Loyalties

            Three o’clock on a Friday afternoon was about the best time you could pick to sneak unnoticed out of a midrise apartment building in a working-class suburb. Pretty near perfect, in fact. The factory labourers would be punching out of the afternoon shift, and waiting for the sluggish buses that would haul their well-flogged carcasses home. The final bell of the nearby public schools had another thirty minutes before they rang out in unison, while the housewives and grandparents who collected their own children would have set out so that they’d be there waiting on time. The derelict elements of the population – sadly numerous in such buildings – would be sleeping off the effects of last night’s booze, meth, or prescription meds. Any repairmen or TV and cable people called out to install or fix something would have either come earlier in the morning or else would be arriving later on in the evening when their clients were home. On top of all that, the daytime has a symphony of background sounds, from the subtle and normally unperceived to the migraine-inducing: cars and trucks on the busy arterial roads that surrounded the neighbourhood; subway and LRT trains clattering and screeching on the tracks which run down a cut in the parklands behind the row of slummy apartments.

            If you followed what might seem like common sense and tried to slink out of your apartment at three o’clock in the morning, on the other hand, you would find that at least a couple of your neighbours took note of the fact and had proceeded to make inferences as to what you were up to at such an hour, when all reputable businesses in the area except the gas station and the 24-hour Shoppers’ Drug Mart have locked their doors. The boldest of them – most likely elderly or an immigrant to the City – may even quiz you about things, or at least hide a snicker-provoking insinuation in their greetings the next time you pass each other in the stairwell. Not that they are unaware that you might have been stepping out to grab a phone card, or some medicine to deal with the flu. But I would suggest that those would be seen as less probable explanations than that you were out to obtain medicine not sold by any national chain (not without a physician’s approval, anyway) or for some forbidden liaison, amorous or mercenary. This and much else Varun Seepersaud had learned in two years of dwelling in just such a ‘slumpartment,’ one of countless cookie-cutter examples crowding in a belt around the outer fringes of the 416.           Varun had been born and raised in the kinder, cleaner suburbs of Mississauga, beyond the last stops on the subway line which mark the effective limits of car-less settlement. There, an extended clan of Seepersauds had been established since sometime in the reign of the first Trudeau, the philosopher king-prime minister who threw open the country’s doors to immigrants from ‘non-traditional source countries,’ thereby initiating the use of spices for cooking and the introduction of the mango to grocery stores. The family pattern had been the one that was then almost a guaranteed rule for immigrants: patient, steady labour and the gradual, accumulative acquisition of durable consumer goods, cars, a house and other aspects of bourgeois security which sound awful in post-modernist academic papers, but which seem pretty darn sweet to the children or grandchildren of indentured cane-cutters. Not that Varun Seepersaud did much reflecting on history. He hadn’t left the comfort of an owned solid brick two-storey in a low-crime area out of a desire to pursue some dream of becoming a consumerist facsimile of a tortured fin-de-siècle artist. That might have been the guiding ideal of most of his circle of friends and roommates (often two very different categories), but it was not what motivated him to live downtown, for the several years that he managed it. He’d actually studied poli-sci and business, which wasn’t the most impractical choice he could have made…though to be perfectly honest with himself, he knew by third year that he was just filling time.

            After he’d graduated, he relented and moved to where the living was cheaper. It wasn’t too much of a loss, when he really considered it. Everyone had drifted off into their own weird subcultures or private miseries after graduation, anyhow. Everyone fighting their own battles…times were tough. Last month, he’d sold the used Acura CSX his parents had bought him in undergrad. Sure, it was good on gas and never had any breakdowns, but saving gas and new fan belts or brake shoes doesn’t count for much when your insurance is eight grand a year and you make less than thirty, with rent taking half. Financial questions had been in Varun’s head every waking hour the last few months. He hadn’t mentioned to his parents that he sold the car they’d bought for him as a gift. The last time he visited, in fact, for a family BBQ on the Canada Day long weekend, he’d told everyone he’d parked down some side street he couldn’t remember the name of…it took a couple hours and changes of spotty holiday bus routes to reach back, though face was saved…till the next long weekend.

