Julian (17 page)

My old habit of thinking too much was a flaw that complicated simple things, a wind that pushed me off course if I let it. I had humiliated Marika, barged into her life, bullied her into talking about her personal relationships. I had done it to give her a chance, but I hadn’t handled it well and I felt bad about the whole scene. What was I going to do? I owed Curtis an accurate report. I had told Marika I’d hold back the photos for a while. Without them, her parents would have nothing solid to take to the cops.

But the ugly welt I had seen on her arm nagged at me. It was the mark left by someone clamping you in his grip until you did what he wanted. Who did it? Plath, or her father?

At home that night I sat down and wrote:
I followed Marika Rubashov to a movie theatre after her afternoon class. Jason Plath was also in the theatre. It was clear that she didn’t mind him being there
.

I composed the e-mail and sent it to Curtis.

Without the photos.

T
HE FOLLOWING DAY
I was leaving the store after the morning’s work when my Curtis cell rang.

“Want to go to the movies tomorrow?” said the voice on the other end. Suddenly the day brightened.

“Ninon?”

“Surprised?”

“I sure am.”

“Well, what do you say?”

“I say yes. Where do we meet?”

“The park. About one o’clock.”

“Okay.”

“See you.”

And she clicked off.

The next morning at work the hours crawled by. My upcoming date was a glimmer of light that I held in the centre of my mind, pushing away the murky questions
raised by strange men watching my house, mysterious temporary boarders in the downstairs rooms, and the confusion stirred up by Marika, her ex- or maybe not ex-boyfriend, and her parents. The worst part of the whole three-dimensional mess was that there was nothing I knew for certain, and I felt I was stumbling around blindfolded. Not that the part of my life devoted to Ninon was very clear either.

At last the hands on the clock came around to the position I’d been waiting for. After checking my appearance in the dusty mirror above the sink in the store’s cramped bathroom I headed for Grange Park, thoughts of Ninon buzzing like electricity in my veins.

I found her with the two chess players I had talked to weeks before, seated opposite the tall one. She was wearing the same outfit as last time except she’d substituted scuffed, low-cut runners for the sandals. She moved a piece and slapped the plunger on the clock. Her opponent growled.

“Got me again.” He looked up at me. “You know this guy?”

In reply Ninon smiled and stood and threw her arms around my neck. She never stopped surprising me.

“Thanks for the game. See you,” she said to the two guys, who didn’t reply. Hooking her arm in mine, she led me toward Dundas Street.

“So where are we going and what are we about to see?” I asked.

“To the Ryerson University film club’s Friday-afternoon screening. They’re playing two old French films.”

As she spoke she flipped a plasticized card from her pocket.

“See? I’m a member of the film club—for this afternoon anyway,” she said, slipping the card back into her pocket.

But not before I noticed the photo on the card wasn’t Ninon but a grumpy-looking round-faced guy. I didn’t say anything, nor did I point out that I didn’t speak French. The prospect of a few hours with Ninon was enough for me.

“I’ve missed you,” I said.

She took my hand but didn’t reply.

For the second time that week I found myself on a university campus, but Ryerson’s was as different from Marika’s school as it could be. There were no stately stone buildings that seemed imported from an earlier century, although our destination, a big three-storey brick structure on Gould Street beside the student union, looked pretty old. We entered and followed hand-lettered signs to the second floor, where double doors had been thrown open to reveal a large room with ranks of chairs arranged before a screen suspended from the ceiling. Most of the chairs were occupied by students, chatting together or thumbing their cells.

“Just walk straight in like you own the whole building,” Ninon whispered.

Before I could reply she took my arm and directed me forward. “Hi!” she said cheerily to the guy sitting by the doors and checking IDs. She waved her card in his direction as we sailed by, her thumb covering the owner’s image, and we were inside before the doorman could react.

Nice move, I thought.

We found two empty chairs at the back and settled in. I reached over and dragged Ninon’s chair toward me until it touched mine.

“I hope you like the films,” she whispered. “There are two
—Jean de Florette
and
Manon of the Spring
—spring as in water, not the season.”

“I don’t speak French, but I can follow the action.”

“There are subtitles, I think.”

“Oh.”

