Page 58

Rip up his flesh, and try . . . .

—-John Webster, The Duchess of Malfi

CONTRARY TO POPULAR belief, no security guard is automatically issued a gun. You have to pass a special six-month training course for that, which hardly anyone ever does, because they make you pay for the privilege, as with so many other things—your P.I. license, your uniform shirt, your on-site shoes (black, thick-soled, equally presentable for PR or plain old patrol duty), your First Aid expertise, even your clip-on tie, with its risible little cloisonné company insignia. And since the unspoken rule of security is do exactly as much as your bi-weekly direct deposit check dictates—no more, often less—I’m sometimes surprised anyone ever ends up packing heat at all.

Besides, as everybody who’s seen an action movie knows, the security guard is always the first to go if anything actually does happen. So the best you can do is just ride each shift out, calm but cool, taking your mortality as a given: become a Zen master in 365 easy steps, for only seven bucks an hour.

So no, I don’t carry a gun, just like I don’t drive. I’m a Toronto girl, after all, downtown born and bred; quite frankly, I’ve never had to go anywhere that required me to learn how to do either.

I got my security job for exactly two reasons: Because I could speak and write fluently in English, and because having a certain quote of female guards was necessary in order for Saracen Security Limited to retain its licence under the new Ontario government (of the time), which supported the idea of job equity. This is how I ended up drawing my current site, subsequent to spending a week at 1088 Dupot, the events of which tenure comprise much of the following story.

And since I was originally referred to Saracen by a friend of my ex-fiancé Colin, who had worked her way through Theater at Ryerson, by taking night shifts at some deserted office building in Scarborough, I guess that’s yet another thing I have to thank him for.

Like so many others.

* * *

Much later, sitting on the couch with Colin, watching him trying to be calm— fingers knit, and shaking—as the music wove gilt swooping arcs around us, effortless trailing ribbons of sound, I thought: So this is the end of everything. And then, no doubt misquoting Shakespeare’s King Lear:

What, will my poor fool ne’er come again?

O never, never, never.

My teeth dancing. My cut heart twitching at our feet, pumping painful gushes of dust. The whole room shimmering with a kind of heatwave, a pricked-bubble haze, seconds after the pin. No explosion, simply absence.

Except, of course, that everything was still there, untouched. And so was I.

“I don’t get it,” he said, over and over. “I mean, I . . . just . . . don’t get it.”

Eventually adding, in a slightly more aggrieved tone: “I mean, I said I was sorry.”

Like he was annoyed, was disappointed, with me for being so obtuse as to actually believe him when he told me our love was just a little more trouble than he felt like going to, anymore.

I twisted the (dis)engagement ring on my right hand and bit my tongue, hard, ready to bleed before I’d let myself agree again to this impossible fucking dream, this useless fucking ostensible marriage of ours, to salve his aggrieved and swelling eyes.

* * *

When I first applied to work as a security guard, the boys down at Saracen made me take a detailed—but apparently routine—psychiatric test, much of which involved checking “yes” or “no” boxes next to a series of statements, like these:

I enjoy life. (Yes.)

I would enjoy working with dogs. (No.)

Next came a multiple-choice, aimed at identifying the best type of site to assign me to. It contained my single favorite question, which ran thusly:

Would you be more likely to prefer a site where:

A) You had a lot of personal power, but were required to deal with people all the time,

Or one where:

B) You sat in a room by yourself, doing a repetitive task, seeing and dealing with no one.

Being misanthropic by nature (when it comes to my choice of straight-up, purely-for-the-pleasure-of-rent-payin’, uniform-wearin’ asshole jobs, at least), I checked the latter. I told Colin about it, laughed, and forgot.

But it wasn’t until two years later, when I turned up at 1088 Dupont, that I ever considered it possible someone had actually taken this response into account.

There were a lot of firsts for me on that site—my first night shift, from 2345 to 0800 hours. My first site outside. My first site with no partner, and no one coming to take over after I booked off, either, since the only reason they needed anyone on site in the first place wa