mystic who sold her the deck in Gastown. She told Nik it was a very good sign that she never saw the mystic’s street stall there again. Nik reclined on the bed and kept still so he would not disturb the cards. He was hoping for a long rumination. A detailed story about the two of them that would make his head prickle as Jennifer told it. Then affectionate kisses. Instead, she said “Hmmm.” Nik looked at the cards, with their fantastical, airbrushed images, but the symbols weren’t obvious. There were cups, wands, and strange medieval figures. He didn’t know which card Jennifer was perplexed by. Nik anticipated a riddle. A new special little game they’d play, then answers. Instead, Jennifer put the cards away into their purple velveteen pouch and lay down. Nik felt a new, unspecific distress take shape, sculptural in the corner of the room. He fell sound asleep with his arms around her.
The next morning when Nik awoke, Jennifer and her cards were gone. Her resin-scented dance bag was gone. So were her high-heeled boots. She left everything else: her black ruffled scarf, her cellphone, her book bag made from recycled rubber, her red candles, the collection of aromatherapy oils she carried around in a red satin box. He assumed she had gone to an early dance rehearsal and didn’t want to wake him. He was upset she didn’t wake him. He wondered why he didn’t hear or feel her leave. How she’d slipped from his arms. He was angry at himself for not waking. She didn’t come back that evening or the next.
He couldn’t text or call her — she didn’t have her phone. He wasn’t sure why she left so many of her things behind. The sculptural feeling grew and darkened. Nik called her roommates but they said they hadn’t seen her either. They said she owed rent. Nik was confused, and with every day that passed, he became more afraid. He spent as much time as possible in his room waiting for her. He kept her cellphone charged. He went to the Vancouver police station to file a missing-persons report, but without Jennifer’s help he had difficulty filling out the forms. He would draw her face in the margins and have to start again. It took two weeks before Nik understood Jennifer was not coming back.
On the way to his afternoon Anatomical Drawing class, Nik slips his hand into the leg pocket of his black military-style cargo pants and feels for Jennifer’s cellphone. He always carries it with him in case it rings.
It hasn’t yet. For awhile there were text messages about dance rehearsals and classes. Nik deleted them. Then they stopped and he wished he hadn’t.
After class Nik buys a coffee at the stand outside. He’s been putting almost all of the money his family gives him into his Jennifer Fund, a savings account devoted to Jennifer-related art supplies — and now his one-man search. His stomach lurches, but he doesn’t have enough change left over to buy a sandwich. Hunger is the cost of not being convincing enough to the police. He was told he was not a spouse or a relative. His story was questioned. Nik doesn’t know who Jennifer’s relatives are. She told him she wanted to live completely in the present. That success depended on now. She never talked about her past. When he was with her, Nik didn’t think of his either.
Nik thuds up the rickety back stairs to the Rumble Shack. The third-floor light is still burned out and in the dim he has trouble getting his key into the lock. He puts his ear up to the rough wooden door but doesn’t hear anything. There’s always music when his roommates are home. Kendall practises bass. Aaron broadcasts erratic noise loops from his computer. Ilana, who somehow figured out the Wi-fi password for the neighbours downstairs, hosts an Internet podcast from her bedroom. The key finally slips into place.
Nik flicks the light switch and snaps the door shut behind him. The apartment reeks of cigarette smoke and something stale and rotten. Unwashed dishes, old garbage, and uneaten takeout remains are the norm in their grubby kitchen. Nik leaves his boots on, steps on a dirty blue hoodie left on the hallway floor, and over a broken canvas frame that’s had its painting kicked through. He strolls into the living room and turns on the overhead light. There’s a half-melted, oversized candle on the paper-strewn coffee table. On a long piece of dowel stuck into the candle is the rigid body of a dead rat.
Nik knows Aaron is responsible. Not for the catching, or perhaps even the killing. Aaron doesn’t make things happen. But certainly for the retrieval. And the reclamation. Aaron’s performance art is always convenient. Or lazy. Nik wonders what grade the rat will earn.
The decomposing rodent is what smells rank. Nik grabs his silver Zippo. He lights a stick of Ilana’s incense. Then another. And another. The sticks fit into gaps in the high, cracked baseboards and into the splintered grooves of the smashed bookshelf. He slips two into the knife-gouged frame of the old wooden TV box.
Nik retreats to his room. The metal chain and padlock with which he secures his door while he’s at school has been busted open. Again. There are ashes on the floor and his blue-and-green-striped duvet is bunched up in the corner of his futon, as though somebody slept there all afternoon. The thick navy drapes he sewed himself to block out natural light are open. Nik prefers working in artificial light. Otherwise he can’t see the dancing shadows that keep him company while he paints — miniature Jennifers whirling in his periphery the way she used to revolve and writhe onstage. He shuts the drapes and reaches into a punched out hole in the drywall behind his dresser. His paints and graphite pencils are still there. The Crème de Cacao is, too.
Nik gives a silent toast to modern dance in Jennifer’s memory. To rapid choreography, he thinks. And its unpaintability.
He takes a sip from the bottle. He hangs up his leather jacket. The hook is a blackened old door handle he found once in the recycling and stuck into the wall. He lights a couple of Jennifer’s candles — the red one still jammed into the old wine bottle and a squat, round white one in an old jar. He watches candle flames flicker in glass, closes his eyes, sees Jennifer. Then, ritual complete, he’s ready to paint. He picks up a tube of red ochre and begins rubbing it on the wall with his fingers, adding a red teardrop earring to the ear mural. Red smears appear on his faded black T-shirt beside old dollops of aquamarine. Nik can’t seem to keep any of his clothes clean.
“I gather you saw the rat,” says Ilana. She’s leaning on the doorframe, an enormous paper cup of coffee in her small hands.
“Revolting.” Nik shakes his head, but doesn’t allow himself to glance away from his painting. “I never know what I’m going to come back to here.”
Ilana sits down cross-legged on the floor at his feet, letting her short black skirt twist up to her hips. She shifts her knee so it grazes Nik’s calf. He finally looks at her. Ilana’s intentionally ripped tights reveal glimpses of freckled skin. Her eyes are puffy and red, but she always looks like she’s been crying, so he doesn’t mention it.
He doesn’t understand the things Ilana always talks about to Kendall. Something is always wrong. Everything wrong is dramatic. She receives frequent, upsetting phone calls. Nik thinks she should stop answering her cellphone and go to class. Nik doesn’t know what she studies. Ilana never seems to do homework, but she has a student card. He saw it once, after Aaron dumped the contents of Ilana’s purse out onto the living room floor and emptied her wallet of cash. Two hundred and fifty dollars. Nik remembers thinking that was a lot of money and wondering where she got it. He remembers Ilana shrieking first, then smirking. Ilana’s reactions never make much sense. Nik doesn’t trust her. He watches her absently pick at her chipped and bitten burgundy fingernails. He turns back to his mural.
“I like your room.” Ilana’s boots clatter and clunk against the floor. “It’s better than mine. Stinks like paint, but I could always open a window.” Nik tries to find the perfect angle with his brush to add more shading. He wonders what angle Ilana is working on him.
“Hey, what’s this?” Ilana says, arching towards the bottle of Crème de Cacao Nik left at the foot of his easel.
Nik tries grabbing the bottle out of Ilana’s reach, but she’s too
