The Adjustment League (35 page)

A maple key. A yellow leaf. A black ant, stopped on the sidewalk—encased in clear.

Except the people. Raking lawns. Shooting baskets on the driveway. Coming up Latimer with their bags. These stay free of the clear, it can't coat them. Because they're moving? No, this old man too—planted in a lawn chair, striped blanket over his lap. He too has scratchy, shifting edges—duller, hard-to-make-out colours. He and what he touches: chair, blanket, newspaper under his hands.

His zone. His human sphere
.

Closing window permit. Before all clarity disappears, allowed to step for a moment outside the room you've been so busy in, and there, in thickening mist, rub a circle with your fist on the pane and peer inside, understanding the mess and order you see within the room, the patterns of the person living in it, what set him going and what accelerated him to fever pitch.

Or—
since likeness is a queen that must lay eggs
—say you tinker with a watch that's breaking down. It keeps bad time and soon will stop altogether. Opening the face, picking gingerly at the gears, you find, in tiny letters scratched inside the cover, the initials of the watchmaker, and know—a calm recognition—who first wound the mechanism and set it going.

Back up.
Old man's eyes widen in fear as I come up his lawn, but it's not him I'm after. It's what stares up from his lap. Vivian's head. What I glimpsed, floating past. Her face covering the front of the
Sun
.

She's banged up bad. Eyes just slits in blue-black mounds. Puffy blue on one cheek near her jaw, scrape down the other like she's been dragged. No make-up. Her hair limp, unwashed.

A brother did her up right. Just right. Lots of colour and ugly, but no cuts to leave scars.

Homolka's gambit, with her raccoon eyes. The same exit strategy. What, twenty years ago? How many will remember in the Age of Amnesia?

Sun-blared caption at the bottom:
FACE OF A
VICTIM
.

Old man's eyes staring up. Wide, watery, unblinking. No, I'm not Death yet. Enjoy the autumn light a little longer.

Moving off, I think I may have to exempt Vivian from my Wyvern hate-on. Reserve a special place for her.

Vigil under the scorched and decomposing parents. Airlift to the land o' plenty. Glitterville. Where aunts and sisters vanish. Where brown-skinned dolls get passed from lap to lap, playthings for old men and teenage heirs.

Just keep crawling out from under. Out and over and up. Out.

§

At Eglinton, by Tuscany Cleaners. Stopped near the corner, leaning against the wall of the Latimer. The brick cool against the back of my head, a strip of shade. A cool hand, almost.

Looking straight across at the red door. Sign beside it: 641. High, wide doors, big trucks blurry behind the glass.
The old brick fire station
. Brand new EMS down right, pie-slice corner of Chaplin. You take it in, but your eyes come back.

Red door. 641. Loaded trucks, bulging behind glass. Fire Station 135. These things, they have a meaning—
something to tell
—but you can't make it out. Can't see, can't hear, clearly enough.

More than help
. But what more is you can't decide.

And then I do know, for an instant anyway. Staring at the red door, I see the facts behind it. The truth visits me like a lonely comet from deep space, crosses my sky for a few seconds, and carries on towards some distant star.

Vivian.
She set up my meet with Dr. Wyvern. Max knew nothing of it. Wouldn't have the stomach for where it would go, and anyway, wouldn't want to cry for help from daddy yet again. For a serious threat, all right—but not for “Judy's friend.” Not yet. But Vivian knows people. Has had to learn to read them since squirming out from under her parents' broiled bodies. She made the call—or had Gwen make it. Dear old Gwen, half-mad with loneliness and dyke-mom yearning for this “fox” she's always “admired.”

And then the helpless call to her other lovelorn guardian. Her sponsor. Her foster-father. Who had the run of her girl's body all his late watch, sweet ripening years of retirement. Maybe she had to seal the deal with a nostalgic hand job. Or maybe just her voice with the right note of promissory pleading and gratitude was as good as a tug through flannel. Who knows what it took to move him? The mention that this annoying person was a particular friend of Judy's?

Maybe, not having bodies delivered to him on stretchers anymore, the mere thought of a live one walking in his door unsuspecting was enough.

Vivian would have told him what he needed to hear. And would have been prepared for how it went, either way. Not many left Dr. Wyvern unscathed—as she had cause to know. Still, ninety-four being ninety-four, if someone did get the drop on him—well, in a world with one less father, she'd be that much better equipped to handle things her own way. Take the next step needed, do what she required—all she'd asked from life, from earliest memory.

I see it all, so clear, and then it's gone. The big red truck goes wailing down the street without the red door ever opening.

