Later Annie B.’s mother confessed that all she did was cross the tracks to the east side, to the Midtown Plaza, and pretend to shop. She rode the escalator. She mused over shoes. She lunched in the Sears restaurant. She stalked men. Or she didn’t really stalk them, she flirted. She didn’t confess any of this to her daughter of course, until she hooked up with a man who promised to pull them out of the swamps of the west side. Her mother was so self-conscious about her decision, and she’d worked it out that all the arrangements for the wedding and the move had been made without Annie’s knowledge. So for Annie B.’s sixteenth birthday celebrations back on the east side, her mother and new stepfather threw a party in their bungalow off Spadina, wine gums in a bowl on the coffee table but not a drink or any friends in sight. Annie hoped life was going to be easier now that she had her driver’s licence.
The night she killed him it was thirty below, a January night in the middle of the school week, and he called her from the pay phone outside the 7-Eleven on the west side where she used to buy her hamburgers. I’m literally freezing, please, Annie B., could you give me a ride home, he said, c’mon, before the five-o catch up. That’s not funny, Annie B. said. She wanted to know what kind of trouble. Nothing, just come get me and I’ll explain, okay? he said. Who are you with? No one, he said. By myself. What are you doing all by yourself then? Looking for Silent Sam, he groaned. Come on, Annie B., what is this with the third degree? I’m freezing. Shit’s real. Put a Harry in your pocket, baby. I’m so super-cold and they’re on my tail, I’m a wanted man, eh. Okay, fine, fine, she said. She didn’t know if he was joking. Yes, I knew you’d be cool, she heard him say. Love you; click.
He didn’t. And maybe she didn’t either. But he could be charming, acting just like that pickpocket in the James Coburn movie. She could see him there at the pay phone brushing the hair out of his eyes with his frozen bare hands. He never remembered to bring gloves.
She got her coat and started the Datsun, warmed it up enough to drive, unplugged the car from the house, took off into the ice. Her mom and stepdad were passed out upstairs with their bedroom door ajar and the lights in the living room still turned on and never noticed she was gone. It was Friday after all. Who said anything about Annie B. caring what her reckless mother did? It was too late. The roads were snow packed, there were deep iced ruts for the tires to lock into like train tracks, and Annie B. was a novice driver. She spun out a few times, fishtailed against a meridian, and slid straight through a few red lights with her foot hard on the brake before she finally skidded into the parking lot of the 7-Eleven where he was waiting. Where you be-een? he cried as soon as he got in the car. Holy, I’m fre-eezing, turn up the heat. It’s on full blast, said Annie B., with mitten to dashboard dials. Less go in the back seat together, he said. You got to help warm me up. Hold on to me. Put your body against me. His thin wool jacket was almost frozen solid. Oh God, he was so cold. His skin felt crisp to the touch, sharp and stiff like hardened slush. His fingers were dryly cold and swollen red. He started to shiver hard.
At first he tried to control it, but it got so he was lying in her arms rattling as loud as the car’s engine, shivering furiously, and scared enough to start laughing. I’m like a Popopopsicle, he said. Careful you don’t bite your tongue. Only reason you’re not dead is all that vodka in you, she said. I-I’ll be fine, he said. I-I’ll go call my brother in a minute, see if anyone’s at the apartment let me in. Loss my keys. Borrow me a quarter? She leaned up and opened the car ashtray and thumbed around urgently for change, like forcing some unknown object out of a dog’s mouth. She gave it all to him. They spooned for a while longer. His shivering died down. He took a few deep, halting breaths. He calmed. Not warmth, but she could feel his skin revive and speak to her. I want to stay like this all night, he whispered. Hardly anything left in the tank, said Annie B. You better go make your call. You want to come over, he asked, watch a movie, like old times? I can give you a lift, she said, but then I got to take the car back or my mom will freak. He groaned and chewed his lips. That’s what I thought you’d say, he said. Toque back on, he was set to leap out the door and run across the parking lot to the phone booth in front of the 7-Eleven.
