"Maybe two."

  "Only one really bugs me."

  "Go for two."

  "How about you?" He shivered. The engines labored through the shiny swath of ocean, picking our way through the dozens of islands dotted there.

  I looked up at a screeching gull. "Jonathan Livingston," I said.

  Samir didn't understand my reference to a book I'd read in summer school between GED Grade Twelve classes.

  "What?" He withdrew his hand. My own was cold and pale.

  "A bird who found freedom in a short book riddled with clichés," I said. "The hallmark of a 1970s lost generation, my mother's generation."

  "Hippies," he grunted.

  "Yes, and they were right."

  "What about?"

  "Freedom, for one thing. We gave it all away, slow as molasses in January, but it's gone."

  "You bag, you don't remember that." Samir smiled at me, his sideways smirk. The touch of his leather sleeve was like rhino skin. Then his hand closed on mine again.

  "Scared?" I asked.

  "No, not me." He sipped on the coffee.

  "It's okay to be scared."

  "I'm not."

  "Oh," I said, snuggling closer.

  "When do you see Dr. Blanche?" he asked. "I have to be at the bone clinic by one."

  "Twelve-thirty," I said.

  "That's your appointment?"

  "Yeah. What did they tell you over the phone when you called, Samir?"

  "The bone clinic covers casts," he said. "Other stuff is billed to the patient."

  "That would be you."

  "I'm on CPP. I got benefits."

  "That’s right. You're copacetic. I think we're there," I said to him."Yes."

  He threw his coffee cup over the railing into the ocean. I frowned and sighed at his lack of environmental concern. That was Samir, though. Everything focused around him and his own needs. Even me. Maybe constant pain did that to a person.

  Dr. Blanche was stocky and white-haired, some would say silver. A beautiful head of hair. I'd heard it was a wig. He peered at me over his professor glasses and placed his hands into a steeple. His big mahogany desk was between us. I gazed at the diplomas on the wall, at his glass and wood bookcases, at the spines of his learned books. I sighed. "Samir's getting his legs fixed," was all I could think of to say.

  Dr. Blanche's face appeared starched, like his coat. Like his silver mustache. His mouth twitched a bit. Far off, I heard a gull screech. "Is he? What do you think of that?"

  "I think it's about time. He walks like a drunk goat. He's in pain like all the time."

  "What made him decide to do something about it at this time?"

  "I don't know." I fiddled with the bottle of pills in my pocket and counted the tiles on the wall.

  "Did it have anything to do with you? You've changed quite a lot since I last saw you, Anne."

  He insisted on calling me Anne. I snorted and pulled a face. "Not really. A few cosmetic changes."

  "Your hair is very becoming. I like it."

  "Thank you."

  "Does Samir like it, too?"

  "I don't know. I didn't come here to talk about Samir."

  "What then, Anne?" He seemed pleasant enough, like a Schnauzer before it pounces.

  "My meds. They make me sleepy and they make me fat."

  "I did tell you they may lead to some weight gain. I told you to be careful. Remember?"

  "Some?" I snorted again. "I look like John Candy."

  He smiled. "What would you like me to do about it?"

  Then he started to explain the pharmacology of drugs, what the meds did, how they worked, yap, yap, yap, ad nauseous. I listened until I couldn't listen anymore, then I interrupted. "Wait. Is there something else I can take?"

  "Do you promise to take it?"

  "Sure."

  "You're sure?" He fiddled with his prescription pad. "I'm going to try you on a depot injection."

  "A what?"

  "We'll give you a long-acting medication with a needle every three weeks. It's called Flupenthixol." He tore off a sheet of the prescription pad and passed it across the desk to me."Take this to the pharmacy, Anne."

  "Thank you." You're not gonna take any injections, Anne, from the man.

  "Do you understand you'll have to come back here every three weeks for the injection?"

  "Do I have to come here?"

  "Anne, we've discussed your noncompliance issues before. You do want to be rid of the voices and the hallucinations, don't you?"

  "Yeah. Okay."

  He hadn't convinced me a lot, but I wasn't afraid of needles. I wouldn't have to swallow pills anymore. Might not be so bad. A blue snake slithered from Dr. Blanche's open mouth to the desk then dropped into the chair beside me. I studied it. It looked back with glowing eyes, then slowly morphed into a pile of books.

  "That's better," I said.

  "What do you see?"

  "A pile of books."

  "Is that all?"

  "Yes."

  "You're sure you're all right now? We can chat again in three weeks. Go to the pharmacy, get this filled, bring the vial back here to the nurses. They'll give you the injection."

  "In my arm?"

  "Probably in your hip."

  "Hip. That's a laugh." Euphemism. He wasn't laughing and neither was I. "Buttocks, you mean." He smiled.

