Julian (2 page)

Instead he pretended to be fascinated by the canvas. Children’s colours, he thought. Buildings in strong shades of yellow, one with a pink awning, another with a red roof. A man walking past on the sidewalk. An impossibly blue sky.

“There’s no way any sky could be that colour of blue,” he whispered.

She turned to him. He had never seen such green eyes. She spoke with a trace of accent, her voice melancholy and soft.

“Oh, in Provence the sky is exactly like that,” she said. “It’s the bluest sky in the world.”

“You’ve been there?”

“I was born there.”

While people eddied around him, he cast about for something else to say, some clever words to keep the conversation going. But she turned away and drifted across the room to where a small group of women seemed mesmerized
by a night scene of swirling skies and exploding stars. Here we go again, Aidan thought.

A uniformed guard was sitting in a chair by the door, arms crossed over her chest, a two-way radio at her belt leaking static. She was good at her job. Without seeming to pay attention to anything in particular, she was watching the girl.

Aidan crossed over, putting himself in the guard’s line of sight, and approached the girl from behind.

“The guard has her eye on you,” he whispered.

The girl didn’t react right away. She let a few seconds pass, then, as light and unconcerned as a breeze, meandered out of the gallery.

Behind him, Aidan heard boots on the gallery floor and the creak of a leather belt. He waited a split second, spun around and took a step, looking down at his notes, and crashed into the guard, knocking her radio from her hand. His papers spilled to the ground. He fell to his knees to gather the sheets, getting in the guard’s way as she tried to recover her two-way.

“I’m sorry! My fault!” he said.

Her eyes were on the doorway as she tried to regain her balance. “Never mind,” she snapped, her face pink with embarrassment. “Doesn’t matter.”

Aidan watched her go back to her seat, waiting for her to use her radio. But she settled back and resumed her bored expression.

Aidan was tempted to go after the girl. He tossed the idea almost as soon as it crossed his mind. What would he say or do if he managed to catch up with her? Mumble a few meaningless sentences, probably. Make a fool of himself. He had
already crash-landed with his pathetic line about the sky in the picture of the houses. On the other hand, what did he have to lose? No, he should do what he was supposed to do—stay and complete the assignment.

He lowered himself onto the bench in the centre of the gallery, ignoring the patrons moving slowly from canvas to canvas, some speaking in hushed tones, as if in church. He took out his pen, tried to concentrate on the remaining questions, but the girl—her beautiful hair, her green eyes, her daring—pulled at him. He forced himself to resist. Eyes boring resentfully into the page in his hand, he skipped over the references to specific paintings and the invitations to share personal reactions of the “How does it make you feel?” variety to the final query, “ ‘Art is life.’ Comment.”

A typically vague, touchy-feely Sayers question. His eye travelled over the paintings opposite. A field at harvest time with a blue wagon in the middle. Another with irises in the foreground. Aidan wished art
was
life. If you didn’t like the way yours turned out, you could do what a painter did—change it by painting over it. You could touch it up, make a few minor improvements. Or you could start from scratch and redo the whole thing, work away until you had something that satisfied you. It would be your painting, and you could do what you wanted. You’d be in control.

They said Van Gogh went crazy for a while and spent time in a monastery sanatorium or something. But they also said he did dozens of paintings while he was there—sometimes two or three a day. Wherever he was, each time he began a new work he started with a blank canvas. He decided the dimensions, the type of preparation, the subject. Everything. He took a piece of canvas and created what
came out of his mind, anything from a plate of fruit to three fishing boats to a pair of old boots. If he made an error or changed his mind, his brush made what he didn’t like disappear. Even a lousy painter controlled the project.

With a bitter, silent laugh, Aidan thought, if art is life, I’m not the painter; I’m the canvas.

