Code Blues (3 page)

I refreshed my burgundy lipstick, winked at
myself, and sashayed back into the café.

Alex hadn't made it back, but his unused
cigarette lay on the plate. I sat back down and crossed my legs.
The college kids behind me burst out laughing, but not at me, I
hoped.

The Ste-Catherine traffic ground to a
standstill. A bunch of girls in skimpy club outfits shrieked and
pushed their way through the cars. A Camaro played dance music with
such a heavy bass that my chair vibrated with it. Behind it, a
Mercedes broadcasted rap, while the little, white driver and his
buddies nodded along. How could Alex hear anything out there?

Alex. I scanned the crowd. He wasn't in
front of the café.

No. That couldn't be right. I half-stood,
craning my neck. He must have gone around the corner, to get away
from the mob.

Why did he go out there, anyway? It was
louder out there than it was in here.

Better reception? But that was lame.

I crossed to the front of the café. Across
the street, I caught sight of a guy with brown hair, his head
tipped down. He held his shoulders like Alex. I rapped on the
glass.

The guy turned west and disappeared into the
crowd.

"Wait! Alex!" I called.

Beside me, the old man with the newspaper
cleared his throat.

I muttered,
"
Excusez-moi.
" I
shoved open the glass door and sprinted out on the
street.

"Watch it, lady!" hollered a guy on the
pavement. I barely registered him and his blanketful of necklaces
and earrings.

"Sorry," I called over my shoulder, and I
started running after the guy. I nearly knocked down an elderly
couple who were arm in arm, taking up most of the sidewalk.

I stopped at the blue and
white metro sign near the Paramount theatre. Herds of people pushed
past me, intent on seeing
Twilight
or
Despicable
Me
. I scrutinized their faces until I
realized that I was, to stretch the movie analogy into retro
territory, on my own mission impossible.

Alex had vanished.

"Worst. Date. Ever," I muttered, but it had
been great until the phone call. "So his dismount needs work."

A guy who was passing by gave me a strange
look and hugged his girlfriend closer.

Okay, now I was talking to myself. I joined
the crush of people and snagged a lobby pay phone. I dug in my
purse for Alex's numbers. The phone rang once, twice, three
times.

Click. "We're sorry. The Bell Mobility
customer you have reached is not in service."

It wouldn't even let me leave a message.
What the hell? Was he still talking on the phone?

On my last quarter, I tried his home phone
number. It rang four times. A recorded female voice, the phone
company default one, intoned, "You have reached 555-2431. Please
leave a message."

I wouldn't have figured Alex for such a
vanilla message. Was this even the right number? I said, "Alex,
it's me. Hope. What's up? I lost you at the café. I don't have a
cell phone"—I'd planned to buy a new one in Montreal—"and my
pager's back at the apartment. So I'll check for you, and then
I'll, uh, head home, I guess. Call me." I left my apartment number
and hung up.

One last try. I walked back to the café. A
breeze raised goose bumps on my arms. I rubbed them.

"I'll keep you warm,
baby!" a guy yelled. He was standing with a group of friends
outside Club Sexxxy's drawings of chesty
danseuses nues
.

I gave him the finger. It made me feel
better, even though he just cackled.

In the café, the old man was still reading
his paper, a couple perused the display case, the college kids
played on, and a server was wiping down the tables. No Alex.

My heart sank. I headed outside to ask the
guy on the pavement with the necklaces. He looked like a
middle-aged hippy, with a graying brown ponytail and a Guatemalan
poncho even though it was a warm night. He smiled. His teeth were
crooked. "Wanna buy something? I got the best beads."

Chunky plastic beads and some silver rings.
I tried to look interested. "Hm. Maybe." I paused. "Did you see the
guy with the cell phone who left the café? Brown hair, about
five-seven, black T-shirt and jeans?"

He shrugged and smiled some more. "Wanna buy
something?"

"Did you see him?" I countered.

"Yeah, I saw him." He gestured at his
blanket ware. "I don't have all night, you know."

He did have all night. And silver doesn't
complement my coloring as well as gold, but better that than
plastic beads. I pointed to a plain silver ring. "How much?"

