The City Still Breathing Page 9

  Elwy shakes his head and peels a really nice flake of wood off the desk. ‘Mr. Bedard?’

  ‘Mm?’

  ‘Do some people live forever?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Do some people, like some people, never die?’

  ‘Uh. Hm.’ Shuffling his papers and touching his moustache. ‘Well, Elwy, some people can live a long, long time. But not forever, no.’

  ‘Oh.’ Elwy starts to pick his nose and then remembers it’s rude. ‘Even He-Man and Dracula?’

  ‘Everybody’s got a time, Elwy.’

  ‘Oh.’ Mr. Bedard goes back to his sheet music. Elwy plays with the hem of his shirt. ‘Mr. Bedard?’

  ‘Yes, Elwy?’

  ‘Can people, like some people, come back after they’re dead? Like once in a while?’

  Mr. Bedard leans back from his desk and stares very hard at Elwy. It’s that look his mom gives him when he coughs funny and she thinks he’s getting the epidemic. ‘You’ve got lots of time, Elwy. Lots and lots.’ Mr. Bedard making a smile like he’s trying to reassure one of them.

  Elwy sliding through the slush on the roadside, his feet already soaked, feeling great. Emilia up on the sidewalk, carrying both their bags, not talking for the first time in hours, but thinking hard. Elwy knows this because she always looks angry when she thinks and right now Emilia looks really angry. The snow’s still coming down and Elwy can feel the pff pff of the flakes as they land in his hair.

  Elwy reaches the metal stairs at the end of Marion and waits for Emilia so they can race to the landing. Even though he lives across the street from the school, he walks Emilia partway home because she won’t give him his bag until they reach the landing. And also because they’re best friends and spending time with your best friend is the number one important thing to Elwy. That and getting up early on Saturday to watch cartoons.

  Emilia gets to the bottom of the stairs and shoves Elwy’s bag at him. ‘There’s only one way a body can disappear. Somebody takes it. That’s the only way.’

  Elwy squirms into his backpack and shrugs. ‘What about magic?’

  She thinks about this, looking angrier than ever. ‘Okay. Two ways.’ She starts to climb the stairs, not even trying to race. ‘You’re coming over to my house to play Commodore.’

  In Emilia’s bedroom with the rainbow carpet, Elwy plays thirty-two straight rounds of Pitfall. Thirty-two straight rounds without the mention of a body. Emilia lies on her bed the whole time with her enormous cat Brutus on her chest, and when Elwy falls into a crocodile’s mouth on his thirty-third round she finally sits up, Brutus oozing off her and pooling on the floor in a mound of fat and orange fur.

  ‘We’re going to find the body, El.’

  This is a very bad idea, Elwy thinks, but he also knows Emilia won’t care that he thinks this. He liked it better when they were playing Commodore and not talking about dead bodies. Talking about dead bodies makes him think about zombie movies which makes him think about zombies. Zombies being the number one thing that scares him.

  ‘Stop ghost whistling. Look, I’ll make a thermos of hot chocolate and it’ll be like an adventure.’

  Elwy stops making strange breathing noises. ‘Mom’ll have a hairy conniption if I miss dinner.’

  ‘So call and tell her you’re sleeping over.’

  ‘What about your dad?’

  ‘He works tonight. Graveyard shift. He won’t know. Or care.’ Flicking her red hair in a way that says big deal but Elwy knows means something else.

  ‘Can I at least go home and get my snowpants, Em?’

  Emilia digs in her closet, finally pulling out a pair of fluorescent pink snowpants and tossing them at Elwy. ‘We’ll start downtown.’

  Emilia struggles through the heavy doors of the police station, dragging Elwy behind her. ‘Em, this is where the bad people go. Mom says.’

  ‘Magnum PI always goes in guns blazing, so that’s what we do too.’

  There’s a man in uniform at the long, cracked wooden counter, reading a newspaper. Elwy tugs at Emilia’s coat. ‘Aren’t they gonna recognize you, Em?’

  She swats him away. ‘He never brings me to work, you ­cornichon.’

  He tugs at her coat again. ‘What if we get in trouble and they throw us in with all the murderers, Em. I don’t wanna be murderered.’

  ‘Elwy Xander,’ hissing in her most mom-like scolding voice, making him immediately shut up. He only ever hears his full name when he’s done something really, really bad. Police stations feel like libraries. Emilia sticks him in one of the waiting chairs and goes to the counter, standing on her tiptoes and leaning with her elbows.

