The Waiting Hours

by Shandi Mitchell

  “Car 245. Check.” She looked over her cubicle to Colleen, manning dispatch, calling in routine checks to her officers every forty-five minutes. She recognized the car number and imagined Constable Wade putting down her coffee and reaching for the handset. She located car 245 on her monitor. It was parked at the point overlooking the harbour. Her preferred waiting spot.

  Constable Wade had a puppy now. A rescue. She had brought it into IES for a socialization visit. Tucked inside her protective vest, it was a fluff of brown fur, pink tongue, black nose and eyes. More teddy bear than dog, its body still growing into its tail. For fifteen minutes, the call-takers had tittered and cooed over the skittering fluff bumping into feet, careening willy-nilly. The pup had made Tamara nervous in its wild abandon. When it chewed on her braids, she had swiftly handed it back. But she didn’t have expensive braids to ruin now. If Raylene brought the pup by again, she’d ask to hold it. This time, she’d let it lick her ears and marvel at its squirm and pulse between her palms.

  Colleen had returned to reading her novel. Tamara gazed at the constellation of pulsing lights dotting the city map. She would like to call them all just to hear their chorus. Good check, good check, good check. Constable Wade would be leaning back now, maybe stretching her legs. Her feet would be hot in heavy boots and her coffee cold. She would be worrying about her pup being left too long in its overnight crate. This was Tamara’s family and it was enough.

  “911. What is your emergency?” Wendy had caught the call. Karl, who was manning fire dispatch, sat up straighter. These were the hours of smouldering cigarettes, forgotten cooking oil and candles.

  “Hello, Robert,” Wendy said.

  Her colleagues high-fived the air. Tamara hoisted her cup, counting herself among the winners. Robert wasn’t her concern. From here on in, she would keep the phone between her and them. She had a good job and a good, ordered life. For the first time in days, she was hungry. She thought about Dottie’s homemade strawberry jam and wished she had licked the knife. She’d like to see her again. Maybe that would be okay if it was a chance meeting at Edie’s. Or if she happened to be strolling through the Square, Dottie might wave and invite her in and they could sit at the kitchen table and wait for the kettle to boil. She’d like her to see her new hair.

  Taking another sip of her sickly-sweet drink, she wondered if Hassan was working tonight.

  42

  Hassan circled back for another run past Liquor Corner. He should go home. He didn’t need the fares or someone throwing up in the back seat. And he certainly didn’t want to see strangers groping each other, or worse, but he turned left for one more pass.

  He knew cabbies afraid to work nights and understood their fear. There had been robberies, stabbings, beatings, and last winter, a cabbie was murdered for twenty-five dollars. He had been working double shifts to send money home to his wife and two children. The judge asked, Why? But, there wasn’t an answer.

  He’d had his own share of skipped fares—young men and women bolting at red lights, tales of lost or forgotten wallets, offers of services in lieu of cash, both male and female—but mostly, he was invisible to his passengers. A silent ferryman hired to carry them through the darkness, no questions asked.

  He preferred the anonymity of night, when the passengers became greater than their ordinary reality. Bigger spenders. Bigger talkers. Beautiful people preening, dancing, seducing. Laughing away their crappy jobs, bills, and relationships in drug- and alcohol-induced hazes. Chasing one shining moment to sustain them through the dull, grinding week. He admired their recklessness, denial, and optimism. But they tipped poorly and when they left he had to drive several blocks with the windows down to dispel the sour, sweet smell of alcohol and hope.

  Sometimes, he picked up angry, hateful fares. Men whose courage increased in groups of three, who talked bitingly about immigrants and stared at the back of his head. He pretended he didn’t understand and took extra-sharp turns, and braked abruptly, until their nausea silenced them.

  Once, he’d had a knife held to his throat, but refused to hand over the forty-three dollars in his pocket. No, he had said. Simply no. He said it quietly and untroubled, as if declining a free sample at the grocery store. He wasn’t afraid. He was ready. Maybe even hopeful. But the young man lost his nerve and ran.

