The City Still Breathing (8 page)

‘You know what you are, Martha –
obsessed
.' Waving the dying inch of her eggroll like a sceptre. ‘And if it is him – y'know what? I'd be glad. Because maybe then you could get some closure – closure on these last seven years, closure on the whole thing.' Closure like some sort of buzzword she heard on Donahue last week and been dying to use, closure like the screen door banging when Van walked out of it that day he got into his car and took off for the store, closure like the screen door banging when Slim walks out of it every morning, screen door banged so much the hinge's gone off and it doesn't close at all anymore, hangs open just that little bit, just enough to let the ants in, like the screen door on her insides hanging halfway between open and closed. That monkey smiling up at her from the placemat, wrinkling as she drops a couple of tears down onto its stupid face. Just a couple to let her know she's still got them.

‘I want to go see him.'

Lucy spitting eggroll. ‘What?'

‘I need to see if it's him.'

‘Fuck's sake, Martha, we are not going down to the police station so you can look at a dead person. That's sick, is what it is. Now sit down, wipe your face and get ready for a nice lunch with a nice man.'

‘He's not coming.' The staircase is silent, the few lunchers starting to head back to work. ‘Nobody's coming.'

‘Could you just wait.'

‘Sure.' Martha grabs her purse. ‘It's all I do.' Leaves her there with the two pints and all that grease on her lips.

Out into the snow, down Elm and over Lisgar and on down Larch to the police station, up to the counter where Martha stands until the thick-necked officer gives her the now-what look and says, ‘Yeah?'

‘I'm here to see the body.'

‘Who?'

‘The body that came in this morning from 17.'

‘Ma'am.' He takes off his glasses like this is causing him some extreme pain. ‘I don't know where you heard that, but I can't discuss the details of a criminal investigation.'

‘That's fine. I don't want to discuss it, I want to see it.'

‘Ma'am, are you a reporter?'

‘No, I'm … I'm the wife.'

‘Ma'am.' That word having less and less kindness to it. ‘You can wait to see if the detective'll talk to you, but it'll be a while.' He nods at the plastic chairs against the wall.

‘I'm not waiting.' She fights to keep her voice steady. Breathe.

‘Ma'am, I'm going to ask you to step away from the counter.'

‘I'm not.' And she turns and walks back down the hallway, stopping halfway, next to the coffee maker, leaning against the wall thinking, I can't go back. I can't go on.

‘Heard you talking to Officer Friendly back there.' A smile. A short man pouring coffee in a styrofoam cup, tossing whitener into it. Blue uniform pants, white undershirt. Salt-and-pepper hair. ‘Coffee?'

‘No thanks.'

‘What – you don't like the taste of dishwater?' He chuckles at his own joke, tearing open four sugar packs at once, spilling granules all over the place.

She pulls out her second-last cigarette and looks through her pockets. Stupid lighter. Scratch of a match and the short man lights it for her.

‘Look, I don't want to put my nose in, but I heard you say you were … his wife?'

She really looks at him, blowing on his coffee even though she's sure it's been sitting there so long it's lukewarm at best. He won't make eye contact with her, focusing on her left shoulder, her forehead, something past her. Wiry – too skinny to be a cop, she thinks.

‘Did you see … ?'

He nods, a rapid-fire jiggle of his chin that seems to go on and on. ‘I brought him in – me and my partner.'

‘Can you take me to see him?'

Clears his throat, then clears it again. ‘No.'

‘Please, I have to – please.'

‘Look, it's not that I don't want to, it's just … ' He looks back down the hall. ‘Okay, you can't say anything about this – they don't want it getting out yet, but … ' His voice lowering to a hiss. ‘The body's gone.'

‘Gone … '

‘Yeah.'

‘Where did it go?'

‘Uh, we're not sure. Somebody may have stolen it. Or … '

‘Or what?'

‘They've got people on it – it's only a matter of time.'

‘So I should just wait?'

‘Uh, yeah … yeah.'

‘Thanks.' And she goes quickly this time, a quick break to the doors, back home to get ready for work, waiting tables, waiting for the shift to end, waiting in bed for the sound of the door opening, waiting to hear her son come in, or waiting not to hear anything.

‘Wait.'

She turns. The short cop jabs behind him with his thumb. ‘I just gotta grab my keys.'

