"Just allow me a minute here." Rajinder mumbled, with his eyes half open. "Rabbit tortellini and grilled organic Sturgeon Valley pork chop."

The woman opened the pa.s.senger door of the pickup truck and just as Madison and the man began helping him inside, Rajinder threw up on the seat. Without a word, Madison and the man turned and propelled Rajinder toward the Mercedes. The woman, looking as though she too were about to faint or vomit, took the keys from Rajinder's front right pocket and ran ahead.

"I am so sorry," said Rajinder. "Thank you."

Madison drove slowly as Rajinder wobbled in the front seat. The regretful man sat behind him in the back, saying, repet.i.tively, "You're good, buddy, hang in there, we're almost there, you're doing real good."

At the emergency entrance, the man rushed inside and summoned two men with a wheelchair. They lifted Rajinder out of the car and into the wheelchair, then Madison parked. The woman in the pickup truck stopped next to her. "I'm going to have to find a towel or something," she said. "It smells something awful in there."

By the time Madison began speaking to the admitting nurse, a stern woman with a Jamaican accent, Rajinder was already gone. There was a lot she didn't know about Rajinder. His birthday and his citizenship, his Alberta Health Care number. But she answered the nurse as well as she could, and accepted her final words of consolation. "It just sounds like a concussion, girl. Your boyfriend will be perfectly fine."

"He's not my" she started, and didn't finish.

51.

not staying out late The hot lights popped on for his opening speech as Lac.u.mseh the n.o.ble Chief, and Jonas scanned the applauding audience. Madison had a.s.sured him they would sit in the first few rows on stage left but he only spotted the regulars with their mouths hanging open.

Not only had Madison stolen his new best friend, she was also keeping him away from weekly proof that when it came to improvisational genius, Jonas had no equal.

Fine. If that was the way it was going to be, fine. Jonas vowed to be way funnier than usual in Madison's absence.

A fire-breathing dragon of funny.

He looked out upon the audience sternly, and waited in silence until the kids who laughed at everything began laughing at nothing. Jonas lifted his right hand, said, "How," and the kids went wild.

Over the next hour, in a flurry of madness, Jonas scalped two of his cast members and invented a language. After the show, at the Next Act, the scalpees wondered if they were gone from the season completely or if the producer would create a couple new characters. Jonas sipped his beer, which tasted foul tonight.

"Why don't you all just shut up?"

His fellow cast members did shut up. Skilled improvisers, they scanned his face quickly for clues. Was he serious? The woman who played his daughter, the warrior princess, slammed the table with her fist. "Why don't you shut up?"

Manitou, the G.o.d of all that is good, along with two braves and a whisky trader, started into a pretend-angry dialogue about someone and everyone shutting up. Sick of actors, Jonas stood up out of his booth.

"Some things are real. The pain in my heart, for instance."

Another bout of creative silence, followed by a new round of dialogue about the nature of reality. Isn't it all just dependent on the evolutionary quirks of human perception? Bundles of atoms and quarks, if a heart breaks in the forest? Jonas sighed, grabbed his jacket, and started out of the pub.

"Can I finish your beer?" Manitou, the G.o.d of all that is good, called after him.

Jonas insulted the young man's genitalia and continued to the door, where he ran into Carlos.

"Wow, you sure did scalp some folks tonight." Carlos lifted his Tim Hortons coffee. "It was something."

"How can you drink Tim Hortons? You probably put milk in it too, don't you?"

"Double double."

"G.o.d." The entrance to the Next Act was barely large enough for two people to stand in. "Why are you here, Carlos? To spy on me?"

"No."

"Do you want to go somewhere?"

"Uh."

"Let's go somewhere. Let's go bowling or to a late movie orI knowLeduc. Let's go to Leduc."

"That's where I live."

"Yes, I know, Carlos. Where's your Mustang?"

"How do you know I got a 'stang?"

"How do you think I know?"

Carlos swallowed and reached up to scratch the back of his neck. "Uh."

"I witnessed your Mustang in action not long ago. My friend Madison and I followed you home one night in her dad's SUV."

"No, you didn't."

"I figured since you could stalk me I could stalk you."

Carlos looked up at the posters and handbills on the wall. He took a sip of his coffee and stuck his free left hand into the front pocket of his hoodie. "I wasn't stalking you."

"What were you doing?"

"Looking."

"Oh, looking." Jonas pushed and held the door open. "Less talk more walk."

Jonas followed Carlos out of the Next Act and north on Calgary Trail. It was cool in the wind so he pulled his peacoat closed and tied his scarf. Ahead of him, Carlos slouched in his hoodie and black football jacketCARLOS on one leather sleeve and RECEIVER on the otheras though he were on his way to prison.

"Hey, Carlos."

He stopped and turned around. "Yeah?"

"You'd make a c.r.a.p spy."

"I don't know any foreign languages either, and I hate getting dressed up and fistfighting, so."

"So a career in CSIS wasn't in your future anyway."

"I can't stay out late." Carlos handed his coffee to Jonas, pulled a Kleenex out of his pocket and blew his nose. He started crossing the avenue. "I'm hunting p.r.o.nghorns tomorrow."

"Hunting p.r.o.nghorns?" Jonas sniffed the creamy coffee, which was its own sort of horror. "What kind of a gayboy are you?"