  When I came back to his office from the pharmacy, the nurse made me wait. By the time I got out of there and charged over to the orthopedics clinic, Samir was gone from the main room. Later I found him huddled in the waiting area, holding a sheaf of papers, a large envelope that said, ‘X-ray film’, and a couple bottles of what I made out to be Flexeril and OxyContin. He was giggling. His funny black kisser was relaxed for the first time I'd ever seen it like that. His legs were bandaged and he wore a brace on his poor left leg. When he saw me, he stood up and brandished his African cane with the ivory head. He knocked twice with it on the hardwood floor.

  "I'm so glad to see you, Annie. Docs said they could fix my legs."

  "Really? When and how?"

  "They have to break da bones again, reset it in proper alignment like, bones will knit together, they said. Top bone doctor in Victoria comes here every Monday."

  "Did you see him today?"

  "Sure did. He gonna fix up ol' Samir good as new brass monkey."

  A dust mote was caught in a sunbeam spilling through an open window. My voices were silent. I looked at the brace, at the tensor bandages, at the pain meds. The doctors had made Samir happy. Happy for the first time since I'd known him. "That's wonderful," I said. "But I don't believe it."

  "Believe it, sister," he intoned, then laughed and hobbled out the exit behind me.

  What would I do if Samir were made perfect? The only reason he liked me was because we were two broken people that came together in the middle of their growing up years, before the 1970s drug guru Timothy O'Leary's cut-off date of thirty. What if there was life after thirty? My new black gladiator sandals made a click-clack sound as I sashayed down that hall with my guy. Samir's cane echoed the click-clack of my heels as we lurched through the exit door and then dove out into the day. The sky was grey with a steady drizzle.

  I'd never seen him so happy. He glowed. I thought it must be the drugs.

  We got home without any visions. My voices were still. My hands trembled and I felt flushed and excited about what the future held for Samir and me. He lurched on ahead with the new brace on his poor left leg, and his old cane in his right hand. He was singing Scream and Shout.

  Yes, it must be the drugs.

  The shot in my butt seemed to be wonderful magic, I thought, that Dr. Blanche sure knew what he was doing. I'd have to make sure I showed up at the clinic in three weeks to get some more of this stuff that fought with my visions and voices and won.

  Chapter Forty-three

  You may have figured out by now that Detective Mark Snow didn't come with us to Campbell River like I sort of planned. The phone rang again the night before, in the float house, and it was Mark, but he was all professional and apologetic for ringing so late, not to mention that I'd been the one who phoned him and then chickened out. At the time my voices were still nagging me and I was seeing little colored animals in every corner of the room.

  The improvement was pretty dramatic after our visit to Campbell River on Monday, when my voices were quiet and the visions didn’t appear very often. When they did, it was more of a muted sort of shadowlike movement on the sidelines, not the active little purple monkeys and blue snakes that I'd been used to since I was sixteen. I did love animals and sort of missed them. Sometimes I'd try real hard to squint and make my vision sort of go off a bit, but they didn't come back unless I was tired or stressed. Then, like I said, they were more of a flickering and morphing of real images into movements that weren't real, but not as dramatic as my colored animals. The new illusions were scarier, though, because I didn't know at those times if something in the room was going to move and attack me from sideways, a ghostlike assault rather than funny, happy pictures.

  The night before Samir and I went to Campbell River, Mark phoned and told me he didn't think he'd go with us. "I trust you," he said. "I know we all told you not to leave town, Annie, but this is something to do with medical appointments and your psych is important. He practices in Campbell River, and it's not far, you'll be there and back in a few hours, I expect. You can accompany Samir and make sure he doesn't go anywhere. He's been cleared, but anyone to do with this case should stay on the Island, you know. You're off the case officially but you can be a great help to me personally as you know the people involved and you know the Island. I don't see that you're unstable at all, though I know your diagnosis. Go ahead and visit your psych in Campbell River tomorrow."

  He said personally, my voices exulted. I hadn't received my new depot injection yet, this was the night before Samir and I went to Campbell River. So that little phone call from Mark made that last night brighter and more magical. I had a good night's sleep before the trip on the ferry to the big Island (Vancouver Island), where Campbell River sprawled on the shoreline and the ferry left every hour for a ten-minute trip to Serendipity. I loved Campbell River, the sleepy little city at the edge of the crashing waves, and I loved the big Island. I loved Serendipity Island, and I loved Samir.

  Oops.

  I did. He was mostly kind to me where nobody had been kind before, at least not a lot of menfolk had been kind to Annie Hansen. His cousin Pepsi tried to make me think that Samir was putting me down, that he was using me for his own purposes, and that he tried to make me think I was crazier than I already was. I knew that, big-boned and tall, I wasn't graceful or delicate like a lady, in my mind, should be, but I more than made up for it with my character, I thought. At least, Mom had always told me that I needed to attract friends with my personality, not my looks. Dear old Mom hadn't done much to make me think I was movie star material.

  I wiped a little leak in my eye and thought about Mark. He seemed to think I was worth talking to like a normal person. That made me think about Lorne and how he had helped me when I was down and arrested for shoplifting from Woodworth's, doing community service with his office. Maybe I deserved better than what I'd always got from life. Maybe I ought to put back more than I did.