The screech of metal and the back doors of the van come open. The cop steps back for Martha, but there's nothing for her to see. He points. ‘He was right there.'

‘Show me.'

He looks around the lot nervously, like he's forgotten he's a police officer. ‘Look, I'm in a lotta shit as it is.'

‘Please.'

He sighs and grunts his way into the back of the van. He offers a hand, but Martha's ditched her cigarette and is already scrabbling in after him. He goes to the small slot that looks into the cab and picks at it, checking something, then comes back. He crouches and puts his hand on the floor, looks up at Martha.

‘Go on.'

He plops on his ass and then slowly lies back, stretching out, squirming a little to one side to make sure he's in the right place. With him all laid out like that, Martha can see a dark stain underneath his head. And they don't move and they don't say anything for a while.

So she's there staring down at the cop's face, his eyes fixed past her on the ceiling, her trying to picture this being Van, lying there, naked and dead. His ears sticking out with that goofy grin he took to the grave and all that hair, like some kind of big monkey, the monkey on the placemat. Year of the monkey. The year she was born, the year Slim was born, the year Van left. These markers in her life, divided by a rhythm, every
tick
bringing some new disaster. The next
tick
the end of the world maybe, and her waiting around for it. Van'll come back kickin through the screen door,
I got that milk
, and they'll laugh and they'll all go back to the way it was, exactly the way it was, without the yelling and the name calling and the door slamming and the rest of it. Just the good stuff. Just the roses.

It's the flash of a squad car on its way out that brings Martha around, quickly slipping out of the van, pulling out her pack for her second-last cigarette to find it empty.

‘Man, it's really coming down now, eh?' The doors slam closed. They both lean against the side of the van. ‘Never would've found him in this. He'd be out there till spring maybe.'

‘He never could sit still.'

He does the clearing-his-throat thing again, like the words are hard to bring up. ‘What made you think it was him?'

She shrugs because no one really knows anything, least of all about themselves. ‘I've gotta get ready for work.'

‘Where d'you work?'

She points to Nibblers down the street, orange sign all lit up in bulbs. ‘Come by for a coffee sometime. I owe you one.'

‘Sure. Maybe later. I've been stuck here all day with this crap.'

‘All right then, officer.'

‘My name's Wally – Walter.'

‘Walter?' She hears her own laugh sneak out on her. ‘Then you owe me.'

She pushes away but then his hand is on her arm, warm but shivering with something. ‘What was he like?' And he's looking at her, right at her, for the first time. Like what she says could really matter.

‘He said nice things.' And she leaves him with that.

At the corner, she looks back. He's still there by the van, all that snow coming down on him, salt-and-pepper hair going white and turning him old.

Maybe she'll stop by Black Cat to pick up another pack. Maybe she won't. She's quitting, tomorrow or one of these days soon. And she'll call someone about that door because look at this snow. She doesn't even bother trying to cover her hair.

8

Normando goes behind the bar at the Sampo, rolling up sleeves to show the blue smear of some tattoo on his forearm. Two lifers are playing a hand of pinochle on a cracked formica tabletop, the leg propped with coasters. Gladys slides into a stool at the bar, accordion oozing across her lap, and Normando places a glass of sherry down which she sips through dentures. The
whisk whisk
of cards, one of the lifers farts and then the hall is dead again under the hum of the beer fridge.

He gets the radio on to drown out all that damned quiet. Some broadcaster coming on about that body everyone'd been gabbing about. A man don't need to be gossiped about when he can't speak up for himself. No respect for the dead. He shuts the damned thing off.

The sound of a door upstairs and Ernie comes clomping down, all bony joints and rumpled clothing. He mumbles something to the card players, who mumble back, and brings his big white beard up to the bar.

‘Here early, Norm?'

Normando shrugs and slides a bottle of Northern across. Gladys picks up her drink, moves off to the stage, starts plunking down music stands. Ernie peels pieces off his beer label, tears these into even smaller pieces.

‘You heard? Union's talking about another strike. Could be a long one.' He looks up at Normando with quick eyes. ‘Gonna be tight times.' Looking away.

‘Tight fer who, Ernie?'

‘Everyone.'

The doors to the Sampo bang open – figures shuffling in, squinting in the dim light. They come in black vests, scuffed shoes, carrying violins and flutes. Some wave or nod at Normando as they keep shuffling off to the stage.

‘Listen, Norm, Sampo's been sold – the Ukrainians.'