  One more pass and he’d head away from the downtown core to the residential streets and look for stragglers. If he passed a house with lights on, he’d slow to admire the art and paint choices on the walls. Sometimes he glimpsed young mothers pacing, or heads silhouetted in a television’s pulsing blue, or the red burn of a cigarette end illuminating a face on the porch. Others like him, unable to sleep, who knew the heavy waiting of night.

  Up ahead the light turned red and he coasted to a stop on the empty street. Some nights if he was lucky, he’d see the flash of a cat’s eyes reflecting golden-green or a streak of fur and tail blazing his headlights. He loved the unexpected wild. Raccoons, skunks, even rats—he’d pull over to watch. He’d seen deer grazing on manicured lawns. Their heads lifting in unison, ears stiff and necks regal, gauging whether they had been detected. An imperceptible flick deciding for all it was time to leap. Gone, in a white-tail flash. And once, returning from an airport run, he saw a coyote dragging the hind leg of a deer clamped in its jaws. In all his travels, he had only seen the speed bumps of porcupines’ crumpled remains. He would like to see one alive.

  The light turned green and he eased through the intersection. He swung past Liquor Corner. The buses had stopped running and the bars were shutting down. The lucky or unlucky had paired up. He should pull over to save fuel or get out to stretch his legs. He should go home. He looked down the hill to the shimmering harbour and sharp-edged moon and made another left up the hill for one more pass. These were the hardest, loneliest hours.

  These hours led to the bridge. He knew the best spot. He knew where the cameras were, and how long it would take bridge security to notice a cab parked mid-span and a man at the rails. For the past few months, he had been calculating the rate at which the prevention barriers were being erected. In another few weeks, he would lose his chance to atone. Twenty years of crossings, and he hadn’t yet found the courage to jump. It was his punishment to want to live.

  He had considered stopping during supper rush hour, when traffic was gnarled. He’d casually step out of the cab, shut the door, and leave the cab running so it could be easily moved. He’d walk without hesitation to the railing. He was much braver in his fictional guise. Cars would veer around his abandoned vehicle, assuming it had stalled. Horns would honk. A woman in a minivan would adjust her radio. A child would yawn. An old man would blink. And he, the man at the railing, would be gone.

  He didn’t imagine the moment after that, or the moment after that. His thoughts always stayed on the bridge. He worried about the commuters trying to get home to their families, cats, and dogs. Good people thinking about supper, a cold beer, a glass of wine, or checking their lottery tickets. Because of him, they would be delayed for hours. And what if someone tried to stop him? What then? No, he would never chance the daytime for fear of someone saying something kind to him. That would be the end of his resolve.

  Night was best. But still, someone would eventually see. The police or coast guard or paramedics or some poor soul looking out their office window or walking their dog…No, he couldn’t give someone else his sorrow. Instead, he spent his tips on tolls, waiting for an attendant to look up and wish him a good night so he could go home.

  Lately, he’d stopped making those crossings. Ever since he started driving Tamara. Tamara of no left turns who was afraid of bridges and smelled of coconut oil and spoke his name like a whisper. Tamara who gave him a book, and asked him to accompany her to hair appointments and funerals, and relied on him to pick her up and drop her off at work. But tonight, she hadn’t called.

  He was prepared for that likelihood. Nonetheless, he had shaved and donned a new white shirt. He changed the water,
put fresh flowers in the dashboard vase, and vacuumed the back seat. Three times he checked with dispatch to confirm he hadn’t missed her call. Beside him, on the passenger seat, was a book of poetry he wanted her to have, even if it meant goodbye. It wouldn’t take her long to read.

  It was a small, thin book with a dust-red jacket and bone-white letters. His name in small print under hers, Translation by…, the letters thick with guilt. It took five years to coax the English from the Arabic. Another four years to save the money to self-publish it. He agonized for months whether or not to format it back to front in Arabic or front to back in English, and finally arranged the poems to work from either approach. He placed his confession in the foreword and waited for the police to arrive. But they never came.

  Hassan signalled left again and headed down the hill for one more pass. Here, nobody cared about poems. The local bookstore sold a single copy. A one-paragraph review surfaced in an obscure journal extolling its “raw fire and language as delicate and exquisite as a sparrow’s bones.” The reviewer misspelled her name and his wasn’t mentioned. He left the books at bus stops, coffee shops, and in grocery carts hoping they would be found. In the glove compartment was the last copy. If Tamara had called, he would have given it to her. She might have understood what he was trying to say.

