But even he can’t imagine Old Aaron understanding why he needs to find her.
He drops his paintbrush. It lands on top of his boot, splattering red over the skull and crossbones he and Aaron had silk-screened over the toe in glow-in-the-dark paint. As the paintbrush clatters to the floor, Nik drops onto his futon. He clutches the duvet his grandmother gave him and thinks of the island. He could have stayed. But he knows he wouldn’t have been content playing video games with his high school friends. Working somewhere part-time. He wishes his mother had never taken him to see an Emily Carr exhibit in Victoria when he was a kid, and then unwishes it. He wishes he’d never answered Aaron’s ad. Or let Ilana and Kendall move in. Then he unwishes that, too. If he hadn’t, he might not have met Jennifer.
Dry air rasps in his throat. He feels lightheaded when he stands, but shrugs the feeling off as hunger. He needs to walk. Think. He takes his leather jacket from the closet, blows out the candles, and leaves, locking his door behind him — not that it will prevent anyone from snooping. No one’s left in the living room. He hears Aaron retching in the bathroom and music coming from Kendall’s room. Outside, fine rain coats his hair and sticks to his face. If he keeps going, he stays warm, so he walks and walks. Lights blur and dance through the raindrops. Aside from a few men hefting boxes out of delivery trucks he doesn’t see anyone else on the street. The city feels empty. Vacant enough that if Jennifer was in it and he walked far enough he’d see her. He’d find her. An image of the Granville Street Bridge appears in his mind like a tarot card. He imagines he’s drawing the bridge, lifting it up by the point of a pencil to let a tugboat and barge through. He looks at his hand, but he’s not holding a pencil. He walks toward the bridge. When he reaches it, he touches the cool metal railing. It feels admirably solid. It’s real. A boat sounds its horn in the harbour, bellowing like his father. His mother was always a foghorn. Repeating everything, low-voiced, her words crawling into his ears and up under his skin.
He drops to his knees and reaches into his inner jacket pocket. He pulls out a dollar-store scrub brush and a small spray bottle filled with soap and water. He squirts and rubs grime away on the pedestrian side of the long concrete barrier separating sidewalk from traffic until the name JENNIFER appears.
“Where are you?” he says out loud. “How can I find you?”
He adds more soapy water to the J, making it bigger and more stylized. It was Aaron who introduced him to reverse graffiti, as a way of tagging without having to worry about getting caught. It’s not illegal to clean something, even if doing so leaves a name or a design. Once, early in first term he and Aaron reverse graffitied a crashing Zeppelin on a long, blank exterior wall at BC Place Stadium. It was Aaron’s idea, but Nik did most of the work while Aaron took smoke breaks.
“I need to gain perspective,” he kept saying, as Nik rubbed with the brush until its bristles were splayed, his knuckles raw from scraping concrete.
Remembering this, Nik imagines asking Old Aaron, “Do you really want to be an artist?” He can’t think of what Old Aaron would say. It doesn’t matter what New Aaron’s long-winded spin on it is now. Clearly his real answer is “no.” It makes Nik wish he had more artist friends. He feels like the only one.
A fast-moving car splashes a spray of puddle water near him. Nik stands and looks down the full length of the pedestrian lane crossing the bridge. He could reverse graffiti a whole message for Jennifer here.
But somebody’s up ahead on the bridge, heading toward him. When the figure sees Nik, he or she turns around and starts running in the other direction. Nik takes chase, but can’t keep up in heavy boots and a cumbersome jacket. If it were Jennifer she wouldn’t run away from him. Unless, he realizes, he is in danger. He stops for a moment at the side of the bridge, the light traffic whooshing past him. Wind pushes at his damp hair. His pants flap. He puts his hands in his pockets and stares at the moving ink below, experiencing vertigo powerful enough to change his mind. Everyone knows how easy it is to jump off a Vancouver bridge. In the worst possible scenario, Jennifer is lost in the depths of False Creek. If he knew for sure she was gone and not just disappeared, he’d make a memorial for her somewhere in Stanley Park by the sea. Like what he saw on the island with his grandmother, but on a city beach. He’d make it safe, covering it with wire netting so her memory would be protected. Then he’d let the office towers watch over her, as yachts boated past. Maybe he’d even lie down next to her. He’d stay there until time turned science fiction and urban erasure swept over them, obliterating like the tide.
