His sales and marketing director, which was how he now thought of her, beamed.

"I'm afraid I have to go." He looked at the men around the table. "Boys? For the next hour or so, Sandy's going to lead a discussion on how we implement this plan. Get other people in here if you need to. Work out the details and we'll go over them on Monday." He looked at Sandy. "All right?"

"Yes, sir!" she said.

Trick and the others nodded in silence. Gerald started for the door.

"Wait!" Sandy rushed his envelope to him. "Don't forget the payoff."

He took it without a word.

During his taxi ride home, as interminable traffic light delays and poor shortcut choices killed him incrementally, Gerald kept thinking about one thing. He kept revisiting in his mind the nights of Kyle's childhood, when he would look in on his son, hours after he'd gone to sleep. Of the time he shared with Kyle, this was his favourite, because it entailed none of the erratic moods and movements of a child's waking hours. There were no unexplained crashes in the bas.e.m.e.nt, there was no absurd bouncing in the hall. No need to order an end to a ten-year-old's frightening, drunken joy at being allowed to play with one of his rowdier friends. No inevitable anger to regret.

It was as pure a moment as he could find, in any of his days. Not that he ever came away unscathed. When he crept into the plum-stained dark of Kyle's bedroom and it didn't matter what age his son was, two, eight, fifteen the pattern of feelings was always the same, a sequence that came at him in waves. He'd see his boy's pudgy fist tucked into his neck, or his fingers, wet with spit, half in, half out of his mouth, and he'd feel the first one roll into him that rush of joy, and then awe that he was allowed such joy that he a.s.sumed was any father's privilege and due. He handled the first wave just fine; he cherished the first wave. But he could never enjoy it for long, because the second wave came fast. That white crest of fear the certainty that he would screw it up, that it would all be s.n.a.t.c.hed away crashed down on his joy and pulled it out from under him every time. Vicki once asked him, as he was closing the door to Kyle's room, why he looked so upset.

"Ach!" The taxi driver hit the wheel with the flat of his hand as they pressed into the back end of another slowdown. He turned halfway around: "Everyone getting a start on the weekend, I think."

"Can't you take Merrivale?" Gerald asked.

The driver shook his head in disgust. "Merrivale is no good! It's all construction!"

Gerald felt the clench of rising panic in his chest. To distract himself, he dug into his pocket and brought out the envelope Sandy had insisted he take with him. Inside was, as she'd said, just a mock-up of a flyer she'd roughed out on her computer and printed on orange paper. Her love-measuring instrument, folded into three panels: [image]

Maybe it was a little over the top; Gerald couldn't be sure. It was situations like this when he didn't trust his instincts. That was the problem with having no strategic vision; you were lost in the forest and you couldn't tell the way out from the path that took you deeper in. But he liked the fact that on the back of the flyer, Sandy had drawn a rough facsimile of a $50-off coupon (good for orders of twenty filters or more). He trusted a sales and marketing director who hedged her bets.

For a while he studied the flyer, or maintained the posture of studying, as the cab crawled like sepsis from the fingertips of the city to its residential heart. But there was only so long he could stare at the flyer before the staring became as obsessive as the worrying it was supposed to forestall, and eventually he let it slide from his hand to the seat beside him and made do with noting all the roadside signage he would never have had the opportunity to read if his cab driver had made better off-ramp decisions.

Finally, when it was almost five by Gerald's watch, the car turned onto Breere Crescent. The driver looked back.

"What's the number?"

"Ninety-three," stressed Gerald. "It's around the curve."

The cabbie took them at an unnecessarily solemn pace past the stucco-smooth Victorian townhouses with their sunken garages that Vicki had once reliably clicked her tongue at, and past the pair of Hall & Ehrlich-designed French Country houses she'd transformed three years before. They skirted properties hemmed with shrubbery and properties walled with brick, and it was taking so long Gerald wanted to toss all his cash into the front seat and run the rest of the way.

"It's right there," he said, pointing over the driver's shoulder to the turreted house beside the Linders' s.h.a.gbark hickory.

