Pasha Malla - The Withdrawal Method

If Neil were his son, thought Timber, would Mr. Barry Parker think of putting stickers on his ice-cream tub magpie helmet? Would he sand off the eyeholes for fear of sharp edges? Probably not. Instead Timber imagined Parker out in the garage oiling his hundreds of gears, waxing his frame, pumping his tires. And Neil would be alone, stabbing ragged holes into an ice-cream tub that the poor kid could barely see out of, and then retreating to the zillion-bit video-game system that his biker father had bought as a surrogate for love. Would Parker tell Neil stories of boyhood glory at bedtime? Would he ride his bike across the country for his cancersurvivor son? He wouldn't. Neil would feel neglected and sad.

Timber kept on, trundling round the bend at the strip mall with the office of Dr. Sloan, whose waiting room Sports Illustrated magazines had introduced Neil to Lance Armstrong in the first place. At the traffic lights the bikers were waiting as though they were the start line to a race. Parker balanced among them without putting his feet down, twisting his front wheel this way and that. They all knew one another, nodding, smiling and joking, admiring one another's bikerly accoutrements. Timber hung back, watching, hiding.

This was the point, waiting for the light to change, that Timber finally began to allow other thoughts to creep into consciousness. Operation Stoplight had begun six months ago, when Timber had been given a laptop, an email address (kittypuff@yahoo.ca), an identity (thirteen-year-old Tanya who loved emo but didn't like math), and an agenda: catch the sicko Ted Givens who was trolling emo chatrooms for young girls. They'd put him in touch via email with one of the other snares, a woman named Janet at sunshine_sara_xoxo@ canada.com, whose assignment was similar. Timber and Janet were to discuss tactics and provide each other support when needed. And so their correspondence had begun.

But today was the day — for Tanya and Ted and Timber, at least. Janet was still working on Hassan AI-Taib, the sicko Sunshine Sara was trying to snare. Today Ted Givens thought he was meeting Tanya at four (after school) at the Mr. Submarine at the River Heights Shopping Centre. But instead of Tanya, Ted would meet a squad of police officers in riot gear hiding in the food-court bathrooms.

What did Timber feel? Pride? Janet had sent him an e-card proclaiming MY HERO!!! and then some JavaScript fireworks. He had replied that only when they had the sicko behind bars would there be occasion to celebrate. Oh, but Janet wasn't hearing it. He had done amazing work and was making the world a better place for everyone. She was so nice!

Of course it was Janet who had coached Timber through his messages about how retarded it was to have so much geography homework when geography was just colouring in maps, and how the seventh grade had been waaaaaay easier, or what colour panties he was wearing, or how, yeah, he believed that ted.givens@xxx.com did indeed have splendid genitalia. It had been tough, for sure. But Janet was a peach, a real peach.

Janet didn't know that Timber was into Barely Legals. Which was fine. Eighteen was fine. The law said so. But, still. There were times when Timber was enjoying the Barely Legals web site when he thought of Janet, and then he began to question if the girls were indeed eighteen as the site suggested. Any younger than eighteen and he'd be no better than Ted Givens. Some of them looked so young though. They were so pretty but so young. And then Timber would slam his laptop shut in a sweat and have to tuck his woody into his waistband and go outside for a walk.

Timber watched the crosswalk sign change from man to flashing hand.

When Timber had told Janet, in their first non-businessrelated email, that he was struggling to cook meals for Neil, she had sent him recipes for spaghetti sauce and meatloaf. The meatloaf had seemed complicated, but the spaghetti sauce, until Neil had vomited it everywhere, was exquisite. Then there were her messages, sometimes two or three a day: funny, caring, sad, conflicted. Timber and Janet began to share what they were telling their respective sickos, the humiliating, disgusting things. But it was okay. It was for a good cause, maybe the best cause of all. Nothing they told the sickos was real.

Over Instant Messenger Timber told Janet everything — about his work, about his son, about his life. And Janet did the same: she was divorced too, but with no kids. She had a dog named Barney and joked about her weight, although Timber hated that. Who cares? he wrote. Also Janet liked reading and Frisbee.

Timber was supportive, and Janet was supportive, and it was really great. Meanwhile, the Barely Legals were bookmarked on Timber's browser and at 5:ol p.m., right after signing off with Janet, he'd hit the page for the daily update. His favourite Barely Legals were Grace and Sari. Once Grace and Sari had done a shoot together and Timber had for a while archived the images in a folder on his computer named Taxes 2003, and then one day panicked and deleted them and obliterated any trace of anything and stayed off the site entirely for five whole days.

After six months, Timber had got to know Ted Givens nearly as well as Janet, almost felt sorry for him, certainly felt sorry for his wife, his two teenaged sons, his ailing, rheumatic mother. Jail would not be kind to a man with designs on bonking a thirteen-year-old, real or not. Jail might even, as retribution, do some bonking of Ted Givens of its own.

But Ted Givens was a sicko, and Timber was doing the right thing, he knew — a heroic thing, according to Janet, a thing of glory. Still, it remained a silent, secret sort of glory; even when Ted Givens would be revealed by the press, cowering under a hoisted suit jacket on his way to trial, the man who had unearthed this scurrilous creature, mastermind Timber B. Kentridge, would remain anonymous. No one would ever know about him, or Janet, or any of the other snares of Operation Stoplight scattered around the province; little would be made of their tireless crusade of e-deception for the greater good. Besides, would he want people knowing about the things he had written as a thirteen-year-old girl to seduce Ted Givens? And what if his own appetites were somehow leaked, despite how many times he cleared his Internet history and deleted every cookie in sight. He couldn't imagine Neil finding out about all that flesh and fluid. Or Janet.

But look, the light was green and the cars were moving and the bikers were off like shrapnel. Timber eased off the curb and, wobbling slightly, made his way forward. He was halfway to work. The morning sun shone down palely from above. A few magpies went flapping across the sky.

What would Neil be doing, right now, at school? Acing a test. Or gazing out the window of his classroom and thinking suddenly and for reasons beyond him, cosmic reasons, of his dad. Timber figured he would call Neil from wherever he ended up the following evening, the first stop on the Tour for the Cure — Quebec, maybe, if he could make it that far — and surprise him. Neil would get off the phone and tell his mother, Dad's biking across the country! And The Ex-Wife, in the den of Barry Parker's yuppie condominium, everything monochrome and sterile, would look at Neil radiating pride and affection, and all The Ex-Wife could say would be, Wow. Lost in this fantasy, Timber went pedalling through a yellow light, and a car turning left had to swerve not to hit him. Timber waved: Wopes!

Safely on the other side of the intersection, Timber thought again of Janet, shut away in an office just like his, alone at her computer. Even before knowing about the Tour for the Cure, before Timber had sent her a PDF downloaded from MapQuest with his route plotted out and a spreadsheet of potential sponsors, she had commended him as a real hero — but Janet threw that word around a tad too liberally. She said that the snares of Operation Stoplight were all heroes. He wanted to believe her. They were in this together, this business of busting sickos, and also maybe Timber was in love with Janet a little bit.