LITMIR.BIZ

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      He managed to cry out to the one who always made things right. She gathered him up when he fell and fixed all his screw-ups, and he needed her now so badly. “Mama.” But she was back in Airdrie, so far away. He would have given all he had to see her smile right now, to feel her forgiving embrace.

      A smile erases a million worries.

      The creature was on top of him now, all black and oily and obliterating the sky. He reached out to touch it, and his heart, his pounding heart … He squeezed his eyes shut, bellowed, and was silent.

      Two

      Light and Shadow

      Blessedly, the Lonsdale barbershop had not changed at all in Dion’s time away. He stood in the entrance and took it all in with a smile. Music, mirrors, posters, and Persian bric-a-brac. There was the strong scent of aftershave that he hadn’t even realized he missed, till now. Nobody here but Hami in his white smock, busy tidying up his workstations.

      Hami turned and saw him. He did a double take. “It can’t be,” he said, Hami the ham, so shocked he staggered. “My God. You’re back. Long time no see!”

      Dion said “Salam,” about the only Farsi word he knew. “’Course I’m back, why wouldn’t I be? I didn’t make an appointment. Have time for a walk-in?”

      “Of course. Come, come.”

      Dion hung his leather car coat on a hook and sat in one of three vinyl padded chairs before the wall-length mirror. He waited for the barber to clip the cape around his shoulders and tuck it in around his collar. With cape secured, he checked out his world in the mirror’s reflection. Hami prepared scissors and razor and spray bottle, making small talk as if only a week or two had passed, not close to a year.

      All of it was pleasant, yet something was out of place. Dion fixed on Hami’s face and words, trying to ignore the slight skew.

      “Was last July, yes?” Hami said, eying him up for the cut. “I read about it in the paper, saw your name, couldn’t believe my eyes. They said there were fatalities, but said too that you survived. But me, I don’t trust the news. Then you miss your next appointment, never come back again, and I’m thinking for sure, man, my best customer is dead. The same?” he said, talking style.

      “Things happened,” Dion said. “Yes, don’t change a thing.”

      “So what things happened?”

      “I took a transfer. Went north to work till I got back up to speed.”

      “Aha. And now you’re back up to speed?”

      “Totally. Better than ever. Passed the tests with flying colours.” It was a white lie. There were no flying colours, but no signs of brain injury either, which meant no medical reason to shift him out of active duty. The initial diagnosis in layman’s terms of “shook up” remained, as far as Dion understood. He pointed and fired a bullet at his own reflected self, made a pewww noise. “Hit the target dead-on, near-perfect bull’s eye. BS’d with a shrink for a few hours, did the math, scenarios, memory tests. Whatever they threw at me, I passed, no sweat.”

      “Kudos,” Hami said, but vaguely. He had paused to stare in the mirror, comb and scissors in hand, like he was thinking of something more important as he studied Dion’s face. “Maybe you keep it long, eh? Such a good-looking guy, why you want the old fart look?”

      Dion’s dark hair wasn’t long at all, but it had relaxed over his year away. It flipped in at the eyes now, curled about the collar, and made him look younger than his twenty-nine years. But whether it looked good or not wasn’t the point. The point was to look exactly as he had the day before the crash that had nearly killed him. A hundred years ago, last summer.

      “Same cut,” he told Hami. “You remember, right?”

      Hami said, “Hey, buddy, short back and sides, boring as hell. I could do this with my eyes closed.”

      The radio was tuned to a Western rock station, and it struck Dion that this was the difference that bothered him. It wasn’t the usual upbeat Persian pop that his barber had always kept jangling. This was a U.S. band he should be able to name, but couldn’t.

      Didn’t matter. Musically speaking, Hami was leaving his culture behind, but that was okay, too, for everything else here was timeless. He watched himself re-emerge, the cut neat and close with only the bangs allowed to follow their natural cowlick. Not seamless, because he had lost weight and was still working at getting it back. But it wasn’t a bad likeness.

      For the first time since stepping off the Greyhound last week, he felt hopeful. It had been a tough haul. He had sat through the two-day bus ride like an android tourist, watching the landscape rise and fall. There were a lot of canyons, forests, and small-town depot sandwiches to get through, but at last he landed at the Main Street terminal in downtown Vancouver, and was cabbing across the bridge to home, the North Shore, straight to the most economical room he could book, the Royal Arms.

      On the day following his arrival came the tests and interviews, and he had done better than expected. But his first day back on the job would be the real test, and that was still to come.

      Today he was fixing himself up for a comeback. He’d gotten himself new clothes that shouted I’m the best, and now the haircut, and tonight he would probably spend an unhealthy amount of time in front of the mirror, trying on expressions. Illusion was a big part of success, after all, and as long as he looked good, he would be fine.

      A blur of motion caught his eye in the big barbershop window reflected behind him. Nothing specific, but an active chaos of light and shadow that thrilled him. Pigeons swooped and awnings flapped. Cars slid by or stopped, depending on the lights. But it was the people he watched. They walked past the glass and warped the spring sunshine, ducked through the fine, slanting rain, stood waiting for the bus. He knew now how vital they were to him, these perfect strangers who made up a city, and how vital he was to them.

      He was going to prove how vital he was in the days to come. He had been summoned back to GIS, the General Investigations Section, by one of the NCOs, Sergeant Mike Bosko, which meant they had faith in him. So what could go wrong?

      The cut was done. Perfect. He settled up, leaving the usual tip, and smiled at Hami, the smile and direct gaze all part of the plan. Smile at everybody, and smile big.

      “You want me to put you down for two weeks here, bud?” Hami asked at the counter, his appointment book open. “Wednesday still best?”

      Dion had forgotten that the trims were a standing order. They came at two-week intervals, and Wednesday had always been his day of preference. He had no idea why. He said, “Of course, Wednesday. Thanks, Hami. You’ve always got me covered.”

      Hami extended a fist, and Dion remembered this ritual, too. He bumped the barber’s knuckles with his own, and Hami said, “Great to have you back, my friend.”

      “Great to be back…. You’ve changed your music.”

      Up now was an old Beach Boys classic about a miserable experience aboard a ship. Hami was grimacing and rolling his eyes at the speakers. “I’m assimilating, man. Godawful noise, this.”

      On Lonsdale the rain had fused with the sunshine to become a dazzling mist. Several blocks downhill, the giant Q marked the Quay market and the harbour. Dion had no urge to go down there and look at the water, which was strange. Wasn’t that what he had been homesick for, the sound and smell, the magnetic pull of the sea?

      Maybe not. There was an order to things. Get back to work, see the crew, confront Bosko, and then call up Kate. Then he would go and look at the water. He lit a cigarette and walked along 3rd, which became Marine Drive, where the traffic was heavy and endless. A used-car lot twinkled into view.

      Cars and SUVs filled the lot, a variety pack of shiny metal. When he came to the bumper of the closest car, he stopped and took it in. A dark-blue coupe, a Honda Civic, poised at a dynamic angle, nosing into the sidewalk as though frozen in escape. A

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