“Aviak! Qanuitpit?” Kunak looked at her eyes. They were crooked. Very crooked.

“Who the fuck are you?” Aviak slurred her words. She held a mickey of Southern Comfort in her left hand. Her eyes tried to focus. She was working them so hard that you could see them grow big and small again. She was trying to find a place to put them but couldn’t.

“Aviak,” Kunak cooed. “Aviak, my nuliaq, I said ‘qanuitpit’—how are you?”

“Huh, your wife? Fuck you!” Aviak hollered. “Fuck you and everyone like you!”

Aviak placed her index and middle fingers on the sides of her lips and let loose a long, screeching whistle.

“Trying to call the cops, are ya? We both know they don’t come running for our kind. Here, let me have a seat,” said Kunak as he settled down on the blanket that Aviak had spread out in front of her. On the blanket she had small drawings and rock carvings that she had made. She panhandled her artwork.

If that didn’t work, she panhandled her mouth, and her crotch, and any part of her that anyone wanted. She didn’t charge as much as the other women did. Not for her artwork and definitely not for her body parts that any man wanted to enjoy.

Kunak reached over and took her right hand in his. “Aviak, my nuliaq, let’s find someplace quiet to go to. Someplace where we can lay in the sunshine and get some rest, okay?”

Aviak, looked at him with distrust. How many times had men said to her that they were just going to “rest?” Her long black hair fluttered into her eyes and she reached up and pulled it back too hard. When she did that, her mouth gaped open like a horse’s.

Kunak could see her teeth. They were the colour of rotten apples, all brown and gooey. He shook his head and then remembered that his life was no more than what hers was. He ran his tongue around the inside of his teeth. He couldn’t remember the last time he had gone to a dentist.

“Come on my nuliaq, come with me.” Kunak reached under both her arms and pulled her up. Aviak reassembled herself like a wooden puppet, her dangling arms and legs falling into place as she tried to stand up straight. Her hazy head saw the black shadow. That shadow had been spinning around her all day like some pesky mosquito. Ah, must be the booze, she thought. Too much of the SoCo before sunrise. The shadow started to spin toward her. Aviak raised her hands into the air and swiped hard. “Get outta here!” she screamed, her arms flapping recklessly. “Get out! Out! Out! Out!” She looked over at Kunak.

“Bring my stuff!” she commanded. “Bring my stuff and let’s go find some sunshine!” Aviak tried to smile the smile of those who are drunk. The drunken half-in-control smile that can’t stay put on anyone’s face after drinking. The one that lands and jumps off a person’s chin like a diver. The one that can’t stay put because there is really not one thing to be happy about.