§

Moving farther down. The end of the Latimer. Moving even slower, step by step slower, though I know I should speed up.

Looking up at the balcony. 501. Straight above. Fear plunge. My insides lurch with it. No one's at the railing, looking down. He's inside, arrived already, I see him moving from room to room, uncertain where he should be. Where he should sit or lie. Mattress? Armchair? Floor in Big Empty? Among the
far cors
?

No place seems right, seems his, and so he paces between them guiltily.

You've checked out
.

Get inside
.

But no. I don't. So goddamn stubborn, even now. Picking my way down the short bumpy slope to parking. The garage door standing open for some reason. Only Lucius and I key it open, air it out. No rain for days.

Tagger's kraken just as it was. Thrusting black bulbs, thrashing tail and jaws. Never came back to add to it, though I kept expecting him to. No Owner-ordered gray goo either. Stasis. Status quo.

Stalemate. And both know it
.

Why not send Judy too? Cosy threesome. Throw her into the mix like an unguided missile. Primed with a tale of Dad and Super chumming up, making deals? Nonsense may prevail—better than even odds with Judy, always. On the other hand… only blood and good can come of it.

Vivian the survivor.

I stick two fingers as far as I can down my throat. Retch up a brown froth flecked with grit. Not much left of all Sandor's pills.

Too late. Behind the play on Wyvern dope, again.

§

Stepping inside. Stepping gingerly. Sensation from below all but gone now. The concrete gouged and pitted. Lunar lot.

Cars in their spots. One to twenty-one. Two between each pair of pillars.

Mine in number six. Beside Lucius's pickup.

Mine?

Step closer.

No, not mine. Close, though. Another Honda, gray. Even older. Rust around the wheel wells. Punch-size pockets, scalings along the side panel. The licence dirty, road-bleared.

Stoop to read it better.

How—

White in the corner of my eye. Bandaged face, stepping to me from behind the pillar.

Big backswing, greedy for it. Get my hand up to catch some of it.

Crack!
Fingers break, my head rocks back with it.

The hand falls, a shot bird, swoop down after it.

Whump!
Small of the back, the other side. Pain roars up my neck and down my legs, rockets around my head trying to get out. Sink to my knees, then all the way.

Tucking, curling weakly, trying to keep an arm over my head, but it doesn't matter, they're not looking for an open spot, just blasting away, pounding like apes with clubs.

Amateurs
.

Their bats descend like rain.

Gray swirls, darkening.

Mud red.

Black.

§

Waiting for me on the stairs. Just sitting there with her hands in her lap. First kid at school before the bell.

No memory of coming down. Just got here.

Wasn't then was.

Am
.

Inside's out now. Facing me. Long cornsilk hair. Bandage where the blood was, shining white. Big bandage on little face: temple to chin, cheek to ear. Some of her hair shaved for it. Stub of nose poking out.

Doesn't smile. Or else just faintly, with her eyes. Reaches up her hand. I have to bend to take it. Cool and firm, makes me think of a fish. But dry. Like talcum.

She leads me further down.

One flight. Turn. Another. Our feet padding on the stone. I look down. Mine bare too.

Nobody in the lower rooms.
They only roamed when she was pinned.

She got free, wrenched herself unstuck, to bring you here
.

Three flights down, she stops. Looks away. The back of her head, corner of the bandage.

Doesn't say anything, she can't, but I understand.

This is as far as she can go. As far as she can take me.

A step or two myself. Slowly. Pricklings in my gut.

Quick pattering. Turn, and she's running up the stairs. Tiny figure in a white shift fleeing, hard to see already.

The ground shaking up above me, where she's gone. Dark slidings, back and forth. Except it isn't ground.
Is your body, being hit. You just can't feel it anymore
.

Peer down into the gloom, thicker now. Or seems so, since I know how deep I am.

One step at a time, descend. A long way down but no more turnings. And no sound—none not my own. Soft footfalls.

Until I reach the bottom.

Rooms lead off, black. Black openings in stone. Jelly-like, bulging.

Four, five, six… lots of them.

A bad smell. Old toilet smell.

Going back.
Can't go back.

Keep going
. I look up but can't see her. I've never heard her voice before. Didn't know she had one. She must save it for emergencies.

Gray fluttering in a room to my right. Not there before, or else my eyes have changed.

I follow it. The light gains feebly, shows what's glimmering in silver-grays.

Which changes once, abruptly, as I near.

Looking up. Way, way up. Big man, big lady—sky faces—looking down. Smiling.

Laughing!
Mouths wide with it.

