Fauna (16 page)

“Hey,” he calls, “you eat garbage?”

“Quiet, boy.” Lily stands, sliding up against the bin. Looks round its corner as casually as she can. No sign. Stepping out into the open, she feels Billy’s nose butt the back of her thigh. “Hold your horses. Heel.”

“Well?” the old guy says.

“Well what?”

“You eat garbage?”

“No.”

“Good.” He pulls a pack of Marlboros from his apron pocket. Lily feels a nicotine pang that apparently shows. He holds them out. “Want one?”

What’s he going to do, knife her? String her up like a portion of pig, a charred and naked duck? Not with Billy beside her. Not with her own knife weighing her breast pocket down.

She walks over to him and pinches a yellow-ended smoke up out of the pack. The stoop is three steps up, but he hunkers down, bringing his face level with hers. Pretty good knees for a grandpa. He lights his own then hands her the lighter. Good—she hates it when they cup a hand around the flame and make her bend in close.

He says nothing, smoking, keeping his ash tidy with an occasional flick of his thumb. After a minute or so, Lily considers moving on. Which way, though? The cop car could be
long gone, or it could be waiting like a cartoon cat by a mouse’s cut-out hole.

She decides to stay awhile, smoking in the late morning sun. Maybe he’ll make the best of his break and light a second smoke off the first. If so, he might offer her another one too.

Sensing her intention, Billy drops into a sit.

“Good dog,” the old guy says.

“Yeah.”

“Good manner.”

“Yeah.”

He takes a deep drag, blows it out in a needle-thin stream. “My name Chin.”

She looks at him.

“You know chin, right?” He thumbs his own as though feeling for stubble.

She nods.

“You got no name?”

She looks away.

He grinds out his cigarette, drops the butt off the side of the stoop. “You need job?”

Lily takes a drag, aware of the slight tremor in her hand.

“I think you hard worker.”

“I don’t know.” She lets the butt fall from her fingers. “I guess so.”

“You know how wash dish, right?”

“Right.”

“Okay.” Chin rises, no hand on the iron pipe of the banister, just the strength of his own stringy thighs. “Come on.”

“What about my dog?”

“He good dog. He lie down here.” He points to the stoop. “I bring him lunch.”

“Lunch.”

“Lunch for him, lunch for you, plus eight dollar an hour cash.”

She looks down at Billy. He seems happy enough.

“Come on, no-name-girl,” Chin says, turning to go in. “Work to do.”

The Joel Weeks Parkette is a good spot for a rest. It’s an oddly peaceful place, given the origin of its name. Stephen wondered about it for months before he finally remembered to look it up on the Web. The little wedge of land is dedicated to an eight-year-old boy who drowned—not in the murky Don River, not even in the chemical blue of the neighbourhood pool. In a sewer. A moment’s inattention, an open manhole that ought to have been closed.

Stephen often comes here after ducking into the Pizza Planet on Queen for a coffee and a slice. There’s a bench in amongst a few young maples, tucked away behind a stand of pines. Close to the quiet alley, it’s sufficiently lonely to be almost always free.

The light here is subtle and sweet. Tiger lies in the slatted shade beneath him; Stephen can feel him panting, pressed up against his calf. Lungs inside ribs inside skin.

Only one kid on the basketball court today—fourteen or so, the bones showing painfully at his elbows and knees, as though he’s recently been stretched. He’s worked up a sweat
playing against himself, deking and dribbling low, whirling to show unseen opponents his back. His dark arms gleam as the ball leaves his fingers and flies. Stephen wonders if he could still sink a basket. He could ask to join in, just for a layup or two, but what would he do with Tiger? Besides, he can’t be certain a white boy would be welcome on the court.

Growing up in Victoria, he couldn’t help but register if somebody was black. There were exactly four African-Canadian kids at Vic High, and two of them were brother and sister. Of course, there were black guys in the Forces, more among the American units—but it’s best not to wander down that path in his mind. It only ever leads to one colour: the shade every soldier wears on the inside.

He eases the lid from his coffee and lays it upside down on the ground near Tiger’s nose. Drawing two creamers from the bag, he empties them into the lid. Tiger drives his brindled snout into the little puddle. When the cream is gone, he favours Stephen with a doe-eyed glance, then commences shoving the lid about with his tongue. The pizza slice is Hawaiian. Stephen peels off a half-moon sliver of ham to share.

When he straightens up, a photograph stands before him. It’s the only way he can make sense of the young woman’s looks: someone has scissored a picture out of a magazine and blown it up large as life. Her lips turn up at the corners, wet-looking, silvery-pink. Her hair, thick and blond, falls like a bright cloak about her arms. A black T-shirt tight as a bandage, golden cleavage in the V of its neck. Stephen is staring. Some part of him registers the fact that the kid on the court has stopped dodging and leaping. The kid is staring too.

Stephen lifts his gaze to find hers has fallen. It rests on the beast at his feet.

“Aw,” she says, dropping into a squat.

“Careful.” He shoots an arm down between them.

“It’s okay.” She reaches past him to lay a hand on Tiger’s brow. “Dogs love me.”

It’s a common, often foolish, claim, but this time Stephen feels the truth of it in Tiger’s rippling flank.

“What’s his name?”

“Tiger.” Stephen takes a breath. “I’m Stephen.”

“Kyla.” She keeps her eyes on the dog. “Tiger, huh?” She works her long, white-tipped nails around the base of one striped ear. “You like that, boy?”

