Blink & Caution (5 page)

The Suit with the beautiful daughter claims he owns the land. The courts agree. That’s what the injunction is about. QVD is suing the Indians for forty-eight million dollars — whoa! But the Indians aren’t budging. QVD says it will back off if the government gives them the money. Gives who the money?
QVD,
of course. Huh. Anyway, the government’s not talking. Lots of other people are joining the Indians waving signs. They’re bringing in food and medicine for the folks who are occupying the land and protesting the drilling, because they don’t want the uranium that’d be dug up polluting the air and poisoning the rivers.

You come up for air, Blink, and there’s this maggoty-faced manager standing above you saying you’ve been there too long.

“You’re right,” you tell him, and take your coffee and your BlackBerry elsewhere.

It’s hot on Bloor Street. The last of Indian summer. Ha! You never thought about that expression before. What does it mean?

And what time is it, anyway? You flick a button, and Mr. BlackBerry says it’s just after noon.

You head back down into Philosopher’s Walk. There are people lunching there, sitting on the grass, catching a few rays, now that the sun is more or less overhead. You find a place by yourself and check out
CityNews
on the magic machine.

Bang!

There it is: the top story.

Jack Niven, president and CEO of Queon Ventures, did not show up for a top-level governmental meeting at Queen’s Park this morning. Police were called in, and Niven’s room at the Plaza Regent Hotel was found to be the scene of what appeared to be a violent confrontation. The police are keeping tight-lipped, but undisclosed sources at QVD fear that Niven may have been abducted.

Abducted?

The meeting he was to attend was called by the Minister of Aboriginal Affairs, the Honorable Cate McCormack, in an attempt to address the controversy over land claims at Millsap Lake in Eastern Ontario. Currently, QVD is at the center of a six-month-long standoff with more than one First Nations organization as well as local residents and several environmental groups over uranium explorations in the area. . . .

You stop reading. Look up, stunned. Laughter a little way off wakes you up: a couple sitting on the grass, laughing together. There is something odd about them, or about the woman, anyway. She’s maybe thirty, pretty, but acting strangely. Then you realize she’s blind. She’s not wearing dark glasses or carrying a cane or anything like that; you can just tell by the way she holds her head, the way she looks, and the way she doesn’t look. They laugh again. Then she reaches out and touches her friend’s cheek, lets her hand linger there. He’s nothing to look at, you’re thinking. But she doesn’t know that.

Then the BlackBerry buzzes and you look down. It’s Alyson.

There have been a hundred calls and a million e-mails floating into your in-box — his in-box — but this is different.

You push the picture of the green phone.

“Dad? Daddy?”

You swallow hard.

“Are you there?”

Your heart is squirming.

“Mom called me home from school when she heard. No one can reach you, but I’m going to keep trying.”

She stops again. Sniffs. You wonder if she can hear the birdsongs, the muffled traffic, the laughter so close by.

“If someone else is listening, please let me talk to my father. Please!”

You feel like some kind of Peeping Tom looking into the window at a crying girl, and you hate yourself for it, but what can you say?

Dump this damned phone before you do something rash.

“Hello?” says Alyson. “I know there’s someone there. If it’s you, Daddy, and you can’t talk, then just be strong, okay? If it’s someone else . . .”

“They didn’t hurt him.”

There. You’ve done it now, kid.

“Who is this?”

“They didn’t hurt your father.”

“What —?”

You lower your voice, curl in on yourself.

“I was there, okay?” you say in something just above a whisper. “I don’t know what was happening exactly, but your father was . . .” You want to say “in on it,” because that is what you think you saw. But you can’t say that.

“Please, tell me who this is.”

“He’s all right, okay?” Then before she can say another word, you click the red phone because you can’t take it anymore.

You look up, your heart racing, and the blind girl over by the poplar grove is looking at you.

C
aution will be seventeen in four weeks. She’s a Sagittarius — the archer. And she’s a murderer. For that, she can never be forgiven. She leans her head against the window of the streetcar, clanging down Queen Street. She has taken
Anna Karenina
from her Little Mermaid backpack. She tries to read a bit of it every day. It was Spence’s favorite novel. He told her there was a character named Kitty in it. That was all she knew. She took it when she left home. She wanted to know what he found in the story. She has read 153 pages, only 715 to go. But her eyes won’t focus. Her mind won’t sit still.

She holds her right hand open in front of her eyes and looks at the scars there. It’s as if her palm were a pond into which someone threw a hot pebble and waves of its heat have radiated out in circles. Merlin caught her at something. She can’t remember what now — just something — but he was real mad. He held her hand down on the electric burner. Then he held her close and kissed away her tears.

“It was wrong what you did,” he said to her, holding her weeping face in his hands.

And she nodded. She knew. You can’t kill people and expect to get away with it.

She was the one who came up with the name Caution for herself. Caution, as in Slippery When Wet; Caution, as in Harmful If Swallowed; Caution, as in Toxic.

She shops at the grocery store and walks home under the noonday sun, with a plastic bag fit to burst in either hand. She thinks about a ham sandwich with mayo and cheese. She thinks about Oreos. Maybe Merlin will be up, and she’ll make him a sandwich, too. She imagines them at the table with mugs of coffee, eating lunch together. In her little daydream, the table isn’t piled high with dirty plates, unpaid bills, a box of Baggies, and a weigh scale.

She turns up Carlaw and there he is, up the street, looking straight at her, just as if he knew she was coming, as if he was expecting her. Drigo couldn’t have reached him because she has Merlin’s phone. He really is a magician.

