Zoe spends the night with me, and years of pent-up passion and longing come rushing out of us both. For the first few hours of our new life together, we are swept away. But then morning arrives, and the TV vans come back, and the tabloid reporters resume their vigil on the sidewalk in front of my house. The phones around the house ring and ring until I finally pull the plug on every one of them.
“Well,” Zoe says, standing in the oblique morning light, peeking through a tiny slit in the curtains of the bedroom window at the media phalanx below, “what do we do now?”
I can imagine the celebration those mudslingers outside will have if they see Zoe and I emerge from the house together. If Zoe is spotted with me anywhere, any time, it will make Janice’s story of her infidelity seem truthful, and I will become the villain of the piece. Janice and Jimmy T have really stuck it to us.
Zoe sits down on the bed beside me, puts her arms around me, nestles her face against my shoulder.
“Well,” she sighs, holding out a plane ticket to Ireland, “what am I going to do with this? I was going to take a vacation while you were away on your honeymoon, but now . . . ”
Downstairs, the doorbell is ringing. Damned tabloid vultures.
“Look, Zoe,” I say, pulling her closer, “This whole nightmare with Janice and Jimmy T is my fault. There’s no reason that you should have to suffer.”
“What are you saying?”
“Maybe you should go on your trip like you planned to. At least until the dust settles.”
“You think so?”
“It’ll probably be easier for both of us that way.”
“Can you survive without me until I get back?”
“I’ve been waiting my whole life for you, Zoe. I think I can endure another couple of months.”
Zoe eludes the TV hounds the same way she had when she came in, and the next day she flies away to Ireland. I manage to duck past the cameras by sneaking out of my house late at night, and rent a room under an assumed name above a tattoo parlour on Queen West. Whenever I go out, I wear a felt cowboy hat, cop-style mirrored sunglasses, and some old, beat-up clothing I’ve picked up at the Salvation Army store. I grow a thick beard, let my hair go wild, and soon I am unrecognizable even to myself.
I am not in the sunniest mood as I walk away from my dingy temporary home. The glare of headlights and traffic signals on the rain-glazed streets make my eyes sting. Icy rivulets of rain trickle through my collar and down my spine. Everything is conspiring to piss me off. Slouched over, trying to hide inside my overcoat, I can’t look up at the reflection of myself in the passing shop windows. I don’t want to recognize the shivering, shadow-eyed loser who will be looking back at me.
As I near Yonge Street, I duck into a faux-British pub called Foster’s to relieve the pressure from my aching bladder. As I stand in the men’s room with my piss angrily hissing against the white porcelain, I read the graffiti in front of my nose. “Young bich you make me ich!” reads one boldly scrawled statement. How poetic. Someone else has etched this bit of wisdom on the wall: “If you voted for the Prime Minister in the last election, you can’t piss here — ’cause your DICK is in OTTAWA!!”
I pull a pen from inside my overcoat, and add the words from one of my songs to the bathroom wall:
I will swallow this sadness
before it ferments
into bitterness
I will savour the aftertaste
the lingering
pain of this loss
Alone in this crowd
I will practice
appearing uninjured
I will drink this glass empty
and wait for myself
to return
I find a shadowy back-corner table in the empty bar, and don’t even look up at the waitress as I order a pint of Guinness. I wonder if Zoe is drinking the same thing over there in Ireland, and if she is missing me as much as I miss her.
“Holy shit,” the waitress says. “Dak Sifter! Is that you?”
I looked up from under the old cowboy hat.
“Lola! Shhhhhhh! Not so loud — I’m in disguise.”
She sits down at the table across from me, whispering, “Shit, Sifter, the outfit’s great. I almost didn’t recognize you.”
“That’s the idea.”
“So,” she says, “I guess Jimmy T screwed you almost as bad as he screwed me, eh?”
“He’s a prince,” I say. “So, what’s new, Lola? When did you become a waitress?”
