Circle of Stones (21 page)

I flick on the Donald Duck lamp Sharon rigged up on the floor beside me. I wait, writing in my notebook until the murmurs stop in the other room. I use my cellphone to check my email. Nothing from the dancer yet, my new subject. I should have asked for her number. I pack up my camera equipment. Grab my bag. I turn the lamp off, open the door, creep down the carpeted stairs. Nearly trip over my own shoes, slip them on, ease the deadbolt open. I know the nearest gas station is a long walk. I'll call a cab when I get there. The labyrinthine streets are calm. I remember I have a digital compass on my cellphone. Maps.

I arrive at the Queen Street diner, red-eyed from a poor sleep in a stuffy chain hotel — the only place that still had rooms available late into the night. The waitress isn't behind the counter. She must be in the back. I sit down on the same stool I'd occupied before and pretend to look at the menu, even though I've already decided to order the same thing. A middle-aged man with a white apron tied too tightly around his wide waist turns my coffee cup over, slamming it into the saucer's groove.

“What'll you have?” The man fills my cup without asking if I even want coffee. Something about this riles me.

“Actually I'm wondering if one of your waitresses is working today. Jennifer.” I set my menu down, look the man in the eye. “I'm working on a film project and I'm looking for her for —”

“Yeah, so is everyone, buddy.” The man turns and shoves more coffee grounds into the basket of the machine. “She didn't show for her shift this morning and when I called her place, her roommates said she up and skipped out on her rent. Did a midnight move
and
left me in the lurch for staff for the rest of the week. Gave her an advance and everything.” The man jabs a stubby finger in my direction. “She only worked here two weeks! I tell ya, there's no respect these days. No trust. Can't run a business without trust.”

I take a sip of mediocre coffee. “Wonder where she went.”

“If you figure it out, lemme know.” The man grabs a dirty wet rag and begins sweeping it across the counter, sending crumbs and paper napkins flying. “I've got a mouthful I could say to that one.”

I wish I could light a cigarette. I look around at the dessert display case, the messy counter, the cash register. Strong visuals, good lighting. Consider the dramatic potential of the wire receipt spike and feel a stab of disappointment. I see a glass bowl full of business cards beside the cash register I hadn't noticed before. One of those customer appreciation draws. Near the top, underneath a small, folded pink flyer is something deep blue. My card. She hadn't kept it. I'm furious — at myself. I played this all wrong. I should have been more articulate. Focused. Clear-headed. Inquisitive. I wonder if I came across as less than enthused about her project idea.

Oh god. What if I came across as creepy? I'm not
that
much older than her, am I? I still have a cool, creative vibe about me, right? Could she tell I thought she was attractive? I wonder what it's like to be that beautiful. If everyone responds to her the same way. Listening, but only half-listening. What that would feel like if that happened all the time.

I wonder where she is now. Probably looking for that artist — but she could be anywhere. I didn't get enough details from her, or ask enough questions to pursue that idea — or her. And now I'm disappointed. I'm a better journalist than this. I let myself get distracted.

I stand up and toss a five-dollar bill on the counter for my coffee. “Hope you find a replacement soon.”

The man shrugs and watches me leave.

I set my luggage and gear on the curb and wave down a cab. I watch the driver put my things into the trunk, then I slip into the back seat and slam my door. I take my inhaler from my pocket, puff the vapour.

“Pearson Airport, please.”

“Yes, fine.” The cabby looks at me through the rear-view mirror, assessing. “You enjoy your stay in Toronto?”

“Didn't really work out the way I'd expected.” I watch the shiny shops and restaurants of the new Queen Street West whip past. I think of Sharon and Glenn, find myself smiling. I think of the dancer and the despair in her eyes and sigh. “I didn't accomplish as much as I'd hoped.”

“Ach,” says the driver, accelerating around a lumbering streetcar. “Everyone thinks they change the world with all this work. Busy busy all the time. Me, I just drive cab.”

“You're probably right.” I turn on my cellphone and connect to the Internet to search for the earliest flight back. “But I love my work.”

