Whatever, right? Like, moving on. I’ve never had so amazing a boyfriend—except Socrates—that I can whatever, let go, you know? You should watch old videos. If you’re still not sad.

  Sure.

  Kali asks me to leave because she needs to sleep early. On the way home, on College Street, Matthew and Sylvia are at the lip of Kensington, and Matthew is in clothes I’ve never seen him in, an outfit, a dark red pea coat like pig’s blood, black jeans, shoes that point, and he’s speaking to Sylvia and fiddling with her scarf. She has her heels on. Their clothes rhyme. As I walk closer, his hands quicken their pace around her neck and finally tighten the scarf to its end.

  Matthew.

  You okay?

  I’m fine.

  I offer a small smile that I split between him and her, and I walk away. I can’t tell if Matthew says something to me, but I know Sylvia reaches her hand out, and I twist away from it. Matthew is awkward and Sylvia offers me a small smile that belches pity. She’s trying to hide it, but it’s so loud, the way she then looks at the ground. Matthew does not know what to say; I don’t know what to say to him. I want to tell him about the cops and ask him what I should do, but I can’t. I want to tell him I went to a mosque like he suggested. That same rage from the bar fills me and creeps into my limbs, and I know it’s wrong, but you cannot stop a motion like that, except to leave, to run away. I don’t know what I want to do to him. They have stopped, expecting us to talk, but I don’t, I keep going, I cross the street, and go and go.

  I call Emina. The phone rings too many times without going to voice mail, so I give up, but before I hang up, she answers. I ask if I can drop by quick, and she says it’s late, but yes, sure, please, come over for a tea, of course you can. Her voice is warm, and when I leave my house, the snow is screeching wet across everything, that lifeless, thin, snow that drenches everything and disappears. It falls all over me and on top of the hard, dirty snow already on the ground.

  I knock on her door twice before realizing there is a doorbell, and she answers in jeans and a thick sweater.

  Darling. Come in.

  No, no, it’s okay—I have something.

  I spoke to Bernie last night.

  That dude tells stories, hey?

  Darling. I have the kettle on.

  I gotta go, actually, my kettle—my kettle is on too. I can’t look her in the eye. I stare at her shins, and the long shadow behind her of her boyfriend.

  Are you sure?

  The wet is freaking out: snow, snow, snow.

  Here. I hand her a photograph that I took from Anna’s room of the two of them, arms around each other, their bodies pressed sideways tight. I got this from Bernie. From Anna’s room. The photo is folded and a crease splits it down the middle. She really loved you, and it was in a box, so I figured, you know … I don’t know when they would go through the box.

  Emina takes the photograph and she looks at it and I try to look at her, but she’s bright, so, so bright in my vision, and she pulls me in for a hug, but I stop her.

  I’m cool. I’m wet, you know.

  I can’t tell if it’s surprising that Kali’s MacBook has no password. Matthew always says white people are too trusting, but this MacBook thing makes no sense. Doesn’t everyone have a password on their laptop? My jaw still clangs from Hussain’s swing, and looking at the aluminum coat of Kali’s computer brings that throb back. When I open the lid it goes directly to the desktop and there is a tidy arrangement of folders: 4thYear, Misc, TV, Movies, Music, Photographs, Documents. The background is a family photograph. Her mother has her head shaved. Cancer? Hare Krishna? I peer closer to see if I can see fuzz or if the head is skin-shaved, but the resolution on the photograph isn’t good enough. I click on Photographs and they are separated by year, going all the way back to 2008. I click on 2014, and there are ten folders. Some have film photographs that have been scanned, but most are shaky digital photos. There is a folder titled Socrates, which has portraits of him, sometimes with her, often not. They are the clearest photographs that I see, composed with a clear, delicate care. The photographs here are rarely blurry, and if they are, they are for effect. The blurriness renders them panicked, like Socrates is trying to escape the eye of the camera. I keep navigating through the different folders of family photos, friends, and click on a folder called 00, which is an array of nude photographs.

