Julian (6 page)

I nodded, my mind racing, wondering if I had somehow landed in a spy movie.

After Chang left the apartment I heard his footsteps on the stairs. The sound of the front door closing sent a ripple of anxiety across my brain. I was free; I was alone; I had gotten just what I asked for. I felt like I was sitting on a makeshift raft of logs, floating down a broad river as an unfamiliar landscape slipped by on either side of me. It was exhilarating, and for just a split second it scared the hell out of me.

My apartment was one of three in an east-end house built a long time before I was born. A Scottish woman named Fiona lived in the attic apartment above me with her preschool son. An older man lived on the ground floor and gave mandolin lessons once in a while. His place was on the left when you came in the front door to a hall that extended through to the door into the garage. On the right of the entry, a staircase with a newel post and wooden bannister climbed to the second floor, occupied by my apartment, and further up to Fiona’s place. Behind the staircase, invisible
from the entry door, were two doors leading to separate single rooms.

The house sat on a big corner lot in a residential neighbourhood of mature trees that canopied the streets. The landscaped front yard was enclosed by a low wooden fence with a gate, and guarded by an ancient oak whose roots buckled the sidewalk that bisected the lawn. The house, with its full-width verandah, was the kind of place you might see in an old movie—not at all like the newer suburb far on the western edge of the city where I had lived with the Foster-Boyds.

Mr. Bai had insisted, Chang told me, that I didn’t need to pay rent. I had argued that I did. The whole point of changing my identity was to be independent, and that meant free of obligations, at least as much as possible. But paying rent meant I needed a job, and it wasn’t long before Chang solved that problem for me too, finding me a part-time spot in a nearby convenience store. I worked mornings. Also, I became a sort of unofficial caretaker of the house. I collected the rents, mowed the lawn, trimmed the hedges, and I had a number to call if anything in the way of house maintenance was needed. I knew my rent was very low, but at least I wasn’t a parasite.

I couldn’t leave the Foster-Boyds in the lurch, wondering what had happened to me. I didn’t blame them for deciding to move to Calgary. At least, I tried not to. It was a great chance for them, with Henry’s new position and the opportunities it opened up for the family. The twins were young enough to get used to a different school and new
friends, and they were thrilled by the idea of a bigger house and yard and Henry’s promise to put in a duck pond. I admit I was put out for a while when they made their decision final and told me about it over the kitchen table, explaining that I could come along, that I’d be just as welcome as now. They meant well, but I wasn’t part of the excitement that thrummed like background music in the house. I didn’t expect to be. They didn’t owe me anything. It wasn’t as if I was hoping or expecting that they’d adopt me. Their decision was one more push in the direction I wanted to take anyway.

On the morning I shoved my raft away from the river bank I wrote them a note. Told them I was cutting out for good. Said not to worry, I’d be alright and I’d drop them a line now and then to prove it. Assured them the move to Calgary was not the reason I was leaving. I thanked them for being good to me and included a goodbye to the twins. I couldn’t think of anything to add.

I propped the note on the desk and picked up my backpack. I had stowed my few important belongings in it the night before. I stood in the bedroom doorway and took a look around the room. Down in the kitchen, April and May were chattering away while Beryl tried to hurry them up to get ready for school. I tried to count the number of bedrooms I’d stayed in over my life—the one- or-two-night perches and the places where I was there long enough to fill a dresser drawer or two and hang my shirts in the closet. Rooms in social services facilities with cheap furniture and the smell of cleaning fluids, with bedsheet corners pulled as tight as drumheads; rooms in chain hotels; rooms in real houses where I allowed myself to
hope it’d be a long stay this time, and did my best to adapt to the new fosters.

This time, I told myself, it was I who was making the change. I went downstairs, said goodbye as I did every morning, headed down the street toward my school.

And kept right on going.

