Julian (11 page)

“Mr. Chang say no,” she reminded me firmly. On my second visit she commanded, “Not call me Missus. Call me Mama Zhu.”

On Friday I was sitting on a bench between two chattering nannies, each with one hand resting on the handle of her stroller containing one sleeping kid. I had put in two and a half hours of the “Find Ninon” game and I was fed up with it. I was hungry and on edge. Grumbling to myself, I was leaning over, packing up my stuff and fishing in my pack for a subway token, when a shadow fell across the ground at my feet. I looked up.

It was Ninon. She had a talent for unexpected appearances.

She had traded the military outfit for jeans and a bleached-out long-sleeved shirt with a row of little flowers embroidered above the pockets. Her hair was loosely gathered behind her neck with a bit of string, her skin pale, her eyes dark with fatigue.

“What’s new?” she said.

“Where have you been?” I blurted, not caring how unfriendly I sounded.

She frowned. “If we’re going to be friends you won’t ask me things like that.”

I stood and shrugged into my backpack. “Are we?”

“Are we what?”

Throwing up my arms in frustration, I snapped, “Going to be friends!”

She took a step back. “We shook hands, didn’t we?”

“Yeah, right. Didn’t mean much, did it? Look, if you don’t want me around you, just say so and put me out of my misery. This is driving me nuts.”

She looked past me at something, then at my face.

“I do want you around,” she said.

Shock displaced my frustration.

“Don’t look at me like I tried to sell you a watch with no hands, okay? Let’s start over.” She held out her hand. “Hi, my name is Ninon.”

I didn’t take her hand. I said nothing.

“And you are?” she urged.

“Confused,” I replied, slipping my hand into hers and holding it for a moment. “And hungry. Do you like spicy food?”

Mrs.—Mama—Zhu’s round, passive face showed no reaction when I showed up at the restaurant with Ninon.

“Eat in, please, Mama Zhu,” I said, beating her to the punch and leading Ninon to a table.

Ninon looked around at the faded prints of tigers and
peonies and fish tacked to the drab walls, and ignored the slurps coming from the table behind her, where a man sat hunched over his noodles. She fingered the white plastic film of the throwaway table covering. One corner—the right—of her mouth turned up in an ironic half-smile.

“You know how to show a girl a good time, don’t you?” she said.

“I can recommend the soup. Or fried noodles. Anything else is new territory.”

Ninon studied the card that she’d pulled from between the bottles of soy sauce and chili, then handed it to me.

“Can you help me with this?”

The entire menu was in Chinese.

“What do you feel like? I’m sure Mama Zhu can help us.”

Fifteen minutes later there were three steaming platters of food between us, all served by Mama Zhu herself.

“She likes you,” Ninon observed when Mama Zhu had returned to her stool behind the counter.

“What makes you say that?”

“I can tell.”

Ninon ate like someone who’d been waiting a long time for a decent meal, and I kept right up with her. We didn’t talk much.

“Fantastic,” she said when we sat back, unable to pack away even one more spoonful of chicken with peanuts, vegetables with oyster sauce, or Szechuan shrimp. “My mouth feels like it’s on fire.”

“Great, isn’t it?”

“Do you eat like this every day?”

“No.”

“Well, thanks for bringing me here.”

“No problem. We can come here again any time you want.”

She looked at her watch. Oh-oh, I thought. Here it comes.

“I have to go,” she said. “But I’m not running off this time. I really do have to be somewhere.”

“And I shouldn’t ask where.”

A smile was her reply.

“And you meant what you said? Before, at the park?” I asked.

“Yes.”

“Okay,” I replied. I gathered what courage I could find and took a deep breath. “Here’s the thing. I think we should spend the day together on Sunday. The weather forecast says sunny and hot. We can go to Centre Island for the day. Lie on the beach. Swim. Chase the geese. Get to know each other.”

“Um—”

Before she could give me her usual vague reply, I cut in. “I’ll be down at the ferry dock at twelve o’clock. I’ll bring lunch. If you’re there, great. If not, I’ll eat all the sandwiches myself.”

Every nerve in my body was firing at once as we left the restaurant and walked along the alley to Spadina.

“Thanks again. See you,” Ninon said.

“Bye.”

