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Colin wished Jayclyn could have joined him at his sister’s soiree. Thought they’d established a trusting rapport during their breakfast at the Grand Union Cafe and then their paddle on Yellow Lake.
She bowed out and baled, though, on the outskirts of Penticton.
“Not much of a one for meeting new people on short notice,” she said, “Present company excepted.
“Besides, look at my outfit. Don’t think your sister would be too pleased to have a vagabond like me seated at her dinner table.”
“It’s casual,” he’d pleaded as they rolled down the incline from Kaleden toward Penticton. “It’ll probably be a back-yard barbecue—cutoffs, Hawaiian shirts, that kind of thing.”
“Thanks, but no thanks.”
“So, what are you going to do?”
Jayclyn shrugged.
They’d rolled on for a while, until they reached a viewpoint overlooking Skaha Lake and the southern approach to Penticton. Colin braked hard.
“Whoa!” Jayclyn scolded.
“Sorry! Sorry!” He begged her pardon. “I just wanted to talk for a couple of minutes before we get into town.”
She eyed him nervously.
“Nothing weird, honest.”
She frowned.
“Well, not weird in any kind of perverted way. I’m not really capable of ‘normal’. He curled his fingers into the shape of quotation marks bracketing an imaginary thought bubble between them. “The best I can pretend to be is subtly abnormal in a harmless. or even helpful manner.”
She allowed herself what he’d come to recognize as ‘a Jayclyn smile’, a brightening of eyes, pursing of lips, and look that conveyed curiosity or dubiousness.
“You mean, you’re on some kind of spectrum?” she guessed.
“Aren’t we all?” He edged his answer with a hint of annoyance.
“I suppose,” she laughed.
Colin couldn’t conceal his astonishment, his joy. It was the first time she’d actually laughed out loud at anything he’d said, and he was elated.
She’s not our mistress, Hermes cautioned.
True, Colin placated.
Cynthia’s laughter had been spontaneous and totally accepting of him as the ‘one-of-a-kind, kind man’ she loved, the spirit that completed them. The boundaries of ‘you’ and ‘me’ had dissolved between them—no, but become permeable—he corrected. When they laughed or sorrowed, it was for ‘us’.
Jayclyn’s laughter seemed a species of delighted curiosity, which he hoped would evolve into a form of affection—perhaps, dare I even think it—a variant of daughterly love.
“Can we walk?” he asked.
She nodded, and they ejected out of the Rialta’s cab doors, then made their ways off the paved apron onto the gravel path, curving through the crabgrass along the embankment overlooking Skaha Lake.
Hey, let me out of here! Hermes barked.
Colin ignored him. He imagined Jayclyn a child, and them holding hands. Wished that fantasy could have been a memory instead of ludicrous fiction, because—tough and prickly as she appeared to be—he felt she needed someone to be that for her. A father figure.
Well, stupid? Say something, Hermes prompted.
“I don’t know if you know it, Jayclyn…
“Jay,” she interrupted. “People who get to know me call me ‘Jay’, without the ‘clyn’. Unless they’re pissed off, of course.”
“Okay, Jay, but what I want to say is…”
Spit it out!
“You’re amazing!”
Good boy! Hermes trolled.
“You’re fascinating,” Colin forged ahead, almost stumbling over his words. “And I don’t want to lose contact with you.”
“You mean, you want to be friends?”
“Yes! But I’m not sure ‘friendship’ is the right word for what I feel.”
She looked askance at him.
“Oh, come on!” he chided. “We’ve dealt with that awkward notion already, haven’t we? I assure you, Plato himself couldn’t be more platonic than me under the circumstances.
“That said, I don’t want to lose you.”
The declaration sounded disturbingly obsessive, even to his own ear, but Colin couldn’t help it. He loved her. Knew he would worry about her perpetually if he couldn’t maintain some form of contact.
He wriggled his mobile out of his jeans pocket. “Can you give me your phone number?” he was asking, until she cut him off…
“Put that thing away!” she hissed, covering her face and lowering her voice.