T
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was ten minutes’ walk from the house. It was run by a middle-aged man named Gulun Altan and his wife, whose first name I never learned. I figured Bai owned the store, or had a stake in it, or at least something that gave Chang the leverage to get me in. Gulun scowled at me when I showed up at 7:45 the first morning but thawed out a little as he showed me my duties—which included stocking the shelves, sweeping the floor, taking out the garbage to the alley behind the building. I did my best that first day and every day after, and I could tell that both he and Mrs. Altan respected hard work.

Gulun was dark, short, pot-bellied, bug-eyed and as bald as a lacrosse ball. Every day, he wore a white long-sleeved shirt and necktie. Mrs. Altan was also short—and round—and favoured dark shapeless dresses under a smock. The Altans spoke in an accent he told me was Turkish, and
both he and his wife put in long hours, sharing shifts and keeping an eye on the anti-theft mirrors hung in the ceiling corners opposite the counter. They lived in an apartment above the store.

I wasn’t allowed behind the counter, where the cash register sat beside a flat glass case full of lottery tickets. Besides the usual wide range of stuff—from milk and dry goods to newspapers and magazines to greeting cards and a thousand different kinds of sugar drinks—the Altans sold illegal cigarettes and pirated DVD movies under the counter.

A lot of the customers were regulars, picking up necessities or magazines, or a coffee from the self-serve machine beside the pop cooler. One of them was a guy who had some kind of storefront office a few doors down the street. He came in at the same time each morning for a coffee and the newspapers, always wearing either a dark blue suit or a dark grey suit with a clip-on tie, and the same black leather shoes. He had a thin moustache and a goatee.

One morning he called me over from filling the potato chip rack and told me we were out of coffee creamer. I went out back and returned with a carton of powdered creamer sachets and placed it beside the coffee machine.

“You don’t work here afternoons,” he stated, stirring the white powder into his cup with a plastic stick.

“Just mornings.”

“Mmmm.”

Unsure whether the comment applied to the coffee he had just sipped or my answer, I said nothing.

“And you look like a guy who can take care of himself.”

I shrugged.

“Think you might be interested in a little extra work?” he asked.

“I don’t know. Doing what?”

He shot a glance toward Gulun at the cash register.

“This and that,” he replied. “Odd jobs. Sometimes I could do with an extra pair of legs, you know, when I’m tied to my desk at the office.”

“What kind of office?”

“You’re very direct. I like that. And I can tell you’ve got a head on your shoulders. I practice law.”

Somehow, with his scuffed shoes and clip-on tie, he didn’t fit the image of the attorney with a dozen suits in his closet and a Mercedes parked at the curb.

“And you want me to—what?—run errands, stuff like that?”

He nodded. “Something like that. What do you say?”

He was being vague. And he was flattering me. Why not come out with what he had in mind?

“I’ll think about it,” I said.

“I pay cash. Strictly off the books,” he added with a knowing look. “Minimum wage. Name’s Curtis, by the way. And you’re Julian, right?”

I nodded. He gave me a smile that didn’t show in his eyes. “Drop in today when you’re finished here. I think we’ll work well together,” he said, and headed to the front to pay for his coffee and papers.

Some adults think people my age can be easily pushed around. A few encouraging remarks, a couple of compliments—they figure that’s all it takes to get their way. Curtis seemed to be like that. But that was okay with me. Let him think what he wanted to think. Playing hockey
and lacrosse, not to mention a lifetime in social services, had taught me that it’s a big advantage sometimes when people underestimate you.

When I finished up at the store I hung my apron on a peg behind the door to the back room, said goodbye to Mrs. Altan, who didn’t look up from the order sheet she was filling out, and walked down the street to a little Italian café. I asked for a wedge of pizza and carton of milk at the counter and took my lunch to a table at the back. The pizza was lousy and usually barely lukewarm, but it was cheap. As I ate, I thought about my encounter with Curtis. Was it possible that CAS had tracked me down, that he was working for them? The thought made my stomach drop. Unlikely, I reassured myself. Very unlikely. I was being paranoid. But it wasn’t hard for someone like me—on the run, with too many secrets—to be suspicious of just about anyone.