“Just after I lost my presidencies at the Women’s Issues Commission and the Minority Rights Alliance. Word got back to them about my performance at the Twelve Tribes, and I got impeached. Twice on the same day. I couldn’t show my face around campus anymore, so I just dropped out.”
“Damn. That sucks.”
“Yes,” she says, “it does suck. But I’m sure glad Jimmy T’s life is going so well.”
Jimmy T’s career, of course, is soaring high alongside his new girlfriend and top act, Janice Starr. The publicity created by our cancelled wedding has caused Janice’s second album, an overproduced electronic monstrosity called Love is Number One, to go straight to number one on the charts. Billy VandenHammer has put all of his resources behind Janice, and hasn’t returned calls from the Featherless Bipeds. It looks like the band’s relationship with Big Plastic Records had come to an end.
“I’ll get you your beer,” Lola says. When she returns, she sets two Guinness on the table, one for her and one for me, along with a newspaper.
“You’re probably okay to go home, now,” she says. “The papers have got a new story to chase.”
The front-page headline reads, “DOWNTOWN RAPIST STRIKES AGAIN!”
“The Downtown Rapist,” Lola whispers, “would I ever like to get my hands on that bastard. All of the attacks have been right here in my own neighborhood.”
“Holy crap,” I say, “doesn’t that worry you?”
“Actually, there’s been a guy following me home from work at night. He fits the description the other victims have given.”
“Jesus! Did you call the police?”
“They put a couple of plainclothes officers on the street along my route, but of course my stalker didn’t show up on those nights. I mean, he probably could tell these tall guys with neat haircuts had to be cops.”
“Maybe the police scared him away.”
“He started following me again two nights ago.”
“Did you call the cops again?”
“They said there’s a lot of paranoia around right now, and they just don’t have the resources to provide an escort for every woman who has to walk home at night. They told me to carry a cellphone, and call if anything actually happens — you know, like, ‘Hello? I’m about to be raped. Oh, sure, I’ll hold.’ I mean, it’s a little too late at that point, right?”
“Why don’t you take a cab home?”
“Try to find a cabbie at 3 am who will pick you up for a three-block fare.” She squints into her glass. “Besides, I want to catch this bastard, not run from him. And I think I know a way you can help me do it.”
“What?”
“I’ve got a plan. What have we got to lose?”
A homeless person is sitting on Queen Street, just inside a delivery alley. He is mumbling nonsense, with a vacant look in his eyes. He sits on a subway grate, warming his body with the secondhand heat, the salt-and-vinegar smell of his body wafting thickly into the air. There are several signs that he is a legitimate street-dweller, and not just some scam artist working for pocket change: he has wild, unwashed hair, and a scruffy beard. All of his clothes are frayed and have turned the colour of dirt. He is gnawing on a chicken bone he’s retrieved from a nearby garbage can.
He’s the sort of person that hundreds of people pass by everyday, like the same old scenery. And he is, of course, me.
I’ve gone to great lengths to blend into the street scene here. I’ve chosen a spot with a clear view of Lola’s route home, a spot which is not already some other street person’s turf. I dragged my clothing around a muddy condominium development site before putting it on, and my crappy, untrimmed beard makes me look like a street-dweller anyway. I’m even pretending to eat out of garbage cans, but my sterile middle-class upbringing prevents me from eating the stuff, so what I’m doing is starving.
At first, I had been playing a version of the wigged out Hamlet I once did in a high school play, but now, after four days of not washing or eating a decent meal, I’m starting to feel the part.
Since it would not make sense for a street person to wear a wristwatch, I have learned to measure the day by the tolling of the bells at Old City Hall. It is 3 am, and, shortly after the last peal of the bell has faded, Lola turns the corner and walks this way. Tonight, though, a solitary man follows her.
