too thin and poorly dressed, a slump to his shoulders. I touched the corner of my eye where it drooped. At home I am known for a certain style, leather jackets and slim pants, and the casual five o’clock shadow, which here, in the dim light, I noted had thickened to something more sinister.
“This way Rita said, dangling a key. “Eight-B.”
The corridor was long and narrow, carpeted in faded maroon. We passed half a dozen doors, each with a brass number and a fisheye peephole. Reaching the end of the hall, Rita unlocked the door and entered just ahead. I smelled burnt popcorn and watched as a teenaged girl rose from a couch and switched off the television set.
“He’s asleep the girl said. “In your bed, like you said.”
“Good.” Rita pulled out a couple of bills and gave them to her. “Thanks Sandy.”
The girl slid a math text and notebook into her pack and left, without casting a single glance my way.
The room was small, with low furniture and a black lacquered table pushed against one wall. I could hear the clatter of the elevator outside as the doors snapped shut and it wheezed back to ground level. A vase by the door held a single yellow bloom, and another vase on the black table held a quartet of irises.
“Who is sleeping on your bed?” I said.
“Andreas, my son. He’s lending you his room for a couple of nights.”
“May I see him, your boy?”
She paused a second, then said, “Sure. This way.”
We walked through a tiny kitchen and down a short hallway, which held a series of black and white photos. These displayed my hostess wearing a skin-tight leotard, posed in strange theatrical landscapes with oversized objects: a giant clock, a chair built for giants, and a huge toothbrush. I squinted at these as we passed, then at Rita’s firm body as she marched ahead of me now, clad in T-shirt and jeans. In one photo she glared at the camera, her lips tinted bright red.
“This is you?” I touched the image, slid my finger across the posed face.
She hardly looked back. “I’m a dancer, when I get the chance.” She pointed towards the end of the hall. “That’s his room, where you’ll sleep.”
A poster of a fierce-looking Gila monster, mouth yawned open and glaring, was clipped to the door.
“He’s crazy about reptiles and amphibians she said.
“So am I.”
Why did I say this? It was not true at all.
She pushed open the door on the opposite side of the hall and at first, in the dark, it was hard to see anything. Then I spotted the child lying twisted in his sheet, his arms wrapped around a stuffed toy.
“He has black hair, like mine I whispered and moved closer.
She leaned over, kissed the boy’s cheek, pushed the hair back from his forehead and kissed him again. He sighed, a warm, minty exhalation.
“Where is your husband?” I asked, when we were back in the living room.
“If you mean Andreas’s father, I haven’t a clue.”
Embarrassed, I gazed at the blank monitor of the television screen. I am not a sentimental man, but I could think only of the sleeping child with his thick hair like mine. I wondered if he was only pretending to sleep, as I so often did as a boy.
Rita had laid out a row of snacks, some sort of pâté and crackers, smoked oysters. But I was not hungry at all. Fatigue had cloaked my whole body now, and the constant search for English words and meanings had left my mouth dry and exhausted.
I pulled out a cigarette: at last, the breath I’d been waiting for.
“Sorry Rita said. “Not in here.”
I stared at her.
“But you can take it out on the balcony.”
She followed me there, showing me first how the latch on the glass door worked, how I must slide the bar across. Two chairs and a small plastic table were set up on the tiny cement shelf overlooking nothing, just an alley, the air still damp. I lit up, then sat on one of the chairs and immediately skidded forward on the damp webbing.
Rita must have imagined us sitting out here, because there was a small bowl of fresh pretzels on the table and a coaster for the drink I didn’t have. Across the alley was another walk-up, a mirror of the building I was now in. The glow from the cigarette seemed significant, a tiny bright light I’d brought with me and kindled to life with my breathing.
Rita sat in the other chair and propped one leg up on the railing. “You must be tired.”
“Yes I nodded with heavy eyes. “I will sleep very soon.” Did she look disappointed? “You’ll meet the others tomorrow she said, drilling her fingers on the side of her chair. “Syd Baskin is president of CAFE. There have been so many people involved with this project.”
It took me a moment to realize that “this project” was me.
I exhaled, lowered my lids, but not too much. Could I detect the smell of the sea in the air? At home the sea has a different spicing, blended with the smell of food from street venders. Why couldn’t I relax after the long journey? Instead I was popping nervous energy inside the exhaustion.
“You don’t look like your photograph she said gently.
“I have not been eating well.”
“Of course.”
When I tilted my head and blew out the cigarette smoke, I felt her watching. This was the arrival of the exiled poet. Because of his time in jail he would tire easily, not be able to process the new sensations, and like a blind man who is suddenly given sight, he is overwhelmed. Did she not say she was a dancer? Then I was caught in her choreography, and glad of it. Even my fingers seemed important as they tugged the cigarette out of my mouth.
“Do you know any of your poetry by heart?”
I felt my ass slip down the webbed chair.
“By heart?”
“By memory.”
“Yes, of course.”
Perhaps she was right: the poet must play himself before he sleeps. And so I pulled out my modest volume, Insomnio, from the jacket pocket and handed it to her.
“Page five.”
She nodded solemnly and located the work, a narrative poem about the mariners who founded Santa Clara and began the cycle of corruption. I recited the full six stanzas, my voice low and whispery, punctuated by the dripping drainpipes and passing traffic. Rita held the book in her lap but didn’t look once at it: she seemed hypnotized by the motion of my lips.
Was she pondering the miracle that had brought me here to her small balcony on this rainy Vancouver evening? Maybe she’d guessed it would be like this, my voice thin and fragile, like the cheap paper of my book.
When