            Breanne certainly knew. He hadn’t heard a word from her since she’d had to bum a ride to Club Menage two weekends ago. Their schedules didn’t allow for him to ‘pick her up,’ given how long it would take to TTC it across town to reach her before then heading downtown together…and could you even call that ‘picking someone up’? He’d offered to escort her home to make up for things, but it was almost one and the subway stops before two, so each had to rush back their own separate ways, he to the east, she to the west. He was chivalrous enough to text and ask if she’d got home alright. By four a.m., she hadn’t answered, so he texted one of her girlfriends. She let him stew till the afternoon. Yes, they got him safe and sound, was the reply – but it was slyly hinted things had not been pretty. Given that the TTC must know who are the main users of its services on weekend nights, Varun inwardly lamented, why are there only washrooms at the ends of the line?

            Work at his Uncle Mohan’s used car dealership kept him busy a few hours a week, Best Buy a few more, but the first was just family pity and the second was unsteady. Life was week-to-week now; confusing struggle to get back in the groove, if that was even possible. Observing the crushing social isolation of a lot of his peers in uni, he was glad that he and remained tight with Sean, Kamal, and the rest of the gang he’d grown up and gone to elementary and high school with. Otherwise he’d probably still be killing himself to pay for residence, bars, board game cafes and other largely ineffective means of warding off loneliness. They’d help each other out, too, sometimes – real buddies, not just people who got drunk together…though, unfortunately, Varun always found himself on the receiving, not the giving, end these days. In fact, he was heading out right now to see Sean about some little…job, or trade, call it what you want. Sean was good for those things, and he needed to get back a car, any car, if he wanted to keep Breanne – not that she’d ever crass enough to admit it. Two grand, cash in the pocket – more if things went his way. That was more than what he would make in a month schlepping for Uncle Mohan or the folks at Best Buy. Real buddies, cheesy coming-of-age gangster movie style, yes sir. And then there was Paco, who made sure he got sunlight and exercise…was practically his ‘agent’ for meeting chicks – not that he intended to stray from Breanne, of course. Paco was also a dog. Most people thought of him as a ‘pit bull’ but he was an American bully, if you wanted to be precise. Varun remembered, when he first got Paco, about 18 months ago, and he showed up at one of the regular backyard BBQs as Uncle Mohan’s house in Mississauga – the whole clan pretty much lived on the same street. The reaction of people – the ladies, especially – was like, “oh my God, he’s so scary!’ but also, ‘protect me!’ and…they didn’t say this out loud, but he could read it in their body language…’oooh, it must take a beast to control an animal like that!’ Heheh….Roweena had picked the name. Roweena Persadie, dark and skinny and smart and silly. They’d gone all the way from kindergarten through grade 12 together, though now he only saw her at those backyard parties or if  a mutual friend invited both of them to the same event. His dad and her dad were best friends back in the old country, as retold in endless rum-soaked stories he never paid much attention to. He supposed her logic had run something like, ‘he’s a pit bull, and Pitbull is Hispanic, so the dog has to have a Spanish name.’ It seemed a little stupid, but Roweena was cute.

            First he would go see Sean in the west end, then on to Mississauga in the evening – no mean feat on public transit. It was hard to keep a clear head…Did you ever notice how loud a dog’s toenails and panting sound in apartment lobbies? Right as Varun laid hold of the vestibule door – “Hey, Paco! And Varun!” The voice came from the open door of the superintendent’s office. Dammit! She should have been out checking the other properties she managed – since she lived in Varun’s building, its affairs usually got taken care of before noon. Stifling a groan, Varun hailed her back, “Heyyy….!” He preferred not to call her by anything, since to refer to someone who lives in your building and sees you practically every day by their job title would be snobbish, while ‘Mrs. Mavrokordatos’ was unpronounceable and calling a normal, modern day person ‘Athena’ just seemed weird. What was the short form of that? Could you even make one?

            “Gosh, somebody’s getting to be a big boy!” Mrs. Athena Mavrokordatos cooed as she rushed out to pet the lapping, tail-wagging pooch.

            Ugh! Every time…then again, Varun remembered, he had been turned away from enough places where the landlord didn’t want the liability of a ‘banned breed’ (yeah, banned in Québec!) in their building. Mrs. Mavrokordatos, on the other hand, was crazy over Paco: “It’s not the dogs, it’s the owners they oughtta ban!” Of course, a woman who had a pack of breeding Scotch terriers in her employer-supplied housing unit could hardly complain about a bachelor with a single dog.

            “Oh my goodness, if you guys were in – “she always addressed them as if Varun and Paco were equally her tenants – “I’d have got the guy to come in n’ take a look at the pipes – he was in, y’know, patching up the walls in 407; they say nothing’s come in since Sunday but I want the guy to have a look just in case. Don’t wanna have to do it all over again if there’s still a leak in your unit.”