  The photographs are numbered. The first photograph is of her almost clothed—her panties off but her bra on. She spreads her legs in the next, then touches herself. Kali looks like she’s in his room. An amber light flows over her, and the photos are frantic. They don’t have the composition of the clothed ones, and she has a smile that I recognize, her “sexy smile,” she called it, the one she would use and then laugh at herself for. Kali has a fringe in these—her hair is long and reaches to her neck. She spreads herself for him again, the focus of the camera on her face. She’s familiar in these, but the hair, the smile, the spread legs—not the same person, as if she saved these looks for Socrates. The second-last photograph is of her on her knees and her hand on his cock. The last photograph is unexpected. Kali and Socrates in the mirror, Kali holding the camera to her stomach, pointing towards the mirror. Socrates has his arms around her from behind and he is kissing her on the ear.

  I text Matthew and ask him to come over. While I wait for his reply, I flip through the remaining folders and find two other white dudes, not named. One folder is almost twenty naked photos of some dude, but they are all missing the vividness with which she captured Socrates. I right-click on the mirror photo and read the time stamp. It was taken six months ago. They are in love.

  I move to Chrome and discover Owen has accepted Kali’s friend request on Facebook. Kali has left it logged in. For half an hour I click through his profile, looking for evidence of Anna. I go through his profile pictures first and find group photographs, where I recognize friends: James, Lindsay, Anna. They’re from three years ago. The rest of his page has almost no information, and she never posted on his page, except on his birthday, and once, when he announced he won a scholarship, she posted a simple heart. I’m looking for a residue of her but find nothing. He has his phone number listed publicly, and his email address, and I type both into my phone (Matthew still hasn’t texted me back; I’ve texted him twice more, it’s two a.m.) and unfriend Owen from Kali’s account. I need to find out where he lives.

  Kali beckons me over, asking if we can have a talk and promises weed. A bottle of red wine feels like a necessary glug. It’s on the round black table Kali keeps on her balcony. Her feet in my lap. She had asked me to pick up a merlot. I spent ten bucks I’m not sure I should have. I paid in change. Coins always feel fake, and I never get over the thrill of buying something that can alter me so much with quarters and dimes. The balcony is shoved full of plants and she names them out for me. They are dying in this cold air and she articulates their scientific names slowly and then follows with what she’s nicknamed them. Her toenail paint is chipping. Today is mild and she asks if she can save them, even as all their leaves are aching towards the ground. Kali fills her glass and puts the bottle down next to a pack of Belmonts. I take a coin out of my pocket and pass it in between my fingers, and when the craving for a smoke gets too strong I place it in my mouth and suck it, let the bitter metal fill me up.

  Have you guys, like, set a date?

  No. He wants to wait. ’Til the bar is open.

  So he’s keeping you warm.

  Don’t be rude.

  He sounds … I don’t know.

  I wanted to maybe do this master’s. In Surrey. Like, England. In environmental psychology. I can’t get a job here. Like an adult-person job.

  So?

  So? He’s coming back. The bar.

  You can be his busboy. Get tip out.

  I didn’t expect to say yes. It shot out of my mouth.

  You said—

  I know! But I didn’t expect him to ask. It was like. A reflex.

  It’s kind of mean to say no, I guess.

  Did you go to school?

  A semester of chef’s school.

  You didn’t love it?

  I shrug. What about, you know, if there’s an after Sock?

  Can you think like that if you’re getting married? Like, that can’t be how you go into it.

  You can be a mature student everyone hates.

  He told everyone in his family. I told my mom!

  You can change your mind.

  I’ve mentioned Surrey for years. It’s fine. Forget it.

  We can talk—

  No, no. It’s whatever.

  Kali gets up and kisses me, unbuttoning my shirt. She runs her hand over my chest, to my belly button, and back again, and laughs to herself. What is this? What colour is this? You’re always changing in the light. Is this caramel? Cocoa? Let’s go in.

  I have an eye sideways, glancing at Kali, unsure of her motivations. In her room, she tugs on her turtleneck and looks at her breasts. She lifts the collar to her nose and smells herself. When I look at her I don’t know what I’m supposed to do: Am I supposed to sit with this pain and let it become me before I can throw it off? I look at her turn to tend to a plant and I see the way her abs twist under that sweater, and I can taste the tangy current that runs through her body and for a moment pain is far away somewhere else, sitting in a corner, but you can’t hold time like that. She feels like the sun bearing down on me full blast, like she came out of a fugue dream to get me to ignore my problems.

