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  Later, the cop took him downstairs to have him booked. They fingerprinted him and stood him in front of a computer camera which processed his image into a data bank. At that point the arresting officer said, “Listen, let’s have another look at that jacket of yours.” Lofton took it off and handed it to him. He went through the pockets a second time and checked for hidden compartments, then concentrated as he manipulated the leather. “What’s this thing in here? I feel something.”

  “Probably just the padding.”

  “No, this thing here. . . . Feels like it might be a wallet.”

  The cop found the rent in the lining and felt around inside, bringing out the library card. “Oh, whose name’s on this? Let’s see . . . ‘Jack Lofton’.”

  “That’s a friend of mine. I borrowed his card.”

  “Uh huh.”

  They put the name through the computer. The booking officer at the desk said, “Take off your shirt.”

  Lofton unbuttoned it, knowing what was coming.

  “Come here, look at the screen. ‘Born May 12, 1961—thirty-eight years old. Grim Reaper tattoo on left shoulder, barbed wire on right biceps, lightning bolts inside of forearms.’” He turned to Lofton with a hint of a smile. “How many people in Toronto do you think have a fucking Grim Reaper on their left shoulder?”

  “Well, nobody, I would hope.”

  “You better pray your picture doesn’t come up.”

  “Oh, fuck,” Lofton said, “you got me.”

  “Well, well. And look at these outstanding warrants: ‘Possession of a Prohibited Weapon’, ‘Failing to Appear’.”

  “You can add ‘Theft Under’ and ‘Obstructing Justice’,” the other cop said.

  After he was charged and booked, he was ushered into the overnight holding area: a hallway lined with cells, each of which was monitored by a camera. Prisoners’ shoes had to be left outside. It was almost two o’clock. Lying down on the metal cot, he pulled the blanket over himself and looked at the sink, the steel toilet, the ceiling.

  3

  Rowe decided to find some music. He got back on the subway and rode north to College, then caught a westbound streetcar to Spadina and disembarked by the Clarke Institute of Psychiatry. White bulbs rolled across the sign outside the Silver Dollar bar in the Waverley Hotel on the other side of the street.

  He passed the pink and green neon palms of the El Mocambo as he drifted into the outskirts of Chinatown. Paved islands with shelters paralleled the streetcar tracks. The broad road was a long-time artery of the garment trade and home to various Asian restaurants and many disparate, shabby-looking businesses. There were window displays with dusty fedoras, wingtip shoes, X-rated videos. He paused by a striped pole to browse the designs inside the fly-specked glass of an apparent tattoo parlor/barber shop. Across the street and through the blocks around Baldwin, Kensington Market’s shops and gamy stalls were closed until morning.

  Blues chords could be heard over scattered applause as Rowe approached Grossman’s Tavern. He opened the door and walked through the front area between some wooden tables and the bar, where an old hippie was nursing a draught and a Chinese woman was loading a tray with bottles. Two people were playing pool.

  The adjoining room on the right was dimly lit and crowded. Rowe scanned the customers as he pulled out a rickety chair and sat down. There were primitive paintings of the building, and countless faded black and white photographs of regulars from decades past on the walls. The band was in the middle of a Sonny Boy Williamson cover.

  Half an hour later he finished another drink and left while the musicians were on break. As Rowe stepped off the curb near the side of the building, he happened to notice a woman looking back his way while she walked up Cecil. It was just a passing glance, a wary gesture on a dark street, but he decided to follow her along the opposite sidewalk. When she emerged from the shadows into the light, he could see her long black hair and what appeared to be a pale trench coat. She looked back at him again.

  The only sounds were their footsteps and the leaves rustling in the breeze. A white cat slunk beneath a car. Although Rowe kept a casual pace with his hands in his pockets, not wanting to alarm her, he was gradually overtaking her. Perhaps she was slowing down. He wondered if he should say something. Even in his unfettered state of mind he could see the unlikelihood of managing a conversation with her in such lonely and potentially dangerous circumstances, but there: she glanced back again. His pulse quickened. As they approached the first intersection almost parallel to one another, he caught her eye and said, “Excuse me. Would you like a cigarette?”