J
ennifer
's in the mouth of a monster. The ugly interior of a speeding truck, headed west. Movement feels like certainty. She doesn't want to stop. She wonders if it's a coward's escape plan. If failure is when backwards is the only direction you can go. She thinks about her last night in Toronto, the shadow puppets she made on the walls in the insomniac standstill. A purgatory play. A flying bird, a deer, a wolf. The wolf growled and bared its teeth at the deer. The bird flew away. She made a decision and packed her dance bag. She boarded a bus. Then she waited at a gas station along the highway and drank tepid black coffee until she saw a truck driver who looked quiet. A middle-aged man. Not a face anyone would remember. She asked him for a ride. He said he'd drive her as far as Saskatchewan. It would take a few days.

The highway stretches on through the darkness. The driver's face is masked in silhouette. Jennifer shifts in the passenger seat, wedged as close to the window as she can get. She reaches into her dance bag and clutches her tarot deck to try to conjure the driver's story. In the red-yellow flicker of brake-lights-headlights she sees the shapes of vague hopes — people, boats, motorcycles, houses — crushed behind his eyes. What most people would call normal dreams. Attainable goals. And still, she sees the driver's eyes are dead. She intuits he's given up. She lets her dance bag fall between her feet and stares out the dirty windshield, watching the lines of the road until they blur together. Then she pinches and scratches at her hands and arms to force herself to stay awake. She imagines they're locked inside a metal crypt. Two skeletons hurtling through a poisoned night, a tenuous veil of consciousness keeping their bones from turning to dust.

Her leg throbs. Osteomyelitis again, a complication from her injury. An infection of the bone and bone marrow turning her inside out. She doesn't need a doctor to tell her it's bad. After her ruptured Achilles tendon was repaired, she had pins in her knee, faith in the idea she'd work again. All she had to do was rest and recover. But now the brief interlude between surgery and infection feels to her like an intermission during a dramatic play. A moment's pause in the green room. She thinks of the specialists, physiotherapists, kinesiologists, osteopaths, and acupuncturists she saw in Ottawa — even a scammer psychic whose “crystal” was an orange glass orb from Ikea. She ended up in Toronto in search of big-city medicine, holding on to ghost shreds of hope long after each one had disintegrated.

The truck driver coughs and spits phlegm into an empty cardboard coffee cup. He slips a white pill onto his tongue and swallows. Something to keep him awake.

Jennifer thinks about Nik's silences. He was quiet, too, but he spoke to her with his eyes, hands, face, mouth, body, painting, presence. She thinks about how when they slept on his futon together he wrapped his arms around her and appeared in her dreams. About how she used to see him in visions. Small, comforting scenes of him walking and painting.

She thinks of how leaving was selfish, but reminds herself she couldn't stay. How she got a picture in her mind of an enormous, expansive stage looming far away in the distance, a singular blood-red spotlight pulsating on the place she felt she was supposed to be. More than anything she had wanted to succeed as a dancer. Prove herself. She wanted to live on the stage and in her body. She wanted to always feel like she was sailing through air, flying in defiance of expectation, rules, and space. She wanted Nik to keep painting. Succeed somehow, too, without her. Forget her. It was supposed to be simple.

But Nik's presence lingered. She remembers how, one night a few weeks after she left Vancouver, she dreamed she was performing a solo. A bright spotlight beamed on her face but she had no choreography, no music. She couldn't move. Nik stepped out from the wings into the shadows where only she could see him. She thought he was coming to rescue her. He stepped forward and dove over the edge of the stage. She woke up terrified. She got up and found the apartment phone. She'd left Nik with her cellphone as a message that he should not try to contact her and she knew he'd still have it. She dialled the number and it rang and rang. Then a click and a roar like wind and a breath. That was all she needed to know. She hung up before he had a chance to say hello.

Under the rhythmic click and the roar of the accelerating truck Jennifer begins to hear music. Piano and bass, a melody as long and winding as the highway. She replays the scene of her demise. She replays it at least once every day, still processing. She sees it like a movie: She was stretching in the green room before the beginning of her last performance. She was listening to the production music on her iPod, rehearsing the choreography in her mind. Sara-Claire, the dance company's PR rep, a thin francophone with stringy hair and beautiful clothes, tapped her on the shoulder. Jennifer hears her voice:

“Pardon, Miss Jennifer, there is a man here, he says it is
très important
to see you.”

