The Killing Circle

that, even here in a city of millions, is limited to only a few, the last of the storybook believers. The ones who have not only seen the Sandman standing at the edge of their lives, but invited him in.

The morning is as bad as you’d guess. Complicated not just by a hangover serious enough to share eight of the nine primary symptoms of toxic shock, nor by the afternoon trip to the emergency room to get an intern to pinch and stick and Oh, damn, I’m sorry his way to stitching my lip closed, but by the prevailing sense that if what has come before has been worrying, everything from here on in is going to show how justified that worry actually was. I might be paranoid. But there’s nothing that says paranoids can’t be right sometimes.

On the way back from the hospital, I stop by Angela’s building again. Still no answer. An idea strikes me all at once. Whether it was William or someone else, whoever I saw last night had come from calling on Angela too.

I try her work number, and the receptionist informs me she hasn’t been in all this week. Len’s not answering his phone. These are all the leads I have. Along with the faith that, if Angela were able to, she would have checked in with me by now, if only to tell me to stop bothering her with my sad-sack messages.

She is hiding. She is with him now. She is dead.

No matter which is true, it leaves me to find her on my own.

Later that afternoon I drive out of the city checking the rear view to see if I’m being followed. But speeding west along the QEW in a suicidal crush, every car fighting and failing to gain an inch on the competition—there is no way not to be followed. Still, there is one vehicle that seems to stick to me more doggedly than the others. A black Lincoln Continental that won’t let me steal away whenever a gap opens in the slower lane. Not that this proves anything other than he has the same ideas about getting ahead that I have. And though the slanting light of dusk won’t let me get a look at the driver’s face, the same could be said for almost every other car jostling for position behind me.

But the Continental is still there forty-five minutes later when the first exit for St Catharines comes up. I wait until the last moment before veering off on to the ramp. At first, it seems the black sedan tries to follow, lurching from the passing to the middle lane. But as the ramp curves into the town’s residential streets, I catch sight of the Continental already shrinking down the highway. If I was being followed, the most the driver will know is where I’ve got off, but not where I’m going.

And where I’m going is to see Sam.

He looks good. Tanned, knee scrapes from roughhousing. Somehow he’s aged a year in the past week.

“Am I going back with you?” he asks when we’re on our own in the living room, a Disney movie paused on the jumbo screen.

“Afraid not.”

“Then when?”

“Another week. Maybe two.”

“A week?”

“I thought you were having fun here.”

“It’s okay. It’s just—I miss you.”

“Any money says I miss you more.”

“Then why can’t I come home?”

“Because there’s something going on that needs to be settled first. And I want you to be safe.”

“Are you safe?”

“You have to trust me. Can you do that for the next little while?”

Sam nods. Just look at him: he does trust me. And though this shouldn’t surprise me—I’m his father—the weight of it does. It’s a gift when another gives you their trust like this. A gift that can be taken back at any time, and easily too. This is what I read as clearly as the banana bruise freckles across my son’s cheeks: once it’s gone you never get it back. You might think you can. But you can’t.

Later that evening when I’m tucking Sam into his bed, I ask if he would like me to read to him from any of the books he’d brought with him. He shakes his head.

“You want me to get you some new stuff? Next time, we can go to the bookstore and go crazy.”

“No.”

“What’s the problem? You too old to be read to?”

“I don’t read any books any more.”

There are a thousand declarations a child can make to a parent more painful than this. But there is a seriousness, even a cruelty in what has just been uttered here in the dark of a spare room that smells of another kid’s smells.

“Why’s that?”

“I don’t like them.”

“You don’t like stories?”

“They’re what you’ve left me here for. Right?”

I deny this. Tell him fiction can inform and influence and provoke, but can’t actually hurt anyone. But what we both know, even as I kiss him goodnight and leave the door open an inch, is that he’s right. It’s the unreal that has stepped off the page to cloud our lives. And until it can be made to go back where it belongs Sam must stay here, awake in the nightlight’s glow, preparing to keep his sleep free of all dreams but the one where his father returns to take him home.

After nightfall, I drive back to Toronto. Down here, where the highway hugs the southern shore of the lake, you can look through the gaps between the old motels and fenced-in orchards and catch glimpses of the city’s skyline across the water. In the past, I would see it as glamorous, a sexual invitation in the embracing pillars of light. It was the suggestion of possibility, of danger that I liked, and took pride in being associated with, if only by shared address.

Tonight, the sight of the distant towers has a different effect. They are an alien army, moonglinting beasts rising from a dark sea. Their lights powered by desire alone. Unrequited, insatiable. A terrible wanting that feeds on anything that will submit to being possessed.

I drive on through the winemaking villages, smaller bedroom towns, the conjoined suburbs along the north shore before the final turn into the light. This last framing of the city before you are consumed within it: there was a time I thought it was beautiful, saw in it the beautiful promise of success. And I still do. Though what I know now is that every promise can also be a lie, depending on how it’s kept.

25

Tim Earheart rings me again for drinks.

“God, I’m sorry,” I tell him, remembering the unanswered emails and phone messages he’d left with me. “Things have been a little messed up the past while. Maybe tomorrow—”

“This isn’t exactly a social call, Patrick.”

“What is it then? Business?”

“Yeah. It’s business.”

We meet at one of the bank tower bars Tim has been favouring since he’d been given a raise following his appointment to Special Investigative Reporter (“What were you before?” “I don’t know. But definitely not