Way down below, two bulldozers plowed their way through a heap of trash. A group of workers followed, shovels at the ready. "It's not like it's their choice to be up here, man," I said.
"What do you mean?"
"I mean, they work for the same company you do; they get stationed wherever they're told. Even you, right? They could have you over on the American side. But you're here."
"Thank Christ for that," Dave grunted. "Pauly, you should try to get on with security. They're looking for people right now — I guess the pickers on both sides are getting pretty out of control again. But a little guy like you they'd never make work nights. You'd be on days like me and Kaede and you wouldn't have to do shit."
"And I'd do what with the shop? Sell it?"
"Oh, fuck. Here we go. How long have we been going through this shit with you, man? There's got to be a point where you just let go. And what about money?"
"Don't worry about me and money." Dave didn't need to know that my parents had stashed enough of their income away that I could go right through to a doctorate without a dollar in loans. He'd have thought "trust fund" and then I would have heard it — especially now that I was living off their hard work and not going to school.
The diggers and bulldozers kept working, shifting the garbage around, moving it into the compactors. The sounds drifted up: the grumble and growls, the grinding of trash packed into neat little squares, the buzz of generators, and the steady drone of trucks moving single file in and out of the pit, dumping their loads and then heading out to fetch more garbage.
THE NEXT DAY I drove down to the store, pulled up into that familiar spot out front. Above loomed our sign, paint flaking; the G of Gold had peeled off in the past year and I'd never bothered to replace it — so now the family business was called Canada _old Souvenirs. I caught myself sighing as I got out of the car, my standard reaction to thinking about the day ahead: sitting there, waiting in vain for the chime of the doors opening.
Leaving the Closed sign turned out, I took my spot behind the counter. Dust had settled over everything, the gleam of figurines and paperweights hidden under greyish fluff. I thought about cleaning it off, going around with one of those feather things. But what was the point? Quickly the feelings from the day before began to rear up again, as sickly and shame-soaked as a hangover.
I looked at the photograph of my parents taped to the cash register, something that usually kept me going. It'd been taken the day they opened the store and stuck up there shortly thereafter. In the picture the two of them stood out front, my mom in a sari and my dad in his turban, the new sign shiny and bright above. Later they laughed at how arbitrarily they'd named it, the naive, immigrant enthusiasm of Gold, and the photo captured exactly that in their faces: eagerness, trepidation, hope.
I'd been born a few years later. We never had many problems. Mostly people found us charming, maybe a little perplexing, this polite Sikh family hawking Canadiana. The honeymooners would come and ooh and ahh at our shop full of kitsch, or there were the tour groups who went nuts for our novelty T-shirts. You could just imagine them parading around back home in their new duds like they were something special, someone worldly. But we sold the same things to everyone. Each tourist who came to the Falls had the same experience: pay too much for parking, look at the water, buy something shitty, load back onto your chartered bus, and go home. There was nothing special about it.
The register itself was an old, clunky thing. We'd never modernized to digital for some reason, and whenever we rang up a sale — as I remember sales, anyway — the thing dinged and clunked as we filed the cash away. Without a second thought, I punched the drawer open, peeled the picture of my folks off the register, and stashed it in the cash drawer, banging it closed. Maybe Dave was right, I thought. Maybe it was time to call it quits, sell the land to CanAm, finish school with the money.
There was a knocking sound then — I had this crazy idea that it was my folks from inside the register, begging to be set free, before I realized someone was at the front door of the shop. I hopped the counter and saw that it was the new girl, Kaede, uniform on, looking very official.
"We're actually open," I said. "Just haven't turned the sign around yet."
She nodded, that big goofy smile splashing across her face. I'm not a big guy, but I had to look down at her: she was maybe five feet tall, with broad cheekbones and a little bob haircut streaked with gold. Her grin exuded a warmth that I'd nearly forgotten could exist in people.
Kaede stepped past me, started moving through the store. She had a camera strapped around her neck.
"Any trouble?" I asked. "With security, I mean?"
"Hardly," she said, and kept looking around. Was she actually shopping?
From one of the racks, she picked up a pen with a little Maid of the Mist boat that went sliding up and down the stem when you tilted it. She pointed it at me like a sword, cocked her head in an inquisitive way. "How much?"
"Honestly, when they closed, every tourist shop in town unloaded their stock on us. We've got a warehouse full of this crap. Take it. Take whatever you want."
Kaede shot me a quizzical look. "Yeah? How about if I take some pictures?"
"What? Of this place?" I laughed. "Knock yourself out."
The lens cap came off and she was at it, snapping away, doing little knee bends and leaning back to get certain angles. When she turned toward me, though, I put my hand up. "Whoa."
"Oh, sorry. I didn't — "
I forced a smile. "No, you know. Just didn't have a chance to do my hair."
She capped the camera. "Gotcha."
"Hey, can I ask you something? What the hell are you doing here? In Niagara Falls, I mean. I know you're in our shop because it's totally amazing. But to come all the way from Japan to work guarding a garbage dump — I don't know, seems a little weird."
"Paul," said Kaede. "I'm from Calgary. My parents are Japanese, and I taught English in Tokyo for a bit, but — no, anyway, I'm here mainly for a project." She held up the camera. "I'm a photographer. Back when the Falls were here, people took thousands of pictures, but they're all the same — the water, the boat-ride, whatever. I want to document the way it is now, for an entire year. The people who live here, their homes, their jobs, and what's become of all the old sites — Marineland, especially."
"Marineland? There's nothing there."
"Exactly. And CanAm gives me a place for free, and I can shoot on the job, so…"
"So you'll be here for a year?"
I felt like I should add that I'd be around, that I could take her out to Marineland sometime, whatever. But I'd forgotten how to do this sort of thing. My last attempt at romance ended with me humiliating myself with some German backpacker, a big horsy woman down for one night from Toronto. We'd met at Dooley's and gone back to her hotel. But it'd been a bust. The machinery didn't work, I guess you'd say; I ended up sneaking off as soon as she passed out. And that had been months ago now.
Kaede was making for the door. "Hey, Paul — can I askyou something?"
"Um. Sure."
"Am I ever going to get used to the smell? It's awful."
"Ha, yeah," I said. "Give it a couple months."
She shook her head, said something about getting back to work. At the door of the shop, she paused. "Your friend Dave said something about a bar? Do you ever go there?"
"Dooley's?" I thought of the German. "I used to. Not so much any more."
"Dave invited me tomorrow night. You should come. I haven't got a phone yet, but why don't you drop by my place beforehand? We'll go together."
AFTER SPENDING AN hour trying to find my going-out shirt, I headed up to Kaede's apartment off Lundy's Lane, in the back of the old Econo Lodge. She was waiting on the steps, cycling through the images in her camera. On the walk down to Dooley's we went around to some of the old tourist stops so she could take a few pictures in the dusky light. Most of them were boarded up; the few that still had their windows intact had been converted to housing or CanAm offices.