  “Okay,” she answered in a small voice.

  They met in the centre of the road.

  “My name’s Derek,” he said as he held out the pack.

  She took one, smiling shyly. “I’m Sarah.”

  Up close he didn’t find her very attractive, but she was unexpectedly young and there was something appealing in her suppliant stance and the tender way she was looking up at him. From her swarthy complexion he thought she might be Portuguese. “It’s a nice night,” Rowe said, lighting her cigarette, then his own.

  “Yes.” She barely inhaled.

  “You’re very pretty.”

  “Thank you.”

  He couldn’t place her accent and wondered what to say next. It felt as if anything at all were possible. “May I give you a little kiss?”

  She shrugged. “Um, okay.”

  He leaned over and put his hand on the side of her head, bringing his lips down to hers. She kissed him back. It was like a strange dream. “I’m certainly glad to meet you. Maybe we should go sit down so we can talk.”

  He took her by the hand and led her to a slight knoll partially concealed by a small tree just off the sidewalk. After they lowered themselves, he flicked his cigarette into the street and kissed her more seriously, slipping his hand inside her open coat and holding her by the waist. Then, moving upwards over her ribs, he palmed her small breast through her blouse and caressed it, feeling the outline and then the growing distinction of nipple unencumbered by bra.

  Rowe looked into her dark eyes while he fumbled with the buttons and pulled open her shirt, trying to commit her tits to memory in case they vanished. As he caressed them she put her hand over his and nervously whispered, “People are there.”

  There was a couple walking up the next street. He leaned back on the grassy dirt and shifted his prick while she rearranged herself, and asked, “Would you like to come back to my place?”

  “Okay.”

  She dropped her cigarette and stepped on it as they began walking. Rowe put his arm around her. He tried to piece together the apparent facts: her hair looked clean, the coat and slacks were all right, she didn’t appear to be crazy, and her seeming naiveté didn’t fit the standard hooker profile. Maybe she was some kind of angel. He asked, “Do you live around here?”

  “On Beverley Street.”

  “Were you coming back from somewhere when I met you?”

  “I was in the bar. Where you were.”

  “You were there too? I didn’t see you.”

  At the corner of Huron and College they got into a cab. He took her hand in the back seat and said he was happy they’d met, but was surprised she wasn’t worried about talking to strangers on dark streets.

  “I was bored in my room. I didn’t want to go back.”

  “You were looking for adventure.”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you have a boyfriend or anything?”

  “Yes.”

  Rowe assumed that she’d misunderstood, and didn’t pursue it. As he looked out the window it occurred to him that they weren’t far from Beverley, and suggested that they go to her place instead. After telling the driver to take the next right, he asked her where she was from and was perplexed when she said India. It was getting so he couldn’t tell whe
re anyone was from anymore. The cabbie, glancing at them in the rearview mirror, could have been from India, Iran, or fucking who-knows-where himself.

  “How long have you been here?”

  “Three years,” she said. “First year I was in Montreal.”

  “Is your family here or back home?”

  “Home. I came here myself.” She squeezed his hand and added, “I had a friend who came first.”

  The cab turned onto Dundas from McCall, a few blocks from 52 Division, passing the Henry Moore sculpture outside the Art Gallery of Ontario. As they drove down the next street she pointed out a three-storey building set back from the road behind an iron gate. After paying the driver, he followed her up a path past some bushes and a bicycle rack.

  While she was unlocking the second door, Rowe looked through the window to the office, and scanned the mailboxes, bulletin board and list of tenants. They walked by a community room where people were watching TV, and climbed the stairs. On the third floor a girl coming out of a small kitchen said hello to her.

