Chapter Two
“I wouldn’t get too close. She might wake up swingin’! I’d poke her with a broom or somethin’.”
“Are you the boyfriend?”
“Nope! Just a friend.”
“What’s your name, sir?”
“Blue.”
“Blue what?”
“Blue fuckin’ Velvet, man. Why are you askin’?”
“Why are you being so hostile?”
“Cuz I fuckin’ hate cops!”
Cops …
Waking up felt like sliding down a hill, grasping at branches and ledges and whatever else could save me from tumbling to the ground of my shitty little life. I clung to the forest, the owls, and the stillness, but the real world slid back so fast that the copper owls and shiny trees became a blur. When my vision cleared, I saw two big cops towering over my bed. I scrunched up my face and closed my eyes as though I could will them away. But they remained, tall and stoic, like two giant skyscrapers blocking the sun.
“Wakey-wakey, princess,” Blue said. “They’ve come to take you in.”
“For what?” I blinked hard a couple of times.
The older cop raised his manicured black eyebrows and said, “Seems you trashed a motel room last night.”
I rubbed my eyes. “Do you mean when I got raped and beaten and left on the floor?”
“On your feet, Ms. Nyrider. We have to take you in.”
I looked at his name tag. “Is your name really Constable Law?”
“Yes, Ms. Nyrider. Now get up.”
“Only if you tell me who your esthetician is.”
“Up!” Constable Law said, raising his perfect eyebrows again.
“I need to get dressed.” I got off the bed completely naked, any sense of shame long buried. The younger cop’s cheeks turned pink, like he’d suddenly developed a fever. I didn’t care. I felt like the world had already stripped me bare. Ever since I’d sold my first blow job, I’d lived in a constant state of disgrace. Nudity paled in comparison to the vacancy in my soul. Strippers had it easy, though they’d tell you different. Their customers had to be three feet from the stage, couldn’t touch them, and if they did, the bar would turn their pack of steroid bouncers loose. The only bouncer I’d had was Milos, and only if I could find him when I needed him.
I scanned the floor for something to wear. I chose a skin-tight apricot tank top with a rum stain on the left breast, lime green booty shorts, and a pair of fuchsia pumps I’d drunkenly kicked off a couple of nights before. I slid my feet into the shoes and shimmied toward the door.
“Do you have a lawyer?” Constable Law chuckled.
I leaned against the door frame, squinted hard, and said, “Let me check my Rolodex.”
He smirked and dangled handcuffs in my face. “Okay, smart-ass. Come with us.”
I put my hands behind my back and dropped my head.
“Seems she knows the drill.” The young cop laughed.
I turned and looked at him. “Hmm. I’m going to call you Constable Outlaw.”
“Ha ha, smart mouth. I’ve seen a thousand of you, girl! You’re as ordinary as a Tim Hortons coffee.”
“I love Tim Hortons coffee,” I said to Constable Law. He grinned and gently nudged me out the door.
The hallway welcomed me with its usual musty scent. It stuck to my palate every time. I never got used to the dank aroma and offensive carpet tile, more subfloor than carpet. The actual carpet — old, faded, and orange — looked sour to me, like some drunk guy had puked up the imminent cancer cells nesting in his intestines. I glanced out a window flecked with dirt, cracks, and dried spit. The outside world was perpetually gloomy through the filthy glass.
The crisp air refreshed me. Fat, smoky clouds hung low, threatening rain. My snoopy neighbours, habitually unemployed and waiting around for the mailman, watched me walk to the police car parked partly on the curb as if responding to a murder in progress instead of a medicated hooker sleeping in her bed. I kept my eyes down. Two baby-pink gerbera daisies wilted on the sidewalk, their petals limp and muddied by dusty shoeprints. They stretched toward their broken water vials, reaching as hard as they could toward their sustenance. Their faces looked determined, committed to their life purpose of being happy.
Constable Outlaw shoved me into the back seat of the cruiser. “Can we stop at the Hortons?” I asked and then laughed out loud as he slammed the door. The stench of regurgitated hot dogs had seeped into the upholstery and oozed into my sinuses. I leaned against the window as the cop car weaved down the winding hill of Queen Elizabeth Park Road toward the downtown valley. I gazed up at the business towers as we cruised past Telus Field, where my dad had taken me to watch an Edmonton Trappers baseball game when I was eight years old. I didn’t call it Telus Field; I called it John Ducey Park because that’s what my dad had called it. He said that a stadium that had been standing in the valley since 1933 had earned the right to keep its name from simpler times and not sell out to big corporations like the rest of the world these days.
That day should have been fun. A rare day out with my dad, just the two of us. But I couldn’t focus on the game. I couldn’t stop looking at my dad’s long face shadowed beneath his CN Rail ball cap. He wasn’t watching the players. He spent most of his time staring at his feet and picking at his nails. I wondered where he was and if I was welcome there. I wanted my dad to be happy, like the other dads cheering and waving foam fingers in the air. But he withered away beneath the black clouds, so I stared at the floor and followed him into the darkness. We sat like two faded cardboard cut-outs forgotten from the better days of 1933, displaced and soon to be discarded.
I’d been too young to understand why my dad got so mad when the game was rained out after the first inning. It’s not like he’d been watching it. “There’ll be other games,” I’d said, hoping to cheer him so he’d spend the day with me. But he kept his eyes fixed on the road as he drove us home, where he’d go hide out in the garage, like he always did when he wasn’t away working.
“No, Chanie. Today was their last game. The team’s been sold to a rich guy, and it’s being moved to Texas.”
“Don’t be sad, Dad. Maybe we can move to Texas too.” I forced a smile and hoped that our house in Texas wouldn’t have a garage.