“The best part is, the stories take place in Provence.”

I laughed. “I should have known.”

The lights dimmed and the screen came to life and the intro credits rolled by to the music of a harmonica. The scenery was beautiful. A grey-white escarpment streaked with pine trees, a stone farmhouse, a stone hovel, stony ground—and cicadas buzzing in the background. Olive groves, vineyards, vegetables—it seemed anything would grow there with enough water. Water was the point of the story, Ninon had told me.

English subtitles began to march across the bottom of the screen like an unstoppable column of soldiers, and I soon tired of switching back and forth between the pictures and the text. The presence of Ninon breathing softly beside me made it hard to concentrate. A young family—parents and a little girl, Manon—moves from the city to a farm. The father is full of dreams and plans, but two locals conspire to make the family fail by blocking up their only source of water—a spring on the nearby mountainside. Crops die.

Sometime during the slow defeat of the family Ninon rested her head on my shoulder, and a bit later I heard her sniffling. Was it the tragic story or seeing her homeland on screen that brought the tears? Or maybe both?

At the end, when her father is dead and her mother sells the farm to the two bad guys, the little girl sees them
unblock the spring. You wonder if she’s old enough to realize what has happened, which sets up for the sequel,
Manon of the Spring
.

The lights came on and the audience scuffled their feet, yawned, rumbled with quiet conversations. People got up to walk around or leave the room in search of refreshments. Ninon sat up and stretched, wiping her eyes with the back of her hand.

“Good,
non
?” she said.

“Yeah, but sad.”

“It’s the Garden of Eden story,” she replied, adding, “People can be mean sometimes.”

She yawned and stretched again. And that was when I noticed a red pinpoint on the underside of her arm, just below the elbow. A needle mark.

My stomach lurched. I stifled a gasp.

“What’s the matter?”

“Nothing.”

I was on the verge of asking her what caused the mark when the room lights dimmed and she settled against my shoulder. The story began to unfold but I was unfocused, taking in nothing, chasing thoughts around the inside of my head. I had seen only one puncture wound on Ninon’s arm. Were there more? Not for the first time I was reminded how little I knew about the girl snuggled up against me, contentedly taking in the second feature. Homeless people sometimes turned to drugs to help numb the pain in their everyday lives. Was Ninon using? Did that explain her pallor and lack of energy at times? Did it account for her unpredictable behaviour?

I couldn’t help myself.

“Ninon,” I whispered to the top of her head as it rested on my shoulder.

“Mmm?”

“What’s that mark on your arm?”

She looked up, her face almost touching mine. “Tell you later,” she whispered.

What could I say? I waited, while Manon took her revenge on the two bad guys and on the townspeople who had kept silent while her family’s dreams were ruined.

Ninon and I emerged from the building into the bright afternoon sunlight and made our way to a sidewalk café just around the corner on Bond Street.

“Hungry?” I asked.

“Not right now. You go ahead if you want,” she answered.

I was too worried to eat.

“Ninon,” I said. “The mark on your arm. Can I ask?”

“Oh, it’s nothing. They took a blood sample.”

“Because …” I let the word hang.

“Because, well, it’s a long story.”

“I’m not in a hurry.”

Ninon sighed. “Well, you don’t know this but I sort of live in a kind of hostel. I can stay there three nights running and then I have to leave. But they let me come back. It’s just a technicality, they said. As long as I don’t stay longer than three nights at a time, I can keep coming there. They’re pretty nice.”

The Guiding Light Mission.

“And the fourth night?” I asked. “Where do you stay?”

“Here and there. Wherever. Anyway, to get back to my needle mark, which you probably think proves I’m a junkie or something—one of the counsellors at the mission is
really nice. Her name’s Odetta. She said I was too pale and rundown all the time, so she talked me into letting the hostel’s doctor—he comes once a week—take a blood sample. Odetta thinks I might be anemic.”

“So a few vitamins and some iron might be all you need.”

“Yup.” She smiled mischievously. “You look relieved.”

I shrugged my shoulders, hoping my guilt didn’t show.

“Don’t worry about me, Julian. I’m fine.”

I cast about for a change in topic. “The movie. Did you recognize the location? I mean, was it filmed near where you grew up?”

