Free The Extinction Club by Jeffrey Moore Page A

in a shitpot of trouble. There’s an all-points out.”
    “Which means …”
    “Which means that if you’re stopped for a DUI or traffic violation and the uniform radios in the information, the bulletin sends up a flag.”
    “Does this … extend to Quebec?”
    “Does a bear shit in the woods?”
    “I believe so.”
    “Does a wooden horse have a hickory dick? Yes, nimrod, it extends to Quebec.”
    “I won’t get stopped.” I’ve been getting stopped all my life, I thought as the words left my lips.
    “You’ve been getting stopped all your life.”
    “So I’ve heard. Listen, has the story, you know, made any of the papers?”
    “Yeah, it’s made all the papers. Headlines in The New York Times: ‘Stamp Collector on the Lam.’ Of course it hasn’t made the goddamn papers.” I could see him frowning, like one of my high-school principals. “I’ll see what I can do, Nile, for the sake of your father. But I’ll be straight with you—you could end up sleeping on a stainless-steel shelf attached to a wall.”

   VI   
    A fter several misfires starting up the van, I sat silently behind the wheel, thinking of questions I should have asked my lawyer: How much does my ex want? What portion of my father’s estate would help her maintain the chemical life to which she’s grown accustomed? And fielding questions from my father’s ghost: Have you learned anything from this, Nile? It’s never a loss if you’ve learned something. Have you? Yes, father, I have. After living with a beautiful woman, I learned the irrelevance of beauty.
    The ignition finally caught and I was halfway down the lane when I saw her. The white cat with the red collar. By the side of the road, calm as can be, as if waiting for her limo. I hit the brakes, opened the door and she leapt in like a dog, up onto my lap. And then onto the passenger seat, staring straight ahead, like a dowager being driven to the opera.
    But we weren’t heading for the opera, unfortunately; we were heading for a kind of hall of mirrors, a gallery of characters of increasing bentness who took me back in time, to my institutional days. Unless they were all ghosts, the coinage of my brain.

    The RE/MAX in Ste-Madeleine, the agency that handled my cabin rental, was open but empty. I could hear myselfnervously whistling, which is not something I do often or well. « Il y a quelqu’un? » I inquired.
    A toilet flushed, a door latch clicked, and a gaunt woman with thick grey hair and a cigarette butt emerged from a door marked Femmes. I stated my business and she pointed with her cigarette. « Jusqu’au bout, à gauche . »
    I followed her instructions, pausing at the threshold of a surprisingly dim office. The agent’s face looked ghoulish in the glow of his computer screen, his tongue protruding as he frowned in concentration. I cleared my throat to pull his attention away from what turned out not to be real estate files or the Internet but a video game.
    « You’re interested in that property? » the agent asked in French, his eyes still trained on his screen. He had yellowish hair like unravelled shredded wheat that hung over his forehead and eyes, and his face was pocked with acne. He looked less like a realtor than a bag boy at the supermarket. « That mudhole? » Like a child protecting a test paper from a cheating neighbour, he put his left arm around a manila folder beside his laptop. He looked coked to the gills. And I should know. « There’s talk, eh? »
    « Talk? »
    « Of rituals and shit. Weird shit. Bad things that happened way back when. You’d be better off with a condo. Or even one of them flooded trailers from New Orleans. »
    With his right hand he punched in numbers on a cell, turning his head away and speaking in a low voice. He folded up his phone and began tapping his index finger between the bottom and top rows of his teeth. It was not a sound I needed to hear.
    « Okay, let’s go, » he said after slipping his folder in a desk