            “Oh, ehhh…” Varun wanted to think of some excuse, but the super was just pretend-annoyed and he was too tired to come up with anything.

            “Now I gotta do another water shut off…who’s a gooh-boy! Who’s a gooh-dog!”

            “I uh, I forgot. Slept in, sorry. Late night,” Varun mumbled, pulling the leash to urge the dog through the vestibule doors but trying to be gentle enough that the dog-loving super would not think badly of him. “Yeah right,” he thought but did not say. “Another leak? More like to check if I am packing up to move out before rent day.” Varun had been over a week late three of the last four months.

            It was a hot summer afternoon, which meant Kennedy Station was humid as the rainforest exhibit at the Science Centre. On the plus side, while the trains belched out their cargo of half-dead workers and students, they’d be practically empty when they shot back westbound. After the smelly human tide had washed past him, Varun entered the car, only to dart out, yanking Paco behind him; “nope, nope, nope!” That car had no AC…near fatal torture, that. He slid into the next one down just as the chimes dinged. Cold and nearly vacant. While the WiFi signal lasted, he alternated between perusing a police foundations textbook that his buddy Joe had given him after the latter made it into the York region PD and the demands of social media. He suspected Joe wanted company on the job. Moreover, he was one of those guys who thinks what works for him must be right for everyone else. Varun had to admit that all that police overtime looked like a fortune next to the grudging sub-minimum payouts Uncle Mohan was giving him. ‘Immigrant family solidarity’ is often a euphemism for cheap labour. Then again, Joe was a beefy 6’3” and one of those Boy Scout types who always plays the good guy and somehow manages not to f**k up their chances at everything. The background checks they did for the police were like something out of 1984. And that was before you even got accepted into training. But, then, what else was he going to do? Law school? Med school? Yeah right, mom and dad.

            The train progressed swiftly and smoothly from green and sunny suburbs, past the scuzzy slum-in-a-drum towers by Vic Park, then underground into the heart of the City. At Bloor-Yonge, the train immediately filled up, as it was now moving outwards vis-à-vis the heart of the City. Varun hated the foetid press of bodies, with the inherent threat of pickpocketing, molesty touching, and, above all, the germs on people – the ‘great unwashed- is not an empty figure of speech. Varun was broad-minded enough to know you couldn’t exactly blame people for travelling in the only way possible for them, but, still….a friend of his got partial kidney failure after contracting gastroenteritis like four or five times in two years, probably spread by homeless people – it was epidemic in Toronto shelters – touching subway poles and stuff. This afternoon, though, Varun didn’t have to worry. Paco was lolling at his feet, tongue-hanging smile on his face. He wouldn’t have known where they were headed, as Varun had always taken the Acura when going out to visit his family. The passengers pouring into the subway car were not so relaxed. In the analysis for seating and standing positions which every seasoned straphanger performs upon entering a car, a ‘vicious dog’ sitting opposite the entrance raised red flags, making them hustle as far down as they could. Those compelled by the press of flesh to be nearest Varun and Paco twisted in their seats, tucked in their extremities and wore fearful discomfort on their faces, “well, I never!” Paco did not notice and Varun pretended not to notice – though he was secretly enjoying himself.

            Varun was not entirely at ease, though. The signal was dead on his phone. Wind Mobile! Sean was supposed to call him…though with all the people around, he would have to be cautious how he responded. If there was business to discuss, no matter whether it was sketch stuff or merely buying some car or computer parts (though now that Varun thought about this…) it was phone calls, a meeting in some ethnic restaurant where no one could overhear them, or else a walk through some innocuous suburb. Sean probably knew the seasons of every flower and tree better than any professor of urban forestry, even if the only Latin he knew was the mottos tattooed on his skin.

            Out of the station, Varun stood in the snaking line at one of the bus stops by the station gates. He didn’t have far to go. Still, he didn’t like the sight of the inky mauve clouds boiling up from off the Lake. He wasn’t carrying an umbrella. Moreover, he was feeling low in the world and didn’t want to show up at Uncle Mohan’s looking like a drowned rat. Nowadays, people driving eight-year-old Civics seemed to his eyes like smug, privileged, planet-ravaging jerks.