  The police officer on the other side looks down his glasses at all that red frizzy hair and smiles. ‘Already bought a box of cookies this week, sweetie.’

  ‘I’d like to inquire about the circumstances surrounding the mysterious disappearance of a body.’

  The officer’s smile drips away and he pulls off his glasses. ‘What?’

  ‘The body that disappeared this morning from these very ­premises.’

  ‘Not another one. Listen, kid, I’ve had a long day, okay?’

  ‘Do you have any leads on the whereabouts of the corpse?’

  The officer starts to come around the counter. ‘I have to lock you up or what?’ He stops when he sees Elwy hiding behind Emilia. ‘Why’s your friend breathing like that?’

  ‘He’s whistling.’

  In a booth at Nibblers, the diner just down the street, Elwy sips his chocolate milkshake, his number two favourite flavour since they didn’t have strawberry, while Emilia taps her fingers on the tabletop, looking angry again.

  ‘So does that mean we can go home, Em?’

  ‘Not yet.’

  ‘But we didn’t find anything out and we could still make it for dinner.’

  ‘Not me, I got to make my own.’

  Elwy feels bad that Emilia’s mom doesn’t make her dinner anymore since she left Emilia’s dad for the Other Man. ‘You could come over. Mom’s making chicken fingers tonight. Chicken fingers’re my favourite.’

  Emilia watches the man hunched over at the counter, the only other customer. Red plaid jacket, lightning-blond beard, rubber boots dripping slush on the floor. Dipping a tea bag in and out of a cup. His eyes dart her way, locking on her, and she feels cold, right down to her toes.

  Then he’s back on the waitress with the big perm as she comes out of the kitchen. He leans over and says something to her as she passes. She gives him a long hard look and then says something back. The cold man’s lip curls, like a dog when it smiles, and he stands. He hisses three words that Emilia can barely hear. ‘Where is he?’

  The door opens with a jingle and two men walk in, stamping their feet to kick off the slush. One is skinny and dark, the other pale and short. The cold man looks their way, sharp, and then back at the waitress. Pulling a few coins out of his pocket and dumping them on the counter.

  ‘Can we order chicken fingers here at least?’

  ‘Hush up, El.’

  The two men make their way across the diner and sit in the next booth. The cold man leaves, the waitress looking down at the money he left like it’s dog poop. She pats at her curls, and Emilia can see her hands are shaking.

  ‘With plum sauce.’

  ‘Hush.’

  Elwy watches the two men getting settled. Peering from behind his milkshake, he can see a piece of one face. Dark skin, twinkly eyes, big smile at the approaching waitress. She smiles back, but it’s fake, plastic like one of his MUSCLE Men figurines. ‘The usual?’

  ‘Yeah, but I’ll take a Northern, Martha. Been a long couple days.’

  ‘Sure thing, Fish.’ Turning to the other man, then smiling, a real one. ‘Oh, hey – you came by.’

  ‘You know my partner?’

  ‘Yeah, we met. Dishwater?’

  The short man laughs, wiggling all over with it. ‘Coffee, yeah.’

  Elwy watches the waitress with the big perm walk bac
k to the bar. He sucks up the last of his milkshake and keeps on sucking, rattling at the bottom of his glass. ‘So we can go home now, Em?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘But – ’

  ‘Hush for the love of rhubarb.’

  Elwy sulks, which he does by scrunching up his eyes and blowing air out his nostrils. Elwy sulks a lot. When people don’t listen to him, when he gets the answer wrong in class, when his mom makes him stop reading and go to bed, when Emilia won’t let him have his turn at Commodore, when –

  ‘I tell you, I’m fuckin exhausted.’

  Elwy stops sulking to giggle. Emilia bites her lip and turns purple. She never swears. Her dad said her mom always swore like a sailor, and sailors use all the bad words, so instead of the bad words Emilia uses vegetables. Vegetables don’t sound mean when you say them. Elwy wonders if the two men at the next booth are sailors.

  ‘I mean we been up all night freezin our asses off.’ It’s the twinkly-eye man talking. Elwy likes his twinkly eyes – they look happy even though he doesn’t sound happy. ‘We drive all the way back here and then they keep us at the station all day so they can ask us the same damn question over and over again. I mean how the hell am I supposed to know where it went? I didn’t even want to touch him in the first place. Maybe he got up and walked away.’

