As She's Told (46 page)

"From my boyfriend. Wait a minute. He's going to find me."

"Is he the bad guy? Should we kill him?"

I put my fist up to my mouth, suppressing laughter. "No, you don't need to kill him. Maybe you could rough him up a little." The concrete floor was very cold, and was jamming the metal belt hard up into my butt.

"Do you looove him?" said the littler one, drawing out the word in charming schoolyard mockery, trying it on for size. The other one was continuing her reconnaissance with an air of fierce efficiency.

"Passionately. Hey, I have an idea. When he shows up – he's a big blond guy – you run out and capture him, okay?"

The older girl tipped her head to one side and gave this some thought.

"Only if he's cute. Is he cute?"

Oh, how soon they start. "I think so. You have a look."

"Ooh! There he is!" she whispered excitedly. "Yup, he's cute. What's he 288

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phoning for?" Silently I put my fingers to my lips and pointed them to either side of the entrance, and they flattened themselves into the corners, suppressing giggles. There was a breathless pause, straight out of an action movie.

Then the older one yelled, "Here he comes! Get him!"

Anders found himself grabbed by the legs and weighed down by two little girls sitting on his feet. He waddled back and forth to shrieks of laughter, then bent down with some difficulty and peered into my hideout.

"You can't have her!" the little one said, bouncing hard on his instep.

"She's ours! She's a maiden in distress and you're a bad guy!"

"An evil giant!" said the bigger one.

"An evil giant!"

He roared and walked them around some more. "Gimme my princess!”

“No!" they shrieked. "Never!"

Anders was stomping away in the other direction when I slipped out and ran. Might as well try my sister's strategy for once. "Thanks, kids!" I called over my shoulder.

"Great job!" He told me later he only got away by showing them the phone and explaining the game, though naturally a sanitized version in which I had the chip in my pocket.

In the meantime I hit a main street and ducked into an antique store, which was the first shop I saw where I could browse and not buy anything.

The sign said antiques, but junk shop was more like it; I would have bet on there being nothing there older than 1970. Anders found me behind a pile of used stacking chairs, took a firm grip on the hair at the nape of my neck and kissed me until I could hardly breathe. Then we went for coffee.

"You evil wench!" he said, stirring his cappuccino.

I snickered. "Serendipity. Hey, they asked if they should kill you, and I said no. Be grateful for what you've got."

He stared at me, and I thought I'd gone too far. Then he threw his head back and laughed, so big and deep that the windows rattled. The whole place stopped talking, turned around and smiled despite themselves.

"God, you're evil! All right, you get that one."

"Thank you. Only because you get everything else."

"Naturally. But we'll have to do that again some time. I like tracking my little animal through the urban jungle. Taking you captive." His hand under 289

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the table had me hard by the wrist. The pressure made my other hand tremble a little as I sipped my tea. Something told me I was going to pay for my little triumph, in some coin or other.

He released me and leaned back. "Speaking of animals, we had a cat problem the other day, did I tell you? This huge cat wandered in and kept getting in the middle of whatever we were doing. Stupid thing must have been deaf; it was actually about to jump up on the table saw while Rizal was using it. We kept throwing it out and it kept turning up again."

"Was it white?"

"Mostly. Might have been white under the dirt. Why?"

"Some pure white cats are deaf; I read that somewhere."

"Dead, too, at that rate."

"Is Rizal working out okay?" This was a Filipino of few words whom Anders was considering grooming for more responsibility.

"Not bad. I got him to supervise the finishing details on that Etobicoke apartment, and he did okay. He doesn't say much but what he does say is to the point.”

“Val hasn't left yet, has she? How's she doing?"

"Giving off sparks. She might set off the gas tank any day now." He told me about the conversation in the truck.

I shifted my chair forward to accommodate someone behind me, large and with packages.

"Val may be tense about setting up her business and so on, but I'll bet she's more bothered by splitting from you."

"Why do you say that?"

"Well, you're buddies. Obviously she's going to miss you."