Looking down then, and in. At a scene with three, not two. The picture a dark box. I am the light that opens it. Man sitting cross-legged, woman kneeling beside him. Good-looking people. Man raw and rangy, daredevil smile, dark suit and tie. Woman softly pretty in a tight gray skirt and black sweater, string of pearls. Meek worried eyes.

On his lap, behind his crossed arms, the little blob in white. Eyes in a flesh slit, mouth hole. Feet in sockettes. But the rest white. Bandages. Windings of them around the face, over the head in a skull cap. And plaster casts—two arms, one leg. Little white mummy. Stiff white arms and legs sticking straight out above and below the man's arms.

Who took this?

Strange squiggles behind them, between them and above their heads. Bright drizzling gray. Smidges of molten silver, melting, twisting down black velvet.
Siver nakes.

Tinsel. Tree.

Murmurings, tense shiftings, in the space beyond this.

The stairs go on beyond. This is just an alcove, though the deepest yet. Beyond leads further down.

Stone waiting, close. Impatient for his start. Eaten into, delayed.

Close up, close up! My turn now
.

You'll get yours, Stone. You always do.

Just now, for a few seconds more, I have to stare at what I've found. Stare and stare, not knowing how long it may last.

A charmed circle. No one here gets in or out
.

I don't know these people, I've never seen them before.

Yet who else can they possibly be?

21

Nothing.

Nothing I trust from the hospital. Confetti glimpses, dreamless sleeps.

Just—
there
. Then—
back, somehow
.

Seeing a world in bits. Thing-bits. Body-bits.

Voice-over by Stone.

Clanks, running water.
Someone washing the dishes
.

Bundling sounds, foul smells.
Seeing to the garbage
.

Chair by window.

Bringing a coffee. Blur of face, fall of hair as she bends. Hands—warm, rough—steadying mine around the mug. Smooth and warmer still.

Hands, hands, coffee.
Russian doll.

“Sandor?” says a voice. Dead leaf swirl in my throat.

“No, no Sandor. Is…” But speech too fast.

Down here they blur. Rustle and dissolve. Move too fast to see. Freeze in statue shapes. Only the dead move credibly. Speak words that reach the ears.

Been here before. And returned from it. And will again. Eventually. No clock time here. Where you rest. And learn. And pay. Where adjustments come from—and go to.

§

Memory scraps, scissored from—this morning? A day ago? A week? Water running, steam. Bathroom. Hands holding me to strip off stinking clothes. Step out of the rank pile. Four hands—two holding up, two popping buttons, tugging down pants. Strong hands. Women's.

Slivers in mirror mist: puffy, blue-black, scabbed. Hello Dead Eyes.

I can't see her well.
Them?
After a time I can look up, find a woman-shape across the room. Fuzzy oblong at the stove, the sink. I can't see more than that. When she comes close, to give me food or drink, take my cup and plate and wipe my face and hands, she disappears. Just bits of her. Tendril of gray-black hair. Chapped red finger. Cracked nail. Corner of an eye, like a clamshell closing. It helps me start to talk. This blur, nearby.

“Devils.” It fills my mouth and then I hear it.

“Devils, sure.” Close, above. “Always lots of devils in the world. One for every angel. And I think you have an angel with you when you need. They find you here, upstairs… with what you have inside you? But no, they wait in the basement. Somewhere someone going to find. Devils? I say you have an angel. Very good angel by your side.”

“Money.” Another time. A question, though it flatlines.

She laughs. “Why? You want to give me some? Mebbe fire me? Well, you know what? You're not my boss. You no hire, you can't fire. You want to, talk to the boss.” She laughs, a deep sound. “So eat your soup.”

Later. Window dimming to dark. Nighttime? Same chair. Somehow a day has passed without anything happening. Without my seeing, feeling—without my being in it.

No matter.

Beside me again. Her coat on. Putting paper, warm in my hands.

Cookie on a napkin. A star, five-pointed. White icing, pink.

“…come to you… ready for bed.” Sounds start, then I understand, catching the last.

People climbing down to me on ladders. Warn them what is here.

Warnings are useless.

You see—so can't be warned. Don't see—can't be harmed.

Hand brings star to mouth. Sweet glaze, soft warm crumbling. Good, says Judas mouth. Bits fall on my lap. Drool drops, black between brown stars.

For a moment I see her face. Her mouth at least. Smiling. Teeth, not too white. Real.

Strong hand on my shoulder.
Leave it there forever
.

“Is Christmas coming,” says the voice above. “Isn't it?”