“Not real close, no. But the landscape is similar. Seeing the movie reminded me of a million things.” Ninon took a long drink. “Do you ever get lonely?”

“Not when I’m with you. But other times? Yeah, but I’m used to it. When you don’t really belong anywhere you’re never
not
lonely.”

“What about those families you stayed with? Didn’t they make you feel welcome—at least for a while?”

“They did the best they could. But no matter how hard they tried, I was an outsider. They didn’t want me to feel that way, but that was what I was, and I knew it.”

Ninon smiled. “It’s kind of like fate, isn’t it? Us meeting, I mean. Two orphans.”

“Thanks to Van Gogh,” I said.

“Do you miss your parents? I know you never knew them. Do you miss them anyway?”

I thought for a moment, seeking the right words. “No one has ever asked me that before. The simple answer is yes. It’s strange, missing someone you never knew. When I was
little I used to imagine who my parents were, what they looked like, what they did for a living, where we lived. I’d give them names. I pictured three people, maybe with a dog, a springer spaniel, sitting in front of the TV watching a sitcom. My mother would bring snacks from the kitchen and we’d munch away, an imaginary family watching an imaginary family on TV. I got in trouble at school sometimes for not paying attention. But how do you explain when the teacher snaps at you, asking why you’re not following the lesson, that you were off in dreamland having fun with your made-up parents or playing with your imaginary dog? I haven’t daydreamed like that for a long time, though. Too old, I guess.”

“I wish things could be the way they used to be,” Ninon said sadly.

I took her hand. “Let’s be one another’s family.”

“Someday I’m going back, and I want you to come with me.”

“You’ve got a deal,” I replied.

“Promise?”

“Promise.”

We sat silently for a while, watching students go to and fro.

“Well, I guess I’d better be on my way,” she said.

“Will you let me take you home?”

“No, that’s okay. Walk me to the subway?”

“Alright.”

On the way there, we made plans to go back to Centre Island Sunday morning. When we reached the entrance to the subway, Ninon stopped and turned to me.

“Bye,” she said.

I put my arms around her and kissed her softly. She responded by pressing up against me and prolonging the kiss, and I was carried away by the fragrance of her hair and her skin and the taste of her mouth, like falling through clouds.

S
UNDAY WAS OVERCAST
and breezy and showery, but we took the noon ferry to the island anyway, reversing our previous route and beginning at Hanlan’s Point. We walked and talked and sometimes laughed, my arm across Ninon’s shoulders, hers around my waist. The air carried the scent of water and flowers. Ninon seemed to welcome the times when the drizzle strengthened to rain, forcing us to take shelter under a tree or a picnic pavilion roof, so she could rest. The walking seemed to wear her down, but she insisted on continuing. Near the Centre Island wharf we stopped at a café.

“You should use the hand-dryer in the washroom to dry your hair,” I suggested.

Shivering, she replied, “Good idea.”

I got a couple of big mugs of hot chocolate and took them to a table. In a few minutes she returned, sat and
reached for her drink. I noticed the inside of her forearm was clear. The needle mark was gone. I didn’t ask about the blood test. She’d tell me when she wanted to. She took a sip of the chocolate, swallowed and shivered again.

“That’s better,” she said. “I’m glad we came, even though the weather is lousy.”

We watched a family of mallards waddle through the drizzle to the edge of the lake, then plop in and swim through the rain-dimpled water.

On the return ferry we sat inside the cabin. Ninon looked damp and bedraggled, but happy. At the streetcar stop she kissed me goodbye.

“I’ll call you,” she said.

“Soon. Okay?”

She nodded and climbed into the waiting streetcar.

That night I got an e-mail from Curtis, short and formal: “Essential that we meet asap. Tomorrow afternoon is best. I’ll expect you.”

I replied with an affirmative and then sank into a funk. Marika must have gone to her parents after my meeting with her in the Arbor Room and confronted them about hiring a lawyer. I imagined stony words hurled back and forth inside the Rubashov house. Now Curtis would be in trouble with the Rubashovs for breaking a confidence. Marika wasn’t supposed to know anything about the surveillance. All of that meant that I was in trouble with Curtis. The whole Rubashov drama was about to crash down on my head.