“Did you tell Kate?” I’m not sure why I ask the question, but for some reason I feel like she deserves to know as much as I do.
“She’ll find out soon enough. Maybe you should tell her,” he says, kissing me once more. Then he’s up, hopping on the spot, and in a bogus cheerful voice he says, “You’ll be happier when I’m gone.” He jogs up the beach and when he turns back he has this look on his face — this shiny, phony hopefulness that makes me feel sick to my stomach. “You look happier already,” he shouts, rubbing his hand under his nose. He’s close enough to see I’m crying. “Look at you.” He stands there for a second, the smile gone, his hands back in his pockets, and I know I’ll probably never see him again. I watch him disappear into the darkness and then I turn to watch the waves roll onto the shore.
I CROSS THE TRAIN TRACKS and walk up 15th Street toward Marine Drive. A grease trap behind one of the restaurants is broken and a large, rank puddle has pooled in the middle of the parking lot. The smell is nauseating, like bile spilling into the air around me. I try not to breathe, walking a little faster, but I stop when I catch a glimpse of something moving. Next to a silver car a black dog bows, lapping at the reeking pool. The smell gets in my nose and I gag involuntarily. The dog looks up and freezes. I can see the white breath around his wet muzzle, and his dark eyes follow me as I back away slowly, breathing into my hands. When I’m nearly out of sight around the corner, the dog goes back to licking.
Down the street, the neon-lit steeple of the West Vancouver United Church glows and a message on the board in front says GOD INSPIRES YOU. I walk up the steps to see if the door is open and I’m surprised to find it is. As I walk down the middle aisle, I keep thinking I hear an organ — not really music, but one long note — and whenever I shake my head the sound disappears and fills with a silence so deep it’s noisy. I walk around the large room, touching things. Nothing is old or creaky or white like I imagined. The floors are green carpet and the pews are caramel-coloured. The bibles look pretty new and I finger their crisp pages. There are no confession booths like I thought there would be. It’s nothing like Kate’s winter church, not even close. I hear a noise behind a curtain at the back of the room and walk quickly out the door. Out front I sit on the stairs and scroll through my cellphone. There’s sand in my shoes from the beach and I tilt my feet, letting it collect near my heels. The screen glows softly in my hand and I wait only a moment before dialing.
PAUL’S CAR HUMS UP the winding roads of the West Vancouver hills, past homes hidden behind tall hedges and big iron gates, past the last few kids in costumes who should be too old for trick-or-treating. “It’s a strange night,” he says, driving by a zombie and a pink-wigged superhero. I rest my cheek against the warm leather seat and turn on the radio. I ask Paul if it’s okay and he smiles at me. When I got into the car he asked me if I wanted him to take me home, but I told him I wasn’t ready to go to my house yet. I made up some bullshit excuse about my parents fighting and my sister having a crazy boyfriend who made me afraid to sleep at night, and by the look on Paul’s face I knew I’d gone too far, but I’m tired enough I don’t care.
“Can I ask you something?” Paul says, looking over at me. He drums his thumbs on the steering wheel. “Why did you call me?” He barely holds back a grin when he asks, like someone who is expecting a compliment.
“I don’t know,” I say. “You’re the first person I thought of.”
We pull into a short, circular driveway and Paul stops the car right in front of the door. The house is modest for West Vancouver, a rancher with big windows. Inside everything looks freshly varnished and I have the urge to go skating around in my socks, but I keep my shoes on and walk around the living room while Paul hangs his coat and moves around the house turning on lights. “Your place is nice,” I say, smelling a vase of flowers and rubbing the petals between my fingers to check if they’re real.
“Can I get you something to drink?” Paul’s voice comes from somewhere I can’t pinpoint.
“Sure. Do you have vodka?”
Paul pops his head around a corner close to where I’m standing. “Funny. Coke, Sprite, milk?”
“Coke’s fine.”
I run my hands over books, tables, chairs, before sitting down on the couch. Suddenly, being in my mother’s nightgown feels ridiculous and I run my fingers through my hair trying to tame it. Paul comes into the room and sets a can of Coke on a coaster for me and sits at the other end of the couch. “Do you want to talk about your parents?” he asks. He has a drink in his hand and he sips it then rests the glass on his knee.
“No,” I say, reaching for the can.
“Something else?”
“How can you afford this place?” I say, taking a drink, the carbonation bubbling in my nostrils.
Paul laughs and looks around the living room as though he’s trying to remember how he got here. “My wife’s family has money,” he says finally.
“Where’s your wife?”
“Edmonton,” he says, resting his head on the couch and turning to look at me. “On a business trip.” He stretches out his arm and turns his palm up as though he wants me to take his hand. “What are we going to do with you?”
“I don’t know,” I say. I reach out and grasp his hand. There’s a glimmer in his eyes — something like alarm — before he smiles at me and squeezes my palm tightly. I close my eyes, because all of a sudden I feel embarrassed, but he hangs on to my hand and starts to tell me my parents did a good job of raising me, that I’m a beautiful girl, that I’m not indifferent or stuck up like other kids, that I need to surround myself with people who love and support me. Everything he’s saying seems like a really nice antidote to sadness, and I can actually feel the words like they’re a silky lotion he’s massaging into my thumping heart. While he talks, he moves closer and I can smell booze on his breath. When I open my eyes, his face is right there with this need tightening the corners of his lips. It looks painful and I can see his dead tooth, and now I wonder why he’s never bothered to fix it if his wife has all this money. I wonder if maybe he doesn’t care about the right things and suddenly I’m not sure anymore how I got here, if it was my idea or Paul’s. “Can I have some ice?” I say, pulling my hand away from him.
“Sure,” Paul says, jumping up and heading out of the room. “I’ll get you a glass.”
I hear him opening cupboards in the kitchen. I hear the hiss of the refrigerator and the crack of ice cubes tumbling into a glass. I hear him pour himself another drink and suddenly I don’t want to be in his house anymore. My toes fiddle with the sand in my shoes. I pull my sneakers off, carefully spilling two piles of sand on the polished wood floor before putting them back on and walking over to the windows. They look out across the distant city lights, where streams of cars cross the bridge and neon signs flicker like stars in another galaxy. Everything is gentle and harmless from here. I place my hands flat on the glass and glide the sliding doors open, stepping out into the night, the perfect lines of the deck and the manicured lawn and clipped hedges. In the distance cars speed along the highway. I walk out onto the lawn and look back at Paul’s house, a cold breeze moving across my face and under my clothes. He’s still in the kitchen, but he’ll be back soon. Most of the windows are lit, but I notice movement in one of the darkened rooms. It’s hard to say, but there may be a child standing there, its small body pressed up against the window, the glass giving its skin an unnatural icy glow. The child stands there like a small statuette and for only a moment I’m frozen.
I WAIT AWHILE ON Marine Drive for the bus, but there are a couple of guys in a car across the street who keep staring at me. It looks like they’re hot-boxing their car, so I start walking. I think about what could happen if I got in the car with them. We’d listen to music and I’d end up doing it with both of them. Or maybe one of them would leave and the other would fall in love with me. He would transfer to my school to be closer to me and we could eat lunch in the alcove every day. Or they’d rape me and leave me in the forest, where no one would ever find me. They’d have to have a funeral with an empty coffin or have the funeral in the forest. At the moment any one of those options would do me fine.