§

Two visitors, a long way in. Christmas closer from her stars and bells. Santa Claus with red and white icing. Green tree with sparkles. I hate Christmas, like cookies—nothing's right to say.

Knocking, firm. Low words at the door, and she goes. Her footsteps clicking away.

Tall shapes, they bring over the chairs she keeps by the stove. Sits on one, puts her feet on the other. Set them by this chair by the window.

Keeping a little space between us, not crowding too much.

Cops all the same.

Close, I see them a little better. The gray fog eats at them, but in between, I catch bits of not-old faces, a suit, a skirt and blouse.

“I'm Detective-Sergeant Beverly… is Detective-Constable Frank.” Coming in with lots of static, but I get the main bits. The names would slide on out again, except the man's is Beverly and the woman's Frank. The oddity a signal boost. “We're from the Integrated Crimes Unit. Have you heard of that?”

Heavy feeling when I shake my head. Delicate, too. Broken parts, sloshing.

“It pretty much explains itself. Most bad actors keep it simple. One bad thing, one department to deal with them. But some bad actors do so many bad things they cross borders. Departments crawl over each other to get at them. Homicide, sex crimes, fraud, drugs, cybercrime, immigration…” He runs out of fingers and just holds them up, ten fat wrinkled worms—sliding in and out of fog—while he muses at the uncountable kinds of bad acting. And expects me to, I guess.

I go back to looking at the low gray through the glass. Half-forget they're there.

“You don't remember us, do you?” The woman. Frank.

Don't shake again. That sloshing's bad.

“We visited you three times. Twice at the hospital, once right after your admission and once a couple of weeks later. The first time you weren't conscious. The second time you were, off and on, but couldn't speak.” Her voice not unkind, for a cop's. Taking it slow, but not so slow it's mean. It takes out some of the static, brings her through clearer. “The third time was a week ago. Your injuries are healing, and the doctors don't feel there'll be permanent brain damage—otherwise they wouldn't have discharged you. But you couldn't give us any answers. Didn't seem to quite see or hear us, was my impression.”

The guy shifting, beside her. Wants to take this harder and faster. No need to look at him to feel it.

“But that wasn't—
this
isn't—just your injuries. The beating you took. The, uh, pills you'd taken. This is… your condition. Am I right?”

That's a go
, says Stone.
Give 'em something so they don't amp up
.

I nod, heavily.

“Listen,
sir
”—if Beverly heard what Frank just said, he didn't understand it—“we're not asking for much. Just a few simple questions and answers, details we're trying to clear up. We ask, you answer. You don't even need to get out of your chair. You wouldn't be back home if you couldn't do that much. And I think we've been very—”

“How about
this
?” An edge in her voice as she cuts over him. She may be junior, but Beverly out of his depth here. “I don't know how much you remember, or how much anyone might be telling you. I assume you're not reading the newspapers or listening to the radio. So why don't we do it this way? I'll tell you some things we know, or think we know. Show you some pictures. If I've got it right, you don't need to say or do anything. If I'm out on something, you can shake your head. Correct me if you can. I won't ask a question unless I need to. And then you can answer… or not. All right?”

It is, so I do nothing. She maybe smiles. Seam of white anyway.

“We know you know Ms. Villanueva.”

Slides a photo, a newspaper blow-up, into my hands. A Vivian I've never seen before. Grainy news grays, but more than that. Hair back under a hairband, no make-up. Wide, earnest eyes. Blazer over high-collar blouse—what it shows of her clothes. A microphone in front of her. If you could shower the vamp and cunning from a fox.
A de-sex spa…

“It's hard for her, really hard. But she's been making some public appearances. Radio a couple of times. TV, once. Trying to get other victims to come forward. We know who some of them are, but unless they're willing to make a statement… Cross-examiner in a courtroom—well, that's a whole other thing. But by working with us, she's also trying to work with them. Leading by example.”

Hello, Ms. Villanueva
.

“We know you saw her quite a lot in a short time. Met her several times, those two weeks in October. At Dr. Wyvern's dental office where she worked. At the restaurant up the street”—she flips a pad—“Ukiyo-e, where she was having dinner with Dr. Wyvern. You visited her at her home, too. Her condo at Bayview and Sheppard. Again with Dr. Wyvern. All that's established. Sign-in books, security cams, witnesses if we needed them. You're not denying any of that, I take it.”

I'm not.

