Three Years with the Rat (6 page)

“You don't know about it,” I tell her. “This constant grief.”

“And why exactly don't I know about it?” she asks. She is focused, framed, crystalline. “I know you don't think they're dead. You said as much without ever saying it.”

I open my mouth. I want to say,
There is nothing I can do.
No words come out.

“
I
never saw a wild thing sorry for itself
,” she quotes, from whom I don't know. She puts out a hand and touches my arm. I remember this feeling. “Man up or suck it up, Danger. Commit to something or stop your maudlin pity party. You can make your choice or you can have it taken away from you again.”

She sidles past me and out the men's room door, leaving only a trail of citrus in the air.

I stand there for a minute doing nothing. There is nothing
to
do. Why couldn't I say it aloud? A sweaty man enters and starts to piss in the back urinal. I leave.

I wade back into the Fortress's sea of silhouettes. I can do nothing. Or I can reconstruct. I know where Buddy the rat comes from. The bag of earth and the lab notebook are less clear but I have a few ideas. And the large wooden box is missing only one panel of mirror.

I pick up one bottle of beer and deliver it to Brian at the stage, where he's setting up his drums. Then I explain to Lee that I have to leave. She's not impressed and not surprised.

As I move to the door I search for Nicole, then for the tomboy, but it's impossible to see faces in such a dark space unless they're right next to me.

Back at the house, just before bed, I go to the kitchen. The small wooden box is still on the counter, pushed to the back corner, the slat with the rubberized hole still removed. I try to slide the panel back into place but it won't form a tight seal. When I look closely I can see I broke the grooves when I pried it off with the butter knife. I dig through the apartment until I find the miniature box's extra wall, no hole, no rubber. I slide it into place and complete the wooden cube.

I wake in the night to the sound of broken glass. I turn on every light, move from the bedroom to the living room, hands balled into fists. In the kitchen is the source of the sound: the small box has fallen from the counter to the tiles, coming apart, flattening, and breaking some of the mirrors. And in the wreckage is Buddy, staring up at me as if nothing is out of the ordinary.

This is the only way back for us
, the note said.

I want to be surprised and so I stand and wait. When no shock registers I pick up Buddy under his stomach, not at all the way John taught me to handle the rats. As I'm about to put him into his cage, I feel a lump in one side of Buddy's stomach. I lift him upright and gently probe his belly with my fingertips. There is something hard and square inside the rat. The telemetry device, implanted two years ago by Grace and John.

STEVE AND BRIAN
ended their set at the Fortress with a long, droning note, Brian hammering the kick drum and cymbals every four beats for what felt like two minutes. It was supposed to be a crescendo but instead it felt like a dull wash of sound. I felt my phone vibrate in my pocket but I didn't take it out. John and Lee and I made our way to the edge of the stage and shouted our support to Steve and Brian, who were kneeling to greet friends. John reached up to shake both of their hands and clasp them on their shoulders. I simply smiled and raised my beer bottle in tribute.

Over at the bar Brian laughed and told us, “Couldn't keep my fucken sticks in one piece for the second half of the set. Flubbed the intro to my favourite song. Fuck, I forgot whole verses of lyrics.”

“It was incredible from where we were standing,” Lee told him, one arm around Steve's waist but facing our direction. Steve tried to smile but only the muscles around his mouth moved. I remembered what Grace had called that fake smile:
non-Duchenne.

“Don't mind that gloomy prick,” Brian leaned into me and said. “He's just fighting with the bassist again.”

Fighting.
I put my hand on the pocket of my jeans where I kept my phone.

“That reminds me,” I said, and excused myself to the outside air.

“Why the hell do you even bother with a cell phone if you never pick up?”

“I was watching a set, Trouble. Our friends' show. You know, that you should be at.”

“They're more like your friends than mine, now.”

“Don't be like that, Nicole.”

“Like what, precisely?”

“Nothing. Nothing.”

“So how were Steve and Brian?”

“Well, it wasn't incredible from where I was standing.”

“God, can't you ever be supportive? You're so judgemental. What do you know about music?”

“Why did you ask if you didn't want to know? At least I came to the goddamned show. Where are
you
?”

“Out with my friends.”

