Running errands at night. Sure, that made sense. The earthy smell tugged at my senses, urging me to recall what it reminded me of. Besides dirt, I mean.
“Sometimes, it is unavoidable,” Mike continued. “The smell. This one, it is a bit odd, but she is a good paying client, and she asks us a favour and we do the favour, you know?”
“Sure,” I agreed. Then: “What is that smell?” But even as I spoke, I knew.
“It is…” he paused, focusing on parking, pulling up to the side of the street outside a dark house surrounded by other large, dark houses. If it hadn’t smelled like what I was worried it smelled like, the air would have given off the odour of new money. He sighed, turning off the car. “Is dead cat.”
I stared at him. “Dead cat.”
He gave an expansive shrug. “She is old, maybe a little crazy, who can say? But when she moves, the dead cat has to come with her. To go in the new backyard.”
“You are trying to tell me that there is a decomposing cat in your back seat.”
“Yes.” Straight face, his hands in his lap, torso twisted in the driver’s seat to face me full on. I recognized that openness; that was the openness of someone trying not to look like their pants were on fire.
I was in the middle of nowhere with someone lying to me about having a dead cat in the back seat and shovels in the trunk who was running errands in the middle of the night for his Russian family.
Oh god.
“That’s very gross,” I admitted, adopting the I’m-not-a-con-artist pose myself. I was in a car with a Russian mobster. “The dead cat, I mean.”
“It is. Very gross. Alek had to dig it up, now it is in a box, and I wrapped the box in the plastic, uh, the plastic tarp.” He hooked a thumb behind him to indicate the back seat, then put his hands back in his lap. “I am very sorry.”
“There’s a dead cat in the back seat,” I repeated, nodding to myself. Trying to give the impression that I was saying, ‘sure why not’ when in reality my mind raced around waving its arms like a demented muppet. “Why didn’t… Alek drive it?”
“Oh, I had to clean the car tomorrow anyway,” he said, easily, as if this was the simplest thing in the world. “Because of the other dirt.”
“The other dirt.”
“Yes. Not enough space in the trunk before so the buckets were in the front seat. With the shovels.” He’s got such a kind face, Mike; like an overgrown boy scout. And he was being completely honest with me, obviously except for the teeny detail that this was all a load of horseshit and I was sitting in a car in god-knows-where North York with a Russian mob errand boy.
Movement outside the car. Mike glanced out and then wound down his window, speaking in Russian. A man leaned over, resting his forearm on the door frame, peering in at me. “Hello.”
“Hi,” I said. Stay calm, Mallory. Don’t look like you realize. Just play it cool.
“This is Roman, my cousin,” Mike said. Roman gave a tired wave, wearing a suit and gold jewelry and looking about as much like a landscaper as I do. They conversed in Russian; Roman nodded, gave Mike a slap on the shoulder, and departed.
Mike spread his hands, apologetic. “This won’t take long. I have to take the cat, and something from the trunk, and talk for a bit with my cousins, and then I will take you home. I promise.”
I forced myself to smile. “Sure.” The moment he was gone I was going to flee. That much was sure.
Mike got out to deal with the lump in the back seat. The overhead light came on and the lump looked more like a box, or a tote, draped in a tarp. He picked it up under one arm—who would do that—before disappearing between the houses into someone’s backyard.
I opened my door and slid silently out.
“Hello,” someone said behind me, and I screamed and leapt in the air, whirling around with my fists up. What that would accomplish, I don’t know, but sometimes fists just want to up, it’s how fists think sometimes.
A younger-looking version of Roman—thinner, more hair to style with too much gel, not dressed in a suit but a hoodie over jeans—leaned against the trunk. He must have come out with Roman and I didn’t notice. It’s dark out!
He laughed, sounding an awful lot like Mike. “Sorry to scare you.” He didn’t have any accent at all. “You’re Mike’s friend?”
“That’s me,” I replied, lowering my hands, tugging my jacket smooth, trying to laugh it off. “You startled me.”
The kid smiled, giving me elevator eyes—ugh—and then looked around at the eerily silent and blacked-out neighbourhood. “Bad day, huh.”
