I had a job in that diner before Claudia did. It only seems like she brought everything with her. But I was there first, alone. Day after day in that steaming kitchen, we worked as dishwashers and short-order cooks. We were on our feet for hours, wearing obligatory hairnets and knee-length aprons tied over tank tops and old jeans stained to a fade. Our bare feet squealed across the linoleum floor in fluorescent sneakers from BiWay or Thrifty’s. After a year, those shoes became lace-up combat boots we wore even in summertime. Claudia’s apron usually lay flat against her after she tied it on like armour.
See how much I remember?
All I wanted from the future was that it would be different from what I’d already known. I only saw the tasks at hand as things tying me to the present—tethered there, impatient.
When I knew Claudia better, I told her, “This is what you do on the way to something else. The trick is to always keep moving. If you look back, be ready for anything.” When no one else was watching, we covered our ears with our hands, elbows angled outward as if to ward off double-fisted blows, keeping our eyes wide open.
It was a way to both escape the past, and face it down.
But from the beginning, Claudia had tunnel vision. Her hands were like tools when she worked, adept and precise. Sure, she might have made mistakes, but it was all practice. That’s all it was for her.
Whenever the other dishwasher went on his endless breaks, I’d watch Claudia move away to stand over the big metal sink basins. She would brace her hips against them and pummel gooey traces and grease streaks of food off the dishes and down the drain. Her fingers gripped the hose, with its steady jet of hot water, like she was holding onto a rope to pull herself up.
I wanted the focus she had. I wanted to know how it felt to have her attention.
◊
We shared almost every shift.
“How are you?” I’d ask, not looking, waiting. A question so ordinary it’s easy not to give a real answer. But you need to start somewhere.
“Doing fine,” she’d say. “Yourself?” Handing me silence above the constant clang and rush of the kitchen.
For a long time, I knew next to nothing about her. Our conversations were always cut off by a new task, a new order, the entrance of one of the other cooks or a server.
◊
One morning in mid-October, a few of the staff called in sick. Another cook just didn’t show. “I’m ready to quit,” he’d told us the previous week. “I’ve got something better lined up.”
Fewer of us there meant more work, but also more space, and Claudia took the lead. The manager didn’t notice until mid-morning. He walked into the kitchen and looked around as if he’d lost something, then paused to find us doing prep for the afternoon.
“You can see I’m short-staffed today,” he said, “so you’ll have to handle the lunch rush.”
Maybe you didn’t notice we just got through breakfast, I thought to myself.
“No problem,” Claudia said.
“Keep the customers’ orders coming steady,” he warned her. “No gaps.”
After the lunch prep was done, those of us working in the kitchen decided we would start taking our breaks as the orders began coming in, instead of waiting until it got real busy.
The others took their turns first, leaving just Claudia and me. I said to her, “You’re so quiet today.”
It was only half true. Claudia always seemed quiet.
She looked up at me as she made grilled cheese sandwiches, buttering six slices of bread on both sides, moving in a flash, two fingers red from a recent burn.
“I’m concentrating,” she said.
I smiled. “You’re not bored?”
“I don’t get bored.” Claudia put down the knife and reached for the pan.
“Really?”
“No. There’s always something to do.”
“You mean in this job?”
“In this job. In life.” She turned back to the sandwiches.
“Huh.” I thought about it for a minute. “It’s funny to hear someone say that. I think a lot of people would get bored.”
Her focus was back on her hands now. She laid the sandwiches out with intention, side by side, neat in the pans. “You know what it’s like when you’ve got all these things to figure out, like everything is piling up and you can’t get to it?”
I thought I understood. I tried to, as I stirred the big pot of cream of tomato on the back burner. “So what’s on your mind?” I asked her.
“Memories, I guess. Nothing bad. It’s just that they never go. There’s a pile of them there, but they’re all out of reach.”
She frowned as if in apology, but her eyes were bright. I wanted them to dare me.
“Like songs that get stuck in your head?” I tried.
“No, not really like that.” She laughed warily. “Because you can sing a song to yourself, and it’ll eventually disappear. Get replaced by another one, I guess.”
Another order came in. Tuna salad. I went to the fridge to get out the bowl we’d prepared that morning, and extra mayo. She hovered the spatula over the pan of grilled cheese, a rare moment of stillness. I went and stood beside her, watched the butter and orange cheddar sizzle with heat.
