Free Julian by William Bell Page B

different now.
    I changed into shorts and a tank top, slipped the rent money into the small, teardrop-shaped backpack I used for running, and left the apartment.
    The sky was overcast, the air hot and clammy and still. Thunderstorm weather. But I decided to go anyway. My hopes rose with every step I took toward Grange Park. Would she be there? Would she be angry at me for what she must have thought was a brush-off on McCaul St. that day? I slowed as I came down Beverley, passed the gallery and jogged into the park. The threatening sky hadn’t scared off many people. A pickup soccer game was underway on the grass. Most of the benches were occupied by street people grabbing a nap, or men and women reading books and drinking from paper cups, or kids just hanging out.
    But I didn’t see the girl with the blue beret.
    Disappointed, I turned and jogged toward Spadina and found the street I was seeking. It wasn’t much more than an alley. A sign hanging out over the narrow pavement advertising the Chongqing Gardens promised “Real Szechuan Cuisine.” The restaurant window was strung with red paperlanterns hanging over a bank of garish colour photos showing plates of food that looked like plastic.
    Inside, the place was more like a long hall than a restaurant, with a counter inside the door where a grey-haired woman wearing a cardigan and a toque perched on a stool behind the cash register, reading a Chinese-language newspaper. Mrs. Zhu, I guessed, the person who would receive the rent money from me every month.
    She looked up when I approached, eyed me up and down, the forehead above her plate-shaped face creased by a frown, her wide mouth turned down at the corners.
    “You wan’ eat here or take out?” she demanded. “Maybe takeout is best.”
    “Mrs. Zhu?”
    She nodded. The frown disappeared, the mouth formed a smile. “You Julian.”
    I nodded, unzipping my pack. When she saw the envelope she shook her head. “No, no. Not here. Sit in back. I come in a minute.” Then she screeched something in Chinese toward the rear of the restaurant.
    None of the customers—all men, all hunched over their bowls of rice or noodles—looked up as I made my way to the one empty table in the shadows at the back. As soon as I sat down a young woman, her hair jammed under a paper hat, her brow beaded with sweat, crashed through the swinging kitchen doors, plunked a bowl of steaming liquid in front of me and disappeared as quickly as she had come. Savoury, spicy steam clouded from the bowl.
    A few minutes later, Mrs. Zhu shuffled to the table and took a chair. “Eat,” she commanded, pointing at the soup.
    I was hungry from running, still too heated to eat, butI picked up the porcelain spoon. The spicy liquid seemed to explode in my mouth, a brew of unfamiliar flavours laced with fire. I coughed and spluttered, but the trickle I managed to swallow was delicious.
    “Hah!” the triumphant Mrs. Zhu proclaimed. “Not used to good food.”
    “I think I’ll just wait till it cools a little,” I wheezed.
    “Now you give money.”
    I handed over the envelope and zipped up my pack. Mrs. Zhu counted through the bills, then stuffed the envelope into her pocket as if it was a used tissue. From the other pocket she took a cellphone.
    “From Chang. It safe. You eat here any time. Not pay. Eat good Chinese food. Westerners no good at cooking. Ruin everything. Now I go back.”
    And with that she made her way to her stool and newspaper. I tried the soup again, sipping carefully from the spoon. It had cooled, but the peppery, blowtorch intensity of the spices hadn’t. I finished it, then got up and left. Mrs. Zhu didn’t look up as I passed her, but when I pulled the door open I heard her parting words behind my back.
    “You be careful, Julian. Many shark in water.”
    Wondering what she meant, I walked through the darkened alley to Spadina, then began to jog toward Grange Park. It was on my route home. Sort of.
    The girl was there.
    The sky