

Two Lanes North

A Novel

This is a work of fiction. Similarities to real people, places, or events are entirely coincidental.

TWO LANES NORTH: A NOVEL

First Edition. December 2019.

Copyright © J.T. Marsh 2019

Written by J.T. Marsh

Published by Queensborough Books
Chapter One

A few weeks after he'd seen her last, Luke Fowler's grandmother was taken to the hospital for a swollen leg, recovering just until she seemed almost fit to go home before contracting pneumonia. The disease sapped her of her strength, Luke's mother had said, calling him before he was to start work one day to tell him his grandmother wouldn't make it through the night. He dropped what he was doing, driving directly to the ferry terminal south of Vancouver, making it on the very next ferry, arriving at the hospital in Victoria to find his grandmother lying peacefully in her bed, struggling to breathe, surrounded already by family. They said she could tell he was there, that she could hear the sound of his voice and feel the touch of his hand, but she was too heavily intubated and sedated to be able to respond. In the room was his mother, Lauren, her brother and his uncle, David, two of David's daughters, Janet and Jordan, with Janet's husband sitting their two young children in his lap. After he'd sat back on a little bench on the opposite side of the room, Jordan and Luke exchanged knowing glances, either of them reaching, entirely on their own, a silent understanding that this was not the time. They'd agreed, some weeks earlier, that the next time they were together with the rest of the family they'd tell them, but that was before their grandmother had fallen ill, the sudden but not altogether unexpected hospitalization of the last remaining member of the family's oldest remaining generation taking these concerns and pushing them aside for a while. Jordan and Luke snuck uncertain looks here and there from across the room, even as their grandmother lay in bed between them, the rest of the family's chatting in fits and bursts punctuating long periods of awkward silence like bullet holes riddling a wall. The air was tense and uncomfortable, many, many years of unaired grievances pushing up against the moment like water against a dam, waiting for the one person who'd tied them all together to pass before breaking through and letting loose a sequence of events that'd change all their lives forever.

She was one of four sisters, the only one without a husband and at least one child. Luke was the only son in a family's generation that produced seven children from three siblings. They each inherited their own expectations from their respective parents, which made it somehow perversely appropriate when Jordan and Luke went out for dinner one night, not the first night they'd gone out together on a date but the first time it'd lead to something more, then back to her place, a couple of glasses of wine, a sly grin, and a bare foot slid up a leg, then one leading the other by the hand into her bedroom. In the morning, though, she was just as glad to have had him, as though she'd half-expected him to be gone when she woke up, the little twinkle behind her eyes and the way she smiled, then bit her lip before leaning in for a kiss suggesting in ways talking never could've that their little tryst the night before was to lead to so much more. You might've expected both of them to regret it the morning after, but then she was always that kind of free spirit, and he'd always been the sort of person who looks at what everyone expects him to do and who does the opposite, if not by instinct then by force of habit. Months later, after they'd 'come out' to the rest of the family, it was on the first night they spent as a married couple, over another couple of glasses of wine, when they, together, came up with the idea of running away like a couple of lovesick teenagers and not at all like the thirty-year-olds they were. "This place is no good," he said. "It's not so bad," she said. They were in their bedroom, in bed, with the rest of the room cluttered by boxes, but otherwise bare of all the little touches that made a room someplace where people lived. He took her by the hand, and sat her down on the edge of the bed, then reached for the side of her thigh. She giggled. "Ticklish?" he asked. "No," she said, giggling again. "You're lying," he said, and playfully grabbed her by the sides and rolled her over on top of him, she bursting into laughter, feigning resistance as she fidgeted on top of him, until, somehow, they stopped, she with her hands on the bed on either side of his broad shoulders, him with my hands on her, she moving her hips back and forth slowly, slightly. Already he was in love with her, as though there was some part of him looking ahead and imagining not a tumultuous affair but a deeply spiritual satisfaction, unaware as he was the true path for them lay somewhere in between. For a pair of cousins who'd married despite so much opposition from among their mutual family, it didn't, couldn't occur to them that the love they'd come to feel for each other might've been the product of something else entirely, of a set of wires crossed, of boundaries transgressed not immediately preceding their relationship but decades earlier by others in their lives.

But, when they were both sitting in their grandmother's room in the hospital in Victoria, watching as each breath brought her closer and closer to death, Luke only looked for a sign, any sign at all, in the hopes she might've made it through the night. He was sure she would still be there in the morning, that she'd live at least one more day. He prayed for it Then, when the morning came and she'd made it through, he'd be sure, again, that she'd made it through that one more day, then the day after that, then the day after that, each day kept alive by the power of his prayers. "Luke's here, Grandma," Jordan said, standing on the other side of the bed, holding their grandmother's hand. "Is she...?" he asked. "Not yet," Lauren said, standing on the nearest side of the bed, stepping aside slightly to let him closer. His grandmother's thin, almost-skeletal body had seemingly deflated, leaving her looking like little more than some skin and bones, covered by a billowy hospital gown and sprouting wires hooked up to machines. Over the next few hours, the family left, one by one, each promising to be back the next morning, each seeming unsure of themselves. And then, finally, it was Jordan's turn to leave, heading out to catch the last ferry of the night back to the mainland. "I'll walk you down," he said, rising from hid chair faster than Jordan, on the way out catching a glimpse, out of the corner of his eye, of Lauren looking back at them, one eyebrow raised just enough to be noticeable in the half-second it took his mother to tighten her jaw and turn away. He shook the creeping feeling that not all was as secret as Jordan and he had thought, when the elevator door closed on him and his cousin the pretense, for the moment, dropped, she burying her face in his chest as she cried. His hand found the back of her neck, and for the few moments they had in the elevator before it reached the ground floor he thought their shared touch might've made her feel at least a little better. But then the elevator's chime rang out and the door started to crank open, the two of them separating before stepping out into the hospital's lobby. It was a small pleasure lost in a sea of regret. In the hospital's foyer, all but empty so late at night, her high heels clicked across the tiled floor while his steel-toed boots squeaked noisily with every laboured pace. Although he was acutely aware of himself, it was not a moment of self-absorption, nor one of introspection, consumed as they all were with the sudden but not unexpected loss facing them.

Theirs was a family of open secrets, of those who spoke around one another, of people who weren't talking to each other, except for when they were. He'd heard, not from Jordan but from Lauren, that Jordan and David weren't speaking with each other; as soon as he'd set foot in that hospital's room he'd felt a palpable tension he couldn't explain. You see, he'd been with Jordan for some months, and in that time they'd agreed not to tell anyone in their mutual family what they'd done, not for fear they'd be rejected, not exactly, but because neither of them wanted to upset the delicate balance that'd been negotiated over the years between and among them all. But after their first night together, all those months before their grandmother's sudden, critical illness, there was a palpable tension when they woke up, and after a brief talk about each other's plans for the day, while he was on my way out he half-absentmindedly said to her, "I love you," she taking a moment to think about it before saying to him, "I love you too." They'd said it to each other before, many, many years earlier. But neither of them meant it in the way they'd meant it all those times, over the years, here and there, this time the exchange of those words giving them both pause for thought. All it took was one night together to make each of them to revert to an adolescent state of mind where they were both irresistibly given to fantasies, he at twenty-nine and she at thirty-one having managed only the most tenuous grasp on adulthood, a grasp that evaporated the moment they took each other to bed that first night. For the next few months, they dated almost like any other couple, more-or-less openly, to dinner, the movies, to the North Shore mountains that towered over the city of Vancouver, to the planetarium three or four or five times. After they'd first told her he was in love with her, he'd wanted to keep it strictly casual for a little while at least, pretending, imagining they'd not confessed their feelings to each other, Jordan seeming to indulge him in this imagining, only every so often the façade slipping, when they looked into each others' eyes late at night in the dimly lit streets of Vancouver a moment of weakness baring their feelings as though it was a bright summer's day. And then he got the call.

At the hospital, he walked Jordan down. "You don't have to go," he said. She was leaving to catch the last ferry back to the mainland that night. "You can stay the night," he said. She was needed back at home; the restaurant she managed needed her. "We'll find a place somewhere, together," he said. But she was upset at not being able to stay. "If you don't want to go, then don't," he said, this time his voice a little firmer. Halfway to her car, she suddenly started crying, and he instinctively putting his arms around her, pulling her in tight, and gently stroking the back of her neck while she cried softly into his chest. If it hadn't been for their grandmother's impending death, it might've been the perfect moment for them both. And then, out of the corner of his eye, Luke noticed David looking right at him from across the parking lot, seeming to glare right through him. But Luke wouldn't budge, pulling his cousin in tighter, then pushing her back just enough to plant the lightest of kisses on her forehead and wipe some of her tears away. But when he looked back, after Jordan had left, he couldn't see David anymore, and on the way back up through the hospital he half-wondered if he'd just imagined the whole thing. Making his way slowly but deliberately back in through the hospital's cavernous foyer, he felt a mounting anxiety curling up from a pit at the bottom of his stomach, the hallway leading towards his grandmother's room seeming, to him, so much longer, almost as though it'd stretched itself out, like it was made of a soft rubber. By the time he made it back to his grandmother's room, though, David had left, gone for the night, leaving just Lauren and Luke, along with Janet's husband who was gathering the last of his things, both Lauren and Luke watching him with a mounting anticipation, until he, too, left. Lauren and Luke were now alone with a dying old woman, the room silent but for the chiming of alerts from medical sensors and the laboured breaths of a dying old woman. What Luke'll remember most is that unsettling, almost-silence that pervades every moment of the night deep in the city, that gentle rumbling sound you can't hear even as it drowns out every thought, every feeling, even every impulse you have, leaving you in a daze.

Much was to happen. After Lauren had called earlier in the day, Luke had driven directly to the ferry terminal, made it onto the next ferry, then on arriving at the terminal on the other side he'd driven directly to Victoria's Royal Jubilee Hospital, arriving still in his dirty, worn work clothes and my falling-apart steel-toed boots. At her car, Jordan had turned back and kissed Luke, lightly at first, then pulling him in close for a tight embrace, their bodies pressing together, her warmth making itself felt even through her clothes, her arms wrapped around Luke and her step between his making it feel, to him, like they were somewhere else entirely, somewhere private, she then breaking the kiss to bury her face in his shoulder, crying. But then she stopped crying, seeming just to turn it off, again, smiling, then kissing him lightly one last time, in the corners of her eyes the slightest hint of something else, something he couldn't figure out in those last few seconds before she left. Lingering in the background was this vague sensibility that they were being watched, not by David or anyone else they knew but by a strange understanding he couldn't, then, identify, and still can't, now. But Luke wouldn't, couldn't tell Jordan they'd been seen, not then, not for a while, the moment too sensitive, too intimate to interrupt with revelations. As he made my way back up in through the hospital's cavernous, eerily-empty insides, he found himself divided, one part thinking of his uncle's discovery, the other of his ninety-two year-old grandmother dying in her hospital bed.

The morning after Jordan and Luke had first slept together, it was awkward, stiff, neither of them sure what to do, the tension building until the next time they found themselves again having at each other, sharing an embrace, he backed up against a counter with his hands on her sides while she leaned into him and kissed me as though she'd never kissed anyone before. It would be some time before they'd marry, though not long after they'd 'come out' to their family, and as they separated after that second night together all he could think about was the next time they'd have each other. He felt as though he was sixteen again, in love, again, for the first time, the temptation to indulge in romantic, melodramatic thinking too powerful, too intoxicating to resist. At nearly thirty, he'd become a teenager again. And some months later, after their grandmother had passed and when they finally 'came out,' the reaction proved to be far more tepid than they'd thought. It'd be the look on David's face when Luke found that he'd already come to know about them, not from that look across the hospital's parking lot but from talking with Lauren over the phone in the weeks leading up to the death of Luke's and Jordan's grandmother, the two of them sharing, first, that Jordan and him were spending time with each other, then a few weeks later that they were spending an awful lot of time with each other, then, still weeks later that they were spending too much time with each other, that something had to be going on. Jordan and Luke would learn their family never knew exactly what they were doing and when they were doing it, only that they'd come to the inexorable conclusion that they must've been doing something, anything at all. When Luke and Jordan 'came out' at the first family gathering several months after their grandmother's death, reactions were mixed; the rest of the family were surprised, but not shocked. To them, it just seemed like something that either Jordan or Luke would've done, if not together than with someone else. But when Jordan turned to him and kissed him, not with a peck on the cheek as would've been customary between family but as lovers kiss each other in full view of the rest of their family, there was a momentary silence before Lauren was the first to speak, saying, "if you have to do that you don't have to do it here," her way of saying grow up. At around thirty, they were acting like teenagers. But neither she nor he could help themselves. Even as they knew full well how they looked, the two of them turned back towards each other and kissed again, after breaking the kiss she winking at him while he nodded back. They had no idea how they must've looked. Maybe it's this fact, that's only occurred to him in all the years since, that'd made their relationship seem more fulfilling and satisfying than it was.

The walk back up through the hospital's ground floor was filled with a mounting anxiety, but also a creeping sadness weighing on Luke, the impending death of his grandmother forcing a confrontation with death itself. When he made it back to the room, Lauren was standing on the near side of the bed, her hand over grandmother's, speaking too softly for him to make out what she was saying. He approached, at the side of the bed resting his hand over Lauren's, and gave it a soft yet firm squeeze. All the years they'd spent at each other's throats seemed to fade into the darkness of the night, disappearing into the silence of the hospital room's bare walls and tiled, linoleum floors. The next day, well after the news had broken and with those of the family still in Victoria assembled at his grandmother's home, he'd already resolved to stay in town and avoid going home to Vancouver for so long as he could, insisting on staying back to provide whatever support he could to my mother, Lauren, in those difficult times. David and Luke shook hands, with David saying to him, "you're a good man," which he took with a nod. As he thought to the trip home, which wound up taking place later that day, he kept mostly quiet, exchanging idle chatter, the sorts of things people chat idly about hours after the death of a loved one; but the air was tense and laden with an uncomfortable feeling that made him want to leave as quickly as he could. With so little time left to make amends with the rest of the family, so little time left until he, too, was to be lying in a hospital bed waiting for the plug to be pulled, it seemed to him as though there was an impetus in reconciling with them all. As he'd come to have found, as nearly everyone must come to find as they turn to face their advancing adulthood and middle age, time seemed to speed, days, weeks, even years passing in the blink of an eye. It seemed to Luke so strange and almost melodramatic to think on your own mortality even as you're still, by any reasonable standard, young at around the age of thirty. But it's also natural, he thought, in that between-time when you're on the cusp of middle age to confront where you've been.

In the months before their grandmother's not-untimely death, whenever Jordan and Luke spent time together, he'd have a great time, but later that night or the next morning when he was alone again just the thought of her being so outgoing and energetic made him feel sad and hollow, almost depressed. Jordan was such a personality, always doing something, teaching yoga classes twice a week, talking about the restaurant that she managed and all the colourful characters she met there, even the long and winding road she'd taken through college to get to where she was. And Luke, Luke was a blue-collar guy, coming home every night with holes in his jeans and dirt under his nails, with steel-toed boots held together by more glue than thread. Luke was a labour union guy, proud and true, while she was self-employed five times over. They were completely wrong for each other. It`s not too late, it's never too late, except for that last time when every second becomes precious, when every moment shaved off your drive there becomes another moment you get to have with someone you love. In Canada, as first cousins Luke and Jordan could be together, their relationship not illegal even though, just twenty kilometres south of them in Washington state their love was a crime. They couldn't even visit Washington for that reason, or at least if they did they'd have needed to refrain from sexual activity during their stay. Before Jordan and Luke married, before they realized just how wrong they were for each other, they thought to elope, to take what little money they had and bound off to some little corner of the province of British Columbia where they could start a new life together. It's a strange thing to run towards someone you should be running away from, and this acute realization of what they were doing even as they were doing it never failed to draw out from the back of his mind an intense doubt. But whenever he doubted himself, all he had to do was look her in the eye and imagine what it must've been like for her to feel the same way, her doubt like an inversion of his, coming from and arriving at the same place but following a completely different path along the way. Only in a place like Vancouver could their relationship seem not the slightest bit out of place; so long as they made sure not to mention they were cousins, not until they knew the person they were to tell was comfortable with it. Vancouver was a city proud not of its tolerance but of its aversion to intolerance, even as it was willingly surrendering this very intolerance to anyone with power and money, or to the latest fad, no questions asked. In the midst of its own crisis, the city they lived in seemed in the grips of an insanity worsening seemingly by the day. Worst of all was the way so many people living in the city seemed to approve even as their own homes were being destroyed to make way for a soulless, lifeless husk of a place. Luke couldn't understand it.

Luke's and Jordan's grandmother died in the night, Lauren, later, telling him she'd held her hand as her breathing and her pulse slowed, slowed, slowed, then stopped, just stopped. It was just Jordan and Luke who'd preferred to imagine they were a secret, and it was in that preference that they'd found a way to live in an ignorant bliss. But that's not all. The first time they saw each other after their grandmother passed, Luke might've expected their relationship, whatever it might've been, to have changed. Nothing had happened. It came as a shock, to him, when they finally 'came out' to their family and found that they'd known all along, the shock soon giving way to a kind of elation, in the meanwhile something terrible happening, something neither Luke nor Jordan would ever forget, something that, when it finally came, seemed so anticlimactic that it was as though it'd been right in front of them the whole time. After their grandmother's sudden death, Luke's and Jordan's mutual family had scattered back across Canada and the United States, each taking with them a little piece of the next few years of all their lives.

Chapter Two

When the moment arrived, Luke drove with his wife, Jordan, to the BC Women's Hospital in Vancouver, bound for the maternity ward. (Vancouver General had no maternity ward). They'd known for some time they were having twin girls, after ultrasounds had revealed it. It'd be hard for Luke to explain, exactly, but the moment he first held his two daughters in his arms, he became unimportant, as though he'd come to see himself only in terms of what he could provide for them. All his insecurities, all his neuroses faded like a wisp of steam rising from a pot of boiling water, and he became someone other than who he'd been all his life. He became something more. In the time since Jordan and Luke had begun their relationship, he'd come to find in her his complement, his opposite, the woman in whom he'd vest complete faith and trust, if only for the sake of achieving that which'd been so long denied of him. But denied of his own volition, a family he'd thought he'd never wanted, never needed, never deserved, but now embraced with an open mind. Seemingly, in the bright, pale light of the hospital's room where Jordan slept, he found himself. "I don't know what you're thinking," said Jordan, after waking up a couple of hours later, "but I hope this is what you wanted." He thought about it for a moment, before saying, "I've never been more sure of anything in my life." But from the very slight, hardly perceptible look in her eyes, Luke could tell she wasn't convinced. That'd been all. But Luke and Jordan had been more than only a couple of people in love with each other; against the backdrop of a city in the process of becoming something other than what it'd always been, a city that was as uncertain of itself as it'd always been.