This was basically against the rules. We were always to be doing something. Not standing still. Not waiting.
She began to flip each sandwich, one at a time, briskly, with perfect aim. “These memories,” she continued, “there’s no story I can turn them into and retell. They’re just flashes. Like, quick flashes. And then they’re gone. Still in my mind somewhere, but I’m always getting further away from them.”
“Try thinking forward,” I said to her. “The past can wait because it’s done. Think about the future instead. No one else is going to do that for you. Don’t ask for permission either.”
Don’t ask for permission was a phrase I’d found in a magazine at the grocery store, or maybe someone had said it on television. I tried to make the words sound like they belonged to me.
The sandwiches were ready, so Claudia headed for the deep fryer. Almost every order came with fries.
I thought maybe she hadn’t heard me, so I tried again. “Sometimes you have to take chances to get ahead.”
◊
Later, I would offer her my own confessions—all of them in the past tense. As though my memories were shells that contained oceans. I told her things then that I haven’t shared since. It was a relief, to turn myself inside out for her, heart in my mouth, then trail off.
I did that with Claudia. I told her the things I wanted to hear.
◊
That was how it began. Some worry or wish, which led to another, until they flew around my head like birds. It got harder and harder to hold them in, hold them down. I would rub my eyes to get rid of what fluttered there.
One day she asked me, over the wet rattle of dishes, what was wrong.
And I knew what it was. Not something wrong exactly, but something new.
I looked at her.
Claudia was taller than me by half a foot. She lifted her dripping hand from the sink to my curly hair and gently pulled. “You’ve got a bird’s nest up here,” she said, laughing, as a flicker of water mixed with soap suds landed on my face.
◊
I didn’t know much about cooking when I first applied to work there.
The manager looked me up and down. “Ever work in a kitchen before, Eva?” he said.
I lied about working in three others before this one.
He kept squinting at me, so I crossed my arms over my chest and focused on a poster just to the left of his face, an image of the CN Tower puncturing the sky, with the words See you at the top! in punchy gold letters. But his eyes continued roving until something fell in the kitchen and he turned toward it, cursing.
Broken free of his attention, I reached for the strap of my shoulder bag and readjusted its weight. It held a two-litre carton of milk I’d found on sale, cigarettes, and some day-old buns and pastries from a shop on the corner. I was all out-of-pocket then, and betting a place like this would have leftovers at the end of the day, leftovers they needed something to do with. That’s what made me walk in when I noticed the Help Wanted sign in the window.
“Okay, sweetheart,” he said. Then his eyes were on me again, so I met them, and he looked away. “We’ll give you a try. Be back here tomorrow, seven a.m.”
He never did say hired, but I knew that I was.
Not long after that, I realized I was the only girl working in the kitchen.
◊
A month after I started, I saw the hiring sign was back in the window. Maybe business was picking up and they needed extra help?
I found that possibility hard to believe.
The kitchen was empty by the end of my shift. The morning and lunch rushes were over, and most of the other staff had gone on their breaks, leaving me to clean up before I could slip a few things in my bag and head home. I was leaning for a minute on the counter—to rest my arms, sore from the dishwashing and from carrying the piles of plates—when I heard the jangling of the bells on the front door. Then a voice, solid but cautious, in a girl’s deep pitch.
I knew the manager was still standing by the cash register at the front of the restaurant, counting change. I wanted to listen, so I moved to stand just inside the entrance to the kitchen. I was worried about being replaced. I guess I was also trying to look out for her. Just in case. I didn’t want him to try anything with someone who wouldn’t know to be careful.
He told her he already had one pretty girl, and asked what he would do with two.
I caught a glimpse of her reflection in one of the mirrors along the walls that made the room seem momentarily endless. She cocked a smile: sudden, sure, and a little hungry.
I recognized it before I knew her.
Maybe that smile was what the manager thought he was looking for. Or maybe he realized, from the resumé she handed over, that she actually had enough experience and could find her way around a kitchen.
One thing I know for sure is that he underestimated her from the beginning.
“Eva will show you around,” he said. Then he paused and called out to me. “Eva! There’s a new girl starting today.”
And suddenly she was walking toward the kitchen. Tall, with sloped shoulders, her hands in her pockets. I moved away so it wouldn’t seem like I’d been listening at the doorway the whole time.