  You’re really sweet, I say.

  Thank you.

  Thanks for everything.

  It’s okay. Socrates comes back soon.

  Half a year. Six months. You want to end this now?

  I don’t know. I think so.

  There’s no need.

  I don’t know.

  I know, I get it. I get it. He did it on Skype, though.

  He’s going to do it again when he gets here!

  That’s important. I wish the sun was here right now.

  Do you ever miss Anna? That was a long thing.

  I do. I do. So what?

  I’m just interested. Sorry.

  Why?

  The memory of Anna’s mouth, her little soul, burning through me.

  I don’t know. I’m trying to get to know you.

  You feel bad.

  No. I mean. You knew what this was.

  I didn’t realize an e-proposal would end it.

  Don’t be mean.

  Do you want to talk about Anna?

  I don’t know! I don’t know a lot about you. And now we’re about to—

  When did you start needing to know about me?

  Don’t get upset.

  I’m not upset. You have a fiancé. Why are you asking me these weird questions?

  Because we’re friends.

  We ain’t friends. You bored as fuck.

  Don’t be stupid.

  I can hear the neighbours bass pounding in slow strokes.

  Kali’s going through her wine so quickly it doesn’t stain the glass.

  You’re drinking fast.

  I am not.

  Look at this shit—you’re almost done.

  You don’t want to talk about Anna. Okay. I thought we were friends.

  I thought we were fucking. You just said.

  And we manage to be friends, too, somehow.

  Yo, we don’t even really know each other. It’s okay. You don’t have an obligation to me.

  Her hands on my knees. This can’t be comfortable.

  I’m fine. You’re good. She’s sitting on me, facing away, twisting once in a while to kiss me.

  After, my cum slides down my belly, onto the mattress. Her hand is still around my cock, softly now. She’s made a ring with her index and thumb. Her hand to her and two fingers pulling inside her—she swivels against herself until she cums, biting my shoulder.

  Can you dump Socrates?

  Her jaw doesn’t drop, but she turns her head to look at me. Neither of us knows if I’m joking. There is no motion to her face, her muscles steady under all that skin. I envision peeling back that topmost layer of skin to see the flesh ripple react underneath, to know that the thing I said had an impact. A blade so sharp it wouldn’t hurt, or leave a scar. I’d love to read that red flesh like you would an inkblot.

  No. She moves her head as she says this, shaking it from left to right. Are you being a dummy?

  I mean, you could just end it. I shrug and say this with a lilt to make it clear that I’m joking, not that I am trying to staple myself to her happiness. I squeeze her sides and she laughs: a clear, uninterrupted flow, and she looks skyward towards heaven when she does—You’re so sweet. And I make my way up her neck in three close kisses and taste wine on her lips. I am joking, really. It’s a silly, frantic idea. Just a quick email. The right emojis would do it.

  Let’s stop this now.

  Because he comes home so soon.

  I think there should be some space before he gets back.

  I want to stay.

  I have an opening shift.

  She doesn’t let me kiss her when I leave. I’m drunk. I take a small potted plant from her garden.

  I wait until the sun squats low and then go for a walk and call Kali, figuring she’ll snap back for one last fuck before calling it off for good. I stop in front of her house, looking through the window at a girl in the lower apartment cutting vegetables, the basics for a soup—celery, onion, carrot—and dropping them into a pot. I have nothing prepared—I’m not really ready to say anything if she does pick up the phone. I look up at her bedroom window and see nothing; I can see her swaying from a rope around her neck, around the barrel of her fan. Is the fan turned on or off? Again, I see her: this time, oscillating with the fan, her legs hitting items on the desk, slamming against the bookshelf, the contents of her room everywhere. What about her in the bathroom, drowning on water the same colour as wine, her wrists slashed, a deep wound down the centre of her body. Or gurgling lifelessly in the froth of the toilet. I never imagine it peaceful, in bed, with a dollop of sleeping pills advancing through her body. I wonder if I’ll be able to imagine us together. I will try: in the future, on an angry, unfocused night, home alone, I’ll remember Kali and how she refused me grace. The past will thrum with the future. It makes me angry that she will continue to live on with me in my dreams. I wanted so little from her: just to be held steady.