“Yeah, a super nightmare,” I replied, easily, leaning against the car myself. No way I could outrun anyone in my heels if it came to that. Probably better to wait for a moment to slip away. “Transit down, buses are running out of gas, streetcars left in the middle of the streets, all that.”
“Yeah,” the kid replied, nodding. “The geezers are all talking about how it reminds them of the old days, but give them anything to talk about at all and it’ll remind them of the old days.”
“Ha ha, yeah, I bet. Old guys, right?” I awkwardly crossed my arms and tried to think casual thoughts. “So how do you know Mike?”
The kid didn’t answer because someone called out in Russian at him. It was Mike himself, coming back to the car, dusting off his hands. “Alek, there you are. Are you helping or are you talking?”
“I can do both,” Alek replied sullenly. “That horrible thing out back?”
Mike noticed me standing, giving a quizzical tilt of his head.
“It’s cooler out here,” I said. “And, the smell—”
He nodded, understanding. “Oh, of course. Again, I’m sorry about that.”
“Not your fault,” I replied easily. “Dead cats. New yard. Happens to everyone eventually.” My former study partner seemed a bit confused and Alek graced me with a grin that I didn’t like.
“Mike,” he said, eyes still on me, “it’s a bit creepy out here. Maybe your friend should come in with us, have some tea or something while we wait for Uncle Lev.”
“Oh, I’m fine.” But Mike thought I was protesting politely because he immediately made it clear that I should follow him. “Really, I’m fine.”
“No, no, come, have some tea.”
“We insist,” Alek added, with the shit-eating-est grin I have ever seen on a person. Then to Mike he said: “I’ll bring the… stuff from the trunk.”
I flashed a look between them. “Stuff”. The way he said it and I knew. I knew exactly what he was thinking. Alek added something in Russian, and Mike’s face clouded, then cleared. I have no idea what that meant but I didn’t like it.
“Yes,” he said, carefully. “Come have tea with us. I insist.”
Swallowing, I followed behind him, Alek bringing up the rear, carrying a huge tote.
15.
Catching Up
Deep breaths, Mallory, act calm. Maybe you can sneak away to the bathroom or something. The house was a two-storey detached, the kind with a double-garage that faced the street; beige brickwork and aluminium siding; a little paved pathway to the backyard behind a tall wooden fence. I could have been anywhere in southern Ontario. I had to step carefully over the grass, my heels wanted to sink in the soft earth. So well-watered, even with the dry summer we’d been having. Wasn’t there a water advisory on?
Mike led us to a small door in the side of the garage. Light glowed around its edges. Stepping in, I found it graced by a few small camping lanterns and an actual glass kerosene antique pioneer contraption. Less a garage than a workshop, with a small kitchenette and a table and chairs.
The men waiting inside all stood. All older, comfortably jowled, scowling, with more jewellery than I’d consider tasteful, shiny watches. Mike clapped a hand down on my shoulder and I flinched a little, not gonna lie. He spoke to them in Russian and they all stared at me. I caught my name several times, as well as Etobicoke.
They seemed to relax and one of them gestured towards t
he kitchenette where a hot plate was plugged into one of those portable generators that takes a car battery. “I just made tea. You want some?”
“I’m fine,” I squeaked.
Alek pushed past us, dumping the tote on the ground, dusting off his hands. “Here it is. All of it.”
“You sure?” One of the middle-aged men opened the lid, and pulled out a clear packet, about the size of a coffee bag, but filled with white crystals. He threw it on the table and they all peered at it, nodding approvingly at Mike and Alek.
I am really glad I managed to find a toilet at Lee’s Palace because this is the part where I would have peed myself.
Still with Mike’s hand on my shoulder, I tried to slide a bit out of the way but he kept a grip and I couldn’t. “Now, we wait.”
“Wait?” My voice made a comical impression of myself on helium. I swallowed. “For who?”
“Where is Roman?” one of the men asked, his voice so heavily accented it sounded like an extra from Hunt For Red October. Like a Hollywood version of a Russian.
