The Killing Circle

You’re dead, I almost say.

“What, no ’How’s the writing coming?’” the living Angela says.

“How’s the writing coming?”

“Not as well as yours, by the looks of things.”

The publicist makes an almost imperceptible side-step closer to the table. The woman next in line behind Angela shuffles forward. Coughs more loudly than necessary. Taps the toe of a Birkenstock on the floor.

Angela remains smiling, but something changes in her pose. A stiffening at the corners of her mouth.

“Have you—?” she starts, and seems to lose her thought. She bends closer. “Have you seen any of them?”

“A couple. Here and there.”

Angela ponders this response as though I’d answered in the form of a riddle. The woman behind her takes a full step forward. Her reddening face now just inches from sitting atop Angela’s shoulder.

“Perhaps you’d like to speak to Mr Rush after the signing?” the publicist says, as pleasantly as an obvious warning could be stated.

“I think—” Angela starts again. I wonder if she is steeling herself to launch some kind of attack. Slap me across the face. Serve a court summons. But it’s not that. With her next words she reveals that she isn’t angry. She’s frightened.

“I think something’s…happening.”

The publicist tries to squeeze between Angela and the table. “May I help you?” she asks, reaching toward Angela’s arm. But Angela rears back, as though to be touched by another would burn her skin.

“Sorry. Oh. I’m sorry,” she murmurs, nudging the book another inch closer to me. “I suppose I should have this signed.”

Now the entire line is getting antsy. The woman behind Angela has come around to stand next to her, an act of rebellion that threatens to create a second line. Fearing the chaos that would result, the publicist pulls back the cover for me, holds the book open to the title page.

“Here we are,” she says.

I sign. Just my signature at first. Then, seeing this as too hopelessly impersonal, I scribble a dedication above my name.

To the Living,

Patrick Rush

“Hope you enjoy it,” I say, handing the book back to Angela. She takes it, but remains staring at me.

“I’m sure I will,” she says. “I’m particularly intrigued by the title.”

The Birkenstock woman has heard enough. Drops her copy on to the table from three feet in the air. A single crack on impact that draws gasps from the line.

At the same time, Angela grips the front of the table with her free hand. Whispers something so low I rise out of my chair to hear her.

“I need to talk to you,” she says. Opens the palm of her hand so that I have to reach into it and take the card she’s offered me.

Then all at once she pushes aside the publicist who attempts to usher her toward the exit, makes her way unsteadily around the corner and is gone.

“I liked it,” the Birkenstock woman says when my hands steady enough to open her copy. “Didn’t totally buy the ending, though.”

PART THREE

Story Thieves

18

SUMMER, 2007

You wouldn’t say climate is Toronto’s strong point. Not if you appreciate seasons as they are normally understood as quarters of transition. Instead, the city endures long months of swampy, equatorial heat, and longer months of ear-aching cold, each separated by three pleasant days in a row, one called spring, the other fall.

This morning, for instance, the clock radio woke me with news of the fourth extreme heat alert so far this year, and it is only the first week of June. “Emergency Cool Down Centres” have been established in public buildings, where wanderers can collapse on to chilled marble floors until nightfall. The general citizenry has been advised not to go outside, not to allow the sun to touch its skin, not to move, not to breathe. These are empty warnings, of course, as people still have to work and, worse, get to work. After I’ve dropped Sam off at the daycare, I make my way back along Queen, lines of sweat trickling down my chest, glaring at the passengers on the stalled streetcar, all of them struck in poses of silent suffering.

From here I turn up toward College, past the semi-detached Victorians, each with their own knee-high fencing protecting front lawns so small you could mow them with a pair of tweezers. I stick to the shady reach of trees as best I can. But the heat isn’t the only thing that slows my steps: I’m on my way to meet Angela.

The card she’d slipped into my hand at the Harbourfront book signing was blank aside from a scribbled cellphone number, and beneath it, a plaintive Call Me. I didn’t want to. That is, I was aware that pursuing any further contact with a woman I had actionably wronged and who, if published reports were to be believed, was no longer among the living, could lead to nothing good.

Even now, my legs rubbery from the heat, zigzagging up the sidewalk like some midday boozer, I’m not sure why I called. It must have been the same impulse that had me press the Record button the first time I heard her read. The reason I kept going back to the circle’s meetings when it was clear they were of no use. The ancient curse of the curious, the Nosey Parkers, the natural-born readers.

I needed to know.

We decided to meet at Kalendar, a cafe where we can sit outside. Now, selecting the one remaining table (only half covered by the awning’s shade), I wish we’d opted for a cellar somewhere instead. I’m here first, so I take the darker chair. Later, when the sun slides to a new angle that allows it to fire lasers through the side of my head, and the chair across the table from mine is comfortably shielded, I will realize the error of my positioning. But for the time being, I order an intentionally funfree soda water, believing I am still in control of the events barrelling my way.

At first, when a young woman arrives and, spotting me, comes over with a shy smile below her State Trooper shades, I assume it’s a fan. Over the last few months, it has become not entirely uncommon for strangers to approach and offer a word about The Sandman. Some will stick around for more than this—the lonely, the tipsy, the crazy. And I’m trying to decide which this one is when she joins me at my table. I’m about to tell her I’m sorry, but I’m waiting for someone, when something in her face changes, a trembling strain at the tops of her cheeks, and I see that it’s not a stranger at all.

“I guess we’ve never seen each other in the light of day,” Angela says, studying me. It makes me wish I’d