty today. My name is Og.”

  She checked her watch.

  “What’s your name? My name is Og.”

  “Serendipity.” She squeezed further into the plush seat and nestled the wall.

  “My name is Og.” He looked down at his fingers, then smacked a hand flat on the glass-top and stared at it.

  “Mr. Og.” She touched the dimple in her cheek. “Let me out, please.” He was unresponsive, except for a twitch in his splayed fingers.

  Drug intoxication, she guessed, feeling her pulse quicken. Phencyclidine. PCP. Agitation, aggression, confusion, blank stare. Angel dust.

  “My name is Og.” He turned his stare at her. “Thirty years old. My birthday. Bang!”

  His pupils were almost completely dilated, with a thin ring of ice-blue frozen around dark bulbs. His face was skeletal. Skin sores stippled his forehead.

  No, Seri corrected herself. High-dose amphetamine, probably 125 milligrams, maybe more. Chronic speed misuse. High levels of NE, activation of dopamine neurons.

  “Bang!” He rolled his fingers again. “Where?”

  Compulsive behaviour. Suspicion. Delusion. Where was Rooke?

  Og leaned close. “What’s your name?” She noticed his infected gums. “Lass?”

  “Will you please let me out of the booth?” she said.

  “You are my birthday present.” He began to scratch the glass-top of the table. Dear Lord, he was psychotic. In person, it was much more disturbing than the dry textbook descriptions she was familiar with. Maybe Rooke was—

  “Bang!”

  You have detailed knowledge of narcotics, Rooke had said, earlier that afternoon. We’ll go after the druggies, with full force. The sellers? she had asked. No, Seri, the users. The abusers. You can never get redemption through drugs, nor through any subversive quest.

  “Thirty today. Thir-teee.” Og smoked, holding the cigarette like a martini and taking quick puffs while scratching the table with his free hand. “What’s your name?”

  It looks so different up close, Seri thought. Either her watch was fast, or Rooke was late.

  “Do you like the band?” Og took a sip from his cigarette. “Your name? This table is itchy.”

  Suddenly she was dying to smash Og’s face, bust all those teeth from their bloody pockets. Riding her swell of aggression, she shoved his shoulder, slipped under the table, and crawled across the beer-soaked carpet to the aisle.

  “Bang!” he cried, kicking the underside of the table with enough force to capsize the Guinness. “Get you!”

  She stood and dashed through a clump of underaged goths while Og jumped up and threw the cigarette at her.

  “Hey, Og,” one of them said, a young witch with a silver bone through the septum. “The hell you doing?”

  Og slapped the witch and pitched forward, head swivelling. She reset herself and punched him in the groin. Two of her heftier friends grabbed his arms and pulled him to the ground.

  “Go get Schuster,” one of them said.

  “Careful.” A brawny bouncer emerged from the knotted herds. “Oggie’s a handful when he’s screwed up.”

  “Get him out of here,” the witch said.

  “Wayne!” the bouncer called. “Give me a hand?”

  Seri stood at the bar between a soccer hooligan and an old sea captain. She clutched the rail, breathing deeply.

  “What can I get you?” the barkeep said, polishing a glass.

  “Nothing,” said Schuster the bouncer. “She’s leaving.”

  “No.” Seri tapped her watch. “I have a meeting.”

  “Too bad. We have rules here. You’re out.”

  “I didn’t do anything. I have an important meeting.”

  He pointed to the door.

  The sea captain smiled kindly. “You’re shaking, lass.”

  “Don’t call me that.”

  Two bouncers dragged Og past the bar.

  “Bang!” He twitched violently and let his feet drag through beer swill and cigarette butts, then pointed at Seri over Schuster’s shoulder. “That’s my birthday present.”

  “Whatever,” said Schuster. “You can uwrap her outside.”

  “No.” Seri’s pulse thumped in her neck. She felt faint. “I can’t, I have to—”

  “Lass.” The sea captain tapped her elbow. “Sneak out the back door. Through the kitchen.” The barkeep nodded.

  Og gave her a look as they hauled him to the front door.

  “Get you,” he said, his pupils sponging light.

  † † †

  Seri left slowly, hiding out among pots and pans for as long as she dared. When she finally stepped into the alley, it was deserted. She walked to the street, passed a tattoo shop, and paused to look at her reflection in the window. Behind the glass she could see samples of neo-pagan iconography, runes, charms, and creatures.

  The moon, battling with encroaching clouds, granted the city a last gasp of luminosity. Light splashed down narrow roads and
alleys, pooled in shop windows and snowmelt. Seri buttoned her coat. She would wait for Rooke across the street, where she could get a better view of the Ship & Anchor’s entrance. She quickened her pace, humming an old hymn.

