The Devil You Know: A Novel (7 page)

I
’d moved from Sharin’ Morningstar Keenan in 1983 up to Nicole Morin in 1985 when the archive door swung open and Angie came belting in. All the overhead fluorescents flickered and shone on at once. She flashed me some jazz hands.

Welcome to the Information Superhighway, she said. I’m setting you up with Nexis access.

I had a vague idea of what that meant.

Necks and asses? I said. Or necks and axes?

Stop your smart-assery and pull up a chair, Angie said.

LexisNexis was thought of as the single best resource for filed news of any kind. That’s most of what I knew about it.

Which table? I said. There were five computers. I pointed between them with an unsure finger.

Doesn’t matter, Angie said. You can get to it off any computer. Here, at home, wherever. That’s why it’s so good. You just need a subscription and a password.

I dragged over my desk chair. It was heavier than I thought and the legs squealed and scraped along the floor.

Like a membership? I said.

Like a club, Angie said. Okay. She reached around to the back of the computer at the next table and switched it on. The Lexis half is legal docs, she said. The Nexis half is hard news. There was a little hum and a quick text scroll across the screen before it settled into start-up mode and the Windows 3.1 logo came up and held. They’ve got sources all over the world, Angie said. I don’t even know how many sources. Tens of thousands. Records going back over a hundred years.

So I can use this at home, I said. In my kitchen? Info-to-go?

Pay-for-play, Angie said. Most subscribers are lawyers, police, media. Big corporations with dollars to spend on getting it right.
The computer shone a welcome screen at us and Angie fumbled around with the mouse till the pointer sat over the LexisNexis icon. She clicked a few times and a new welcome screen appeared.

I got a feeling this winter’s going to be high impact, Angie said. Something’s coming. She wrote out a bunch of numbers and letters on a scrap of paper and handed it to me. There’s your password. You change it to something private. Go ahead, I’m not looking.

She pushed back slightly and let me lean into the blank screen. I went through the motions of password modification and hit Login. The search window opened up black and wide and empty. A bright green cursor blinked at me, waiting.

Okay, Angie said. What do you wanna know?

You want me to ask it a question?

It runs on keywords. Just throw in a few words, like a library search.

Angie Cavallo
, I typed.
Toronto Free Press Date Of Birth.

Good luck, she said. I don’t release that information.

The screen filled and scrolled down fast, a block of green text.

The hell you don’t, I said. What is all this? The list rushed down, screen after screen. What the fuck is going on? I said.

Here, Angie said. Hit some buttons. Hit the F-buttons.

Which one?

I don’t know. Just keep hitting them till something works.

The screen froze.

FEBRUARY 8 1993:
Angie Cavallo: Bell rate hike off the mark

FEBRUARY 3 1993:
Angie Cavallo: These ladies don’t speak for me

FEBRUARY 1 1993:
Angie Cavallo: Job starts up: get back to work

JANUARY 29 1993:
Angie Cavallo: Hard times at Toronto High for teachers’ union

JANUARY 27 1993:
Angie Cavallo: Shame-faced smokers? We’re not gonna take it

JANUARY 25 1993:
Angie Cavallo: Let cops get the job done

JANUARY 21 1993:
Angie Cavallo: Windy City parents strong-arm school

See? Angie said. It’s just the column. Nice try.

I looked at my hands on the keyboard. I had an old desktop in my kitchen that I’d used for school assignments, but no one was online in a big way. The Internet was something you read about, or wrote about, in the newspaper. David talked about bulletin boards sometimes and it’s true that I’d been given an e-mail address at the paper; they even paid for dial-up service so that I could check it from home, but I almost never did. Mostly people used a fax machine.

How do I start over?

Angie leaned over me and pressed F10 down hard. Nothing happened. She hit it staccato about thirty times in a row.

Really? I said. This is how you’re doing research?

Angie leaned harder on the F10. She put some shoulder in it. The screen stayed frozen.

Vaffancul,
she said.

The big door swung open and Vinh walked in.

Look who’s here! I said.

He moved with a hunch to his neck, like someone who spends too much time sitting down. I gave him a big smile and he glanced over one shoulder to see if someone else had walked in right behind him, undetected. Someone I would normally smile at.

What do you know about computers? I said.

I got a thing I forgot to file, Vinh said. He waved a box of film at us, then dropped down into his wheelchair and pushed himself across the room to the stacks. We sat and watched him file the item and spin the chair back toward the door.

Don’t run away, Angie said. You know how to fix this?

What’d you do? Crash? Vinh rolled over slowly, his hands on the push-rims of the chair.

It’s frozen, I said.

Man, you crashed on a search? You probably broke the Internet!

He reached around to the back of the machine and turned it off and then on again. The hum came up, and the pale blue Windows logo. Vinh got up from the wheelchair.

What would you ladies do without me?

Where do I log on again? I said. I pointed at Vinh: Shut up, I’m not asking you.

I’m gonna stay and watch, Vinh said. He came in close behind me, his elbow hard on my shoulder until I shrugged him off. He had one arm on either side of me, fighting for keyboard space.

What’s your password? he said.

Fuck off.

For real, you want to log on or what?

I tried to move my body in such a way that he couldn’t see what I was typing.

E-V-I-E? That’s what you came up with?

I opened the Nexis window. The cursor blinked at me.

What about like this, I said.
Angie Cavallo editor years old
.

Put a search limit on, Vinh said. So she’s the subject, not the author. Right there. See? There.

You still on this? Angie said. Five bucks says you get nothing.

Except when it doesn’t, I said. Except when five bucks says: Here you go, Evie.

