Road and Keith, Canada’s longest red light. A captive audience. I just know some little shit with a felt pen’s going to go draw a Hitler moustache on it.”
“Felt markers ought to be illegal.”
“I agree. Kids today are monsters.” She finished my Jell-O and somehow squeaked a drag from what remained of her cigarette. “Have to run.”
“I think there’s still one more spoonful left.”
She was almost out the door. “You look like hell, darling. Three more days at least. Wouldn’t you think?”
“Yes, Leslie. Thank you.”
“See you tomorrow, darling.”
I began to watch Bambi. I wasn’t really sure why the video store clerk had recommended it as a sad movie—and it seemed pretty tame. There was a knock on my door, and because there was no intercom buzz I assumed it would be Wallace, the caretaker. It was young Donna from Landover Communication Systems, coltish and seemingly undernourished, standing in my hallway with a stack of folders and envelopes pressed to her chest. Everyone in the office likes Donna because she’s always up, always on—but I’m on to her game. She’s like me. She’s a watcher.
“Donna?”
“Hello, Liz.”
I realized how awful I must look. I touched my cheeks. “Swelling’s pretty big.”
She kept the papers clamped to her chest. “Liz, your eyes are all red.”
“Sad movies.”
“What?”
“Sad movies. Painkillers make them seem sadder than they really are.”
“I love crying at sad movies.”
“Oh. Would you like to come in?”
“Thank you.”
“Liam said he was sending a courier.”
“I thought it’d be better if I came instead.”
Not only is Donna a watcher, she’s also a minor tattle-tale, and she’s no cretin. She scanned my apartment like it was so many bar-coded groceries. Doubtless the lunchroom was due for a guided playback the next day: It’s like a spinster’s cellblock—almost nothing on the walls, furniture chosen by a colour-blind nun and, weirdest of all, no cats.
Donna said, “Nice place.”
“No it’s not.”
“Yes it is.”
“It’s adequate.”
“I think it’s nice.”
“Are those the files Liam asked me to pick away at?”
“These?” She’d forgotten about them while she was doing her sweep. “Yes, they are. Nothing too complex, I hope. You must be kind of wooey from the drugs.” She put the files on the dining table.
“Would you like some?”
She was shocked. “What—your drugs?”
“I was just kidding.”
“Oh.” She fished around for something to say, but my condo was almost entirely devoid of conversation fodder. On the TV screen she saw Thumper frozen on PAUSE. “You’re watching Bambi, huh?”
I tried to be chatty. “You know, I’m thirty-six and I’ve never seen it before.”
“It’s so depressing. You know—Mrs. Bambi being shot and all.”
This surprised me. “I didn’t know that.”
“You didn’t know? Everybody knows that Bambi’s mother gets shot. It’s like Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer—part of the culture.”
I considered this. “You mean Rudolph the Useful Reindeer.”
“Huh?”
“Let’s be honest, if Rudolph hadn’t been able to help the other reindeer, they’d have left him to the wolves—and laughed while the fangs punctured his hide.”
“That’s a grim way of looking at it.”
I sighed and stared at the files Donna had brought me.
She changed the subject. She nodded at a Monet print of lilies at Giverny beside the kitchen. “Nice poster.”
“My sister gave it to me.”
“It suits you.”
“It was left over when she redecorated her office.”
Donna blew a fuse. “Liz, why do you have to be so negative? This is a great place. You ought to be happy with it. I live in a dump, and the rent’s half my salary.”
“Can I make you some coffee?”
“No, thanks. I have to head back to the office.”
“You sure?”
“I have to go.”
I saw her to the door and returned to the movie, and realized that knowing about Bambi’s mother didn’t spoil it. So I was happy.
At the end, I checked the year it was made: MCMXLII— 1942. Even Bambi was long dead by now. He’s soil, as are Thumper and Flower. Deer have up to an eighteen-year lifespan; rabbits, twelve; skunks, at most thirteen. And being soil doesn’t sound like such a bad idea really, moist and granular like raspberry oatmeal muffins. Soil is alive—it has to be in order for it to nourish new life. So, in a way, it’s not remotely deathlike. Burial is nice that way.
William, my older brother and possibly my best friend, waited until the evening to check up on me, right after On the Beach. In the truest sense of the word, I was sitting there speechless as the credits rolled and I contemplated an entire radioactive planet populated with decomposed bodies sitting in their offices, kitchens, in cars and on front lawns. When he came in, I don’t even think I said hello—I merely sniffled, but the verklempt mood fled the moment I saw my two essentially evil nephews, Hunter and Chase, run in after him.
“Lizzie, Jesus, your eyes look like two piss holes in the snow. I can’t stay long. I have to fly to London on a red-eye.”
“Hello, William.”
The twins groaned in harmony, “We’re hunnnnnnngry,” followed by Chase saying to his father, making no attempt to masquerade his feelings, “Aunt Lizzie’s place blows. You said we could go to the arcade.”
I said, “Hello, Hunter. Hello, Chase,” who, as usual, ignored me.
William addressed his sons. “Well, if I’d told you we were going to Lizzie’s, then I’d never have