“He’s just checking on something,” Alek said, watching for my reaction.
“Maybe I should wait outside or back by the car, let you guys do your business, I don’t want to be in the way.” I was babbling and the grip on my shoulder tightened. Just a bit. Just a squeeze telling me I wasn’t going anywhere.
“Is that… cat… taken care of?” the man asked Alek.
“I don’t know, that’s Mike’s job.”
“I’m asking you, you do it.”
“But—!” Alek switched to Russian, arguing, and yet everyone’s eyes stayed on me.
“Just take care of it,” the man said, sagging his bulk into a fold-away card table chair. He crossed meaty arms over his chest, regarding me with a scowl that seemed a permanent feature of his face. Alek stomped out of the garage, muttering.
“Shouldn’t be long.” Mike gave me a pat as he finally moved his hand away.
I tried to look anywhere but at the faces of the men surrounding me, or the table with the packet of crystalline powder, or the giant green tote filled with drugs. I ended up peering at the unfinished walls of the workshop, studying the insulation. In the low, flickering lights of the lanterns, it didn’t fluff like cotton candy, but instead moved with ominous curls and grasping outreaches, like fingers. Something moved. Was that a mouse?
Suddenly the garage door swung open and lights blazed, right into my eyes, blinding. I screamed and recoiled, throwing my hands up over my face; the men leapt from their chairs, cursing in at least two different languages.
“Freeze! Police!”
I shoved myself backwards behind Mike and wedged myself down behind a plastic shelving unit, hands over my head.
The cursing devolved into heavy braying laughter, and I opened one eye cautiously into the beam of a flashlight, then it tilted up and away to reveal Alek, back with his shit-eating grin, and Roman.
They were all laughing at me, including Mike, who held out a hand to help me up. I blinked watering eyes, bewildered. “I told you, we do landscaping,” he guffawed. “But you don’t believe me, huh?”
One of the heavyset uncles in the chairs laughed so hard he started coughing, wiping tears away.
“Seriously.” Alek clicked his flashlight off. “How gullible are you?”
I swallowed, relieved and embarrassed and foolish all at the same time. “I—” I held out my hands helplessly. “You wouldn’t believe the day I’ve had if I told you.”
“Mobsters,” Roman sniffed, making himself a cup of tea. “I wish. The money would be better.”
“…The dead cat?” I asked Mike.
“Is dead cat. I’m not lying. Crazy old woman wants her dead cat in her new backyard. She pays extra, so what do we care?” He leaned against the shelving, grinning at me, arms crossed. “Your face. You think we really are mobsters.”
“Then what’s that?” I pointed at the tote.
One of the older men picked the packet up and then tossed it back in the tote. “Fertilizer, mostly. Some, how do you say it, Alek?”
“Pesticide.”
“Yes, for the weeds.”
“Fertilizer and pesticides,” I repeated. “Because you do landscaping.”
“Because we do landscaping.” Mike grinned.
“And you’re doing this at midnight because…?”
“Because I was out all day trying to make sales,” Roman said, slurping his tea. “It is very weird hours. And then this power out—”
“Yeah.” I nodded, then rubbed the bridge of my nose. “Landscaping.”
Mike laughed again and clapped me on the back so hard that I staggered. “Come. I give you a ride home.”
“No! Stay for food,” one of the men protested, jovially. “We have leftovers! Propane barbeque. You must eat. Come, come.”
I weakened, tempted by the idea of barbeque, but Mike already had his hand on the door handle, and I was so tired. “Thank you, but no.”
He waved me away, no hard feelings. They were all still grinning at me, shaking their heads, pleased with their joke. I’d made their day.
* * *
I leaned against the side of the car, arms resting on the roof. “Oh my god, I can’t believe that just happened.”
Mike’s grin came back. “You looked so funny.”
“You had me fooled.”
“You really think I am criminal?”
“No! I mean, no, not you. But I don’t know your family, and then you started in with the dead cat thing, and running errands in the middle of the night, and I don’t know, man, I just… the things I’ve seen today, this isn’t even the weirdest.” I ran a hand over my hair. “I just can’t wait to get home.”
