Janine Armin - Toronto Noir

“I’ll follow,” he said, with a knowing, almost servile condescension.

She shrugged, thought for a moment about what she might need, then shrugged again. She took Colbeck Street over to Jane, held out her hand at the crosswalk, then marched across like a trusting fool. From there it was a short hike down to the entrance of the park, and down the short steep hill at Humberview Road, and the longer sloping hill of Old Mill Drive. She reached the parking lot running, had to stop and crouch to catch her breath. The day was overcast and humid; she could feel the threat of rain in her sinuses. The scattered copses of trees and fertile patches beneath the bridges had the look of hiding places for humans. It was the sort of day bad men chose to bury body parts.

Paul caught up with her. She turned for a moment to look into his familiar, fretful face. He was stuttering out facts like a telegraph machine: “You know, it’s Petro-Ecuador now. The Ecuadoreans managed to wrest back control, but only after a long and underhanded battle. It was the Americans first. Occidental. They were the ones who invaded what was essentially forbidden territory. And then they did sneaky things like sell part of their shares to EnCana, a Canadian company, Beth, who then sold to the Chinese. If you think we are blameless in all of this you are wrong. We Canadians drift in on the Americans’ wake. Oil or diamonds — it doesn’t matter, we’ll take their sloppy seconds with our shadowy lesser dollar.”

She scrambled her way down the concrete wall that had been built to counter flooding, found a log designed for sitting, and looked toward the stone bridge, the site of the Old Mill, its ruins pressed up against a new spa and condos. A fisherman was standing under the bridge, his hip waders making him large and mournful. He baited his hook, cast into the deeper waters downstream, and hooked a salmon while Beth watched. In the fall, the salmon would be running thick through these waters, leaping with every ounce of their life force to clear the man-made steps that had been installed to control the flow of the river. Their connection to their home, to their little patch of earth and rock and water, was that compelling, that terrifying and true.

The water was higher than it had been for weeks; there had been fierce, unseasonal rains while they were away, then in late July the sun had come out and the river had receded, but the most recent downpour had lifted it once again. Above them, a subway train went rumbling by. Out of the corner of her eye, Beth saw a small black airborne shape, a scrap of red. And there it was: familiar, dogged by its Ecuadorean shadow, its strange tropical double. Here — a red-winged blackbird darting out. And there — a toucan decimating a small hard fruit with its unlikely beak. Here — a pair of squirrels trapezing through the low branches of a maple. There — a monkey grooming his mate, bold and fastidious, perched on his very own Amazonian awning.

Paul tapped her shoulder. “Let’s not stay here, Beth.”

He didn’t appreciate the river the way Beth did. Six months ago, four boys had mugged him and two of his friends on a Saturday night as they strolled and took turns toking like teenagers. The boys held a long serrated knife to Paul’s throat; they fancied themselves gangsters. Later, close to dawn, the police found three of the four hiding in a gully. They were peppered with red ant bites, their pockets clanking with change.

“Beth, I’m taking you home. You’re in no condition to be traipsing around down here like some goddamned explorer of yore.” He grabbed her arm.

Beth shook free, but could not remain sitting. She got up and swatted at the seat of her pants, but nothing was clinging there. She had to cut back up to the main path before she could make it down to the beaten sandy trail next to the water again. Paul zigzagged behind her, panting and driven by loyalty. On the far shore, a night heron was picking through pebbles and bits of trash. The bird stepped carefully over a soda can. Beth stopped to trail her hand in the water. At the edges, the river was lukewarm, but in the center, in the depths, it would be cold. A man had drowned here, having jumped in after his dog. The dog survived.

That first night in the jungle, she and Paul had huddled close on their mattress, flicking the flashlight on and off like schoolchildren, peering out through the mosquito netting at the matte surface of the night and the six other gauzy, tented sleeping areas.

“They’re like bridal beds, aren’t they?” Beth said.

“Or ghost ships,” Paul replied, and Beth turned to him, surprised. They kissed then, softly shocked kisses that helped them both to sleep, despite the rustlings, the constant exchange of information and emotion under the canopy, despite the scurrying geckos and dazed spiders Miguel had warned them might come tumbling from the rafters. Despite their recent history and despite themselves, they kissed and slept like gentle dragons, until the clear commands of the camp cook woke them.

And then there was the issue of moving from sleep to waking, selecting the appropriate attire without parading around as God and all of nature had intended. Paul managed to pull on a pair of shorts and wriggle a T-shirt over his head before emerging to introduce himself to the German couple who had farted unself-consciously as the morning light crept in, and the group of cheery Spaniards sitting on the steps smoking cigarettes. Beth put on her quick-dry pants in a supine position but had to stand to do up the zipper. She ran her hands over her abdomen as had become habit. As if rubbing Aladdin’s lamp, she caressed the pouch of flesh above her belly button. She looked up because she thought she could feel Miguel watching her across the expanse of swamp that separated the sleeping shelter and the dining area, peering out toward her, silhouetted against the mosquito netting like a shadow puppet. Perhaps they all appeared this way, funny outlines backlit by their particular cultures trampling their way through the jungle, laughing and drinking around the slab of a wooden table, starting comically at all the same sights — the tarantulas waving their chubby arms, the sloths hanging like overstuffed handbags from the branches of ancient trees. Watching Miguel watch her, she was overcome by modesty; she had not yet thought to put on a shirt, and she could feel sweat beginning to accrue underneath her breasts. She reached for her bra.

It had been concluded that there was nothing technically wrong with either of them. At first Paul had scoffed, said something about natural selection, overpopulation, all for the best, and she had felt an odd pull in her gut, as if one of her arteries had gone spelunking in the region of her uterus. They had walked for two hours in High Park after the third specialist gave his verdict. It was February, the temperature was sub-zero, and they had to dodge Canada geese strutting like cops along the path. They did not speak; although the words were there, their footsteps over the snow and ice told a more complete, forlorn story. They wore parkas and Thinsulate accessories, but the wind blew straight through them. Once they had circled the park four times, Paul said, “Chicken breasts for dinner?” and Beth nodded, veering toward Bloor Street.

Beth made her way closer still to the water’s edge and began creeping along, stepping over boulders and small eddies of water. If she squinted she could almost envision it, and it took a whole concerted face scrunch to make it real. But the greenery here, for the most part, belonged along the edges of a golf course. And although the humidity approximated the freighted air of the jungle, it also brought with it an oppression unique to the lands that bordered Lake Ontario. She could hear Paul in the brush behind her and was flung back to Cuyabeno — that noisiness of humans pushing their way through chummy, crowded plants.