I watched her walking south, disappearing and reappearing in the Friday afternoon crush like a faulty bulb flashing on and off. And then, before I knew what was happening, I found myself striding in the same direction. I told myself I wasn’t following. I was just taking an indirect route to the subway. She showed no sign that she knew I was behind her
but, to be sure, I took a diagonal to the other side of the street at the first corner. With each cross street that appeared I told myself I would turn off Spadina, but I didn’t.

At Queen Street, Ninon crossed Spadina with the flow of pedestrians, then stopped and looked west, one of a crowd waiting for the streetcar. Screened by a wall of bodies, I made my way to the south side of Queen, then stepped into the shadow of a music store doorway. I had a clear view of her across the road, waiting, talking to no one. I’d just stay put until she got on the trolley—sort of see her off.

It wasn’t long before a streetcar came to a stop. She waited for the disembarking passengers to clear, then scooted up the steps. I could see her though the windows, standing by the token receptacle for a few seconds, then moving down the aisle. The light changed and the streetcar crossed the intersection.

At that moment a taxi pulled up to the curb right in front of me. A woman got out of the taxi, hung a purse on her shoulder and reached into the back seat for a briefcase. The streetcar rumbled past, no more than a few metres away. Its bell clanged. Before the woman could close the taxi door I slipped into the back seat.

“I know this is going to sound corny,” I said to the driver, a wide-shouldered man wearing a knitted cap. “Follow that streetcar.”

He studied me in the rear-view mirror.

“My sister’s on it,” I explained. “I forgot to give her something.”

Slapping the car in gear, the man growled, “Whatever you say, chief.”

The taxi crept along behind the streetcar, stopping at
every intersection to exchange passengers, waiting for the traffic light to change, moving off again. I’d have been just as far ahead to follow on foot. Every metre I travelled piled guilt on my shoulders. What was I doing? Things had just begun to look up for me and here I was invading the privacy that for some reason was so important to Ninon. Why couldn’t I leave it alone?

To make things worse, the fare indicator on the meter rose alarmingly whether the taxi was moving or not. I’d be out of cash in no time at this rate. No, wait, I reminded myself. I had a credit card in my wallet. I only carried it for emergencies, and this was beginning to look like one. I sat back, relieved but sinking deeper into self-loathing, as the streetcar towed us into an increasingly downscale neighbourhood. Boarded-up storefronts. Discount stores. Rundown hotels and cafés. Lost-looking men and women on the sidewalks.

The streetcar came to a halt and I saw Ninon step down.

“Here, pull up here,” I told the driver.

I had just enough cash to cover the fare. I paid the driver, who muttered, “Say hello to your sister for me,” before he roared off.

Ninon had turned the corner and set off down a side street. I waited a couple of minutes before following. She walked quickly along the sidewalk, about fifty metres in front of me. Farther along, a sign hung out over the doorway of a blank-faced brick building. A couple of guys and a woman stood smoking by the door under the sign. Without greeting them Ninon pulled the door open and went in. I stopped. From that distance I could just make out flaking black letters on a white background.

Guiding Light Mission and Hostel.

——

In a way, I wasn’t surprised. From the beginning I had thought Ninon might be a “person of no fixed address,” as they said in the cop novels. It was possible she went to the mission to visit someone. She might be a runaway. Maybe she was passing through the city, planning to head for Vancouver when the weather turned cold, like so many others.

What was the point of speculating? If she wanted me to know, she’d tell me.

But I could do a little digging. When I got back to my neighbourhood I dropped into the library to pick up something to read. At the NEW ARRIVALS shelf I read a few dust-jacket descriptions of the stories inside, selected a couple and headed toward the checkout. Then I got a different idea. I went to the research area, presented my card and used one of their computers to go on line and check out the Guiding Light Mission and Hostel. It was run by a non-religious organization—which surprised me, given the name of the place—and was supported by private funds and grants from city and provincial governments. Latest financial statement on request. Donations welcome. The mission offered counselling—mostly for addictions but also for job searches and, according to carefully worded statements, victims of abuse. You could sleep there and get a meal, both for a “nominal” fee, but you couldn’t live there. There was a three-night limit. If you had no money you could work off the fees in the kitchen.