Others made the decisions, set the goals, described his obligations. Others wielded the brush. It had always been like that. When he was younger, every time he had thought he was settled with a new foster family and could be normal for once, the ceiling fell in. His caseworker would speak to him, explain why he’d have to move again, assure him it wasn’t his fault. Mr. Foster-McCallum lost his job and had to move out west for work. Aidan packed up his things and waited in the living room for a taxi. Mrs. Foster-Wainwright had been diagnosed with breast cancer and had a rough time ahead of her and couldn’t handle an extra kid to care for. Aidan cleaned up his room for the last time, said goodbye and got into the back seat of his caseworker’s car. And now it was beginning to look like life with the Foster-Boyds might also tumble down like a pile of pick-up sticks. He’d only been with them for about a year and a half.

He didn’t blame the people at the Children’s Aid Society. He didn’t blame anyone. Sometimes he wished he could focus his anger and discontent on somebody. Instead, he stood quietly fuming on the sidelines while other people made decisions about every aspect of his life. Loneliness and instability had hardened him, and he looked at the world from behind a wall of his own making.

One CAS caseworker, Raleigh Diamond, got him into lacrosse. Aidan played for a couple of years, then quit when
Raleigh changed jobs and disappeared. Another, Jannie Sugarman, introduced him to hockey when he was ten. He liked hockey—most of the time—and turned out to be good at it, which pleased the Foster-Boyds, especially Henry. Aidan played centre and usually led the league in points. Now his life was a whirl of school, practices, games and sports camps. There had never been a minute of his time that was his.

The feeling that had almost knocked him to the pavement a while earlier as he stared into the hanging snow outside the art gallery swept over him again. A door was about to open, a curtain was about to be drawn. He was sure of it. Was it something to do with the girl in the blue beret?

Aidan jotted a quick note to Sayers on the blank side of his almost complete assignment and gave it to a girl in the class, asking her to wait a half-hour before giving it to Sayers. Then he made his way downstairs, collected his backpack and coat and pushed through the art gallery doors into the street.

A
IDAN LOOKED UP AND DOWN
the street but didn’t see the girl anywhere. Disappointed, he walked into Chinatown and came to a busy avenue with streetcar tracks up the centre under a web of electrical wires. Snow continued to hang in the damp air, touching his face as he strode along, hands deep in his jacket pockets. Across the way a restaurant with a wide porch flanked by massive stone dragons dominated the corner, out of place in a neighbourhood of grocery stores, fruit stands spilling onto the sidewalk, and import-export shops peddling everything from cotton shoes to incense.

Delicious aromas wafted from noodle restaurants. Aidan’s stomach growled. He peered at the menu taped to the steam-covered window of a small diner. He checked his wallet, shook his head and moved on.

He had had no plan in mind when he left the gallery.
His note to Sayers said only that he would find his own way back home. She’d be surprised. Aidan had never been a problem student, but he’d catch a load of trouble for breaking the school’s field trip policy. He might get back home in time for supper, but it didn’t matter as long as he made the game that evening. If he had to, he would go straight to the arena. Henry would bring Aidan’s gear to the rink.

He headed north, then turned left where the avenue split to encircle a complex of old buildings. He turned corners randomly and soon realized he was lost. Good. Content to wander through the snow, he passed through an old neighbourhood of houses standing shoulder to shoulder with tiny shops.

After a while he found himself on a residential street flanked with maples, their branches black and wet against the sombre sky—a northern sky, not the brilliant blue upturned bowl of Van Gogh’s paintings. He was enjoying the time on his own—a rare thing for him, free from schoolwork, practice, games. The boredom of swampy locker rooms, the mindless banter and pranks. The endless bus rides to and from arenas that all looked the same. Aidan usually passed the time reading. His teammates had harassed him at first and jeered at him, but they lost interest after a while. Over the years he’d burrowed through lots of detective stories—by Hammett, James Lee Burke, Chandler, Parker, Bruen and more. He liked detective tales because, at the end, things were put back together. Order was restored. A few months ago he had discovered a historical action series about Captain Alatriste, and he had put away two of the series already.

Thoughts of thrilling stories pulled the girl-thief to the front of his mind. It was one of the things about her that had attracted him as he watched her in the gallery earlier: she seemed adventurous. Fearless. Free.

