Girls Fall Down (34 page)

Alex was concentrating on staying upright in the dizzy flowing air, his body numb and fragile. ‘I guess you should take these, then,' he said, handing over the plastic bag, feeling it as as a loss.

‘Thank you.' Evelyn looked into the bag, sorting through the contents. ‘That looks like the main things he'd want. This was good of you.'

‘I don't know.' He wasn't sure if this made Susie less alone or more so, that she had shared Derek's pain all along with someone
else, with a friend who had never told her. Whether he himself would tell her after all. Or even have the chance. ‘I just, it was just an idea.' He rubbed his eyes again. ‘I had some free time, I guess.'

She reached out and put a gloved hand on his arm, and his nerves startled at the muffled contact.

‘This is where we live, Alex,' she said.

‘I … what?'

Evelyn shrugged, her hand still on his sleeve. ‘This is where we are. Right here. It's a fallen world, or whatever you want to call it. Derek's not exactly wrong. There's dangerous chemicals all over the place. We just … follow it down. Make it what we can. That's all we do.'

She turned away, the plastic bag hooked over one wrist, and slid down the hillside.

In the snow by Holy Trinity Church a man fell to his knees, the Eaton Centre like a cliff of glass behind him, a red flush spreading across his hands. He cried out, an inarticulate noise, stretching his arms towards the men who lived in the square, blankets wrapped over their heads, and one of them stood, staggering towards him. A woman by the icebound fountain saw the falling man, saw him jackknife now and retch on the pavement, and she picked up her briefcase and ran.

A man sat on the steps at Summerhill subway station and wept, not even sure what he was crying about. Because there could be no end to this, not a proper end with catharsis and resolution. Because there would be neither a single evildoer to cast out of the community nor a moment of realization to draw us together, because there would be no shape or sense but only the ongoing confusion of our lives.

Because our bodies are permeable to the world, and ash and poison are moving in the air, and we have to persist like this, in anxiety and longing, on high alert.

Alex hadn't considered how he was going to get home. He felt too awkward to follow Evelyn on the Bayview slope, so he went back to Derek's tent, then skidded down the long valley wall that he and Susie had climbed the first night they came here, towards the brickworks, his camera bag over his shoulder, his trousers covered with snow up to the knees. Pulling himself out of a tangle of dried thistles, he made his way along the path to the side of the abandoned building, where a network of footbridges spanned the frozen wetlands.

He was more tired than he could have imagined possible, his head floating, unable to form coherent plans. His eyes were starting to hurt again. Morning sunlight splitting through heavy cloud to shatter on the snow, drowning him in a milky blur. He thought longingly about the restfulness of the taxi's back seat, the smell of fake leather, and it seemed to him now like the softest, the most comforting place he had ever been.

He'd never find another taxi here. The road was thick with rush-hour traffic, but any taxis passing this way would have fares on board already, no one would cruise around the highway turnoffs looking to pick up stray photographers and flower sellers. He'd have to walk to Castle Frank station.

He went into the old factory hall and sat down for a minute, holding the bag against his chest. He was still feeling somehow deprived of Derek's remnants. Lonely without them, though he had been their custodian for only a few minutes. But he still had the photograph with him, he remembered. That was reassuring but not proper, he would need to return it somehow, and this gave him a small residual duty, a thing to hang on to. There were the pictures he had taken of Susie as well, the ones he had promised were hers. He was accumulating quite an archive in his bag, and none of it should stay with him. He was terribly tired. But he could do this, he could get to the top of the hill, and it would be easier after that.

He wasn't sure what he would do with the photographs. Maybe he would give them to Adrian; one more small thread of knowledge and silence, but Adrian could handle it, he could take them back to Susie and it would be a straightforward thing, not the random complicated mess that it was bound to be if Alex tried.

He stood and came out of the hall, wet and chilled, blinking hard, onto the shoulder, and began to trudge alongside the road, dishevelled and unshaven, clutching his camera bag. West on the first turnoff, and then up the long slope of highway ramp, under the bare trees, orienting himself towards the great viaduct that spanned the Don Valley, its massive black arches, the delicate suicide veil bending harp-like above, shining silver in the breaks of sunlight.