She barely looked at me when we said our hellos. Instead, she surveyed the space as if she could see some possibility that wasn’t visible to me. I wondered what she thought of the state of the kitchen. Its chaos that I was supposed to wipe clean.
Even then, I was already craving suspense, when it was Claudia I was waiting for.
I watched as she forced herself to accept a hairnet from the cardboard box. Then I handed her an apron—a spare one I’d yanked from a hook in the broom closet, one smelling of ketchup and the laundromat—and told her that it would be deducted from her first week’s pay.
That was when she finally looked right at me, down from her height, with those brown eyes of hers. The kind of eyes that go on and tell you something and then almost immediately look the other way in case you happen to hear what they have to say.
“That’s messed up,” she said quietly, shaking her head, “to have to pay out of our own pockets.” She frowned.
I thought maybe she was trying to figure out how she could afford it. “Tell him,” I said.
She didn’t. But I noticed that she would treat that apron as if she’d earned it, as if it was made for her, even though any of us working there could’ve worn it.
Later, we stood across from each other at the counter, rinsing, peeling, and chopping carrots and potatoes. Their moist surfaces glistened in the fluorescent lights.
“Like a sauna in here, right?” I said to her. Claudia wiped the wet edge of her forehead and jerked a thumb toward the end of the kitchen facing out on a crumbling parking lot behind Yonge Street.
“Hotter in here than outside. Even with that back door propped open,” she replied, as if it was a secret she was tired of keeping.
I wondered how long would she last.
◊
There were so many rules around us, spoken and unspoken, and we were both used to being told we had broken them. It was something we shared from the beginning.
But still, it grated on Claudia. Getting told she’d done things wrong. I think it was because she paid attention and noticed the hypocrisies, always deciding between whether to point them out or to prove herself despite them.
The thing is, except for when she was cooking, everything Claudia decided to do took time. A lot of time. No matter how fast life was moving around her, she moved slower.
I warned her that there are only so many opportunities, and they tend to change and disappear if you don’t make a choice and run with it.
The two of us took the most blame under the manager’s watch. He liked strong words and he would use them to get a rise out of anyone. More than once, he told us he should let us go.
One Sunday morning, when we were hungover and chopping potatoes for the deep fryer, he came in and saw that my hair was down around my shoulders. I tried to sweep it up in a bun when I heard him coming, but it was too late.
“Listen. You listen to me, now,” he hollered. “There’s no way I’m gonna let this kitchen get shut down by some goddam inspector because of you. You better clean yourselves up if you want to keep this job. I’ve said it before. I don’t want to have to say it again, right?”
Our eyes took in the floor and then the ceiling, flinching at the clang of pots and pans, and at the bright fluorescents. I felt a sense of tired relief when he left.
I told myself that he wouldn’t have the guts to fire me then and there because he still needed me, at least for that shift. I also told myself I didn’t really care either way.
Claudia, however, looked disappointed—maybe in me, maybe in herself.
I wanted to ask her: Why would you expect anything else from him?
◊
A week later, I decided I wasn’t going to seal my head in a hairnet anymore. The job didn’t matter to me. I would not give it my loyalty. Instead, I wore a baseball cap into work, my hair pulled back tight inside it.
It was early morning. I found Claudia already there, alone, the first one to arrive in the kitchen. To my surprise, she seemed almost betrayed when she saw my cap. And maybe it was a kind of betrayal: of what we had going, of our silent agreement to endure together. Of something else between us, still unspoken.
“Don’t worry,” I said, stepping toward her. “I’ll convince him to let me wear it.”
“How are you planning to do that?”
“I’ll figure it out,” I told her. Then I added quietly, moving closer, “Sweet talk and dirty talk are the same with him, I’m guessing.”
She rolled her eyes. “You’re kidding me, right?”
I still wasn’t sure why she was upset. But at least she was paying attention. Maybe it meant she cared. I felt bolder. I lingered there, near enough to breathe her in, her scent like what I imagined mornings could be.
Claudia took a step closer. Eyes on me, she ran the fingers of her right hand once along the brim of my cap. Then, glancing toward the door of the kitchen to check if anyone was coming in, she lifted the brim, bent over a little, and kissed my cheek.
