Fractured: Tales of the Canadian Post-Apocalypse(84)
“He said you would be coming tonight.”
“I was anxious to see you,” the young man admitted. “I came early. I was afraid you might be ugly but you were so beautiful and then you were crying and I felt so sorry about it. I just wanted to hold you and tell you it would be all right.”
“And I hit you.”
“Yes.”
“I hit a priest.”
“Yes. Please don’t tell Uncle Matthew.”
“Father Matthew?”
“Yes,” the young man said, squaring his shoulders a little. “He came to make the wedding arrangements and see that everything was prepared properly for the bishop.”
“Then when you put your arm around me,” Joyce paused. “We were betrothed already.”
“If you meant what you said about getting married, yes. It really was all right. The Convocation understands that. I spoke to them. It will be harder to explain you throwing stones at me.”
“Why didn’t you tell me who you were?”
“I was going to tell you in the garden but you ran away before I could. I was going to tell you on the hill but you wouldn’t listen.”
Joyce felt the blush rising in her cheeks. The young man smiled and shrugged.
“Please,” he said, “never tell my uncle or the bishop about any of this.”
“No,” Joyce said. She was horrified that either should ever find out.
“I know I am a stranger to you and that we did not start off well. I hope we can start again. Maybe you can love me. At the very least, I hope that you will be content. We could make a life together and be happy if you will stop hitting me.”
Joyce half-laughed at that, not certain what to say.
“The Convocation expects a priest to give strength to the people he leads. I will need someone to give me strength. My name is Father Daniel Whyte and this will be my parish, though I do not feel worthy of that honour. I feel alone. I think that you feel alone too. We can change that. I wouldn’t deny that it is a hard life being married to a priest, but it has its rewards too. Will you share it with me?”
“I don’t know.”
“Perhaps we can talk about it more,” the young man said. “But we better get back. Uncle Matthew will wonder what has happened to us.”
“And I have a stew to finish.”
“What kind?”
“Dog.”
“I might just have some vegetables,” he told her.
MAXIM FUJIYAMA AND OTHER PERSONS
Claude Lalumière
Over the percussive noise of the rain, Maxim hears male voices shouting and cursing. The sound comes from the direction of his home. He detours half a block so as to hide among a patch of trees that affords him a good view of the apartment complex’s front door. Near the shore of False Creek, the downtown Vancouver neighbourhood where he currently lives, there are trees everywhere. Even more so now than before; even after only a little over a year of urban neglect, there are already signs of nature taking back the city.
Two middle-aged white men are trying to enter the building. But the old Chinese man who lives on the third floor is blocking the door. The Chinese man isn’t talking loud enough for Maxim to make out his words over the distance and the rain. The message of his body language, however, is unambiguous: you may not enter.
The white men are wearing drab business suits that have seen better days. Their hair is long, their beards unkempt. They do not look dangerous, merely pathetic. Four metres away from the door, they continue to shout obscenities and threats at the building’s de facto guardian. The Chinese man responds firmly, shaking his head.
The Chinese man takes a step forward. The two men in business suits take three steps back. They know they have lost, Maxim observes, but still they do not leave, nor do they cease their verbal abuse. The taller of the two men bends down to pick up a rock. He hurls it toward the front door. The throw is ineffectual; the rock lands half a metre short of the Chinese man, who again steps forward. The white men retreat twice that distance. Without saying a word, the Chinese man picks up the rock. He looks at the white men, flexing his forearm with the weight of the rock in his hand.
The men yell a few more threats and insults, but Maxim can hear the defeat in their voices. Finally, the shorter man tugs on his companion’s jacket and the two are off, scowling back at the source of their defeat and humiliation. As the men leave, the rain tapers off.
This is not the first time Maxim has witnessed his neighbour – who is barely above 150 centimetres tall but powerfully built, his demeanour projecting a physical arrogance that seems unaffected by his diminutive height or his advanced age, which Maxim estimates at around 70 – chasing off people trying to enter the building. Once the white men are completely out of sight, Maxim emerges from his hiding spot. Careful to avoid the intimacy of eye contact, the Chinese man steps aside so that Maxim can enter.
As Maxim climbs the stairs to his apartment – a fully furnished tenth-storey luxury condo that showed no signs of ever having been inhabited before he claimed it – he recalls reading an article that discussed housing costs in Canada, back when there was such a thing as housing costs: Vancouverites, on average, spent 80 to 90 percent of their income on housing, compared to Torontonians, who spent 50 to 60 percent, and Montrealers, who spent 25 to 30 percent, which was the recommended ratio for sustainable living. If the so-called “invisible hand” of the market really worked, the article speculated, housing would not be so expensive in Vancouver; the city’s vacancy rate for condos and apartments hovered in the 20 to 25 percent range, which should have brought prices down, but it didn’t. Vancouver remained the most expensive city in which to live in Canada, regardless of how many housing units were left uninhabited, forcing people out to ever more distant suburbs. Most of the vacancies consisted of condos such as Maxim’s. Near the once-bustling Granville Island, it offered a breathtaking view of the downtown cityscape across from the water of False Creek.