Laura Cardinal - 01 - Darkness on the Edge of Town

A fluorescent bulb sizzled above the yellow and green door to her room. The glare of the light was so harsh she had to blink. When she stuck her key in the lock, it didn’t turn.

She jiggled the key in the lock, cursing under her breath. Stared down at the stubborn lock. Funny: Her hand didn’t look like her hand. It looked strange, but she couldn’t figure out why.

Brain fart. She’d gone without sleep for long periods before—the job required it. Forty, sometimes sixty hours straight. She was young, she was healthy, but tonight she felt every one of her thirty-one years bearing down on her like a weight.

Abruptly, the lock turned. She got the door open, stripped off her clothes and crawled under the covers. But even when she closed her eyes the light from above the door seemed to sizzle behind her eyelids, little fireworks popping in the dark.

9

THE BIRTHDAY CELEBRATION

Musicman bought a cupcake and a box of birthday candles, even though the box of candles was a waste of money because he used only one. He chose a blue candle because blue was her favorite color. He set it down next to the present, even though the present was not for her. He’d wrapped it with care, beautiful eye-catching paper with a bright golden bow.

While waiting at the checkout counter, he’d picked up a paper. Jessica Parris’s death made the front page. Lots of strokes and attaboys. He was disappointed, though, that cable hadn’t picked it up.

Back inside with the shades drawn, he lit the candle and sang Happy Birthday, surprised when it made him cry. She would have been thirty years old today. He remembered the last time he saw her in 1998, two years before her boyfriend beat her to death during a drunken binge. Musicman liked to think she had provoked the cretin into killing her because she could not live with herself.

It still troubled him, her ending up like that. He hated thinking about what had happened in Alert Bay, but sometimes it just reached up and grabbed him, pulling him down into that bad time.

He had been surprised how warm the village on the west Canadian coast was in midsummer. While browsing through the drugstore on the main drag, he’d even had to take off his jacket and wrap it around his waist.

Alert Bay was about as far away as you could get from where he lived—so far away it was even in another country. It was almost as if she had drawn a line on a map. He didn’t blame her, after what she’d been through.

There were plenty of knickknacks on the half-empty shelves. Most of them had a native or marine theme, which was fine except Misty had lived here awhile and none of it would be new to her.

Who are you trying to impress? It didn’t matter what he bought. He knew that. She would know what was in his mind, and that was what counted.

He glanced at his watch. If he was going to surprise her, he’d better get a move-on. She got off work at two. Hurriedly, he picked out a ceramic orca and a card, one of those soft-filtered ones showing two cute little kids together. He also grabbed a roll of breath mints.

He walked fast, worried he might miss her. As he rounded the bend, he saw the yellow clapboard building housing the Midnight Sun Hotel and Restaurant. He’d just started up the steps when a woman pushed the door out, struggling with a kid in a stroller. The woman looked used-up, your basic white trash—stringy hair, tattoos on her bare arms.

He waited for her to get through the door. She made a big show of wrangling with the stroller, but he refused to help. She gave him a dirty look and he returned her gaze serenely, not letting her know what he was thinking. What he was thinking: She looks like a hype.

“Thanks for your help,” she said.

He ignored her and went inside. The place was empty except for a woman he presumed worked there sitting at a table by the window. He asked her pleasantly if Misty Patin was there.

“She just left.”

“Could I get an address?”

The woman parted the curtain and then looked at him. “She’s still there. Didn’t you see her when you came in?”

He felt his heart drop, the funny feeling you get when an elevator goes way up. “I didn’t see anybody.”

The woman looked at him as if he were crazy. She shoved back the curtain again and pointed. “She’s right out there.”

He leaned down and peered out. He saw the hype and her kid across the street. A brand-new navy pickup pulled up. The driver looked like an Eskimo, although that wasn’t what they were called around here. He wore a tank top, shorts and flip flops. A little girl, maybe ten years old, hopped out right behind him. She was blond and didn’t look anything like the man or the kid in the stroller. The girl ran down to the rocky beach and threw rocks into the water.

Looking at her, he knew it was true.

She looked just like Misty.

He felt a wall in his gut give way, the dam he had carefully built up over the years. He could feel something dark and toxic seep out, the resentment and anger that had always been there, but that he had managed to control up until now.

The woman said, “You better hurry if you want to catch her.”

“Shut up.”

“No one talks to me like that. You’d better go, mister—“

“Shut the fuck up or I’ll make you shut up, you dried-up old hag!”