            The bus rolled up right as the first peals of thunder echoed down the concrete canyons. As Varun stepped onto the platform and gave Paco a tug, a smoke-coarsened, nasal female voice whined, “Heyyy, you’re naaht gonna let him on heah, are you? He’s got a dawwwg!” A shabby, witch-faced woman with permed, obviously dyed ‘red’ hairm who probably played a lot of Bingo, scowled venomously at him. The driver stared at Varun and Paco. The driver’s natural inclination – Varun gave him the benefit of the doubt – would have been to do nothing, but Ms. Frizz – Varun had troubled picturing a Mr. for her – shuffled up past the yellow line, blocking Varun from paying his fare. “You can’t let him on,” she droned; “he’s got a dawwwg!” he driver waited glumly for the problem to resolve itself.

            Behind him, Varun heard grumbling. Lest the crowd take Ms. Frizz’ side, he tried to state his case: “He’s my pet; he doesn’t bite” – people love dogs, don’t they? – “And I was just on the subway like two minutes ago; nobody had a problem.”

            Ms. Frizz was not placated. “He’s got a dawwwg. It’s rush ‘owah. You can’t bring a dawwwg on the bus at rush ‘owah. Read the siiign.” She gestured to the metal plaque deeper into the bus and presently invisible to all parties concerned, which spells out a bunch of draconian rules which are basically never enforced, unless drivers want to be pricks. Varun knew that the sign did say something about how, during ‘rush hours,’ drivers could, at their discretion, choose to exclude people with pets. But, come on, who followed those things?

            Unfortunately for him, while there might have been one or two people won over by Paco’s cuteness – plus his risqué identity – the bulk of the commuters were interested solely in getting home as quickly as possible and therefore, as such crowds always do, instinctively turned against the party who appeared most bullyable and likely to yield – definitely not the scruffy, prune-like old woman with all the time in the world to wait (retired? Welfare? Varun decided on the most unfavourable reading: that she’d reached retirement age after a life on welfare). Varun was not by nature quarrelsome. He backed down and retreated, leaving Frizz to pucker in triumph as the bus sped away.

            There was no choice but to carry on by foot. Alas, Varun did not know the area and Sean, being Sean, had never texted or email Varun the address. As he hurried along the sidewalk, keeping to the main road, he whipped out his phone. A solitary drop of rain struck his thumb. “Awww, shit!” Varun muttered. While the signal had been dead in the tunnel, Breanne had missed-called him. Twice. That wasn’t like her at all. A few more rain drops pattered down the screen. Paco whimpered – he wasn’t any fonder of foul weather than his owner. “Damn it, come on!” Varun raged at the device as he fumbled with it, the touch screen refusing to obey his will as the water-slick surface blurred the signal from his fingertips. As his finger swiped about the screen like a drunken ice skater, the desktop menu flashed into the ‘incoming call’ display. Frustration slowing his reactions, he accidentally swiped the green. “Noooh!” he groaned. It was Roweena, all sweet-voiced, asking him some perfunctory small talk stuff, which he perfunctorily answers so as to avoid seeming rude. He could hear lots of noise in the background; she must already be at Uncle’s. Indeed, she announced that was the case and that everyone was waiting for him to arrive – ‘everyone,’ of course meaning her. She then asked how the job hunting was going, trying to be as non-demeaning as one can be asking such a question. She received evasive mumbling in reply, exactly as she expected. Fighting to contain her excitement, she told Varun that there was this rich old guy whose cat she’d helped save after the kitty had been bitten by a raccoon – Roweena was a veterinary assistant at a clinic by Church and Wellesley. He was so grateful to Roweena…well, so, on her own initiative, she’d pressed him with a hard luck story about this friend of hers stuck grinding away in retail (she’d actually said her “boyfriend” but she did not tell this to Varun), even though he was full of talent and had a BA in some vaguely useful subject from Ryerson University. There was wisdom in her whinging, for it was known in the clinic that the owner of Sheherezade – the cat she helped save – was a middle-ranking official in some bloated, well-funded government department. This gentleman, cheeks still damp with tears of joy as he embraced his beloved pedigree Laurentian Shorthair, was only too eager to agree to put in a good word for a promising candidate who would also help meet diversity quotas. In other words, she’d got Varun a job. True, the starting wage was only $16 an hour, barely a living wage according to the newspapers. On the other hand, it was a secure job behind a desk; a mythical prize in the current economy. She added that, as a vet’s assistant, she made about the same…

            Why would she mention that? Varun asked himself. He muttered that he was busy at the moment, which was enough for Roweena, who wished him speedily on his way. Varun wouldn’t have gone into the details, anyhow. Roweena taken care of, he called Breanne back. He kept walking, phone against his ear, waiting. He didn’t know what those two missed calls were for, but he was sure, at least, that she was mad. It rang out. He called again. And again. Same result. Okay, real mad, then. He sighed and decided this time to leave a voice mail…hmm…voice mail inbox full. Breanne was not a very organized girl, but it did seem a little too convenient to be a coincidence. He could handle it tonight, he guessed, if he got home early – and if that didn’t look possible, he could find some moment to slink away from the party that evening and sort things out there.

