Blink & Caution (16 page)

You have never taken a train before. You stammer when the ticket man asks if it’s a round-trip. You hadn’t thought that far. Round-trip? That means you’re coming back, doesn’t it? How could you know that? He asks you again, this tired look on his face, even though he probably slept in a bed last night, which is more than you can say for yourself. He’s bored and annoyed, and the day has only begun. You watch his hands in case there’s a button to buzz the cops. You look around, as if they might be moving in on you right now. But you are alone, except for this freakish girl in a fuzzy blue jacket. Her arms are crossed, as if you’re taking way too much time. Beyond her the vast hollowness of Union Station fills your eyes and ears.

“Kid,” he says.

“One-way!” you say. You yell it, like he’s hard of hearing and you’ve been saying it over and over. One-way. Because no matter what happens, you won’t be coming back to the same place you left behind.

She watches the boy take the roll of bills out of his pocket to pay for his ticket. He’s around her age; a street punk — probably stole the money, she tells herself. Like the meth freak stole hers. What goes around comes around.

She sees how he holds his hand out flat to look at the money, like a child inspecting a caterpillar or some other wonder of the universe. Obviously hasn’t lost enough yet to be so reckless. She can help him with that. That’s just the way it is. It isn’t fair, she tells herself, it just is. And now it’s showtime.

“What’s in Kingston?”

You look up. It’s the girl in the blue jacket. You’ve taken a seat down in the place where the gates are. Your train doesn’t leave for over an hour.

“Are you deaf ?” she says. Then she makes a bunch of crazy movements with her hands as if she’s talking in some kind of freak sign language.

“None of your business,” you say, and her face lights up as if you handed her an engraved invitation to sit and chat.

“So it’s a big secret?” she says. And before you know it, she’s perching beside you, her eyes big as saucers, as Nanny Dee used to say.

You get up to leave, and she stops you — grabs your sleeve. You look down at your arm, and her hand slips away. “Hey, sorry,” she says. “I’m just a little wired. Bad night. Not drugs! I mean just bad. Well, you know.”

She’s looking at you as if she really does know how bad your night was — as if hers was bad in the same way. And her eyes — her eyes are this pale gray like early morning fog with the sun seeping through it.

He who hesitates is lost, Nanny also used to say, and you just hesitated, Blink. You sit down again.

“That’s better,” she says. Then she suddenly moves her face in close to yours, staring seriously into your eyes. “Have you got Tourette’s?”

You shake your head, not knowing what she’s talking about.

“Tourette’s syndrome. All that blinking,” she says, blinking herself. “It could be a symptom, especially in kids our age. So could the facial grimacing.”

“It’s just a tic or something.”

“If you say so. But there was this guy I knew with Tourette’s. It got bad. He’d swear sometimes right out of the blue — right in the middle of class. Very weird.” Her hand comes up, and you pull back as if maybe she’s going to try to touch your eye.

“Do you sniffle much?” she says. “Grunt?” She grunts.

“Jesus, no!” You shake your head.

“Well, good. So maybe this eye thing is just a tic.”

“That’s what I said.”

“Okay, just checking.”

Then she sits back, her hands in her lap as if the medical diagnosis exhausted her.

“What do you want?” you say to her.

She shrugs. “Apart from a house in Beverly Hills? Oh, I don’t know. Some company, I guess. What do
you
want?”

You shrug. She shrugs. It’s a shrug-off. You both sort of smile. But you’re not buying into this con job, although she’s working it hard.

“Bug off,” you say.

“Hey,” she says. “Give me a break. There is no one here to talk to. Just old people.” You look at the lines beginning toform at the gates. “Well, okay, there are
some
young people,” she says, “but it’s Friday, right? They’re all university students skipping classes so they can go home for the weekend and Mommy can do their laundry and cook them a roast-beef supper.”

You look again, and she’s right: old people and students. And some business types and a few moms with kids . . . So, she’s not entirely right.

