Trader

  She stopped in front of Max’s door.

  No, she thought. It hadn’t been that kind of conversation. She hadn’t mistaken what they’d been talking about—it just didn’t make any sense. And she couldn’t even ask Max about it, because then she’d have to admit she’d been eavesdropping on him.

  She had to smile at herself. She was building this way out of proportion, she realized. There was a reasonable explanation of what she’d heard this morning. She might never get to hear it, but it still existed, because one thing was for sure, people didn’t switch bodies—not this side of a Hollywood screen. To consider otherwise was just being silly.

  She knocked on the door, stepping back when it was flung open a few moments later.

  “Hey, I was serious, pal,” Max began, his voice trailing off when he realized that she wasn’t the stranger he’d been talking to earlier, back for another round.

  Are you feeling okay? Nia had been about to ask him. I saw the shop was closed and I got worried.

  But the words stuck more forcibly in her throat than had her apology to her mother this morning. Because the man looking at her from Max’s doorway, the man standing there in Max’s skin...he was looking at her blankly, expectantly, the way you’d look at a stranger who’d come to your door, thinking it was a salesman, or a Jehovah’s Witness. He didn’t recognize her at all, not for a moment, and all she could do was replay in her mind the conversation she’d overheard earlier. The impossible things she’d heard went tumbling through her head until she felt as though someone had stuffed her into a spin dryer and locked the door, everything going round and round.

  “Can I help you?” the man asked.

  A deep coldness rose up Nia’s spine and she felt sick to her stomach. With her voice still stolen by fear, all she could do was shake her head and back away.

  “Are you one of those deaf-mutes?” he asked.

  Nia continued to back away. Her legs were all watery and she found herself making hopeless promises to a god she’d never quite believed in that they wouldn’t give way on her and tumble her to the floor. The man who’d stolen Max’s body studied her a little more closely.

  “You know, sweet thing,” he said slowly, “I think maybe you and I should have ourselves a private little talk.”

  He knows he screwed up, Nia realized. He knows he screwed up, that he’s supposed to know me, that I know what he’s done to the real Max, and now he’s going to kill me so that I can’t tell anybody else.

  The man took a step toward her, hand outstretched as though he were trying to coax a nervous animal to come to him. That was all it took to break Nia’s paralysis. She bolted. Not upstairs where he could trap her in her own apartment—she didn’t want him to know where she lived—but down to the first floor and out the front door, running at full speed, boots clattering on the wooden floor and then the cobblestones outside, chest so tight with fear she thought it would burst.

  She didn’t slow down until she got to where the street began a twist that would take it out of sight of her apartment building. Banging up against the nearest wall, she looked back to see that there was no one following her. She held on to the wall for support and bent over, trying to catch her breath.

  She couldn’t go back, she realized. Not by herself. Not with that...that monster still in the building. She’d have to wait until her mother got home from work and then—then what? What could she possibly tell her mother that wouldn’t sound completely insane? Nia shook her head. With the way things were going between them, her mother would think the worst and try to check her into some drug rehab clinic.

  Okay, so she wouldn’t say anything. But she’d still wait for her mother to come home before she went back in there, except then she remembered that her mother wasn’t coming home after work tonight. She had a date and god knew how late she’d be getting in.

  Nia slid down to the ground and leaned back against the wall. She stared at her building with morbid fascination.

  What could she do? The only course of action that seemed open to her was to try to track down the stranger from the hallway—the one who claimed he really was Max—but in a city this size, that would be almost as impossible a task as trying to convince anybody that what she’d heard was true. But the stranger was the only one who could help her, the only one who’d believe her.

  Stranger? she thought suddenly. That conversation returned to haunt her again. No, that had been Max, incredible as it might be.

  She stood up slowly and gave her apartment building a last searching look. The man in Max’s skin still hadn’t made an appearance, but she knew he was in there. Waiting for her if she tried to return. She shivered and turned, walking quickly away.

  Oh Max, she thought. How am I ever going to find you?

  17 MAX

  I never realized how big the wooded tracts in Fitzhenry Park are until today. You could hide an army in here. Or maybe there already is an army hidden here, for I keep coming across rough campsites, cardboard shelters tucked in under the pines, ratty blankets or sleeping bags hidden under the spreading boughs of the stands of cedar or wedged up in the branches of the hemlocks and hardwoods. More than a few of the city’s homeless are squatting here.

  I think I can feel them watching me at times, but I never see or hear anyone. Which isn’t surprising, considering how much noise I’m making myself.

  Occasionally I stumble out from among the trees onto one of the many paved paths that cut through the park, startling a jogger or in-line skater with my sudden appearance. The fear in their eyes bothers me a lot. The way they put as much distance as they can between themselves and me. One woman on in-line skates gives a sharp cry of alarm when she sees me and hugs the far side of the path before she speeds away.

  No one has ever been afraid of me before and the experience appalls me. That woman had been terrified, coming around the corner to find me standing here on the path. I watch the flash of her legs as she flees and make a promise that this is one more thing Devlin’s going to pay for when I finally settle accounts with him. No one should be made to feel like this, especially not while trying to cope with everything else I have to.

