At the clinic, there was no Cecile. Dr. Stevens said h.e.l.lo, asked if Madison was still throwing up regularly, and told her to lie down. Madison pulled her shirt up and pushed her skirt down while Dr. Stevens put clear goo on the Doppler.

"Any questions for me?"

Abby had suffered uterine rupture when Madison was born. Both of them had almost died in labour. At her last visit, Dr. Stevens had a.s.sured Madison that it wasn't a concern. "If I was at risk for uterine rupture, how would I know?"

"Shhh, just a second." Dr. Stevens was hunting around with her machine. "Hear that? That's gas." Then, a whooshing s.p.a.ceship sound came out of the speakers. "There it is. Can you hear that?"

"What is it?"

"The heartbeat."

Without giving it much thought, Madison started crying. The whooshing s.p.a.ceship sound faded.

Dr. Stevens smiled and pulled the machine off Madison's stomach.

"Wait." Madison sobbed. "Can I hear some more?"

"Once you start crying, it's really hard to hear. But next month it'll be easier."

"With uterine rupture..."

"Please don't worry about that." Dr. Stevens wiped the goo off Madison's stomach, sat in an old metal chair and crossed her legs. "It's a freak thing. And we're far better equipped to handle emergencies like that now. Worrying about it is way more dangerous than the risk of having a rupture."

Madison wiped her eyes. "So how's your husband?"

"Oh, he's great." Dr. Stevens shook her head and laughed as she started into an amusing story about her man and his friends going on a fishing trip in August. None of them had ever fished, of course, being a bunch of spoiled rich kids. The rain, a bear, no toilets.

Madison had wanted to be a spoiled rich kid so badly, and she hoped her own child would be spoiled and rich someday. As Dr. Stevens spoke, Madison decided to concentrate on the dryness of the woman's light brown hair. It was so dry, and her ankles were so puffy. Gloriously, there was a pimple on Dr. Stevens's forehead and another one on her chin.

In the clinic parking lot, the rain was fierce and cool. Madison walked slowly and deliberately as the big drops splashed down on her face. As she stepped into her father's Yukon, completely soaked, "Born to Be Wild" began to play. "David Weiss's phone."

"Your dad gave me the number. He also let me talk to Garith. You know what Garith said?"

"It's two in the afternoon on a Monday, Jonas. What are you doing up?"

"Planning a reconnaissance mission. You in or what?"

"I'm feeling sorry for myself, and the last time you planned an adventure you got drunk and pushed me down and the cops came. Leave me alone."

"Borrow the tank or your mom's Civic and take it to the soaps tonight. Recon!"

And with that, Jonas hung up.

23.

leduc, leduc Lac.u.mseh and his braves planned an attack on Fort Edmonton in the opening segment of the soap. The natives wanted to move from b.l.o.o.d.y colonialism to merely depressing post-colonialism, and felt they couldn't wait 180 years for the poorly dressed palefaces in arts faculties to help them along. Only half the audience in the Varscona Theatre thought this was funny. Behind Madison, Raymond Terletsky clapped and said, "Yes, yes, too much. Way too much!"

When Madison turned around, Shirley Wong just shrugged.

In the end, the attack was thwarted by s.e.x. The country wife of the Chief Factor had fallen in love with Lac.u.mseh. She convinced him it would be a boneheaded idea to attack the fort because a bigger army would come down the river and kill everyone. Most importantly, if Lac.u.mseh started a war, the country wife vowed not to come to his teepee anymore.

Somehow, everything ended with a Viennese waltz compet.i.tion.

After the show, as planned, Madison spied on Carlos. She followed him across Calgary Trail to the Next Act, where he sat in a corner booth by himself. Still in his Lac.u.mseh costume, Jonas met Madison on the sidewalk. Inside, Carlos checked his watch a few times. He ordered one beer and drank it quickly. Then, without warning, he left the bar.

Jonas and Madison ducked behind a Dumpster. Madison ran down the avenue and fetched the Yukon. She pulled up in front of Jonas, who gestured wildly. He jumped into the SUV. "He's in a black Mustang, headed south. Floor it!"

It was late on a Monday night, and Calgary Trail was deserted. They caught up to Carlos at a set of street lights near a Superstore.

"Stay a few car lengths behind him, so he doesn't get wise."

"All right, Starsky."

The Mustang pa.s.sed the big-box circus of South Edmonton Common, anch.o.r.ed by the gigantic blue-and-yellow IKEA, and sped up. "Faster." Jonas bounced in his seat. "We're gonna lose him."

Madison sped up, even though she was already twenty kilometres over the speed limit. "What are you going to do when you find out where he lives?"

"Stalk him right back. I mean, he's going to all this trouble. Maybe he's psychotic but maybe he's the exquisite man I've been looking for to settle down with, raise a brood."