“You and I,” she says. “We don’t have anyone to do our laundry, do we?” You shake your head. “And when was the last time you had a nice juicy roast-beef dinner?”

Now you’re suspicious. “Are you, like, a social worker?”

She laughs, shakes her head. “Do I look like a social worker?”

“So what are you? Hare Krishna?”

She rolls her eyes. “No turban,” she says. “And, anyway, I look like shit in orange.”

You sigh. This is too high-energy for you. You fold your arms and look straight ahead. She may be pretty, but she’s wacko.

“Ah, come on,” she says, punching you lightly in the arm. “Wakey, wakey.”

“Cut it out,” you say. “And I haven’t got any spare change, so you’re wasting your time.”

“Huh,” she says. Then she sighs. “Okay. Sorry.” But she doesn’t leave. And the thing is you don’t want her to. You can handle this.

“You’re an Aries, right?” she says. “Strengths: independent, optimistic. Weaknesses: moody and short-tempered.”

You turn to stare at her. “I’m a Virgo,” you say.

She shakes her head. “No way,” she says. “I am, like, so good at this.”

“I’m a Virgo,” you say. “September fifteenth.” Somehow it’s important to set her straight.

“Wow!” she says. “Really?”

“Listen —”

“Okay. I hear you. I’m out of here. Have a nice day.” She gets up to leave. There’s a strip of lining hanging down from her jacket like a tail. You want to grab it, pull her back. If she’d just slow down a bit, a little company would be nice.

She walks about five paces away, then she spins around on her feet like an ice-skater. She plants her hands on her hips. “How about breakfast?” she says.

“I already ate.”

“Liar.”

You look down. She’s a bully. You’re too tired for this.

“You are a liar,” she says.

“So I’m a liar — just go away.”

But she won’t. She stabs you in the leg with her finger. “Hey,” she says again, her voice quiet. She’s bending down, her hands on her knees, to look you in the eye. “It’s on me.”

You look up, skeptical.

“Seriously,” she says, patting her pocket. “There’s a Tim Hortons in here somewhere. You know those little potato things? I
love
those. I’m going to order three of them. It’s my treat. How about it?”

You haven’t eaten. You were so worried about getting to the station on time, you got here way too early. You are hungry, and when you look at her, she smiles and doesn’t look half as wacko anymore.

“What’s your name?” she says. “I’m April.”

You swallow, try to think. “Bruce,” you say.

“Come on, Bruce. It’s chow time.”

Next thing you know, you’re in the line at Tim Hortons. You’re in the GO train part of the station now, and it’s crazy busy with commuters arriving in droves like cattle in a cowboy movie. She’s quiet now, and you actually miss her voice.

You glance sideways at her, through your hair. She manages a tired smile. She’s putting on the cheery routine. And for some reason that endears her to you. There’s no way her name is April. But that’s okay. She knows your name isn’t really Bruce; you could tell. So already there’s this thing you’ve got going, even if it’s only a lie.

She’s the only person you’ve really talked to in days, apart from Alyson, and that was on a phone. Oh, and you can pretend all you want, Blink, but in your heart of hearts, you know that Alyson wouldn’t give you the time of day if it weren’t for this thing she wants you to do.

Oh, Blink. How can I ever thank you?
you have imagined her saying to you. You’re out on that manicured lawn by the water. You’re all in white, like she is. She’s holding the collar of your shirt, her face right up next to yours.

“I’m heading to Vancouver,” says April.

“What’s in Vancouver?”

“My folks,” she says. “I’m a ‘runaway,’” She makes little quote marks in the air. “You, too, right?” You nod. “Figured. So is Kingston ‘home’?”

“No.”

Mr. Conversationalist. Oh, give it a try, son. Talk to the girl, why don’t you? She’s buying you breakfast, after all. She’s a bit of a flibbertigibbet, but there’s something about her, isn’t there, lad? Something inside those gray eyes that you recognize. Some kind of need.

“There’s this . . . thing I’m doing for someone,” you say. “I’m kind of, you know, helping someone out?”