I knew the cops would have been alerted that I had hit the streets. The Foster-Boyds would have contacted CAS as soon as they read my letter, and they would have informed the police and filed a Missing Person report. But the cops had a long list of runaways; everybody knew that. They couldn’t hunt for all of them. And CAS—according to my latest caseworker, who complained about it every time I saw her—was always understaffed. They had enough problems on their hands. Sure, they’d put out the word, ask around, but that and registering me with the police was about all they could do. Besides, I was living far across the city from the Boyds’ place.

I relaxed a bit. I wasn’t interested in working for Curtis, but I figured I’d meet with him just to rule out the chance that he was onto me. If I decided he wasn’t, I’d see what he had in mind. The more I thought about it, the more I reminded myself I could do with the extra money.

A group came through the café door and took a table. A family, it looked like—two adults with a boy and a girl. The girl sat down sideways in her chair, head lowered, her back to her mother, her face half screened by long sand-coloured hair. Making a statement. The boy, around eight or nine, a couple of years younger than the girl, plunked his elbows on the table and gave all his attention to the video game device in his hands.

The dad conferred with the woman, then went to the order window. Mom reached into the pocket of her torn yellow windbreaker and peeled the wrapper off a stick of gum and handed it to the boy. Without taking his eyes off his toy, he stuck the gum in his mouth, folding it double on his tongue before he chewed, and continued with his game, rhythmically thunking the heel of his running shoe against the leg of his chair. The woman gazed vacantly at the far wall, turning a pack of cigarettes end for end, over and over, as if the motion had hypnotized her. Her pale round face looked tired and careworn. The girl worked hard at ignoring her surroundings.

The father slouched over to the table, carrying a tray of food and drinks. He distributed slabs of pizza on paper plates, then set down four cans of pop, each with a straw sticking through the zip tab hole. None of them smiled. Nobody spoke, not even to persuade the girl to eat her pizza before it got cold.

You’d never see this foursome pictured on a billboard in one of those happy-loving-family scenes created to make you feel warm and fuzzy about the product being advertised. They were just ordinary people, not too well off if their clothing was any indication.

And I would have bet the kids, each in their own way, didn’t realize how lucky they were. They took their parents for granted, knowing, without even thinking about it, that their parents would look after them. Their parents would be there in the morning when they got out of bed knuckling the sleep from their eyes. Every day.

I gulped down the rest of my milk, folded up the pizza wrapper and stuffed it into the bin on my way to the door. As I passed the family’s table the father said something to the girl. Her head snapped up. She tried not to, but she laughed. Then all of them started eating.

Curtis’s office was jammed between a Vietnamese manicure salon and a small engine repair shop that had a couple of old gas-powered mowers on display out front. It had once been a store—I could tell from the display shelf in the front window. A sign above the door read “A.T. Curtis & Associates.” I found him at his desk, his jacket hung on the back of the chair, his shirt sleeves rolled up, typing away on a laptop. A cracked plastic radio on the shelf behind him was playing middle-of-the-road music just loud enough to be irritating. The office was rundown-looking, with chipped furniture and bare floors. There was nothing on the walls but a calendar showing the wrong month under a picture of a sailboat—no framed licenses or degrees, which may have answered my doubts about Curtis being a lawyer. He hadn’t said he
was, not strictly speaking. He had said he practiced law.

Curtis looked up when he heard the door close.

“Ah, good. Glad you could make it,” he greeted me, closing the lid of the computer. Then, gesturing, “Take a seat.”

I dragged a wooden chair over to the desk and sat down. Curtis started in right away.

“Know how to use a cellphone camera?”

“I guess I could figure it out if I thought about it long enough.”

He ignored my sarcasm and rummaged in his desk, coming up with a cell. He powered it up and held it so, if I leaned forward, I could see the keypad and screen. “Push this button to bring up the camera function, and this one”—there was an electronic click—“to take the picture. Simple, see? Just be sure whatever you’re taking is in the centre of the screen so the camera knows what to focus on. Think you can do that?”

I felt my jaw tighten. “I guess.”

“Here, try it.”

He handed me the cell. I took a photo of the radio and showed him the image on the screen, then put the cell on the desktop.