Normando looks down at his hands, spread on the stained surface of the bar – thumb missing a tip, couple of fingers bent, calluses slowly peeling away to something pink. Wedding band on one hand, twenty-five-year ring on the other – company logo etched and fading. He picks up a cloth and starts wiping, just to have something to do.

‘Gonna take the bar out, turn this place into some kinda daycare or something. Maybe I can get you some work as caretaker – cleaning up – you want.'

The unhappy sound of instruments tuning, some kind of march or dirge, as the folk ensemble warms up.

‘Well, anyway, you got the popcorn cart, right? Not like you need two jobs, right?'

So what if he's only been working a coupla evenings a week. They know him here. It's his place. It's not about the damned job. But he doesn't say it.

Ernie drags a crumb out of his beard. ‘You hear about Ristimaki? He's got it in the other lung now too.'

Normando keeps on wiping the same spot, a stain that'll never come out. Ristimaki, the poor damned sap.

9

T
he third punch breaks his nose and the next time Gordon Uranium opens his eyes he's lying on a mountain of garbage behind May's. His shirt is a constellation of blood and somebody has taken his snakeskin boots.

It's just starting to snow, the first lazy flakes of the year. He staggers down the alley, easing his bare feet around broken glass and the liquid gifts of someone's hangover, and out onto Elgin. He squints in the grey November light. Fuck it's cold.

Nursing a beer at the Nickel Bin, Gordon gets to thinking about those damn boots. The same pattern Bronson wore in
Once Upon a Time in the West
– twelve-inch shaft, quarter-inch heel, J-toe and crested with a double rose scallop. Only had them two weeks. Custom-made by the old Serbian widow down in the Donovan, pecking away with arthritic fingers. She offered fresh-fried
krofne
and he supplied the snakeskin – eastern diamondback rattlesnake. Her kitchen smelled like cinnamon and yeast.

‘You're bleeding all over my bar.' Foisey, curly hair jammed up under a net, glares at him from behind the register. Gordon tears two strips off a napkin, rolling them between fingertips, and stuffs one capsule up either nostril. He uses the rest of the napkin to mop up the blood on the cracked wooden surface. Nobody else in the place except McGowan, passed out by the pinball table already. Some news report is playing on the set above the beer fridge, the reporter looking all-important holding his microphone. Something about a body gone missing.

‘You know who was just in here?' Foisey talking quick, trying to play it cool, but Gordon can smell the nerves. ‘Jyrki fuckin ­Myllarinen.'

He searches but can't find a face for the name. The reporter keeps on going, standing outside the back of a police van. Something nagging Gordon about it, the whole thing making him feel queer, like this whole news report, a body all laid out and cold, is some movie he's already seen.

‘Thought he was in Kingston Pen. Fuckin butcher.' Foisey following Gordon's eyes up to the television. The report turning over to the Wolves' latest loss. ‘New uniforms, same fuckin shit.' He slaps a dishrag down in front of Gordon and leans over the bar. ‘That Lalonde kid's the only good egg in the whole batch, eh?'

Gordon pushes his beer away, half-finished. Coming down on the wing. One, two, three strides. White noise in his ears – the crowd. Then crash. Then nothing.

‘Sorry, forgot you don't talk hockey. They just ain't been no good. Not since, y'know, you, well … ' Foisey trails off, getting awkard. He whisks the bottle away under the bar. ‘So who rearranged your face?'

Gordon shrugs. Walking home from the bar last night, cutting into the tunnel under the tracks to get out of the rain – a flash, a detonation in his brain – then hitting pavement so hard his head should've popped off. Being dragged, rain freezing to slick. The smell of garbage.

But there's something dangling back there. Just as he climbed the last step down into the underpass. Reflection in a puddle. Gold watch.

‘You don't care, I don't care – fuck it.' Foisey wanders off to change the channel. ‘Two-fifty for the beer.'

Searching pockets on his torn work jacket. Nothing. Took the wallet too. Gordon shifts on his seat, bare feet rasping against the metal rim of the stool, and clears his throat.

‘Okay. Add it to your tab. Y'know, fuck it, heard about Katie – this one's on me.'

Gordon gives Foisey a nod and slides off the stool. Padding across cement toward the door and pushing it open to head back out into the snow.

‘What the fuck happened to your boots, man?' McGowan squinting bloodshot in the corner, as the door swings closed.