"She's tearing strips off me at the moment." He thought. "But that's how Val would deal with separation. Yeah, you might have something there." He finished his coffee. "How's it going with your colleague of the afternoon shift? She still hiding the stapler?"

"Yes," I groaned. "And the keys to the desk drawer. And she keeps changing the network defaults for some reason. On purpose just to aggravate me. What is it with that woman?" Dearest Vera, the sticky letter in the keyboard of my life.

When we emerged it seemed colder, or maybe it was just that I was no longer on the run. The clouds had assembled closely overhead, and were 290

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considering their precipitation options. We wandered east. As we waited for the traffic to pass so we could jaywalk, Anders directed my attention upward to the hydro wire across the street. I was puzzled; all I saw was a squirrel travelling along it. But as I watched I realized that the creature was on quite a journey, with no trees available as off-ramps for a whole long city block, only concrete poles right next to the street. It seemed very exposed.

"How often do you see a squirrel going that far in a straight line?"

Anders asked.

"Well, only for a second, heading for a tree. Usually they dodge about."

"Like you." He squeezed me, his eyes still following the squirrel. "Not that it has a choice at the moment. On the street you never know which way they'll go. Back under your tires often as not."

"It does look odd. I have never been under your tires, by the way." We watched the critter cling and scuttle on its narrow path, on and on above the sidewalk, above the traffic, tail whipping back and forth for balance. "Like a tightrope walker over Niagara Falls.”

“Looks like it's on a mission. Like something out of a Looney Tunes cartoon.”

“I'll bet he's got a girlfriend in the next block."

Halfway down the next block the squirrel finally reached a tree and disappeared. We crossed, and Anders turned us south, through small but thoroughly renovated houses. We'd reached the Beaches; east-end upscale. I hugged his side to keep warm.

"Well, well," he mused. "A fleeing hunhund. A crazy cat. And a disturbingly methodical squirrel. This is our day to consider unusual animal behaviour. What next, I wonder?" I dug into his chest with my head, either protesting or confirming my animal status; he could take it any way he wanted.

On Queen my eyes raked the outside bins at Book City, and Anders indulged me; we went in. He ended up buying Jane Jacob's last book, about the decline of Western civilization, from which I averted my eyes; I got a Penguin Classic edition of an Arnold Bennet novel, the story safely set in 1910.

We ended up in a fancy pub-slash-bistro, eating grilled chicken pizza and talking about Christmas.

"Christmas traditions? I don't know," I said. "The usual. A tree, a pile of 291

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presents. A free-range turkey with dried apricot and organic wild rice stuffing.”

“That was it?"

"Let's see…. My uncles and cousins watched football down in the rec room. My parents went to a million parties, and came home trashed. My sister complained about turkey sandwiches and sent out for pizza."

"What about you?"

"I ate leftover wild rice and read the books people gave me."

"That doesn't sound like much fun."

I shrugged. "I like wild rice. Anyway, it could have been worse. My friend Laura's parents did their drinking at home and fought through the whole thing, every single year. Broken crockery and all. One year she had to call 911. What was your Christmas like?”

“Oh, well, a Danish Christmas is something else. It's a very big deal.”

“Is it?"

"Oh, yeah. A big lead-up, first of all. The whole month. Weeks of baking and decorating. We had Advent calendars, of course, with little presents, one for each day. Chocolate, mostly. When Janne was three she ate all of hers at once and threw up." Janne was his little sister. "Svend teased her about it every Christmas for years; she'd chase him around the house trying to tackle him.”

“Now there's a golden memory. Did you have big presents too?"

"Of course. Everyone spends a fortune on presents. Plus days of feasting and parties and games and visiting back and forth. It goes on and on. But it is fun. I'll have to take you back there some time; you should experience it."

"Not this year, though?" I tried to keep the anxiety out of my voice. A big friendly noisy family taking me in, requiring me to have social graces, speaking another language over my dark swarthy little head. Oh, boy.

