Free Blink & Caution by Tim Wynne-Jones

and cold — the day old all of a sudden and tired. She digs her fists deep into her jacket pockets, turtles her head down inside her collar. She’s way across town from the apartment on Carlaw, but you can never tell with a magic man how far is far enough. She heads south, zipping along, half out of fear and half out of trying to keep warm, dodging traffic, zigzagging through the bustle and lights.
    She does know one good someone in this city, and she knows where he lives, though she has never once contacted him. She walked by his place a couple of times last winter when she was desperate — even saw him once in his window but couldn’t bring herself to ring his bell. He hates her. Still, she figures, someone from back home who hates you is better than nothing.
    Oh, please be here, she thinks.
    It’s a rooming house, tall as a nightmare. The outside door isn’t locked. The inside door isn’t locked, either. It’s like saying to a potential thief that there is nothing in here you want. Caution is glad she doesn’t have to ring, but the unlocked doors don’t comfort her. She climbs the stairs to the first landing, climbs the stairs to the next. Listens at number seven. At first she hears nothing, but when she steps back, she can see light seeping out from under the door into the dimness of the landing. She listens again and smiles nervously: someone is playing a guitar.
    She sniffs, gathers up her courage, and knocks three times.
    The music stops; heavy footsteps approach the door. Caution pulls back and back farther, until her hand is on the newel post, ready to launch herself downstairs if she has to.
    Then the door opens.
    Wayne-Ray has gotten large. Overweight. It surprises her how much he looks like Auntie Lanie now. He has his mother’s deep brown eyes, her swarthy complexion, thick eyebrows, her heft.
    “Kitty?”
    It’s taken him a long time to recognize her. She nods hesitantly. It’s been a long time since she answered to that name.
    He raises his hands to his head. “Jesus!” he says.
    Caution glances behind her furtively, as if maybe a savior snuck up the stairs behind her. No such luck.
    “Is it really you?”
    She nods, a little uncertainly. She’s waiting for him to come to his senses — to remember what she did. He may have identified her, but he seems to be having a whole lot of trouble figuring out who she is.
    But as large as he has gotten, he is 100 percent Cousin Wayne Raymond, right down to the XXXL Toronto Maple Leafs hockey sweater, the green sweats, the moccasins.
    “Hey,” she says.
    It isn’t exactly “abracadabra,” so maybe it’s the sound of her voice that breaks through his confusion, takes him to the next stage.
    “Ah, heck,” he says, “come in here, you.” He steps back into his apartment, holding out his hand. She hurries past him, and he closes the door. Next thing she knows, she is bawling her eyes out all over his big blue maple leaf.
    The first thing Wayne-Ray does once she stops crying is to find his phone. “I can’t wait to tell Mom,” he says. “She can phone your mom.”
    “No,” Caution says, shaking her head. “You don’t understand.”
    “Ah, Kitty, come on. For God’s sake. Everybody’s been worried sick,” he says. “I just want to let them know you’re okay.”
    “I’m
not
okay.”
    That stops him for a moment. He puts down the phone. She looks around, finds a chair, and plunks herself down in it.
    “Are you, like, knocked up?” he asks. She frowns at him. “Well, you said you were not okay. I just —”
    “I’m not pregnant,” she says, cutting him off. Jesus, she hopes she isn’t. “There are things even worse than that,” she says.
    “Sorry,” he mumbles. “It’s just . . .”
    But he doesn’t finish. Then there is a long silence, which she breaks, because she owes him some kind of explanation.
    “I got myself in with some bad people, okay? Really bad people.” She looks down to escape the pity in his eyes. Then she