The Vanishing Track (5 page)

“You checking to see if we're junkies?” one of the young men asked. He was wearing a sweat-stained ball cap on his head covered by a dark brown hoodie.

Juliet crouched down so she was at eye level. “Just here to say hi,” she replied, smiling.

She chatted with the kids for another five or ten minutes, assessing health and addictions, handing out condoms, and making sure they all knew about the safe injection site. By noon she had talked with about thirty people around Oppenheimer, and it was time to head to Priority Legal's office up the street. She walked to the two-story building with no street sign and nothing to indicate the goings-on inside. A man slept in the doorway of the office, his face pressed into his folded arms, his knees drawn up to his chest.

Juliet knelt down in front of him and quietly said, “It's Juliet. I'm a street nurse. I'm just checking to make sure you're okay.”

The man lifted his head from his folded arms and opened his eyes.

“How you doing today?” Juliet asked.

TEN MINUTES LATER
she and Denman Scott were walking west on Cordova.

“I met Ernie,” she said.

“Yeah, he likes our place. Figured out that nobody's going to bug him in front of
our
building.”

“He's
HIV
positive.”

“I know. We've got him into treatment a couple of times. He's also schizophrenic. He's had a tough time remembering when he needs to be at the hospital, or even how to get there.” Denman was wearing his trademark flat cap over his bald head, his tight, compact body in a jean jacket, his hands buried into the pockets of his brown canvas pants. He wore scuffed black Doc Martin dress shoes, and Juliet had to walk fast to keep up with him.

He continued, “We need more community-supported housing. We need about a thousand units of it. Maybe two thousand, to be on the safe side.”

“The City is looking at a few places for that right now.”

“The City,” said Denman, turning to smile at Juliet, “is always
looking
 . . .”

Juliet faced straight ahead as they crossed the street. “Don't get me wrong, Denny, I'm not an apologist for them. Remember, I work for the Health Authority. They do seem to be always
just
looking. There seems to be support from the public, though.”

“Of course the public wants to solve it. That's because the yuppies living at Denman and Davie have junkies in their doorways now too. The problem is much bigger than the Downtown Eastside. It's spilling out of Skid Row and onto people's manicured front lawns. People are afraid to let their kids play in the parks because of needles, or they're worried about drug deals at the local shopping mall. It's the whole Lower Mainland.”

Juliet asked, “Where are we going?”

“Place in Chinatown I know. Good noodles. You up for it?”

“I'm up for anything,” but she didn't sound like it, and Denman looked at her.

They sat at a table near the back of the restaurant, Juliet the only white person in a noisy room filled with the lunchtime crowd. Denman liked the Chinatown atmosphere since it reminded him of his roots. Sipping green tea, they continued their conversation.

“I think the gentrification of the Downtown Eastside is making our problem the region's problem. Look at the number of low-rent hotels that we've lost in the last five years to condo projects. It's like . . .” Denman thought for a moment. “Five hundred rooms and counting. These places were dives. Real rat-infested fire traps, but they beat the street. We need to build three thousand housing units just to meet current demand.”

Their lunches arrived: thick soba noodles and vegetables in a dark, steaming broth. They both picked up their chopsticks.

“That's just current demand,” said Juliet, lifting noodles to her lips.

“The Eastside is going to look like a shorter version of the West End by the time Mayor West's first term is over,” said Denman. “People on the streets, who find a temporary shelter in places like the Gaslight, the American, or the Cobalt hotels, will have nowhere to go. We're in for an epidemic.” Denman pushed some noodles into his mouth and wiped his lips with a paper napkin. He took a sip of tea. “I'm sorry to be ranting at you,” he said, looking down at his food. “It's just that we're getting pretty frustrated right now.”

“It's okay,” Juliet said, touching his hand. He looked up at her. “It's not a rant. It's just the facts.”

“Just the facts,
Ma'am
,” he quipped. He sat back in his chair, tea in hand. “You sounded worried on the phone, Juliet. Surely you didn't want to have lunch just to hear me fume.”