“Then let’s get you home,” Mike agreed, that openness back on his face. It was the expression of a decent person and I felt even more foolish for having fallen for the stereotypes in the first place.
I had my hand on the door handle. I remember closing my fingers around it, so close to going home. But then there was a sudden loud squeal of tires and a car sped around the corner of the winding, suburban street. The windows were open, someone shouted at us, and then I got hit with something. I screamed and ducked behind the car, checking myself for a wound, but it was a crumpled up Tim Horton’s Iced Capp container that they’d chucked at me. “What the fuck!”
Mike shouted at the car that had overshot us and was now braking, red tail-lights like animal eyes in the dark. Doors opened. Alek and Roman came running when they heard my scream and joined Mike in the street.
“I thought you said you weren’t mobsters!”
“We aren’t,” Mike protested.
“What the fuck.” Roman growled. “Who the fuck is this? What are they doing shouting at us?”
There were four men, and they were advancing. Alek swung his flashlight at their faces, and I realized with sickening horror who it was: the businessman, the one in the pinstripe suit. I didn’t know the others, but I knew him.
“They don’t want you.” Panic spread up and around me like strangling vines. “They’re here for me!”
One of the men threw something else—more garbage—and it hit Alek. He threw down the flashlight and charged at them like only a stupid young man can do, breaking out of Roman’s grip.
“Stay here,” Mike told me, already running after his cousin. The older men streamed out of the garage, and shouting in Russian filled the lane.
I remained crouched by the car. This was all my fault. Somehow, for some reason, I’d brought the pinstripe suit man and now there was a fight going on.
Maybe I should have stayed and tried to explain. Next time this happens, I’ll remember to do that, to stand up and be the bigger person and wade in and talk it all out. But that’s not what I did.
Instead I ran, the sound of my heels on the asphalt lost in the commotion.
16.
Down At Heel
I leaned against a fence in a rabbit warren of suburban houses som
ewhere in North-Fucking-York with honest-to-Ed’s goons behind me. I mean, I have to assume goonery. How that pin-stripe-suited motherfucker kept finding me, I don’t know.
What had Chantuelle called it? An ‘embargo’? It had sounded ridiculous under cover of afternoon, but anything at all seemed more likely in the middle of the night.
I peered around for signposts, street signs, hoping to recognize at least something. But I appeared to be at the corner of butt-fuck and nowhere. There wasn’t even the glow of the core against the southern sky to guide me.
“Toronto slopes south” had been parroted at me ever since my first visit, and maybe it does when you’re on Yonge Street, but it certainly doesn’t slope consistently everywhere and whole neighbourhoods were built where it was flat. Like here. Flat as a pancake. The CN tower wasn’t visible. The lake wasn’t visible. Just stupid post-war bungalows and trees and parked cars, all featureless silhouettes under the starlight.
So I literally picked a direction at random to walk. Eventually, goes the reasoning, I would hit a larger street, and from there figure out where the hell I was. And so I stepped confidently off the curb.
And my heel fucking snapped off.
The instability pitched me forward; I yanked myself backward in an attempt to stay upright; I over-yanked; I fell flat on my ass. And it hurt.
I sat there, legs out on the street, smarting ass on the curb, trying to catch my breath and keep from bursting into tears, rubbing my chilly arms. Eventually the sniffling passed and my resolve came back. Nothing to do but pick myself up and keep going, unless I wanted to sleep on the sidewalk. No guarantee power would be on in the morning, either.
So I pulled myself up, dusting the grit of the road off my skirt and wiping my face. Every time I stretched, my ripped sleeve gaped at me. I bent down and picked up the chunk of heel off the street; maybe I could glue the shoes back together.
I took a wobbling step in my broken shoes. It was like limping. I had to stand on my tip-toes, all the pressure on my blisters and they burned in protestation, bringing more tears to my eyes. I took a few more tentative steps before there came a tearing sensation on my toes and unpleasant wetness. I sat back on the curb, taking off my pumps to survey the damage. Yep. All my blisters had ripped open and were now bleeding.
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