  After they reached her room he went back down the corridor to the men’s lavatory. It looked sterile for a rooming house. Flushing the urinal, he took a long drink of water from one of the taps to try to dilute the alcohol, and looked himself over in the mirror.

  Her single bed was pushed against the wall. Above the opposite counter was a shelf with a few books and papers, then a row of cupboards where a photo of her with short hair was taped. “Nice picture,” he said. “Where was it taken?”

  “In Montreal. A place like this.”

  Her window overlooked Beverley. “If you don’t mind my asking, how old are you?”

  “Twenty-seven.”

  “You look younger.” Rowe checked the foreign literature on her shelf and noticed a copy of what seemed to be The Koran. “I thought people in India were Hindus.”

  She giggled and pushed herself against him with her head down. “I lied.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I’m Afghan.”

  “Afghan?”

  “I’m from Afghanistan.”

  “Why did you say you were from India?”

  “It sounds better. It’s a very big country next to us, and it’s more . . . interesting.”

  He put his arm around her. “I don’t know much about Afghanistan, but I’m sure you can be proud of it. And maybe you’re too pale for an East Indian.”

  After helping her out of her clothes, he set her down on the edge of the bed and stood in front of her while he slowly unzipped his pants. She sat awkwardly with her thin arms crossed, then looked up at him with a shy smile as he touched her cheek. Rowe noticed her downy mustache as she put her fingers around the base of his erection and took most of it into her mouth.

  Later, lying beside him, she fingered the greying hair on his chest and wanted to know if he had a girlfriend. Rowe said he’d been seeing someone, actually, and asked if he could smoke. She told him apologetically that it was against the rules. He lay back again, glancing at his watch as he put his arm around her. “So, what do you do for a living?”

  “I’m getting welfare.”

  Her looks seemed to be waning as he took in her thick brows and the circles beneath her eyes, noticing that her face was quite gaunt. He still found her fragile body language disarming, however. “What kind of work have you been looking for?”

  “Anything, I think. I had an interview at a restaurant, it was for a dishwasher, but the man started touching me in the kitchen and wanted me to . . . have sex with him. He had my address when I filled out the paper, and wanted to come here. I didn’t know what to do, so I said yes. It happened quickly and I didn’t have time to think about it, but I didn’t want to do it.”

  “That doesn’t sound too good.”

  “No. And I probably wouldn’t get the job, either. It would be for nothing.”

  “Did he come over?”

  “He came but I didn’t answer the buzzer. He was pressing it for half an hour, and finally went away. I saw him leave out my window.”

  After a while she fell asleep. When he heard her light snoring, Rowe saw that it was after three. As he tried to ease himself from the bed, she woke up. “Where are you going?”

  “I have to get up early.”

  She watched him pull on his pants. “When will I be seeing you?”

  “Well . . .” Tucking in his shirt, he turned to reach for his coat. “Since I’m going out with someone and you said you had a boyfriend, it’d be a bit hard right now. But why don’t I take your number?”

  “I don’t have a telephone.”

  “Oh.” Rowe sat down beside her. “It’ll get complicated if the woman I’m with hears other women phoning my place. If it’s all right, why don’t I come down and call on you sometime?”

  “This week?”

  “Soon.”

  “I might have to leave here. My welfare is stopping and I think I’m going to get evicted.”

  “How long have you been collecting it?”

  “Here, two years. Maybe . . . maybe I’ll look for you in the bar. Where we were tonight.”

  “Sure, if I don’t see you before that.”

  Outside, Rowe lit a cigarette. While waiting for a streetcar, he decided that she was probably looking for a meal ticket now that her dough was getting cut off, and thought about her lying about being East Indian. Now, there was a whole different Third World hierarchy for you. Christ, if she’d lied about that, she’d probably lied about Afghanistan too. She was probably one of those Gypsies.

