Zsuzsi Gartner - Better Living Through Plastic Explosives

No. A vision. But Nina, who’s been a determined unbeliever for years, no longer has the vaguest notion of what it means to be confronted by a vision.

How can we measure disbelief? How many cubic tonnes of topsoil and almost impenetrable glacial till and granitic bedrock must be removed without recovering a single wall stud, newel post, or fragment of ceramic tile, how far into the substrata must workers delve without a trace of the chef-quality Amana gas range or the collection of stubby beer bottles (bought at auction), how many heavy-equipment operators must make limp jokes about digging a hole all the way to China and shake their heads at the homeowners’ evident derangement as they ask them to excavate just one metre deeper, how many times must their daughter sob, But I don’t want a new Costa-Rica-Survivor Barbie™, I want my Costa-Rica-Survivor Barbie™, before the bereft owners-who cringe at anything that smacks of the supernatural, pretend to gag at the words chakra and aura , and roll eyes skyward when anyone speaks of faith- must accept the unfathomable? Their house, all 3,217 square feet of it, and its entire contents have vanished without a trace.

Then there’s the dog. A formerly amiable wheaten terrier who circles the perimeter of the yawning pit, endlessly snuffling at the loose earth, snapping at anyone who comes near, possibly mourning in his canine brain a soggy tennis ball left on the mat by the back door, or a beloved chew toy (the peppermint-scented Orbee bone) that felt so good against his aging gums, or simply an ambient memory of a sweet spot in the master bedroom where the late-afternoon September sun edged through the skylight and onto the kilim rug where he wasn’t technically allowed but where he whiled away the empty hours in a kind of existential bliss.

Dan and Patricia are everywhere, spreading like toxic mould. On the No. 14 bus on Hastings a few days ago, Patricia looked primly at Nina from the dimly backlit panel ad, eyebrows winched skyward, as Nina glared back. If you’re looking for the best of everything, sister, you’re on the wrong bus. Dan still had his smirk, but didn’t meet her eyes. He looked out past her at a young woman wearing a Happy Planet T-shirt that appeared to have been designed for an eight-year-old and shakily crunching Doritos, sallow pad of her stomach overexposed between the well-worn shirt and her low-riders, studded white belt pockmarked with cigarette burns, a rail yard criss-crossing her inner arms. Nina could’ve sworn Dan had to adjust his pants at the crotch.

Even the billboard at the entrance to Granville Island, just the other day advertising the delights of the Vancouver Aquarium and its imprisoned beluga population, now shows the couple, toothy smiles set on stun, in their kitchen, an assault of stainless-steel surfaces and grey-blue slate. Patricia is poised to slice a fennel bulb. The knife in her hand glints under halogen light while Dan leans across the cooking island as if whispering something naughty in her ear. Here’s the really weird thing. They look less like Dan and Patricia than the real Dan and Patricia Nina saw last week on the wharf outside the market.

It’s only much later, when she’s trying to get back to sleep around four A.M.-the time she often wakes and can’t remember which side of her chest houses her heart, even though it’s thrumming so violently she fears the landlady will start pounding on the floor above her bed, yelling, “I thought I told you to keep it down!”-that it dawns on Nina: the real Dan and Patricia O’Donnell were not Caucasian like the actors in the ad, but Chinese. Tall for Chinese, but unmistakably Chinese. Odd that she hadn’t noticed at the time.

Never make the mistake of showing how much you really want something. That’s Honey’s philosophy. She reels in uncommitted buyers by appealing to their unclothed desires. If you want four competing bids above list price on your aging ranch-style on Eagle Harbour Road, go ahead and give Honey Fortunata a call. Because Honey knows what to watch for and Honey doesn’t talk too much.

That childless couple in their mid-thirties, the wife who hovers a little too long in the doorway of a second bedroom? That fifty-eight-year-old civil engineer who seems disproportionately interested in the empty carriage house out back and mentions having gone to the Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design a lifetime ago? Honey knows just what to do. She calls them to come and take a second look; the sellers are very motivated (real estate code for getting a divorce).

The couple returns, and when the wife looks into the bedroom again she sees a pine crib with an Anne Geddes photograph above it of a baby dressed like a bumblebee. The room smells of talcum powder and a limitless future. Bewildered, she turns to Honey and says, “I didn’t notice a baby’s room before!” Honey smiles. “You went through so quickly last time.” The workaholic engineer returns to find the carriage house partially transformed into a painting studio, stretched canvases and splotches everywhere. “Excuse the mess,” Honey says, shrugging, “but the owner has this little hobby.”

But even Honey makes mistakes. That day two months ago when she finally tracked down Charity-her sister walking along Blood Alley with the herky-jerky marionette steps of an addict, small, untethered breasts straining against her Happy Planet T-shirt, while Honey negotiated with her pimp and dealer. He told her Charity had ripped off some very scary people and was alive only because of his personal munificence (although he called it something less poetic), and Honey had said, “Name your price.”

Nina holds a pair of ski poles awkwardly in her lumpy paws and pretends to slalom in slow motion through the Granville Island crowd watching Byron-from-England, a flame-haired, flame-juggling comedian who specializes in homophobic jibes. People step back to clear Nina a path and smile good-naturedly; children point and yell: “A bear!” (The marmot is actually a rodent, but no one on the Olympic Committee wanted kids pointing and yelling, “A rat!” so they’ve erred on the side of the ursine. After all, who, except for those trying to save the doomed Vancouver Island marmot, has actually ever seen one?) But there’s this one guy, a large man eating fries from a paper cone, who doesn’t budge. Just gives her a look Nina knows all too well because she’s seen it staring back at her in pale, aggrieved reflection from SkyTrain and shop windows and her own bathroom mirror.

The noise in her head is like one of those fireworks kids launch all through the night at Halloween, a high-pitched squealer that ends, not quite with a bang, but with a loud pop. Greetings, fellow misanthrope, now get the hell out of my way!

She heads straight for the French Fry Guy as if he’s the finish line, ski poles flailing to the left, to the right, to the left. A woman yells, “Curtis!” and yanks a Jack Russell on an extendable leash out of Nina’s way. Poles high in the air now, well over her head, sweat coursing from her armpits like ill-fated bison streaming over the last rise at Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump. With a warrior cry, Nina slams into the man and bounces backwards off him as if she’s a character in a Saturday-morning cartoon. You can practically hear the requisite Boing!

“Mascot busts a move!” someone announces, DJ-style. Nina’s head should be cracked open, her durian fruit of a brain fouling the sea-spiked air, but the marmot suit has cushioned the fall. She staggers to her feet to scattered applause, woo-hoos!, and the insistent, machine-gun laughter of someone going off his meds. The salmon eaters think it was all part of her act.

As she straightens, Nina sees the same little boy in the private-school uniform from last week standing in front of her, like a miniature security guard in his blazer with its cheesy golden crest. The light behind his head is dazzling, reminding her that it hasn’t rained for several weeks; the reservoirs are unusually low, and residents have been asked to share baths and take short showers. Dan and Patricia no doubt still fill their Jacuzzi tub to the brim, hot water tumbling unchecked from the gilded modernist faucet. Nina pictures Dan sliding in behind Patricia, kneading the knots in the small of her back as she releases a tight little sigh, reluctantly, as if she’d never willingly let go of anything.