“Does a girl need a reason?”

“No. But my guess is that there is one.”

They finished their lunch and paid on their way out. “Let's walk,” Juliet smiled. “I'll tell you about my . . . thing.”

Chinatown was busy with afternoon shoppers, the sun warming the air so that Juliet took off her sweatshirt.

“What is it that's troubling you?” Denman asked.

“You're going to think I'm being silly. Hysterical.”

“Try me.”

“I really think it's nothing. It seems stupid now.” Denman stopped. They stood on the corner of Keefer and Taylor. The SkyTrain rounded the bend from the Main Street station, groaning toward the Stadium stop, its wheels squealing. Traffic on the Dunsmuir span droned in their ears.

He looked up at the Lucky Strike Hotel.

“You know that one's on the block, too, eh?”

Juliet absently regarded the landmark hotel, its ashen façade dreary in the September sunlight. “Denman, I think something is happening to the people in this neighborhood. I think people are disappearing.”

SEAN LIVINGSTONE WAS VERY HUNGRY
. It was Monday and he was standing in a line waiting to buy lunch with two dollars in his pocket. Lunch at the Carnegie Centre cost a buck seventy-five. Sean had learned that the line wasn't as long as the free soup kitchens around the city, and the food was much better. He was always hungry after eating the free food at the Salvation Army and the other shelters. One of the hookers who worked the low track had told him about the meals at the Carnegie, and he had started eating there when he could panhandle enough coin. The room was warm, and he couldn't escape the body odor rising from the man in front of him. Sean kept blowing his nose on paper napkins, trying to clear the stench. He felt a wave of revulsion surge through his body, and he looked for an exit, thinking that maybe he'd just step out onto the street to get some fresh air. His stomach rumbled and he decided to stick it out in the line.

Sean wondered how long it would take for him to smell as bad as the man standing next to him.

He looked down at his own feet and shuffled.
He
was different. He would never let himself fall
that
far. He was, after all, here by choice. He had a purpose. Sean still wore the brown dress shoes he had donned the day he had walked away from the downtown campus of the
BC
Community College. The shoes were scuffed and the damp had gotten into the seams of the loafers and begun to rot the stitching. One of the soles had pried loose and flapped awkwardly when he walked.

College wasn't a good fit for him, Sean had decided. The professors were complete idiots, who were either bored or incompetent, or both. It was beneath him to be stuck in a classroom with a bunch of retards who could hardly count or read or write, to be lectured at by someone he thought fit the age-old axiom that “those who can't do, teach.”

“I'M SORRY, MR.
Livingstone, would you repeat that?”

Sean sat in the middle of the class. His face was a study in calm control.

“Mr. Livingstone, I asked you to repeat that remark.”

Sean looked around the class and grinned. He caught the eye of a brown-haired girl two seats in front of him. She smiled back.

“Mr. Livingstone . . .”

“I said,” he interrupted loudly, and then lowered his voice, “I said, those who can't
do
, teach.”

A few students snickered behind him. Sean breathed easily.

“What exactly do you mean by that, Mr. Livingstone?” Harry Banks had been at the college for eight years. He had taken early retirement from the provincial civil service where he had worked with small business start-ups, helping them get their feet under them. Now he taught a couple of classes in small business to first-year commerce students at the college.

Sean looked around, an affable smile on his face. “It's not that difficult a concept. People who can't make it in the real world end up in community colleges, teaching.”

“That's an interesting theory, Mr. Livingstone. Thank you for sharing that pearl of wisdom with the class. Now, if we can return our attention to the subject at hand . . .”

“You shouldn't feel insulted, Harry,” Sean cut him off.

“I don't,” said Banks, looking at Sean from beside a computer that was running a PowerPoint presentation on small business start-up cycles.

“Good, because lots of people who have failed in their careers find meaning and value after they get put out to pasture.” There were more snickers in the class, and Sean leaned back, relaxed in his chair.

