I know we didn’t, because we never talked about any of that. Not even when we broke up.
* * *
Ever since I was a child, I’ve had a running debate with my mother over whether or not there’s something “wrong” with my bladder capacity—a nagging fear reinforced by a nightmarish visit to my grandmother that ended with her counting every time I went to the bathroom during the night, giving us a full report in the morning, and telling me (very seriously, in her Scots-Canadian burr), “You really shude think aboot consoolting a doctur, Lee. It’s jist nut nermal.”
But I’m a big girl now, supposedly. So after I’d held it in for about three hours, I decided I’d rather take my chances with one of the portasans than risk getting fitted with a colostomy bag.
Inside this unlit, upright plastic coffin with a septic tank, however, I found not only no toilet paper, but an overwhelming stink to boot—a nose-and-mouthful of warm European cheese, the kind so bad you can barely stand to taste it, let alone smell it. Not to mention I was desperate, but couldn’t let go . . . which actually had less to do with the situation as I’ve painted it above than with an overpowering feeling of being watched.
You know how it is sometimes, when you’re caught unaware—that impassable glitch between reflex and realization? You’re seconds from sleep, dreaming a busy daytime street, until you feel yourself step in the gutter and jerk awake again, bruising your foot on the bedboard. The plate’s left your hand, and you know you’ll never catch it. But you can’t stop yourself from jumping, even as it slowly arcs down to break apart on the floor.
A flash of movement, right at the edge of my vision. Next thing I knew, I was up—standing so quickly that the whole portasan gave one big jerk—and out. I strode behind the nearest truck and squatted, scanning the bushes: There was nothing to wipe myself with but leaves, naturally, which seemed more than a little sixth-grade, so I pulled the tail of my shirt free, planning to use it and tuck it back in before I could think about what I’d just done. And I sat there on my hands, listening to my heart hammer in the hollow of my throat—my breath ragged, like I’d run a mile through some seashell.
My throat was sore. My lungs felt full of blood-warm mucus. But all I could think of was the figure I thought I’d seen loping past in the crack of dark between door and jamb, its face the barest Pierrot mask, two smudged eyes in a white oval, with an uneven red thumbprint for a mouth.
I sat there on my heels, knees pulsing with fatigue, and felt the warmth drain out of me, spurt by uneven spurt.
Under the truck, a shadow in its shadow, some pile of half-crushed stuff nested by the back tire. Having nothing else to focus on, I stared at it until it resolved into a calcified cache of turds—animal, presumably, given their location. Except that I could see a glinting twist of metal protruding from one cracked fecal egg. A bright, bent hook topped wi
th a ragged glass sliver.
It looked like a chewed-up earring.
Then the church across the street’s neon Passion Tree winked out, and I decided to call it a night on external patrols.
* * *
Night shift is different from anything you’ve ever worked, though it doesn’t usually feel that way: After the first day, your clock turns with an audible click. But it’s not a simple thing. You lie awake in what now passes for darkness, with the most opaque towel you can find triple-folded and draped over your eyes. Breathing slow. When it finally comes on you, you sleep like a dog—mouth open, tongue like old flypaper by the time the alarm goes off. A noose around every limb, pulling you downward.
When the phone rang, I was still dressing.
“Late dinner sound good about now?”
“Sure. Muggs okay?”
“Sure.”
I peeled sleep from one eye, struggling to keep my thoughts stacking up in a straight line.
“I think,” I said—and it was at exactly this point, as I heard myself say it, that I knew for certain it must be true—“that they have people living on that site. Not . . . legally.”
“Mmm.” I heard Dewey the dog in the background, making that asthmatic little pug whine of hers. “Yeah, wouldn’t surprise me. Ontario’s Common Sense Revolution in action.”
We set the time. We called each other pet names, told each other how much we were looking forward to our upcoming meal. But as I hung up, I finally remembered my dream—the same dream I’d had for months, on and off. The dream about the woman with hooks for hands, holding Colin’s mouth open in a too-wide smile, pulling so tight the corners were already starting to crack. Turning him to me and grinning (just a touch) herself, like it was some new kind of party trick she’d just mastered, and she needed my reaction to know whether or not it’d go over well in public.
So smile if you like it, baby mine. Smile.
* * *
The second night, I hit a nearby 7-11 to stock up on fast food and napkins, planning to pee in a wadded up paper bag and bury it at the bottom of a wastepaper basket. As I approached the counter, a man and a woman were already investing in their own little haul—or rather, he was buying, she watching. Sometimes he’d smirk and whisper something to her, adjusting his toque. She was one of those bendy girls, double-jointed and voluptuous, but with lips so thin they barely masked the points of her small, sharp teeth. It was late September, colder at night—sky a black vault, like an open door into vacuum—and he was dressed accordingly, his Maple Leafs jacket bulbous with down. But she wore a slip-on smock dress and a shapeless grey sweater, her sockless feet stuffed into a pair of too-small, open-toed summer sandals. Whenever she moved, I thought I could hear her exposed toenails rasp on the floor beneath her, like the stealthy claws of some passing animal.
The man finished his business and drew her away into a big, tonsil-polishing kiss: She twined one leg around his, leaning back. There were almost no other customers in the store, and the clerk kept his eyes firmly on the free show by the door. I briefly considered just grabbing what I wanted and telling him I’d already paid for it.
A minute later, they were gone, and I was telling the clerk to add on the big bottle of cran-apple juice I’d spotted on display near his elbow.
So: Back on the site, still with no flashlight. (I guess I might have put myself far enough out to actually bring my own, had I cared enough to do Saracen’s job for them. But the way I saw it, if a flashlight had ever suddenly appeared in that desk drawer, I would have lost my sole excuse not to do a real patrol.) Since Colin wasn’t in, not even by 0200, I polished off the last of the cran-apple juice, and almost threw the bottle away before I realized its other possible uses.
Three hours and a half-full bottle later, justifiably paranoid about an unannounced visit from my site supervisor—they usually come on the first night, just to see whether you’re sleeping, smoking or entertaining guests on the job—I capped it, zipped up my parka, and stepped out to dump this impromptu toiletry aid on the nearest waste-pile.