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That spring evening I felt like I was dying. The whine of traffic on the new arterial overpass went through the top of my skull like a buzz saw; the drip, drip of the massive, perpetually damp concrete pillars looming over our house was sending me mad. I couldn't go up the Hill any more – the Arterial had seen to that, cut it off from me – all the magic places were flattened, Fairy Rock and all. So I flew onto my bike and down the road: past Breen's store, past the hydro wires and the old train station across the river, past Shanawdithit and the dockyards. Up the hill, around the corner, cliffs surging with secret waterfalls. Glassy green harbour, rimmed on the far side with the ugly waterfront buildings of downtown. I pumped my legs up the hill. Down, swooping precariously. Narrow road, dangerous turns, beware of falling rock. It narrowed here, the cliffs overhung the road. A wharf. The sun was going down behind me; the harbour blue and gold now, the seagulls pink as squat flamingoes in the sky. The air smelled of the sea. Around the corner a postcard view of the Battery across the Narrows, little coloured houses on the rock like a chewed-up quilt. Above them hulked the cracked, shifted plates of rock, domed like a giant's skull: Signal Hill.

I made a rush at the steep slope that took me into Fort Amherst, and the Narrows opened. Past Signal Hill, the ocean spreading wide. I pushed harder, passing the white and yellow and rust-coloured houses of the community, the Southside Hill tawny and wet above, praying that everyone I knew was in at supper and I would have the fort to myself. Breathless now as the road climbed up and up, slipping on gravel, back and forth, I reached the end of the track, the lighthouse, and flung my bike to the ground.

I didn't go to the edge of the lookout to peer at the ocean. I took the series of treacherous concrete staircases twisting down into the remains of the fort. The walls were rough and damp against my palm, corroded and crusted with salt; the steps falling in on themselves. I passed dank rooms smelling of beer, and the first gun turret agape on the ocean, useless gun still pointing out to sea. At the second gun, I clambered over the barrier and out onto the rocks. The Atlantic foamed green and black, I could taste the salt. Birds shrieked. I leapt over crevices where the waves tongued deep and made my way to a lone gun turret, lower down. Here I sat, pulled my knees up under my chin, and let myself look out.

Signal Hill loomed between city and sea. The city looked golden when I squinted at it over my shoulder – a fairy-tale in the setting sun. Looking the other way, I stilled my breath. Three capes pointed out to sea. The most easterly, Cape Spear, was invisible, but I knew it was there, shrouded by a dense wall of fog. Fog rimmed the horizon, grey, and the wind out of it was bone-cold, despite the sun behind me. An iceberg gleamed improbable turquoise in the rays of light, hovering on the verge of the fog, emanating chill. Spring is cold.

I sat there for a long time. A few vessels forged into the harbour; a big Russian tanker emerged from the fog as if from another world. I could see the blank white faces of the sailors on deck. The sun was leaving me, the fog was closing in. Waves cast salt into the air, onto my lips, sucked and crashed at the rocks; dank concrete leached warmth from my coiled body. The fog darkened and swallowed the iceberg. Signal Hill changed from rich apricot to the black-purple of a bruise.

At last I stirred. I was shivering uncontrollably, I realized, in shadow now. I hadn't thought about Patrick, hadn't thought about my body. I hadn't thought much at all. Shaking myself to get the blood flowing, I began to pick my way back up to the fort. The waves boomed behind me, menacing my back; was the tide coming in? I clambered to the base of the lighthouse, dreading going home. At the top the sun's rays still caught me in light. I folded my arms on top of the wall, leaning there, staring out. Someone with a dog was taking the treacherous, cliffy trail that snaked along the side of Signal Hill. It led, via hundreds of steps, to Cabot Tower and a charmless parking lot. My eyes idly followed person and dog.

My father would never walk on these rocks again.