“The Cuckoo, then? Great. Awesome. So we're not going to see you?”

“You don't sound like you want to see me, Danger.”

“Look. Why would I be asking if I didn't want to see you? For Christ's sake, Nicole.”

“I'm not being talked to like this.”

Click.

We didn't stick around for the last band. Brian asked if they could store the gear at John's apartment for the night, since their jam space locked up at midnight. John didn't immediately say yes, which surprised me. Once he'd agreed, though, he hoisted a blocky amplifier cabinet and walked straight to his front door, two streets away, without complaint. I have no idea how he got it up the stairs by himself.

I was last into the apartment and it was strangely quiet. The gear was stacked in the living room and John could be heard in the kitchen, getting drinks.

Lee came out of the washroom and said, “Was somebody arguing?”

“I tried to put the gear in the second bedroom,” Steve whispered. “There's a lock on the door.”

“What? Why?” Lee didn't try to speak quietly.

“Who cares?” Brian said. “It's probably nothing.”

Lee looked to me. “What's going on in there, Scruffy?”

Before I could answer she got up from the arm of the sofa chair and went to the second bedroom door. She put her hand out and cranked the knob, which turned but didn't open the door. She fingered the keyhole for the deadbolt with her other hand.

“Lee?” John now stood at the edge of the living room, drinks in each hand. His face was unreadable, a mask.

“What is this?” Lee said.

John slowly put down the glasses. “It's a locked door, Lee. I would ask that you respect it.”

Lee flinched. Steve, Brian, and I didn't move.

“You would ask that we be fine with it,” Lee said.

“Yes,” John told her.

“With a locked door.”

“Yes.”

“A locked door in the home where our friend was last seen before she disappeared. After you just got out of the mental hospital.”

“A month ago,” John said.

He took a step toward Lee. His back was to me, then, and he was obscuring my view of all but Lee's elbows that jutted out as she crossed her arms over her chest.

“John. A locked door. You were the last to see her,” she said.

Only his head moved, a shallow little wobble of thoughts. I was breathing through my mouth and the air was dry and hot. Then his posture relaxed a little.

“Maybe you're right,” John said to Lee. “Maybe it's unreasonable to ask that you be fine with it. But I would ask you to trust me.”

He faced all of us, carefully inspecting our eyes one at a time.

“Or I would ask you to leave,” John said.

He and Lee took a good look at each other, both of them sad but in different ways. Lee leaned over and picked up her jean jacket, folded it into her arms.

“We're worried about you,” she said. “We all are.”

The three friends filed out together. Brian said nothing but ran his hands through Grace's coats piled on the rack. Steve held Lee's hand and mumbled a goodbye to me and a thank you to John. Soon I was the last visitor in the apartment and John still stood proud, staring into his empty living room.

Without looking at me, he asked, “Drink?”

I put on my shoes and told him I would see him soon. He closed the door behind me with the tiniest click, then the heavy crank of a deadbolt.

I was twenty-five minutes late for work the next day but there were prospective clients in the office all morning and my boss was in such a good mood that she didn't give me her usual grief.

Only once did she leave her glass-encased cubicle and it was to say, “Thank you. That's enough.”

At first I had no idea what she was talking about, but then she pointed to my foot. I hadn't realized I'd been humming and tapping one of Steve and Brian's songs.

Nicole made me lunch at her restaurant before her own shift started, couscous, steamed spinach and other vegetables, a rich sauce with garlic, Parmesan on top. She had been dead asleep when I left for work, with her fists curled in and her face slack but pretty. At lunch she worked her hand across the table until I was running my fingertips from her knuckles to her wrist. We didn't say much, only put our pieces together for another day. Every bite tasted meticulous and rich and complex. I ate with my eyes closed. When I was finished, she asked me to help finish her plate. While she washed up for her shift, I smelled traces of her sticky, sweet scent on the back of my hand.

I kissed Nicole goodbye and deliberately held it for too long, until she was laughing and her tongue curled up and our teeth clacked together. She hated this, she loved this, she put her palms on my shoulders and pushed me away. I told her I would make dinner that night and she didn't say anything, only walked backward into the kitchen with a long, genuine smile on her face.
Duchenne.