Carlos stopped walking again. "I'm not gay."

"What do you mean you're not gay?"

"I mean I'm not gay. What, I look gay to you?"

Jonas laughed. "No, actually. You look painfully not gay, with those running shoes and Levi's Superslims and no belt. Oh, and that appalling jacket. But you're gay."

"No, I'm not."

"Then why are you picking me up?"

Carlos took the coffee from Jonas and continued into the parking lot. "Can't two guys be friends without being gay? I just want to be your friend."

At the Mustang, Carlos disarmed the security system and it beeped. Jonas paused to look up at the stars, obscured by the city lights, but they offered neither guidance nor sarcastic comments. He opened the pa.s.senger door and got inside. On the console, between the two seats, sat two Red Hot Chili Peppers compact discs. Carlos turned the key and the music blasted. Jonas lowered his head into his hands.

52.

sick people In the waiting room of the University of Alberta Hospital, Madison lifted the pay phone receiver and began dialling her friend Sandra in Vancouver. If Madison left Edmonton now, or soon, and spent her pregnancy on the West Coast, Rajinder would never know. She could give the baby up for adoption, come back to Edmonton and pretend she had been abducted by Al-Gama'a al-Islamiyya.

Rajinder was not boring. He was not secretly ugly, or foul-smelling, or cruel. Their violent first date only endeared him to her further, and it already seemed too late to tell him she was pregnant. Madison hung up before she hit the final digit. Instead of imagining her confession to Rajinder, or the one-bedroom apartment near an industrial park where she would soon live, Madison flipped through a seven-year-old copy of Details magazine with Michael Jordan on the front cover.

When she could put it off no longer, Madison took the elevator to the third floor. Everywhere were the smells of creamy protein drinks and steamed spinach, the sound of suction. Rajinder's door was half-open, so she knocked.

"Please come in."

It was dark outside, and the lights in Rajinder's room were dim. She could see both his eyes were faintly blackened. He was propped up in bed, wearing a gown, his hands clasped on his lap. As she approached his bed, Madison wondered why she hadn't bought him something at the gift shop. Anything, a paperback or a granola bar. What sort of black-hearted monstress was she?

"Oh, look at you."

"Madison, this is not my finest moment." Rajinder pushed back the cuticles on his left hand. "If I try to read or turn my head quickly, I feel nauseous."

"Nausea is one of my specialties. I'll get you some ginger to sniff." Madison pulled a chair across the floor. "How did you get a private room?"

"I feel guilty but yes, yes, I paid extra to have it. After the car accident, when I was in this hospital for a long time, I grew to despise sick people. It is a terrible psychological weakness. I recognize that. Excuse me." Without moving his head, Rajinder reached for a bucket to his left. He held it in front of him for a few seconds and placed it back on the table. "False alarm."

Madison slid her chair closer to the bed and touched his arm. He sighed and leaned back.

"I was thinking about Jack's Grill and our reservation."

"Should I call them?"

"Not now. I like that you are in here with me, for the moment."

The television in Rajinder's room was off; sounds from the rest of the hospital were limited to footsteps in the hall and faint voices from the nursing station. Madison started speaking, to kill the dread silence, at the same moment as Rajinder. They both insisted the other should go first, so Rajinder went first.

"I was talking to Jonas the other night, of Jeanne and Katie Perlitz."

"You knew them?"

"Rather foolishly, I lent Benjamin some money at the worst possible time."

Madison wondered why Jeanne had never mentioned Rajinder. "Wow."

"Part of my interest in fixing the neighbourhood, I must admit, comes out of personal feelings about the Perlitzes. If I had not lent Benjamin the money, which merely sustained his gambling habit, perhaps he could have sought help before he"

"You shouldn't think that way." Madison thought for a moment. "So you were friends with the Perlitzes?"

"I was planning to tell you at dinner tonight, Madison, about my role in this. Jeanne and Katie are safe and doing as well as they can, under the circ.u.mstances."

"You know where they are?"

Rajinder reached beside him and positioned the bucket on his lap again. "Summerside."

"Summerside the subdivision? The one by the big box stores, with the fake lake?"

"Jeanne's sister lives in Summerside. She has a different last name, so the reporters did not know where to find her."

"Summerside."

Rajinder heaved but didn't throw up. "I cannot think of a more disastrous or humiliating first date."

"This was a date?" Madison slid her hand down Rajinder's arm, to take his hand. "Really?"

"I had hoped it would be a date," he said, with his eyes squeezed shut.

"Me too. But I wasn't sure if you thought so."

Rajinder gripped the bucket again, and retched a couple of times. Nothing came out. "I want to die, somewhat."

"Should I tell the nurses?"

"Madison, would you be insulted if I asked you to leave me here for the night? They are going to release me in the morning, after observation. When I am throwing up, I must admit, I have a desire to crawl into the bushes and suffer alone. I am pleased you stayed and visited me, and I hope we can try our first date again."

She wanted to know more about Jeanne and Katie, but Madison understood Rajinder's need to be alone. Besides, it was deeply unpleasant to watch and hear him retch. "Next time, if we decide to stand somewhere and look at one another, we'll stay clear of heavy doors."

"That is a capital idea."

Madison paused on her way out. "I could bring back a mini-stereo, some French music. The ginger."