into a ball. She felt too weak to move and her legs twitched and ached. A soft blow hit her heart. The cell went black around the edges.
The woman wanted to die.
It seemed like months before the narcs removed her from the women's jail upstairs and put her in the interview room. By then she was clutching her guts with both arms just to keep them inside. The room was ten feet square with a table and two chairs. One cop, young and muscular, remained standing by the door. The other narc sat down. He was much older, a man with a waxy embalmed complexion and a silky black moustache. He looked like a Mississippi gambler from the 1880s. He was the one who grabbed her arm and slapped it down on the table.
'You been hookin' that spot so much it's about to get infected.' He pointed to the needle welt in the crook of her elbow where the vein had almost disappeared, retreating back toward the bone to escape the probing needle.
Black Moustache then dumped her purse onto the table between them. Combs, cosmetics, condoms and tissues scattered across the surface. He placed the cap of junk seized from her shoe in the center of the contents. Then he began the spiel.
'The law allows, lady, up to seven years for possession. With the sort of shape you're in even minutes will seem like years. You make the decision.'
'Back to your cell,' Muscles said, 'or walk right outa here.'
'Pick up the contents of your purse and sashay out the door.'
Black Moustache tapped the cap and rolled it an inch toward her. 'Name your pusher.'
'Name your pimp.'
'Give us something better.'
'We're reasonable men.'
'Poor sick girl like you.'
'Don't tell us,' Moustache said, 'and what else can we do?' He shrugged his shoulders, palms up, like the Frenchmen do.
But she did nothing. Said nothing. And the narcs made good their threat. It wasn't until 4:30 a.m. that they issued her an Appearance Notice and let her out of the can.
She had gone first to the room they shared in a rat-infested hotel. A sign outside advertised:
When she reached the exit onto the street a drunk was sprawled in the doorway. The wino had a pale thin face and long yellow teeth. He looked like a rodent. Flicking her a blank, cold smile, the man took a deep slug from a bottle of Aqua Velva shaving lotion. On the ground beneath him was a puddle of piss and rain.
Disgusted, the woman squeezed herself flat against the brick wall near his feet. 'Gimme a kiss,' the drunk slurred as she stumbled out onto the pavement. Then the woman turned down Carrali Street and made for Chinatown. The feel of the bricks on the skin of her palm had reminded her of The Wall.
Now the traffic light at the empty intersection of Pender and Main turned red, suffusing the mist with a color so intense that it seemed as if a rain of blood dripped down on the city. The woman glanced down Pender Street, back the way she had come.
Chinatown at 5 a.m. could be in another century. For at this hour the mystery and inscrutability that the West sees in the East is almost tangible. The woman could see a line of buildings stretching out in the rain, their facades as ornate as Chinese theater masks. Windows looked out on the road like dead man's eyes. In one of these buildings Sun Yat-sen had lived out part of his exile. In others Secret Societies had met in an atmosphere as thick with mystery as the smoke which fumed from their opium factories. While under the street — where she sat now — fabled tunnels had snaked from somewhere to somewhere else for some forgotten reason.
This woman, of course, knew none of this — for she was new to this city. She had lived within it for a total of four days.
Slowly struggling to her feet, she lurched toward the hotel.
The Wall was right next door to the Moonlight Arms, the pub of the Moonrise Hotel, and it was built of old brick painted with the red and white stripes of a skid row barber shop. The white stripes had become a hookers' message board. For it was here that the prostitutes who worked the Downtown Eastside warned their sisters of the night about certain kinky johns. Messages like:
With a rising panic, the woman frantically searched for Johnnie's characteristic scrawl.
She didn't notice the vehicle that came around the corner.
The car crept down the block from Main Street, its tires hissing over the rain-soaked tarmac, its license plate covered by mud. Ten feet from the woman, it headed for the curb. The passenger's window was open. The engine idled.
The woman heard the motor purr and she slowly turned around. Then she stumbled to the window.
'Want a date?' she croaked.
On instinct she bent down to get a look at the driver, for hers was a dangerous business. Only yesterday afternoon she had heard that a working girl had been snuffed by a john. The guy had used a nylon to strangle her to death.
Though the driver's face was shadowed, she could just make out the eyes.
'Forget it,' the woman said sharply, and she went to turn away.
'Hey, wait a minute, lady. You don't look so well.'
'Fuck off,' the woman said, glancing back over her shoulder.
'You strung out, lady? I can fix that up. I want you for a friend of mine. He'll throw in some junk.'
'No!' the woman said — and then the cramps hit her again, worse this time.
Ten seconds later, she climbed into the car. The driver eased the vehicle away from the curb and they drove off into the night.
11:45 a.m.
The maple trees were turning. Earlier that morning the rain clouds had blown inland and now, out beyond the panes of the greenhouse, the leaves were a riot of color. Hues of red and yellow and orange stood out sharply against the backdrop of English Bay with its blue-green waters whipped into foaming whitecaps. Bright October sunshine slanted in through the glass, hitting a row of prisms that threw rainbows across the floor. Inside there were also other colors in profusion, for they liked it here, the roses.
The plants were growing in tropical wells and artificial gardens, row upon row of them, spread out around the greenhouse.
Over near a door which led to the house was a section for hybridizing.' In this section stood a single plant that flowered deep maroon.
The man was sitting in one corner in a large white wicker chair. He was a tall, slender individual with piano- player hands. His hair was dark and wavy with a trace of gray at the temples, his eyes dark and brooding. There was a slight shadow of beard showing through the skin of his finely chiseled jaw, and his aquiline nose, on first impression, hinted at arrogance. It was only if you heard him speak that his humility came through.
The man was sitting cross-legged with a pad and clipboard on his knee. Scattered about him, covering the surface of a library table, hiding the tiles on the floor, were several dozen volumes of history on the First World War. The floor space left between the books was littered with crumpled paper.
Engrossed in what he was writing, the man failed to notice that a woman had entered the room. She stood for a moment just this side of the door to the house, contemplating him. Her eyes were large and green and sparkling with life. They were set in a flawless face. Her cheekbones were slanted high and her lips were full. Her
