“So what happened to me?” he asked. “In your dream?”
“I’m not sure,” I mumbled.
“Come on,” he said, with what felt like forced levity. “You must remember something. You said I’d died. How did it happen? How did I die?”
In the dim room, he looked very old. I struggled to keep my eyes open, blearily gazing at the clown light. “You were…” The dream was fading, but I still had a hold on it. I could almost see it, shimmering under the surface of my consciousness. But before I could pull it out, the dream pulled back, dragging me down with it into darkness.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Once I’d set the apartment in order, the chaos of my life settled. The natural rhythms of the building returned. The clock made sense. I still thought about Jasmine and Kim, but my father’s death had put the situation firmly into perspective. A few days after hearing my sister’s messages, I phoned her in New Zealand, claiming to have been away, and she completed the picture for me, explaining how Dad had kept his diagnosis to himself until the last week of his life, how the cancer moved more quickly than even the doctors had expected, as if he’d made the conscious decision not to fight. She’d flown home to be with him at the end and said that he’d been heavily drugged, swimming through different periods of his life, speaking to her as if she were people he’d known in the past—a teacher, his mother, his wife.
“Did he talk about me?” I asked.
She hesitated. “Well… no. But he wasn’t exactly himself. Anyway, we need to talk about his estate. There wasn’t much. A bit of savings and the house. Dad wanted us to split everything evenly between us.
“So I own half a house?”
“I thought we could rent it out,” Eileen said. “Until we decide what to do with it. I know someone in town who can deal with the tenants. You’ll get a monthly cheque. You won’t have to do a thing.”
The idea of anyone other than Dad living in the house felt strange, but it was a twenty-hour drive from my apartment, and I could think of nothing better to do with it. I hung up, feeling both relieved and ashamed to have gotten off so easily. I was deep in debt. The inheritance couldn’t have come at a better time, as if my father’s death had been brought about for the sole purpose of rescuing me financially. I tried to summon tears, but we’d been apart for so long that I could barely remember what he’d looked like. What memories I had were unclear, distorted by the dread I’d always felt in his presence, not of what he might do, but of what he might be thinking, his features eclipsed by the insurmountable force of his disappointment in me.
My sister was able to forward me part of the inheritance, and I paid my overdue bills and reconnected to the internet, navigating to my email account, where I found messages from my agent and publisher, but nothing from Kim. I thought about having a drink, and gently pushed the craving away. The secret to quitting, I’d found, lay in taking pleasure from deprivation. I punished myself with three sets of push-ups and crunches, then lay exhausted on the floor, looking over at my bookshelf. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d actually read a book. I went over and ran my hand along the spines, feeling the old flicker of anticipation, the almost pornographic allure of climbing into another person’s head. I shut my eyes and selected a book at random, carrying it over to the sofa without looking at it, wanting to experience the first page without preconceptions. But the moment I sat down, a distinct noise came from the kitchen, the whisper of fur against wood. I looked back at the cupboard under the sink. The fruit flies might have gone, but the rat was still with me. I’d been checking the trap multiple times a day, seeing nothing but the locked garbage can, a bottle of bleach, and the turds the rat left behind, as if to mock me, or punish me, for depriving it of its steady diet of trash. Every time I swept out its droppings, rage would spike through my head and I would picture myself destroying the animal in outlandishly violent ways—taking a knife to it, a hammer, a bat. Crouched in front of the open cupboard, I would shine a light into its ragged hole and threaten it through clenched teeth, daring it to come out and face me.
The rustling stopped. The instant I returned my attention to the book in my hand, it started up again, louder than before, as if the rat were not only watching, but deliberately taunting me. I stared at the silent cupboard for a full minute, then threw my book aside, strode into the kitchen, and tore open the door. I slammed the bottle of bleach in front of the hole and returned to my spot on the sofa. Before I’d read two words, the sound returned, more of a gnawing than a rustling this time. I went back and thumped around under the sink, thinking the noise would scare the rat away for a little while at least, but the gnawing started up again the moment I shut the door. I jabbed a fork down into the hole, splashed bleach all around it. If I’d had something explosive, I would have shoved it in without hesitation. For the better part of an hour, I sat cross-legged in front of the open cupboard, my book forgotten.
“Come out,” I commanded. “Come out!”
But the rat had finally gone away. Across the room, my laptop beckoned—an open portal to distraction. I went over and googled myself, finding a smattering of reviews of The Pole, most of them damningly ambivalent. I opened a new page and searched for adult webcams, my self-control unravelling. A pop-up ad for a dating site obscured the search results. I started to click it away, then paused, knowing enough about the internet to know that these advertisements were tailored to my specific needs and desires. They were trying to sell me something they thought I might use. I touched the link and a stylized pink and blue yin-yang filled my screen. After I’d entered some basic personal information—age, location, credit card—the site invited me to browse through profiles of female members. Of the several dozen women in my area, only five were online, none of whom had profile photos. The youngest, Miss Bliss (Female, 19), sent me a cluttered shorthand of numbers, letters, and symbols, suggesting we meet that very night. A low buzz of fear ran up the back of my head. I ignored the message, sending tentative hellos to the other four women, but received no reply. I was just about to log out and return to my hunt for Jasmine when a new user came online, going by the name Twice Shy (Female, 28). Seven years younger than me. Unlike the other active users, Twice Shy did have a profile photo, not of herself but of a majestic white unicorn head. The photo gave me pause, but I sent her a message anyway, ignoring the notes from Miss Bliss piling up in my inbox. After a minute, a notification appeared on my screen:
Twice Shy wants to chat with you now!
I knew that I would be charged for activating the live chat feature, but I also knew that if I failed to accept the invitation, I would spend the rest of the night wondering if I’d done the right thing. The exchange would be completely anonymous. The fee wasn’t that high. I pushed the green accept button and a chat room opened, where Twice Shy appeared to be waiting.
Hello, she typed.
Hi, I wrote back.
Her cursor blinked, before the next message came. How are you?
Not bad. I slid my free hand down the waistband of my pants. Yourself?
I’ve been better.
My hand stopped. This was going in a different direction than I’d hoped.
What’s wrong? I asked, out of politeness more than anything.