by Eva Crocker
“Absolutely not. Do you have any other questions?”
“What were they looking for?”
“Unfortunately, I can’t disclose that.”
“That guy shouldn’t have called my work.”
“Do you feel like we’ve resolved things verbally?” he asked.
“No.”
He nodded.
“Will I see you out?” he asked.
“Okay.”
“What happens now?” I asked when we got to the door that opened onto the lobby.
“You can request further review.”
“Oh. And then?”
“Possibly disciplinary action, depending what the reviewers decide. Do you want to request further review?”
I could see the sun shining outside the police station through the big glass doors. The investigation was done; I wasn’t a suspect. So badly I just wanted to walk out there and be done with it all.
“Not right now,” I told him.
“You don’t feel we’ve resolved it verbally?” he tried once more.
“No,” I said.
* * *
I woke up in Kris’s tidy bedroom and checked my phone. There was an email from Joanna with her script attached. She invited me to audition and said she welcomed any feedback I had about the script. For the first time since the cops came I felt pure, unadulterated happiness. The joint production had felt like a long shot; this seemed like a real possibility. Kris was naked beside me, I slid my phone back under the pillows and pulled her into me. I rubbed the side of her head where her hair was buzzed close to her scalp. It felt velvety. I ran a hand down her arm and squeezed her bicep.
“You’re waking me up,” she said.
I lifted her ducktail of dark curls, put my lips on the back of her neck and said into her spine, “Did I tell you about that girl I work with who got funding through Telefilm to make a feature?”
“Maybe.” I loved how squeaky and high Kris’s voice was in the morning. Other people only heard her husky, fully awake voice. Her hair tickled my face and I sneezed on her. The sneeze whooshed through me without warning and I got snot and spit on the back of her neck.
“Stacey! What the fuck?” She squirmed away. “Disgusting! I’m sleeping.”
“Sorry, it was an accident.” I wrapped myself around her again and ground my pelvis into her butt. “I’m trying to tell you something.”
“I’m sleeping.” But she reached an arm behind her and squeezed my thigh.
“She asked me to audition. She sent me the script.”
“Very cool, let’s just sleep a bit longer.”
Frankie was using the blender downstairs.
“A role in a feature, even an independent thing like this would be kind of a big deal. For me.” I bit her shoulder.
“Ow.”
“I mean, she just asked me to audition, it’s not for sure. And it could be for a part with like just one or two lines for all I know.”
“It’s all work, right?” Kris said, smooshing her face back and forth in the pillow.
“The way Joanna said it, when she mentioned it in person, I feel like she’s thinking of one of the bigger roles.”
Kris reached her arm further back and spanked me. “You’ll get whatever part you want, sure look at ya.”
“I mean any part would be cool.” I sat up. “You’re working today, right? I think I’m going to get on the go.”
“You’re leaving? I don’t work until eleven.”
“I need to read the script, she asked me for feedback.” I kissed Kris’s hand, I put a fingernail coated in bike grease in my mouth and bit down on it, then got out of bed. My jeans and bra were the only pieces of clothing on her bedroom floor.
“I thought you wanted to fuck,” Kris said.
“I do,” I said, hauling up my pants. “But I have to go.”
I darted down over the stairs. Normally I would have lingered in the kitchen doorway making small talk with Frankie, but I was dying to call Viv. She was the only person who would really understand the significance of the audition. The tops of my new boots were chafing my calves; lacing them up hurt. Outside the sun was shining and the sky was blue. About two feet of snow had fallen overnight. I stomped a path to the road in my waterproof boots.
“What’re you doing?” I asked when Viv picked up.
“Cleaning my bathroom.”
“Joanna sent me her script, she’s holding auditions next month.”
“This is the outport thing?”
“Yeah.” With every step the back of the boots rubbed the raw part of my calf but my feet were completely dry.
“You think it’s good?” she asked.
“I haven’t read it yet. It got Telefilm funding.”
“So? That doesn’t mean anything,” Viv said.
“I could have a role in a feature.” I was clomping up the middle of Pleasant Street, glancing over my shoulder every few steps to see if there were cars behind me. “That could lead to other stuff.”
“I know, I’m glad you’re excited.”
“God, you don’t know anything about the script.”
“It’s going to be like depressing outport life and like romantic shots of the majestic coastline. People eking out a living in the destitute bay. Like she knows anything about it.”
“It might not be that.”
“Anyway, I don’t care! I’m excited for you, I really, genuinely am.”
On either side of the road people were shovelling out their cars and clearing their front steps, hefting mounds of wet snow into hills on the sidewalk.
“Joanna’s not that bad.”
“She’s annoying,” Viv said. “But that doesn’t matter, you should do the movie.”
“Well, I don’t even have a part yet. And it might just be like, a very small part.”
“You need someone to run lines with you?” Viv asked.
“You don’t have to.”
“I want to, I’m being honest, okay? About everything.”
“Okay.”
Thirteen
In March, months after we’d locked the door to Patrick Street and dropped three sets of keys into a mailbox whose rusty hinges squawked, Viv texted to ask if she could borrow my drill.