He couldn't shake the feeling that when he reached the top of the hill there would be someone there waiting for him – Adrian or the imaginary doctor, or possibly the police, he didn't know which of these it might be but he felt crazily sure that he was awaited. A wave of vertigo hit him, and he stopped, an acid burn in his throat as if he might need to throw up on the gravel, but it wasn't that bad, the moment passed.

He heard the sound of a motor behind him and moved further over on the shoulder. Somewhere behind the trees a car alarm was going off, a mechanized voice barking commands at no one.
Please step away from the car. Please step away from the car.
He was out of breath, but close to the top of the hill now, and there had to be something conclusive in this. Some expected moment.

He let himself think that it would be Susie who was waiting for him, though he could not imagine a circumstance which would cause that to happen; and it was not a particularly good thought, a fragmentary swirl of shining brown hair and anger and failure, but it pulled him forward with a quick deceptive longing. He came around the last bend, where the ramp curved through the last edge of the woods and opened up to Castle Frank subway station.

Of course there was no one there.
Please step away from the car
, the alarm repeated. It was parked near the subway station, he could see now; someone must have brushed against it on the way in. A woman with a sky-blue helmet rode a bicycle onto the viaduct and spun quickly out of sight. Beyond the traffic island, someone pulled open the door of the station and entered.

He had never really thought there would be anyone there. He had never really supposed there was anyone waiting, but he stood at the edge of the sidewalk for a while, looking across at the subway entrance, and no one came.

He wouldn't see her again, he thought. That was what it meant, that he had looked for her at the top of the hill and she wasn't there. He needed sleep so badly. He would have a bowl of soup, he would lie down and rest, his cat curled up against his legs, and Evelyn would guard the secrets of the world, and that would be enough.

He walked across the traffic island, kicking at the snow, crossed the street and entered the station. Inside, a skinny old man stood in the corner leaning on a cane, wearing a bright red coat and a baseball cap with a large Molson Canadian sticker on the front. At his feet, a mechanical clown doll was jerking and gesticulating frantically, reaching out from a paper bag. Someone had scribbled the word FEAR on the glass wall in black marker.

Maybe she was right that he had chosen to live his life so much alone, though it wasn't a choice he remembered making. But it hadn't saved him anyway from the network of debts and payments. It hadn't saved him at all.

The doll stretched out its palsied arms to Alex as he passed, as if it were begging him for rescue.

He was waiting on the platform at Castle Frank, leaning against the wall, when he saw a young man, mid-twenties maybe, with wire-rimmed glasses and a small goatee, sliding an oversized black marker into the pocket of his army jacket and exchanging a covert glance with the woman beside him. She was tall and athletic-looking, dressed in a short black skirt and rainbow tights, her long hair a bright lime green. She was carrying a canvas backpack, and as she turned to look into the tunnel for the lights of the train, Alex could see the top of a can of spray paint. He smiled to himself. So these were the city's editorialists, then. He was relieved to discover that they were not people he knew, that the FEAR graffiti was in no way connected with him, that there were still a few people around with whom he did not have complicated emotional ties.

He would have liked to signal to them somehow that he was on their side, a supporter of graffiti in general and largely in agreement with their message. But they would never believe that – he was too old, and despite his current slept-in state too respectably dressed,
outside of their world, a stranger. It didn't stop him from privately wishing them luck.

The train pulled into the station, and he and the young people got into different cars. He had managed to walk into the morning rush hour, so there was no chance of a seat, but he was pressed so tightly against the people around him that it seemed almost relaxing, as if he were not wholly responsible for supporting himself, and he closed his eyes, one hand on the metal bar, a dark velvet blanket of exhaustion surrounding him. The train swayed through the tunnel, hot and close and filled with intimate bodily smells; and though he had not really decided if he was going to change at Yonge or stay on until Bathurst, he found himself conveyed almost automatically out with the wave of other passengers at the Yonge/Bloor station, onto the narrow platform of the east-west line. He blinked, his eyes watery, and looked up and down for the sign pointing him towards the southbound train, got onto the escalator, wanting to sit down on the metal steps and see if he could sleep for the few seconds it would take to travel upwards.