A man around the age of thirty named Tony Zhou had lived most of his life in the city of Richmond, one of Vancouver's larger suburbs which had come to be populated mostly by Chinese immigrants and their descendants over the past twenty or thirty years. But Tony, Tony had lived as a youth with his single mother in a modest, one-bedroom apartment, earned poor grades in high school, and smoked cigarettes from a very early age. As a youth he'd gotten a job as a dishwasher at a bistro that no longer exists. He'd hung out with friends who liked to mock and belittle him, and at least once they turned him in for stealing a small pack of chips from a Subway restaurant. That's not exactly what happened, but that's how he chose to remember it. He'd liked to wear leather jackets, although every one in his wardrobe wasn't real leather. After he'd gotten into a fight with one of his friends, he'd been reported to the police who came and arrested him, giving him the first line on what would turn out to be a very long rap sheet. As he was only sixteen at the time, he'd been brought up on charges with the others as a juvenile, which spared him the possibility of jail time. Thinking he'd gotten away by the skin of his teeth, Tony didn't have the kind of come to Jesus moment he sorely needed. Like a butterfly flapping its wings in China could eventually cause a tornado in Texas, his arrest for causing a disturbance in public would be the small beginning of a long and dangerous path. Although Tony was only one man, and a rather simple man at that, his beginning on a long, slow descent into madness and malaise would prove to have been the only possible path for him all along, in this Tony becoming something of an avatar for many young men and women around him. When he expected his friends to help him after he got out of jail—the very same friends he'd gotten into a fight with—he was sorely disappointed when only one of them would even give him a call. "Don't bother showing your face around here," that friend said, "there ain't nothing for you around here." By this time Tony had realised his friends had turned on him, and he only said, "you all can go fuck yourselves," before hanging up. Although this realisation was belated, it was still important to him in that it meant him truly striking out on his own.

Luke and Jordan named their daughters were named Sylvia Louise and Sandra Lauren. They'd already been talking about leaving Vancouver for a while, and when their daughters were born the notion of moving away became an immediate concern. It wasn't the city they'd both grown up in any longer; maybe it never was that city. As she slept in the hospital bed after giving birth, Luke looked on Jordan only with a kind of momentary contentment. Actually, he'd never been more frightened of anything in his life, of having to become a better person than he was in learning to become. When Jordan had finished delivering both daughters, she was predictably exhausted. The doctor who performed the delivery handed her the daughters first, then helped her in handing them to Luke, first one, then the other. Like most couples, Jordan and Luke had agreed to know the sex of the babies before delivery, but some small part of Luke had expected the ultrasounds to have been proven wrong. But then he was relieved to have daughters, as it meant he'd been freed of the burden of being their primary role model, that burden instead conferred upon Jordan. As well, he'd never have to tell them how their bodies worked, because he didn't know himself. But another part of him was disappointed, looking forward as he'd been to having sons, to take to ball games at the local minor league Vancouver Canadians to explain a game even he barely understood. "Well," said Luke, "I've never been more afraid of anything in my life." The doctor had left by then, leaving the nurse, who said, "that's normal. You seem like you've got a good head on your shoulders, so all you have to do is make sure that you always do what's right."

Every day hundreds of planes landed and took off from Vancouver International Airport, on an island on the Fraser River's delta, wedged directly to the south of the city itself. On one such plane on one such day there'd been a young woman named Aaliyah Jones, sitting in a window seat with a view out over the plane's wing. After having spent the better part of a summer in the American state of Texas, Aaliyah Jones was returning to Canada to begin the school year. Before boarding the plane in Texas to head home, she'd had an encounter with a black man in a finely-pressed but decidedly cheap-looking suit, who had seemed to have picked her out from a crowd. "You go to this guy and you have to tell him what you've done," said the passenger sitting in the seat next to her, "and you've got to give an offering in exchange for this book." The passenger, a balding but thin and gaunt middle-aged man had then reached into his bag and drawn out a book. "Yes, it costs a little bit of money," said the man, "but what is a small cost compared to your infinity?" Aaliyah took the book in her hands and pretended to flip through it, awkwardly uncomfortable but unable or unwilling to simply decline the man's sale. She was only sixteen, readily identifiable as such from her short stature and from the braces still on her teeth, and the man may have targeted her for this very reason. "So would you like to take one?" asked the man. He then thrust a copy of the book into Aaliyah's hands, whereupon she couldn't say no. "After you've gotten where you're going," said the man, "I hope you'll reach out to your local temple for more services." Aaliyah promised she would, even though both of them knew she absolutely wouldn't. The cult member hadn't expected anything more than a sale from the young woman, and Aaliyah herself would only peruse the book bought so she could say she did. After boarding the plane, Aaliyah had flipped through the book she'd bought, not really reading but merely passing her eyes over a few pages before putting it back in her bag. Although she was young and therefore uncertain of herself, Aaliyah fully believed she'd never been surer not of the cult member's book she'd been tricked into buying but of the things that lay in her immediate future, in the coming year.

After having delivered twin daughters without complication, Jordan lay in bed, still in her gown, still hooked up to various medical equipment owing to the long and difficult delivery. "What are we going to do now?" Jordan asked. "We'll stay here," Luke said, "until the doctor sends us all home." He thought about it for a moment, then quickly added, "I'll stay here with you." But then she'd looked at him and said, "that's not what I meant." The doctor would later tell them that she should stay in the hospital with the twins for a little bit longer than most women, who can be discharged with newborns as soon as the day after delivery, to allow for a few more tests on the girls. They'd told most of their mutual family weeks in advance when they were expecting to go into the hospital, although few chose to make the trip to visit for the occasion. They were rather resentful of Jordan having married Luke, not because the two were cousins but because she and he had chosen a 'quickie' marriage that none of them could be a part of. His only sibling, he wasn't on speaking terms with, and hadn't made a point of notifying. (Although he hadn't completely disowned her either; he'd insist that he was not not speaking to her). To him it all seemed so antiseptic, so at odds with the kind of image he'd built up in his mind. He hadn't known what to expect, and he'd come to believe it was that lack of knowledge that made him something more than what he was.

In Vancouver's not-distant suburbs, things were hardly any different except perhaps by degrees. In the city of Surrey, long beset by gang wars that'd spared most residents from the worst effects, a huge and confused effort was now underway to do expel the dregs of the city and make way for something, anything at all, whatever might've been represented by the forest of glass and steel being put up where once there'd been small houses with chain-link fences with holes big enough for a dog to walk right through and old minivans rusted in strategic spots around the wheel wells. A young man named Kit Winger had been raised more or less in the city of Surrey and now looked to try and survive on his own. His mother and his father both lived in Surrey as well, although in different parts; his father lived in the depressed neighbourhood of Whalley, along the northern half, while his mother had lived in south, close to the American border which sat right against the city's southern limits. His mother had been killed in a car accident a few years earlier, and this was one tragedy he'd never been able to personally recover from. As he'd come to realise, there're no indulgences, no sympathies extended to ordinary men like him. Every day so many deaths are let come and go, without ceremony. After Kit's mother had died suddenly and unexpectedly, there was no money for much of a funeral, less for a proper burial. Kit had arranged for the scattering of her ashes, although few were there to see it. It was the hardest thing Kit ever had to do. It was a seminal moment in Kit's life, to have lost something so profound as his own mother. During this time, he'd come to rely on a rotating cast of friends, most of whom took from him whatever they could before abruptly disappearing from his life forever. A particular example of such a friend was a young man named Josh, a young man with his head shaved and his arms covered in tattoos. "If you don't take care of your business," Josh had taken to saying, "then no one will." Neither of them knew exactly how young the other was, nor where the other had come from except to be sure from the same stock as each other. "I'll find a way," Kit had taken to saying, whenever confronted with the immediate possibility of failing to compose himself. It wasn't always easy.

Although their daughters were Luke's mother's, Lauren's, first grandchildren, Jordan was the fourth of four daughters to have children, giving her father, Luke's uncle, his youngest grandchildren yet. Luke and Jordan had known well in advance when she was to deliver, and they'd notified everyone in their mutual family, inviting anyone who'd wanted to come. Lauren was the first to arrive. As the daughters had been born on time and without complications, the doctor had told them soon after delivery that they could take their daughters home as little as thirty-six hours later. "Do you really want to live in Vancouver for the rest of your life?" she asked. "Of course not," he said. "But you've never made any serious attempt to get out," she'd said. "I would have," he said, but caught himself before finishing the thought. Within a couple of days they took Sylvia and Sandra home. It'd always been rather hard to make a living in a city like Vancouver, but now, with the enormous and rapid escalation in prices having left nearly everyone behind it was harder than ever.

After a particularly stormy fall, a typically dreary and wet winter was to have set in, seeming to loose steady but light rain on the entire city. A young graduate student named Stephanie Wilkins had a stack of papers to grade; like all or nearly all graduate students she taught undergraduate classes where the tenured or tenure-tracked professors were unable or unwilling to do so. Although she was nominally employed, she felt as though she hadn't had a real job since she was in high school and had worked part time at her father's restaurant. At twenty-three, Stephanie felt as though she was in over her head, having to grade dozens of introductory-level undergraduate papers at the very same time as she was having to write her own papers for her graduate-level courses. Sometimes she'd sit in her small office space—little more than a cubicle—and simply stare at the wall, not for long but for long enough to forget exactly what she was doing until looking back down at papers she'd been grading. All the little things that'd characterised life for young women were gone, the nights out and the trips to anywhere and everywhere. It'd been well over a year since she'd had anything even vaguely resembling a date, even longer since she'd been in a proper relationship. What exactly made up a proper relationship, as opposed to improper, she never knew. It all seemed impossible to her, the notion of picking an exact moment when it'd all gone wrong. A chime sounded from her office phone, followed by the disembodied voice of her academic advisor demanding to know why grades for term papers from a particular class hadn't been entered into the system yet. She said, "I'm working on those right now," before turning back to her paper. Her advisor reminded her, somewhat less angrily, that these entries were overdue. "They'll be in by eight o'clock tomorrow morning," said Stephanie, before quickly adding, "I promise." As she hung up, Stephanie inwardly groaned at the long night ahead, to be followed by classes in the morning. This wasn't what she'd envisioned when she'd set out to make something of herself on the cusp of adulthood only a few years earlier, but she believed it'd become too late for her to give up lest all her efforts be wasted.

Although Luke and Jordan had made their family's home in the same one-bedroom apartment they'd lived in together for some time, it wasn't a family's home and no arrangement of furniture nor creative shelving of household items could make it so. Jordan always had that look in her eyes that seemed to suggest that she had something in the works, that she had some kind of plan for the future that she couldn't quite tell him about but was dying to anyways. When they'd first struck up a relationship it'd seemed charming to Luke, the way she'd look at him with an impish grin whenever something fun was about to happen. "I only want one thing," he'd said, after having come home to find Jordan alone in the bedroom, seeming to pay the twins no mind as they cried. "What's that?" she asked, without turning to look at him. After setting his things on the table, he approached the bedroom and made for the twins before her. "For you and the girls to be happy," he said. "Do you really mean that," she asked, "or did you just read it in a book somewhere?" All the emotion had drained from her voice, and she spoke with a dull, empty tone. It seemed too exaggerated to be real. He wasn't sure what was happening to her, or why, and it was this lack of certainty that made him choose to ignore what he'd later look back on as an early warning sign. Although the twins had been unplanned, it wasn't always immediately apparent to either of them when it'd happened. They'd agreed to simply stop using any kind of protection during sex and let come what may. It took a few months but eventually this strategy resulted in pregnancy, later turning out to be twins. Luke hadn't wanted to know the sex of the baby, later babies in advance, but Jordan did. She convinced him that if would've been impossible, or at least impractical for only one of them to know; she declared her intention to know, thus resolving their first real argument by unilateral action on her part.

Still elsewhere, a middle aged man named Vincent Reyes had worked for many years at a large warehouse somewhere in the outer environs of Vancouver's southern suburbs, only to soon find himself on the way out. As he was fortunate enough to work for a unionised workforce, a rarity in this day and age of rampant free trade and precarious employment, he came to the understanding that he'd had to keep his job at all costs. This day was the day when his union was to vote on a new contract, recently negotiated by their bargaining committee after several months of slow, ponderous progress. Neither Vincent nor any of the other rank and file workers knew what the proposed contract contained, and when Vincent had asked their representative why this was the case he was simply assured that it was standard practice for non-national contracts. Even still, it'd left a bitter feeling, which'd prompted Vincent to fall into a sinking, almost-depression. After Vincent had become involved in his union to such a great extent—volunteering to serve as a shop steward, targeted by subpoenas, appearing as a witness in not one but two arbitration cases, and most importantly put his own neck on the line in speaking truth to power with management, publicly and private during the many meetings he'd been a part of—it'd come as such a shock to be so rejected by his brothers and sisters in union in favour of a pair of workers who'd never lifted a finger to help anyone but themselves. And it felt very much like a rejection, deeply personal and dejecting, one which'd made him hardly able to get up in the morning, hardly able to go to sleep at night. "She goes to church every Sunday," said another worker gathered outside, "but not this Sunday." At the time, all Vincent could think was to mumble something, "well, this is important," or something to that effect. He was saying what he'd felt he needed to say, even as he was fully aware that it must've been obvious to all his brothers and sisters in union that he was burned out. But it didn't, couldn't stop there.

As for Jordan, well, Luke couldn't pinpoint the exact moment she began to have doubts, except to say that he'd become about fifty percent sure she'd had doubts all along but could never admit or show it. The last thing he'd wanted was to be anything other than whatever he was, and it was in this spirit that he simply took their daughters home and then carried on with his life as though nothing had changed save the need to work more overtime to pay for everything that came alone with twin daughters. He still worked at the same warehouse where he'd spent the past six years of his life, and he continued to work the same shift in the same department, without fail receiving the same crew talk from the same supervisor every week. The girls had given him a new lease on life, after his relationship with Jordan had begun to peter out. But all this happened a few years later, well after they'd 'come out' to their family, after the death of their grandmother had given them all a reason to come together, at least one more time. After the last time they'd been together with all their family, much had changed, though little of what'd changed had been under their control. The financial markets were on the verge of crashing for the third or fourth time in their lifetimes, and they'd found themselves living and working in a small, one-bedroom apartment. They lived on the seventeenth floor, which for Luke meant a surge of anxiety whenever he went outside on the balcony. He'd never overcome my fear of heights, and he hated going out there. Such a small balcony had room only for a table and two chairs, with little protection afforded from the rain. A few more months had passed after they'd gotten married and little had been accomplished in reconciling the two with their mutual family before having children. "A few more days," said Jordan, "and everything will be fine." In the time before they'd had children, before they'd gotten married, even before they'd 'come out' to their family, there'd been plenty of little moments when they could see what might've, what must've been coming.

After coming home from work one day, Luke'd found her already home. He walked in through the front door, approached her in the kitchen, and kissed her, taking her by the waist with one hand, by the back of the neck with the other. "What's gotten into you?" she asked, after breaking the kiss. But she meant this in a playful way, with only the slightest hint of annoyance around the edges of her voice. "Nothing," he said, "just felt like kissing you." But then, at the same time, each of them noticed the grease on my hand, and he knew she was tracing the chain back across the wheel of my truck, to the machines at work she knew little about and which he'd never explained to her. "Sorry," he said, "it's been a long day." But Luke felt as though he was still madly in love with her, even after all they'd been through together still the young man in him steadfastly committed to such a thing as true love. Although they were in the middle of a 'rough patch,' Luke didn't see any cause for concern. All of a sudden it felt to Luke as though they were teenagers again, back when they were teenagers. It seemed a cruel irony that Jordan's professional life had been all but destroyed by the rise and fall of the markets while his had become easier and more comfortable by the indulgence of so many millions in boredom and booze. "I wouldn't want them to see the inside of your truck," she said. "What's wrong with my truck?" he asked. "Nothing a can of stain remover and a bottle of Windex wouldn't fix," she said. But this was after he'd brought her home, not the next day but a few days later, once they'd had the chance to settle in. And Luke, Luke was fervently and stridently committed to raising his children, to providing for them the best life he could. This, he assumed, was the ordinary, the natural, the default, only to learn, over the next year, that it was nothing of the kind, that it required hard work to maintain, that even hard work might not be enough.

After giving birth, it seemed little changed right away. Luke kept on working, while Jordan remained at home. With up to a year of maternity leave in the province of British Columbia, she hadn't to worry about having to return to work for at least that long, although as the restaurant she'd managed was about to close permanently she felt as though she had no work left to return to. As rents had been increasing in Vancouver for some time, they still lived in a one-bedroom apartment, all they could afford anywhere close to the city centre. (They'd lived there because the restaurant Jordan had formerly managed was located in the city centre, and she needed to be able to come in at any time). He'd grown up, mostly, in the Vancouver area, while she'd grown up in small cities across the province. She'd only moved to Vancouver a year or so before they became an item; on their first date, she'd complained how hard it was to meet people even in so large a city. At the time, he'd thought she was only making for playful banter, insinuating that she was actually easily making friends and was only coyly making an advance. But later on in the evening, after they'd slept together, it occurred to him what she'd meant. He was on his way out, a few hours later, when she'd said something about his moves. "Well," said Luke, "that's everything I know that women like." She'd only laughed and said, "that's way more than most men know about women."

It was an inauspicious start to what would turn out to be the defining relationship in both their lives. As much as Luke would've like to convince himself they'd found something as insipid as true love, he couldn't. A few more people had given their opinions on their relationship, on their marriage, on their decision to have children, all rejections. "Don't you know what this means?" Jordan asked. "Not entirely," he said. "They're not coming," she said. "They're not?" he asked. "Not for a while," she said. "Do they want to come?" he asked. "I don't know," she said, "I don't think so." He didn't know what to say, so he said nothing. She had a look on her face he couldn't decipher, which made her seem like she was about to burst out into laughter or tears at any moment. It seemed hardly appropriate to turn away from her, but he couldn't tell what else to do. "Don't look at me like that and tell me you've stopped thinking about her," she'd said. But all that was only the start of an entirely new set of problems, an entirely new set of problems both Luke and Jordan were altogether ill-equipped to overcome.

Although Luke had mostly grown up, there was still that part of him that remained totally convinced that the woman he happened to be with at any given time was the woman he was meant to be with. Meant by what, he wasn't ever sure. After he'd graduated from university with a bachelor's degree in English literature, he'd found what work he could. Even at the peak of the property bubble, in Vancouver wages had languished owing to the presence of so many migrant workers and loose lending from big banks. He wouldn't pretend to fully understand all the causes, nor all the effects. Jordan and him kept on living in that little, one-bedroom apartment, even after they'd come home with their daughters. Yes, they looked for a two-bedroom, but couldn't find anything within commuting distance of work that fit within their budget. Invariably, when Luke came home from work late at night he'd interrupt the daughters' sleep, no matter how delicately he'd try to enter the bedroom. "Why don't you handle it?" she said once, while turning over in bed to face away from the girls. "Don't they need to be breastfed?" asked Luke. "Formula's in the fridge," she said, before falling asleep again. After a few weeks he'd taken to simply collapsing on the couch, still in his work clothes, asleep within minutes of hitting the couch. "You don't have to worry about it," Jordan had said, after meeting me in the kitchen one Saturday morning, "they're up every two hours anyways." After all that'd happened since they'd brought their daughters home, it'd seemed to him so unlikely that they'd have so suddenly become something other than what they were. Yet, Luke had instinctively accepted that he'd become unimportant, willing and able to push his body and his mind harder and longer than ever. The ten or twelve hour shifts he'd been struggling to get through suddenly began to seem to him as though they were passing in an instant, as though he could effortlessly work through them. He could see, coming home, that it wasn't the same way for her, although he chose not to say anything. "The other one's asleep," said Jordan, "somehow." He took Sylvia, and went to make conversation only to find Jordan turning for the bedroom. She collapsed into bed, and he let her be. At such a young age, the girls seemed to Luke so helpless, so utterly dependent on them, and it's this perception that'd stick with him over the coming years, perhaps for the rest of the girls' lives.