"Raise a brood?"

"Go to church on Sundays, join a community league. Get a garden going, put a block parent sign up in my window. Get into a book club and start watching Dr. Phil."

Madison tried to imagine Jonas doing all these things, and to her surprise it worked. "Why don't we get married and you can help me raise my brood. It'll be a marriage of convenience, with the odd neck ma.s.sage, like in Hollywood."

Jonas swallowed and looked down at his hands for a moment. As soon as the words were out of her mouth, Madison realized she had said them in a tone that was entirely too sincere. She wanted to drive the Yukon off the highway and into a bluff of spruce trees. They pa.s.sed the Nisku industrial park and the airport in silence.

"By which I mean to say I hate you," she said, finally.

This was atmosphere tonic. Jonas smiled. "No, it is I who hate you, you awful b.i.t.c.h, and I intend to hate your child with equal..." The Mustang began to slow down for the turnoff into Leduc. Jonas reached over and grabbed Madison by the arm. "Leduc! Leduc!"

The Mustang drove past the McDonald's and the Safeway and the car dealership, through the main intersection in Leduc. Madison followed Carlos until he reached an intersection on the south end of the park surrounding the Civic Centre. The Mustang turned right.

Near the Leduc Golf and Country Club, the Mustang turned into a crescent of large houses facing a reservoir. There were Buicks about.

"We've driven into the seventies," said Jonas.

"Your stalker is rich." Madison turned off the lights.

Carlos pulled into a driveway and the garage door opened, revealing a s.p.a.ce filled with snowmobiles, red all-terrain vehicles, and an extensive collection of tools. Parked next to the Mustang was a large truck with four tires in the back: duallies. Carlos took a sports bag from the trunk of the Mustang and dropped it on the garage floor as the automatic door closed behind him.

"All that's missing is a poster of Heather Locklear in a pink bikini." Jonas sat back in his seat and shook his head.

"Maybe he's house-sitting."

"Our boy's practically a Texan."

They sat in the Yukon for several minutes, watching the lights go on and off. Eventually, Jonas opened the door and stepped out. He sneaked up to the house and peered into the front window. A flock of something, perhaps bats, whispered through the trees and over the Yukon. Madison searched the radio until she found the French cla.s.sical station on FM. This was the sort of music they sold at mothers' fairs, brain music for babies, so Madison turned it up.

As Jonas slouched to the Yukon, along the sidewalk, "Born to Be Wild" began to play on the cellular phone, interrupting the purity of Isaac Stern doing Schubert. Madison picked it up and imagined, once again, Jonas as a father. Then, fatherlessness in general.

Instead of saying h.e.l.lo she smacked herself in the head with the phone, turned it off, and tossed the warm bundle of silver on to Garith's backseat bed.

24.

an authentic conversation Four out of five Death in Philosophy students arrived for the field trip at West Edmonton Mall's World Waterpark. When Professor Raymond Terletsky arrived at the lobby, one of the menMattwas playing Ms. Pac-Man on a wrist.w.a.tch. The other threeJess, Dannika, and Paulwatched the action.

"It kicks a.s.s, Dr. T," said Dannika, a tall, black-haired graduate student from the political science department. She was taking Death in Philosophy as an option. "This baby's from the eighties."

Raymond crowded close to Dannika and feigned interest in the wrist.w.a.tch game, controlled by a tiny joystick. Dannika wore a thin, baby-blue b.u.t.ton-up sweater that highlighted her collarbone. Around her neck, a gold Saint Christopher pendant. While Dannika watched Ms. Pac-Man, Raymond took the opportunity to peek down at her b.r.e.a.s.t.s. Unfortunately, her backpack pulled the shirt up, obscuring the view.

"I got this thing on eBay." Matt, who wore his hair in a ponytail, shook his head in disbelief. "Sweet deal, too."

"Cool," said Raymond, and immediately regretted it. He was walloped with the certainty that the word cool stopped being cool 'round about the time Happy Days went off the air. Since his son and daughter had moved to Calgary and Seattle, he wasn't regularly exposed to fashionable jargon. Not like Madame Chairperson Claudia Santino, hired because the committee felt she was "edgy" and "plugged in."

Indeed, Raymond was so smooth and unplugged he didn't understand what eBay was, exactly, or how it worked. Was it an Internet antique dealer of some kind? Why eBay? He felt obliged to add something, to offer a piece of a.n.a.lytical context for Ms. Pac-Man and Matt's high-tech mode of acquisition. However, once he had mentally committed to saying something, he had nothing. So he added, "Really cool."

The game ended as these games always seemed to end, with Matt's avatar in ruin. "So, Dr. T," said Matt. "What are we doing here?"