"A steal. Six bucks." He grinned, displaying
nicotine teeth with a gap between his incisors.

Cigarettes reminded me of Alex. Something
had to be really wrong for him to leave without a word. I shook
three toonies out of my change purse. Before I handed them over, I
prompted, "The guy with brown hair?"

"Yeah," he said. "I saw him." He grabbed the
money. "He went that way." He gestured north, up the little
cross-street.

"But—" I should have seen him. I'd been
sitting right alongside—I checked the name—Ste-Alexandre. But then
I'd gone to the bathroom. And north of here was McGill University.
Alex had said he lived in the student ghetto. Had he chucked me and
gone home?

"Here." The street guy held up the ring. His
eyes were soft with—was that pity? I was now being pitied by a guy
who sold chunky beads?

I snatched the ring away and headed back to
the metro.

"Hope!" A guy's voice.

My head snapped up, my heart drumming at
hummingbird speed. Then I saw the white-blond hair and more angular
face. It was Tucker coming down the street toward me. Tori raised
her hand in a cautious wave, and Anu beamed at me.

Shit. The last thing I
wanted to do was face my new classmates. Clearly, Montreal
wasn't
that
big a
city.

"Hey guys," I said, adjusting the purse
strap on my shoulder.

Tucker said, "Hey, we tried to call you.
We're going to grab a bite to eat and check out the Jazz Fest.
Wanna come?"

I shook my head. "I'm beat. Gotta unpack,
and I've got the first emerg shift tomorrow." I bared my teeth in a
cheery grin. "But have fun, okay?"

Tucker opened his mouth, but Tori said,
"Sure. Some other time" and towed him off. Anu waved.

Once on the metro's orange
and white plastic seats, I closed my eyes and tried not to feel
like a disaster. My feet hurt, my eyes felt dry beneath my contact
lenses, and I didn't know whether to worry about Alex or strangle
him. The metro car was almost deserted. An electronic board flashed
the names of the next stop and bus numbers for transfers, as well
as ads and tidbits of news. My main companion was the recorded
woman's voice that announced, "
Prôchaine
arrêt
..." Everyone was heading downtown
for the night, not partying in Côte-des-Neiges.

Actually, that was something else to worry
about. When Alex picked me up, he told me that my neck of the woods
"wasn't the greatest area."

At my expression, he tried
to back peddle. "You probably don't have to worry. The real
low-income housing is on Van Horne." Right by my neighbourhood
grocery store. After I freaked out more, he said, "Look. It's
probably just a bad rep, because Côte-des-Neiges has a lot of
immigrants. And some students, because it's near the U of M,
l'Université de Montréal
." Then he smiled and said, "Don't worry. I'll protect
you."

He wasn't winning any gold
stars right now. The
Université de
Montreal
metro stop was only a five minute
walk from my new place, but his warning had me jumping at every
shadow behind a tree. I didn't dare cut through the university. I
stuck to the poorly-lit streets. During the day, the maple, ash,
and birch trees were pretty, but at night, they could hide a family
of rapists. The sound of my own steps beating on the sidewalk, the
wind in the leaves, the shadows in the apartment balconies—all of
it spurred me, until I was almost running down Mimosa Avenue. My
keys were clenched in my fingers, pointy side out, ready to take
out someone's eyeball.

At last, I dashed up the concrete walkway to
my three-story brick apartment. Only two dim torches lined the
path. As soon as I opened the building door and stepped into the
well-lit front hallway, I felt safer. Even silly. No one had
attacked me. The silver mailboxes and buzzer system inside the
entrance looked perfectly innocent.

Like St. Joseph's, the apartment had
probably been beautiful when it was first built, but it had fallen
into disrepair, from its overgrown, dandelion-fiesta lawn to the
cracked glass in my balcony door. It was really two buildings, with
an arched wrought iron sign between them that read, MIMOSA MANOR.
Still, there were Art Deco squares of glass on either side of the
outer door and I had real hardwood floors in my apartment.

I unlocked the inner building door, ambled
up the staircase and turned the key in my apartment lock. I
half-expected Alex to be there, saying, "Boo." But it was empty. I
could hear the silence. Only a tap dripped in the kitchen.