But mostly it recalled those moments immediately after the deaths of their grandmother, before they'd 'come out' to their mutual family. Neither Jordan nor Luke were sure their relationship would last, and so it seemed an unnecessary difficulty to 'come out' as lovers when they could just as easily wind up apart. It wasn't readily apparent to me, the full breadth of her experiences, nor the place of profound heartache she'd been caught in when she and he had first started seeing each other as lovers. The benefit of having a pre-existing relationship of some kind, and this was something he had never experienced before with any girlfriend or sexual partner, was that they could effectively skip the intermediate stages and proceed directly to the committed relationship they both agreed they'd wanted. These long days had become routine, a routine he'd been unable to adjust to for months before the birth of their daughters. After Jordan had lost her job, they'd agreed it'd be better for her to stay at home—no one would hire a pregnant woman, they'd thought. "At least it's something," she'd said, "I need to know how long it'll last." "A few months," he'd said, "after that, it's all up to us." It was agreed—one of the few times they'd agreed on anything substantial—that he'd keep on working through this time, that he'd take a day or two off during the delivery to be there, but otherwise keep on working. "If I could bring it all home," she'd said, "through a few of my old customers, I'd have something." He didn't like the sound of that, but he'd said nothing, nothing critical at least. "You are so beautiful," he'd said, after a moment's pause for thought, "it doesn't matter what happens, as long as I can make it home at night." All this seemed rather antiseptic to Luke, who'd always nodded along whenever Jordan had spoken of her problems; the loss of her job so shortly before the birth of their daughters was to cause more problems than were immediately apparent even to him.

A few times Luke and Jordan had come close to calling it off, only to find themselves unable to comprehend the possibility of a life without each other. He never knew how she'd ever come to the realization that they should keep going, as it wasn't a conversation they'd had openly. For the first time in many, many years, perhaps in his entire life, Luke thought he was happy, that he had happiness foreseeable through the near future. But there was more to it than that. There's always more to it than that. When they brought their daughters home, it suddenly became possible to do things he'd never done before, as if by some unknown but acutely felt power he'd become stronger and better able to endure the physical strains of day to day life. "Don't talk like that," she said, "it doesn't suit you." "I'm just trying to live up to the situation," he said.

"You're doing it," she'd said. If only he'd been able to see, then, the insidious disease that was beginning to influence her thoughts and actions, he might've, would've done something, anything at all to try and change it. For such a man as Luke, no longer thinking himself young at around thirty, the possibilities still seemed endless, only in ways he'd never considered before. As easier as it'd become for him to make it through the days, it'd become harder still for her, in ways he couldn't have begun to appreciate even if he'd known. "They're the most beautiful little girls I've ever seen," he said. "You don't really believe that," asked Jordan, "do you?" From the quizzical look on her face he could tell she meant the question sincerely. Baffled, he took a moment to consider his thoughts. "Of course I believe it," he said, "and I can't believe you don't." She let out a sigh, and asked, "when did I say I don't?" It was a passing exchange, one which became lost in the shuffle. To him, these memories all turned into one blur, a seamless sequence which probably bears only a passing resemblance to the real events he could even try to remember.

And now, they'd become a family, as something not altogether unlike a real family. After Luke and Jordan had their twin daughters, even he had to admit inwardly that he was a little afraid of himself, as if the task confronting him was somehow beyond his capabilities. There wasn't any one moment when the gravity of parenthood hit him. It was a long and slow process, the kind of thing that you see coming all along but still surprises you when it finally arrives. After returning from the hospital where she'd given birth, Jordan and Luke more or less carried on with their lives, she staying home to tend to the twins, she taking maternity leave while he returned to work. Although most of the family had spurned their relationship and all but disowned them, a few turned up at the hospital or shortly thereafter to see the twins. Although David had already been made a grandfather through each of Jordan's sisters, Luke's and Jordan's daughters were Lauren's first grandchildren. David turned up at the hospital, making the two hour drive down from Squamish, while Lauren declined to come despite living in the city only a few kilometres from the hospital. It was an awkward, uncomfortable time, made easier for them to get through by the inspiration given to them from their new children. "Think about what you say," she said, "before you say it." But the upbeat tone of her voice and the loose grin on her face suggested she wasn't altogether serious. "Oh like you're one to talk," he said, "you wouldn't know how many times I've had to stand up for you." he tried to match her tone, grinning wickedly. "You're supposed to do that," she said. "But I love it anyways," he said. After they'd learned the baby she was carrying was to be twins, he was thrilled; although he'd never told anyone, he'd believed for some time that children were a blessing, and that he'd secretly been wanting children for at least some of that time. But the city, the city of Vancouver itself seemed on the brink of something becoming something other than what it was. Of course that's a tautology; but it's also something might very well be true. It'd become the sort of place that could give anyone, almost anyone pause when contemplating their own future.

A few years before Jordan and Luke became a couple, whether they'd announced it yet to the family or not, Lauren had told her only son, Luke, that she had come to terms with a belief that she'd never have grandchildren. This seemed to stem from his inability to form any relationship that lasted more than seven or eight months. But the daughters, they'd come at exactly the wrong time. "Do you realise what's going to happen now?" Jordan had asked Luke, shortly after they'd returned home from the hospital. "Of course I do," he'd said, "I'm going to return to work, and you'll stay here and take care of the girls." She shook her head and said, "that's not what I meant." "You're going to have to be a little more direct with me then," he'd said. "Of course I will," she said, "I mean, where do we go from here?" At once he was struck by the oddness of her questions, but it didn't yet occur to him that the real oddness ought to lie behind the questions. He took them all at face value, as he'd always done. Returning to work was easy enough for him; the guys on the docks were congratulatory, offering pats on the back and words of encouragement. But he couldn't help himself from thinking there was something he'd done wrong, something he couldn't quite perceive but which was there nevertheless, real, concrete, only just out of sight. A lot of neuroses had gone into making the person he'd become, and the birth of two daughters had made him an entirely different person. The girls were crying all the time, which they'd been told was normal. Even still, every time Sylvia or Sandra began to cry, every time they began to cry when he was home Luke rushed to take care of them, to feed or change them, to do whatever it seemed they needed at any given time. He couldn't know when exactly Jordan began to turn from the happy go lucky young woman she'd been all along to the depressed mother of two he'd never thought possible. He'd only become certain this transformation took place sometime after she'd left work and before she'd come home from the hospital with the twins. It was late summer, during that time of year when the season seems at the height of its strength, unleashing one last sweltering heat wave as if in a determined effort to conquer the remainder of the year and purge the sky of any sign of the impending autumn's rains. Summers in Vancouver have always been clear and moderate, the air deceptively dry and moist at the same time, carried along by a continuously light wind. It's only a myth that it rains endlessly in the Pacific Northwest, at least in city of Vancouver which is considerably drier than the island, perhaps sheltered by it.

But there was something that'd happened in the few days after Luke had returned to work. He came home from work one day—perhaps it was a Thursday, but it might've been a Wednesday—to find Jordan sitting in the living room, on the couch, she seeming to be staring into space. The daughters were both crying, in their crib, on the other side of the room. Even as he'd entered the apartment, Jordan made no movements, gave no hint that she was even aware of him. She simply continued looking off into space, out the window and into the deep grey sky. After a long day of work, he'd thought the best thing to do was just let it be, so that's what he did. Approaching the girls' crib, he coddled one, then the other, alternating between the two until both were sleeping soundly. This wasn't the last time he'd see her like this, but the first in a series of encounters which led to something entirely different from what it'd been all along. A few more nights would pass before it'd all come to a head, by which time it'd be too late to arrest her deepening depression, only to try and pull her back from the edge. Still, for the next few years both their lives would become overtaken by events far beyond their control, the city they'd come to live in seeming to build itself up and then bring itself down.

Chapter Three

Luke's and Jordan's grandmother's funeral was held at a little church in Victoria, attended by a hundred or so, Jordan singing, pausing once or twice to wipe away tears while the rest of the attendees looked on. At the reception, Luke and Jordan awkwardly stood next to each other, close, but not too close, having not yet 'come out' to their family neither of them knowing quite what to do, how to act. The burial, held the next day, was more intimate, twenty there to see her ashes lowered into a plot next to their grandfather's. Jordan wasn't there. She'd gone home after the funeral. To Luke it was unsettling to watch as a small box containing his grandmother's ashes were lowered into a just-as-small hole in the ground; she'd always been there, until she wasn't. His grandfather had died of cancer nearly twenty years earlier and it was next to his plot that his grandmother was buried. It rained lightly that day, in the way that it seems to rain for months at a time on the coast, a steady mist that floated gently to the ground, the small group of attendees standing out in the open, no one really bothering to shield themselves from the hazy mist that soon covered every patch of exposed akin, every jacket, droplets forming along loose strands of hair, clinging to every eyelash and every crease in every pair of jeans. But they wanted more. They all wanted more. When Luke made it home that afternoon, Jordan wasn't there, having left for work already, and when he went to work later in the afternoon he spent most of his shift thinking about what they'd done. Arriving home that night almost at midnight, he found Jordan in bed but not yet asleep, looking up from a book as he entered their bedroom. He took off his clothes and slid under the covers next to her, a light kiss all that was needed to ignite their passion even in the immediate aftermath of having been in the presence of death. They had each other that night, neither slow nor fast, neither sensuous nor frenetic, but satisfying all the while. If only they could see what was coming, they might've felt even the slightest regret at having spent these times on such a frivolous thing as love fulfilling.

After have made it out of high school with a report card made up of a smattering of C's and D's, Tony had bounced around from job to job, on the margins, working at construction sites and warehouses here and there, along with balanced against his habit of drinking every night, usually to excess. At first, he'd thought that blacking out was the same as going to sleep, only alcohol-induced rather than coming about from lying in bed and staring at the inside of his eyelids for as long as it took. He continued not to have many friends, a few from high school hanging around with him just long enough to take what they wanted or what they could from him. A few more times he'd wind up being arrested for one thing or another, almost always related to his increasing dependence on heavy drinking. It was around this time that he came to realise his path in life wasn't one he'd wanted or ever foreseen, in the vague and impulsive sort of way that young men can realise such things, although he still felt largely powerless to change it. A small piece of the future had been lost in the time it'd taken so many years to pass, whenever Tony returned from one ill-advised venture into this or that his remaining goodwill expended just a little bit. A conversation had taken place, between him and his mother, not long after he'd graduated from high school and he'd come home drunk at four in the morning. "What are you doing?" asked his mother. "I know what I'm doing," he said. "So tell me what you're doing," said his mother. "I'm getting on with my life," he said. "You don't go to school," said his mother, "and you don't work at any job for more than a few months at a time. You've got to get your act together and you've got to do it soon." Although Tony kept arguing with his mother for so long as he felt compelled to, there was nothing that could've been said between them that would've changed either of their minds. By now he wasn't living at home, having come to spending a few months here, a few months there, usually leaving each place worse off than when he'd arrived. This had been all in his past, several years before he'd finally come to his wit's end, during which time his life would worsen in ways he couldn't have foreseen.

Much earlier, for Luke and Jordan the task of 'coming out' to their family following the death of their grandmother was to be complicated by the wedding of one of Jordan's sisters. First the wedding, then the reception. The wedding was held at a Catholic church in Penticton, a smaller city a few hours into the province of British Columbia's interior from Vancouver. Their grandmother was there, sort of; the bride and groom had a portrait photo of her and her husband, predeceased by nearly twenty years, printed, framed, and mounted on an easel near the altar. The couple, one of Jordan's sisters, Michelle, and her fiancée had contemplated putting the wedding off, but had decided she'd have wanted them not to. She looked elegant in her white dress. He looked dignified in his tuxedo. The reception was held at a public hall overlooking a marina. The reception was tense, but not unmanageable for Luke, he and Jordan exchanging the odd knowing glance from across the hall's floor, the last few months of their secret yet not-secret affair turned intimate love having rendered them immune to shame. It occurred to Luke the irony of such an intimate setting confining he and Jordan to the distance of looking across a crowded hall at each other, but then neither of them were the sort of people given to subtlety, nuance, or grace. They were like children, and they were aware they were like children, even as they thought themselves mature, functioning adults, with jobs, car insurance, credit cards, student loans, and all the other various and sundry things that make up adult life, or so they'd been led to believe. So soon after the death of their grandmother, Jordan and Luke were on the cusp of the rest of their lives. Suddenly filled with a boldness, Luke found himself staring right at her even from across the darkened, crowded floor. Standing, he made at her, walking up to her, taking her by the hand, leading her in a dance that was wholly inappropriate yet not altogether out of place in this crowded dance hall surrounded by family and friends who never had much of a reason to talk to each other at all. But they danced anyways, his hands resting on her hips, hers around the back of his neck, the slow melodic waltz playing in the background guiding them as they gazed longingly into each other's eyes, momentarily without care for how they must've looked to their family. What Luke didn't see, what he's come to realize only in the years since, was that while Jordan and he were dancing like lovers and not like cousins there was an entirely different sequence of events playing out in the darkened hall, the spectacle of Jordan and him drawing much-needed attention from the pain others were going through. In love at thirty just as either of them would've been at thirteen, Luke and Jordan couldn't see outside the walls they'd built around themselves. Love is like a drug; it takes everything you have and it leaves you spent, but still you keep going back for more. Neither Luke nor Jordan had any idea what they were doing even as they both thought they had it all figured out.

Although Aaliyah was a young woman at the tender age of sixteen, like all sixteen year olds, she believed herself much older than she was. She always bristled at the mere suggestion that she didn't know what she was doing, whether she was in class or hanging out with friends between periods. After the plane had touched down but before they were instructed by the captain's disembodied voice to remain in their seats, Aaliyah was finally granted a moment of respite from the chattering of the people all around her. Although Aaliyah didn't know anything about the cult from which she'd just bought a book, she took the book with every intention of reading it at a later date. She intended to read it not because she intended to join the cult, which she didn't, but because she might later be able to talk about it with her friends. Even this wasn't altogether clear to her, although she might've thought it perfectly clear in her own mind. "The doctor said if I can't find a way to relate more positively to my surroundings I'm going to die," said a man sitting in the seat behind her, "so I suppose I'm going to die." This was followed by an agreeable laughter from a second man sitting next to the first. Even Aaliyah might've later chosen to brag about the book she'd bought as evidence of her worldliness, showing it, or at least talking of it whenever some teacher tried to lead a class discussion on meaningless terms like 'global perspectives' or 'social justice.' After having left the airport on that day with her father, nothing had changed immediately in the weeks that'd followed. She'd gone home and used her last days before the onset of the new school year to do the things that young women do, whether hang out with friends, chat on social media, or simply make imaginary preparations for the coming school year. Rather, as she came home with her father, she was acutely aware that this past summer was likely to be the last she'd spend with her mother in the states, given that she was on the cusp of adulthood and wouldn't want to waste any more time on these forced visits. But there was more to it than that. Aaliyah had stepped off the plane to find her father accompanied by a woman she didn't recognise, a woman her father would awkwardly introduce as his new girlfriend. Aaliyah didn't like her.

After having danced with Jordan, Luke found Lauren sitting on the deck, smoking a cigarette and looking wistfully into the sky. "I think my marriage is over," she said, her eyes red and her cheeks glistening slightly in the twilight's dim. Her husband, Frank, had come late, missing the wedding but arriving in time for the reception. It turned out that he'd taken to drinking, after having come under the impression that it was open bar, when it wasn't. On learning the tab he'd racked up, he told the bar that his wife would be paying it, then made to leave. That was when she'd confronted him, and that was when it'd all come out. "I know about you and Jordan," she said, Luke's heart skipping a beat and his insides turning ice cold. "But it's okay," she said, dabbing at her eyes with a bunched-up Kleenex. "it's, it's okay. I've thought about it a lot and a few months earlier I might've been against it, but now I just don't know. I just don't know." The music inside, muffled through the closed doors and windows, faded to a near-silence, allowing the low bubbling of voices to bleed through. Despite the summer season, on the coast it was cool, with the wind rustling the evergreen trees and pushing up whitecaps on the ocean. As the evening's sky slowly dimmed, Lauren and Luke stayed outside, the darkness enveloping them for only a brief time before the deck's lights flickered on all at once, immersing them in a pale light, altogether too sterile and dry to provide any real light. Nothing could bridge the chasm between them, even as they reached across to each other in a vain effort at it. She was too old, too frail to have much in the way of a future, yet Lauren was there, having so recently made up her mind to leave her second husband. Though she hadn't said so that night, nor would she tell him for some time, it was one of those things that's left unspoken but understood all the same. She and Luke said very little for the rest of the night they spent on the deck, she smoking a cigarette and looking into the sky while he looked back every now and then through the window to see if Jordan was still there. Every time he looked back, Jordan seemed to look out at exactly the right moment for their eyes to meet for a glance traded as though they were forbidden lovers whose secret was still kept.

But the city of Surrey was unlike any other in the area, having been beset by gang violence for years. No one really knew exactly where any of this was headed, much less young men like Kit Winger. No, Kit had never been tempted to join in the worst of this, not for lack of want but for the simple truth that he'd never been in a position to do anything like that. Now, he'd taken to driving to and from work every night in an old Geo Metro, a small plastic shell wrapped around an oversized lawnmower's engine, a whole assembly that could topple over in a stiff wind. Josh went with him, the two living close enough together to make it easy. "Are you writing this down?" asked Josh. "Every word," said Kit. But Josh looked over and saw that Kit wasn't writing down anything at all. They were working together, both of them temporary workers at a particular construction site, putting up one of the man glass and steel condo buildings that'd been going up across the city. Kit had been working as a temporary labourer for several months, while Josh was relatively new, the latter having been a temporary labourer for only a few weeks. Every day the two of them arrived to work with the expectation that the day's particular shift could be their last, with no guarantees made by their nominal employer, the agency that signed their paycheques on a weekly basis. "You should be writing this stuff down," said Josh. "Trust me," said Kit, "I know what I'm doing." But the both of them could see that he didn't, not in the slightest. Actually, the gang violence, characterised as a 'gang war' by local media, always seemed like something else entirely to young men like Kit and Josh. They never saw any of it, nor did any other ordinary residents of the city of Surrey, as the violence was confined to gang members shooting and killing each other, almost always in private. But there were other instances, a few notable instances where innocents were killed. A few years back, there'd been six killed in an apartment, including two bystanders who were killed to ensure their silence. A few years after that, a 'hockey mom' had been killed in a botched robbery while waiting to pick up her young son from hockey practice. These killings were enough to shake the community to its core, even as there were American cities in the grips of drug and gang wars that saw more violence and death in an afternoon.

