Janine Armin - Toronto Noir

They’re rolling them off the lines, he said. Account of it’s cooling off. They’re expensive to run. But there might be one or two of them left on the road.

He pulled away. Tell you one thing about these drivers. They’re polite.

I stood for a couple of minutes. Armpits burning. Turning into a chronic condition. I felt faint. I was digging my fingers into my eyes when I heard movement to my left. Realized the sailor was still there. Just by the corner of the building. Probably the biggest fright of the night. He was looking at me. Hadn’t boarded the last car. What was that about?

I eased the case up against my chest, trying to make it seem lightweight, and dragged it past the other end of the building. Pulled out my cell phone and looked at it. No calls. I glanced over at him. He was gazing up at the top of the electrical tower.

I called my land line. She answered. Baby, she said.

Baby, I said, but I didn’t feel anything lower than the pit of my stomach.

I told her what I had done. She said, You did what? And I told her again. She hung up. I was starting to get anxious.

I called back. She let it ring for a bit and then answered. Don’t come here, she said.

It’s my place, I said. She told me it was some serious shit I’d done and she didn’t want to get involved. I asked her why she didn’t warn me that her husband was a psycho freak. He wasn’t my husband, she said.

What? I said.

I’m not the marrying type, in case it wasn’t obvious. He was just a guy I used to see. Guess we hadn’t had our fill. Guess we’ve had it now, whether I like it or not.

A bus pulled in from a road I hadn’t noticed. Down from the Queensway on the other side. The black-and-white sailor got on and it went back the way it came. I was alone again at the Humber Loop.

Don’t be a drama queen, she said. He’s dead and you’re an asshole. Killing’s wrong.

So’s lying.

For an intelligent girl, she said, I sure surrounded myself with some collection of dopes. And then she hung up.

Conversation got things going though. Set me in motion. Like the kid in the TV ad who laces up the shoes and drinks the drink and climbs up behind the eight ball. With his skateboard. I dragged the case down into the ditch below the corner of the wall and opened it. I felt sorry for him. I did. But there was no time for the Catholic shit. I tried to roll him out but the top parts were stuck together. The case and the body. I walked around the other side, turned the case over on top of him, stepped on his back, and pulled. His head popped out and I fell into the cattails. Lay there for a couple of minutes. I hadn’t been that close to cattails since I was a kid. Then I got up and rolled him down to the bottom of the ditch. Walked over to the rusty loop and filled my case with gravel and rocks. Dragged it back and dumped the rocks on top of him. A couple more trips and he was covered. I tried to think of a little prayer. Heard the rumble of the streetcar and dove into the weeds.

It rolled by. No idea what he saw.

After a bit, I stood up and brushed myself off. Don’t think my two-dollar suit looked like it was worth much anymore. Case was a mess too. Only on the inside. Worry about it later. Closed it and latched it and dragged it behind me back up into the glare of the lights. It felt buoyant. Like a balloon. A breeze caught me in the face and woke me up. I noticed the rain had stopped.

Things were good.

Then I remembered I still couldn’t get on these streetcars. Had a picture in my head of walking east along the Queensway, middle of the night. A cheap and filthy suit. Dragging an empty case with the Styrofoam impression of a human body pressed onto the inside. And the bass was still in that closet. See why I’m not telling you the name of that bar? Four grand, it cost me. Some people kill for that. I thought I might dump the case in the lake. But Styrofoam floats. And the case cost a bundle too. I tried to think of the worst case scenario: dump the case, head back to the bar, bass is gone. A ten grand debt — two instruments and a flight case — nothing to show for it. Move up to Wicky. Take up the washtub. Pretty indestructible, the washtub, no matter what the devil might say. Don’t cost anything either. Not so bad. I’d be able to play. Man, I just want to play.

My phone was ringing. Missed it the first time around but it rang again a minute later. It was her. She said she was in trouble. That didn’t make any sense.

She said she’d left my apartment, but there was something wrong with the freight elevator.

Take the stairs, I said.

Too late for that, she said. She’d been in a huff. Couldn’t get the barrier to slide up. Finally lost patience and jumped over it. The elevator wasn’t there so she fell three floors. Landed in the basement and broke her hip.

Call 911, I said. I’m stuck at the Humber Loop.

She said, You think 911 can help that the elevator’s coming down right now?

I said, You think I can?

She said, Maybe you know some tricks.

I said, Don’t jump over the barrier.

Then there was this horrible sound coming into my ear and I realized I wasn’t holding the phone anymore. Had to go poke around the dandelions under the electrical tower till I found it. There was one message. I checked it. It was from the first call she’d made. She called me baby and told me she was sorry and she was in trouble and could I call her. Is that the way it is with people? Do they hate you until they’re dying? And then they don’t hate you anymore?

Do you ever find yourself wishing you could just have an aneurism? Allow the vessel in your brain to just pop and let you go? Is there some kind of higher state of concentration that would allow you to do that? Could it be learned? That’s the feeling I had, right then, standing beside the snack bar with the sign on the wall that said, Don’t feed the pigeons. Every square inch of wall, a urine trail leading away. Going exactly nowhere. Nowhere to go and nothing to take me and a cargo that won’t fit anyway. That’s how I feel, standing at the Humber Loop. Been told that bass players live a long time. Like elephants with their ears that grow large, encouraged by low and gentle music. I’m still waiting for that. I’d like to feel that.

Dufferin Mall

Outside the Dovercourt 7-Eleven, K. watches police cars roll by from the nearby station. Young Portuguese gangsta impersonators with peach fuzz glance at K. in disgust from their souped-up Honda Civics as K. pops his skateboard into his hand like an ejected tape. He sips on his Blueberry Buster Slurpee, as if the life-giving fluid might suddenly be stolen away from him. K. sneers at the teens and smiles at the cops; he conducts most of his life in this territorial, animal way, though there are few things he possesses — a few good soul records, a signed copy of Paul Auster’s Moon Palace — and only small bits of earth he inhabits. He sips and slurps until his lips are blue as a death mask and he has given himself brainfreeze.

He pulls out the wadded piece of newspaper that Christmas gave him and studies it for a moment before jamming it back into his oversized shorts. He slaps his board on the concrete and begins to roll down Dundas, past Brazilian bikini shops that look obscene and unseasonable, given the cool climate and great distance from anything resembling a beach; past heavily stocked hardware stores and stunted middle-aged men and women sloshing their words together as if there are shells caught in their mouths. He crosses Dundas and makes a sharp left with his board, as if cutting through waves, on Gladstone. He uses the momentum of the hill to avoid Dufferin, its swath of train tracks bisect east and west; he scales up and down residential streets for an out.