Her hair is glowing—Stephen can almost feel its reflected warmth—but the crown of her head tells a different story. The black half-inch stripe at her part shocks him. Her true colour the same as his own.

“Your hair.” He hasn’t meant to say it out loud.

She looks up at him. “What about it?”

“It’s … pretty.”

“Pretty fake.” There’s something muscular, almost reflexive about her smile. “I know, I need to do my roots.”

“Do you like it?” Something reflexive about his speech too, bypassing all the usual controls. “Better, I mean. Like that.”

She turns her attention back to the dog. Stephen forces himself to look away from the black strip that halves her skull, a scorched path through a blinding field. He focuses on her hand; she’s moved over to the other ear now, keeping things balanced, fair. Tiger gives vent to a sigh, reeling the sound out steadily through his nose. She won’t answer
now—it’s been too long a pause. He never should have asked.

“I don’t know.” She gathers Tiger’s thin-skinned ear in her fist and gives it a tug. “It’s not really
for
me.”

“Your hair?”

She releases the ear, her body seeming to coil as she rises, as though she were made of smoke. “I better be going. My shift starts about now.”

Stephen makes the calculation: If she’s supposed to be at work already, how far away can it be? Three, four blocks at most. He can make note of which way she turns at Queen and narrow the field further still. It can’t be an office with the way she’s dressed. A waitress? He begins running through nearby restaurants in his mind.

Tiger scrambles out from under the bench and stands trembling, his nose pressed to Kyla’s knee.

“Aw, look. He doesn’t want me to go.”

And now Stephen stands. He’s taller than her by a hand’s breadth. He looks down along her scalp as though sighting his mark, until the line tips back and he’s looking into her eyes. “Where do you work?”

She closes her eyes as though remembering, and he sees that her eyelids are shiny and green. A black slash marks the lash line, the lashes themselves unusually long.

“Jilly’s,” she says.

“Jilly’s?”

She takes a step back and regards him. “Yeah, you know, over at Queen and Broadview. Jilly’s.”

“I don’t think so. Is it—”

“Christ, everybody knows Jilly’s.” Her gaze is suddenly hard. “I’m a dancer there.”

“A dancer?”

“That’s what I said.” She looks down. “Bye-bye, Tiger.”

Sensing another betrayal, Tiger barks.

“Quiet.” Stephen closes a hand around the dog’s collar as Kyla turns on the sharp white heel of her boot. She walks away quickly, a short block and a half before she rounds the corner onto Queen and disappears. “It’s okay, boy,” Stephen murmurs.

The dog sits back on his haunches and howls.

It’s incredible, the way some of them come back from the brink. Mitzy was dragging her hind end when she first came in, the classic dachshund scar still fresh alongside her spine. Now, a mere four weeks later, she’s stepping lively and half wagging her tail, good for fifteen minutes on the treadmill followed by a two-minute swim. Kate still has Sandi diaper her to be on the safe side, but it’s been three full treatments since she let go in the tank.

She’s too small to be in there on her own, so Sandi stands over her with her feet planted on either side of the running belt. Mitzy only needs a few centimetres of water to buoy her up, but Sandi’s rolled her scrubs up above her knees. Bare feet, bare calves—no denying she has nice legs, but the sight of them no longer causes Kate pain. Besides, she’s intent on four stubby little limbs at the moment, down on her side on the tiles alongside the tank, evaluating Mitzy’s diminutive stride. There’s no sign of a drag, not even the slight skipping she was showing last week. Kate reaches for the camera and snaps a series of stills.

“Smile, Mitz.” Mrs. Greenbaum has planted her chair at
the base of the ramp where Mitzy can see her. Dressed head to toe in fuchsia velour, she’s the brightest thing in the room. “I just can’t get over it,” she says.

“I know.” Kate smiles up at her. “We’ll measure her later, but I can already tell her muscle mass is up.”

“Just look at those drumsticks,” Sandi croons, reaching down to centre Mitzy on the track.

“Have you noticed her face?” Mrs. Greenbaum says.

Kate sits up. “Her face?”

“Her expression. She always used to look so cranky. Hell, she
was
cranky. It’s like she’s a completely different dog.”

“Did you see her with Baby when she came in?” says Sandi. “She went right up and touched noses.”

“I
know.”
Mrs. Greenbaum taps the front pane. “Come on, Mitzy, come on. That’s my girl.” She sits back. “When I walked her in the hallway the other day, she didn’t even bark at the cocker spaniel from 3B.”

“It’s the pain,” Kate says, noting the first hint of a slowdown in the dog’s hind legs. “Once they feel better, it’s easier to be nice.”

“Poor Mitzy,” Mrs. Greenbaum sighs. “All this time Daddy and I just thought you were a little bitch.”

Kate laughs, rising to hit the
Slower
button then squatting to see if Mitzy’s gait improves. A little, but she’s clearly getting tired.

“Okay, girl, not far to go now.” Kate picks up the camera again and centres it on the back legs alone. Sandi’s toes are in the shot—tanned and well tended, the nails a glassy pink.

What must Lily’s feet look like? Thin, of course, and pale. Certainly in need of a long soak, a healthy scrubbing. Someone
to bandage the blisters and trim the curved nails with care.

“Think she’s had enough?” Sandi says.

“Huh?”

“Mitzy. That’s fifteen minutes now.”

“I’m getting pooped just watching,” says Mrs. Greenbaum.

“Okay.” Kate stands and steadies herself with a hand on the tank. After a moment she lays a palm to the
Slower
button and depresses it again.