Raymond proceeded to the counter with five hundred dollars in petty cash, and explained. They were going to partic.i.p.ate in two of the indoor waterpark's most popular attractions, the Tropical Typhoon and the Bungee jump, in order to better understand the pricey games we play with death. He quoted Kirilov, a character in Dostoevsky's The Devils, who says everyone who desires supreme freedom must kill himself.

"Yet Camus said the refusal to commit suicide gives meaning to life," said Dannika.

Raymond stopped and faced his four students. Matt, the lazy skateboarder; Paul, the silent veteran of the first Gulf War; Jess, the future lawyer with perfect posture; and Dannika, a polished gem of prairie Polishness. "Exactly, Dannika. That's exactly what I want to get out of this field trip."

"I just want to see you three fellas in bathing suits," she said, without allowing a moment to pa.s.s. Her three peers laughed, and so did Raymond.

What a coincidence.

In the men's change room, Paul stripped immediately. He scratched at a Tasmanian Devil tattoo on his right arm, pulled some lint out of his coa.r.s.e orange belly hair, grunted and walked into the bathroom to stand in front of a urinal. Raymond and Matt, who allowed themselves to be naked for all of 1.5 seconds, shared a knowing glance. Now that was supreme freedom.

Matt had the age advantage but each of the three men was at least thirty pounds away from the statue of David. When they met the women on the mock beach, Raymond sucked in his belly. So did Matt. Paul wiped the snot away from under his nose and uttered a rare comment: "Humid in here."

Of the five, only Dannika had remembered a notebook and a waterproof pen. Raymond was pleased to see that unlike uptight, one-piece Jess, Dannika had also remembered to wear a white bikini. Since they had all just taken showers and the air in the waterpark was a few degrees cooler than comfortable, they decided to begin in the hot tub.

Raymond got in first, and hurried underwater so he could relax his belly. To his delight, Dannika got in next. It was only then that Raymond understood the strangeness of this field trip, the first he had ever organized. Without the seminar room, the wooden chairs and peeling plastic table, the stained blackboard, nothing bound him to these people. They were near-naked strangers in a hot tub, obliged to speak to one another.

Instead of presenting their thoughts on entrepreneurs who used death to charge exorbitant fees for the illusion of risk, they talked about novels. Then movies. Then horror movies. Then, finally, Raymond had an idea.

"Paul, you must have thought a lot about the meaning of death. During the war."

"It was pretty remote out there, sir. We did killing, but it was more like Matt's wrist.w.a.tch than anything you might see on the TV."

"You weren't afraid of getting shot? Or shooting someone?"

Paul lifted himself out of the water and sat on the ledge. "I was more afraid of catching something. And I did catch something."

"What did you catch?"

"I'm not at liberty to say, sir. I signed a nondisclosure agreement?"

Matt hopped up. "I'll meet you guys back here. I'm gonna slide a couple times, get pumped."

"Me too," said Jess.

Even though he wasn't submerged, Paul reached into his trunks and scratched himself. The subject of the military had inspired him. "Folks in the forces these days aren't ready to die. That isn't what it's about, sir. Ma'am. You know, boys in Rio de Janeiro fight to the death in the middle of the street, surrounded by crowds. With knives, bats. One-on-one. Just for honour. Now, from the point of view of our lives here in Canada, sir, ma'am, I think we find that sort of thing real foreign."

Raymond nodded in pretend-thoughtfulness. He wanted to say something about street fighting but Dannika had turned to face Paul, and one of her velvety knees was touching Raymond's thigh.

There seemed to be no accidental reason for this physical contact. The hot tub was almost empty, and the ambient blend of pop music, screaming schoolchildren, and rushing water in the wave pool wasn't overpowering. It was clear to Raymond that Dannika had crowded into him like this because she wanted to send a message.

An erotic message.

"I used to be into death in a big way," Dannika said, moving even closer to Raymond. "All black clothes, matte-white face, silver jewellery, Sisters of Mercy, the whole vampire thing."

Paul scratched his left nipple and grunted but Raymond wasn't really listening to Dannika. He was certain that a silent and more authentic conversation was going on between them.

25.

a little progressive in that conservative David Weiss paused for five seconds and smiled. This was the secret to conflict resolution, creating and controlling the tone of the conversation. In his teaching days, David had calmed hundreds of hormonal monsters using this method.

Tonight, his adversary was a harmless dullard called Andrew. The young man stood behind the Metterra Hotel counter with posture that contrasted with the slick surroundings. Poor skin, poor diction, poor manners, brown hair sticking straight up with frosted tips.

"Andrew, there are hundreds of hotels in Edmonton and thousands of conference rooms."

"Yes, Mr. Weiss, I understand that and we appreciate the fact that you've chosen the Metterra. But our new policy states no dogs. No dogs means no dogs. I don't know what else to say."

"May I speak with your manager?"

"He's on dinner break. I'm the a.s.sistant manager."