  Later on in the day I meet someone who isn’t startled by my sudden appearance, merely indifferent. He’s a hobo, a homeless man, sitting on one of the many wooden benches that line the paths, bearded, long-haired, grimy. Shabby clothes, eyes unfocused and sunk deep in a gaunt face, a plastic shopping bag stuffed with clothing at his feet. The skin of his hands and face is like old leather, weathered by the elements, dirt caught in the deep creases. It’s impossible to guess his age, though judging from his body odor, I can make an educated guess as to the last time he had a bath.

  We study each other for a long moment when I first come out of the trees. I stick my hands in my pockets. I touch the handful of change in one of them. Not even a dollar there. Not enough to buy a subway token or a coffee in most places. The homeless man’s appearance acquires a new poignancy for me then.

  That’s going to be me, if I don’t get out of this soon, I realize. Another homeless man that no one sees and no one cares about.

  “How’re you doing?” I try.

  Right then I just want to hear somebody else’s voice, someone who doesn’t know Johnny Devlin and hold a grudge against him. The hobo watches me from under his thick eyebrows, but says nothing. His continuing disinterest wakes a twitch in my chest.

  The guy’s worse off than me, I think, and even he won’t have anything to do with me.

  “Yeah, well you have a good day,” I say.

  The hobo finally stirs. He spits a wad of greenish phlegm on the pavement between us.

  “Fuck you,” he says, and offers me a toothless grin with no humor in it.

  I retreat, stumbling back into the woods.

  It wasn’t personal, I tell myself. The guy was just some sick, old bum who wouldn’t have a kind word to say to anyone. But I can’t shake the feeling that it was personal. No matter who I am in my own head,
the whole world sees me as Devlin. The whole world recognizes me only by Devlin’s worthlessness—even people who’ve never met me before—and that’s how it’s going to be from here on out. I’m going to be met with, if not antagonism, then certainly indifference for the rest of my life.

  I come out of the trees again, but this time it’s to find myself on a rounded granite headland overlooking the shore of the lake. A bike path follows the shoreline, twenty feet or so below me. The traffic on it is heavier than the paths I’ve come across earlier, but standing above it, I’m distanced from the passersby. I could be on another planet, for all the notice they take of me.

  Which is just as well, really. The last thing I want now is to be among other people.

  I sit down on the smoothed rock and lean back against the bole of a tall cedar that’s managed to root itself in a crevice. Putting a hand behind my head, I rub the rough bark of the tree. It flakes easily under my touch, getting under my fingernails. I bring my fingers to my nose and inhale the rich aroma of the wood, letting the familiar scent calm me. After a while I can feel my tension begin to ease. The tightness leaves my shoulders and chest and I find it a little easier to breathe.

  The far horizon of the lake catches my gaze. With the growing dusk, the demarcation between sky and water is disappearing, smearing into one broad canvas of faded blues and greys. I find myself thinking of Janossy and what he’d have to say about my situation now. I smile. Probably the same thing Janossy said whenever he started a new project, quoting Yogi Berra as though he were a Zen master instead of a baseball player: “You’ve got to be very careful if you don’t know where you’re going.” And then he’d tell me to meditate.

  I rub the residue of the cedar bark between my fingers and breathe its scent again. I don’t need meditation to regain my balance. All I need is my life back.

  My stomach growls.

  Or at least a decent meal.

  I had supper last night around seven as I usually do—closed the shop, went upstairs and cooked a stir fry that I ate with some reheated rice. But that was while I was still in my own body. Who knew when Devlin had last eaten.

  A sudden rustle in the trees behind me makes me sit up and turn quickly. I don’t see anything at first; then a dog creeps forward on its belly, moving out of the brush but stopping well away from where I’m sitting. A stray. Fur matted, ribs showing. It doesn't look to be any particular breed, just a midsized mongrel with some terrier in it, some shepherd. Maybe a little Lab. Heinz 57—that was what they called a dog like that when I was a kid.

  “Hey, buddy.”

  I hold out my hand but make no move toward the animal. The dog watches me, tail twitching, but comes no closer.

  “Wish I had something to feed you. I think you could use it more than me, though I guess it won’t be long before I start looking as rough as you. But I can give a little affection and that’s got to be worth something, right? Guys like us, we need to get it where we can.”

  The dog thumps its tail once, but holds its position, belly to the ground, submissive. I can tell it’s interested in me, that the soft tones of my voice are easing its fear, but not enough for it to come any closer. I don’t blame it. The sort of life a stray like this leads, it’s probably had people cursing it and throwing things at it more than it ever got a kind word or a pat.

  “Is that it, old fella? People treating you the way they’ve been treating me? Nobody’s got a kind word, there’s nobody to turn to, but you’ve got nothing of your own? Tell me about it.”

  The dog lies with its paws crossed in front of it, the weight of its head resting on its paws. Whenever I speak, its tail gives a weak thump against the stone.