Work ended late so I drove to Bloor to buy kimchi, Nicole's current favourite. Even after a year of living in the city, I still found it amazing that the street was so divided at Bathurst, with bookstores and record shops and the Fortress to the east and the vibrant Korean neighbourhood, its restaurants and Asian produce and beauty salons, to the west. Night was already casting its deep pinks and blues over everything. I called Steve on the walk back to my car and told him I'd been humming his song. There wasn't a chance to gauge his reaction, though, because I ended the call when I saw John coming toward me on the other side of the street.

Though the daylight had faded, I could see that John was struggling. Eight or ten planks of wood and a heavy, arrowhead shovel were balanced over his arms. With every step the wood slid and jutted at bad angles. To compensate, he shifted his frame and walked with an increasing lope. But it was no use. Eventually he stumbled under his own gait and dropped the supplies. Other pedestrians circled around him while he fought to collect the wood. As he lifted the pile, the shovel fell out of his hands. As he knelt to grasp the tool, the wood slipped away from him again.

Hands empty, he shouted, “Fuck!”

Passersby scattered and fretted.

By this time, I had jaywalked across the street and was shouting to get John's attention. He startled like an animal when I touched his sleeve but regained some composure when he finally recognized me.

“There's a reason it's evolutionarily conserved, you know.” He wouldn't look at me as he spoke. “Anger. Aggression. They're useful. My hands are shaking now, over some inanimate objects, but it's a fair trade-off. Violence is the logical extreme of communication, the only language that people will not ignore, the only language that everyone understands.”

While he rambled I separated the wood into two piles on the gritty sidewalk. I helped him up and together we carried the supplies back to his apartment. My hands ached from the chilly air.

John avoided using the overhead bulbs of the apartment and switched on the table lamps instead, a bath of warm light. He left the wood piled at the door and lowered himself onto the couch like an old man. He jammed his fists into his armpits and rocked a little. His shoulders stretched the shirt but his chest had started to look deflated.

On the coffee table was a piece of paper, printed on which was a grid, the alphabet running across the rows and columns.

“It's called a
tabula recta
,” John said absently.

“What's it for?” I asked.

“Officer 2510 asked me the same thing when she came by to see me today.”

“2510? What did she want?”

“Only to ask me the same questions, as per her usual.” He un-tucked his hands and began to massage his face. “Have I heard from Grace. Do I have any new information. Why am I so convinced she's gone for good. Why am I keeping things from the police.”

John pulled his mouth tight at the corners and rubbed his eyes with his knuckles. I sat down on the other end of the couch. He removed his hands from his face and his eyes flitted without focus.

“And what did you tell her?” I asked.

“Nothing she wanted to hear.” He coughed, closed his eyes, kept them closed. “I'm starting to treat her like my therapist. Told her I'm swallowing anxiolytics by the handful. Told her I wake up in the middle of the night thinking Grace is in the bed, beside me, whispering in my ear. Told her I'm doing a good job of alienating friends and isolating myself.”

I'd had my own conversation with Officer 2510 and could imagine her nonplussed reaction to all of this. Her thick monotone was more memorable to me than her appearance.

I asked, “Did you tell her whether you're alienating friends on purpose or by accident?”

“I didn't, no. Scotch?”

He stood and went to the kitchen. I heard the lovely uncorking sound of the bottle, rocks of ice rolling in glasses, a gentle pour. John returned to the living room and sat at the end of the couch, handing me a small, wide glass of golden liquor. We tapped glasses and drank. The scotch was fairly mellow and as long as I kept my mouth shut, I wasn't revolted by the aftertaste.

“So which is it?” I asked.

John looked at me, unsure.

“Are you alienating us on purpose or by accident?”

“Ah.” He raised his chin a little. “Does it matter?”

“Jesus, would I be asking if it didn't?”

“I suppose it's a little of both,” he said.

I surveyed the living room. Grace's things were still hanging on the walls, still poking out from under the couch, still taking up every bit of psychological space in the room. I felt closed in, trapped.

I asked, “Look, you want me to trust you, right?”

He nodded.

“Then I need you to trust me. At least a little.”

He was about to interrupt but I raised my hand and continued.