LITMIR.BIZ

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stop feeling sorry for himself and get on with things. If what he’d learned in Sudbury could give him anything, then it could give him that.

      Twenty-Two

      Now Playing

      The day for the planned porn sequel had arrived. Hardly the final instalment of Lord of the Rings or even The Godfather Part III, but still, Dan wasn’t about to miss the premiere of Richard Philips’s latest. He walked along the eastern perimeters of the Danforth, silently studying the words raised a head above the sidewalk: Zam-Zam Beauty School, Pro-Tax Accounting, Yummy Delicious Good Food. Hand-painted signs on plywood with lights affixed bore the perennial optimism of the eternally down-at-heel. He paused when he came to the Islamic-Christian Friendship Society. Was there any cause more hopeless at the moment? What well-meaning but futile urge lay behind the establishment of such a thing?

      High over the rundown storefronts, a militant billboard proclaimed to the faithful that “You Deserve A Better Life.” A message of salvation from an organization claiming to be “Debt Counsellors Since 1966.” Dan imagined the first hopefuls lining up for the offer of a better life all those years ago. Had they achieved a better life or anything remotely like it? Was there someone even now passing by and looking up, thankful that a similar moment had saved him from a life of perpetual misery all those years ago? Or had those first clients just bumped through life from one misery to another and died eventually, the only end to debt they’d ever had?

      Dan chose Yummy Delicious Good Food for a vantage point — half because he felt sorry for the place and half because it looked a step or two up from the donut shop on the opposite corner. Besides, it had its own soundtrack: Hank Williams Jr.’s “Hey, Good Lookin’” blared from tinny loudspeakers with its invitation to cook something up together. For all intents and purposes, it was as though the fifties never ended. A quick glance around the brown-on-orange interior with its garish lime green tablecloths and the display of yesterday’s tea biscuits and revamped muffins under fingerprint-marred glass sent a further message that no one cared about the food any more than they were concerned with interior design or current music trends.

      A tiny man whose chin seemed glued to his chest pivoted to regard the newcomer. Dan tried not to stare before realizing he was the one being stared at. To the man’s left sat a wreck with a bloated face and swollen nose. Her drink-inflamed skin looked as though it couldn’t decide where to settle, a herd of nomadic goats roaming across her cheeks. Another poor thing sat wistfully in the window wearing a yellow cardigan with a rose scarf tied neatly around her throat. Her idea of a bit of bright or just a subconscious urge to leave it all behind, like Isadora, with a quick jaunt in a Bugatti? Dan felt himself a relative beauty here. Lonely, sad, and unwanted — he called them the Eleanor Rigbys, friendless by chance or maybe even by design. Then again, who needed the grief that friendship brought? They were the city’s detritus, its social castaways.

      While others his age were moving in droves to Parkdale, awed to find drunks and crack addicts huddled on their doorsteps as though that constituted a more resonant form of city life, Dan had moved to Leslieville. Parkdale was for the middle-class kids who’d never experienced life outside the suburbs. Con artists went there to practise scams that were old in the forties and left feeling sad and somehow ashamed — something about children and candy. At least the rich kids knew better. Some days it seemed the city was filled with a million voyeurs. All audience and no show. Yet compared to this ’hood, even Parkdale seemed a buggy ride in Chelsea. But Dan had begun in the east and in the east he would stay.

      He sat and watched the entrance to Moonlight Videos. Daylight was beginning to fade. No one came or went by the front door. After a half-hour, he began to wonder if the shoot had been cancelled. Until that moment it hadn’t occurred to him that even a minor operation like Moonlight Videos might have a stage door. A private entrance for the artistes. He finished his coffee — surprisingly good for the looks of the place — and left.

      A halo of lamplights brought the sky down low, making the street look like the backdrop to a Victorian melodrama. Pigeons cooed restlessly in the twilight. He crossed the road, eyes peeled for anything showing in the upstairs window; there was no sign of life.

      He turned into a back alley, trying to decide which of the broken down doorways hidden by cast-off sofas, disintegrating cardboard boxes, and bags of rotting garbage belonged to Moonlight Videos. He was in luck. A hand-written note beckoned over a buzzer that glowed faintly in the semi-dark. He pressed the buzzer and heard the automated click. He entered and climbed two flights of dimly lit stairs with a single entrance at the top. He knocked and opened the door.

      A wiry man with a clipboard glanced up. “Hi — come on in.” He looked Dan over, his face registering interest. “You’re just in time. You’re a top, right? I told them I needed a top.”

      Dan looked over the man’s shoulder and spotted his prey in jeans and a tank-top among the handful of people in the room. Dan pointed him out. “Sorry to spoil your party, but I’m here to take that boy with me.”

      “Oh.” The man’s face tightened. “You his father?”

      “No.”

      “Who are you then? I’ve got an ID card that says he’s eighteen.”

      “And I’ve got a court order that says he’s a juvenile. Want to see it?” Dan offered the paper to the man, whose face turned the colour of ash.

      “What the fuck’s going on here?” And in came the Man in the Moon himself: a short, smudge-faced gump puffing on a cigar, as pocked and cratered as the dead rock itself. “Who are you?” he demanded.

      “Dan Sharp — private investigations. You own this place?”

      The man’s bravado faltered and died. “I’m Dave Henigar. Yes, this is my operation.” He paused. “Are you a cop?”

      Dan shook his head. “I said ‘private.’ But I’ve got a piece of paper saying I can take that boy” — he pointed at Richard — “with me when I leave.”

      The hard look on Henigar’s face returned, a barely contained fury that proclaimed him a force to be reckoned with. Without the court document, Dan wouldn’t want to be confronting this man. He waved the letter under his nose. The offer to peruse it was turned down again.

      “Believe me,” Dan said. “You’re better off if I take him off your hands, but I’ll call in help from the police if I have to.”

      The man looked over at Richard. Ash fell from his cigar. “He’s just partying with us.”

      “He made a movie for you last month,” Dan said.

      The man’s eyes flashed venom. He barked at Richard. “You — kid! Get over here. Now!”

      Richard scrambled toward them and stood there nervously.

      “This guy says you’re underage. That true?”

      The boy’s eyes flickered at Dan. “No.”

      “Don’t fuck with me,” the man growled.

      “I’m not — I’m eighteen. My name’s Lester Higgins.”

      “His name is Richard Philips,” Dan told the fat man. “He turned fifteen last month and he ran away from home in July.” Dan waved the paper at Richard, and for once someone took it. “Is that you?”

      The boy looked up from the photograph, his face scared. More than just interrupting a party, the boy’s livelihood was being jeopardized. Dan looked around at the others. A mulatto kid stood watching from a corner. Definitely underage, Dan decided. “Hey! How about you? You got ID?”

      Henigar stirred. “He’s mine.”

      Dan turned to him. “Your what?”

      “My son,” he said with a snarl, despite the aura of fear he was giving off at that moment. “And he’s working the camera.”

      “Really? Glad to know you’re using homegrown instead of stealing other people’s kids.”

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