Nik feels his head nod forward. His stomach rumbles and jolts. Someone taps him on the shoulder. He spins around.
What Nik believes happens next is that no one is there. He thinks Jennifer is an electrical current and can be radioactive when she wants to be. He thinks Jennifer is sending him a message. He thinks he’s sitting down comfortably on the bridge. He thinks Jennifer’s message is that she needs him. She’s desperate, in danger. He promised his grandmother. He hears a ringing sound in his ears. Nik believes he is reaching into his pants pocket, palming Jennifer’s cellphone, flipping it open.
“Hello?”
Nik believes he is falling through a large pothole in the bridge. As he drops down toward the inky darkness, he drops the phone. But then he feels something around him, pressing into him. He reaches out and feels fishing net. Something small and hard hits him on the thigh. The cellphone is caught up with him and he grabs it back. Cars rumble on the bridge overhead. Waves crash below. He’s entangled in a spiderweb. It’s a trap.
“Hello?” he says into the phone again, desperate for clues. But no one is there. He puts his hands in front of his eyes. He realizes he can’t see.
Nik waits. Fishing wire presses in harder each time he moves. He tries painting a giant web, but the spider keeps returning. He starts counting seconds and gets to 4,537. That’s when he hears a large splash below. He feels the net sinking slowly down toward the ink and begins to tremble, preparing himself for the icy plunge. He wishes for his grandmother and gulps air, trying to fill his lungs. In the frigid water everything goes silent. He is so numbed by the cold he hears the splash of impact before he feels an abrupt tugging. He kicks and struggles as the fishing net is reeled in and lands with a soft thud on a hard surface. He’s in a boat. A large figure bends over him in the shadows. The person smells like mildew. Something strikes Nik on the head. Everything turns black.
What Nik experiences is not all real. What actually happens is that a large, bald man appears. He tackles Nik and drags him toward a waiting car. He forces Nik into the passenger side of the car to question him, but Nik’s head keeps nodding forward. Every time Nik’s body goes limp the man punches him. Then the man’s cellphone rings. Nik hears the man say hello before falling out of consciousness. The man revs his engine and drives away. He presses down hard on Nik’s back with one thick arm so he won’t be seen with a passenger, and drives with the other arm. The man drives quickly then stops the car in a deserted part of Stanley Park. He drags Nik out of the car, across the beach, and into the frigid ocean.
“Wake up, Nik,” the man says, plunging Nik’s head under repeatedly. “Tell me where Jennifer is. I know you know. I’ve seen you with her before.” The man tries to hold up Nik’s limp body. He slaps Nik on the face then lets him drop back down into the water. The man picks up his cellphone and dials while he watches Nik bob around then begin to sink. “Yeah,” the man says into the phone. “I’ve got him. I don’t know what he’s on, but he’s fucked. Not going to make any sense for at least a couple of days. Probably not worth my time.”
The man sees Nik is starting to struggle in the water. He pockets his cellphone, tugs at Nik’s jacket, and pulls him ashore. He heaves Nik’s body onto a wet log. He punches Nik hard in the face then clutches his bruised knuckles. “Ow, that one hurt.” The man swears, leans down to pick Nik up, then stops. He looks at Nik’s heavy leather jacket. He tries to remove it, but something sharp stabs him in his hand. He leans down and tugs at Nik’s boots until they slide off. He throws both boots into the water like footballs. Hard and far. Then he heaves Nik over his shoulder and dumps him into the backseat