Free Meaner Things by David Anderson Page B

possible, maybe even likely, that their mutual ethnic background connected them, or at least their families, in some way. Then, when the real Emma met her fate, my Emma took advantage of circumstances. I could only speculate about why she would do such a bizarre thing. She must have known that it couldn’t be a permanent identity switch. Sooner or later someone from Victoria who’d known them both would have bumped into pseudo-Emma and blown her cover immediately.
    I’d now discovered that my Emma, as I still and would forever think of her, had been studying at UBC under an alias. Maybe she did have some compelling reason for doing so, but I’d never know what it was. I wasn’t even sure that I wanted to know. Whatever it was still wouldn’t have explained or justified her subsequent behaviour on the rooftop.
    When I got back to the hotel I borrowed the telephone directories in the foyer. Both the names I was interested in were uncommon and I’d no trouble finding them in the phone book. There was a Virtanen listed with an address on McNeill Avenue and a Nurmi along St. David Street. I jotted down both addresses on a scrap of paper. In the Yellow Pages I found an accountancy firm called Nurmi & Associates, on Fort Street, which was within walking distance. I added their address and number to my notes.
    Up in my room I sat on the bed and considered my next move. I smoothed out the scrap of paper with my thumb, laid it on the quilt and picked up the phone. As my finger tapped in the number I thought about what I would say.
    “Nurmi & Associates, how can I help you?” It was her voice.
    My brain froze. I opened my mouth but couldn’t get a word out.
    “Hello?” Her tone was insistent now.
    I sat there, immobile, as if time had stopped for me.
    “Hello?” She waited another couple of seconds then the line clicked dead.
    I put the phone down and stared into space. My heart was pounding, my chest heaving. I found it hard to breathe, as if the room had suddenly emptied of air. Sweat trickled into my eyes. I sucked in an enormous breath and lay back on the bed.
    Eventually my chest calmed and my breathing became normal again. My body cooled and the sweat dried on my forehead.
    I would go there, confront her. That’s what I’d do.
    *
    I didn’t, of course. Somehow hearing her voice took all the fight out of me. I stayed another day but kept well away from Fort Street. By now I had no money left to stick around any longer and no reason to do so, if I wasn’t going to take the next step.
    I realised that I no longer had the stomach for it. I was tired, broke and terribly depressed, and all the tramping around Oak Bay had hurt my ankle so much that I was limping badly again. She was gone from my life. Accept it, I told myself, accept it.
    Truth was, I was scared too, scared of what might happen if I pushed any further, dug any deeper.
    It was time to move on.

 
    8.
     
    SOB STORY
     
    Present day
     
    The address she’d given me was for a high-rise building on Alberni Street in the West End, very close to Stanley Park. As soon as I saw the luxurious exterior I knew that my hunch that she was loaded was one hundred per cent correct. She buzzed me up and welcomed me into her half of the ninth floor. I stepped inside and immediately became two hundred per cent sure that she was loaded.
    I undid my shoes and took my time examining the layout. There was a small bathroom right beside me, its door slightly ajar. Past this, I noticed a long, narrow kitchen with a bedroom to its right and a dining room to its left. A cosy book-lined den led out to, what I guessed would be, a spacious patio. Directly ahead of me everything seemed open plan. She led me past a massive oak dining table, big enough to seat at least twelve people, and the living room area opened out in front of us. On the wall to my right, above the fireplace, hung a massive Alex Colville painting of a cat staring up at some crows perched on an ancient stone cross.