Jennifer remembers asking what the man looked like, and the comical gesture Sara-Claire made across her trim hips and belly to show the man's large size. Jennifer knew right away it was Leo, a bouncer from the club she'd worked at in Vancouver. She refused to see him, but she thinks about how hard it was to keep her composure knowing he was there. How she cut her usual warm-up ritual short and paced, then jumped up and down. She tried to shake the image of Leo from her head. Tried to contain the fear. But it held her in a grip like claws until curtain. When it was time, she shut down her thinking and burst onto the stage, the full embodiment of the choreography. Pure movement. Jennifer thinks about how falling was a shock not just because of the pain of it, but because it broke the spell.

She remembers the long wait in the ER. How Sara-Claire gave her the card and roses Leo brought to the performance. Jennifer threw the roses in the trash and waited days before opening the card. He'd signed it:

Congratulations for making it, Jenny. I was in town on business and saw you on the poster. I couldn't miss your big performance. Leo.

Jennifer thinks about how Leo operated his side business at the club, and his continuous clandestine transactions. Handshakes and back-pat hugs to conceal the transfer of small packages. She tried hard to stay out of it, but she couldn't avoid seeing what was going on around her. And he kept trying to get involved with her. The harder he'd tried to pursue her, the more she wanted to get away from him. She hadn't needed her tarot cards to know how dangerous he was. She thinks about her obsessive, focused state of mind during her last night in Vancouver. She snuck into the back office of the club, reached into the secret pocket in the lining of his black bomber jacket, and grabbed the fat wad of cash he always kept in there. Until she got the flowers Leo sent, she didn't see the magnitude of that mistake. Anyone who knew Leo would know the flowers were a sign that he wanted something. She read his note as a threat. She should have guessed his business might have taken him across the country, too. She wonders why she thought the people and things she left behind in Vancouver would simply stay put, in her past.

As white halogen lights flash on the highway she simmers with regret. A green sign looms ahead announcing the City of Moose Jaw. Then there are streetlights, stores, brightly lit parking lots. Nameless driver stops at a gas station rest stop and looks at Jennifer, waiting for her to get out of his truck.

“Where you headed again.” It's not a question. He says it like he already knows he's not going to get an answer. Jennifer swings the passenger door open and throws her bag out ahead of herself. She walks across the parking lot, listening to the truck driver's engine rev then rumble into the distance, relieved of his flat, enervating company. She ducks into the gas station washroom, brushes the fur off her teeth, and tries not to look at herself too long in the mirror. She's sweaty and pale, but she hopes she still looks presentable enough to get a ride.

The hallway stinks like air freshener. Jennifer pauses at the glass door leading to the convenience store. A clutch of truckers leans against a back counter drinking coffee. They all turn when she opens the door. She stares back. She doesn't realize the one in the blue ball cap and navy jacket is a woman until she speaks.

Blue ball cap murmurs to her friends and they laugh. Then she nods at Jennifer. “Need a ride, hon?” Her voice crackles with the thick, low resonance of a long-time smoker. She fingers the brim of her cap and tips her head. “Name's Lorraine. I'm goin' clear across to Van if you wanna go all the way with me.”

The two guys beside her laugh again. One punches her on the shoulder. Jennifer turns to leave.

“Seriously.” Lorraine's voice bubbles like hot coffee. “I need a little company to help me stay awake. And I gotta get goin'.”

Jennifer looks back, hesitating. When she doesn't say no, Lorraine grabs the dance bag out of her hands and heads for the exit. Jennifer has to hobble fast to keep up as Lorraine speed-walks across the parking lot toward a big truck with a shiny black cab.

“Got a bum leg there, kid?”

“Yup.”

“Well, lemme get the door for ya.”

Lorraine swings the passenger door open, throws Jennifer's bag in, and helps hoist her up onto the seat. She circles the truck checking things out, gets in, then readjusts all the mirrors. She plucks a notebook out of the blue plastic organizer caddy between the seats and writes something down in it.