             He was keen to put his phone away because the storm was picking up and he wasn’t entirely sure which way he was supposed to be going. The sky over the City was now one vast milky umbrella, foretelling a long and steady rain. It also made navigation difficult, as he couldn’t discern direction using the now-hidden sun. The neighbourhood was not an old one, by Toronto standards. There were none of the richly carved Gothic Revival homes and repurposed turn-of-the-last-century garment factories that beautify the south and east, nor were there many of the lot-spanning glass-and-steel prisms which embody Fritz Lang’s dystopian vision in the latter day 6ix. The area was, instead, divided by numerous irregular side streets lined with modest brick-and-cladding houses, small but with generous yards, in the cosy but generic architecture of postwar suburbia. Towering birches, blue spruce and bushy Norway and silver maples, lush with the rainy summer, told of the practical policies of City governments past, before localist ideology dictated that fragile red oaks and sugar maples be planted in asphalt fertilized with road salt. Every couple of blocks, a squadron of Brutalist apartment towers glowered among themselves in silent counsel; their origin story was rooted in well-meant, grossly ineffectual social engineering designed to uplift the habitually indigent, threatening poor by planting them in close proximity to the more industrious and ambitious members of their class. The sidewalks were uncannily bare of pedestrians, except for the odd shambling form bundled in a shapeless coat, bowed and hooded against the spitting rain. In the covered entryways of the sombre towers, groups of three to five youths could be glimpsed, furtive and hostile, watching the street. Passing a windowless corner wall, Varun observed that some community organization probably led by naïve students who lived far away, had put up a mural in bold, plastic colours. There was a Captain Planet-esque globe in bright green and blue, a stylized bus and towers, black-and-white portraits of Gandhi, MLK and Mother Teresa (copied off famous press photos of each, which appeared disjointed when put together). Among this ill-proportioned scenery, a suitably multicultural gang of youths cavorted together with no apparent object. The figures were garbed and coloured like a cartoon from the early 90s, with backpacks and shoes, watches etc. that gave the impression of roller blade gear, sans rollers. Above all, drawn to a different scale, the upper torso and head of a hijab’d exaggeratedly Somali-looking young woman floated, her arms folded eyes burning with all the baleful hatred of a coddled grad student. Varun shuddered, knowing this was not a good place to be lost in.

            What was it Sean said? Left at the Coffee time in front of the dental clinic, left again, like you’re going in a spiral…Which Coffee Time? There’s gotta be more than one in the area…he rung Sean’s phone; no answer. “Maaan….for real?” On the bright side, he could see the next intersection up ahead: a glassy new mixed-use midrise complex, a gas station and a strip mall…if anything, there’s be a Shoppers’ or somewhere he could buy an umbrella and a donut-n’-coffee place he could grab a bite and wait out the rain. The beneficent owners of the business strip had installed glass awnings anchored on cathedral-style flying buttresses for a hundred and fifty feet or more. Varun sheltered against the wall beside a huge potted shrub and brushed out the water which had slimed his hair gel. He looked at this phone. A text from Breanne: “dnt act like u dnt understand.” Understand what? He was aware it was something about their recent difficulties, but was this, say, bait for him to apologize or offer to make amends or was she, God forbid, telling him things were done? The wind blew unseasonably cold, as if in concert with his predicament. He reluctantly pulled back his jacket cuss and tapped out the least-potentially-disastrous message he could come up with at the moment, chilly, wet and agitated as he was. “Yes I kno. I’m sorry babe. Nything I can make it up…”

             As he was about to send the message he heard a voice growl something about “the fruits.” It sounded queer and distant under the patter of the rain on the glass canopy and the crunching roll of cars passing in and out of the strip mall parking lot. He noticed it above other distance voices in the lot and from shop entryways only because of the language. “Fruits.” Who says fruits, with an ‘s,’ in any normal conversation? Varun pondered, distracted for a moment from his task. His question was answered a split second thereafter, in a most unexpected and terrifying way, when a wildly bearded and haggard face loomed up, shadowing his phone, which he dropped in fright. “Hmm? So you gonna give ‘em back ta me then?” the glassy-eyed, abominably filthy patriarch standing in front of him asked.

