Craig Davidson - Sarah Court

“Mines.”

“Like, the stuff that’s inside is the stuff blowing it up.” He points to his belly. “What if tiny-tiny aliens landed here—”

“You mean Phantoids?”

“Phantoids are peaceful, Dad… and so they hate each other and so get into a humongous war? Dig mines into my stomach. Make planes out of my bones and so, the gas is my blood? Mix the juices and the, uh, so, other stuff on my skin to make bombs? Everything they need to kill each other is on me.”

He rips the waxed wrapper in neat ribbons. He’s fallen into an obsessive habit of taking things apart. Pocket calculators, stereo remotes: anything with diodes, springs, cogs. He asked for a set of jeweller’s screwdrivers to facilitate his deconstructions. I’d bought him a decent Timex for Christmas: he used the screwdrivers to gut it. Endstage methamphetamine addicts take gadgets apart with no intention of putting them back together. It accelerates or accentuates their grotty highs. I’m scared my son is exhibiting meth-head behaviours.

I say: “There’s a drawing class at the Learning Annex.”

“I like drawing.”

“That’s why I said it, buddy. Maybe that’s a little more your speed than boxing.”

“So… if you want.”

“Not what I want. What you want.”

“Is it?”

“You tell me.”

“Okay, it is.”

The naked girlon stage has jet-black hair fitted precisely to the plates of bone composing her skull. Playmobil hair — clip it on and off.

I hate strip clubs. Truly, they leave me griefstricken. They cater to a pitiful male hopefulness. For the young guys, the hope of sucking tit in the champagne lounge. Older guys, the hope a girl might drop her defences to tell him her real name. Not Puma: Trudy. Not Raven: Paula.

The black card holder’s name is Starling. Wide, lashless eyes set far apart on his head give him the look of a trout. As the girl on stage performs a deadeyed gymnastic manoeuvre, spine bent like the Arc de Triomphe, he tells me he’d recently bought a Japanese dog. While we’re talking, a guy I find familiar walks past. Long hair up in a ponytail. Jacket with Brink Of embroidered on it.

“Colin,” I say. “Colin Hill. Hey!”

He smiles, a celebrity posing for paparazzi. “Man, aren’t you…”

“Nick Saberhagen. From Sarah Court.”

“ Riiiiight .”

He’s here with his father, Wesley, and some kid with dreadlocks. Colin tells us he’s going over the Falls tomorrow morning. I recall reading something in the Pennysaver. I tell him I’ll be there. And my son. Starling tells a bizarre story about a shark that plunges a dagger into all further conversation. Next he’s saying we’ve got to leave.

Our cab glides down Bunting to Queenston. Tufford Manor and the cemetery where Conway Finnegan’s father lies, on over the liftlocks. QEW to the Parkway to River Road running along bluffs of the Niagara. In the basin puntboats — smugglers, jacklighters — run the channel with kerosene lamps bolted to their prows. The smell of baked wheat from the Nabisco factory. We pass the hydroelectric plant. Static electricity skates along my teeth to find the iron fillings and touch off fireworks in my gums.

“I imagine,” says Starling, “a fair number drown.”

“In this river? It happens.”

“Most common cause of brain damage is oxygen deprivation, Nicholas.” I hate that he calls me that, but his membership fee entitles him to call me “dickface,” if it so pleases him. “Most common cause of oxygen deprivation is water trauma. A man of average intelligence deprived three and a half minutes — he’ll end up with the brain capacity of a colobus monkey. Up to four minutes, a springer spaniel. Truth is, the humans whose company I enjoy most are those most like animals. I spent time in a brain injury ward. One boy suffered massive cerebral hemorrhages due to his mother’s narrow birth chute. The most beautiful, open smile. He experienced more moments of pure joy in one day than I’ll lay claim to in a lifetime. Most of us would be better off having our heads held underwater a couple minutes. Ever see an unhappy dog, Nicholas?”

“No, sir. Not for very long, anyway.”

The taxi pulls into a warehouse. Security spots throw light at odd angles. Starling leads me down a domed hallway. A man sits on a wooden chair beside a door.

“Donald Kerr, you old scallywag.”

“No names. I said no—”

“What shall he write on the cheque?” Starling asks, indicating me. “Wal-Mart bagman?”

Donald’s got a narrow chicken face. Easy to picture him sitting on a clutch of eggs. A flatteringly tailored suit cannot disguise a physique shapeless as a pile of Goodwill parkas. One hand is cocked high on his second rib: a prissy, girlish posture.

He leads us into the warehouse, which is empty save the object in the centre lit by a suspended bulb. It’s one of those trick boxes stage magicians make water escapes from. Designs carved into base and sides. A softball-shaped something sits inside. Starling leaves Donald and I to examine the box.

“What’s in the box?”

“A demon,” Donald tells me.

“Come on.”

“You asked, chum.”

“So it’s a demon.”

“Another guy, my associate, arranged it with your client. He wants to believe it is, okay, I say let him. It’s whatever he wants it to be. It’s his.”

“I’m asking you. This other guy, associate of yours, was drunk when he said it.”

“When I inherited it he wasn’t in any real position to say.”

“Inherited?”

“Something like that you don’t have to steal.”

“Doesn’t look like a demon.”

“What’s a demon look like?” Donald Kerr’s chin juts at an aggressive angle. “Could be something dredged up from the bottom of the sea nobody’s ever laid eyes on. Not my place to know or not know.”

“Why don’t you want it?”

“Why’s that matter? Not my cup of tea or whatever. It’s mine now, but in a minute it can be his. He wants it. So let’s make it his.”

“What do I write on the invoice: Boxed Demon?”

“Not my problem, sport.”

I step forward to examine it myself. Whether the box was built expressly for this purpose is beyond me. Inside: an oblong ball, faintly pulsating. Its scabrous outer layer looks like dead fingernails. I snap a few photos with my cellphone. When the cheque is cashed the amount transfers to Starlings’ Centurion account. On the memo line I write: Antique Box . Blood spatters the paper. My nose has started to bleed.

I wait in the taxi while Starling speaks to a man across the road. He leaves the man standing beside the river and rejoins me. Our cab veers upriver to Chippewa. A harvest moon slit edgewise by an isolated cloud. The road bends past Marineland.

“Stop,” Starling tells the driver.

The dreadlocked guy from the strip club is propped against a tree in the parking lot. His eyes are a pair of blown fuses. When Starling offers him a ride I resolve to find my own way home. We load the guy into the cab and I say goodbye. The cab’s taillights flare as it accelerates on under an Oneida billboard.

Somebody’s egged the Marineland ticket booths. Sunbursts of exploded yolk. I worked here in high school. One time an animal rights activist with jaundiced eyes like halved hardboiled eggs shackled himself to the entry gates with a bicycle U-lock round his throat. The owner, a fierce Czech with pan-shovel hands, he’d gripped the protester by his ankles and shook him as you would a carpet. Roaring like one of the beasts he was accused of abusing. That was the autumn of my wife’s pregnancy. Dad floated the idea of an abortion. My wife showed me a terminated baby in a Right To Life pamphlet. Nothing so much as a skinned guinea pig.