It felt as though she was saying goodbye, and I would need to convince her otherwise. But before I could try, the door swung open, and one of the cooks strode in, coffee in hand.
“Ladies,” he said in greeting, and went to hang up his jacket in the closet.
We shuffled away to start the morning prep.
◊
Eventually, Claudia ended up cutting her own hair so short she’d have no reason to use a hairnet either.
The manager left her alone after that, though I wondered again if the job would be hers for much longer.
“You’re lucky he doesn’t have a thing for tomboys,” I said to her, winking, as we stood at the six-burner stove. We were frying eggs and bacon, and the scent and the heat from the pans coated our skin.
She leaned closer to me.
We shared our breaks together, Eva and me, out back behind the diner.
One afternoon, in the chill November air that always makes me think of taking shelter, I mentioned I was grateful for the steady work.
Eva reached into her pocket for another cigarette. “You really think this job is something you need?” she said. “You’re a fool.”
“Sorry.”
She took her time while she lit up. “Why do you apologize so often?” She glared at me, blowing smoke. “You’re not queen of the world. You’re not so important everybody thinks you’re to blame.”
We rested against the brick wall in the shadows under the fire escape, shifting our weight from one tired foot to the other. My thoughts turned in tight circles. Something urgent about Eva always made me feel both so wide and so narrow.
“Don’t settle for this,” she said, looking around, as if her attention was drawn to something more important.
I couldn’t stop watching her.
Eva took off her baseball cap, and her muddy red curls came loose from the clasp where she’d tied them back. They fell around her face like a tattered wreath and tangled with the blue bandana knotted at the divot of her collarbone, the one she used to wipe her face in the heat of the kitchen.
What did life taste like to her? I wondered.
She looked back at me, and I quickly dropped my gaze—first to my old shoes, then to the cigarette I dropped to the ground and covered with the weight of my heel, then to the brick wall a few feet away from where we stood, pocked and lined with grit and dust. I tucked both my hands into the pockets of my jeans so she wouldn’t see how they were shaking, but then Eva leaned in and let me put my arms around her instead.
There’s a thin scar running halfway across my cheek that I got as a kid, from falling in a race. An ordinary mark I used to imagine as evidence of a battle. Eva reached up to touch it with the edge of her tongue, softly, just tenderly enough to be almost more than I thought I was ready for.
◊
Most of the things I learned about Eva were things I wasn’t expecting. Mostly, she just kept me guessing.
Only after a year in the kitchen did I find out she was already planning her getaway. “If we just worked here part time, to pay for something like college,” she said, “it would be different.”
I didn’t really know what that difference meant. High school was all I thought I’d be able to get. This job was all I needed because it was all I knew I could do.
But Eva had me dreaming wild. I began to think about going to George Brown, to become a chef in a serious kitchen. I even considered applying for a student loan. I knew debt could be a trap, but I was caught by how much Eva wanted something more, by the need she had to go.
I gave her my charm bracelet for her birthday that year. Each of the little planets in our solar system hooked to its links, metal flawed from miniature half molds, the sharp clasp rubbing blue veins I saw pressed against her skin when she turned the inside of her wrist toward me. Each part of the dangling universe painted silver and gold, shivering in the air, swinging in her clipped shotgun salutation, casual, knees and arms blossoming bruises, bad-luck violet.
How hungry we were then. A storm of coffee and nicotine on her lips and mine, only eating enough when we were working. Taking something here and there on the side, the pies we divided to devour. Our hands touching underneath the table on lunch breaks we now spent in the sticky vinyl-seated booth at the very back of the dining room. Hauling ourselves up to work again, heated by the kitchen. Ringing the cutlery in the big wash bins as if we were trailing a flurry of wings of knives and forks, to drown out the sound of that world, get liftoff.
At night, I studied the ragged rash around the tattoo across her hip as if it were a book, new ink injected into tender skin. What I wanted badly enough, I was just beginning to understand.
◊
I thought I could handle being in that kitchen. It helped that you don’t have to be pretty there, don’t have to serve yourself up. The pay is regular so you keep going, and eventually you get faster and more able. Sooner or later, there’s less treading water, less threat of being pulled under.
It helped that Eva was there. That I could come through the haze of every single early morning and find her, the sharp scent of smoke and stolen cologne on her skin—that was what kept me buoyant, working and waiting.