            Varun, true to his Canadian upbringing, responded to being terrorized by the socioeconomically pathetic with obsequious politeness. “I’m, ah, sorry, uh, sir, give what back? I don’t know what you mean…”

            “Is’sat it, mmh? What’s that then, I’m no better n’ some rat ‘er dog ya find on the streets, huh? It’s mine, mine by rights, so sayeth…mmhm..” the gravelly, mucous-clotted voice cracked and sputtered as Varun backed against the wall, unable to escape the streetside prophet’s hypnotic stare. “The fruits ta’ he who sows the seed!” the stranger wailed, with particular emphasis on ‘seed.’ “N’ I sowed the seed, I did, in twice five miles of fertile ground, n’ the golden sun was whirlin’ round!” the old man came close to Varun’s face, whispering almost conspiratorially.

             Varun cringingly attempted to reason like a guilt-ridden prisoner: “I can help, listen, if you need something – “his nervous eyes caught the LCBO logo on the plaza sigh a few metres to his left. “I’ll, uh, get it for you, don’t worry.” Far from being placated, the old man seized him with a nut-brown hand, the shiny, sun-scorched surface of which resembled an exoskeleton which scraped and scratched, rather than touched, the tender skin on the younger man’s collar bone and throat. Varun bruised his shoulders falling back into the wall. He writhed left and right, but despite thrice weekly gym sessions, he was powerless to shake the malodorous wraith who clung tenaciously to him as the sucker-legs of a gypsy moth caterpillar cling to the hair and clothes of an unlucky passer-by on whom they dropped from their tree.

            “Ah…ah-haah!” Varun tried to stifle his cries. Everyone was hiding from the rain; there was no point embarrassing himself.  His assailant, meanwhile, was jabbering in a mixture of King James Bible and lower class Canuck slang. Apparently he mistook Varun for someone who’d stolen or done some other wrong against him. The man’s immediate object seemed to be to poke and dig at Varun’s eyes and mouth with his scabrous claws. Varun attempted to resist, but even though he outweighed his adversary by a good forty pounds, fear, confusion and, above all, cringing disgust rendered him dazed and feeble, like trying to run in a dream. Just as the man’s sodden beard scratched across the chest of Varun’s jacket, his eyes bugged out like a pair of pickled lychees. “Naawaahooh!” he let out the most ghastly primal wail that Varun had ever heard from a two-legged being. Varun’s attacker spun round, flailing his arms in vain grabs for support. Varun, too stunned himself to react, stood back and observed – Paco had seized the hobo about his femur, his jaws clamped like a vice. He did not bark, only let out a seething frothy growl. The man swung and grunted, trying to steady himself to kick the dog with his free, boot-clad foot, but the stout beast, solid as an 85-pound ham, its veins coursing with adrenaline, was far beyond his powers to contend with. When the man tried to bed down to strike the dog with his fists, the dog wrenched the leg it held away off the ground, sending the hobo toppling into the pavement. Now, the old alchy was crying like a whipped puppy, transformed into the picture of sorry helplessness. “D-don’t hurt me, mister, I didn’t mean no nothing’ by it. Oh gosh, oh gosh, I’m sorry, mister, please don’t let him hurt me no more.” Varun, true to his nature, immediately felt sad for the fellow. Life on the street all those years couldn’t have been easy…

            “Calm down, Paco, easy boy, it’s okay now,” Varoon soothed as he picked up his phone and Paco’s leash. He was about to offer the battered hobo help to stand when Paco charged up, snapping at the prostrate man’s throat, causing him to scream in panic. Varun glanced at the man’s hand…he was gripping a glass bottle that had presumably been lying beside the nearby recycling bin. Wretched as his life was, the prospect of having his jugular munched out by an angry pit bull did not seem worth it and he relinquished the bottle. As Varun and Paco left, they could hear the old hobo howling curses addressed to them, passing drivers and whatever old companions he might have seen in his inebriated visions. “Cowards! Tryin’ ta beat up an old man. He sicked his dog on me, didn’t ya see? F***kin’ tryin’ ta kill a defenceless old man. Yer a f***kin’ goof, ya know that?”…