  I call again: it’s picked up, hung up, all of it an accident.

  I’m walking away from Brunswick, with the scars and scrapes of Christmas lights guiding my way. I’m not sure where to go. I see something sway quick up a tree and from the corner of my eye it looks like a giant lizard, one of those slithering dragons my father told me patrolled his childhood, the ones still populating his dreams. It’s not that, of course; it’s one of the fat beasts of my childhood, a raccoon. I came close to seeing my father cry once. The tears ballooned in his eyes but did not fall. It was when he told me about a casual kiddish cruelty. He used to watch lizards monitor his house, moving from closet, to wall, to under the bed, to wherever there were gaps of darkness. One day his best friend, Ankith, gathered several of the house’s lizards into a bucket, took them outside, and crushed them one by one with the heel of his foot. A playful laugh tumbled out of the kid’s mouth. My father didn’t stop him, he didn’t know why, and even though he had always loved observing the lizards, counting how many he saw in a day—fifteen was his highest count—he couldn’t stop Ankith, couldn’t even try. Finally, he looked away, and he looked away while telling me the story. Tears bubbled in his eyes without dropping. I can’t remember why he told me the story. I watch the raccoon climb up onto a branch and move to a house. It stops to watch me. The next day I check my phone for Matthew and instead am greeted with four texts from Kevin, asking me to go down to the mosque before a prayer time, to go and see if we can do the next thing. I’m lying in my bed, watching a sun that looks like sculpted butter hang. Snow is falling, almost wet, yellow; it’s almost hot out.

  What’s the next thing? I ask him if it will be done after this, if I’ll get left alone, and he ignores the text, instead tells me to call him when I’m down there. I don’t bother shaving or changing. I have no clean underwear; I look for coins for laundry but have none. I get into yesterday’s dank boxers, spray some air freshener on my socks from the day before, and slip outside the door. Maybe I can hit Kevin up for some more money after.

  The wind is savage and my fingers hurt trying to get this Boston cream into my mouth. There’s a guy at the Spadina and College streetcar stop with his dick out, pissing! He’s drunk from last night, I guess. For the first time in a month, I can step back and appreciate Matthew, that he’s been there for me, but it comes with a vehement anger. I can only appreciate him now because I know that he’s spacing out from me. I miss him. I miss the warmth he brings into a room and his steady presence.

  Kevin tells me to go inside and be as nervous as I want—I don’t expect that. He tells me to explain my situation to whoever asks, without lying but omitting the Kevin part. Stick to the truth. I’m a lost Muslim. I have no idea what I’m doing. I’d like to get involved again. Aren’t these things true? Don’t say you are angry at the West. Don’t mention politics. Mention you are political. Don’t mention any beliefs. Don’t mention the Middle East. Don’t mention Saudi Arabia. Don’t mention Syria. Don’t talk about anything like that—not yet. Don’t be so bait. Don’t mention politics! If anyone talks about politics, listen, make eye contact, don’t mention your beliefs. What do you think about Syria? Who gives a shit? Say you don’t really know, that it seems fucked up. Don’t swear. Don’t have a belief beyond: it’s unfair. If someone asks you directly, deflect. Say: I don’t know much, it’s unfair. These are the two things you are allowed to say, and that’s only if you’ve been asked. If you’ve made eye contact. Be eager. Learn. Be clean, be eager, be cool.

  I take my shoes off and go to the bathroom for wudu, but it’s too early; I’m here at a weird time, one of the first for prayer. Someone is rolling a few leftover rugs and putting them to the side. I see a poster board that I hadn’t noticed last time and pore over it: community notices. Nothing extravagant—offers for tutoring, rent, et cetera. The dude who was rolling the rugs brings out a broom and begins sweeping. He has a long beard and is wearing a white salwar kameez that is dirty at the bottom. He looks like he’s mumbling to himself. I hope he’ll be able to tell me if Anna is in heaven or hell.

 

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