But while Luke went outside at that wedding's reception Jordan stayed inside, not because of what they'd been seen to do, or at least Luke wouldn't have thought so anyways, but because she was having too good a time at her sister's wedding. This night was the first night when he could recall not wanting to tell Jordan what'd been said, even as he wanted, as they both wanted to be in each other's arms the way lovers do. In the habit of keeping his head high and his mind straight, Luke said, "don't worry about it," when Jordan asked, later that night, what'd happened between Lauren and him on the deck at the reception. But she said, "I worry about you sometimes." And he said, "you don't have to." But she said, "that's not what I mean." "Oh?" "You don't want to pick orders for the rest of your life, do you?" "Today of all days..." There was more, but little of it meant anything, their arguments not yet arguments, given that they'd known each other all their lives but still didn't really know each other in the way they would've thought most couples would. Jordan was a beautiful woman by any measure; she was tall and thin, with legs up to her neck. Her hair was a natural red, bright and fiery, which she usually had tied in a long ponytail that pointed down her back and ended almost at her hips. But it was her deep blue eyes that Luke always found to be the most seductive part of her looks, the way he had to be careful not to stare into them too long in case he'd lose himself in them. What she saw in him, well, while they were together that first night together she'd let her gaze linger lovingly on his chest and let her hands fall gently on his biceps made it clear even to someone as slow on the uptake with women as him. In the time it'd taken the two of them to decide on forming a real relationship, on moving in with each other under the guise of roommates sharing resources, so soon after having been with each other for the first time, this was enough. Never mind the bare facts they'd come to know about each other; she worked at a trendy restaurant, while he was a Teamster. She was a yoga instructor, while he bought all his clothes at one of several area thrift shops. She was talking, around the time they married, of opening a restaurant of her own in downtown Vancouver in the middle of a real estate bubble after having managed one for a few years, while he was happy enough if his truck kept on running without any complaints. She would never, of course, get around to opening her own restaurant, as managing the current restaurant where she worked would prove to be the apex of her entrepreneurial career. Luke would consider that a blessing in disguise. He'd keep the thought from her.

Although Stephanie had lived for several months in a basement suite somewhere in Coquitlam, one of Vancouver's eastern suburbs, she'd found herself spending much more time on campus, whether teaching classes, which accounted for only a small portion of her time, or in her little cubicle of an office grading papers, planning lectures and lessons, and sometimes just sitting there during mandatory office hours, waiting for students who would never come. The University of British Columbia, situated on the western tip of the Vancouver area but technically outside it, is more than an hour and a half by a combination of bus and train from her home, and her commutes frequently doubled that. The city of Vancouver had been promising a subway line out to UBC for years, but they can only promise for so long until people like Stephanie simply tune their promises out. There were many students in her undergraduate classes who simply didn't speak English, mostly from China and India, and she was under tremendous pressure from the university to pass these students. She often wondered, as did the other graduate students employed to teach undergraduate courses, how these students could hand in term papers and write exams in a language they couldn't stammer through a basic conversation in, but these wonderings never amounted to much. It was little moments like this, sitting in her cubicle of an office and staring out the window, that made her acutely aware of herself. The rain seemed to fall in a steady stream, striking the window in spots here and there, drops sliding down the window's surface as if following the winding course of some imaginary river. Sometimes she liked to leave the window open a half inch, just wide enough to let in the sound of the rain striking pavement outside. It sounded like the crackling of a thousand distant firecrackers, blending to form a single, almost-smooth mass of undulating water. "If I told people who didn't belong in school that they shouldn't be here, then I'd be out of a job," said her counselor. "So what do I do?" asked Stephanie. "I think you need some time off," said her advisor. "I can't do that," said Stephanie, "if I take any time off at all, there's a hundred others waiting to take my place." She met with her academic advisor, the university having taken in recent years to replacing professors in advising graduate students with dedicated, professional advisors. "That doesn't have to be the case," said her advisor, "if you need a week, then take a week." But Stephanie only said, "I'll think about it." She left the meeting with her advisor more confused than when she'd gone in.

After their grandmother's sudden but not altogether unexpected death, the long process began of sorting out her affairs. She'd left a will, of course, but little beyond that. Most of the value of her will was made up of her home, which, even in the provincial capital of Victoria had appreciated in value considerably in just the past few years. Luke had no knowledge of those sorts of affairs, only a vague and indeterminate, almost visceral disgust whenever hearing news of some tremendous year-over-year increase in prices. Now, in a position to benefit from those increased prices, in at least some small way, he'd come to think they all felt a little guilty. This became clear not right away, but a little later when Lauren and Luke were on the ferry, heading for the island to attend Michelle's wedding. They went over together, to cut down on travel costs. They sat in the cab of his truck the whole trip and the ferry's crew let them, even though it was supposedly no longer allowed. And as they spoke there was the gentle yet overpowering whirring and grinding of the ship's engines. "...But I feel like it's wrong of me to gain from her death," she said, "like I can't bring myself to cash the cheque." Without skipping a beat he said, "I'd be willing to take that burden for you," but in with a sly, sideways sort of look that made clear his humorous intent. It was only a short time before it'd all come out, and still he was entirely ignorant of the fact that Lauren already knew of Jordan and him, that they all knew and had all known for almost as long as Jordan and he had been together. But even if he had known, then, the moment wouldn't have changed much, if at all. Lauren was a wreck, the light behind her eyes having dimmed just a little bit, just enough to be noticeable, although Luke couldn't have said for sure exactly when this'd happened, if at all.

On this day, in the middle of an unusually long and cold winter, Vincent was on his way to the union's hall to take part in a vote on the proposed new agreement between the union and the company. After having graduated from high school by the narrowest of margins, Vincent had worked one job or another, happening himself through his twenties, until beginning his thirties still working, still earning only just enough to keep himself alive. Even now, as he'd come to travel to vote on his union's next agreement, he felt as though he was experiencing a state of consciousness somehow altered, altered not by booze or drugs but by something far more nefarious. The drive over to the union hall took Vincent over a bridge which afforded him a good view of this part of the city. Off the north end of the bridge, clouds of industrial smoke spewed from stacks clustered around different factories and shops, seeming to blend into the deep grey sky. Although there was no visible smoke far beyond the sources, a drive over the bridge was always marked by the same thick, acrid stench filling the cab of his truck, the drawing in of this thick acrid stench producing in him a deep-seated anxiety, a knotting of the muscles in his stomach and the stretching of his skin white against his knuckles as he gripped the wheel tight. But this was the same reaction he'd always had when driving across this very same bridge to work every day, five or six days a week, his commute taking him mostly the same direction as to the union hall until a critical turn this way instead of that. He was a rather conservative driver, adhering rigidly to the rules of the road, but keeping right to make way for anyone who didn't Over the bridge and along the highway he felt every little bump and groove on the highway's pitch-black surface, his truck's rotten front shocks seeming to amplify each. After the vote was to be taken, it would be clear that the results had been essentially predetermined, which left Vincent even more embittered, working as he did the next several weeks rather depressed that all his efforts over the last three years, almost three years had been wasted. Well, he decided, no more. No more would he stick his neck out for his so-called brothers and sisters. When next confronted, however, with crisis, Vincent would find no good options, either for himself or for his brothers and sisters in union.

When the reception had ended, Luke drove with Lauren back to the ferry terminal, as they were waiting in their lane to drive onto the ferry an uncomfortable silence settling between them. Jordan had decided to stay a few more days on the island, then come back over as a foot passenger. Luke wondered whether anyone had told Jordan yet, as Lauren had told him, which made him, in turn, wonder if she, too, was wondering whether anyone had told him. He couldn't help but think on the absurdity of it all, given as he was, as he'd always been to moments of introspection at exactly the wrong time. No one was sure of anything, but in this state of mind he'd become dead certain of his relationship with Jordan, secret as it was from all but a few trusted friends. It was time to 'come out,' he'd realized, even as everyone or nearly everyone in their family had already realized they were doing something together a long time ago. They couldn't live a lie, even one as theirs, no matter how hard they wanted to try, no matter how they might've wanted to, no matter how either one of them might've come to honestly believe in the lies they'd told themselves. Later, after Luke and Jordan had gone home and resumed their daily lives, he made an experiment by seeking out the one co-worker who'd never liked him, whom he'd never liked, and told him that his live-in girlfriend was his cousin. This other worker's name was Amardeep, and he was an Indian who'd only emigrated to Canada around ten years earlier. Actually, the act of telling him was somewhat anticlimactic; he said, "a lot of people marry their cousins. It's no big deal." It made Luke think, then, but only for a moment or two that it could've worked. Still at around thirty both Jordan and Luke were given to notions of love as something that could, that should overcome, only to discover, over the next few years of their lives, that it was all an elaborate sham.

On the Island where Jordan had grown up but which Luke had only ever visited there was always that sensibility of being in a place that thought itself much smaller and more tight-knit than it was. The island was just like Vancouver in this way, only its identity crisis inverted, Vancouver thinking itself much grander and more important than it was. Such tension on either side of the Georgia Straits had become an inescapable fact of life for both of them, in his eyes the whole lot of it an unmitigated mess, a disaster that could never be recovered from the shambles it'd become. But not everyone saw it that way. There were plenty of people, maybe even more than not, who looked on the gleaming glass-and-steel towers, the boutique shops whose business couldn't be determined by looking at their storefronts, even the row after row of overpriced apartments as a sure sign the city Jordan and Luke lived in was becoming something more than what it was, that it was in the midst of realizing its aspirations of being something more. At night, sometimes he'd look over at Jordan as she lay in bed, sleeping with the covers half kicked off revealing her bare breasts and her skin which never had the same tone from patch to patch, colours slightly different at a distance but seeming to blend together up close. After the reception he'd have thought she might've already known what Lauren had said to him, what the rest of their family had been saying to each other, but he was too afraid to ask. It made little difference, as she probably just assumed his quietness was the masculine part of him asserting itself, that he was doing what men do. And he let her keep on assuming, because it was easier, or at least less unpleasant, than having to confront expectations and assumptions on himself. In any case, her assumptions were true.

But on the mainland things had come to be not altogether different from things further afield, the city of Vancouver a confusing mess of glass and steel criss-crossed with narrow roads cutting long canyons into the urban landscape. If Jordan and Luke had a future, they would've thought their future could only be in a place like this, not because there weren't a hundred other cities they could've made a go of it in but because they'd always thought of this place as their home. This remained true even as they'd found themselves living in a city increasingly at odds with its own self-image, sleek and modern, yet filled with more secrets, more sins than cities like New York, London, even Tokyo, cities much older and more important. The city itself was a bundle of contradictions, each passing day seeming to twist Vancouver into a more intricate, more dishevelled and chaotic mess, a tangled web of insecurities masquerading as confidence, even arrogance. And people like Jordan and Luke were finding themselves unwelcome in this, the city that'd given them all they'd come to know, all they'd come to love, a city that was not leaving them behind but pushing them away like a slowly-expanding rift at the bottom of the ocean. Increasingly aware, they were both at that age when the possibilities of youth were receding like a distant star fading from the night's sky as it speeds from the Earth as fast as it can. It's a deeply depressing feeling, for them to be confronted with the impending realisation their youth is gone, to look back on all the missed opportunities, all the chances squandered only because they couldn't, when they were young, see past themselves. When Luke was younger, he'd have thought it stupid and banal when older folks expressed a sincere desire to go back and have another shot at their youths, even back into adolescence and the quixotic mix of awkwardness and utter confidence that goes along with being that age. But now, at around thirty, at almost thirty he'd come to see things differently, as he'd come to see things different exactly as Jordan and he were realizing just how different they truly were.

Even though Luke had always been given to love, to romantic notions of giving himself over to someone wholly and selflessly, he'd never been able to put these notions into practice. It's not for lack of trying. When he was younger, he wanted only to be older, then at around twenty-eight he began to look back on himself and wish he could've been younger. It happens to everyone around that age when you're neither young nor old, and he'd liked to imagine it passes sooner or later. But he couldn't say for certain as he'd yet to have reached that point in his life when he began dating his own cousin. As for Jordan, well, she was a few years older than him but just as unsure of herself, even if she did a better job of hiding it than him. At one of her favourite restaurants in all Vancouver, she'd spot a friend and invite him to their table, then spend some time chatting him up while he kept on sitting in awkward silence, poking at his food, she looking over nervously every few seconds as if to implore him to say something, anything at all. But it wasn't until they were alone again that he could let my guard down and show himself to her, having only taken to trusting her at the exact moment he decided he'd fallen in love with her. It'd come out later, some weeks or months later that she'd already told one of her sisters about the two of them, but even then she wouldn't say which one.

It might be hard to reconcile the image of a strapping young man, strong and confident with that of a man inwardly anxious at the thought of real human intimacy, but then Luke was at nearly thirty around that age when he'd already started to come to grips with the bundle of contradictions and idiosyncrasies that make up the personalities of real people. Jordan was the same way. In this way, it was like they were perfectly suited for each other at that exact moment in each of their lives that each of their lives came to meet. This might've been why none of their family were at all surprised when they 'came out' to them; they already knew them both in ways you can know a person without them ever being aware of it. On the ferry back to the mainland, they made the second-to-last sailing of the night. The upper car deck was mostly empty, and the lineup at the cafeteria took only a few minutes to clear. So late at night, when you sit inside the brightly-lit passenger decks right at the bow, you can't see anything in the distance for all the blackness of the night. Jordan and Luke talked on the ferry home, but they said very little, while half-listening to the thrum of the ferry's engines reverberating through the deck beneath their feet. "I'm thinking of moving," Jordan said, more than an hour and a half into the sailing. Already there was the glittering golden glow of the lights on shore, the terminal and the container port alongside one another. "Somewhere like Chilliwack," she said, "far enough away from Vancouver to cut down on living expenses but still close enough to drive into the city often." Admittedly, Luke was still only half-listening, even as they sat on either side of a small table. For all the empty seats on that ferry it almost seemed they were alone. But work was to intrude. Although he didn't—wouldn't?—answer right then, at the time he wouldn't even consider moving an hour and a half out of town, out of the only city he'd ever really thought of as home. From the trepidation barely hidden behind her voice, she must've known this, must've expected hos reluctance, even as she was only testing the waters, cold and brackish though they were. As the straits between them had grown more distant, he thought there was nothing left to say that night.

As their grandmother had been the last surviving member of their family's eldest generation, both Luke and Jordan had now confronted the very real possibility that they, too, would one day become the eldest of an increasingly fragmented family. Their grandparents had been the last generation capable of forming and maintaining healthy, stable relationships. Their parents had each divorced, with his fighting bitterly and hers not altogether friendly with each other. Although it was a while before Luke and Jordan were to get married and have children, even already Luke had hoped that he would've been able to succeed where his mother and father had failed so miserably. Arriving back at their small apartment, Luke thought to tell Jordan what Lauren had said to him, but then thought not to spoil the moment when she pushed him down onto the bed underneath her and had herself at him. For all their posturing, for all the trappings of adulthood they'd surrounded themselves with, being as they both were around the age of thirty, whenever they were alone together the teenagers in them seeming to reappear. It was as though they'd never grown up at all.

Chapter Four

A few months after taking their daughters home from the hospital, Jordan and Luke had little to say or do for a while, in that time much happening. A light rain fell on the city, the kind of rain that falls almost as a thick drizzle. After the last of the late-summer's heat had faded, the season resolutely refused to cool, as if the summer had reluctantly accepted its failure but had refused to cede any ground to its rivals. Jordan and Luke couldn't find any other apartments with at least two bedrooms that were within their budget, not in Vancouver at peak insanity, and they were consigned to living as a family of four in a one-bedroom place for the time being. Truth be told, Luke came under the distinct impression that Jordan hadn't been looking, not even glancing through any listings despite the minimum of effort needed to do such a thing. But he didn't press the matter, partly because he had little energy for anything even vaguely resembling confrontation. "It's not the separate bank accounts," he said, "I don't care about things like that, I honestly don't." He said this as he was changing the girls diapers, one then the next, with Jordan sitting on the couch in their little apartment's main room. As they'd neared the birth of their daughters, they found themselves getting rid of a lot of their possessions to make room for baby things, then again when they realised Jordan was to deliver twins. "Well what is it then?" he asked, picking the girls up, one in each arm. The room was warm, too warm, with beads of sweat trickling down the small of his back. "I know you've got some basic concerns," she said, "but you won't have to worry about that. It might take a little while longer than I expected to find work." And he said, "that's perfectly fine, I'm fine to keep on going as is for a while." But hidden behind these attempts at maintaining a healthy and normal relationship was the spectre of something far more sinister. In the time it'd taken Jordan to sink into the depths of a dulled, muted depression, even someone like Luke couldn't have imagined a harsher crash than what'd transpired in the city all around them.

Soon, it was only a few years after barely graduating from high school, and Tony Zhou was essentially homeless. A few years had passed, but to Tony these years were a blur. What struck Tony the hardest was the sudden eviction of his mother from that little apartment where she'd lived for as long as he could remember. It wasn't an eviction, per se; the landlord claimed that essential renovations were necessary to bring the old apartment up to code, renovations that couldn't be performed on any of the suites while they were occupied. Management had been obligated by the law to help her find a new place to stay; in practice, this meant they presented her with three or four ads for rental places and told her to call. "You have no place to go," said his mother, "and you can't tell me where I should go." After having been at odds with his own mother for the better part of his life, it was only fitting that they should keep on being at each other's throats even through this crisis. "Will I see you on Sunday?" asked his mother, asking him to consider coming back to the church he hadn't been to in years. "Of course not," said Tony, before leaving the same way he'd arrived. Although Tony was quite troubled by his mother's imminent eviction he let nothing show, instead heading to the liquor store on his way home. At his little apartment there were empty bottles littered across the floor, across every table and shelf, a small forest of amber and brown glass. Whenever he'd accumulate more bottles, he'd turn over each and collect the last few drops from every one into a single glass, enough for another shot's worth of booze, only to then leave the bottles littered across the floor to repeat the process some days or weeks later. It never really mattered to him whether he was inflicting any long term damage to his body; as a young man in his mid to late twenties, he had only the vaguest awareness of his own mortality. He found no solidarity in the increasingly panicked and frantic attempts by the remaining working people around him to hold fast against the deluge of construction crews, 'for sale' signs, and developers whose true loyalties were hidden behind a bureaucracy opaque and near-infinitely complex.