"Which one?"

"Just stop the car."

He paid the fare and opened the door at the same time, and he told himself as he ran through the tender spring air, down the sidewalk and up the drive, that he had no earthly reason for running. Out of breath, he went to the garage first, saw Vicki's car was still gone and surveyed his own for ominous indications. He found, to his scant relief, none; it was parked in its proper spot, if a little off-line, and there were no marks on it that he could see. Which meant nothing.

The door from the garage led to the mud room, and he wiped his feet out of habit. "Kyle?" he called, expecting no answer. "Son?" He found the kitchen empty, the breakfast nook hollow, and abandoned further downstairs searching. It was a straight path up he needed to take, to the door of his son's room, and though he tried to stay calm as he climbed the stacked staircase, he still hated each landing and turn.

Outside Kyle's door, he forced himself to slow down. Even if his son seemed fine, he really wasn't, and no good could come from bursting in. He took a breath and flattened his tie, then called in a soft voice, "Kyle?" His son didn't answer, but it wasn't for that reason he pushed open the door. It was because he heard something else. A meow.

He saw Kyle lying on his back, on his bed, over at the far side of the room. He was apparently asleep. And for a minute it all seemed normal, the old joy wave came rolling in, except the d.a.m.ned cat was there too, sitting on the bed beside his son. It was licking the outside of what appeared to be a bag of candy, b.u.t.terscotch and grape and cherry sweets, that Kyle was holding on his stomach. Gerald went in quietly like he always had, this time to shoo the cat away. When he got close enough to see it wasn't a bag of candy at all, a surge of dizziness knocked him to his knees.

He was suddenly swimming. It seemed he was swimming across the floor, through a tide that kept pushing him back. He was required to swim against the current to his son.

"Kyle!" he shouted.

He grabbed hold of the side of the bed and pulled himself up. The hissing cat he swept away. "Son!"

Kyle opened his eyes sleepily. "Dad," he said. "Don't."

Gerald's response was to grunt, because he was trying to pick his son up. It was clear to him what he needed to do. But his legs weren't working, he couldn't get leverage, and his son was so much heavier than he looked. "I need your help, son," he gasped, in between his attempts to shove his arm underneath Kyle's shoulders. "We're going to the hospital."

"No," said Kyle.

"Come on, son." He felt strangely calm. "Can you stand?"

"Stop," yelled Kyle. Gerald thought he yelled stop stop. Which made no sense so he kept working. He kept trying to lift his little boy.

And then Kyle started flailing with his good hand. "No! Let me go!" He started to push and to hit. Gerald took a popping fist on the ear and began to understand something else was wrong. He backed away so that his son's mangled hand wouldn't be hurt any more.

"Kyle," he said from his knees, his chest heaving, "we have to get you to the hospital." He spoke slowly, in case his son was drugged or drunk, though no signs or smells told him that was true. He began to see that Kyle had other marks on him, bruises and cuts to his face and neck. It occurred to Gerald it seemed logical, it seemed complete that here were the effects of the unexplained off-camp event, the physical manifestations, that they'd somehow been delayed until now. His son had been in a war war. And though he tried not to see the hand, its dried blood and swollen flesh, the k.n.o.bs and crooks of broken bones, he couldn't help but look. And when he looked he couldn't breathe.

"I'm not going," said Kyle. "You can't make me go." He said it in a way that seemed rational, not crazy. Which made it harder to comprehend. Kyle pushed himself up with his good hand until his back was against the wall. As if his father were the enemy.

Gerald's mouth hung open but he was having trouble getting air. It didn't matter what had happened; he had to think about what was next. He pressed his skull with his hands to quell the panic, so he could figure out how to speak, to make his son understand.

"Your hand, son." He had to do better. Had to try again. "Doctors have to see to your hand."

"No!"

Oh, lord, these no's no's and and not's not's were making him queasy. It was probable he was going to throw up. "It could be infected," he whimpered. "The bones...need to be set." were making him queasy. It was probable he was going to throw up. "It could be infected," he whimpered. "The bones...need to be set."