Annie B. faced me, sometimes looking to the movie screen for her thoughts, often directly into my eyes. As I listened there were at first five then three seats between us in the theatre, then two, and finally one, I was close enough to imagine being in the car with her on that cold night. My hard-working mop and bucket of cold soap water on casters were waiting for me in the aisle. I had listened to her reasons for staying the night inside the Cinémathéque, how she had made it this far, out of Saskatoon and as far west as she could go, and as far from her old life as she could go. But she wasn’t out of the movies yet, and neither was I. We were here.
She said, I’ll never forget being in the back seat when he shut the door of the Datsun and went to the phone, put in the coin and dialed. He looked at the pay phone’s earpiece and listened. Then he smacked the earpiece against the pay phone’s metal shell and checked if it worked now. He hung up and tried again with another coin. Still nothing. Now what’s he going to do? she wondered, just come back to the Datsun already. He hammered the earpiece against the steel shell of the pay phone until the wire guts popped out. Oh, great. Then he ran back to the Datsun. She rolled down the window. Ha ha, see that, out of service, he said. I’ll go check see if the clerk’ll let me use the Sev’s phone. I’ll just drive you there, she said. What if nobody’s home? Just hold on, okay. He turned back into the 7-Eleven.
He was in there for a matter of minutes when the cruiser silently pulled into the parking lot with its lights off and the two officers lifted themselves out, walked side by side into the convenience store. She reached forward frantically to turn off her car, then stayed hid in the back seat, watching. When the police came out again, he was between them, missing his toque and dragging his feet meekly along as they carried him by the arms to the cruiser. When he had a chance to look at her, Annie B. saw his nose bleeding. They put him in the back of the police car and one of the officers returned to the convenience store, and her heart froze when she saw the second policeman walk toward her vehicle. She cowered under her coat. The officer tapped on the frosted window and told her to roll it down. Let’s see your licence, he said. Annie B., still in her gangly, awkward teens, fumbled and vomited all the contents of the glove compartment, jawing it open to get him the registration papers. Your licence, I need to see your licence, miss. Shivering now, she coughed up her wallet. He looked at her licence for a long time. The cold air rushed in. She stole another look at her west side secret cuffed in the back seat breathing a warm round hole in the frost of the cruiser’s window so she could see him mouthing the words, Help me, Annie. What are you doing? the officer asked her. She noticed for the first time how swollen the cop’s face was, webbed by red veins like her mother’s. I came to pick him up, give him a ride home, she said. Who’s he? He’s my friend, she said. You been drinking? Smells like it. No, he — , I was in bed asleep. Well, you can go back home to bed now, young lady, we’ll make sure your friend here gets home safe, too. Well, is he in trouble, what’s he done? Oh, you know these west side boys, all kinds of havoc.
We have a call out for him tonight, he’s been into people’s homes, you know your friend here’s into B&Es? Go straight on home now, Miss Annie B. Back to bed. We’ll take care of this. Good night, now. She rolled the window back up and crawled into the front seat and, shivering, put the car into gear and drove. Drove the Datsun fast, afraid to look in her rear-view mirror and see the cop’s face like a brick wall…and his bloody face in back of the cruiser on the other side of the parking lot. Help me, he says. What a jerk to get himself into such trouble. Get me out of here. For the first of a million times she thought about his starlight tour as she drove home through cones of dark orange light and the harsh white lights pouring out the windows of the mall onto the black parking lots, and everywhere she looked the walls were sprayed furiously with illegible graffiti — what did any of it say? The white snowdrifts, the dark orange snowdrifts. No one could survive this. She decided in the car driving home that she would never see or talk to Harry again. The decision seemed frozen and black and irreversible. It was too cold. She could not imagine a place on earth where night and ice didn’t exist permanently, as they did for her in Saskatoon.