“The fuzzy area—the gap between versions—is why. According to Dr. Wyvern, the visits were escalating harassments in aid of extortion. He named the sums discussed. There's no disagreement there. But according to Ms. Villanueva, you were attempting to obtain the money for Judy Wyvern, now in custody, charged with her father's murder. I'm sorry if I'm telling you things you already know, that you may have trouble following, I'm not sure. But we need to get this clear.” Grit in her voice when she needs it. “In Dr. Wyvern's version, your concern for his sister was just a front, a scam, to get the money for yourself. To keep on getting it, probably, as long as you held on to evidence that incriminated him. What else would you expect—Ms. Villanueva's view—from a serial sex predator? Someone who, like his father, drugged and sexually violated women in his medical practice? What other kind of motive would such a man understand? Her words, more or less. And a view I'm strongly tempted to accept, absent other evidence. As I suspect most women—most people—would be.”

Making Max eat the whole thing. Not that he doesn't deserve to choke on it.

“Your car. Your Honda.” Beverly, snappish. It's not just his junior taking all the play. It's interviewing someone with my file, my Face—the Face done double, super-Face—and having to mince along like this. No talkee, no speakee. Kid gloves all the way. “It was impounded after being towed for a parking infraction two blocks from a murder scene. The morning
of
the murder. Or the morning just after. Several hours later, say.”

I have to talk to make him disappear. Performing way out somewhere beyond myself. Subway busker in Carnegie Hall. “My ex-in-laws. They live nearby. I go back sometimes.”

“Nostalgia?”

“The car died.”

Worth it, despite the effort. The words hauled up like rocks. He sinks back in his chair, fog closes over him. Like a gray blanket. Like a head slipping under the waves.

Frank leans forward. I don't mind that. Her. “We're not interested in you for the murder. Not really. We've got Judy's confession, freely given. Which for all her… challenges… hasn't changed since the first time she gave it. For motive, there's all we need in the victim's photograph collection. Which should go a long way towards reducing her sentence. Some sort of special custody, obviously, given the nature of the crime. But… Even that will seem too harsh to the people who'd like to see her walk. You wouldn't know, I guess, but there's a groundswell for that already. Blogs, editorials, Facebook groups. Ms. Villanueva gets asked about it in her interviews. She doesn't tip her hand, but it's pretty obvious she'd lean to leniency, too. I can't say I disagree.”

Shiftings in the fog shroud beside her. Beverly unhappy in his bag.

I'm taking in too much. Static mostly gone, radio almost clear. It's dangerous—wrong in post-window time, Stone's time—and it scares me. I've climbed up way beyond myself, up into regions I've no business being in. Like a fish taking a stroll on deck, gazing at stars. Gopher lounging beside the burrow—sky full of hawks.

Stone not saying a goddamn word. Which scares me too. He should be howling foul.

“Just a couple more things today. Then we'll let you rest. We've made a good start. You know these men.”

Glossy colour photo. Peach and Lemon in a doorway, pastel shirts and crotch-kissing pants, heads leaned together grinning. Heading out for a night at the club, it looks like.

“This is a more recent shot.”

Ms. Villanueva doesn't issue pink slips. The slips are pulps of red, white and gray where the heads were. Strangely little of it on the shirts, just flecks on the pressed collars. Someone strong and swift. And, too, they're hanging off a couch, most of them still up on it. A natural drainage position, the pool going out of the frame.

Bye bye, bros.

“A lot of blood on the bats, as you can imagine,” Frank says. Something soothing in the way she talks. Not hard, not gentle—just quiet and direct. “Most of it theirs, of course. But a little of it yours. Traces, down in the cracks. You were in our system… and the match came up.”

“Which means the guys who did you got done too. Exact same way,” Beverly growls from inside his bag. Pointing out the obvious for any morons in the room. It's torture for most men to sit silent while a woman does the talking. It eats like acid, all over.

A little more gets said. Not much, but most of it I miss as I descend back into the element where I'm supposed to be. Feel Stone waiting below, fuming.

Just a few more things I catch.

I hear them go to the door, call the woman back in. Hear her chuckle at something said as she returns to the kitchen. A strange sound to hear, that chuckle. I can't place it up there where I was for a few moments, can't place it down here where I'm heading.

Detective-Constable Frank comes back for a moment. A gray skirt flecked with black, a fine plaid, in front of me, the start of legs below.

“Something you may be wondering. It just occurred to me,” says her voice, clear but thinning as I drop. “Something you may be in the dark about. It was Ms. Villanueva who hired your caregivers. Round the clock at first. Then just for daytime. She said she wanted to come and thank you personally, and plans to. But for now this was the least she could do. For helping her get out of a trap she couldn't get out of herself.”