            Varun slopped into the Coffee Time, whose weather-stripped double doors silenced the greybeard loon. He ordered a large of the chain’s nearest facsimile of the Double-Double and sat down at a table looking out on the intersection. He set his phone on the table but wanted to warm up and steady his nerves a bit before calling Sean again. No missed calls or new messages – good, if only because it meant less to think about. The rain was coming down in sheets now and lightning flickered off in the distance. A proper summer thunderstorm was brewing. There would be downed power lines and birds’ nests on the sidewalks tomorrow morning. Maybe even a foolhardy swimmer taken in by the undertow along the lakeshore. If someone had been following Varun all afternoon, they might be forgiven for thinking he seemed even more stressed and uneasy than when he set out on his journey. He paid no attention to Paco, who, this being a working class neighbourhood, didn’t attract the nervous attention he might have at a café downtown. He just stared out the window, contemplating the people in their cars, the ruffled, quivering maples trees and the birds that were probably hunkering among their branches or in hollows – he particularly imagined owls, for some reason – watching the storm as he was. The buzz of his phone vibrating along the table started him out of his meditations. “Hey, Sean!”

            Sean spoke low and excitedly, but said very little, leaving the other party to fill things in. “Yo, what the f***k, mate? Been waitin’ for you…”

            “Yeah, uh, sorry. Listen, I just got attacked by…I’m not kidding…this crazy homeless guy. For real. Just came out of nowhere n’ went all apeshit on me. This is one sketch f***kin’ place you’re living in, bro. On top of that, man, I just don’t know my way around here. Did you even give me the address?”

            Slow, heavy breathing. “…You got ‘em…?”

            “Hmm?…Oh, yeah…yeah. Listen, I’m at the Coffee Time. By the gas station. Remember, I don’t have the car, since last month…”

            “…” Sean mumbled something. His words were unintelligible, but he was plainly displeased. “In the mall with the fish n’ chips place and the Guyanese bakery?”

            “They got a Guyanese bakery in here? I mean, yeah. So, you can, uh, come and pick me up?”

            “…I could have got you some work, you know, but…yeah, yeah.”

            “Okay, I’ll be on the lookout for you.”

            “Driving a green Altima.”

            “Oh? New – “ Sean hung up before Varun could finish.

            Ten minutes later, a dark green Altima with rims and windows tinted to obsidian blackness was idling at the edge of the lot. “You couldn’t park a little closer?” Varun though, annoyed at the prospect of dashing through the rain and curbside pools.

            “In the back,” Sean called out, rolling the driver’s window down when Varun reached. “Christ, you couldn’t walk three blocks? I don’t like having that thing behind me.”

            “But you didn’t give me the add…” Varun gave up before he finished the sentence and it was silence for the rest of the mercifully short ride. Varun couldn’t be sure – after all, it is not easy to keep your bearings riding in a car, in a thunderstorm, in the evening – but Sean appeared to be driving in circles and doubling back on parallel streets. He could barely catch a street sign, what with the water running down the window blurring his view, but he was sure they’d passed certain houses and shops more than once.

            The car crawled down an alleyway long and only a single lane wide, with a high concrete wall on one side and some sort of brown-brick old-fashioned industrial building on the other. The tall grass and springy young saplings growing unkempt at every seam and border of the pavement, and the plethora of weather-greyed cargo pallets and peeling drums lying about suggested it was abandoned or at least neglected by whoever owned it. Down past a bend in the U-shaped lot, in the corner, behind a row of loading bays with filmy windows and padlocked gates, they stopped. “Here,” Sean said curtly as they piled out. He led Varun not into the derelict factory but to a high chain link fence where the factory premises adjoined the backyards of a row of houses, which could barely be seen for the dense weeds and shaggy old trees which spilled over the barrier. “Come on.” Sean had peeled back a door-sized section of chain linking, the edges of which had been clipped by heavy shears. Clever, Varun thought; when the person lets go, it will spring back into place, the cuts hidden among the foliage.

            “Whose place is this?” Varun asked as they walked across the long, uneven lawn towards the back of the house. It was evidently an old building, wide enough to block off the view of the street, mottled brick on both stories with a faded shingle roof and green and white wood trim which looked quaint from afar but which closer inspection revealed to be badly in need of a reno. Sun-bleached Fisher-Price vehicles and deflated basketballs were scattered around about the back porch.

            “I wouldn’t say,” Sean explained, “but it’s okay since he’s not in the country. Some rich Chinese, foreign investor type. They’re not coming into the country for another ninety days and won’t be moving in till probably next year – they’re rebuilding; this one’s gonna get knocked down. Prolly gonna put up one of them ‘monster homes,’ flip it, eh? But that suits us just fine. I know the guy charged with gutting the place…it’s a three-week job, but if he tells ‘em three months, what the hell do they know? Gonna get some use of the place beforehand, y’know? And if anybody goes off ratting to the cops, they’ll be knocking on Mr. Ching Chong’s door in Shanghai or wherever.” Sean burst into menacing laughter.