"Don't worry," said Kyle, full of anger, contempt. "I ran it under the tap."

It was then Gerald heard the clack of heels on hardwood, and he knew he had to stand and get to the door. "Vicki," he called out, "don't come in." He stumbled across the carpet she'd chosen. "Please..."

She peeked in the doorway as if unsure whether to intrude. When she came in and saw him flopping about, her eyes brightened as if she might laugh. He found his footing just as she looked over his shoulder, as she coughed and crumpled as though she'd been punched.

What parents they were, Gerald thought as he went to her. In a moment of crisis they couldn't even stay on their feet.

4.

Everybody was freaking out so much Dad running around, Mom sort of catatonic I decided I had to get out of there. As soon as Dad was busy trying to carry Mom into their bedroom and make sure she was all right, I grabbed a sweater and eased down the stairs and out the back door. I thought for a second about taking the cat with me, but that just seemed like too much to deal with.

My hand hurt like h.e.l.l, of course. The fact that it was useless didn't bother me, but if I let it hang at my side the throbbing was so intense it got hard to see for all the sparks in my eyes. It took me a while to figure out that if I kept it above my waist, the hand stopped feeling like it was going to explode. So as I walked to a street where I knew I could get a cab, making sure to take the back lanes and cutting through some properties so Dad couldn't follow, I held my hand up over my heart, like I felt really deeply about something. And I wrapped it in the sweater so people wouldn't stare.

When I was finally able to get a cab, I asked the driver, a dark-eyed young guy who looked almost Pashtun, to take me to a hotel with Internet service.

"They all got that," said the cabbie, looking at me in the rear-view mirror. "You got a computer?"

I looked around the back seat. Under my armpits. "No."

"Then you have to use the business centre." The cabbie seemed to study me through the mirror. "They might not let you, though."

"Why not?"

"You're a kid." The cabbie grinned. "They might think you want to use it for p.o.r.n or something." He shrugged as he made a turn. "Which, you know, I'm not saying is bad. People should do what they want." He looked back at me again. "So, any place in particular you're thinking of?"

I shook my head.

"Someplace cheap though."

"Doesn't matter." I still had money in my account, and the military was paying my full salary until the end of my COF-AP COF-AP contract. contract.

"You have some way to pay? Credit card?"

I still had my wallet with about three hundred dollars in my back pocket the guys at the casino were probably so excited about the eighteen thousand in cash they forgot to look for it. I took it out and held it up for him.

The cabbie bobbed his head from side to side. "Okay," he said. "I know where."

We drove for a few blocks. Sat at red lights that wouldn't turn. The cabbie must have had his air conditioning on high because I was starting to shiver. When I unwrapped the sweater and pulled it on he looked back again. "Whoa, you hurt yourself or something?"

I laid my hand in my lap, out of view. "It's all right."

"What's it, like, cut or something? You need to see a doctor?"

"No."

"What did you do to it?"

He was bugging me, so I just stared out the window. If Legg had been in the same situation, he would've probably told the driver to f.u.c.k off. But that wasn't necessarily one of his better qualities. I looked up at the driver. "Are you from Afghanistan?"

He laughed as if I'd said something funny. "I'm from Oakville," he said. "My parents, though, they're from Iran originally."

"Have you ever heard of the gudiparan?" gudiparan?"

The driver looked back at me through the mirror. "No, I never heard of that. What is it?"

I stared out the window again and pulled the sweater tighter. "Doesn't matter," I said.

5.