She asked for the drill because she wanted to remove two plywood figures screwed to her fence. They were both about three feet tall and two across. One was painted to look like a little boy peeing; he was facing away with his pants slid down, flashing his chubby butt cheeks. The second figure was a little girl covering her face with both hands, shocked by the peeing boy.
Viv was sitting on her front step when I arrived.
“Did you tell your landlord you’re taking them down?”
“I doubt he’ll care.”
I laid the hard plastic case on the sidewalk and opened it up. There was a mound of stubborn snow on the ground below the figures’ feet.
“You’re going to do it now?” Viv asked.
“Sure.”
“I can do it,” Viv said.
“It’s fine.” I looked at the screw in the girl’s forehead and plucked the appropriate bit from the case.
Viv hopped off the step and stood next to me as I fit the drill bit into the screw. The screw resisted and I pressed hard on the drill’s trigger. The girl’s head cracked down the centre, her two hands separating to show the green paint on the fence post behind her.
“It broke,” Viv said.
“Fuck, I’m sorry,” I said.
The split spread to the middle of the girl’s chest but she was in one piece from the waist down. There was another screw between her Mary Janes.
“Should I take the other screw out? It might break her completely.”
“I guess we have to, we can’t leave her like that,” Viv said.
“I won’t press so hard,” I said, fitting the drill bit into the second screw.
This time I held the drill steady and pressed lightly on the trigger until the screw crunched and then began wobbling out of its hole and finally fell to the sidewalk. Viv and I each took a side of the girl and tugged, her back was still fused to the fencepost, we met eyes and pulled again. We both took a step backwards when the figure detached. Viv let go and I lowered the wooden girl onto the sidewalk. The boy came off easily and stayed intact; I stacked him on top of the girl. Viv picked them both up.
“I’m going to put them in the shed,” she said.
“Are they heavy? I can take one.”
“Maybe you can open the door for me,” Viv said.
I followed her through the muddy backyard to a shed. The barn-style doors were held closed with a wooden latch. I turned the block of wood that held them closed from the horizontal position to vertical and the left door swung open. Inside, the shed was warm and musty; there was a window in the back that looked onto a dogberry tree. There was a biscuit tin filled with rusty nails on a wooden ledge and a gas lawn mower in the corner.
“I’m jealous of your shed,” I said.
Viv leaned the figures against the wall, hiding the broken girl behind the boy. I nearly walked into a web with a fat, scab-coloured spider sitting in it. He was surrounded by long-dead fly carcasses.
“I miss living with you,” I said.
“I miss it too,” Viv said.
She walked out into the yard. I pushed the door, trying to close it, but it had to be lifted.
“Do you know when filming starts?” Viv asked.
“Mid-August, if the second batch of funding comes through.”
“Has anyone else heard about funding?”
“Not that I know of.”
“No news is good news.” Viv held both hands in the air with her fingers crossed and smiled. The sun lit up her orange hair. I slid the piece of wood that held the doors together into place.
“I have some news,” she said.
I waited. A warm wind stirred leaves in the muddy yard.
“You’re pregnant.”
Viv smiled, her irises cranked all the way up.
“Holy shit, you’re having a baby?”
She nodded like she was surprised too.
“I’m getting an ultrasound in two weeks.”
I wrapped my arms around her.
“It just happened,” she said.
“But you want it?”
“I really want it.”
Later as I left with my drill case I called to her, “Send me a picture of the ultrasound.”
* * *
I was lying in bed reading Chelsea Girls, another book from Kris. Holly was making curry, I could smell the frying onions and cumin. She was listening to a podcast, two people with bubbly Toronto accents talking about astrology. There was a loud knock on the front door. I put the book down on my stomach. I listened to hear if Holly would go to answer the door — maybe it was someone she’d invited over. Instead, she just turned down the radio. Three more loud knocks. I got off the mattress; one of my knees made a loud cracking noise as I knelt on the floor before pushing myself to standing.
I walked to my bedroom window; the crystal I’d stuck there was click-clacking against the glass. I pulled the curtain aside and saw a white car idling outside our door with a Domino’s sign on the roof. There was a young guy on the doorstep holding a delivery bag with one arm, his other arm was reaching towards the doorbell. I didn’t realize I’d been holding my breath until I exhaled when I recognized the Domino’s logo. Two sharp rings sounded through the house. I ran down the stairs. Holly was cooking rice now; the air in the living room was warm and moist. She was standing at the bottom of the stairs, looking at the front door.
“It’s okay,” I told her. “It’s a pizza guy.”
“I didn’t order pizza. Did you?” She was frightened.
I walked past her into the porch and opened the door. The pizza guy started opening the insulated delivery bag. At first I couldn’t remember what to say and then it came to me. “We didn’t order pizza.”
“What about her?” The guy nodded at Holly with his chin. The bag flapped open: inside there were four pizza boxes stacked on top of each other. “No one else here?”