We started sharing apartments, moving all over the east end with our cat, Trout. I called him that for my love of contradictions. We lived on streets named after trees that I would go look up at the public library. “To match a name to a face,” I explained to Eva, stoned, when she asked me why. “It’s like in our apartment, we’re living in the trees’ organs. Along their veins. The curvature of their particular branches, the shapes of their specific leaves.”
“Are you studying to be a biologist now, a treeologist? A fucking poet?” she replied, laughing. Then she paused. “We should cover this ceiling with a mural of trees. I’ve always wanted to do that in a room. We’ll steal some paint from somewhere, and brushes. I had good ones back in high school.” She grinned. “I didn’t know how rich I was back then.”
We would walk around at night, going nowhere in particular, dreaming to somewhere, turning the streets away. Passing through neighbourhoods slammed with action, accidents, heavy voices, whistles in the dead of night, bone-dry pavement, blood on the sidewalk. Hotel facades, burned-out institutions, social services with their seams showing, spilling out, broken storefronts descending, apartments towering overhead, uncertain shelters fought for and stolen.
We kept moving as if we could choose the chase.
“This is not enough for us,” Eva told me once, pointing everywhere. “It’s time to make a change.”
Neither of us believed in fate. What happens is not for any reason other than the things you do and the choices you make. You can’t rely on what should or could be.
◊
In our second year together, we were living in a third-floor attic apartment. The radiators there didn’t churn out enough heat in the winter. Then the cheque for my share of the rent bounced, and I knew we couldn’t call the landlord to ask again about fixing the radiators. It got cold enough that we could almost see the plumes of our breath. We were both shivering.
The bounced cheque startled me because I’d just borrowed some money from an acquaintance, a guy named Darren, to help pay for my share of the phone bill. I’d thought it’d be enough to also cover a college application to George Brown —which was going to be a surprise—and to buy wine and weed to help us through the cold.
It wasn’t. I’d been so focused on the future that I lost track of the exact costs in the present.
I didn’t know how to tell Eva about the missed rent. Nor did I know what to say about Darren. How he suddenly wanted me to pay back all of what I owed him, sooner than we’d agreed. How the abruptness of his demand made me uneasy. How he knew where we lived, because he’d looked up our address in the phone book. How he might be coming for me any time now, maybe even that night.
So when she mentioned the cold, I said to her: “At least there’s no one living above us. And we can almost see the lake from our window in the kitchen.”
“You can’t see anything over that brick wall next door.” She rubbed her hands together to warm them and pulled at her collar.
“Do you want my scarf?”
“No. You wear it.” She turned away. “We should’ve known there was a catch to getting this place so cheap.”
I shrugged, let the old wool hang loose around my neck, and stuck my hands into the front pockets of my coat. The cold was seeping into the joints of my knees and wrists and around my feet, like shoes that fit too tight.
“I’ll try calling about the heat again tomorrow,” I said, wishing it could be true.
“Our phone isn’t working either,” she answered, shaking her head, looking angrier than before.
That was when I realized Eva hadn’t paid our phone bill yet, even though I’d already given her my share of it.
I decided that I wasn’t going to tell her about the cheque after all.
Nervous, I rested my hands on the edge of the table’s firm, flat surface for balance. My library books were stacked there neatly in a pile because I didn’t have the shelves for them yet—the ones I was planning to build. I looked down at the books. Science fiction and fantasy, chef biographies. I counted ten of them.
“Any idea what’s wrong with the phone?” I asked.
“Why do you read all this crap if you can’t actually say what you’re thinking?” Her voice jarred my silent counting, shook up the sediment of dread I felt and dragged me through it. She picked up two of the books, one in each hand, and threw them hard across the room. They opened like accordions in flight and hit the wall behind me.
Stunned, I flinched but refused to move. I felt a familiar sense of being boxed in, being caught up in something beyond my control. I counted the seconds of silence.
One. Two. Three.
I saw her reach for more of the books, and I knew I had to leave the room.
All I wanted was a little peace. Everything was going wrong at once.
When Claudia left, I sat down on the floor and cried. Then I called to her. But she didn’t reply, didn’t come to me.
If it hadn’t been so cold, I would’ve even offered to help build shelves for all the books she thought she wanted. Eventually, I picked up the ones I’d thrown, smoothing the pages.