  Elwy can see the back of the other man’s head nodding, nodding being the only thing needed of him. The waitress plunks the drinks in front of the men. The twinkly-eye man smiles at her with one corner of his mouth. ‘Hey, Martha, any naked frozen men come in here looking for a cup of coffee? Maybe a burger?’

  ‘No.’ She keeps on smiling, but now it’s a different kind, like the smile Elwy’s mom gave him when she told him about his dad’s heart explosion. ‘Not today.’

  The short man grabs the twinkly-eye man’s sleeve and hisses something as the waitress walks off.

  ‘What? Just joking. Hell of a thing. You go to sign us in, I take a piss and when we open it up, nothin.’ He drains half his bottle in one gulp. ‘I dunno. Maybe we left the van unlocked or something. Maybe somebody was walking by. Maybe … ’ He drains the rest. ‘I tell ya, they want to find this guy they should dredge up Ramsey. That guy, whatsis name, you remember that guy? Dumped that body out there a few years back. And they found that girl out by Moonlight, just floatin there. That housewife too, husband dropped her in the crick. Almost all water runs down to Ramsey, underground or whatever. Maybe he’ll end up there too. They should dredge it before it starts to freeze up. Hell of a thing.’

  Elwy is down at Ramsey Lake almost every day in the summer. His mom sits in a beach chair and reads while he and Emilia swim at the beach down by the amphitheatre. Elwy pictures zombies floating in the water, hair brushing up against him like the slimy weeds he hates.

  ‘C’mon.’ Emilia out of the booth and zipping up his jacket for him, helping to pull on his mitts.

  ‘We going home?’

  ‘Nope.’ Toque down over his eyes so he has to tilt his head back to see. ‘We’re going to the lake.’

  ‘But it’s too cold to swim and what about the zombies?’

  ‘C’mon.’ Dragging him by the hand to the door, the waitress giving them one last big fake grin like her big fake hair and back at the booth the twinkly-eye man says it again, ‘Hell of a thing,’ like it’s the worst curse of all.

  At the mouth of the underpass, Elwy plops down on the top step, puts on his best sulk and refuses to budge no matter how many vegetables Emilia cusses at him. He waits until she runs out of vegetables and has started into fruits and nuts.

  ‘Why do we got to find it?’

  ‘Because.’

  ‘Because why?’

  ‘Just because, you cashew.’

  ‘Because is not a reason.’

  ‘Because maybe there’s a reward or something or maybe they’ll put us on the news at 6 p.m. My dad always watches the news at 6 p.m.’

  ‘But I don’t wanna find it.’

  ‘Quit being such a baby.’

  ‘I’m not a baby.’

  ‘Yes you are. So go home, you big baby, I’ll find it on my own.’

  ‘Don’t call me a baby.’

  ‘Baby baby baby.’

  ‘But you’re not supposed to go to the lake alone because you can’t swim.’

  ‘I’m not swimming – it’s snowing out, you stupid flaxseed.’

  Emilia stomps down the stairs and turns the corner into the tunnel. Elwy waits, his bum getting cold, no longer sulking because there’s no one to see. The scuffle of feet on sidewalk and Elwy turns to find a man passing by, big shoulders stooped in a stained green work jacket like the one Emilia’s dad wears. His nose is all black and red and there’s tissue coming out of his nostrils. He trips, loses something – a shoe – but keeps on walking.

  ‘Hey!’ Elwy grabbing the shoe, a slipper, and chasing after. ‘Hey!’ He catches up to the tissue-nose man, him loping even with just one slipper and Elwy running along beside him shaking the slipper in the tissue-nose man’s face. ‘Hey.’

  The tissue-nose man stops, looks at the slipper like Elwy’s mom looked at him that time he pooped in the tub by accident. Elwy’s not sure if he’s made the tissue-nose man mad and for a minute he thinks he’s going to get yelled at. Getting yelled at’s the number one thing that makes Elwy cry and he feels his eyes itching just thinking about it. But the tissue-nose man doesn’t yell. He takes the slipper and puts it back on his foot. And stands there. Elwy thinks he’s going to ask the where’re-your-parents question, but he doesn’t. He just stands and stares. Elwy tries to whistle and thinks about walking away but walking away without saying something would be rude, like not giving grandma a kiss before you leave even though her face tastes like makeup.