“Gotta be pro about driving truck these days.” She taps the steering wheel with her pencil then starts the engine. “It's a business like anything else and we're hauling groceries. Gotta be safe or we'll spoil a lot of little kids' lunches.”

She checks her mirrors and grins. “Welcome to my travellin' circus roadshow. We got everthin' you need. You name it. Snacks, drinks, Kleenex, good music, extra jackets, first aid kit, a heckuva saucy driver, and plenty of smokes.”

“Great.” Jennifer leans back in her seat. Lorraine pulls out of the parking lot, honking and waving at her roadside friends on the drive-by. As soon as they're on the highway Lorraine grabs a package of cigarettes from her pocket and offers them up. Jennifer takes one and copies how Lorraine lights hers. It makes her cough, but she inhales again and again, thinking of the dancers and choreographers she knew who smoked to keep slim. She never did. She wanted to keep her lungs clear. Maintain every competitive edge.

Lorraine keeps both hands on the wheel and exhales from the corners of her mouth, not caring about the ash falling onto her jeans. She has a peculiar blend of unhurried energy that Jennifer can sense. Jennifer leans down, reaches into her dance bag, and touches her tarot card deck for reassurance, trying to tune in. Lorraine reminds her of her ex-roommate in Vancouver, a pot-smoking vegan from one of the smaller coastal islands who taught her how to read cards. To her roommate the tarot was fun and mystical — an exploration, like dharma beads and yoga. Jennifer thought if she could figure out the tarot's magic she could manipulate her fortune.

Jennifer watches Lorraine — whose eyes are steady on the road — bounce along in her seat to the peculiar mix of eighties pop, country, and electronic music shuffling through her iPod. The truck speakers are high-end. Jennifer can see she's doing well with her trucking business.

“You know, doll, you look kinda familiar,” Lorraine says. “Where you from?”

“I've been living down east. Montreal, Toronto.” Jennifer has to clear her throat to talk, unused to cigarette smoke.

“But you lived in Vancouver at one time, right?” Lorraine lifts her ball cap and itches her forehead, as though touching her head will trigger a memory.

“Yeah. That was a while ago.” Jennifer watches as Lorraine navigates a blind corner. She doesn't volunteer anything specific.

“I've got it!” Lorraine turns to her with her big, stupid grin. “You used to dance. Stripper, right? One of Leo's girls?”

Jennifer stares ahead, not saying anything. She wonders if heading west is a mistake.

“Awww, nothin' to be ashamed of, hon,” Lorraine says, patting Jennifer's thigh.

“No. I wasn't. I was just a club dancer.” Jennifer frowns. “It was a side gig. For cash. It wasn't trashy like that.”

“Yeah, I get it. Don't be insulted.” Lorraine thrums her fingers on the steering wheel for a beat. She looks over at Jennifer and gives her a nod. “But were you involved?”

Jennifer pauses. She closes her eyes, trying to feel what's happening, what role she's playing. She wants to know who Lorraine is. What she knows. “Involved in what?”

“In Leo's business.”

“I don't know what you're talking about.” Jennifer opens her eyes again and turns to look at Lorraine, who meets and holds her gaze.

“You know I always hated that guy Leo.” Lorraine makes a face and straightens her ball cap. “Played nice but there was something about him —”

“He's an asshole,” Jennifer interrupts.

“Is?” Lorraine shakes her head. The truck seems to slow down. “Didn't you hear, girl?”

“What?” Jennifer shivers and time seems to slow like the truck.

“Leo's dead.” Lorraine reaches for her pack of smokes. She grabs two, lights them with her silver Zippo, and hands one to Jennifer. “News said it was a heart attack. But between you and me, there's people sayin' it was more complicated than that.”

Jennifer wonders if this is a warning. They both smoke in silence. The cigarettes create space and time for thinking. An old Siouxsie song comes on. Lorraine turns up the volume. Jennifer feels for her cards and studies Lorraine's face, watches her movements, as though the way Lorraine tilts her head or clears her throat will tell her whether or not she can be trusted.

“These straight, flat prairie highways make me starkers.” Lorraine fidgets in her seat. “Talk to me, kid.”