The screen expanded to show a small list, still green-on-black:

NEXIS SEARCH: SUBJECT, ANGIE CAVALLO EDITOR YEARS OLD

MAY 31 1992:
Free Press
takes home production awards, writers prize

MAY 5 1992:
Free Press
columnists Cavallo, Perry get nod on award list

Did you win last year? I said. No, wait. Don’t spoil it for me. I hit the arrows on the keyboard until the entry for May 31, 1992, lit up, reversing to show black type on a small, green, highlighted field.

And go, I said.

FREE PRESS
,
MAY 31, 1992

Free Press
staffers went home happy last night after the National Newspaper Awards ceremony, with production teams earning top marks for Special Project and Presentation, and news editor Angie Cavallo walking away with a Gold Award in the Column category. A self-described “lifer,” 55-year-old Cavallo has been working the news beat at the
Free Press
for more than 30 years. This is her seventh NNA win and her twelfth nomination.

I could get used to this, I said.

Fifty-five! Vinh said. Shit, Angie, you’re looking okay. You still get laid? He gestured to his chair with one hand. You want the wheelchair, you go ahead and use it anytime you like.

You want me to get laid in your wheelchair? Angie said. That’s so sweet. Now fuck off back to the newsroom.

The door shut behind him and I started a new search.

Look, Ma, I said. And I’m not even crashing the system.

Of all the guys to help you out, Angie said. That guy’s a pig. I don’t like to give him an inch.

He’s only got an inch, I said. Maybe two.

I typed new parameters into the search window:
Vinh Nguyen public masturbation.

Atta girl, Angie said.

Nothing? I said. Impossible.

I got up and threw myself into the wheelchair to get it rolling.

Okay, Angie said. School’s out. You still need to come down here sometimes. You want images, you want context, this is still your best bet.

Whew, I said. It’s pretty glamorous here in the basement. I pushed back with my feet and the chair took me rocketing backward ten feet or so. I’d hate to give all this up.

D
avid and I came busting down the street toward home. He’d come to pick me up after my day in the archives and now we were waving our arms in the air and arguing. Houses in my part of town are old and most of them were split up into apartments or rooming houses at one time or another. If you take a walk around inside any of them you’ll find they’ve all been altered the same ways: stairwells capped off and ceilings lowered to save on heating costs. So where there were these gorgeous fourteen-foot ceilings, now you’ve got cardboard ceiling tiles at maybe eight feet. Keeps you warm but makes for poor circulation, and you can tell by looking at the size of the icicles hanging from every eave. Broad-based and dripping.

It was the icicles that got us going. We were arguing about the state of the Earth.

It’s not worse, I said. You just don’t remember. When I was nine there was a thaw every year in January and again in February. Nowish, I said. We’d throw our jackets on the stairs and skip rope at recess. There was no ice. We were sweating, I said.

Nah, David said. That was his whole argument. Two weeks ago when we were snowed in you told me
that
was normal for February, he said.

Because it’s
February,
I said.

The gutters were running. I had a pair of red-striped mittens in
one hand and I took off my hat and shoved them inside so I’d have less to carry. We’d been raiding the cash-and-carry line up at Hikers Anonymous, and I had two chocolate-mint PowerBars jammed in my pocket. David had a flask of Wild Turkey and we were doing a fine job taking turns with it. We walked down through the High Park zoo, breaking off chunks of the bars and feeding the animals. It’s true that for a llama, or even a yak, chocolate mint is not as natural a food source as peanut butter flavor might have been. Beggars can’t be choosers.

We took a left at the Queensway and wandered up to where it turns into Queen Street proper. The light was all behind us now. There was a fried chicken shop run by Jamaicans at the bottom of Roncesvalles and a few junk stores that sold antiques but only the chicken place was open. The sun was heading west to the suburbs and beyond. Around the corner from my house there was a parkette with a little bench and an old grocery cart with its wheels stuck in the slushy mud. I pulled it out and told David to hop in.

I’m too heavy for you.

Who you calling a weakling, weakling? I said.

I threw down the hat-and-mitts combo I’d been carrying around and braced myself against the cart handle. David climbed over the bottom end. I had to bear down with all my weight to keep the thing from tipping but once he was in I got him going okay.

We’re on a downslope! I yelled. Jesus, I hope I don’t let go!

Okay, now turn around and go back up, David said. Repeat! Repeat! A hundred push-ups!

I swung hard on the cart handle to turn it around but the weight was too much and it threw the whole thing off-kilter. The cart went over fast. David just lay there on the sidewalk with his eyes closed.

Are you dead? I said. I couldn’t breathe.

You’re laughing! David said. My head is cracked! You cracked my head. Stop laughing. I’m dead now and this is sad.

He got up and I made a big fuss of brushing the old road salt off his peacoat.

Too late, David said. I know what you’re made of. He ran a hand down through my hair and left it there a moment, his fingers resting against my neck and shoulder. I focused on his ear to avoid eye contact. I could see the edge of my house just to the right of him, out of the corner of my eye. There was a row of spindly cedars along the fence line and they shook slightly.

Wait, I said. What’s that.

What?

There’s someone there. I stepped back and away from David. Just there. I pointed to where the fence disappeared into the backyard. Some guy. Like a homeless guy or something. He went in behind the trees there.

That’s wind. David put his hand up and caught a few drops of water coming off the overhead maple. There’s a breeze, he said. See?

T
he temperature dropped overnight. In the morning I stood in the bathroom pushing Tylenol down my throat and swallowing hard. The icicles had regained their shape and hung sharp in front of the window. I left for the newsroom and almost tripped over my hat on the way out. It was lying on the outer doorstep, soaked through and frozen. I remembered throwing them all down in the park, close by, when it was so warm the day before: the hat and the striped mittens. Had I picked them up again? The mittens weren’t there. I put the hat inside on a rad to dry and sank my hands deep into my pockets for the walk to the streetcar.