Several more months were to pass before Jordan's maternity benefits ran out, but still she seemed to spend most of her days in bed or on the couch, as though she'd become unable to muster the energy to move. Although the daughters continued to demand much of hers and Luke's energies, he never seemed to tire for want of a changed diaper or a load in the laundry. It became a routine to spend weekends caring for the girls, then all week, ten, twelve hours a day at work. Even sometimes he took a shift on Saturday, thinking to make even more overtime, for the sake of paying for a family of four. "That's not right," she said, "it's not right at all." Without knowing what she was talking about, he set the groceries on the counter and approached the girls. It'd been several weeks since they'd taken the two home, and in that time very little had changed outwardly even as much had changed beneath the surface. "They're so well behaved," he said, "they don't ever seem to cry much at all." But for the constant thrum of the city fading in through the background, the room seemed to Luke to be perfectly silent for the first time in recent memory. He'd expected new children to be screaming and wailing at all hours of the night, but the twins Sylvia and Sandra had both quieted when they saw him enter the apartment. They'd been crying, but they stopped when they saw him. He supposed it mightn't have been long before they learned to interpret the opening of the door as a sign he was home. It made him feel like he was doing something worthwhile each and every day. But he saw that it made Jordan feel worse, from the way she'd seem to sink slightly lower after he'd come home every day.

It all meant something, although so young a woman as Aaliyah couldn't perceive what except in the vaguest of ways. Several years had passed since Aaliyah had first flown alone, something which she'd done for the first time long after the September 11th attacks had changed the world forever. Like everyone else around her age, she had no frame of reference against which she could compare the changes that'd taken place in the meantime, making her part of that first generation who couldn't remember the true horrors of so traumatic an experience, as the day when an entire way of life had been brought down. "What are we supposed to do?" asked the thirty-something man sitting in the seat in front of Aaliyah, "scrutinise every single little action to make sure it's okay under policy?" The thirty-something man was speaking on his cell phone, after having walked down the airplane's aisle, put his bag in the overhead bin, and sat down seemingly without having missed a beat in the conversation he was having with whoever was on the other end. "So corporate asked us to do a five-minute review," said the man, "and then they'll send in a lawyer to teach us something we already know. Whenever they send me on these trips they always fly me economy." But Aaliyah's thoughts were hardly focused as the plane had landed, rather scattered like grains of sand in the ocean. Now, after having returned home and begun the new year, what would be her year in the eleventh grade, there seemed to her something different about herself and the things that she was capable of perceiving, even if she couldn't articulate it as such. Something was to happen to her over the course of the school year, something which she wouldn't have wanted to talk with anyone about, something which'd seemed to make the air and the sights and the sounds all around her different in perception even as those very things remained as they'd been the year before, and the year before that, and the year before that.

It was still too warm out for Luke's liking, even with the windows open all the way. It seemed as though the remnants of the summer's heat were fighting to escape inside from the steadily-encroaching fall. "Since when did you know anything about hardware?" she asked. "Since I had to," he said, "you learn a lot when you can't afford this or that." He was referring to his years in university and immediately after; in university he'd subsisted largely on student loans and part time work, and after he'd graduated the student loans stopped coming in. It was a very difficult time in his life that he's never cared much to share with anyone, not even his own wife. "Well, I won't stop you if you want to give it a try," she said, turning back to the couch. "I think I will," he said. It was around this time that the city they lived in was in the midst of an identity crisis, unsure of itself yet never surer of what it thought it ought to be. Jordan and Luke had had many discussions on the future they could look forward to in Vancouver, each discussion seeming longer yet shallower than the last. A plan, at some point, had been agreed on to leave the city and move to another part of the province of British Columbia, with each day that passed seeming to make them surer than the last that they were to leave one day. As the city became crowded by a dizzying array of glass and steel towers, many times unfinished as yet finished, a bitterness had come to emanate from the remaining few sections of untouched urban area, small and out of the way though these may have been.

In the city of Surrey a gang war was said by the media to be underway, although Kit had never seen any direct evidence of it. There were many stories in the media, on the local television news and in newspapers, of murders, of exchanges of gunfire with deaths and injuries, but no one had ever seemed to see any of it. "I didn't come here today expecting to fall in love," said Kit. "And you ain't gonna do that either," said Josh. The woman with whom Kit had fallen in love with, or so he believed, was one of the supervisors at this particular construction site. Her name was Reva, although he wouldn't have known her last name. She'd made a habit out of sleeping with some of the temporary labourers, including Josh, with the knowledge that any of the temporary workers who proved to be a problem could simply be stamped as non-returnable and sent back to the agency. Josh had slept with her a few times since coming to work at this particular job site, and he hoped to sleep with her many more times before work at this job site ended. But what Josh couldn't bring himself to accept was that she meant nothing by the little times they'd spent alone in her office. Although Reva spent most of the day on site, supervising the workers directly, there were times when she'd withdraw into her office and not come out for up to an hour. It didn't matter to Kit and the others when she'd send some of the workers home at the end of their shifts without knowledge or notion of when they'd return, as he kept on getting his. But after a few weeks had passed and the work had kept on coming, Reva had told Kit she couldn't treat him any differently, or else she'd have to let him go. It was intimated during this conversation that this was a principled stance on her part, that no one should receive preferential treatment because they were sleeping with the boss; although Kit would come to see that this was her skilful manipulation of him, he didn't at the time know how to take it which made him take it at face value. By the time he deduced the truth, it'd be too late for him to do anything about it, if there was ever anything he could've done.

As Jordan had never lived in Vancouver during her childhood, she had nothing to compare her current experience to. As Luke had spent nearly all my life in the city, it seemed to be so unlike what he'd come to remember from this childhood. For several years since he'd graduated university he'd thought of leaving the city, keeping these thoughts in the back of his mind even as he'd taken a series of steps that made sure he never would go through with it. Although Jordan and Luke had agreed to leave the city soon after they'd first hooked up, something inevitably came up time after time to delay these agreed-upon plans. They took their daughters to see his GP, a middle-aged Asian lady who'd been his GP as long as he could remember. Only a few weeks after they'd brought their daughters into the world, a terrible crisis had emerged, one which threatened the world both Jordan and Luke had thought they'd brought their daughters into. Suddenly, problems like the failing restaurant where Jordan had worked and Luke's desire to escape the city in which he'd lived most of his life seemed so distant and so small. But there were moments when Luke would've considered that he had a future in the city of Vancouver after all, that he was mistaken for ever wanting to leave the city in which he'd spent most of his life. This was the power of memory, the power of Luke's and Jordan's memories to reach back and change each of their experiences. "It's probably going to go under before I run out of mat leave," said Jordan, referring to the restaurant where she'd worked for some time. They were talking at home, on the weekend, a rare weekend when Luke had neither gone in to work on Saturday or Sunday. "Well," said Luke, not really thinking about what he was saying, "you can just use up your mat leave and then look for a new job." But Jordan only shook her head and said, "you don't understand." She was right.

It was a cutthroat world, the world of graduate studies, except that it wasn't. This Stephanie had begun to realise only after having spent the better part of a few months working earnestly and honestly. "We're up all night," said her roommate, a young man named Clark, "so don't worry about it." She wanted to reply, to say something about it, but said nothing. Later, talking to herself, Stephanie said, "I just hate this city, so much." Although she didn't mean it, not the way she thought, it seemed to her the right thing to say. Her roommate was even younger than she, only three years out of high school and already earning a decent wage working as a plumber. Sometimes Stephanie would think to ask him why he still needed a roommate if he was doing so well for himself, but she'd always caught herself. From a very young age she'd been taught separately by her mother and father that it was impolite at best to ask all but the most intimate of relations about their money. It was precisely this sensibility that compelled her to keep quiet about her own problems, for which there were no solutions, none she could see. After having relied on student loans to see her through undergraduate, she'd accumulated more than forty thousand in debt, not counting the fifteen thousand worth of trouble she'd gotten into with credit cards at one point. After making it home one night just minutes before midnight, she was acutely aware of the need to fall asleep as quickly as possible, the following day calling for her to be up at five in the morning and not a minute later. But she couldn't sleep, she just couldn't, nor would she try to. Instead, she poured herself a glass of vodka, intending only to use it to help her de-stress. This was to be the first of many missteps for Stephanie, a small beginning which would lead inevitably to personal disaster.

After they were first told about it, neither Jordan nor Luke knew what to do about it, although they agreed to keep on working through it. As the whole country began to drown in an ocean of red ink, the immediate threat became the possibility of Luke losing his job, and with it the only real means of providing for their two daughters; although Jordan was receiving maternity benefits, these amounted to only a small stipend compared to the cost of living, insufficient on a monthly basis even to cover the cost of their rent on a one-bedroom apartment in the city of Vancouver. On a late-summer's Sunday, Jordan and Luke were at home when they first heard the news. "It's never the people really responsible who have to suffer," he said. "It doesn't really matter," she said, "all of this is meaningless." A pause. "Do you remember where you were when the nine-eleven attacks took place?" he asked. "Of course I do," she said, before asking, "don't you?" As he was only about three years younger than her, he supposed she might've thought it at least possible that he didn't. The nine-eleven attacks had been a deeply personal moment for all those who had been old enough to be capable of later remembering them, Luke and Jordan included. Such a deeply personal and yet overwhelmingly impersonal event had had a chilling effect which could ripple across generations, taking many more such generations before any real progress could be made in mending the damage. Although the city had become desperately unaffordable there was still no end in sight. There were streets entirely devoid of residents, apartment blocks emptied to make way for glittering new glass and steel towers that were never to be built. Luke's and Jordan's apartment was located in one of the neighbourhoods with many lots surrounded by rented fencing, put up by crews hired by companies in anticipation of funding that would never arrive.

Vincent Reyes' family had emigrated to Canada from the Philippines when he was very young, too young to remember, which made Vancouver the only home he'd ever known. But all this was rather distant to a young man like Vincent, consumed as he'd become in presenting the best possible face to the brothers and sisters at the hall. He wasn't sure what kind of crowd to expect, save his assurances from the rep that there'd be a larger crowd than their last meeting at the hall more than a year prior. That was the meeting to nominate and vote on representatives to the bargaining committee, as well as to discuss topics for bargaining, things they'd like to see in the next contract. All this is rather dry and sterile, lacking in the kind of emotional weight that Vincent had come to associate it with. Each of the men and women who were to turn up at this particular meeting had their own reasons for doing so, their own reasons for voting one way or the other, although their reasons for voting one way or the other were largely unimportant to leadership who were determined to get the agreement passed as it was rather than as anyone might've wanted it to be. After Vincent had returned to work and witnessed the unceremonious adoption of the new agreement, he felt hardly able to summon the energy to keep up with his duties as steward. He received numerous requests to file grievances from his so-called brothers and sisters, but judged most of them to be nothing more than personal gripes; these he refused to file or directed the complainant to another steward. Speaking to one of his friends outside work, Vincent said, "I think I need to start looking for another job," before quickly adding, "and I need to find a wife as well." His mother in particular had been pressuring him for years to find a nice woman, ideally another Filipino or, failing that, at least another Catholic. "You can't pursue everything you want," said his friend, "you've got to pick one." This was something that Vincent had come to accept only recently, as he'd been rejected by his brothers and sisters to the bargaining committee the notion occurring to him that working so tirelessly for the union was coming at a deeply personal cost.

But the city was caught in the midst of an identity crisis, sure of itself, yet seemingly aware of its own lack of surety. Some of the city's most expensive condos stood towering over red-brick apartment blocks filled with cockroaches and silverfish, the sidewalks between littered with used syringes and indeterminate stains. This combination may not have been an invention of the city of Vancouver, and it may have been precisely the banality of even these jarring contrasts that made them all the more jarring. "The girls have a lot to look forward to," Luke said, "there are a lot of important milestones. Thank God they're so healthy, right?" But Jordan wouldn't reply, not right away. "What's going on?" he asked. "What do you mean?" she asked. "You don't seem like yourself lately," he said. "Well," she said, seeming to take great care in choosing her words as she spoke, "having two kids at the same time takes a lot out of you." "I'm still in love with you," he said, "just like it was the day we first got together." A thread that had been running for the last several years through the background seemed at once to disappear. "Do you think they'll have a nine-eleven?" he asked. "It doesn't really matter," she said, before asking, "does it?" It seemed like a strange question to ask of me, an evasive, non-response that revealed much even as it revealed nothing at all. By the time their daughters were fully grown, they'd learn to be rather blasé about the rise and fall of the way and life which still seemed so new and so raw to people like Luke and Jordan.

On the other side of the street across from Luke's and Jordan's apartment sat a small chapel, ensconced between two shops. Across the city, entire blocks had been cleared of shops, lots, and decades-old apartments that'd stood a modest two or three storeys. In a mad dash to make money before the bottom inevitably fell out, a vast and confusing array of companies had begun the laborious process of erecting their slick, glass and steel monuments to nothing at all, replacing what'd been with something that could never be. An article appeared in the local news, replicated many times over by many publications, had been carefully crafted to convey the impression that these churches benefited from the dramatic increase in prices of so much real estate. And it was true; these churches, they'd traded in their souls for a moment's riches. But a thirty-something woman named Emily Liu was a pastor, her church an exception to the phenomenon of the trading of souls for riches, as had most churches throughout the city. It'd once used the facilities of a local branch of the Salvation Army, only to find themselves evicted for reasons never fully explained to them. Now, they'd come to occupy a small shop, used by its former owner to house an import/export store that never seemed to have any customers at all. The move had been simple, as there were no facilities or equipment to transfer from the Salvation Army facility which they'd never owned. Later, some months after they'd moved, the Salvation Army would sell the property to a developer who purchased it sight unseen; the developer wanted the land, and shortly after the purchase was completed and the property's title was transferred two signs would appear out front, one signifying a red rezoning application and the other a blue development permit application. It was a regular feature of the urban landscape throughout Vancouver, but one which maintained its ability to depress spirits despite its ubiquity. Emily had said, once, to her friends that, "I wonder if they'd already sold the place even when we were still inside." But her friend, her friend had said, "they wouldn't do that." And Emily had only said, "I'm not so sure." That particular friend would be the one who had earlier persuaded her to take a part time job as a realtor, to supplement her work as a pastor. This was something Emily had justified at the time by claiming the same need to eat as anyone else, her meagre pay as a pastor insufficient for these purposes. Almost immediately, she'd come to regret making this decision, and it was for this reason that her heart had never been in it.

But Jordan seemed unconvinced. "You don't actually believe that," she said, "do you?" "I've got to," he said. Right away it became obvious that she'd become someone else, someone besides the outgoing, happy-go-lucky woman he'd fallen in love with only a couple of years before. And with that in mind he refused to consider the extent of the implications of what he'd done, what'd been said, even after having been confronted with irrefutable evidence on Jordan's steadily mounting depression. It was around this time that a young woman named Jennifer showed up at the shipping office which Luke reported to at the warehouse where he worked. Actually, she'd been working there for a couple of years already, but had only recently switched from night to day shift, only over the past few weeks coming to work in the same space as Luke. It started as most such things tend to start, with a chance encounter in the office on the warehouse floor at work. Luke had begun working longer hours, during the busiest times of the year putting in twelve hour days, four or five days a week, then volunteering to come in on Saturday for another eight hours. The young woman Jennifer, who had long blond hair that seemed to flow down to the small of her back and deep blue eyes, seemed at once to capture Luke's attention, in the way he sort-of looked at her out of the corner of his eye whenever he passed the shipping office, whether on foot or on one of the forklifts they operated. Like all men, he tried to surreptitiously check her out, only for his glances to be so obvious as to be immediately obvious to her. But she seemed to be taken by this. When they spoke at the end of their first shift together, they exchanged ordinary small talk, rather banal introductions but with Luke detecting a little glint in her eye that suggested the possibility of something more. "I'm glad to have met you," she said, at the end of their first conversation together. "I was glad to meet you too," said Luke. Before they parted she quickly looked him up and down, while simply looked at her. He felt as though it was nice to simply make contact in a friendly way with another, with a young woman so pleasant and affable as her. He thought about this as he drove home, then made his way up the stairs of the building in which he lived, still ruminating on it as he entered the apartment he shared with his depressed, her steadily mounting depression, and their two daughters.

By the end of the summer the young man Martin Hall had firmly cut ties with his mother and father, not because he wanted to but because he was too embarrassed to speak with them any longer. He was the sort of young man so headstrong and stubborn that he could choose to cut his own path through a metre-thick layer of snow and ice rather than accept any help. It was deep into the winter's season, with a layer of frost and ice seeming to cover every patch of exposed concrete, seeming to intricately coat every blade of grass. The parking lot outside work was massive, and its with afforded Martin and the other workers the chance to have one last meaningless conversation, one last independent thought before being immersed in the endless expanse of stuffiness and subdued conformity that was the maze of cubicles in which they all worked. Sometimes Martin arrived early; he always arrived early, sometimes even earlier than others. He worked at a call centre, in a massive structure that'd once been a warehouse but which had been repurposed to take customer complaints for online retailers from across the world. He was one of the few regular employees there, most of the rest being temporary workers forwarded from an agency, sent to man the lines during the busiest shopping season of the year. All of the temporary workers had been offered the possibility of being 'hired on' after the holiday season was through, although virtually none would be. In fact, there'd been years before the exactly zero temporary workers would be 'hired on' after the holiday crunch had ended. But all this remained somewhat distant and antiseptic to young men like Martin Hall, young men who were made to be concerned only with where their next experience came from. He was too young to appreciate exactly the full extent of what it meant even to have these experiences, but that made little difference to him, although he couldn't, wouldn't realise it as such. As he walked into work through the main entrance, he jockeyed past a small crowd of these temporary workers, every one of them brown. "Made it just in time," said the young woman in the cubicle next to his, as he sat down, plugged in his headset, and pressed the switch to begin receiving calls.

The rain fell lightly, pattering against the window, somehow the sound of the city seeping through. It had that vague sound of something emanating from the city that infested his mind and made him think these things. Still the young woman Jennifer couldn't pose any serious threat to his marriage, not yet. No more than a few days had passed since the last time Luke had felt truly detached from himself, since the last time he'd felt so numbed to the world at large. In those first few weeks after he and Jordan had come home with the twins, neither of them managed much sleep, one or both of the girls keeping them up at any given time. It's said this is normal, that all newborns don't sleep through the night until several months after birth, but still it seemed to Luke as though something was wrong in their sleeping no more than two or three hours at any time. The young woman Jennifer who'd only recently taken to working during the daytime had not captured Luke's imagination overnight, save the fact that she looked so upbeat, so happy in ways he hadn't known in many months at least. He wanted to know more about her, almost instinctively, his curiosity aroused. They got to talking, about work mostly, a few weeks after they'd first began working together. "I need these checks to get done," she said, "before the end of the shift." She had a small stack of bills, printed-out and then scribbled in her messy handwriting, where she'd crossed out notes and then written new ones, sometimes over and over again. "I'll get right to it," he said, rushing to finish these last-minute checks, speeding from one part of the warehouse to another to check specific locations in the racks, then handing them back in at the office just as his shift was ending. "Thank you," she said, her smile seeming genuine and appreciative. It was so clean, to Luke, the way Jennifer smiled, her smile capturing Luke's imagination and holding it for the rest of the night.