I marched down the hall, to the kitchen, and
tightened the faucet. I'm an environmentalist. I'd hate to end the
day by wasting water, too.

The phone rang. I nearly jumped out of my
skin. I had to race back to my bedroom to pick it up. I'd only
brought one phone. The rest were on their way, in the moving van.
The phone had rung four times before I snatched it up. "Hello?
Alex?"

"Who's Alex?" said my mother.

"Are you making friends already?" said Dad.
"That's good."

"Oh." I sunk into bed. "Hi guys. I was going
to call you."

"I miss you!" said my brother, Kevin. He's
only eight. My family makes weekly phone calls with everyone on a
different extension.

"I miss you, too, bud." My throat tightened.
I felt perilously close to tears. Ridiculous.

Dad said, "You sound like you have a
cold!"

I cleared my throat. "I don't have a
cold."

He tsked. "Well, you sound like you're
getting one. It's a long drive from London. You should have let us
help you pack!"

"It's too far. And you have Kevin." I took
comfort in our old argument.

"I could have helped!" Kevin protested.

"I know, bud. But then you might have missed
your violin lesson."

"Good," he muttered. My mother started
scolding him.

I felt almost normal again. No matter what,
my family was always there for me. I told them I was starting with
an emerg shift at 7:30 a.m. Not a word about Alex, even though his
name was throbbing at the back of my brain.

"Wow. We'd better not keep you up too late,
then," said Dad immediately. "You need your rest."

"Wait, I wanted to tell you Grandma still
has that cough, but she's feeling better." Mom went on at some
length. My grandmother is very healthy, but we all need
up-to-the-minute bulletins about her few vagaries. Especially me,
the family doctor. I thought I heard a noise in the front hall, but
turned back to hear, "Kevin is going to start summer school, but we
could still go on a trip in August—"

I sighed. "Mom, I told you, I don't want to
take a vacation at the beginning of residency."

"Right, right, right, I was just going to
say, or we could come visit you. Maybe spend a week. What do you
think?"

I looked around. My one-bedroom apartment
was littered with a handful of half-unpacked boxes. "You guys would
sleep in the living room?"

"Sure, sure. Why not? We could bring
sleeping bags."

"It's like camping!" crowed Kevin.

"Uh." I held my head. It felt like the
beginning of a headache. I massaged my temples.

"You think about it," Mom insisted.

"She should go to bed," Dad said.

Kevin piped up. "You're going to bed earlier
than me!"

"Good for you." After some more last-minute
news, I hung up. I had to smile. There was only one more thing to
do tonight.

With an Exacto-knife that had been lying by
the front door, I slit open a box labeled "Misc." Right at the top,
wrapped in tissue paper, lay my faceless, jointed wooden man. I'd
bought him for a long-ago art class, but didn't really have any
drawing talent. I just liked this guy. Some of my friends called
him my imaginary boyfriend. I called him Henry.

The previous tenants had left behind a black
veneer desk, topped by a bench-shaped piece of wood that made a
second level. Carefully, I placed Henry on top of the bench. I made
him sit with his legs dangling down and his right arm bent, hand to
his head. Not sad, but pensive.

Beep!

I definitely heard something that time. I
tracked the noise to my backpack in the front hall. My little black
pager read DUPLICATE. I pressed the button to read the number.
Alex's cell phone.

Hot dog! I picked up my phone and heard the
rapid beeps that meant someone had left a voice mail message.

"Hope. It's me. I'm so sorry." Alex's voice,
a bit muffled.

I bit my lip.

"Listen. Something...came
up. Something important. I know this sucks. I'll make it up to you.
Maybe tomorrow." A noise, like he covered the mouthpiece, and he
said, his voice far away but irritated, "In a
minute
." His voice got loud again.
"Hope, I'll call you." And then he hung up.

I tried the cell phone number he'd left on
my pager. Still out of service. He must have turned it off before
and after calling me at home and on my pager. But why?

I bent Henry's other arm,
so now both hands were pressed against his face, like in
The Scream
.