  On the sidewalk were two young men. They were wearing varsity T-shirts and had the physiques of athletes. Holding each other upright, they staggeringly hailed his cab. One man stumbled and was caught by his friend. Regaining his feet, he kissed him sloppily on the lips. His friend gently disengaged, guided him into the back seat. Hassan’s nose crinkled at the stench of cheap cologne and beer. The address was outside the city. His friend passed Hassan too much money but refused the change. “Just get him home safe.”

  “I love you,” the man in the back seat slurred.

  “Yeah, yeah,” his friend said. “Love you too, man. Fasten your seatbelt.” He proceeded to buckle him in, checking that the strap wasn’t too tight. He tapped the cab roof to send them off. The passenger rested his temple against the cool window.

  “I love him,” he mumbled.

  In his side mirror, Hassan saw his friend wipe his mouth. He looked in the rear-view. His passenger’s eyes were already closed. He took the right turn gently so the man’s head hardly bobbed.

  He rolled down his window and the hot night rushed in. In the dashboard vase, the wisp of wisteria nodded. Its dreamtime scent lightly blanketed the cab.

  She could still call.

  43

  Kate had only intended to lash down the trash cans and make sure the windows were closed. But when she checked the perimeter of her mother’s house she found rotting garbage that hadn’t been put to the curb in months. Tomorrow morning was the last pickup before the storm. She looked up at Matthew’s window. The house was dark. She hoped he wasn’t there. Maybe she could empty the fridge, check the trash cans, and head straight home.

  She approached with caution. She didn’t reach for the light, feeling safer in the cover of darkness. She waited at the threshold while Zeus searched the lower level. Her eyes slowly adjusted. The outline of wings appeared first, followed by the hulking grey-blue-blacks of furniture carved from moonlit shadows. She traced the deep ink of Zeus’s body by the clatter of his nails and huffs of breath at the cubbyhole, into the kitchen, and around. She was relieved when his soft snout nuzzled her hand.

  She followed him up the stairs and waited on the landing while his nostrils flared at Matthew’s open door. All clear. “Good boy.” Her voice sounded husky and pricked from the effort and her body sagged from the day’s weight. Moonlight raked the sour, soiled mattress. On the floor were his sneakers, broken-backed and abandoned. Their aloneness made the bruise over her heart ache.

  Down the hall, Zeus scratched furiously at her childhood bedroom door. Dread tensed her body and her hands curled into fists. But Zeus wasn’t barking. He wasn’t indicating “live” or “danger.” He was spinning and prancing, “happy” and “play.”

  The Stay Out sign had long been removed, but layers of yellowed cellophane tape remained. She looked down to the glimmer of Zeus’s eyes. He was watching her. She could hear the swish of his tail. She opened the door that she had kept closed most of her life. With the flick of the light switch, she was seventeen again.

  Zeus bounded in, following his nose over the shag rug, bookcase, books, and back to the floor. He gave a cursory swipe of the desk, breezed past the dresser to the single neatly made bed with its lime-green comforter, and leapt up. He burrowed his head into the pillow, flipped his snout under the sheets, and rummaged the covers, before rolling upright. Tail waving, he barked loud and deep. He had found her.

  When she moved out, she didn’t take anything with her, and Ruth wouldn’t let her discard it. She insisted it was worth good money at the flea market and would sell it all. But there was the second-hand dresser she had painted purple with yellow polka dots and its cloudy, tarnished mirror. Tucked in the frame were the curled photographs of long-gone dogs, concert stubs, and photo-booth strips of a boy she thought she loved.

  She pulled open the dresser drawer and Zeus’s nose poked up over the edge. Rainbow-hued cotton panties and a training bra were neatly folded. She nudged aside the underwear and lavender satchel still blooming a faint perfume and exposed a single cherry-scented condom. She shut the drawer and slid open the closet. The roller mechanism stuttered. Zeus squirrelled his head between the jean jackets, ripped jeans, and grungy shirts. The clothes smelled freshly laundered. Zeus sneezed. She noticed the bookcase was dusted, the table polished, and the floor vacuumed.