“What?”
“Power it off and put it back in your fucking pocket!”
“But…”
“Do it!”
He depressed the iPhone’s buttons until the ‘Slide to power off’ and ‘Emergency call’ links appeared on the screen. Powered off, the screen blacked out. He looked up at her, imploringly.
“Shit! My fault. I should have warned you earlier,” she explained. “I don’t like cell phones, and I don’t own one. Has that been on the whole time we’ve been together?”
“Yeah, but…”
“Let’s get out of here,” she cut him short. “I need to get going.”
They trudged back to the camper and pulled back onto Route 97 in solemn silence, Colin’s anxiety ratcheting up as they closed in on Penticton.
“What happened back there?” he pleaded.
“The less you know, the better off we’ll both be.”
“No!” The less I know, the more I’m going to worry. Is there any way we can keep in touch? I’m going all the way to St. John’s, Newfoundland. I can give you a ride from anywhere in between if you’re ever stuck.”
Jayclyn gave him a puzzled look.
“I know it’s crazy, Jay, but I can’t help feeling the way I do. Maybe our spectra overlap in some strange, mystical way,” he smiled. “I want to have a chance to figure out what we mean to each other—don’t you? All I’m asking for right now is a thread that will allow us to maintain contact.
“Can we do that?”
She fixed on him with an intense stare, as if there might have been some indecipherable graffiti spray-painted onto the inside back of his skull and she could read it by looking into his eyes.
“Ya know how general delivery mail works?” she asked.
“Yeah.”
“There will be a general delivery letter waiting for you at the main post office in Calgary, and another in Regina, if you’re come and gone before the Calgary note arrives.”
“Sounds sort of cloak-and-dagger,” he joked.
Jayclyn patted her hip. “Well, you know I’ve got the dagger; maybe I’ll go buy myself a cloak before next time to complete my underworld fashion statement.
“Pull in here,” she pointed toward the entrance to a park at the north end of Skaha Lake, then clambered between the seats into the back of the Rialta before he’d stopped.
“Drive carefully,” she cautioned, half-playfully, when he scurried round the front of the camper to say his sad farewell as she stepped outside.
Ignoring her stiff rebuff, he hugged her, an awkward embrace due to the bulging backpack slung over her shoulder. Hermes, on the pavement beside her, barked once.
“See ya,” she said, marching off into the park and vanishing under its canopy of leaves.
Will we ever see her again? Hermes moped.
“We will see her again,” Colin vowed.
~~~
There are many shades of black. There’s darkness perforated by countless stars, glimmers of an infinite beyond; darkness aglow with the ambient effulgence of streetlights; the impenetrable darkness of the caves spelunkers lower themselves into.
But the darkest zones of all are those constructed by men, reinforced bunkers and basements, where the agents of sanctioned conspiracy dwell. That darkness penetrates the thinking flesh to the very core, and grips the beating, human heart in its fist.
“We got a Level 5 voice recognition alert, sir.”
“Yeah?”
“It’s weird.”
“Weird, as in?”
“It matches a Coleen Clayton’s speech pattern.”
“Okay. So what’s weird about that?”
“Coleen Clayton is supposed to be dead, sir.”
“How good was the match between this talking dead person and the voice pattern on record?”
“Over 98 percent overlap. That’s into the one-in-ten-million range.”
“Tell me something I don’t already know.
“Where did the signal come from?”
“Canada. A place called Penticton in the province of British Columbia.”
“Have you been able to trace the phone?”
“It appears to be a third-party intercept. The phone belongs to a Colin Peterson, lives in Victoria, BC.”
“Accidental or intentional intercept?”
“Appears to be intentional.”
“Okay, send me the file.”
“Can’t, sir. That’s what I came to tell you. We’re not cleared to see anything more than the synopsis.”
“Who are we supposed to direct it to?”
“The top, sir.”
“The very top?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Send me what you’ve got.”
Next: Guest of Honour | TOC