of the plan. Smile at everybody, and smile big.
“You want me to put you down for two weeks here, bud?” Hami asked at the counter, his appointment book open. “Wednesday still best?”
Dion had forgotten that the trims were a standing order. They came at two-week intervals, and Wednesday had always been his day of preference. He had no idea why. He said, “Of course, Wednesday. Thanks, Hami. You’ve always got me covered.”
Hami extended a fist, and Dion remembered this ritual, too. He bumped the barber’s knuckles with his own, and Hami said, “Great to have you back, my friend.”
“Great to be back…. You’ve changed your music.”
Up now was an old Beach Boys classic about a miserable experience aboard a ship. Hami was grimacing and rolling his eyes at the speakers. “I’m assimilating, man. Godawful noise, this.”
On Lonsdale the rain had fused with the sunshine to become a dazzling mist. Several blocks downhill, the giant Q marked the Quay market and the harbour. Dion had no urge to go down there and look at the water, which was strange. Wasn’t that what he had been homesick for, the sound and smell, the magnetic pull of the sea?
Maybe not. There was an order to things. Get back to work, see the crew, confront Bosko, and then call up Kate. Then he would go and look at the water. He lit a cigarette and walked along 3rd, which became Marine Drive, where the traffic was heavy and endless. A used-car lot twinkled into view.
Cars and SUVs filled the lot, a variety pack of shiny metal. When he came to the bumper of the closest car, he stopped and took it in. A dark-blue coupe, a Honda Civic, poised at a dynamic angle, nosing into the sidewalk as though frozen in escape. A placard on its windshield advertised a price he recognized as decent. The windows were tinted. He peered inside and saw the interior was a handsome black, if not leather, then a good imitation.
He hadn’t owned a car since the crash. In Smithers he had walked or cabbed anywhere he needed to go, except when on the job. The job demanded that he drive, sometimes at speed, occasionally on ice, so he had no choice but to get good at it again. Here on the Lower Mainland an off-duty vehicle was not optional. He needed a car, but he would never drive again just for the fun of it. No thanks.
He read the stat sheets on the car’s window and saw the mileage wasn’t so bad. He circled the Civic again, and already a salesman was approaching, hands in pockets. The salesman stopped and looked at the car, proud as a new dad. He remarked that Dion had great taste in wheels, and did he have any questions? Dion said no, he didn’t right now, thanks. He stood and drew at his cigarette and looked at the car, while the salesman looked at the sky and talked about the weather. The salesman segued from weather into suggesting a test spin.
Dion smiled at the salesman. He wasn’t born yesterday. He knew what used sporty-looking coupes with great price tags meant, and the kind of people who fell for them. He was about to say so, but the salesman spoke first. “Whatcha got to lose?”
He had a point. The man took his driver’s licence to make a copy and went to get the key and demo plates, and Dion stood on the sidewalk to wait. He looked south along Marine Drive at the city skyline, then northward, at the mountains. He thought about the highway that wove through them, and the long drive between this point and that, North Vancouver and Smithers. Strange how a part of him wanted to go back there even after he had worked so hard to be here. This was where he belonged, not there.
The salesman brought the keys. It took a moment for Dion to remember why. “Thank you.”
“You’re … all right?” the salesman said.
Dion smiled at him, and smiled big. “Absolutely.”
Three
Crime Currents
Each new day, Dave Leith had to look harder for that silver lining. For over a month now he had been living in a strange city, confined to a crappy little apartment that was costing him twelve hundred a month, plus utilities, and driving a rental car to an office full of strangers, none of whom he had managed to befriend. He asked himself now: when exactly in the recent past had this move to the metropolis struck him as a “great idea”?
Last night from Prince Rupert, his wife Alison had given yet another long-distance reassurance: “You just need time to adjust.”
“It’s not exactly what I thought it would be,” he had told her.
“What ever is?” she asked.
Sure, he would adjust — what choice did he have? But Alison didn’t get it, that adjustment for him was step two in a two-step process. First he had to get over the disappointment, and he had to do that in his own particular style, griping all the way.
At least the daily commute from his apartment to the North Van detachment had become routine by now; he no longer tilted an ear to the GPS delivering her robotic instructions. He merged onto Highway 1 and joined another vehicular lineup. North Vancouver hadn’t failed in its promises in any big way; the bright lights were maybe not as bright as he’d imagined, but he had grown up in a small Saskatchewan city, and his thrill-meter was set fairly low. Really he was only disappointed in himself. Where was the handsomer, smarter, wittier Dave Leith that this move was supposed to have made him? A juvenile fantasy, of course, but still he would check the mirror as he shaved each morning and be chagrined to see no progress. He remained a tall, thickening, doubtful-looking forty-four-year-old with lumpy, blond hair beginning to recede, blue eyes too close set, nose and chin too big, mouth too thin and always clamped into a self-conscious smile.
There was no wild nightlife here, either, at least not for him. He had made the effort and gone out drinking twice with the rowdier set of his new workmates, but the situation — it was mostly the noisy atmosphere that got him down — only made him antsy. Not that he would quit trying.
He seemed to spend all his time commuting, burning frozen dinners in the apartment’s quirky oven, and studying up on the procedures and protocols of his new office. In an effort to impress his new superior, Sergeant Mike Bosko — the man he’d met on a northern assignment and who had made this transfer happen — he also brought his caseload home with him to mull over as he ate his burned dinners.
He missed Prince Rupert. Missed his buddies and comfortable bungalow on its good-sized lot, which now had a big for-sale sign on the front lawn. He missed the morning fogs and the busy harbour, the locals and summer tourists. Alison was still up there, with the furniture and their two-year-old, Isabelle, waiting for Leith to get settled before coming to join him.
Their foolish expectation had been that he would find a great little house, put an offer on it — stretching the budget just a bit — and they would transition smoothly from one residence to another.
The expectation had hit a brick wall called the ridiculous price of real estate in North Vancouver. He was still reverberating from the shock. Some local staff were buying properties as far afield as Abbotsford, he heard. Which meant they spent half their lives commuting.
He was off Highway 1 and driving down the spine of North Vancouver, Lonsdale Avenue, a gauntlet of traffic lights that each turned sadistic yellow as he approached. He had learned that pulling faces and swearing at traffic lights didn’t help. Didn’t help at all.
Making it through the last light, he turned his car up 15th and down St. Georges and entered the underground parkade of his new detachment.
The
