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* * *

Romantic love. “Real” love. The kind of love where you’re so far into the other person they seem like a part of you, like they are you. Until it falls apart, that is—and the other person comes to you and tells you everything that’s gone wrong, how it can’t be fixed, how it’s all your fault.

And you think: But if I’m you and you’re me, honey-bug, then why the fuck didn’t I already know that?

I mean, I can live alone. It won’t kill me. I’ve done it most of my life. I’m doing it now.

But the thing is, I don’t want to.

* * *

Czolgoscz had just cleared the top step when an arm reached out and caught him around the throat, hauling him upward, two more sets of arms worming around either bicep as the first hand turned, dug, freed a wet, red starburst so suddenly I barely avoided being splattered, recoiling, catching the back of my parka on the ragged edge of the nearest hole and jolting myself so badly my feet slipped, losing the stairs altogether. Falling down, parka ripping as I hit the nearest girder, falling down hard on one knee and skidding, skinning it to the meat on 1088’s unfinished ground floor. Falling to sprawl (pretty damn near) right at the bare, clawed feet of the girl from the 7-11—my nubile cannibal rover, still wearing the same dress, the same blank eyes. The same stained smile.

(Her relatives making short work of Czolgoscz, meanwhile, up above both our heads: Up in the rafters, where they’d been sleeping like extras from Aliens or something, apparently, ever since I’d called the cops that one time. And me too distracted, one way or another, to even credit them with enough sense of self-preservation to hide.)

Thinking: Now I’ll never get to read those extra hundred pages of “Amazingly Accurate Information about My Secret Self” in Young Moron, or find out if Sassy thinks I’m a “Bad Girl Bud or A Substitute Sister.”

The girl just kept on smiling, enjoying the luxury of taking her time. I guess she thought I was too stunned to move. I guess maybe I thought so too.

But we

were both wrong.

* * *

Next thing I know, I’m back in the portable, holding the door closed behind me with all of my body as the girl crashes against it again and again. I dump out the key cabinet, scrabble through, grab the can opener, hook the cop button, back away. Looking for anything I can use for anything that’ll keep me alive until they get here.

Under the desk, the cran-apple bottle, full and capped. By the door, a fire extinguisher: Type 3—Industrial Fires. Hefting the one. Unhooking the other, as the door heaves one more time, comes off its hinges. The girl’s arm coming through. Her face, her smiling mouth.

“Faa hew, bisssh,” she says.

And then I break the bottle across her face, and start spraying.

* * *

I learned two things that night (among others.)

First—a little liquid nitrogen goes a long way: And second—on occasion, the cops actually arrive within five minutes.

I ended up at the hospital, which pleased the whole hell out of the guys at Saracen: With something this public, even they had to start thinking about compensation. Which was just as well, since it turned out I’d burned my hand pretty badly on the fire extinguisher’s spray, and had to wear one of those weird plastic gloves for the next month or so, just to keep it rigid. When they finally pulled it off, my hand shed its skin like a snake, leaving a fine vellum glove on the examination room counter.

Two weeks later, Colin and I broke up.

* * *

One night, weeks later, when I was booking on, the usual Dispatch deadpan gave way to Sonny Rehan’s cheerful voice, brimming with gossip. He told me how my former supervisor’s jawbone had been pried out from under the seat of that famous lightless Portasan, half his dyed brown moustache still attached, along with a full bottom lip.

“Pretty freaky, huh, man?” he asked.

“Guess Saracen lost that contract.”

Sonny guffawed. “Oh, no shit. Seriously though, man, you got out just in time.”

My new site is up in Scarborough, somewhere—a mere apparent bus stop away from the ass-end of beyond. Mushroom cloud country, with way too much skyline and not enough pedestrians for my liking. Another night shift, roaming from dusk till dawn around a square of Ontario Lottery Corporation offices, checking to see the computers don’t overheat, counting the fire extinguishers as I card-key each successive door. Looking out the windows as I pass.

Scanning the parking lot for shadows.

Last week, on the street, Colin came up behind me, seemingly not realizing I had my walkman on. He got within an inch of the back of my head, shouted, “Hello, Lee!” and stalked off. As though I’d insulted him with my lack of notice. As though either of us really gave a good God damn anymore.