“It must be for the church, is it?” I asked. “Youth on the Horizon or something?”
“It says 2 Clarke Avenue.”
“We didn’t order it.” I opened the door wider and stepped into the frost on the front step in my sock feet. The guy had to back up. I pointed to the double doors on the side of the church. “Try there, they keep ordering stuff to our place by mistake. There’s a youth group in there, something Horizons, Wider Horizons or something.”
The pizza guy zipped his bag closed and started towards the church, his car still idling outside our house. I looked for the coughing woman but the fire escape was empty. When I shut the door Snot and Courtney were skulking in the porch behind me.
“Get in, get in.” I nudged Courtney’s fat side with my cold foot and both cats scurried back into the living room.
“Thank you,” Holly said. “For dealing with that.”
“It freaked me out too,” I said.
“I have to check the rice,” Holly said. “I’m making curry, there’s lots — if you want some it’ll be on the stove.”
“Thanks.” I started up the stairs but I turned around when I got to the top. Holly was in the kitchen with her podcast turned back up. She didn’t hear me walk back in, she was wiping the counters.
“Hey,” I said loudly, competing with the radio. “I’m sorry about your glasses.”
“Okay, thanks for apologizing.” She didn’t turn around.
I waited another moment; she lifted the lid of the rice and started fluffing it with a fork. I left the room.
* * *
The next morning I woke up to a slab of bright blue sky outside the window. I didn’t have to work until the evening and it was supposed to be warm. I could hear the neighbour kids yelling at each other in the parking lot.
I got a shower and made a coffee by pouring boiling water over the partially dried-out grounds I’d used the day before. The paper filter was rippled and yellow where dampness had spread up through it but the coffee turned out surprisingly strong.
I brought my bike in through the kitchen to the living room, leaving a trail of leaves that had frozen and thawed between the spokes of the wheels. Outside there was still dirty snow in the shadows of large buildings and bright white snow gleaming on the side of Signal Hill. For the most part the sidewalks were clear though.
I wore my spring jacket for the first time that year. The next day was supposed to be cold again, but today my baby-pink jacket with racing stripes down the sleeves felt appropriate. The coat was much looser than the last time I’d worn it; usually it was snug around my breasts but now it hung off my shoulders straight down to my hips, where the elastic waistband bunched it up. I’d been entering a thin phase when the cops arrived, but now I was much skinnier. Even though I’d started cooking again the skin on my breasts was slack, the texture of gum that’d been chewed too long. There were stretch marks like dried-up riverbeds on my hips and thighs and butt.
I emptied my knapsack out onto my bed. I tightened the straps over my shoulders. I put on my canvas sneakers, they felt impossibly light after months of heavy-soled winter boots.
The neighbour kids were riding their bikes around the parking lot in long shorts and sweatshirts. The brother had on a Halloween wig, a chin-length, rainbow-coloured bob with bits of silver tinsel in it.
I locked the cats in the kitchen so I could open the front door wide enough to get my bike out. The coughing woman was in her usual spot on the fire escape and there was a younger couple sharing the same side of t
he picnic table. I’d seen the woman before, today she was wearing a thin grey cardigan over a spaghetti-strap tank top. The guy looked younger, he had a swoop of dyed black hair over one eye, an early-2000s emo look. The woman was smoking and the guy was drinking a green sports drink. He pushed the upturned cap of his drink into the centre of the table and the woman ashed her cigarette into it. They both smiled at me. I lifted my hand in a wave.
I leaned my bike against the side of the house and ran inside to free the cats. When I came out the kids were stopped outside my door, standing on tiptoe with their bikes between their legs, their fingers wrapped tight around the handlebar grips.
“Is that yours?” the boy asked.
“Yeah.” I stepped over the crossbar and squeezed the brakes — they were stiff at first but they loosened up after a couple of pumps. I would ask Kris to tune it up next time she was over, but it was definitely rideable.
The girl nodded and kicked off again; she did a wide figure eight around the parking lot, gracefully leaning into the turns. Her little brother careened after her, stomping on the pedals. I could feel the people at the picnic table watching me. It was my first time on a bike since last summer. I was tempted to get off and walk it until I was out of view.
The bike jerked beneath me. The brake pads rubbed against the shiny rim of the front wheel, making a whining noise. The tires were definitely low on air. I pedalled hard across the parking lot, resisting the urge to look back at the people at the picnic table. Finally my legs found a rhythm and the bike glided up over the small hill by the nurses’ union.
When I went fast the whining brake pads faded into a measured shushing. By the time I got to Torbay Road my thighs were aching. I rode on the sidewalk to avoid the steady stream of traffic. My knuckles and the backs of my hands were bright red from the wind. There was a knot of pain in the spot where the dog’s teeth had pierced me. When I met people walking, I braked hard and the bike shrieked. I scuffed the sidewalk until I could hop off and walk the bike around them.
There was a new burrito place, a chain from the mainland where you choose ingredients from behind a sneeze guard. A group of seven or eight teenagers were squeezed into a booth in the front window, sharing a plate of nachos.