  He melted out from behind the dumpster without a sound.

  “So soon, lass?”

  “So soon what?” Her rattling heart. An absurd answer, the kind given in moments of sudden distress.

  “My birthday present,” Og said. “Bang, bang.”

  “I have a meeting,” Seri said. He was blocking the sidewalk. The Interfaith Thrift Shop to her right was closed. The road pumping with traffic. No other pedestrians in sight.

  He blinked.

  She turned and fled. A block ahead, the Rose & Crown Pub winked with good cheer. Laughter and the clink of glasses flowed out on softening night air. Her senses prickled: thick toaster-burn of roasting coffee, broiled potatoes from the Greek restaurant, fish and nuts sizzling on the Mongolie Grill. The Green Dragon Chinese and Western loomed to her right. Somebody opened a door and dashed a tub of hot water into the alley where it splashed against the snow and hissed in a cloud of steam.

  “My biiirth-day!”

  She leaped two steps at a time and entered the Rose & Crown. A blast of air, warmed by sweat and kitchen, fogged her glasses. She took them off, and was struck with an immediate sense of relief. Here was a congregation of normal people, gathered cheerfully around a roasting hearth, people who had houses and spouses, who plotted their lives across well-chosen meridians.

  “Bang! A-ha!” Og loomed in the doorway, casting a long, fire-lit shadow.

  She turned toward a table set with jugs of brown beer, circled by laughing women nipping at chicken wings held like expensive French cigarettes.

  “Excuse me,” she said. “That man is chasing me.”

  The laughter flattened. Four glasses lifted to five pairs of lips. An angular blonde turned to a brunette and whispered something, while a tall henna redhead jiggled her watch. Two very young women, one pig-tailed, one baretted, pointed their noses at the ceiling like synchronized swimmers; the pig-tailed one o’d her mouth and released a faraway giggle.

  Og was strolling now, hips absurdly loose.

  “Hello, lasses.”

  The henna redhead made a pop with her lips and stroked a zigzag through the condensation on her glass. She yawned. “My boss is chasing me again.”

  Seri backed up, knocked over a stool, walked quickly toward the back of the bar. As soon as she rounded the bar she broke into a run, through an arched doorway, into a back room low-slung with smoke, a fireplace popping. A small group of men and women, all bespectacled, sat smoking a hookah at a high table, set with one tall bottle of absinthe. Their conversation lapsed.

  “Excuse me.” Seri locked eyes with a silver-haired man, a fox. She noticed how small his hands were, how delicate his fingers.

  “There’s a man behind me . . .” she began.

  They stared, unblinking, with an air of casual decadence, as if they had just been discussing deviant sexual practices and stock-trading tips with equal languor. The fox smiled and pointed a finger.

  “That way,” he said.

  Seri rushed out the back, then cut north toward the river. A crash behind her, as Og leaped through a window. She looked back once. Og shook the absinthe bottle at her, then threw it.

  She ran. The bottle sailed over her head and smashed on a minivan, spraying green.

  Seri zigged left.

  She stopped.

  A high cubed hedge blocked her way, cut with spiked iron gates. Beyond, a clutch of towers, a statue of Jesus backlit with spectral green glow.

  The old Catholic mission.

  “Yeeee-ah!” Og must have been sucking unlimited draughts of energy from the moon, back in orbit and unzipping the clouds with furious white heat.

  Seri accelerated. Squeezing every fibre, she aimed for the hedge, struck it full-bore. She crashed through, rolled over buzzcut grass still wet with snow.

  She jumped to her feet and raced for the buildings. A squat parish office. A cathedral. A sandstone convent, turret speared with green-lit Jesus.

  “Ack!” Og must have tangled himself in the hedge.

  Seri tracked the cathedral, eyes wide. Entrance stuck in a stone tympanum. Statue of the Virgin in canopied niche. Bell tower scratching sky.

  “Bee-auty!” Og called behind her.

  She rushed between the stems of a builder’s scaffold, saw cathedral doors, embossed with four creatures: winged lion, winged bull, eagle, angel. Prophets or something.

  What now? Angel. Sky. Up.

  Climb.

  She leaped, grabbed the scaffold. Then monkeyed a diagonal brace and scrambled pipes to the top. She jumped to the roof, just about slipped on pitched wet shingles.

  “Lasseee. . . .” Og blistered through the scaffolding, then vanished around a corner.