At work the next day, we moved in wide circles around each other. I left early without letting her or anyone else know. I didn’t care. I was almost done with that place anyway. The city was smothering me, smashing me up so I couldn’t think straight. I knew it was time to go.
But what about Claudia? Should I try to take her along? Would she even join me?
She was starting to seem like a mystery again, like she had in the beginning. As if she was turning away from me.
Bundled in my hat and scarf, I walked and walked, watching the snow blanket the pavement around me, getting blinded by it. So cold, though I was moving fast, because my feet were soaked from the holes in my boots.
When I got home that evening, Claudia was the one acting like she had done something wrong. Her books were gone.
Why was she pretending like she’d forgotten what I’d done? It scared me.
She said hello and smiled, the same sudden smile I’d caught in the mirror the first time she walked into the diner. Self-assured and hungry. But also calm—that gorgeous calm of hers, though now I knew about the ripples underneath. Her calm always rattled me, kept me from knowing which way to move. This time it stopped me from apologizing right away, like I’d planned.
We propped open the door to the outer hallway to let the heat from downstairs seep in. I kept an eye on the entrance, listening for footsteps, and I noticed that Claudia did too. We were not new to the present danger of strangers—strangers, and acquaintances, there was always a question of who could turn against you. But for now, there was only the binding force of the deep cold.
We opened a bottle of wine. Red, sweet, and cheap, the second of two she’d brought home a few days ago. I felt it thick at the back of my throat, a floating red carpet lifting me off my feet. This was some sad goodbye party.
The layers I’d put on for warmth felt ribbed and ruffled. I didn’t like the stifled, swollen feeling, and I kept trying to smooth down my hair and my clothes. I was worried she was going to ask again about the phone, still useless on the table in the corner.
We shivered in silence. Claudia seemed lost in her own thoughts. She looked at the floor.
“Why can’t you just be direct for once?” I demanded, trying to catch her eyes. I could hear the burn in my own voice, the way it hurt, the way it gave me some force.
Claudia seemed more resigned than surprised when she finally looked at me.
I was breathing fast. My chest hurt. Everything was moving fast, making me panic.
She still wasn’t saying anything, so I decided to make a show of looking for the money for the phone bill. That was the issue here, wasn’t it? She was mad about the phone, but she wouldn’t say it to my face.
The truth was, I’d kept the money she’d given me to pay the bill. With it, plus my next paycheck, I was hoping to pay back a debt I owed to my friend Jackie. I’d borrowed from her a while ago to get things I thought I needed at the time, but I could hardly remember what they were. It would have been a huge relief, not owing anyone anything. Then I could focus on the phone bill, focus on the future. Mine and Claudia’s.
But what did it even matter now? Why should I tell Claudia anything?
It was always me doing the telling, not the other way around.
Claudia hadn’t moved at all. I could feel her eyes stuck on me. All I wished for in that moment was a reaction from her, a way out or a way to reach her. And it made me frantic.
I picked my purse up from where it lay on the table and turned to her. As I did, the purse fell open and my things spilled onto the floor and rolled underfoot. The only money in there was some loose change. Exactly three dollars and twenty-two cents in quarters and dimes and pennies. I’d counted it earlier.
As we watched the coins come to a stop, I got angry again, as if the heat of my anger would fuel me through the long cold night.
But still, Claudia said nothing.
“I’ll tell you what I think then, if you’re just going to sit there,” I said. I took a breath. “I think you don’t say what you mean, and you don’t mean what you say. You always leave me guessing. I think you’re a liar.”
We glared at each other.
“Sometimes, I wish you’d just shut your fucking mouth,” Claudia said quietly, every word a hard smack.
The space around us felt closed and tight. I couldn’t focus long enough to figure out how to make it right, to rearrange the order of events.
We had swung our wrecking balls. I was afraid.
Claudia got down on the floor and began picking up the scattered contents of my purse. The idea of my possessions in her hands was strangely soothing. But she gave them all back to me quickly, like it hurt to hold them.
I decided now was the time to go, before she had a chance to ask me to leave. I would not be thrown away. “I’ll see you,” I said, then moved so fast I didn’t even hear her close the door.
When Eva was gone, I got back down on the floor.
Trout was hiding under the couch, sitting in the shadows with his eyes like glass reflectors, each catching the light, his nose raised alert, as if he could sense the danger I felt in the air.