            “Ha-ha,” Varun attempted to play along, “poor guy won’t know what they’re f***king talking about,” but he sounded so awkward. He was really out of his depth now…

            Sean knocked a rhythm on the sliding door at the rear of the house. They were ushered in by a disreputable-looking tough – a bird of Sean’s flock. The house was empty of the finer touches of domesticity, but the basic structure and surfaces were all intact and there were couches and chairs, either abandoned or brought in after. It was like there was a house party going on. There were people milling about – mostly men, though – bottles and disposable cups of assorted types of booze were all over the place; pungent, but not entirely unwelcome, aromas wafted through the air and a massive sound system pulsed late 90s-early 2000s hip hop and reggaeton through the floorboards. Varun did not inquire what was happening on the upper floors. He did not inquire about anything – indeed, he passed among the bodies and bottles in an almost catatonic state, following Sean past the herculean bouncers, down into the basement.

            “There’s for providing the entertainment,” Sean shoved a wad of bills into Varun’s passively obliging hand. “Er, I should say, half of it. I did you a favour, bet five hundred bucks…on yours, of course. Me, I like to hedge things, put a little on both sides, y’know? Not like I’ve got a dog in the fight,” his teeth gleamed in the dim light. “You can leave or stick around; up to you,” Sean offered, making his way towards a wall of people in the centre of the basement, which had had its wood and drywall-based partitions knocked out. The music was low and indistinct down here, but the crowd was noisier and frantically alert and energetic. Nobody was dancing. “’Course,” Sean shouted over the hubbub, “if you can’t stay, word of honour, you’ll get yer share of the winnings – if you win,” he punched his chest and laughed.

            Varun desired nothing more than to be out of that dungeon; to be at ease among friends and family in gentle, harmless, familiar Mississauga. But he could not tear himself away. He could not resist making his way, zombie-like, into the wall – it was actually a ring – of people. Pushing through till he was pressed against the four-foot-high barrier that edges the circle of bare concrete. A stentorious voice bellowed a ritualized declaration and the circle was empty no more. He knew he would regret what he would see, but he could not turn away. Not when the two squat, muscular dogs, ears pricked, teeth bared, stalked each other around the ring to cheers, jeers and the waving of handfuls of cash. Not when, obeying the instinct bred into them over generations and cultivated by rigorous training, they leapt at each other, determined that only one – if any – would leave. Not when his pet and companion, thrilled by ancestral bloodlust, severed the ear of his russet-coated foe. No, not until the russet-coloured dog, equally matched physically but with keener technique, turned the fight and crippled Paco with bites to his hamstrings, before moving in and disembowelling his weakened opponent. Then and only then did Varun tear his body away – he ran sobbing through the twilight and the freezing downpour – though his mind would not leave. Not that night, or any other night.

            When, heedless of the rain and tree-blasting lightning, Varun entered the subway, he did not go west, to Mississauga, but east, towards downtown. When he sat, alone, at the row of bar-style stools looking onto Yonge Street in the Hero Burger, masticating a wild Alaskan salmon and ciabatta burger like it was so much cud, he did not bother to check the text that Breanne had sent him. She’d grown tired of putting up a pouty front and included a link to an ad for a concert in the beaches they could go to, seeing as he’d be getting a new car on payments when the cheque for his new job came in. Nor did he check the texts from Roweena, with an attached duckface photo, asking where he was and if Paco was handling the GO Train alright. Nor the voicemail when she repeated her enquiries because ‘everybody’ (she) was worried. No; he just stared mindlessly out the window. A hipster student type who’d been one or two behind him in line knelt down on the other side of the floor-to-ceiling windows; knelt on the wet, gum-spoor-dotted sidewalk, no doubt relishing the experience for its gritty authenticity. With a bluff, sanctimonious grin, he handed a burger combo worth a sixth of a min-wage worker’s daily income to a hunched, Aboriginal-looking man squatting cross legged under an umbrella, beside an illegible cardboard sign. He saw the hipster look left and right, swelling with pride at the grandness of his generosity. Above all, he saw the squinting, mouth-breathing wreck of a man take the assemblage of Angus beef and layered toppings firmly in his swollen, black-nailed hands and tear it into two more or less even portions, offering one to the grateful maw of a husky in a Maple Leafs sweater, and smile.

終

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Copyright © 2017 by M.G. Warenycia