  Seri crept toward the tympanum. At the roof ’s end she took a deep breath, then jumped. Her toes hit the ledge. Her hands grabbed buttoned bricks.

  “Bang! Hell-o-ho. . . . ” Og’s voice fading.

  Seri swung from a brick and landed on the tier over the tympanum. She jumped, flinging her arms around the Virgin’s neck. Pulling hard, she scrambled up and came to rest astride the Virgin’s head.

  “Sorry, Mother.”

  She dragged her whole body onto the canopy and out of the light, then collapsed face down, sweating.

  You have amazing conditioning, Rooke had told her earlier, in the mid-afternoon. And the resolve of a prophet.

  Prophet?

  Seri almost snapped a finger. She was hardly acting like a prophet here, running mindlessly. More like cowardly Jonah, who fled God’s purpose and ended up in the belly of a whale. More like her father, who had preached many sermons on Jonah before his own breakdown, a quick irony she never forgot.

  She slapped Mary’s head. Whoops. Made a fist, whispered a quick prayer, immediately remembered the four prophets below. Yes, thanks for the signs and symbols, Lord. She understood: this was a test, a small crucible, a reminder that there were also strong, steadfast prophets: Samuel, Isaiah, Elijah. Who was the fourth?

  Og shuffled below. Adding apology to prayer, Seri peeped over the canopy’s lip. Was she an Elijah or a Jonah? A Samuel or—

  Og had vanished. In a crooked shadow below, a circus midget in a top hat and red military jacket sniffed the air. When he kneeled to snuffle the pavement, his face lit with halogen light.

  Not a midget. A boy.

  “Okay, Lord,” Seri whispered. “Not exactly sure what your will is here.” Was this some fast-flowing contingency, or another sign?

  The boy straightened his spine. From his jacket he drew a small jar of ice cubes and a knife. He rattled one cube from the jar and placed it on the ground, where he chopped it to powder with the knife. He then he gathered the powder in one palm and held it to the wind. It blew south, sparkling blue and green.

  He laughed.

  Then he stood and followed the airborne powder across the wet grass, tossing and catching the knife. Both boy and powder vanished into a ring of dark trees.

  Seri kneeled, searched for Og. No sign.

  She looked toward heaven, scanning the belltower’s lines where they cut the night sky. The moon was still white-hot, blistering cloud-skins. Overcome with vertigo, she looked down at the neighbourhood, houses winking with secrets, dotted along the western hills and Bow River.

  Well. One lost meeting with Rooke. One blown chance to follow God’s purpose. She promised to do better.

  She thought of the door’s four-winged creatures, and suddenly remembered that they weren’t prophets at all. Each symbolized one of the Bible’s evangelists. But these creatures looked more like pagan gods than saints. She stared out at the ghostly green Jesus, then to the trees where the boy had made his exit.

  This world, Rooke had said. It’s not what you think.

  “Yes it is,” she corrected. “Yes it is.”

&n
bsp; Across the mission, from the ring of dark trees, she heard a chunk, like a knife slicing into wood. A magpie cackled, then strangled to silence.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Small Ice On the Hat

  Frozen leaves scattered in the wind.

  “This is where we’re staying?” Lor said.

  “Yessir, amigo-san.”

  “This is a church, Al.”

  Alistair reached to catch a leaf. “Lookit, it’s free lodging.”

  Plus the bellboy wouldn’t be messing with his head anymore. Lor assessed the building. Red-bricked, bell towered, stained-glass windows mincing rainbow.

  “It’s padlocked,” he said.

  “Yessir, been that way for prob’ly fifteen years, since before Franklin started living here, bringing his girls’n boys—”

  “Franklin?”

  “Yeah, ’migo. Like, this was Franklin’s hideout.”

  “Holy shit.”

  Alistair laughed. “Yeah. Holy shit.”

  “Who owns it?”

  Alistair shrugged. “Who knows? This little beauty has been abandoned for years, which be why we have to climb in through the window.

  “Gives me the creeps.”

  “You want to return to the hotel, bud?”

  “No.”

  “Well ’en, you gets what you gets, ’n my guess is you may get to like this place, has a certain cachet, y’know?”

  “Lethbridge.” Lor shook his head, while Alistair stomped off toward the church.

  “Hey, ’migo,” he called back. “Technically we’re not in Lethbridge—not even North Lethbridge—till this little hamlet gets annexed next year.”

  “Hamlet?”

  “We’ll be long gone, Lor.”

  “Where the hell are we?”

  Alistair stopped and turned around, ankle-deep in a whirlpool of leaves.

  “Spookleton,” he said, and laughed.

  “Spookleton? That’s ridiculous.”