I thought about whether Eva still wanted me. Not much, not anymore.
If Darren showed up, I could only promise him that his money was coming in a couple of days. That’s all I could tell him. But I hated to lie. That wasn’t me.
It was so cold with the door closed and locked again. I turned on the stove and boiled water in the kettle. I thought I’d need instant coffee to stay awake, but in the end, it was thinking of her that kept me up.
“C’mon, Eva,” I repeated to myself, like a harsh kind of prayer, punctuated with the sound of my fist on the table. What would I say to her if she was here? But words could be explosions, so I swallowed them all, shoved them to the back of my skull, the aching there. Anger. It won’t stay there for long. Like oil, it splatters everywhere if you’re not careful. It’s a shapeshifter. I used to mistake it for love. Whatever went flying, whatever broke, whatever got raised and brought down hard like a curse, I used to confuse it all with love. I thought I’d learned to understand the difference, but maybe not. Could Eva? I wasn’t sure she knew how either.
Where would she go in the middle of a winter night? What was she doing to me?
I looked at the phone that wasn’t working. I went into the kitchen, checked the weak latch on the window, closed the curtain. Someone could still easily get in that way by climbing up the fire escape. My heart was racing. I knew I couldn’t last the rest of the night in the apartment without Eva. It was dangerous here without her.
I packed a suitcase, then dragged Trout out from under the couch, his claws scratching in protest, and scooped him into his carrying case. Before I left, I wrote Eva a note in red marker and put it on the kitchen table. Someone’s looking for me. Be careful. I’ve got to go. I have Trout. Finally, with the last twenty bucks I had in my pocket, I took a cab to our friend Jackie’s in Parkdale.
Part of me hoped that was where Eva had gone. That she was already there.
◊
When I showed up for work the next day, Eva wasn’t in the kitchen.
I asked the manager if he’d heard from her.
He shook his head, refusing to look at my tired eyes with his. “No more,” he said, walking away.
“Sorry?”
“I don’t pay her to get sick,” he hollered from across the room. “She’s done here. That’s it.”
“I’m sure she’ll be back tomorrow. Our phone isn’t working so she couldn’t let you know she needed to take today off. I think she’s really not feeling well.”
“No, no, she’s done here. And you are too if I catch any more messing around.”
After all the time we’d spent there. All the work.
I’d put the time in, did things right, and it was still ruined.
What Eva and I had together, in that kitchen. Just more wreckage to remember.
At first, my curses came out hoarse, and got swallowed up by the clamour of the kitchen. I picked up my bag and moved toward the back door, and I shouted at him. I wanted him to hear. All my anger, everything. I turned on him.
He walked around the counter and looked at me in
disbelief, shaking his head.
“Who do you think you’re talking to? Are you out of your mind? Stupid kid. Get out of here before I call the cops.”
When I saw the fists he was making with his hands, I thought of fighting him. Anger wrapped its arms around me, oil and fire. But I shook it off, and left before he could approach me.
◊
I wondered about going by the apartment to see if Eva was home, but the thought made me feel hollow. I was still worried about running into Darren. So I stayed at Jackie’s and waited. But a whole week went by, and there was no sign of Eva. No message, no call. When I finally got the nerve to dial our number, the phone line was still disconnected.
That was when I knew she was gone.
“It kills me,” Eva used to tease, “how you move so slow and quiet.”
I told myself that I wasn’t going to get dragged down by her longer. That I wasn’t going to lose myself. I needed to leave it all alone. I needed to contain the weight of it.
◊
I still walk the old neighbourhood on my way to my new job. I’m in a bigger kitchen now. It moves faster, with more of a system, and there are more rules I can’t afford to break. But I can find my way around another place without much difficulty. They’ll see how I can cook.
Winter is finally over. Later, in the spring, I’m going to start taking courses at George Brown. They decided to let me in after all. The loan I’ll get for tuition stretches out around me like a strange new city.
Everywhere, there’s something of me spent, something owed.
Sometimes, I wonder if I’ll see her again. In the back seat of a cab, the window rolled down for the feeling of flight, or on a bicycle at night, strains of light rushing past as if to race the shadows sliding faster below. One of us always on a corner, the other one flying by.
If I do see her, I’ll stay silent as ever, until she’s gone, down the sheer halls of the empty streets.
We both do what we can to be safe.