  “Come,” she said. Her stride said now. His tail drooped.

  She didn’t check the back of the door to see if the chalkboard was still there where Matthew wrote the opening lines of books he thought she should read. She switched off the light and shut the door.

  She groped for the hallway light and blinked back the bare bulb’s glare. Zeus stared up at her, but she didn’t look at him. From the landing, she could see the blinding white of satin gowns, synthetic curls, and praying hands. She wanted one, just one, to move its wings.

  When she realized she wasn’t rooted there in exhaustion, but was truly waiting, truly wishing, a voice in her head said, Enough.

  * * *

  —

  Zeus trailed close behind as she made another trip from the house to the street. She paused to swipe a mosquito from her arm, and hot blood smeared. The wheelbarrow tilted and she wrestled it level, but not before several angels toppled to the ground. Zeus shot forward to herd them back.

  This was the last load. When she reached down to pick up the fallen angels, her legs throbbed. Eighteen loads, not including the regular garbage, and another hour securing the yard’s lawn chairs, buckets, and debris. She grabbed the angels by their useless wings and tossed them back on the wheelbarrow. She would have burned the lot if not for the fire ban.

  If her mother ever came back, maybe she’d be grateful for the space. Maybe she’d thank her for doing what she couldn’t do herself because she didn’t know how to start. Or maybe she wouldn’t even remember that she had ever needed angels. She’d benignly walk in the house and the sun would be shining and she would just feel like she was home. Kate almost laughed at the ridiculousness of her hope. Even now, she wanted a happy ending. Or at least an ending that was merciful, no matter how tragic.

  Zeus raced ahead to the end of the driveway, circling and sniffing the splayed wings, hooped skirts, and indignant eyes heaped at the curb. She looked down the street at the sleeping houses and their tidy garbage piles. In the morning, the neighbours would wake to the debris of her family’s lives. So be it. She would take the wrath. She dumped the final load.

  A tumble of plastic, polyester, porcelain, and chicken feathers sprawled at her feet. Some landed face down. A few clutched each other in awkward embrace. Others were on their backs and levitating on the tips of gosling wings, their rigid arms raised to the
moon. Even fallen, their angel smiles were beatific and forgiving. She hadn’t asked for their forgiveness. They should be begging for hers. Her mother’s angels hadn’t kept anyone safe.

  She kicked at one and it flipped over. Zeus gingerly stepped into the pile and nosed the angel’s cheek. It rocked on its back. He whined and looked up at Kate.

  “Leave it,” she said.

  He nudged it again and licked its eyes. He slapped his paws against its hooped gown and play-bowed, huffing a low woof.

  “They’re not real.” She nudged another with her toe as proof. Zeus scrambled over the pile, stepping on wings and gossamer chests, and squirmed between her and the angel. He didn’t want her to hurt it. Barking sharply, he burrowed his nose under its dress.

  “No,” she said.

  He woofed again. She had trained him to insist. He pawed the silken gown. His claws caught the stand and the angel lifted a few inches before flopping down. He jumped back, barking wildly. It was a game.

  She crouched down and tried to see what he saw. Miniature people, eyes open, reaching for him. Zeus stared intently at her, shifting his gaze slightly to the dolls and back to her, willing her to do something. She pressed on a stand and an angel rose upright. Its feathered wings glowed in the moon’s light. Zeus’s ears lifted and he spun in circles. He pawed another.

  “They’re not alive,” she whispered. He licked her cheek.

  Play, he barked forcefully in her face. Play. He bowed, luring her back to him and now.

  “Okay,” she said. “I understand.” Her eyes glistened, but her smile was true. “This one?”

  Zeus backed up, anticipating another miracle.

  44

  Mike woke to a rap on the window and the hiss and cackle of the radio. His head lurched and his neck cricked. The stark street light bored into the back of his eyes. He was in his squad car. He turned to the tapping and saw a police officer’s vest. Knuckles rapped again. The badge said Wade. The officer leaned in, a woman. He searched the gauze of his brain for her name. Raylene. He rolled down the window.