Probably Ninon could stay three nights, let a day pass, then go back for another stint. But where did she go in the meantime?

O
N
S
ATURDAY
Mrs. Altan asked me to work all day. Gulun had taken the train to Hamilton to visit his brother in the hospital.

“Leaving me with all the work,” she complained.

I didn’t object. More hours meant more pay.

He came back around five o’clock. On my way home I picked up sandwich fixings—Calabrian bread, cheese, ham, some fruit and apple juice. I had no idea what Ninon might like, so I guessed. I stowed the groceries in the fridge and went out for my run. After dinner I watched a remake of a movie based on Raymond Chandler’s detective novel
The Big Sleep
. For some reason they moved the locale from LA to England. The book was better. I couldn’t concentrate on the movie anyway. My stomach was in knots. Will Ninon show tomorrow? I asked myself every ten minutes.

In the morning I woke early, unable to sleep any longer. I built the ham-and-cheese sandwiches, pestering myself with questions I couldn’t answer. Did she like mayonnaise? She must; everybody did. Should I trim the crusts from the sandwiches? No, leave them on. How about pickles? Didn’t have any, and it was too late to zip out and get some.

I packed the sandwiches, along with a blanket for the picnic, sunglasses, a map of the Toronto Islands I had grabbed from the Web after breakfast, and some breath mints. All the while I hoped that I wasn’t wasting my time. As time passed the butterflies in my stomach fluttered faster.

I timed my arrival at the ferry dock so I’d be there a half-hour early. I was off by fifteen minutes, which didn’t leave much time. The quay was a madhouse. Mothers. Fathers. Dogs and beach balls and baby strollers. Kids with skateboards. More kids with kites, dolls, soccer balls that wanted to roll and bounce. I tried to find a vantage point to catch sight of Ninon when she arrived.

But she was already there.

She was sitting on a bollard at the edge of the quay, writing in her notebook, one ankle resting on the opposite knee, her canvas satchel at her feet. She seemed unaware of the chaos spinning noisily around her. I noticed that the blue beret was back. Behind her the calm water of the harbour stretched under a clear blue sky, the islands a lumpy green backdrop, the ferry about halfway across the lagoon, lumbering toward the dock, a V of foam at the bow.

“Hi,” I greeted the top of Ninon’s head.

She jotted down a half-dozen numbers, then marked her page with the ribbon, closed the notebook and secured it with the elastic band attached to the cover.

“Hi to you too,” she replied, shoving notebook and pen into the satchel.

“I’ll just go and get the tickets. We don’t have much time.”

“That’s okay. I got them already,” she said, and slung the bag onto her shoulder. “I didn’t know there were three drop-off points, so I took a guess. Centre Island.”

“That’s fine. You look nice.”

“I’m wearing the same clothes I had on the last time you saw me.”

“Except for the beret.”

“True,” she conceded.

“And you do look nice. Again.”

The ferry had bumbled into the slip, its reversed engines churning the water under the hull, and the crowd surged on board, impatient to begin the excursion. Jostled and bumped, Ninon and I went with the flow. We found an unoccupied spot on the bow rail. The ferry chugged across the lagoon, grey-brown water slipping under the hull below us. Seagulls wheeled overhead and alighted like a spray of confetti on the water in the boat’s wake.

“Are you keeping a journal or something?” I asked, mostly for something to say. “Just wondering. I’m not trying to be nosy.”

“Not really a journal, but similar. Just thoughts. Observations. Sometimes a sketch. You’re staring at me.”

“Sorry.”

Her French accent, hardly noticeable, seemed to soften her speech. The sun brought out the auburn highlights in her hair, which hung thick and loose on her shoulders,
contrasting with her green eyes and the blue of the beret. Who wouldn’t want to look at her?

She pulled her notebook out of the satchel and opened pages at random, holding the book so I could see. Line after line of numbers, with the occasional sketch—a flower or two, a few faces, a narrow street.

“I write in code,” she pointed out.

“Code? Why?”

“So no one—”

“So nobody else can read it. Right. Stupid question.”

Two things were clear to me by now. Ninon was as nervous as I was. And I had learned more about her in the last ten minutes than she had revealed up until now. Why the sudden change in her? I decided not to waste time wondering.