  Then it hits him. ‘Whoa.’ The tissue-nose man’s face on a card in Emilia’s dad’s album. ‘You’re like Wayne Gretzky, aren’t you?’

  The tissue-nose man gets a look, his eyes all scrunched up, and his top lip rolls up to show his teeth, but it’s not a smile. He’s said something bad. Like when Grandma threatens him with the wooden spoon bad. This guy doesn’t like Wayne Gretzky. He doesn’t think he’s Great or anything. Elwy’s never been hit before, except by Emilia, but that doesn’t count because she wasn’t an adult, but if he was ever gonna be hit it’d be now.

  Then he sees he’s wrong. Wayne Gretzky makes the tissue-nose man sad. Really, really sad. Like when his mom talks about his dad sad.

  ‘My dad died.’ He doesn’t know why he’s said it. Maybe because it’s the most honest thing in the world he can think of. ‘His heart exploded.’ The tissue-nose man doesn’t say anything, he just keeps staring, and Elwy thinks he might be staring at his pink snowpants. ‘They’re not mine, they’re Emilia’s.’ The tissue-nose man doesn’t say anything again. ‘She can’t swim and if she falls in she might drown.’ The tissue-nose man still doesn’t say anything. ‘I should go. I don’t want her to die, dying is no good for anything.’

  But there’s still only staring and it hits Elwy – the grey face, bags under the eyes, the red stuff running from his nose to his mouth. A zombie. Right here, right out of the movies. First there’d be groaning and then cold fingers reaching and then crunch crunch go his brains. All he can do is close his eyes and plug his ears and blow through his lips.

  When he opens his eyes, the tissue-nose man is walking off down the street. Just like that. Not a zombie – still alive. Like he’d been paused like a movie at a good part when you go pee and when you get back you hit play again and it keeps going like you never went pee or anything.

  Before the tissue-nose man turns the corner, he kicks the slipper off again, and Elwy notices for the first time. They’re pink. Just like his snowpants.

  Then he hears a squeaksqueak and a cart rolls around the corner, a shadowy thing pushing it, and Elwy yells for Emilia, chasing her into the tunnel.

  He catches up to her on the hillside over the park. The lake asleep, snow disappearing into it like it
never mattered to anybody. ‘I’m sorry for calling you a baby,’ she says.

  All the trees big and black against all that collecting white. Elwy doesn’t like trees at night because they look like giants. ‘Can I have some hot chocolate now?’

  ‘No.’

  The padlock on the canoe club’s gone frosty, but Emilia holds it in between her hands and blows into it for a bit. This time the key turns. Emilia has copies of all her dad’s keys. She learned by the fifth time he passed out in the car and she found him in the garage the next morning. She had to break the window with a fry pan to wake him up for work.

  They slip into the old wooden shack, Emilia pulling the cord on the light bulb, throwing shadows all over the place.

  Elwy only has to whine a little bit to get Emilia to put her life jacket on, her little head poking out of all that orange like a Ring Pop, and within fifteen minutes they’re in the water. Emilia in the back steering, of course.

  She takes them out away from the canoe club and with every few strokes Elwy looks over his shoulder at the shack getting smaller and smaller on the shore. Now a grey dot, now a grey speck, now a grey gone.

  ‘Where’re we going, Em?’

  ‘To the deepest part of the lake.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Cause that’s where the underwater currents are, that’s where it’ll come out.’

  ‘But how’ll we find it if it’s on the bottom?’

  ‘Dead bodies float in cold water, El. Everybody knows that.’

  Elwy remembers a movie his mom didn’t know he watched late one night about underwater Nazi zombies. Zombies can live underwater because they don’t breathe. Zombies could be anywhere.

  ‘Stop ghost whistling and paddle. You’re making us go in circles.’

  Elwy paddles a couple more times, grunting with each stroke, and looks around. The snow is drawn in like a curtain and he can’t see the shore in any direction. It’s like being in the middle of one of those snow globes in that box in the basement labelled Christmas. That box that Elwy and his dad used to open every December first. That box was all closed up and double taped like the coffin at the funeral all closed up because Elwy’s mom said no one wants to look at somebody like that. It was like going up to stare in the windows of a house when nobody’s home. Nothing to see but a whole lot of empty.