  4

  Jack Lofton was woken at six AM on Saturday, chained to the other prisoners, and driven to Old City Hall in a police van where he had to wait in a holding cell with fifteen other people until court began at nine-thirty. They were served packaged sandwiches and juice. He told his story to the public defender or “duty counsel,” a young Chinese woman who advised him to request that his case be remanded until Monday, since it was evident that his friend wasn’t going to show up. There was no point asking the judge for bail if there wasn’t anyone to post a surety. He was then taken to a larger holding area in the basement to wait until two when everyone else was finished in court.

  Lofton and the other prisoners who hadn’t made bail were driven to the Don Jail. While waiting to be processed, they were fed Salisbury steak with vegetables and dessert on aluminum trays. During the strip search he had to lift his testicles, turn around, and spread his buttocks. His money, clothes, keys and other possessions were confiscated and taken to the property room. He was given a blanket, a blue jail jumpsuit, a pair of socks, a T-shirt, and a pack with a comb, toothbrush, toothpaste and small container of shampoo, then told to walk naked into another holding cell off the processing area to change.

  Everyone there appeared to be a small-timer. He got into a conversation with somebody who’d been arrested for Fraud Over and Failing To Appear while passed out at his ex-wife’s place after she called in on him. A little oriental punk who seemed to know the routine from the way he was talking to the guards and asking people for cigarettes and things went up to him and said, “Hey. Do you need a house?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You want to bunk with me?”

  “Uh . . . sure.”

  “Okay, come on. You stay with me.”

  Prisoners observed the new guys coming into the main lockup as they sat around reading newspapers or watching one of four TVs in a long narrow room lined on one side with two-man cells and a guard station. Opposite, there was a wall of bars, and beyond that a walkway; the windows behind were protected by metal mesh. Steel tables and stools were set up in the centre of the room, toilets and showers at the far end.

  Everyone was locked up early for the night. A bunk bed in Lofton’s new “house” stood against one wall of cinder blocks, across from a stainless steel table with connecting
chairs that were bolted to the floor. At the back, a toilet and sink. Du produced some smokes and held up a match for his cellmate before he walked back to the lower bed, lighting his own. “So, what do you do? Why you here?”

  “Oh, just some bullshit. . . .” Lofton leaned forward with his arm across his knee and took a contemplative drag. He wasn’t sure why the kid had chosen him to bunk with, unless it was for protection. But that hardly seemed necessary, the way he’d been introducing him around like he was cock of the walk. Getting deodorant, scoring tobacco.

  “I got picked up on probation violation,” Du said. “It was shit—they picked me up when I was just walking home from school, man. Not fucking fair. There were all these things I couldn’t do, like I couldn’t leave the house except to go to school. All kinds of conditions. But I wasn’t doing anything, they just grabbed me—”

  “What were you in for originally?”

  “Armed robbery.”

  “And they just gave you probation?”

  “Time served too. Six months.”

  “Oh, so that’s how come you know everybody.”

  “Yeah.” Du drew on his cigarette. “It wasn’t nothing. My friends and me, we went into a store and robbed it with a BB gun and a couple knives. You know,” he added with a shrug, “just doing something.”

  “You’re from Vietnam, right?”

  “Yeah. Five years I been here.”

  Lofton flicked his ash on the floor. “They don’t mind if you smoke?”

  “Yeah, they don’t fucking care. You clean up yourself in here.”

  “So your friends are out on probation, then.”

  “Yeah. The cops pick me up for nothing. Just walking home. Fuck.” He shook his head disgustedly. “So, you. Really—what’s the charges?”

  Lofton smiled slightly and rubbed his jaw. “Just a comedy of errors, my friend. Last summer three cop cars showed up one night after I’d parked my bike behind my girlfriend’s building. I didn’t know what the fuck was going on when they pulled their guns on me. This other girl came out and said, ‘Oh, no, it’s not him, he’s just visiting someone who lives here.’ Apparently, there was a peeping Tom before I got there. You know, some guy looking in her window—”