I rock on the balls of my feet, ready to spring up at the right moment. Lola’s pace quickens, and the man following her speeds up. He doesn’t look like what I would have pictured a rapist to look like, but I guess that’s part of his cover. With his little glasses, thinning hair, and slouching shoulders, he looks more like a nervous bean counter than an elusive criminal. At the rate he’s moving, he will catch up with her right in front of where I’m squatting. Perfect.
“Excuse me, miss,” he says, touching Lola on the shoulder. He screams as I pounce on him. Before Lola even turns around, I’ve got him pinned to the concrete.
“Oh my God, don’t hurt me!” he whimpers, “Take whatever you want!”
From behind me, Lola says, “This isn’t the guy.”
I look over my shoulder at her. “Not the guy?” Then I focus back on the small man pinned under me. “If you aren’t the guy, then why were you following her?”
“I just wanted directions to Queen Street,” he says, eyes wide.
“You’re lying on Queen Street right now,” I say, and I get off him and help him to his feet.
“Oh,” he says, turning to hurry away, “thanks.” Then he stops, takes a second look at me, and asks, “Hey, aren’t you that guy who was supposed to marry Janice Starr?”
“No, I’m not,” I grunt, “I’m a crazy street person. Now get the hell outta here.”
“Well, you wound up where you belong,” he says, shaking his head as he wanders away. “You really broke that poor girl’s heart.”
I look at Lola, who has her fists planted firmly on her hips, and is tapping one foot on the sidewalk.
“Nice going,” she says. “Now we’re never going to catch the real Downtown Rapist!”
“Well, you could have told me what he looks like!”
“I don’t know exactly what he looks like! He always followed at a distance, but he was bigger than that guy!”
“How was I supposed to know! I mean, it could have . . . ”
“Shhhhh!” Lola hisses, “Listen!”
“What?”
“I heard a cry for help!”
Lola sprints up the street. I try to catch up with her, but I keep tripping over the baggy pants of my street person costume. I look down an alley, but Lola is nowhere to be seen.
In the alley, on the ground beneath a fire escape, two figures struggle. A woman is face-down on the pavement. A man kneels on her back as she thrashes beneath him. He jerks her head back, tapes her mouth shut, then pulls her arms behind her back and begins winding tape around her wrists.
“Hey!” I shout.
The guy jumps up from his victim and charges at me, his eyes wild through the holes in his ski mask. He grabs an aluminum trash can lid and clangs me in the face with it. My knees buckle, and I’m sprawled out on my back. I can hardly breathe through the blood and goop spurting from my mouth and nostrils. I roll over on my side. I hear the tearing of duct tape. My arms are jerked behind my back. I am helpless to stop the tape from binding my wrists and legs. I’ve finally mustered enough breath to call out for help, but the duct tape is plastered over my mouth.
“Now you can watch, hero,” he says.
Lola leaps from the fire escape above him, hitting him squarely on the shoulders with her heels, knocking him to the ground.
“He can watch you get your balls busted,” she says.
He pulls a knife from his belt as he struggles to his feet, but Lola sends it clattering across the concrete with one deft karate kick.
“Fuck!” cries the rapist.
“Not again in your lifetime,” says Lola, who kicks him several times in the crotch.
He falls to the ground, gasping and puking. The woman he was attacking is on her feet, and she adds a couple of kicks of her own. The man rolls onto his back, groans, and stops moving.
“You okay?” Lola asks the other woman, who nods yes. Lola picks up the knife, cuts the duct tape from the woman’s wrists, hands her the cell phone and says, “Dial 911. Tell them we’ve got the Downtown Rapist here.”
Then Lola cuts me free, and tears the tape from my mouth.
“You okay?” she asks.
I am able to say something that sounds like, “blorrt!”
She helps me to stand up. There is the sound of a police siren, tires screeching. Four uniformed police officers run into the alley, guns drawn.
“Hi, guys,” says Lola. “He’s over there.”
Lola and I stand in the alley answering the police officers’ questions. I’m dirty, stinky, ragged and bleeding, so of course this is the moment that the photographers and TV cameras finally catch up with me.