Three Years with the Rat (9 page)

Back on the street it felt a little colder. Nicole was standing alone outside the Fortress, a cigarette glowing between her fingers. She looked indifferent to everything, and I wasn't sure why but it was beautiful.

I wrapped her in my arms, careful of the cigarette's burner, and asked, “Can we go home?”

OUTSIDE THE BATHROOM WINDOW
it is a crisp, grey, early October morning.

I take a long look at myself in the mirror above the dirty sink. My new clothes were bought specifically for today, a grey hoodie with a pouch and black sweatpants. They are loose and unflattering but they hide the layer of clothes I wear underneath and will blend perfectly with the university undergraduates. My face is concealed by a coarse and wiry beard that has taken months to grow, at first out of indifference but now deliberately. For flair I've added a baseball cap with a long bill, and the shag of my hair creeps out from underneath it. Altogether it's a nearly perfect disguise.

Except the eyes. I have never considered my eyes to be remarkable but now it feels as if they're a dead giveaway. Not even the new lines in my skin, the subtle crow's feet and sunken-eyed creases of worry, can lessen this. That familial intense green, so similar to Grace's. I scour the bedroom until I find an old, scratched-up pair of sunglasses. I look in the mirror again. With my eyes hidden, the deception is complete.

“O.K.,” I say. “You are the detective. You are the spy.”

There are only a few preparations left. I remove the keys for my car and the apartment from my keychain and put them into my sweatpants pocket. I place the other keys on the lip of the sink. I grab my electric razor, give it a quick flip of the switch, its hum reassuring in my hands, and then bury it in the pouch of my hoodie. From the floor next to my bed, I pick up a portable flash drive.

Back in the kitchen, I take the wire lid off Buddy's cage and scoop him up. If he's aware that today is a special day, he makes no sign of it. His body relaxes in my hand and he sniffs idly toward me as I inspect him. His eyes are black and featureless, only the hint of a bluish line around the eyelid.

“O.K., you turd,” I say. “No funny business today. I need your help.”

I slip him into the pouch of the hoodie, next to the razor and the flash drive. Buddy burrows in.

Next to the cage is John's blue lab notebook. I flip to its front page and run through the instructions one last time:

Key fob then

4-2510- then

2510#- then

2510

At the front door I select my most nondescript shoes from the pile, a pair of slim black runners with dark-grey eyelets, and slide them on. I double-knot the laces so that they won't untie but will still easily slide off and on again.

My landlord is in the garden outside of the apartment when I exit. He is a tiny, soft man and he's worn a white shirt and white trousers to do his gardening. It makes him look filthy to have such pale clothes smeared with dirt.

“Ah, hello,” he says as I'm closing the apartment door.

“Good morning,” I shout with my back to him. I lock the door and, pretending I'm inspecting my shoes, slide the apartment key under the mat. I turn to greet him and he's standing on the patch of dirt where the persimmon tree used to be. I say, “It was a shame to see it go.”

“Eh?” He looks at me strangely.

It was foolish to get into my disguise at the apartment. Now he's seen me dressed this way. I curse myself silently.

“The persimmon tree,” I tell him. “I miss the tree.”

But still his face is cocked, puzzled. “Eh? What tree?”

There is a quiet moment where neither of us breathes. I look to the earth that used to house the tree, and back to his uncomprehending glare.
What tree?
He wipes the dirt into his white pants and looks at me expectantly.

I consider my options, then give him an apologetic smile and walk away. As I approach the car I bury my hands in the pouch of the hoodie, one hand wrapped around the razor and the other stroking Buddy's soft fur.

I park the car just east of Bathurst and College, a busy, anonymous intersection near Shifty's and a city block from my final destination. A credit card bill for parking could later prove I was here, so I pay with coins. The autumn day is too grey for sunglasses and too chilly for only a sweatshirt, but that is my disguise. I keep one hand on Buddy, to warm him and ensure that the little bastard doesn't slip away again.

I walk east. At Spadina Avenue the buildings start to shift from low-rise commercial to ornate university architecture. The only people lingering in this liminal zone are waiting for the soup
kitchen to open. I turn north into a shrubbed alleyway and walk slowly, waiting for my opportunity. The animal facility is just up ahead, an unimposing concrete cube with tiny windows and a security door. This is where Buddy came from.

The hardest part will be the beginning. John seemed to have thought things through, and his key fob was probably in plain sight in their apartment, but I didn't see it and now it's too late. Without the key fob, getting through the inner doors will require following someone in. No one is coming down the alley from either end, yet. I slow myself as naturally as I can, turn around, pretend to have forgotten something outside of the alley. Then I pace back to the entrance of the alleyway, walk to the intersection, turn around, and try again.

This time I'm luckier. A young woman is heading toward me and it takes very little work for me to synchronize my arrival at the entrance with hers. She's probably a graduate student or researcher, fair hair in a ponytail, no make-up or jewellery. As we approach each other she smiles at me confidently. I grin but also don't want to attract too much attention. We converge at the glass door to the facility, which I open for her, and she turns to glance at me as we walk inside.