  I slid some Spanish combs into my lovely locks and smiled into the mirror over the bathroom sink. Someone had shoved an Avon cosmetics booklet under my door while we were gone to Campbell River. It was a sign, I thought. I'd never bought lipsticks and makeup from a catalogue before but it was less embarrassing and less trouble than going to the drugstore late at night. Yes, I was embarrassed that I was trying to change my appearance. People might notice the difference and mock me. I squinted into the mirror. Where were my voices, mocking me? Still two weeks until my next injection. Was it possible the voices had been my own mind, something I'd picked up from childhood, maybe, my parents, my teachers, my companions?

  I sighed. I often found myself short of breath, a psychological thing, I thought, or maybe my heart. I put my hand on my heart and grinned. 'I love you,' I mouthed to the image in the mirror, the pink lipstick, the foundation that evened out an uneven complexion. I did look a bit like a clown.

  Mark didn't think so. Mark had said personally and he had called me back.

  I scrubbed my face with the white washcloth hanging on the towel bar. The washcloth turned amber and pink. I studied the face that was left. I still didn't look half bad. The kimono I was wearing was covered with delicate orchids. Purple orchids. When I am old I shall wear purple.

  I was twenty-four years old and Samir was twenty-two. I would have a birthday in April and I would be exactly a quarter of a century old. I thought we would go to the Red Ox Inn the night of my birthday, and I would wear my long broom skirt and the coral lipstick that was in the Avon catalogue for four ninety-nine. Coral kind of went with my complexion better than pink.

  Then I sashayed into the kitchen and sank on the wicker chair. I had a grin higher than the old barn and the little calf, too. What, was Annie getting vain? You little poop, I thought. You vain little shithead. I laughed and laughed, threw my kimono off and bounced my breasts up and down with the flat of a hand.

  That was when the phone rang again. I looked at the call display and it said, Mark. Snow.

  My breasts were still bouncing when I answered.

  Chapter Forty-four

  I settled down in the tawny cushions of the wicker chair in the kitchen to talk on my cell to Mark. I was a bit worried I hadn't charged the phone lately.

  A wash of sunlight fell through the window above the counter and splashed on the hardwood floor in front of me. I tried to count the dust motes. That hadn't changed, still counting, I thought. My fingers flew, tapping out a rhythm of motes.

  "Hi. Mark?"

  "How are you?"

  "Better than you think."

  "How do you know what I think?" He chuckled. I yawned.

  "Am I boring you?" He's teasing me. Cute. "I always yawn when I'm excited," I said.

  I knew he was grinning from his tone of voice. "I have that effect on pretty women," he said. "They get breathless."

  "You got it right. Pardner. Now why'd you call?" I was all business, just before the phone died. Dang. My BlueBell iCell phone never did give me a signal that it was dying, but I thought the little battery indicator should do that. It seemed to be full all the time, unless I was misreading it. I peered at the icon. A little light had gone on. So I found the cord and charger and plugged it in. I'd missed the important part of Mark's call.

  I wasn't too surprised when fifteen minutes later there was a knock on the front door. Well, it was the only door. Mark stood there, poised between the dock and the threshold, staring down into the watery space at his feet.

  "Come in, stranger," I said, and opened the door wide. Maybe too wide. 'Don't be overanxious, Annie,' I cautioned myself, hearing an echo of my mother's voice in my coconut brain. She had always thought I was a bit too optimistic in the romance department, being somewhat homely like I am and everything, kinky hair and buck teeth. I sucked on my lower lip and smiled. Mark didn't seem to notice the overbite. Good on him. He was a prize worth keeping.

  Typical of us delusional alcoholic thinkers, Firewall Eddie had told me about the movies he ran in his head when he met a new girlfriend, the wedding and settling down in a petunia-covered trailer and everything. Right after he met someone. I was like that with a new guy, not that I'd ever had one except for Samir. Of course, it never worked out for ol' Eddie, or me, either. I went right back to hallucinating and he went right back to using drugs and drinking, a lot of the time as far as I know, girlfriend or not.

  That worried me a bit. Something niggled in my brain about Eddie and the night Doc Hubert was downed and drilled.

  "I want to talk to you about the case," Mark said. He ducked when he came in the door. The door jamb was pretty low and Mark was more than six feet tall. He had a bit of a paunch, too, I noticed, and was a bit thin on top, with greying hair around his temples. He was at least ten years older than me. There you have it, thanks, Mom, ruin this for me, too.

  His blue eyes redeemed him in my books. "You have some of the pieces I'm missing. You know Firewall Eddie and the guys on the street. The boys in the office at City Hall are beginning to think there's a connection between Doc's clients and the murder, that we're on the wrong footing here. It was nothing more or less than a killing for drugs and the cash he kept in his wallet. A street killing, or maybe revenge."

 

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