It had stopped snowing. Aidan was alone on the quiet street. Up ahead he noticed a school, in front of it a break in the files of parked cars lining both sides of the road, leaving a safe pickup and drop-off area. A little kid emerged from the building, skipped down the steps and bustled along in Aidan’s direction on the opposite side of the street. In addition to his backpack he was toting some kind of music case. A clarinet, maybe, or a flute. The kid was Asian, small, maybe in grade five or six, probably rushing to his music lesson.

Far behind the boy a compact SUV slipped out of the line of vehicles at the curb and drove slowly down the street. A cold, prickly sensation flowed up Aidan’s spine and into his arms and hands. He stood watching the scene unfold. The dark vehicle drew to a stop about thirty metres behind the kid. Two young men scrambled out and began to shadow the boy. The SUV pulled forward, the image of overhead branches sliding across the hood and up the windshield, and drove past the boy. Abruptly it nosed into the curb, the hood dipping sharply as it jerked to a stop, and two more men jumped out, leaving the rear doors open.

Aidan realized immediately what was happening. It wasn’t hockey, but the principles were the same. The kid was boxed by the four men. The two followers quickened their pace. But the kid had already caught on. In one motion he dropped the instrument case, shrugged off his backpack and dashed across the road. He cut between two
cars and pelted down the sidewalk directly toward Aidan. Calling out to each other, the four men took up the chase.

Aidan felt a familiar jolt of adrenaline, his body’s instinctive call to action. The kid flashed by. Aidan walked toward the men casually, as if he had no idea what was happening. One had already outstripped his partners and thundered toward Aidan, arms pumping, eyes focused on the boy. Aidan was suddenly glad he was taller and heavier than most teens his age. As the man brushed past, Aidan threw a hip check, launching the stranger over his back and into the street, where he crashed to the pavement, let out an explosive grunt and lay still.

Aidan steadied himself, then lined up on the second pursuer. The guy had seen what Aidan had done to his partner so he would be on guard. He’d probably try a head-fake. Training his eyes on his opponent’s chest as the man barrelled toward him, Aidan took a step forward. The man feinted to the left but his shoulders tilted to the right, giving away his intention. Aidan dipped his knees, jammed his shoulder into the man’s chest, heaved and, using the man’s momentum against him, redirected his body off his feet and into the air. The man pivoted and tumbled with a crash into a row of trash cans, strewing garbage across the sidewalk.

Aidan snatched a glance over his shoulder in time to see the kid bolting between two houses, then turned back to the two remaining men quickly closing on him. They split up, like forwards rushing the net. As the first reached him, Aidan held up his hands, as if surrendering, and faked a smile, bringing a look of confusion to the pursuer’s face. Still grinning, Aidan head-butted him. Aidan felt the blow
in his forehead, heard the crack of bone, then a howl. Groaning, the man cupped his hands over his broken nose as blood dribbled off his chin.

Three down. By now the element of surprise had evaporated. Aidan scurried backwards to give himself room. The last attacker reached into his jacket as he rushed forward. Aidan heard a click, saw the blade, threw up his hands in desperation as the man lunged and slashed at his face. He felt a bee sting on his palm, then a burning pain. The attacker stumbled, thrown off-balance by his charge. Aidan stepped in and buried his fist in the man’s stomach. As he grunted and folded, Aidan turned and ran.

He flew along the street and threw himself down the driveway where the kid had gone. Ahead, he saw the boy vaulting a fence. He must have watched the action from hiding before taking off when Aidan began his sprint. Trailing blood he hardly noticed, Aidan caught up to the boy on the road, loping toward a café on Dundas Street. Smart little guy, heading to a place with lots of people.

“Hold up!” Aidan called, pulling a hanky from his hip pocket and wrapping it around his hand. “They’re gone.”

The boy walked on without turning around. A few minutes later Aidan and he were sitting in a booth at the back of the crowded doughnut and coffee shop, the kid with his jacket over his knees to hide a wet spot Aidan had noticed but ignored.

“Who were those guys? Why were they after you?” he asked.

“You got a phone?”

“No, don’t you?”

“It was in my backpack. I’m supposed to keep it in my pocket.”

“Are you going to answer my question?”

The kid looked around, then got up, holding his jacket at his waist.

“Wait a minute,” Aidan snapped. “Don’t you realize you were almost kidnapped?”