"No, I think we'll just have fun at home. But I'll do some baking. Deck you out in pretty chains and sprigs of holly."

While we were eating the clouds had decided on sleet; there was a thin layer on the tops of cars, and some slush piling up on the sidewalk. As I wasn't wearing boots we took a streetcar. At the next intersection my eye was caught by a man, broad, drab and blank-faced, wandering off the curb into the slow traffic. He began meandering in circles and figure eights, ignoring all honks and verbal advice. I nudged Anders, and he leaned past 292

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me to take a look. "Wow," I said. "The sun's not down yet."

A car edged past the wavering figure. The man weaved toward the sidewalk, then changed his mind and headed out again, his path describing a curve, as if one leg was shorter than the other.

"Something tells me time of day isn't what he goes by," Anders said.

"Poor bastard." I half expected Anders to get up and take steps, but he stayed put. "No urge to rescue?"

"No need. Look." There was a cop car, a pair of policemen just emerging with that slow and deliberate convergence thing they do.

The streetcar moved on. "Hey!" I said, sitting back. "Squirrels going in straight lines and men going in circles!"

Anders grinned down at me, and in his Danish professor voice said,

"Aha! Very significant."

"What does it mean, Doctor Thygesen?"

"Obviously, the squirrels take over after our decadent society implodes and we succumb to global warming."

"I thought that was supposed to be cockroaches."

He stroked his absent beard. "The squirrels want you to think so. They are gaining in intelligence by picking up the washed-away brain cells of tavern customers. Elite rodent cadres are preparing to rule the world."

"Rodent cadres, of course! Rats I can believe."

"Very well, the squirrels are in league with the rats. Brothers in arms.

The city rodent and the country rodent."

The woman sitting in front of us glanced over her shoulder, amused, or possibly alarmed. Anders put an arm around me and said in my ear, "Of course, the real meaning is that the boundaries between human and animal aren't clearly defined. Some creatures might need to remember at which end of the continuum they belong." Payback. I knew it. What was he planning?

It turned out he was planning to emphasize my captured animal status by hanging me from the ceiling again, tying my labia rings to my thighs, and tormenting and teasing me until I howled.

293

As She’s Told – Anneke Jacob

I lay curled beneath the desk one Saturday afternoon, inhaling warm and gingery baking smells, listening to half a conversation in Danish above my head. The legs beside me took themselves off toward the kitchen. Through the slats I saw my master, phone in hand, looking through cupboards. An ingredients search, it looked like.

We were well into December now. The tree was up and decorated.

Danish tradition was to leave it till just before Christmas, but Anders was using it to substitute for the lack of family fuss, and to be the recipient of decorations as we made them. He'd showed me how to make paper hearts in red and white, apparently traditional, and strings of little Danish flags, of all things. Plus small baskets of chocolates.

He'd been spending long hours in the basement, clanging and banging, leaving me tethered upstairs. Normally I got to spend some time chained beneath the bench, watching him work. I missed keeping him company down there. He'd fastened me to posts or joists and amused himself between the worktable and the lumber pile. When he'd been in a whimsical mood, he'd use me as a holder for small items, hanging them from nipple and nose rings. But I hadn't been downstairs for weeks; he'd even taken over the laundry. It was obvious he was hatching more surprises than usual.

A really big Advent calendar now hung on the wall in the back bedroom, and starting on the first of December I'd been allowed one item a day. There were pockets of all sizes velcroed on; I suspected Anders of shifting things around to the day's date to suit his mood. Things like nipple clamps, new whips, chocolate truffles, vibrators, cookies. Whatever it was I got to wear it, eat it or have it applied to me. And the non-edible items accumulated and got combined another day. Clamps were decorated by weights shaped like Christmas ornaments, vibrated, joined by silvery chains.

Today I'd gotten a break from the clamps; the day's pocket had produced various small bells. One for each nipple ring, one on my nose ring, which made me feel truly silly, and some for my collar and cuffs. Oddly, they all seemed to produce different pitches. I tinkled like a wind chime.