Gerald was a good husband. Not exceptional. Not award-winning on a grand scale. But better than most, Vicki suspected. And she found the realization warming, even after twenty-odd years, despite the events it had taken to make her see. Over the weekend, practically every hour, he'd come into the bedroom to check on how she was doing and to give her reports, though at first she hadn't been fully able to respond. Why that had been so still wasn't entirely clear, but it was as if a heavy blanket had been laid over her, and everything that had once come easily speaking, thinking, getting out of bed seemed suddenly to require a preposterous effort. She was in the clutch of some sort of anxiety crisis, Gerald said he'd been told. It was connected to the pains and shortness of breath she'd been experiencing, and what she needed was quiet and rest and calm. And Gerald's presence, after what she'd seen in Kyle's room, had helped a great deal. Surprisingly so. That was something she wanted to tell him, now that she was feeling very much better.

As for Kyle, Gerald had insisted the whole weekend that he was fine. And when she'd asked about his hand, and what could possibly have happened, and for heaven's sake what was being done done, he'd been very firm. It was all under control; she was not to worry that, Gerald had said with a half smile, was his job. And at the time, without the energy to argue, she'd chosen to believe that what Gerald meant was that Kyle was receiving treatment and getting well.

But now that she was here in his room, sitting on the edge of his bed, now that she saw the touches of dried blood on his duvet, which Rosary had neglected to launder, she could sense that Gerald had not been telling her the whole truth. That he had been trying to protect her from facts she had a right to know. And so she was angry at Gerald and needed to tell him that too. She would have to make it as clear to him as it was to her that, when it came to painful truths about their children, mothers should not be protected.

The spring light coming into the room, through the leaded gla.s.s windows, gave everything in it an elevated glow. The encyclopaedias and textbooks, the pieces of furniture she'd selected over the years, the Persian carpet in reds and golds all these things seemed strangely vivid, as if she'd never seen them before. From the bed she looked up at the antiquated periodic tables she'd given to Kyle when he was much younger, when his growing love of science seemed to define him the way hockey or video games or practical jokes served to define other boys, in a kind of characteristic shorthand that was useful in any conversation that began "My son...." She remembered how pleased she was to be able to give him these old musty tables, framed and flattened under gla.s.s, which showed only the elements that were known and understood at a time when science hardly knew how to look.

Then she pulled Kyle's duvet in bunches into her lap. She drew her fingertips across the coin-sized stains, and bent to press them against her cheek, and lips.

Somewhere in the room, she remembered, there was a plastic model of a man, with transparent skin that revealed all his inner workings. When Kyle was nine it seemed nothing could make him happier than painting the veins and arteries, the liver and lungs, giving shape to what was inside. It was surely proof, Vicki and Gerald had agreed, that he was a doctor, a researcher, some kind of scientist in the making, and it had stood on his desk, with pride of place, ever since. But now she couldn't see the transparent man there or on any of the shelves.

It became very important to find the transparent man. And after some minutes spent shifting boxes and searching among the detritus of Kyle's closet, Vicki saw its veined plastic legs peeking out at her. The man had fallen or been thrown into a corner and become buried under an acc.u.mulation of old shoes and books.

When she pulled it out, the sudden thrill she'd felt at recovering it fled. Although its organs were intact, one of its fragile outstretched arms was broken off at the shoulder. And despite falling to her hands and knees and pawing for the missing piece through paper clips and b.a.l.l.s of dust, it wasn't to be found. So, for a time, until the sainted light in the room had dimmed, Vicki sat on the floor of Kyle's closet, holding the transparent man to her chest, and the shirts and pants hanging from above absorbed the sound of her unrestrained weeping for the man and his lost plastic arm.

A call late on that Monday afternoon determined that h.e.l.la was not at home, and she still had Vicki's car. So after she'd washed the dust and salt from her face in the ensuite, and dressed for what was left of the day, Vicki ordered a taxi to take her to the warehouse. With the twisting chain of rush hour traffic headed in the opposite direction, it was an easy drive downtown along the sweeping road that tracked the edge of the ravine, and she was able to roll down the window and let the breeze swirl through the cab until it tossed the driver's fine hair and fluttered the pages of the clipboard beside him. He turned it over on the seat without a word.