I stared longingly out the back window of the cop car as we drove along Rossdale Road. When we reached the top of Grierson Hill, the stadium had faded from my vision just like my dad had faded from my life. I felt nostalgic for something that felt like home. But I could never go home. I’d never really had a home. I never really had a chance. I was a hostage in the back seat of a cop car and a hostage in a life I never chose.
I pushed my dad’s sad face out of my head and tried to distract myself with the scenery. I focused on the old EPCOR Building. But it looked sad too, its weathered beige and boring concrete exterior a stark symbol of how fast our world deteriorates. I thought of how the Chateau Lacombe, a once glorious, sleek, and eye-catching building, paled in the shadows of towers like the all-glass thirty-six-storey Manulife Place. A world obsessed with bigger, better, newer. Everything else fading in the background, like the stadium. Like my dad. Like me, someday soon. My youthful body, forgiving of long nights and little sleep, would become old and outdated and be replaced by sleek young girls who, too, would inevitably lose their lustre and end up in the back seat of a cop car.
Inside the police station, a sturdy female cop gripped my arm and steered me to a shadowy room that resembled an abandoned library. A wobbly black metal bookshelf threatened to collapse in the back corner. Two burgundy armchairs that looked as though they’d been stolen from a trailer park lawn sat side by side. They’d been angled toward each other as though I’d be having a chat with a talk show host.
“Today’s your lucky day,” the female cop said. “Some of the bleeding hearts in the community have a program for kids like you.”
Kids like me?
I looked at her name tag: Constable White. She looked like a former Roller Derby girl who’d retired her tattoos, helmet, and kneepads in exchange for a badge and a gun. Maybe she’d even changed her last name from Blanco to White so she wouldn’t seem so badass.
She looked me up and down, leaned closer, and said, “I suggest you shut your smart mouth and listen to what the worker has to say when she comes in.”
“I hope she suggests a lobotomy.”
“What’s that, smart mouth?”
“Sounds good, sir.” I saluted Constable White and plopped down into a chair. I waited for her to get lost so I could rest my eyes. My temples pounded. The bruises on my body pulsed like twisted lullabies waltzing with my anxiety. I leaned back in the armchair, pulled my knees to my chest, and burrowed down the best I could. But every time I closed my eyes, I flashed back to the motel room. The broken glass. The blood. The ambulance. Blue.
I woke up to the scent of lilacs and the sound of rustling pages. A dark-haired woman in her mid-forties was sitting in the armchair next to me. I guessed she was French or some other exotic breed. She wore black-rimmed glasses and a leather jacket with a white blouse underneath. Her nails looked like little pink pearls had nested on her fingertips. She held a blue paperback in her hands: The Bone Cage by Angie Abdou.
I propped myself up and put my feet on the floor. “I’m sorry. I must have dozed off. Good book?”
“There’s no need to apologize, Chay-nee?”
“It’s actually pronounced Shaw-nee.”
“I’m sorry, Chanie. Lovely name.”
“Thanks.” She wasn’t the first to mispronounce my name, but at least she was polite.
“Anyway, I’m sure you’re exhausted.” She held the book up for me to see. “Yes! An amazing book! It’s on the Canada Reads list!”
Canada Reads?
She marked her place with a receipt and set the book down. “My name is Rie. I’m a psychologist, and I’m in charge of a new program for young adults like you.”
“Like me?”
“Young people who’ve had some run-ins with the law and don’t have stable family supports in place.”
I rolled my eyes and slumped back into the burgundy abyss of the armchair.
“Would you like to hear about it?”
“Do I have a choice?”
“We call the program Begin Again. It includes a series of counselling sessions, academic upgrading, and career planning.”
All shit I didn’t care to hear about. But I liked the way she talked to me. Articulate. Clear. Breaking everything into tiny sentences, digestible, like the puny pieces of cheese I fed the mice in the garbage room of my apartment building. Nonetheless, I wasn’t interested. I was beyond saving, like the dead daisies on my sidewalk. I forced a smile and said, “No, thank you.”
“It’s in your best interest to consider this option. I’ve reviewed your file, and you are looking at jail time at this point. You’ve had several — well — six clashes with the law.”
“So I get raped and beaten, and I’m the one going to jail?”
“It’s not really like that. You’ve damaged property on more than one occasion. You don’t pay your fines, and there are out-standing warrants for your arrest. Yes, you are a victim, but you are also accountable for your behaviour.”
“I’m so sick of everybody and their fancy social worker words — victim, accountability, warrants. Why can’t people leave me be?” For the moment, jail seemed okay. No rent, no phones, no blow jobs, no sweaty, emotional men. I could rest, maybe learn yoga, read books, and get free counselling.
Rie leaned forward and raised her eyebrows. “Will you please consider what we’re offering you?”
“Nope.”
“Let’s see, Chanie. You can either go to jail or go into our program. Jail means no freedom, no takeout food, no cellphones, movies, friends, or dating.”
I needed the world to shut up! I began to understand why people confessed to crimes they didn’t commit. Anything to be left alone. The pain meds had worn off, and I craved the refuge of my dark apartment, where I wouldn’t feel like a dissected frog at a science fair. Jail would mean constant surveillance. No more hiding out. No more Captain Morgan, weed, Tim Hortons, or lasagna from Rigoletto’s Café.
“Okay, Rie! What do you need from me?”
A sharp knock on the door startled me. Constable Law walked in. “Are you hungry?”
“Always.” I smiled.
“What would you like to eat?”
“A chicken bento with California rolls.” I laughed. I hadn’t even known what a bento was until the week before when one of my regulars took me for a guilt meal after he’d choked me too hard during his role-play fantasy.
He smiled and shook his head. “How about Tim Hortons?”
“Everybody loves Tim Hortons!” I smirked and slumped back into my chair.