In the alcove I see the wall-mounted security system and a laminated note above it proclaiming

FACILITY PERSONNEL ONLY

UNAUTHORIZED ENTRY PROHIBITED

IT IS EVERY FACILITY MEMBER'S RESPONSIBILITY

TO PROTECT THIS ENTRANCE

The young woman is looking at me, polite but cautious. She digs in her pocket for her key fob but she's also stalling to size me up.
I need to build trust with her and so I take a calculated risk: I remove my sunglasses and look directly at her.

“Good morning,” I say in as honest a voice as I can muster, considering I'm trying to break into a restricted university building.

She's cute in a very plain way and has the glistening skin of an athlete. She scrutinizes my eyes and then holds her key fob to the security system. Its little light goes green and the latch clicks as it unlocks. I reach out to pull open the second door for her and follow her inside. I try to swallow down my racing heartbeat but my mouth is dry.

We both nod at the tired security guard across the spacious foyer and make our way to the next barrier. My eyes don't linger on the guard and I can only hope that his don't linger on me. The young woman walks in step with me and has her head turned as if she'd like to make small talk. The only sound is the scuffle of our soft shoes against the tiled floor.

We come to the next door and she pauses. It's clear from her lack of action that I'm expected to open this barrier. My abdomen squirms and I'm not sure whether it's my viscera or Buddy spinning around in the pouch of my hoodie.

I look to the twelve-button number pad next to the door, rehearse John's instructions in my head, and hope the code still works. I don't see a hyphen on the number pad so I make a guess.

With my thumb I press
4 2 5 1 0.

The light above the security pad goes green and again I hear the click of a lock.

The young woman exhales just loudly enough to be heard. I open the door for her and do my best to withhold my own sigh of relief. Buddy and I are in.

The men's changing room reminds me of a public pool, stalls and benches and sinks surrounded by concrete walls and blue laminate wood. Instead of chlorine, it smells of disinfectant. Buddy and I are the only ones in the room. I change into a set of blue hospital scrubs and throw my street clothes, electric razor, and shoes into an empty locker. Buddy wanders back and forth on the bench in the changing stall, casually shits on the wood, one dark wet bolus, and looks up at me.

“You must be feeling awfully proud of yourself,” I say to him.

He turns and sniffs at his own shit, his pink nose expanding and contracting.

I grab an extra hospital scrub shirt, stuff Buddy and the flash drive inside, and jam the bundle under my arm. Buddy will be uncomfortable for a minute or two but hopefully he'll be O.K. I slip on a pair of foam shoes near the exit, punch the code
2 5 1 0
and the pound sign on another keypad, and head inside.

The animal facility is a sterile labyrinth. Each hallway seems to stretch and branch endlessly, bland beige and blue tunnels with cold lighting from above. The walls, ceiling, and lights are all segmented and I can't help feeling as if I'm wandering down the inside of a worm. My borrowed shoes are bouncy against the hard floor. The facility is extremely clean and brightly lit but there is a faint trace of something dank in the air. At even intervals are mirrored domes that likely house security cameras, and they make me thankful for my beard and unkempt hair covering my features. I walk past doors with thick panes of glass, turn randomly down hallways, and search for anything that may seem familiar. It has been two years since Grace first showed me this facility.

Eventually I recognize my surroundings. The entire floor may be painted and lit the same way but I have seen this particular configuration of doors and windows, and at the end of the hall is the entrance to Grace and John's supervisor's laboratory. This door
has a five-button security lock, with two numbers sharing each button. I punch in the final code,
2 5 1
0
, and watch the green light illuminate. The door opens inward.

The anteroom is small and cluttered with rolling plastic cabinets, boxes of rubber gloves, and hanging lab coats. Opposite the room's entrance is another door, this one with a viewing portal, and through it I see no researchers, only stacked cages. I unwrap Buddy from the blue shirt and set him on my right shoulder. He paces across the back of my neck to my left shoulder, and scurries back again in agitation when I push through the next door into the pitch-black rat colony. My nostrils are flooded with the smell of piss and my ears are filled with the din of hundreds of animals rattling the wire lids of their cages. On the other side of the colony room is the final door, wedged open with a piece of wood, and a little lacquered sign that says
Procedure Room.
It takes a few hard kicks to get the wedge out and the door closed behind me.

In the centre of the procedure room is what I came for: a dark Plexiglas cube that's big enough to house a rat. In the shelving underneath the cube I find extra Plexiglas panels, one with a rubber-lined hole in it, and messy wires that sprout from an electrical box. The wires feed to a desktop computer that sits on a long stainless steel bench. On the shelf above the bench are stacks of papers as well as some other computer supplies, tools, and jagged pieces of plastic and metal.

I have been in this very room once before, but only now does it occur to me: its layout, contents, and purpose are strikingly similar to those of the second bedroom of John and Grace's apartment. It's hard to pin down, but it concerns me that John's wooden box has no wires, no overt mechanisms. In its elegance it seems more sophisticated, more dangerous than this laboratory setup.

“O.K.,” I say to Buddy. “Enough wasting time. Let's get moving.”

He pays no attention to me. His long whiskers and nose are
twitching furiously and he's dangling off my shoulder to sniff the room. It appears he remembers this place.

I turn on the computer monitor and find an unexpected challenge: the desktop has many log-in names and each is password protected. There are only two names I recognize, John's and Grace's, so I try my sister's log-in first. There is a small “?” icon to the right of the password space and when I press it I'm given a hint that was written by the user.