VenCo(7)

“You know how many wannabe writers there are out there?” her grade-eleven English teacher told her after giving her another A. “I mean, you’re good, but so am I. And if I can’t get a book deal, you sure as hell won’t.” At the last minute, he added a minus beside the A, just to keep her expectations real.

With Stella’s paltry pension cheque, Lucky didn’t have the luxury of chasing dreams. Plus, the temp agency was pretty good at keeping her employment—and pay cheques—steady. Somewhere along the way, she learned to just accept it.

The first day at the new office was set aside for orientation—training videos and handshakes and names she wouldn’t bother to learn. The second day there was nothing but a pile of folders waiting in her inbox to greet her. She threw her bag under her desk and plopped into her seat, swivelling to look out the window at the view of other buildings. She wondered if other temp workers were looking back at her through their own mirrored glass.

When the corporation opened an artery at five o’clock and the office bled out into the lobby, Lucky was a part of the flow. She rode the subway into the east each night. Ironically, she did not take the number 2 train, which made Stella’s teeth clink against the drinking glass where they spent more time than in her mouth; the number 2 did not stop anywhere near their house. She took the number 5 and then had to walk three blocks.

In the winter the walk from the station was not bad. Snow covered all the imperfections: garbage, broken eavestroughs, empty buildings, spray paint designs, and shivering junkies. It rendered the streets Dickensian. But in the summer, it was horrid. Lucky would try to hold her breath for most of her walk, the heat cooking the garbage into a rancid street stew. The broken-down residents crawled out of their stuffy bachelor apartments and rented rooms to stand around on cracked feet, drinking cans of warm beer. Over the years she’d written some very bad poetry about those walks.

According to her grandma, in the days before the bridge, the neighbourhood had been hopeful. It had sprung up over spring and by mid-August had already filled out, with the western border having lawns and enough mowers pushed by husbands in sweater vests to cut them. A few corner stores supplied the pedestrians with bread and milk and bins of penny candies, and by that Halloween the ladies had started a book club and a Neighbourhood Watch.

Today was Friday, so Lucky walked two blocks in the opposite direction, head down against the strong wind, then stopped in front of a store on the corner and went inside. It smelled like somebody’s basement.

The shop used to be a movie-rental place. Now it was more of a nostalgia shop. The mortgage was paid by the rental units above, and the owner kept the store as a passion project. Along with DVDs and the occasional VHS, it stocked books on film and filmmakers, souvenirs from both popular and obscure franchises, and magazines that the film students came in to purchase or shoplift, depending on who was working the till.

A young man in a white T-shirt entered the room through a beaded-curtained doorway behind the cash register. Every time someone came through that door, Lucky had a vision of them being born to a large belly dancer.

“So, Lady Luck, what’s new and traumatizing in your corner of the world?” Malcolm settled onto the stool behind the counter and nestled his chin in the apex of his bony hands, held open as if in interrupted prayer. Tattoos covered every available canvas from his fingers to his neck—mermaids and pirates and playing cards all co-habiting nicely. His dark hair was newly cut, edges shaved so that she saw the raw pink of freshly revealed skin at his neck. She held her own hands together to stop from reaching out.

“Nothing at all.” She leaned on her elbow, propped against the counter on the opposite side, her face inches from her friend’s face, pretending at nonchalance. Being this close to him made her aware of the weight of her thighs, the volume of her breath. God, why couldn’t she just find the balls to tell him how she felt?

“Jesus, sounds interesting.”

“I know.” She sighed, looking out the front window, the words You should be in THE MOVIES stenciled across the surface, old-fashioned style. “Life is just a non-stop music festival. Great, now it’s raining. I hate April.”

They both paused, listening to the rain hit the street. They watched the night open up like theatre curtains, with all the hushed anticipation of an old couple at the ballet. Water slid slowly down the glass, like liquid-filled spiders spinning languid webs in the semi-darkness. From somewhere close by came the sound of a siren, and across the street an early raccoon knocked over a row of empty trash cans, chattering his disappointment at the garbage collectors’ efficiency.

Malcolm stretched his arms out on the counter and whispered to her, or the night, or maybe even the raccoon lumbering down the sidewalk with his graceless girth: “What do you suppose comes next?”

In a moment of bravery, Lucky slipped a finger into the soft arch made by Malcolm’s bent thumb curving in across the palm of his hand lying on the desk in front of him like a forgotten, broken thing. There was a bright flick of electricity, and she caught her breath. Just tell him, she screamed to herself. Tell him. She leaned across on both elbows and put her mouth very close to his ear, holding her breath so it wouldn’t shake.

Then she paused, and it was too much delay not to deflate. “Everything,” she whispered. Malcolm’s eyes closed, made heavy by her warm breath. She popped up her hood and yanked it down to sit low on her forehead and left.