“Uh-oh,” she says. “
Helping out,
Bruce?”

“It’s like a favor.”

She takes your arm and leans in close, her body pressing against your side, and whispers in your ear. “You’re not moving drugs, are you?”

You pull your head back as if she’d shouted. “No way.”

“Phew,” she says. “Good one. Keep clear. Believe me. I know.”

You’re almost at the counter now, and you look up at the choices available on the menu board. You don’t want to order too much. By the look of her, she’s been living on the street, just like you. And yet she’s going to Vancouver, which must cost a bundle. So you think, a breakfast sandwich and a coffee.

“Can I take your order?”

The crankcase in the hairnet behind the counter looks borderline hostile. You turn to April, who nods encouragingly while she searches through her pockets. So you give your order and April adds her own, and the crankcase totes it up and tells you the price. By now April is frantic.

“Oh, no,” she says. “My money!”

“What’s wrong?”

“My money’s gone!” She looks back as if she might have dropped it. The people in the line scan the floor, see nothing, and do not look amused. The woman behind the counter is tapping her finger on the stainless-steel counter.

“Come on, sweetheart,” she says.

Now April looks at you, Blink, desperate. “I’m
so
sorry,” she mumbles. “I don’t know what happened.”

“Move it or lose it,” says the suit behind you.

April swears at him, then turns back to you. “Come on,” she says, and grabs you by the sleeve. But you don’t budge.

“It’s okay,” you say, surprised but suddenly elated by this turn of events. Then with something of a flourish, you pull the roll of bills from your pocket — the last of the windfall of Wednesday morning. “I’ll get it,” you say.

But you don’t get it, Blink. You don’t get it at all.

Before you can peel off a ten, April snatches the whole roll from your open palm and takes off.

“Hey!” you shout, too stunned to move.

“You just got took, kiddo,” says the woman behind the counter, as if she sees this kind of thing every day.

You take off after the girl, but the commuter herd keeps pouring off the GO trains, and you lose sight of her in no time. You dodge through the push and hurry, catching electric-blue glimpses but nothing more. It’s as if she’s run into a moving, impenetrable forest. You shout her name that is not her name. You push your way through, against the flow of the crowd, the flow of everything — jostled and shoved, elbowed and insulted.

But it’s no use. Give it up, you poor stupid boyo. She’s gone.

It is high tide. You stop in a place where it is impossible to stand still, and soon enough the crowd carries you back like flotsam — debris from a sinking ship. That is what you are, Blink: a bit of wreckage washed up on the shore.

C
aution sits in the handicapped stall in the women’s room, counting her take. Over three hundred dollars. How far will that get you? Someone enters the restroom, and instinctively Caution climbs up onto the seat, so her feet won’t show. They’re here. They’re looking for her, and it isn’t just Merlin. It’s the others, too.

Someone tries her door. “Oh, sorry,” says the someone, and finds another stall.

Another toilet flushes. Someone washes her hands and leaves. The door opens, wafting in an echoey loudspeaker voice, then shuts.

Where will she go? She hasn’t a clue. Where
can
she go? The answer to that is simpler. She can go up to three hundred and sixty dollars away. Is that far enough?

But to go anywhere, she will need to buy a ticket, which will mean venturing up into the main part of the station, standing in a line, and then standing in another line for a train. A sitting duck.

Something inside her shifts. Maybe it’s because of exhaustion. She didn’t sleep last night, didn’t dare stop moving. Adrenaline got her through the little performance for Bruce, if that was his name. What a sap. She feels this pang of regret. It’s not that he was stupid, just naive. No match for her.

He’d been wary at first, but she’d stripped him of his wariness as easily as she’d stripped him of his cash. His problem was that he had wanted exactly what she was offering — friendship and breakfast. She could see the yearning in him as much for company as for food. She knew the feeling.

She slithers down off her perch like a boneless thing until she is sitting on the toilet again, where she leans forward and rests her head in her arms. She feels empty, drained of every last ounce of spirit.