“I think, Mr. Livingstone, you would do well to focus, for a change, on the lab work. In case it has escaped you, I'm at the head of this classroom, and you are a student.” A red flush began to seep up from under the instructor's shirt collar as he spoke.

“Are you saying that you're better than me?”

“I'm reminding you that I am the one doing the teaching here. You are supposed to be doing the learning. If you don't like or respect those roles, you're welcome to leave.”

“Are you saying that you're better than
us
?” asked Sean, gesturing to the class.

“I'm asking that you respect this classroom and keep your opinions about my credentials to yourself.”

“If you think that somehow you're better than me, than the rest of us, I've got news for you . . .”

Banks interrupted.

“I've got news for
you
, young man,” he said, standing up from his desk. “You are a constant disruption to this class. This isn't high school, Mr. Livingstone. This is college. You may not take it seriously, but I am gathering that your classmates do. If you don't respect me, I really don't care. At least respect them. If you can't, then get out!”

Banks stood with his fist clenched and pressed into the metal desk. Sean looked around the room, his charming smile still on his face. A few students still looked at him, grins on their faces. Others now looked away. The brunette was looking straight ahead. Sean felt fear wash through him and then it was gone.

He stood. A few students shuffled. He walked toward the front of the class, slowly closing the distance between himself and Banks. He still wore his bright smile. He felt nothing at all. He simply walked up to Banks, stopping only a foot in front of the teacher, and regarded him coolly.

“Mr. Livingstone, I suggest you leave and never return here . . .”

Sean smiled broadly, then quickly reached over, yanked the laptop computer from the desk and hurled it across the room. It smashed against the wall of the class next to the door, sending a shower of electronic debris across the first few rows of desks. A girl screamed. Several students gasped and ducked their heads.

Banks took two steps backward, his mouth agape. Sean looked at him coolly, smiling faintly. It only lasted a second but Sean had felt a red hot wave of excitement pass through him.

Sean turned and looked at his fellow students. Like sheep, he thought. Followers. Sean Livingstone was not a follower. He was a leader with big plans. He started to make for the door. A twenty-year-old student who had ducked for cover from the exploding computer rose from his desk and was about to block the door.

“Let him go . . .” Sean heard Banks say. The boy apparently thought to stop him, detain him until the authorities could be summoned. Be a hero. Sean kept walking. When the boy stepped in front of him, Sean drove his head into the boy's nose and heard the snap of cartilage. The boy buckled in front of him. The brunette screamed.

Sean stepped out of the room, blood from the boy's face on his forehead. He walked down the hall, then descended the front steps of the college and into the bright June day. He turned east on Pender Street. It was time to get to work.

Two days later he was arrested. He had been sitting on the steps of the Carnegie Centre when two uniformed police constables approached him.

“We're placing you under arrest. Please come with us,” one of them said, touching his arm. Sean smiled, stood, and winking at one of the vagrants sitting next to him, allowed himself to be accompanied to a police van that rolled to a stop on Hastings Street.

Sean spent a night behind bars, was brought before the magistrate in the morning, assigned a public defender, and ordered to appear before the courts in two weeks' time. Then he made the now-familiar call to his father's office and spoke with the old man's secretary. The next day he was released with a promise to appear. His court date was delayed, and delayed again, and so he spent July living in a backpackers' hostel near Gastown. His money had started to run out in August, and Sean began a closer examination of his purpose by direct immersing himself into the plan. He had a pretty clear idea of what he had to do, but several important questions remained, such as where?

He walked the streets. He stopped for coffee at Macy's on Carrall, his feet aching. He drank two cups of sugary coffee and then hit the streets again, heading east on Pender. He found his way back to the steps of the Carnegie Centre, where he passed the afternoon watching the dope dealers and vagrants and miscreants and then, on a whim, walked west again. He thought he might see if there was a room at the backpackers' hostel again—he'd come into some money that morning—but before he reached it, he stopped dead in his tracks. It was like a lightbulb had gone on. He stood and stared up at a massive building, its familiar name having been bantered about his father's home for what seemed like ages.