A few months later, the question became how much longer this could be kept up. Although Luke hadn't tired from the arrival of their daughters, nor from the extensive overtime. But the city beyond seemed so relentlessly depressing, cloaked in a permanent yet entirely transparent haze. All around him a forest of gleaming, glass and steel had been erected, seemingly grown in almost overnight. It was as though the city he'd grown up in had been spirited away in the blink of an eye, replaced by a counterfeit city that looked exactly alike but different. Life, it seemed to Luke, had become more complicated even as it'd become simpler than ever. All he knew how to do was work through any problem, and this problem was no different. Even during those moments when he began to contemplate the possibility of unhappiness he still kept on determined to work through this early, difficult period. But the young woman Jennifer wasn't to tempt Luke outright, not yet, still the possibility of future temptation lurking just out of sight.

Chapter Five

The first person Luke and Jordan made it a point of telling in their mutual family, following the funeral of their grandmother, wound up being Jordan's father, David. Actually, Luke wasn't sure how he'd take it. But since everyone likely already knew anyways, it was more important to Jordan and Luke that they looked like they knew what they were doing, afraid as they were of admitting that at around thirty years old they were as lost as a pair of teenagers in love for the first time. David lived in Squamish, a small city about an hour up the highway from Vancouver. He lived in a three-bedroom ranch home, the kind you'd find often in the American south but rarely in Canada. He'd worked most of his life for the Ministry of Transport, laying down highways across the province, from Penticton to Prince George, from Atlin to Agassiz, even from Vancouver all the way out to Valemount. He'd seen it all, and still he'd retired to this little house he'd lived in for decades almost right on the beach. A gruff, rough-shaven man with a big heart, David had been divorced twice, first to Jordan's mother. Four daughters later, and David had about as much as he could take. Jordan had never told Luke why her mother and father divorced. But then neither had Luke ever told her why his mother and father had divorced when he was still a young child myself. As the three of them awkwardly sat through dinner, it seemed none of them were altogether sure where it should end. But this was only Luke's recollection, for David was too experienced in life to take much issue with such a thing as his nephew and his daughter in a relationship with each other. Although the last time they'd seen each other—at Jordan's sister's wedding, not long after the death of their grandmother—had come after David might've seen Luke and Jordan embracing outside the hospital in Victoria, there was some small part of Luke that'd preferred to imagine this was to be the first David would've heard of them. He acted accordingly.

But as a young man in his mid to late twenties with little money, there was nothing Tony Zhou could've done to stop his mother's eviction, nothing he could've done to protect his own mother. What neither Tony nor his mother knew was that the owner of the property had no intention of renovating the building, that a sale would precede the beginning of the planned renovations to a new owner who would simply wait until all residents were gone before tearing the building down. More gleaming, glass and steel condominiums would be built in its place. This was to be done with the blessing of the city, the city of Richmond fully aware of its own expulsion of so many people like Tony and his mother to make way for a better, richer class. Soon, Tony met a young woman who pleaded with him for help. "Don't care," said Tony, "not my problem." But the young woman, whose name Tony had never known before today, persisted. She said, "please, you can help me." But Tony only keep refusing, as he said, "stop bothering me. Just go away and bother somebody else." This was a particularly cold and callous moment, not long after Tony had witnessed his own mother evicted from her apartment. By the time Tony will have seen through this difficult, early period in his life, much will have changed even as nothing will have changed at all. After turning to drink, he deceived himself into thinking, into insisting on thinking himself a 'high-functioning' alcoholic. He kept on working, sometimes driving to work so drunk he saw double. Then he kept on driving to work, always so drunk he saw double. "You can still help me," said the young woman whose name Tony has only recently come to know but still chose not to acknowledge. They kept on running into each other, in the street outside the small apartment he'd come to live in. (It was one of the few such small and simple apartment buildings left in this part of the city of Richmond). She begged him to let her in, but Tony refused, noting the building's policy on not letting anyone without a key. "I don't want to know you," said Tony, "and I don't think there's anything you can do to change my mind."

Arriving at David's home, Luke and Jordan had found David in his garage tinkering with tools on his bench, the garage door open. "Luke," said David, "it's good to see you." But Luke only nodded. They shook hands, and they both made sure to give as firm a grip as possible while Jordan looked on. The smell of cigarette smoke lingered in the air, David having only a few years earlier given up on a lifetime of smoking. The shag carpet was a bronze-brown colour that seemed a slightly different shade in every patch. But the truth was that Luke had little clue what kind of relationship Jordan's three sisters had with their father; even Jordan hadn't told Luke much of anything about her own relationship with him. What little Luke knew had been thatched together by listening to his own mother, Lauren, talk of one of them not speaking to the other, someone up to something at any given time. It'd been a while since he'd last visited his home, and still it looked just the same, sparsely furnished, without even one painting, poster, or framed photograph on the walls. In his kitchen you'd have found as much food as any bachelor, in his medicine cabinet a toothbrush, a tube of toothpaste, and the four or five or six different medications prescribed by his doctor for the various conditions that go along with advancing into his seventies. Thankfully, his oldest granddaughter wasn't there; it'd turn out to be a pure coincidence, that he hadn't made any special accommodations for their visit. This was just another day to him, even as, to Luke and Jordan, it was the first of many awkward and rather uncomfortable meetings. But the two were still madly in love, even if they couldn't bring themselves to see what they must've looked like. With various subjects not yet broached but surely already on the minds of everyone they knew, it came to this one meal where it didn't really matter what they ate.

A young woman like Aaliyah is yet to face a future in which the consequences of so many years of breathless growth and bloodletting will be visited on her and others like her. A city like Vancouver had yet to earn the status of a global city, even as it'd come to desperately seek approval as such a thing. "The first guy says, I'm an astronaut so I drive a Saturn," says the man sitting in the seat directly across the aisle from Aaliyah, "and the second guy says, I'm a pimp so I drive an escort. And the third guy says, I'm a proctologist so I drive a brown probe." Although Aaliyah couldn't hear the voice of the man on the other end of the call, it became evident that the man sitting in the plane directly across the aisle from her was greatly amused by his own antics, belting out a laugh that carried on for a moment too long. It seemed to Aaliyah that everyone in the world was happy but her, with the mixed feelings she'd faced when returning home from the summer making her feel, in turn, isolated, more isolated than usual. As the school year had gotten underway, Aaliyah had begun to act out, fighting in the halls with other young women in the eleventh grade that year who'd seen fit to target her for bullying over her mixed race background. "Is he even your real dad?" asked one girl. Her father didn't often come to school, but somehow it was widely known among her classmates that he was white. When Aaliyah insisted he was, the girl, with her friends standing around her, asked, "how do you know that for sure?" When Aaliyah didn't respond, the girl yelled out, "hey! I'm talking to you!" Aaliyah threw the first punch, but not the last. It was for this reason that she was blamed for starting the fight, and given a suspension.

"Well, I suppose you'll be wanting to tell me about the two of you," said David. "We're really happy with each other," Luke said. "We're in love," said Jordan. "I'm sure you are," said David. In the years since Luke had seen him last, before his youngest daughter's wedding and before the death of his mother, he'd grown into an old man neither bitter nor idealistic, but the sort of old man who'd learned a long time ago to just let things be. But whenever Luke looked over at Jordan, she was seemingly more nervous than he was, poking at her food, sometimes twirling a loose strand of hair. After the evening had passed, it became clear to both Jordan and Luke that there was something beyond themselves, something more going on that neither of them could put their minds to even as they were fully aware of it all. It reminded Luke of one time when he'd visited Jordan, David, and the rest of their family, in those years before David and his first wife, Jordan's mother, were divorced. When they'd lived in a small city in the north of the province, a city called Smithers. Luke never knew why or how the six of them wound up living in that oversized logging town in the mountains along the highway in from the coast, nor why they moved back to the south after only a few years; it was always one of those things neither of them spoke about. But events were in play not only there but across the Georgia Straights that should forever change the world they'd all grown up in, the world they now lived in. While they were still young, while they were still only on the cusp of middle age but not taken up with the resignation of the middle ageds' to becoming old, life still seemed full of possibilities even if those possibilities were nowhere near as imaginative as they'd been just ten years before. Luke could see that David saw that, from the way the old man looked at them when they leaned towards each other and kissed lightly while holding hands on the table, fingers tightly but not too tightly intertwined. It was a strange feeling for Luke, but a feeling that wasn't out of place.

There was a day when Kit had found a bullet on the site, somewhere near the entrance. He'd picked up the bullet and stashed it in his pocket. Words had been stamped onto the base of the shell. These read, 'Tulammo 7.62x39.' He kept the bullet, leaving it in the trunk of his car, intending to throw it out or keep it in his little basement suite somewhere as a memento. "Forget her man," said Josh, "she's got nothing but trouble." But Kit only shook his head and said, "what girl ain't?" Their lifestyles very much resembled those of wage labourers from over a hundred years earlier, selected in the morning for a day's work and then theoretically released from their work in the evening, with no guarantees or promises made. Even as these sorts of concerns had come to dominate the attentions of men like Kit and his new friend Josh, still Kit looked for a sign that his supervisor Reva was there. It was horrible what she was doing, to him and to the other men she'd taken advantage of, even as Kit had come to honestly and truly believe that he was different. Kit was a young man, too young to seriously believe even the things that he would've presented himself as believing. He was consumed by a series of internal contradictions and tensions that even he was largely unaware of, and it was these hidden motivations, these motivations unknown even to him that compelled him to pursue an affair with an older woman. Although he couldn't—wouldn't?—admit it as such, he was coming to fall in love with her. It was precisely this sentiment that she'd cruelly and coldly exploited in him and in the temporary workers that'd come into her office before him. Reva was a deviant in the most despicable and most basic of ways, seeking cruelly to extract whatever pleasure she could from those she'd targeted before discarding them once their use had been exceeded. If Kit had known the truth in her heart then he might not've allowed himself to fall in love with her, not from the occasional meetings for sex they had. Then again, Kit was the sort of young man who was a total slave to his feelings, and he might've well chosen to let himself fall in love anyways had he known. He might've well taken to a belief in the nobility of loving her for who she was, like a soldier bravely marching directly into the enemy's guns. By the time he'd realise the truth, by the time he'd come to have seen her for what she really was, it'd be too late to spare himself any grief.

"In case you were wondering, I don't really care," said David, "it's not that I approve. I just don't care. When you get to be my age you just stop caring about things like that. Whatever it is you wind up doing, just, just make sure you know what you're doing." With an atmosphere less tense than either Jordan or Luke had expected, neither of them were sure about it, caught off guard as they were. It was as if David could tell Luke was in love with her, that she was in love with him, that they were at around thirty as they'd been at thirteen, either of them. Still Luke projected the image of a still-young man confident, even brash, with only the lingering sensation of unease to remind him there might've been another way. No, he was always determined to push through, to ignore—not ignore, but endure—any difficulty, any discomfort and make it through to the other side. But then, with Jordan Luke could see it was different, an entirely different experience in sitting with her father, his uncle, having to explain to him that which she couldn't ever explain, that which she should explain without having to say anything at all. It'd later emerge when Luke and Jordan were alone once more that this was not the first time she'd spoken to her father in years but the first time she'd willingly sat in the same room as him and had a conversation with him, that her sister's wedding and their grandmother's death had put her in the same room as him not by her choice. It's something they had in common, not being able to recall any one home they'd each lived in as children, moving from place to place, never more than a few years in any one spot. In this way, neither Luke nor Jordan had ever really known a home, even as she'd have told you she'd grown up an island girl while Luke was distressed to see the city he'd known become something other than what it ought to be.

But Stephanie didn't come from the city in which she lives, rather from a smaller city deep in the province's interior. It doesn't matter exactly where she's from, because the city she now lives in doesn't care, nor should it. Even the suburban community in which she had come to live was changed from the peaceful, idyllic past it imagined, becoming something altogether different, huge and confused, sprawling up the mountains at its back like an invasive fungus creeping up the trunks of hundred year old trees. That night, it'd been the first of many, with Stephanie somehow managing to keep on working and studying at the university despite an increasingly problematic drinking habit. This was how she'd justified herself and her own behaviour; if she gave up then, the university would find someone else to teach these classes, or to perform the perfunctory work that all graduate students kill themselves over in exchange for the possibility of a letter of recommendation from professors. "Don't ever stop working to better yourself," her father had said, when she was very young, too young to understand exactly what he'd meant. She'd been an only child, and thus carried the weight of both her mother's and father's expectations solely on her shoulders. They'd been very strict, for reasons they'd never told her. When she'd come home for the first time since moving to Vancouver, on a holiday visit, she felt a warmth that'd been absent since. "It's good to see you smile again," her mother had said, only a short time after she'd left home to start her undergraduate studies. "You should smile more often," her mother had said. She'd been only seventeen when she began studying at UBC as an undergraduate, as her birthday fell in early December. "I don't feel much like smiling these days," she'd said, before managing the weakest and thinnest of smiles. Her late-year birthday had always made her smaller than the other children in school, her growth spurt around puberty starting some months after those of the children in her cohort. "Find a reason," her mother had said. It's interesting how children are grouped as though they're manufactured goods, according to model year rather than by something more innately human. "I'll try," Stephanie had said. Now, some years later and in graduate school rather than undergraduate, Stephanie felt torn.

But it wasn't all easy. After an awkward dinner, Jordan and Luke stepped out onto the backyard's deck while David stayed inside to clean. While the three of them were there, the skies were beginning to darken, the twinkling of the stars dulled by the lights running up and down the coast and all along the islands scattered here and there. The trees all throughout the neighbourhood rustled in the brisk wind, Squamish a city like all the others on the coast seemingly built amid a thick forest. More certain of this moment than any other before and any other since, Luke was unknown to my own wife, and although he sought to project an air of calm and confidence it made him feel uncomfortable to be so secretive. While Luke hadn't ever asked to know why Jordan's parents had divorced under less than amicable circumstances, neither had she ever asked why his had done the same. It was one of those things they'd both learned, they'd both been taught throughout their lives to never talk about with anyone, as if these sort of things were shameful. "Actually," said David, "I'm sort of relieved." "Relieved?" Luke asked. "After all the guys she'd brought home, I'm glad she wound up with a guy like you," he said, "you've got a good head on your shoulders. Once everyone gets over the fact that you're cousins, they'll see you're a good influence on her. You might be the one who could make a difference." Thinking quickly, Luke said, "I'll do my best." And David said, "that's all any of us can do." There was more, there's always more, but after Luke had been through the most important part, all the rest began to seem much easier than it'd been. "I've been here for years," said David, "long before the hipsters, yuppies, and tourists took over and started putting up all those damn condos everywhere." "I know what you mean," Luke said, "I'm just old enough to remember what Vancouver used to look like." That was before Vancouver was so expensive, although he still remembered—owing to the vague, uncertain sort of way a child is capable of committing things like that to memory—certain people complaining about how expensive everything seemed to be. Back then, there were still some glass-and-steel towers erected in spots throughout the city, only not nearly as many as there'd come to be in the twenty years that'd passed. They avoided talking about Jennifer's mother and father having become divorced; if it was hoped that Luke's and Jordan's generation would turn away from dysfunction of their mothers and fathers then it seemed to Luke as though David must've had his hopes for Jordan dashed by the sudden emergence of Luke's relationship with the only daughter he hadn't seen married or have children.

Like many of his fellow workers, Vincent lived in a small, simple apartment that took up a large portion of his income in rent. Like most of his fellow workers, he lived in a small, simple apartment across the street from a luxury condo development, the latter standing out from its surroundings like some medieval castle surrounded by a clustering of peasant shacks. Ever since the condos had opened for occupation, there'd been a marked increase in unrecognisable cars parked in the street, cars parked in the street despite ample parking built into the condos' huge parking garage underground. A few of the vehicles were marked with Quebec license plates, driven by drivers who spoke neither English nor French but Chinese, who'd gotten into the country by way of an investment scheme and some very creative accounting. The short, three story apartment blocks that made up the rest of the neighbourhood were rather run down in comparison, wood and concrete buildings all coloured either a faded grey or brown. These working class apartment blocks had once been the dominant feature of the city's urban landscape, but now had given way to gleaming forests of empty glass and steel towers. Vincent had moved into his current residence, on the third floor of exactly such an apartment block, only some years earlier. Vincent had two brothers and two sisters, but was the only one without any memory of life in the Philippines. Vincent was the only one of the five who hadn't yet married. But Vincent, like many others in his family, had long become a lapsed Catholic, loathe to return to church but equally loathe to turn his back on it as a way of life. The church's teachings had an almost insidious way of influencing the very way its members and their children thought, creating in them a shame that knew no bounds. Now, after having witnessed the vote and earlier rejected by his so-called brothers and sisters, Vincent was taken aback by an exchange with one worker. "Have you gotten your vacation request back?" asked Vincent, who hadn't. "I'm not sure," said the worker. "You're not sure if you have been given your request back?" asked Vincent. "Well you never tell me anything," said the worker, "and you always say you're not sure when I ask you something." Vincent thought about it for a half second, then said, "fuck you," and walked away. He'd been treated rather poorly by some of the workers, and he was sick of it. For so long as he thought he'd be able to advance, he'd put up with it. That time had ended when he'd come in third of three candidates. But it wasn't over, not yet.

On the long way home, Luke and Jordan stopped on the highway to take a rest. It was a strange kind of almost-fraud, the state of mind where they both realized how pathetic it was for either of them to be so determined to cling to their youths that they couldn't help themselves from acting like a pair of teenagers. "That's the first time I've spoken to him in years," said Jordan, breaking the almost-silence. "Really?" Luke asked. "Well, sort of," she said, "the first time I've said anything meaningful with him." But on the cusp of thirty, Luke had become acutely aware of himself. And Jordan was not there yet, Luke could tell only by the look in her eyes whenever they traded glances. In his truck on the drive back to Vancouver, they hardly spoke, yet they said so much to each other, the road making real conversation difficult but not impossible. Arriving home, they took to bed not right away, instead she making for the shower while he sat on the couch. It was a time of great uncertainty, even as it seemed everyone in the city was dead certain of themselves, if nothing else. Whenever Luke drove past some obscure little spot in the city that he'd not seen in years, each spot was nearly unrecognizable to him, fields left vacant only a few years earlier now occupied by towering structures, glass and steel shells, some half-built, some seeming to be permanently incomplete. It wasn't all that long ago when the city was a little more assured of itself. Back when Vancouver was contented in its identity as a sleepy, provincial city, before it became the huge and confused mess that it is today, it was still rather confused. For Luke and Jordan, still in the early period of their almost-relationship, the first hump had been overcome. It became easy for Luke and Jordan to deceive themselves into thinking this relatively easy period had proven them capable of withstanding any future trauma. But it wasn't so simple as that, it couldn't have ever been so simple as that for them.