I don't know why I thought of him, at that particular moment. But all the world around me seemed suddenly the poorer for his absence. His feet would never walk again in this world. I didn't think of Mom – it was Dad, his worried face, his tanned hands with his beautiful, long, blunt fingers. His awkwardness, his dark hair, his big feet.

I started crying, couldn't stop. I blew my nose on my jacket sleeve and wiped my eyes with dirty palms; my sleeve grew stiff with snot and my face raw, and still sobs choked up. I started to get frightened that I'd never give over crying. My throat ached up into my ears. I wrapped my arms around my belly, numbed out for a bit, then another wave of grief rose and I was off again. My face was swelling. If I kept this up a crowd of the Fort Amherst kids might come, catch me at this. That thought braced me up, and at last I subsided into hiccoughs.

The person and the dog were no longer anywhere to be seen on that long trail across the water. The sky still bled light, although the sun was down. Freezing except for the heat of my face, I flung my head back and gulped some air. Then from over the crest of Signal Hill, a scattering of ragged black birds came screaming before the wind. They made for me in a gloriously straight line. A murder of crows. It passed over my head, and I gabbled the rhyme my father had taught me, counting every crow we saw.

“One for sorrow, two for joy, three's a girl and four's a boy. Five for silver, six for gold, and seven,” – I was flying through the rhyme to finish before they disappeared behind the Southside Hills – “and seven's a story that's never been told.”

Seven crows exactly. If Dad had been with me, I would've made him spin me a tale right then. Looking out to the darkening sea, alone, I decided that my life lay outside, in the wall of fog, untold. And that this sign was a gift from my dead father.

The year after that I got my motorcycle license, and my first motorcycle. Then when my heart got broken – and it kept getting broken – I knew that soon I'd be
off
this goddamned island. That sort of thing makes you feel better when you're sixteen. I thought it made up for the shame of having raised my face for kisses again, believing
this
guy would know what to do. It was so simple, what I wanted. “Hello, Ruby. Hello, Ruby Jones.”

At home, I had the bones of the earth, the hulking rock and hills and torn-up sky, cliffs and ocean, to batter my grief against. Toronto – how flat it was. Here the buildings were everything, the biggest things there were. Maybe the lake had potential once. Not any more.

CHAPTER 5

It was a challenge to find the address in the maze of the Market. Clyde lived over a meat market (how appropriate) –
Luigi's
– there! I parked and got off the bike, pulling the helmet off my sweaty head. The sidewalk was blocked with people, the street jammed with cars. Coming toward me, weaving his way through the crowds, I glimpsed a man; despite the heat he wore a dark cap and jacket. He was tall and moved with dignity, and over each shoulder flopped the pale corpse of a pig. The two bodies hung, whole but bloodless, their bellies cleanly slit and the guts removed. Their heads lay on his shoulders like sleeping children, white like the faces of saints; he held them almost tenderly. No one he passed gave him a second glance.

I turned away. Above the meat market stared two blank windows, a sheet hung crookedly on the inside of one of them. His bedroom? I started forward across the sidewalk, but a tumult of wings startled me; a black pigeon swooped over my head and landed on the windowsill above Clyde's door. It squatted, fat neck ruffled, beady eyes fixed, one on me, one up to the sky. I stood still. It jerked its head, rose, turned, and shat, then began marching triumphantly up and down the ledge like a miniature member of the Gestapo, keeping one dead eye on me the whole time.

I knew it was going to try and shit on me as I went for the door. I wondered if I could time my approach, rush it so to speak – but the pigeon had the tactically superior position. Defeated, I put my helmet back on my head; it could shit on that if it wanted.

I rang the doorbell, grasped the handle and tried the door. On the Southside we never locked anything, or even used the front door; we'd just walk around to the back and go on in, not even knocking. I stood on tiptoe to peer through the wired glass of the door, and could make out a dingy ascending staircase. What the hell was taking him so long? I rang the bell again, waiting for the wet plop of pigeon shit on my helmet, waiting for Clyde to come. Waiting. I hate waiting. What if the doorbell didn't work?