As the cab pulled into the alley next to the warehouse entrance, she saw her car parked across the street, where it was sure to get a ticket, and she allowed herself a sigh at h.e.l.la's lack of care. After she paid the $12.80 fare with a twenty-dollar bill, insisting the driver keep the rest, she went to the car and found it unlocked, with a.s.sorted sticky Popsicle wrappers on the back seat. She set down the large fabric bag she was carrying, opened the door, and gathered them up, one by one.

Rather than take the freight elevator to her floor of the building, which would have announced her presence, Vicki walked up the four flights of dimly lit wooden stairs, her shoes falling softly on old iron treads embossed with the name GateHouse Ltd., the long-dead cardboard maker whose plant the building used to house. As she ascended the last few steps, she was met with the sound of children.

She pulled open the heavy, paint-chipped door.

"Nooooo! Dooon't!"

Although her view was blocked by the first of two wide warehouse shelving units that spanned two-thirds of the cavernous length and bore the majority of her smaller pieces and boxes of accents, she could tell that the sound was coming from the northwest corner.

"Jeremeee!"

Vicki made her way quietly across the width of the old plank floor, following the path that separated the bulky main-level furnishings (dining room sets, cabinets, upholstered sofas and chairs) from bedroom and auxiliary room pieces. She rounded the end of the first shelving structure and saw at the far end largely what she expected to see.

h.e.l.la was there, her thin frame doubled over a slat wood box, searching for what, Vicki could hardly imagine and behind her were her three small children: Peter, Jeremy, and Erin. With h.e.l.la's attention diverted, they were down on the floor, playing with Vicki's small collection of seventy- and eighty-year-old German and British-made toys.

"Jeremeee! Quiiit it!" it!"

Erin, eight, was happily engaged with examining a Kestner "character" doll and making it dance from knee to knee. A short distance away, Peter, barely five, was making putt-putt noises and attempting to push a yellow-painted tin d.i.n.ky van in a continuous path, unmolested. Seven-year-old Jeremy, however, appeared determined to thwart this effort, by using a 1930s torpedo-shaped Guntherman landspeed-record car, worth approximately eight hundred dollars, to ram the d.i.n.ky van repeatedly.

"Jeremeee! Stoooop!"

Vicki had covered half the distance to them when h.e.l.la looked up.

"Oh, s.h.i.t! Kids! Jeremy! Put those toys away. You know know how I don't like you playing with Mrs. Woodlore's things." h.e.l.la left the box she'd been hunting through, skipped around her children "Now!" she ordered, snapping her fingers and intercepted Vicki as she approached with a stream of goodwill: "How how I don't like you playing with Mrs. Woodlore's things." h.e.l.la left the box she'd been hunting through, skipped around her children "Now!" she ordered, snapping her fingers and intercepted Vicki as she approached with a stream of goodwill: "How are are you? I was really worried. I called your house on Sat.u.r.day and Mr. Woodlore said you were knocked flat by something. Did you hear about Avis not being able to get into the house? Oh, boy, she was furious. There was something wrong with the locks so she had to get them all changed on Sunday and then she asked me, because we weren't sure how long you were going to be sick and I didn't want her bothering you, I said I'd try to finish the boy's room, you know, just add a few sportsy things? So that's what I'm doing here. I was looking for football stuff but..." She gave Vicki a desperate smile. "Do you mind?" you? I was really worried. I called your house on Sat.u.r.day and Mr. Woodlore said you were knocked flat by something. Did you hear about Avis not being able to get into the house? Oh, boy, she was furious. There was something wrong with the locks so she had to get them all changed on Sunday and then she asked me, because we weren't sure how long you were going to be sick and I didn't want her bothering you, I said I'd try to finish the boy's room, you know, just add a few sportsy things? So that's what I'm doing here. I was looking for football stuff but..." She gave Vicki a desperate smile. "Do you mind?"

Vicki looked past h.e.l.la to the children behind her, reluctantly returning the toys to a pile near the box.

"I'm really sorry about that," insisted h.e.l.la. "I know some of those things are expensive but the kids were just going squirrelly waiting for me and I didn't think they could really hurt anything."