One day, early in the new year a young man by the name of Christian Mullins rose to face a freshly laid coat of snow seeming to cover every surface outside. The winter so far had proven unusually mild, even by Vancouver's standards, which has meant little in the way of snowfall until now. The first snow that'd fallen in the night had been only a light dusting, sure to melt within a day or two. In the meantime, Christian had enough warm clothing to stay safe through this period. He slept in various places, often in unoccupied nooks in the city's alleys, sometimes under overpasses, still sometimes along railroad tracks. He'd learned not to fear the night, not even these coldest winter nights, but the day that beckoned with the possibility of invasion by hostile forces. This was one of the things that most of the other residents of the city preferred not to think about; although they knew in the abstract that people like Christian existed, they preferred to keep them at a distance, out of sight. The same people who perhaps came from a hopelessly impoverished background somewhere else in the world had come to prefer ignorance. Such a young man as Christian Mullins has only been on the streets for a short time, a few months, and in that time he's come to feel the chill not only On a particular day, Christian had made his way through the streets. He'd come across a police patrol, two young officers he'd never seen before. The younger looking of the two, an Asian woman, said, "the only way I can get the shift that I want is to volunteer for foot patrol, and that means coming into this place." The other officer, an older white man, said, "I wouldn't worry too much about it. These surges happen all the time. They only last as long as it takes for the police to be seen to do something, while larger forces continue their work.

A middle aged man named Clarence McDowell hadn't been out of work for very long when he'd realised the futility of trying. After having driven trucks across the Canadian west for decades, he'd seen it coming long before he'd found himself out of work. All the trucking companies simply weren't interested in hiring men like him, no matter how low the wages. It wasn't about wages. It'd never really been about wages. All they wanted were young men from India, brought into the country on student visas, then put to work driving overnight from Vancouver to Edmonton and then back the next day. At one point in his years as a truck driver, Clarence had noticed that all the trucking companies had simply stopped hiring Canadian workers, seeking instead to hire only Indians, who would work for low pay and under terrible working conditions. For years Clarence had complained to his wife, and for years before that to his union rep that the Indian drivers were working longer hours than was legally allowed, driving in teams of three or four, sleeping in shifts so the vehicle was always in motion. But these things were largely ignored, even after, perhaps especially after the catastrophic accident in Saskatchewan that'd killed almost every member of a junior hockey team. If there would've been a single incident that should've provoked a crackdown on underpaid, overworked, underqualified truck drivers on Canada's highways, Clarence would've been sure that should've been it. But nothing changed. Nothing changed. The same set of circumstances which produced so horrific a disaster were meant to produce a much more horrific disaster in the impoverishment of millions just like Clarence. "I know you didn't mean for it to be this bad," said Clarence, speaking back then to his union rep, "but it's not my problem. You haven't gotten me shit." It was a problem, the use of Indian workers to take union jobs, and it was a problem that Clarence and many of the others who'd once driven Western Canada's highways had wanted dealt with many years ago. Now, he knew, it was too late.

Although Emily Liu had been coming to this small, nondescript church for many years, even she had now been tempted stray. Like so many others, Emily had taken a job as a realtor, selling property at vastly inflated prices, or trying to. By the time she'd determined to jump into the gold rush, all the easy money had been made. It's like that in any gold rush; by the time you hear about it, it's over. Emily had been engaged to a Ugandan man around her age by the name of Dwight. "Alright," said Dwight, "we all got to do something." They were having lunch, in the midst of a particularly difficult time for Emily; she hadn't sold a property in almost three weeks. Dwight drove an old Rolls Royce, which he'd bought used at a police auction; he was told the car had been owned by a businessman whose business had gone under only a few years ago. Dwight would sometimes tell Emily that there were far worse off people than even the worst they saw on a regular basis, but it wasn't always easy for her to maintain that kind of perspective. For his part, Dwight often talked of setting up his own record label to produce and release hip hop and pop music; he characterised the music he'd like to produce as like the Black Eyed Peas with an urban twist. "There's nowhere I'd rather be," Emily would say, "than right here." Although some might've thought this a lie she'd have simply told herself, to make herself feel better in a feeble attempt to ward off mounting gloom, this wasn't the case. Despite the sometimes-sparse congregation and the mediocre pay, Emily had come to take a personal and emphatic satisfaction in working the city of Vancouver's spiritual trenches, ministering not only to the faithful congregants by delivering sermons but to the faithless as well, a task which took considerably more effort and yielded considerably less. But when next she stepped up to that pulpit and preached to a congregation smaller than ever, she was only emboldened to preach more fiery than ever. "Take heart," she'd say, to herself as much as her congregants, "for when the way of the world turns against you, it is for the glory of God that you will persist in standing against the ways of the world, as you have always done." But hardship reigned in their hearts. Emily would continue her work, but at some personal cost.

After Martin Hall had found a small apartment in a formerly working class part of the city of Vancouver, the next task facing him was the finding of work. His apartment was generously referred to as such by the listing he'd responded to; in fact it more closely resembled a shack in the back of a large mansion. The owner and nominal resident, a Chinese lady whose name Martin never learned, was hardly ever around, and most of the time the mansion sat vacant. It only occurred to Martin over the course of his first three or four months in his new residence that he was effectively paying for the privilege of being her on-site security. It'd been this far and he'd already arrived at the grim determination not to be a part of anything he was personally opposed to. At some point in the summer he'd started seeing a young woman named Sharmila Bacchus, a vaguely Indian immigrant who was actually from Barbados of all places. She was a few years older than him, and came from a firmly Catholic background, the latter of which irked Martin but which he overlooked anyways. Although she claimed to be Catholic, she wasn't very observant, being seen to drink, never attend mass, nor pray or read her Bible. When Martin made the mistake of asking her why she was so concerned with identifying as Catholic without respecting the church's edicts, she only said, "you wouldn't understand." And he'd said, "try me." But she'd said, "forget about it." It didn't even occur to him that he'd implicitly insulted her, and in the time it'd take either of them to forget about it she'd get in one or two of her own such implicit insults. As the winter ground on and the summer's last warmth had faded into a distant memory, the gravest task in his life would continue to lie in his not-distant future, even as the current difficulty seemed yet to become the permanent and the impermanent in a way that only men as young as Martin can quite pull off.

Chapter Six

On the phone with her mother, Jordan let Luke break the news. Her mother, Vicki, lived and worked in a small town no-one's ever heard of, somewhere up the coast. Actually, they would never visit her mother there, and it's only by coincidence that Vicki was home during her summer's vacation when Luke and Jordan had set about the task of 'coming out' to their family. Against the rising tide of a panicked bid by the city they lived in to change itself into something, anything other than what it was, they were to speak with Jordan's mother at exactly the right moment to catch her in the midst of her own personal transition from one stage of her life to the next. On the phone, Vicki said, "David's told me all about it," but she said it without the slightest hint of condescension or disapproval in her voice. "I didn't realize you were still friends with him," he said. "I wouldn't say we're friends," said Vicki, "but we keep in touch. When you have four daughters you never completely separate your lives from each other's." And he said, "well that's, that's good." But Jordan was uncharacteristically quiet. Every time he looked over at her, she was running the tips of her fingers around the rim of her coffee mug. "You should come over," he said, "the three of us can have dinner somewhere and talk about it." "No, I don't think I'll be doing that," said Vicki. "Then why are we still talking?" he asked. At once Jordan seemed crestfallen, a look of dismay crossing her face as she listened to one half of the conversation. "I don't know," said Vicki. There was a moment's awkward pause before Vicki hung up. No matter what'd happened, both Jordan and Luke would come to see things differently, as they'd seen things differently all along. At once Luke became more confident and outgoing, absconding into a different state of mind than any which he'd been familiar with over the course of his life. It was as if he'd become an entirely different person, able to manipulate his own body from a distance, treating himself like a machine under his own control. He liked listening to early-nineties grunge, the kind of alternate rock that became briefly mainstream which in turn prompted some people to wonder what it was the alternative to.

But as a young man in his mid to late twenties with little money, there was nothing Tony Zhou could do to stop the eviction of his mother from her home, nothing he could do to protect his own mother. What neither Tony nor his mother knew was that the owner of the property had no intention of renovating the building, that a sale would precede the beginning of the planned renovations to a new owner who would simply wait until all residents were gone before tearing the building down. More gleaming, glass and steel condominiums would be built in its place. This was to be done with the blessing of the city, the city of Richmond fully aware of its own expulsion of so many people like Tony and his mother to make way for a better, richer class. Soon, Tony met a young woman who pleaded with him for help. "Don't care," said Tony, "not my problem." But the young woman, whose name Tony had never known before today, persisted. She said, "please, you can help me." But Tony only keep refusing, as he said, "stop bothering me. Just go away and bother somebody else." This was a particularly cold and callous moment, not long after Tony had witnessed his own mother evicted from her apartment. By the time Tony will have seen through this difficult, early period in his life, much will have changed even as nothing will have changed at all. After turning to drink, he deceived himself into thinking, into insisting on thinking himself a 'high-functioning' alcoholic. He kept on working, sometimes driving to work so drunk he saw double. Then he kept on driving to work, always so drunk he saw double. "You can still help me," said the young woman whose name Tony has only recently come to know but still chose not to acknowledge. They kept on running into each other, in the street outside the small apartment he'd come to live in. (It was one of the few such small and simple apartment buildings left in this part of the city of Richmond). She begged him to let her in, but Tony refused, noting the building's policy on not letting anyone without a key. "I don't want to know you," said Tony, "and I don't think there's anything you can do to change my mind." This was said even as the halls had come to flake with chips of loose paint and the carpets beneath their feet had worn and frayed with loose thread. But there was more to it than that, there was always more to it than that.

But for Jordan and Luke, there was little point in contemplating an alternative to the life they'd chosen, together. "Don't think this is over," said Jordan, in a moment of silence afterwards. "I don't know what you mean," Luke said, feigning ignorance. "Of course you don't," she said, leaning over to gently rest a palm on his chest before kissing him goodnight. It was in the late-summer's season, only months after their grandmother's death, that they were learning to adjust in the way all couples must when they really get to know each other. An entirely new sequence of events had begun to set themselves in motion, events which wouldn't become apparent until much later. Although there was no one point that either Jordan or Luke could've pointed to as a marker for the transition between one part of their lives and the next, it'd become immediately apparent to of them only after such an event had occurred. But Luke wouldn't be willing to listen to her advice, compelled as he was by some unknown but altogether real impulse to press forward on his own. He drove a small, simple truck, one which he'd bought used and only recently paid off. With Jordan, he lived in a small, simple apartment, the kind that'd used to be built to house the largest number of people to a reasonable standard of comfort and economy but which have become seen fit only to be torn down and replaced with something else entirely. "Don't think this is over," Jordan had said, which had prompted Luke to think about their plans even as he went about the act of carrying through the days. His mind was free to wander, with his body like a machine running entirely of its own accord. He'd sometimes stop on the way home from work, sometimes to get something to eat so as to avoid having to sustain himself on all the meals Jordan wouldn't cook. She'd work late, her work at the restaurant she managed keeping her even past shift change when the evening manager would arrive to take over. She'd sometimes come home, talking about having had to pitch in to help the waiters and waitresses, her restaurant so critically short-staffed at all times.

At such a young age it wasn't altogether abnormal to feel isolated from the world, but it's something else entirely, something altogether new to be born into the world destined to become worse off than the generation that'd preceded your own. Beyond, the mountains stood jagged, seeming to cut across the sky like a serrated blade. But for a young woman like Aaliyah, the prospect of having to work for a living remained distant and half-foreign. At sixteen, she was still concerned with the sort of things that all sixteen year old girls are concerned with; boys, cars, finding a part time job, doing well enough at school not to get into a good university but to satisfy her mother's and father's demands that she do so. Actually, there was someone in Aaliyah's life she cared about, only someone her friends and family would've never guessed; she'd always kept such things to herself. It was her fourth-period English teacher, a kind and caring man who seemed as passionate about his subject as the day he'd first started teaching. One of the reasons she'd told no one was that she was sure they'd insist it was only a crush, when she felt as though it was so much more than that. This was perhaps why she'd never skipped his class, never been late, never acted out save that one time when she was only giving another girl what the other girl had coming anyways. When her father drove her home from school that day, after she'd thrown the first punch in that fight in the halls, she said very little as her father did most of the talking. "...You can't act out like that," her father said. "They were saying things I couldn't ignore," she said. "What were they saying?" But Aaliyah wouldn't say. "You wouldn't understand," she managed, after a lengthy quiet while the car was stopped at a red light. "I think I might understand better than you might think," he said, finally, as the car lurched forward on green. But to this she said nothing. In the end, Aaliyah would take her suspension from school, as she'd willingly admitted to throwing the first punch which made her the aggressor. Her father had argued for her not to be suspended at all, and had only turned to question her when they were alone. By the time Aaliyah returned to school following her suspension, nothing had changed, even as the girls who'd picked a fight with her would soon escalate their abuse in a rather unlikely way.

But for Luke and Jordan, the something else they lived in was not yet threatened. "It's something I've been meaning to tell you," he said, not sure what to say, exactly. "You don't have to talk like that now," she said. A moment of awkward silence emerged. "Don't condescend," she said, "you don't know me all that well." All Luke could think to say was, "I'm trying to." After having spent the better part of his life living underfoot in a city constantly in search of its own identity, Luke had learned long ago to adapt to whatever circumstances he found himself in. But he could intuitively sense that this, this was different. He wondered how much she actually knew about his past, about his upbringing, the backdrop against which he'd developed his psychological blueprint for his adult life. He'd been a young man shuttled between custodians—not a young man, but a child made to do some of the things a young man would. The most strongly defining feature of his childhood had been parents divorced, like Jordan's had been, only different in ways he'd only begun to appreciate as the two of them were together making the effort to bridge the gap between what they were and what they should've been. To have so rapidly decided on a course of action—marriage, and all the pratfalls that came along with it—they could only come to a new agreement. Luke secretly wanted to get married, sooner rather than later, if not to Jordan then to someone else, anyone. Although these might seem like questions which ought to come out before agreeing on marriage, it'd only been a few months since Jordan and Luke had first gone out on something resembling a date, meeting for dinner at a restaurant on Vancouver's Granville Street, a district now dominated by upscale shops that seemed never to have any customers nor to offer any clue to the casual onlooker what they were selling.

All this had reached a peak at exactly the wrong moment, at a time when Kit was contemplating returning to school. He'd thought about getting his high school diploma through the Surrey school district's adult education programs, then enrolling at the local Kwantlen Polytechnic University in one degree program or another. It wasn't altogether clear to him exactly when he'd begun formulating these plans, only that he'd become enamoured of the idea of him going back to school. "If you think you know what you're doing," said Josh. "I know exactly what I'm doing," said Kit, even as he was fully aware it was a lie. He was pursuing a relationship with a much older woman, a much older woman who'd had no interest in him and who made her lack of interest abundantly clear whenever they were together for a short amount of time, each time. Still, there was much more to it than that. If such a woman as Reva could capture the imagination of a man so simple and puerile as Kit, then there were many more women in the world who could've done so much more than simply capture the imagination of men like him. The first of a long and dull winter's rains came early, in an earnestly unexpected fashion, seeming to coat every patch of exposed surface outside in a thin film. But still Kit felt his heart lift a little whenever Reva came around at work, a slave as he was to his emotions which ruled over his minimal judgement. He smiled at her, but she seemed to look past him. He approached her, but she sent him away. At the end of a shift he went to her office, in a small portable, but she said she had too much work to do even to see him. Her desk was conspicuously clean. But she told him to come back the next day; although he was unclear on whether she meant to her office or to show up for a shift, he agreed. Next, he'd do something stupid.

Luke had tried to talk past Jordan, but she wouldn't buy it. "Come on," she said, "give me a little credit." Neither of them had broached the subject of marriage before, even in all the time they'd known each other, dating back to when they were only little children. Still, it left him confused, even as he kept that same straight look on his face. How do you tell someone something you've kept from almost everyone in your life? How do you share a secret you've never shared with anyone? "You don't know them the way I know them," she said. "That may be true," said Luke, "but I—" "But what?" she asked, "what if I've got my own reasons for not want to speak to them? Did you ever think it might not be them, but me?" And Luke said, "well, I just assumed—" "Because you love me?" "That's not why, although I do." A pause. "We shouldn't be arguing about things like this," she said. "What are we arguing about?" Luke asked. But Luke's own personal upbringing had been radically different from Jordan's, even if a lot of the basic contours were the same. It could be the case that their both being children of divorce had brought them together with a particular notion not of what love is but of what love ought to be. Whether that notion was realistic or not didn't matter. What mattered to him was the tenuous hold he had on a real relationship with her, and the promise of something that could last. He knew he could find something at least vaguely resembling a real relationship with nearly any other eligible woman around his age, but few, if any that could offer the promise of anything more. It was this promise that would dictate his actions for the next several years. The restaurant where she worked would soon enough fail, drowning as it was in red ink despite being filled with customers. It would've seemed to Luke, if he'd known, that it was impossible for so successful a business to be running itself into the ground as was the restaurant where Jordan worked. But then Luke was only a simple worker, whose collar was neither blue nor white, but black-and-brown dirty at the end of the day.

And Stephanie, Stephanie was acutely aware of her part in this manufacturing process, however small and inconsequential her part may have been. She recalled reading such things during her undergraduate courses, but these ideas hadn't seemed altogether real to her at the time. It wasn't under relatively recently that she'd come to understand how it felt on a visceral level, when she'd come across an offhand remark written by one of her own undergraduate students in a paper she had to grade. She'd graded that paper, as she'd graded so many, right here in this very room, in her cubicle of an office. Soon after, Stephanie had started to escalate in her drinking, never quite drunk but always making sure to have a drink within arm's reach. She counted the small things, in some feeble effort to ward off the inevitable, the small things like having a window office when so many others in her role had windowless cubbies essentially. "Let me have my peace," she'd said. "Okay," said Michelle, "as long as you make use of it." But why the first step down had to be taken by her, Stephanie didn't know. As she'd walked home one night, on her way between the building that contained her office and the bus loop at the centre of the university's sprawling campus, these thoughts seemed to come together all at once. A bus sloshed by, on its way out from the bus loop, and Stephanie noticed it was the very bus she was on her way to board. Even in a city so large as this—perhaps necessarily in a city so large—the possible always seemed impossible. She could wait for another bus, but she decided instead to set off on foot down the street, making it to the next stop on the bus route and there having not come another bus prompting her to set off for the next. She was still feeling the warmth of that last little nip of drink when the bus finally came, fortuitously just as she'd paused at another stop. She made it home as tired as ever, unsure if she'd keep going.