Standing on the red brick sidewalk outside the Nickel Bin, facing the tracks and train burping ash smoke into steel sky, Gordon thinks about the things he has lost – a long list ending with two boots. He tries to let it go. Watching the engineer, black-capped, swing into the Budd car – glacial steel surface. The car shunting. He tries to let it go. The brakes squeal and then – crash! – the cars impacting as the train reverses.

Crash.
Shaking something loose in his brain.
Crash
– his nose bursting.
Crash
– the feeling of knuckles on bone. Make sure the gloves come off. Grab with your left, cock the right. You wanna get a good one right there on the cheekbone, leave a shiner. Tattoo the fucker so everyone knows you got him.
Crash
– laying in with the shoulder.
Crash
– the sound of a body hitting the ice. The years crashing together.

‘Hey, Killer, somebody think you're too pretty or something?'

Martha walking down Elgin with a cigarette hanging between lipstick. He tries to smile, he'd like her to see him smile, but it hurts. She comes to stand at his shoulder and they both watch as the train shudders out of the station, smeared brick of row housing coming unhidden on the other side of the tracks.

‘Listen – I heard. I'm real sorry about Katie,' she says while he tries to let it go. ‘Know how attached you were to her.' Seeing red, he tries to let it go. ‘You okay?' He tries –

Ah, hell.

Door to the Nickel Bin bangs open, Foisey peering out like an albino from a cave, tossing something. ‘It's fuckin November, Gordo. Jee-sus!' Pink slippers hitting the sidewalk next to Gordon. ‘Lost-and-found box – somebody mighta puked on them. I dunno.' Door banging closed.

He sits on the curb, bare feet in gutter and leaves. She bends and grabs a slipper, waiting for him. ‘Your colour, I think.' He slides his foot in – too tight. She looks right at him – eyes like rum, a network of lines sneaking in, and her face too warm for this day. Her smile flattens out. She pulls something small and hard from between his toes. ‘Oh, shit.'

A station wagon screeches up, front tire jumping the curb and banging down. ‘Fuck's sake, Martha!' A woman with an ugly thatch of purple hair hops out of the car and walks toward them, chewing gum like it's a profession. Martha groans and stubs her cigarette out in the concrete planter.

‘You fuckin left me with the tab at the Empress!'

‘I didn't have anythi– '

‘And I had to finish your goddamn beer.' The woman stops in front of them. She looks at Gordon and blinks. ‘Hey. You're the hockey pla– '

‘Shut up, Lucy.'

‘Viper – no, Cobra.' She giggles. ‘Why're you wearing slippers?'

‘Lucy.'

‘What?' She looks at Martha's hand, the thing she pulled from his toes still pinched between finger and thumb. ‘Whatcha got?'

Martha balls her hand into a fist. ‘Nothi– '

Lucy snatches at her, giggling like it's some kind of game, one that's fun only to her. Gordon gives her a little nudge and she falls on her ass in the planter.

‘Fuck's sake, you two – I was just jokin!'

She reaches out, hands snapping open and closed. ‘Now help me up.'

He pulls her to her feet and turns to Martha. She's looking at him. Like he's naked. Not in an I-want-to-fuck-you way, but like she knows him. And she probably does. All the bad shit, and still she looks.

‘Hey!' Lucy holding up the small, shiny thing she took from Martha. ‘This's just like those boots at the restaurant.'

‘Lucy!'

‘What?'

Gordon grabs it from her and turns.

‘Hey!'

‘Gordon – stop!'

But he's halfway down Durham before he finally opens his clenched fist – the glossy shine of a snake scale, like a beacon. Martha's voice coming after, ‘Don't hurt him, Gordon, don't hurt him!'

Oswald's Pawnshop is in the Flour Mill. Walking past lines buckling with laundry, old Italian women beating their linen with brooms, the abandoned silos hanging over it all. Gordon remembers he always hated the Flour Mill.

It was just a little farther up, at that place behind the go-kart track, where he bought that diamondback rattler seven years back. He remembers it cold and motionless behind the glass, and him recognizing something there. Bringing it back to his apartment – the space almost empty except for her terrarium. Seven years of coming home to something. Giving her dinner, making his own. And then one day, nothing.

He stops, slippers deep in slush, at the door to Oz's shithole. Peering in through the glass to see the counter empty, he cracks the door – remembering to reach up to stop the bell before pushing the rest of the way through.