The boy with the goatee and the green-haired girl got off at Yonge as well, and moved quickly through the crush onto the north-south level, then up another flight of stairs and through the turnstile into the mall. Near the drugstore, in front of a large poster advertising a new perfume, the girl turned and raised her eyebrows interrogatively. The boy frowned, doubtful, but she nodded her head, and he slid the marker carefully out of his pocket and into her hand, taking up a position in front of her as she slipped the backpack off and he hooked the straps over his own shoulders. Holding the marker below chest level, she began to slash it across the glass case that housed the poster, moving it in quick rapid strokes, but then the boy's hand shot out and grabbed her arm, and she stopped, the marker uncapped in front of her, the letters FE scrawled on the glass, and a security officer a few feet away, his mouth opening in a sharp command.

They both knew what you did in this case. You dropped your eyes, you handed over the marker, the spray can, you apologized, possibly
cried a bit if you were a girl. You went with the officer, you said you'd never do it again. They both knew this. So there was no explaining what the girl did next, why she suddenly grabbed her marker and ran, the boy coming after her, encumbered by the backpack, the security man chasing both of them. She dashed down the stairs to the subway level, and then reached the turnstile, launched over it with her hands and landed in a neat crouch on the other side, a transit guard appearing out of a booth as the security officer fumbled with the gate and shouted, ‘Stop her!' The girl bounced up and ran for the escalator, and the transit guard followed.

‘Sasha, come back!' called the boy, as the girl leapt from the bottom of the escalator into the mass of commuters on the platform, colliding with a man in a duffel coat and then springing away, dodging into the crowd, head down. The man's briefcase crashed to the tiled floor and he made a grab for the girl's arm but she was long gone, her swift feet skating over the fake marble, people pulling away from her on either side. As the boy reached the bottom of the escalator the transit guard overtook him.

She was weaving now, through the mass of bodies, putting them between herself and the guard, her rainbow legs and flying hair darting in and out of sight. The guard moved fast and heavy in a long-legged run, reaching for her as she sped along the edge of the platform. ‘Leave her alone!' shouted someone, while someone else tried to take hold of her arm, and she jumped sideways, away from his hands.

The lights of a train swept through the tunnel in the distance as it swung in towards the station. And the girl was going the wrong way, one long leaping step threw her onto the yellow line, and her own momentum was moving her forward.

‘Jesus, stop, stop!' yelled the transit guard, throwing his hands out towards her. Her lead foot crossed the edge of the platform.

‘Shit, oh shit, oh shit!' cried the guard. She tried to turn but the turn itself threw her off balance, and she was rocking on the edge, her arms spiralling, her green hair fanning out in the wind of the approaching train, and the lights of the train were washing her out in a haze of white, her mouth wide open and soundless. And now
people were running towards her, a dozen people had realized what was happening and broken into action, converging on the girl from every side. A man in a knitted Rasta cap reached her first, jumped out of the crowd, grabbed at her wrist, and pulled.

A man in a dark coat pushed past Alex, holding a package wrapped in brown paper.
He looks like the doctor
, Alex noted, a quick twitch of fear, but the doctor was imaginary, of course. Like most of his problems. His own imagination and his own damn fault.

That man's going to drop the package and poison us all
, he thought. He was thinking this on purpose, wasn't he? A weird variant on punishing himself, and he reached the top of the escalator and walked onto the platform.

The
PA
system was explaining that delays on the Yonge line had now been cleared but that normal service might take some time to resume. Passengers might experience longer than usual waits between trains. All right. He put his head back against the wall, retreating again into something near a dream, only his commuter reflexes still awake, attending for the sound of a train arriving.