  “C’mere, buddy. I won’t hurt you.”

  The dusk’s falling rapidly now, but my eyes adjust to the poor light. I can still see the dog, know it’s watching me, drawn, but too nervous to come any closer. I let my hand fall back onto my lap.

  “That’s okay,” I tell it. “You just take it easy. We’ll lie here and keep each other company. Would you like that?”

  It’s so dark now that the dog’s only a shadow on the rock, but I let myself believe that I saw its tail thump in agreement. I lean back against the tree again and close my eyes.

  I’ll just rest for a little bit and then figure out what I’m going to do next.

  But the long weird day catches up with me in a rush of weariness. Just as I’m drifting off I sense, more than see, the dog come wriggling forward to lay its head on my lap. I shift my arm slightly and the dog tenses, relaxing only when I lay a hand on its shoulder and absently ruffle the matted fur. Sighing, the dog closes its own eyes and I fall asleep, still patting him.

  18 ZEFFY

  After dinner, Zeffy retreated to her room to practice. She pulled out her guitar case from where she stored it under her bed, as hidden from cursory view as was her desire to sing. Her guitar was a midprice Yamaha, the best she could afford for the time being. One day she’d get something better—an old Martin, maybe, or even commission a Laskin or a Trader. A smile touched her lips as she took the guitar out of its case. Right, like she could ever afford to actually have one built to her own specs. But a person could dream, couldn’t she?

  Her strings were starting to go dead, but she didn’t feel like changing them until the day of the gig, so it took her a little while to get in tune. She was very aware of Tanya reading a magazine in the living room, which made it hard for her to loosen up. She knew it was stupid. In a few days time she’d be playing these same songs in front of a few hundred people, but she had this thing where, if she knew there was someone else in the apartment, she always found herself holding back. Didn’t get the ring out of her guitar the way she wanted it to sound. Didn’t project much past the back of her throat.

  She practiced scales for a while, hoping that Tanya would at least switch on the TV. After a half hour, she gave up and started working on her set. She closed her eyes, pretending she wasn’t sitting on the end of her bed in her own bedroom, but on stage at the YoMan, her guitar and voice booming back at her from the monitors, the PA filling the club with her sound.

  She didn’t have a long set, only nine songs. Having long since worked the kinks out of the material, practice now entailed running through the set two or three times a day. She started with an original, a real rouser that, with the right mix by the sound man, should have her guitar swooping and swelling in waves the way Luka Bloom’s did the one time she saw him in concert. Guy didn’t need a backup band with that sound. She followed that with a cover of Kiya Heartwood’s “Wishing Well”—one of those songs that she wished she’d written, delicate fingerpicking, sweet melody, but the words were so resonant, at times almost grim. It was about rising from the abyss, about facing the worst and being strong enough to get through to the other side of it, if not entirely intact, then at least true to yourself.

  The next song was another original, also about facing darkness, but the character in this song hadn’t had either the luck, or just plain fortitude, of the one in Heartwood’s song. When all was said and done, its protagonist was the one who was always left standing on her own, unable to understand where it had all gone wrong.

  It had a simple chord structure, the hook coming with the change from the song’s major key to its relative minor for the first couple of lines in the chorus. Zeffy sang it, almost completely transported away now—not to the imaginary club in her head, but to that place she went where the songs came from, where a good performance had chills cat-pawing up her spine.

  What she has she is holding,

  But what she is holding is gone.

  It all fades away at the break of the day

  in the hush that comes just before dawn.

  The song ended on a minor chord and she let it echo and fade before she finally opened her eyes. Still feeling a little spacy from the feeling that had come over her while singing the song, she was surprised to find Tanya leaning against the doorjamb of her bedroom. She hadn’t eve
n heard the door open.

  "That’s a new one, isn’t it?” her roommate said.

  Zeffy nodded. “I’ve been working on it for a while, but it finally came together for me last week.”

  “I really like it.”

  “Thanks.”

  Tanya hesitated for a moment, then asked, “Is it about me?”

  “I’m not sure,” Zeffy said. She honestly didn’t know. “It started out from the way you were feeling after Frank broke up with you, but then it went off somewhere on its own. You know me. I never seem to be able to write about what’s happening in my life or around me, except indirectly.”

  “I feel like that sometimes,” Tanya said. “Like in your song, I mean. Not all the time. Not right now. But I know that feeling all too well.”

  Zeffy nodded. “Me, too.”

  Tanya looked at her in surprise. “I can’t imagine you ever feeling that lonely.”

  “Lonely’s such a specific word,” Zeffy said. “I think I’d describe it more as a sense of forlornness that I never quite understand.” She shrugged. “I don’t know where exactly it comes from, it just shows up, all uninvited, and hangs around for a while.”

  Tanya straightened up from where she was leaning against the door jamb. “I guess I was interrupting you.”

  “No, it’s okay. You look like you’ve got something on your mind. C’mon in and sit down.”

  She laid her guitar back in its case and moved over a little on the bed to give Tanya some room. Her roommate hesitated, then walked over from where she was standing and joined her.