Shelves lined with dust and junk, yellowed price tags dangling in the fluorescent buzz. He pads across linoleum and vaults over the counter, following a short hallway to the swinging light bulb of a stockroom. With his broad back to the doorway, Oz is bent over a box, humming to himself in the half-light.

Gordon grabs Oz by the wrist, torquing his elbow and pinning the big man against the cold cement of the wall.

‘Hey!' A short jab to the kidney takes the fight out of him, and Gordon spins Oz around, now jamming his left forearm under the other man's big, drooping chin.

‘Gordo.' He's gasping, wheezing, walrus moustache quivering. ‘What the fuck? Lemme go, I didn't do anything – I swear.'

Gordon presses in a little tighter to watch the fat man's eyes bulge. Pin him up against the boards. It's in your end – pressure's on. Scuffle for the puck, kick it out, get it back on your stick. It's all on you. Dump it. The crowd – fuck, the crowd.

‘Gordo!' Oz sputters, going purple, and he finally eases off, stepping back as the big man slides down the wall. ‘The hell's your problem? You want me to get the cops down here on you? Chrissakes.' Rubbing at his throat, Oz dips his eyes to take in Gordon's slippers. ‘The boots – why didn't you just say so?'

Back in the front room, Oz passes him a yellow square of paper over the counter – chicken scratches. ‘Didn't buy those boots, something off about that kid, but I got the addy for the other stuff he brought in. Fake, likely.' Oz eyes him, turning something over in his big skull, and sighs. ‘Listen – I seen that kid before. Think he squats up in one of those tailing shacks behind the Gatch.'

Gordon nods and walks to the door. Gatchell – one step farther down the ladder. He gets a hand on the doorknob and turns.

‘Damn shame about Katie,' Oz says. ‘Maybe you should get yourself another one.' Door swinging open, bell jingling, and Oz's voice chases him out onto the street. ‘It's just a pair of boots, Gordo.

It's a long walk to Gatchell, and with each step Gordon's mind slips a little further back on itself. Just a pair of boots. Step step. Just boots. Step step. Just. Step. Boots. Step.Boots.Step.Bootsstep.

Katie.

He stumbles, and somebody yells at him, and he turns, ready to fight. You get a skate caught in bad ice and they'll come after you when they see you weak. But it's just some chubby kid waving his slipper at him. Some kid like a whole bunch of other kids.
Hey! Can you sign this? Please. You're gonna be something. You're gonna be something big. The next one.

He takes the slipper and leaves the kid behind, with all that hope in his eyes. He just can't bear it. He keeps on down Elgin, the slippers soaked. But he ignores it. Keep your eyes on the puck. You dump it, but it's picked off centre ice. You square up, watch him bring it over the line. He's got his head down, charging, as you sneak up on his side. Score tied, thirty seconds left. You lower the shoulder, one two three strides.

Each step brings him closer to Gatchell. Closer to just putting this whole thing behind him.

He remembers the day he brought the rattler in to that old Serb down in the Donovan. Gordon had been careful with her, careful not to bring his hand near for the first few hours, knowing the heat of his touch would trigger the hidden electricity in her jaw – venom and fang. He brought her wrapped in newspaper, finally stiff, to that baba – white drifts of hair coiled in a bun. He watched the woman temper the leather, work the cork and finally peel the rattlesnake's skin back, leaving only the black marbles of the eyes behind. She had been kind enough to ignore him each time he cleared his throat, swallowing back the image of his own skin stripped away – laying open the black core of loneliness inside.

Gordon stands before the slag banks, the lights of Gatchell at his back. He stands, one foot in slipper and on asphalt, the other bare and on the grit of slag.

He leaves the city behind and walks into the narrow path. On either side, the banks, heaps of black pebbles, tower over him. The banks seem to run straight to the horizon, and he scans for some break, some hint of the cluster of abandoned shacks the foreman grafted into the hillside. They still run the slag dumps at night. People used to come watch the rail cars pour the melted waste down the sides of the hills, a spreading wasteland. Some would sneak a trunk-load home for the driveway. But the novelty of it is gone. The only people who come up here now are crazies, junkies or people with something to hide.

There. A movement – shuffling – somebody walking toward him. Gordon veers to the right, sticking to the shadow of the bank of slag, and waits.