Dripping sweat at Video Difference — open twenty-four hours, for shift workers and insomniacs. She’s looking for a movie to start the delta waves in her head, the brain waves which relax you and summon sleep. There is no cable in the house, not even a DVD player, only a VCR. She finds Marathon Man, a “retro” movie, the girl at the cash calls it. It’s almost always the same girl on the graveyard shift, a girl who says she moved from the Valley to the city. Her hair is window-cleaner blue. She says she has insomnia too and when she does sleep she has nightmares about her brothers, one dead and one who may as well be. The clerk makes change while she puts a quarter in the bubble-gum machine on the counter.

She blows bubbles as she heads back across the Commons. Under the sallow lights of the park. In the east, the sky is lightening. Soon birds will chirp, traffic will roar, people will parallel park on the street in front of the house and she will be in bed with a stranger, searching for a few early morning hours of sleep before she drifts through a hot day on iced coffee and fatigue.

Her neighbour is still out smoking as she comes, gleaming with sweat under the streetlight on Maynard Street. Home. She wipes her forehead and tightens her ponytail. This sweat is from relief, and she can smell the difference. She sees the old man from the corner. She waves as she steps from the curb, and her toes poke warm fur.

The old neighbour watches her, white and sweaty and kneeling on the road by the skid marks. He hobbles over and shakes his head. They pick up the big cat together. Its head lolls, neck broken, eyeballs bulging from the sockets. She cries and he pats her shoulder.

“Poor old Lister,” he says in his love voice. “Lister, my boy, you shoulda stayed in tonight . . . you know it, Lister, my poor old boy.” He strokes the cat, fur soft as pussy willows.

“It’s hard,” she cries, “so hard when you can’t sleep.”

“It is, so it is,” says the neighbour, patting her damp hand.

And they hear the lady calling again, over on Creighton Street, each syllable shooting out like gunfire, a tiny pause as she reloads with air and resumes, relentlessly now: “Kittykittykittykittykittykitty.” The lady is standing on her step, fat and old, wearing an orange nightie and pink slippers, her hand clutching the railing. She screams. The eastern sky is forget-me-not blue. Here, in the city, the summer morning breaks through the last film of night as the transient insomniac and the old man slowly cross the street with the slack bundle of fur and bones in their arms.

Desire Lines

greetings and salutations from the mists, my fellow wayfarer!

That was how the email began. He was obviously still living out east, in the same place on the North Mountain. He assumed I would be happy to hear from him. He didn’t use my name, but as I read on I realized this wasn’t some kind of promotional email or solicitation. It was meant for me and me alone. He was in Vancouver and did I want to get together?