I rang it a third time and gave the door a couple of kicks.

At once his long legs came into view on the stairs, and I was instantly embarrassed for betraying my impatience. All of that disappeared when he opened the door. I gazed up at him, and gazed some more, breath suddenly shallow, stomach churning, nipples trying to poke holes through my leather jacket.

“Can I help you?” He looked blankly at this apparently mute person in a helmet on his doorstep.

“It's me.” Braving the pigeon aloft, I took off my helmet and shook out my hair.

He smiled. My knees went weak. “You came,” he whispered, then grabbed my hand and led me up. The stairwell smelled like the meat market, but from his open door drifted the scent of cheap incense. I stepped inside, suddenly shy. It was a real boy's apartment. An old sofa, shelves full of books and CDs, a laptop with speakers and an i-Pod, his high-tech bicycle against a wall. Over the sofa, a largish black-and-white print of himself riding through water, spray like wings. This always blows me away, the frank self-adoration of these boys. It charms me.

He strode ahead into a windowless kitchen. “Want some water?”

“Sure.” I shrugged out of my jacket and followed him.

“Didn't know you had a motorcycle,” he said, holding out a glass filled from the sink. I took the water but kept my leather jacket hanging shield-like between us, resting the helmet on my hip like a hollow baby.

“Well – ” I gestured with the glass in an abbreviated toast, “I do.” Brilliant, Ruby.

He looked amused. It occurred to me to wonder what a bike courier would think of bikers. I gulped down some water. He was looking down at me, but I didn't want to meet his eyes so I looked around the room, which contained – besides the sink – a stove, a fridge, and a doorway into an even tinier room with a mattress on the floor. So the bedroom was in the back. I let the helmet and jacket drop to the floor and turned to face him. I opened my mouth to say something, I don't know what, for in that second Clyde lunged toward me and was kissing me; my water splashed over us both in blessed coolness and the glass slipped to the floor. Somehow he hooked his arm between my legs and with surprising strength lifted me into the air. I twined around him. He carried me into the bedroom. I was utterly happy.

He actually knew a woman's body. He used fingers, tongue, wrapped his arms and legs around me, pushed me back and looked at me, laughed and, gently, bit. And he talked. I'd never been with anyone before who talked about what we were doing, what he felt (although I did go out with one guy who babbled nervously about his job whenever I went down on him). It scared me, and turned me on violently, and scared me again. When he came, though, I felt disappointed. He went interior, like I wasn't there.

Afterwards I felt sleepy. He kissed me, and I was happy again. Up close his Prince Charming looks collapsed into themselves; he looked like a happy tousled boy. I ran my hand through his hair and tugged on it hard, then ran my foot along his leg.

“Look at the size of the feet on you,” I said. My accent came out strongly, surprising me. Tenderness did that to me, and rage: my heart-language. He registered the change, and we both laughed. This is okay, I thought. I can do this. I knew why Judith had warned me about him, but in fact, I told myself, this is
good
for me; I need to learn to live in the
present.
It wasn't like I was in
love
with the guy.

“I have to go,” he said. I kept the smile on my face, but my heart tightened. I made as if to sit up. He gently pushed me down. “Stay, have a nap if you like.”

“No, no, it's okay. I'll get on home.” I wasn't sure I wanted to be here alone.

“Okay. I have to run now, though, I'm late. Let yourself out, the door locks automatically.”

Of course it does.

He kissed me again, and I tried not to cling to him. He pulled on his clothes. Another caress and he was gone. I heard him banging the bike out the door, down the stairs at a run – the door slamming shut behind him.

I was scared I wouldn't see him again; I'd been too hung-up to ask him. Come to think of it, I was a bit
mad
. He'd squeezed me into his busy schedule. Jesus! How humiliating. I started to work up a good rage, and then sleepiness swept over me again. What a day… maybe I would nap here, take him up on that offer. Just for a while, twenty minutes, tops.