She hauls one of her hands up into the air in greeting. It isn’t much of a wave, what with the groceries dragging her down. He doesn’t wave back. His hands are shoved into his pockets. And as she gets closer, she can see he’s angry. He’s in a white T and jeans and bare feet. There’s a tat of an eagle on his right bicep, and even the eagle is glaring at her.

“Hey,” she says.

Then his hand is on her arm, hurting her, dragging her toward their place, while he looks around to make sure no one is watching.

“I can explain,” she says.

“I bet you can,” he says.

He pulls her up the path, opens the front door and shoves her through, buzzes the inner door open and shoves her again, turns down the corridor, and shoves her so hard she almost falls.

“Okay, okay!” she says.

Then he slaps her. Hard.

She shrieks and drops the bag in her right hand to fend off a second blow. His left hand grabs her hand in a steel grip; his right hand cups her chin, lifting her face to his.

She can feel the shape of his open palm burning on her cheek and wonders if it will leave a hand-shaped mark on her face to match the burner-shaped mark on her hand.

Tears fill her eyes.

“Have you got a death wish or something?” he says.

There it is again. Isn’t this what Drigo was saying? All these people that know her better than she knows herself.

“We were out of coffee,” she says.

He squeezes her jaw so tight, she wonders if he might snap it right off. And it would serve her right for talking nonsense. He pushes her up against the wall.

“We may be out of coffee, but you are out of your fucking mind,” he says.

She’d nod if she could.

The door to number four opens. Claudia sticks her head out, her mane all tousled, still in her nightgown.

“So you found her,” she says, leaning against the doorjamb. She doesn’t sound relieved.

Merlin drops his hands. Punishment is a private business for him.

Caution glares past his shoulder at Claudia. “I wasn’t lost,” she says.

Claudia pulls her nightgown close. “Maybe you should look into that,” she says.

“Shut up, Claudia,” says Merlin.

She salutes. “Yes, sir,” she says, and slinks back into her lair.

In the apartment, Caution expects more but gets nothing. It’s a mixed blessing. Sometimes he’s loving once he’s got the rough stuff out of his system. Not that he apologizes. He never apologizes. And the love, she suspects, is because the rough stuff turns him on. Except not this time.

“The money,” he says. And she gives him what’s left, plus the receipt from the grocery store. He stares at it in disbelief.

“It’s all there,” she says. “Count it.”

He throws the cash on the table and walks over to the window. In the glare, he becomes a thick-shouldered silhouette. She sneaks his cell phone out of her jacket pocket and slips it down the side of the couch. It’s foolish of her to think he won’t know she took it, but she has to try. Pretend. Play the game, even though he always wins. She remembers a line from
Anna Karenina.
“She felt clothed in an impenetrable armor of lies.” Caution wishes she were so lucky. Merlin sees through her every time.

“Never take money without asking,” he says, not turning to her.

The statement confuses her. “What do you mean?”

“You know what I mean,” he says.

“I don’t. Didn’t,” she says, squinting at the white wall of light. “Take money from where?”

“Don’t fuck with me, Caution.”

“I didn’t steal any money.”

Now he turns, and though she can’t really see his eyes because she’s squinting so hard into the sun, she knows he’s working himself up for another round of violence.

“The stash is not
our
stash,” he says. “It is
my
stash.”

Oh,
she thinks.
He doesn’t know where I’ve been.
She is momentarily stunned. He’s Merlin — he knows everything. But not this.

“Merlin,” she says. “If there’s money in some stash, I don’t even know about it. Count it, okay? You’ll see.” What she doesn’t say is that if there’s money in a stash, why are they living on Rice Krispies?

He pushes himself away from the window ledge and walks toward her. She braces herself for another blow, but he breezes past her to the far corner of the apartment where the painted pony stands. It’s one of those rides they have outside grocery stores. You put in your quarter and let Junior have a little jiggle. She’s not sure where Merlin got it, but there it is: a blue pony with a yellow mane and tail, a golden saddle, and smiley brown eyes. He cups the pony’s head in both hands and lifts it up and over a foot or so. His biceps bulge from the effort. The wooden floorboards under the horse are darker. His fingers pry one of them up and then his hand reaches in and takes out a cookie tin. He opens it and removes a handful of cash, which he counts.

Caution watches in astonishment.

He puts the top back on the tin and drops it in the cubbyhole, replaces the board, then lifts the painted pony back into place.

“I told you,” she says, knowing it may get her a slap but needing to say something.

He walks to the table and pockets the money left over from the shopping.

“So, are you turning tricks?” he says. “The breakfast special?”

She wishes he were angry now. She wishes that the idea of her walking the street made him furious. Instead, a smile plays across his face. He takes his long hair in his hands and pulls it into a tight ponytail. She hands him an elastic band that is lying on the table. It’s instinct. He takes it and ties his hair with it, doubling the rubber band, tripling it.

“Well?”

She shakes her head. And now she’ll have to tell him. Tell him what she was doing this morning. Where the money came from.

“Huh,” he says, looking her up and down as if she really were a hooker and he was checking out the merchandise. He flicks the edge of her kilt with his finger.

“Maybe you should look into that,” he says. He smirks. Then he gathers up his watch and car keys and looks around for his cell. She joins in the search.

“Oh, here it is,” she says. “Between the cushions.”

He takes it without a word, tucks it into the holder on his belt, and then heads toward the door.

“Where are you going?” she asks.

“Out,” he says.

“Where?”

“OUT,” he says. “Business.”

“When will you be —?”

“When I feel like it,” he says.

He’s paying her back for . . . for what? For not being there? For showing up with groceries?

He’s sitting on the pew by the door, putting on his socks and shoes. He once told her he stole the pew from Saint James Cathedral. Stole it right out from under a pack of parishioners, while they were kneeling to pray. One of his better tricks.