So late in the year, the days were cool but not yet cold, the fall's rains having begun in earnest. Everywhere you went in the city there were people out and about, women in yoga pants and tank tops walking briskly along the waterfront pushing strollers, Asian tourists clustered in a herd all snapping photos while wearing the same sun visors, even young men in dress shirts and ties to go with jeans and hi-top sneakers. That was one half of the city of Vancouver, the half known to Jordan. Alongside there were people kept in, trapped, where young women had two or three children from two or three fathers, where men either worked twelve hours a day, seven days a week without making ends meet or worked not at all, even buying everything they owned from thrift shops and dollar stores but still never saving any money. After he'd spoken with her mother, Vicki, Jordan and Luke were still very much in love, like teenagers still given to their first real crush. "If you won't," said Jordan, "then I will." They were talking about his sister, his sister whom he hadn't spoken with in years but who he would continue to insist that he was not not speaking to. "Fine," said Luke, "if you think you can handle it, go for it. I have absolutely no problem with that." At their grandmother's funeral, he'd seen his sister take an entire plate of sweets and desserts only to proudly proclaim that she was successfully cutting back. She'd dropped out of university some years earlier, and worked for minimum wage. She received regular payments from their mother in order to afford rent, car insurance, and other essentials of life. But there was more to it than that. They had not seen each other at the hospital in Victoria where their grandmother died, as she'd been working at the time. There was always more to it than that. This had left Luke the only one of Lauren's children to have been there to comfort her. He paused, then said, "it's no problem at all. You can get through to her better than I can." She said, "you called my mom. That was something I wouldn't want to do." Luke nodded. Theirs was a life typical of young couples in a city like Vancouver. During the heady days, the supposed boomtimes when the talking heads had spoken of endless growth and yet more endless profit, even then this was an illusion. After the boomtimes had well and truly ended, though, the cranes had kept on swinging and the glass and steel towers had kept on going up. It was as though the city itself had become aware of its own confusion, its own self-delusion.

But then Vincent Reyes had turned up at the hall those months, nearly a year earlier to disappointment. Nominations were made from the floor, and he'd almost failed to receive one. Two of his fellow workers had been readily nominated for the two open spots on the committee. Vincent wasn't nominated until he'd asked the rep if he could nominate himself. The rep said no, but this exchange prompted one of the others to nominate him, which he'd accepted glumly. In the end, he finished third in a three-person race, receiving a few votes but not enough. This was the moment when he'd lost interest, to some extent, in the union, although not for the reasons you might suspect. On the way to the hall that day, all those months after the vote for bargaining committee had taken place, he did his best to put these thoughts, these memories from his mind and to devote himself fully to the task at hand. It was a day like any other, with a light rain seeming to fall from the sky as a fine mist, the city illuminated by light obscured behind the permanent overcast. It was much more drab and depressing than snow on the ground and sub-zero temperatures but clear skies that afflicted the rest of the country half the year. This turn of events had soured Vincent on the union and on his fellow workers. He'd been the one who sat in meetings and argued tirelessly with management. He'd been the one who'd received subpoenas to turn up at hearings. He'd been the one who put his hand on that Bible and sworn to tell the truth. All this was rather difficult for a man like Vincent, who'd been battling depression and anxiety throughout these past few years. Yet he'd been able to overcome these internal contradictions because of his tireless commitment to the cause. And they, they'd responded by voting in two other workers to who'd each done nothing at all, simply because those two were their friends. It was, as Vincent had come to learn and bitterly accept, simply the way things were. "You should've come to the last vote," said Vincent, when next speaking to another of the workers, one of the great majority who hadn't shown up to the elections that'd preceded the new agreement by several months. "No one told me about it," said the worker. "There were notices posted," said Vincent. "You should've told me," said the worker. But Vincent thought, those who care make it their business to be there. "I'm not working towards anything," said Vincent, later, speaking with his sister on the phone, "I'm not accomplishing anything, and I'm slaughtering myself doing it. It's got to end."

Even Luke still couldn't have said for certain whether she felt the same way about her life that he'd always felt about his, not even after all that'd happened between them. From the day they'd first slept together to the last day they'd seen each other since, neither of them could ever come to trust each other, to bare their souls in the way he'd have thought people in love do. That may sound ridiculous, but it was the way even Luke used to think, before all this happened. As for Jordan, he didn't know and he won't probably ever know why she never brought herself to open up to him. In the time it's taken the two to come to terms with who they'd become together it'd been possible they'd both lost sight of who they were apart. And this city, it will endure the coming pain and suffering, as it always has and always must. The heights to which it'd been led to aspire were never meant to be the end but merely one of many waypoints between what it'd been and what it can never be. "It's not the work that gets to me," said Jordan, on a rare Saturday when they were both home together, "it's the working." But Luke didn't understand what she meant. "It's like this," she said, "you can take days off, but you can't take a day off. If you let up even for a moment then someone else will come along at take all your customers from you." Still Luke didn't understand exactly what she meant. "I don't expect that you would," she said, "you punch a clock." This Luke took exception to. He said, "I hope you meant that in a neutral way." And Jordan said, "of course I did." She seemed to take a moment to consider her thoughts, before saying, "it's just, it takes a lot out of me." He said, "do you expect to be doing this forever?" She said, "of course not." But then she said, "it's hard to imagine ever doing anything else."

Although it seems intuitively true that Vancouver's comparably mild climate should've made it a gathering place for all Canada's homeless, it wasn't true. It'd never been true. Living on the streets wasn't so simple as propping a box up in an alley and waiting for loose change to fall into one's lap. It was rather profane and disturbing, or at least it'd have been if Christian hadn't been so exposed to the brutalities of life on the streets. Since Christian had come to live on the street a new and insidious evil had become known to him and to the others living on the streets. The streets have produced many rumours over the years, most of which prove the result of the compounding of so many people's mental illness and hopeless addiction blended into one. But this, this was different. "It doesn't matter," said the young Asian officer, "I just hope the Canucks can make the playoffs this year." And the older officer said, "if that rookie Thatcher Demko keeps playing as well as he has, then it's a sure bet. The rest of the team's not nearly bad enough to drag so good a goalie down. Now, in the playoffs that's another matter..." The two said this as they stepped right past Christian, who was sitting on an upturned milk crate in the entrance to the side of an alley. He was worse than usual, with a horrible cough, every retch seeming to wrack his ribs, his entire midsection with pain. Some have lived on these streets for only a short time, as short as a few days, while others have been surviving here for many, many years. And then the so-called 'opioid crisis' began. To Christian it was as though an insidious evil had begun to emanate from the very streets on which he'd come to live, killing people quietly in the night and noisily in the day. The streets of East Vancouver were always harsh, but soon this insidious evil had begun to claim lives, dropping otherwise healthy and virtuous men and women in groups, in alleys a trail of bloated and rotting corpses leading to darkened spots where evil had struck.

After having returned to his home, Clarence had moved with his wife to the city of Langley, one of Vancouver's outermost suburban communities. There, they'd moved into a mobile home park, paying rent not to the park but to some company that was paid to manage it. In his last years as a truck driver, Clarence would regularly see convoys of four or five trucks, each in the convoy driving hardly a few metres from the one in front, every one of them driven by thick-bearded Indian men. It never mattered whether the whole lot of them were capable of or qualified to do the work they were assigned; rumours suggested that they weren't even licensed to drive commercial big rig trucks. Although there were a few white drivers scattered here and there, Clarence sometimes went weeks without seeing another on any particularly route. After the summer had ended and the last of the silky golden sunlight had receded behind the winter's permanent haze, the steady drowning of the city beneath a greyness continuing unabated. Although Clarence and his wife nominally owned the trailer in which they lived, like most other such owners they had no means of moving their trailer and paid rent to the park. In the evenings, sometimes the rain fell at an erratic rhythm, its intensification seeming to pulse and throb against the street. In the trailer park, Clarence and his wife would find leaks in the roof of their homes. "It's your own problem," said the lot manager, "you own your own house, so you've got to fix it yourself. Unless you want to accept the standing offer..." But after having gone to speak with the manager, Clarence was certain this meant something other than what it'd immediately seemed. It was common practice for the owners of trailer parks to sell trailer homes to couples like Clarence and his wife, then rent the space in the park to them. When financial problems inevitably rose in the lives of people like Clarence and his wife and they could no longer afford to pay rent, the owner of the park would offer to buy the home at a fraction of what'd been paid for it originally. Then, the home would be sold to the next unfortunate person with nowhere else to go, and on the cycle would keep going.

And there was a time when Emily might've been able to convince not only those around her but herself as well, that time having long passed. With winter in full swing, there was little for any of them to do except keep on attending services, keep on holding services at their new church, no matter how many or how few showed up. There'd been a particular service recently when only two parishioners had shown up, not counting the volunteers who ran the worship. It'd been a demoralising experience for Emily, to work so hard and to see such small results. Dwight was in the band, and led worship. Nearly every Sunday, the worship was attended by the same smattering of youths who'd remained committed for various reasons. She'd sold properties with some effort; it was during that difficult almost-crash time when so many of her former congregants had stopped appearing at services. For his part, Dwight made a living buying things at auction and reselling them, mostly cars. The biggest movers were luxury brands resold to people who were looking to acquire them on the cheap, being unable to afford those very cars, those very brand names new off the lot. In Vancouver, in this day and age there were no shortage of people looking to project the appearance of wealth. Dwight would sometimes, nevertheless, come home empty-handed, the day's auctions having failed to sell any of the items he'd put up for sale. "I'm thinking of giving up on cars," said Dwight, one night, "there's not a lot of money left to be made in those cars. But fleet vehicles, vans and such, those are the ticket." "Whatever you do," said Emily, "do it right." They made a point of expressing their own celibacy to the congregants in their church, testifying that they intended to remain so until they became married. They were vague about when they intended this to happen, because they hadn't set a date. In truth, both Emily and Dwight were unsure whether they'd ever get married, whether they wanted to marry each other, and only that they were intending to remain celibate until that time. They knew this was largely done for the benefit of their congregants; without their congregants, they'd remain celibate before marriage but wouldn't talk about it openly, not unless asked. But their principles were not to be understood by many, and it was this absence of understanding that would cause them new hardships, not hardships of the flesh but further hardships of the spirit.

As for Martin Hall, well, he'd never been much of a Christian himself, not even after ostensibly becoming a born-again evangelical only a couple of years earlier. "It's just you and me tonight," said Martin, "let's just skip the parts neither of us care about and get right to it." But Sharmila wouldn't indulge him. At work they played no-stakes poker between calls, and over the winter they'd taken to playfully tossing snowballs at each other in the parking lot before and sometimes after work. She was a few years older than him, something which bothered neither of them. Even during the Christmas season there were few calls to take at night, with the overwhelming majority of their customers in the United States. Many of them seemed to assume that the staff on the lines were located in India, and the staff generally chose not to make the effort to disabuse customers of this assumption. Sharmila, or Shaneza as she sometimes liked to be called, gave her name honestly on the line with customers, and she complained that most customers assumed that she was not only Indian but in India. Martin supposed that she had little real connection with India, having been born and mostly raised in Barbados, although he never dared voice this supposition in direct conversation with her. In the parking lot one day before work, after a lengthy but light overnight snowfall, while Sharmila was clearing snow from her car Martin took to filming her with his cell phone, only for her to turn and jokingly protest, throwing a snowball at his feet. It was one of the few times Martin would see her genuinely happy. "It's okay," she'd said, "I don't know anything about that anyways." There was talk of forming a union, among the regular employees at least, and all they'd heard about it was this talk. That talk would eventually take a turn but only after Martin had moved on, finding himself gearing up for the next major challenge in his life, a challenge entirely unexpected but not altogether unpredictable.

A young man named Bhulwinder was working around this time not as a long-haul trucker but as a temporary worker at one of the many warehouses in and around Vancouver. At this particular warehouse there were many other temporary workers, the company which ran the warehouse using four or five agencies on any given day to receive workers. It was a massive warehouse, over six hundred thousand square feet in floor area, said to be one of the largest such warehouses in the province of British Columbia. It required several hundred workers on the floor at any given time to keep running, even in this day and age of computerisation and automation. Yet, the company that operated the warehouse employed fewer than two dozen such workers, on paper at least. Bhulwinder had been working at this particular warehouse for several months; there were others who'd been working here for years. All were considered not to be employed by the company. All were paid poorly and received no benefits, such as drug coverage or paid leave. Yet they came to work like any other, arriving early in the morning and leaving late at night, working eight, ten, even twelve hour shifts, sometimes even longer. As the winter's season began in earnest, these difficulties became magnified, the workers all walking along a path that cut across the parking lot. The warehouse sat in an industrial district, along a narrow road frequently congested with eighteen-wheelers and trundling dump trucks, blocked by trains that rolled along a rail line cutting across the road at all hours of the day and night. Sometimes young men like Bhulwinder imagined themselves somewhere else, somewhere other than where he was. "Yes well you've got to think about that," said another worker, another young Indian man whose name Bhulwinder never learned and never would. They'd been talking about going home. "This isn't what we were promised," said another young worker, who'd been complaining about lacking the ability to bring his family over. "No," said Bhulwinder, "it wasn't." He was thinking, of course, of his own family, wondering what they hadn't been telling him, wondering on the things he was missing. Every day that passed with their separation from him, or his separation from them, meant another day something could happen to make their separation permanent.

In Vancouver—perhaps throughout the pacific northwest—the transitions between seasons is smooth, almost seamless, as if residents could wake up one day and suddenly find themselves immersed in winter where the day before there'd been summer. For a young woman named Carol Chan, living in the small apartment somewhere in the southern part of the city had become increasingly hardscrabble even as so many gleaming, glass and steel towers had been erected in every available space. It'd been a deeply disturbing and depressing thing, to watch as so many were displaced to the outer edges of the city, or to places further still. The vastly impersonal force now acting against them was rather cruel. Carol—whose real name had been something else but which she'd chosen Carol as a replacement for—felt under the influence of this insidious force, one that directed her and others like her to its own ends. "Where are you going now?" asked Carol's mother. "To buy things," said Carol. "What things?" asked her mother. "Things for you," said Carol, before grabbing her keys and leaving. Even as she was on her way out, her mother continued to shout at her, things which Carol couldn't understand. Down the hall, Carol stepped quickly and quietly. The halls of this old, decrepit apartment building were creaky and leaky, seeming to exude thin tendrils of faintly visible in pale, flickering light. Its floors were covered in a carpet that frayed along the walls, as well as along seams that seemed to reach at odd angles. The walls, the carpet covering the floor, even strategic spots on the ceilings were covered in a stained colour that looked very much like dried-out piss stains. The smell of cigarette smoke lingered in the air, infusing every breath, tasting on the back of Carol's tongue every time she walked through these very halls, as she'd walked through these very halls daily for many years. It's not possible to become accustomed to that smell, even if she was to spend the rest of her life walking these halls, morning and night. "Don't come back," her mother had shouted at her once, "until you've gotten something done right!" Carol had left, then, trying to take advantage of the opportunity in leaving to achieve some measure of peace and quiet in the coming evening. But it couldn't come, it couldn't come. By the time this night was through, Carol was to have found a new and unexpectedly depressing low.

Chapter Seven

After they'd gone through the effort of making good on their promises, neither Jordan nor Jordan knew what would come next. But, living in the shadow of a city huge and confused, both Jordan and Luke fully believed they knew what they were doing. "It's not your fault," she said, the next night, after they'd improbably found themselves with a night in together, with neither of them working or sleeping while the other was home. "No, no, I'll take this one," Luke said, reaching for the keys to his truck on the kitchen counter. It was a chance for him to get out of the apartment and be alone for a while. It was a strange thought, given that you can never really be alone in a city of millions, even as you're always alone with your thoughts no matter where you live. "I love you," she said as he stepped out, but he said nothing in reply, in the street finding comfort in seeing his truck in exactly the same spot it was always parked whenever he ventured out into the street. It seemed to him like a stupid thing to take comfort in, but when in his adulthood he'd seen the results of vandals working over his last car not once but twice in this city sometimes it was comforting to see his little truck still in one piece. In the city at night there was still that darkened energy, that kind of desperate resignation that seems to infuse itself into the air of every other major city the world over aspiring to be something other than what it is. Luke can know this, he can know this about the city of Vancouver because he'd lived there almost all his life, with only a few years spent living here and there—or is it there and here? Unlike Jordan, he'd grown up here, and he'd come to see the place that'd given him so much as no longer a place to call home. Unlike him, Jordan saw this city as a place full of opportunity. Both were right and wrong.

Although this young woman had been living in the street outside Tony Zhou's apartment building for some time, it'd only been recently, around the time that Tony's mother had been evicted from her apartment that Tony had begun encountering this young woman in the halls, sometimes wondering where she'd come from, how she'd gotten in if not let in by anyone living in the building. After one more meeting in the stairwell, Tony had begun to wonder if she was really living there. "I'm doing everything I can," she'd said, after Tony had run into her outside and told her she should get a job. "Actually it doesn't sound like you are," said Tony. "I challenge you to do better than me," said the young woman. "Who are you to challenge me?" asked Tony. But even this was a passing exchange, held against the backdrop of a rapidly changing turn of events. As it was the middle of winter in Vancouver, the city seemed shrouded in a constant mist, accompanied by a constant rain that seemed hardly distinguishable from the very fine mist. The challenge posed by this young woman whose name Tony had learned but had chosen not to use in conversation itself remained shrouded in mystery. "Now we wait," said the young woman, "and hope that nothing happens." But Tony, ever the impatient young man, wouldn't put up with the kind of waiting. Everywhere in the city it all seemed like the feverish bid to unseat the way things'd been to make way for the way things'll never be continued unabated, with wide-open spaces filled by a confusing array of glass and steel. But no matter how much the city tried to grow beyond its provincial roots, it could never agree in what it ought to be, in what it ought to aspire to be. Tony Zhou, for one, was unsure what to do next. He'd soon be forced into action, whether he was ready for it or not. It was possible that he'd not even recognise the time to make a change in his life, which lent him an unexpected confidence even as his world slurred into depression and darkness.

But Luke and Jordan knew the night was on them both. Alone, they took each other into the bedroom and fell back onto the bed they shared. A rare night alone was not one either of them intended to waste. Still only months after they'd first had each other and already they'd come to know the contours of each other's bodies, she the little nicks and toughened patches on his hands and arms, from his twenties spent on a life of labour, honest labour, he the way her hips, thighs, the slight paunch on her stomach all seemed to soften, to relax a little bit whenever they were alone together. She seemed to him so small and fragile as he rested his palms on either side of her and made love with her, she clutching at his broad shoulders with her little hands, hooking her long legs up around his thighs. They were too old for this kind of thing, not for sex but to think of sex as making love. Jordan was a lovely woman, and it was only by happenstance that Luke had wound up married to someone as lovely as her. "What are your dreams?" she asked, afterwards. "What kind of question is that?" he asked. "No, I'm serious," she said, "you didn't want to work in a warehouse all your life, did you?" Unsure what to say, he simply shrugged, then sat up on the edge of the bed. What Luke remembered most was the delicacy he had to handle the subject with, sensitive as she was to the fact that her would-be bistro was, then, little more than a website and a credit card almost maxed out. Although neither Jordan nor Luke might believe it as such, they both come from a largely barren cultural background, lacking in memories of a homeland or language other than that which they already were. It's precisely this barren cultural background that makes them vulnerable to notions of true love or having been meant for each other.

Unfortunately there were no jobs for a young woman like her to find. Twenty or thirty years ago, it might've been easy for her to find any job pumping gas, flipping burgers, or stocking shelves at grocery stores, but not anymore. Now all those jobs were filled by nominally retired men and women working to supplement their meagre pensions, slaves imported from India, and recent graduates with arts and humanities degrees from any of the area's many universities. As Aaliyah was about to find out, no one wanted a high school student. By the time the plane had taxied to the gate, so young a woman as Aaliyah was to be left alone. Although she thought much of the man who was her English teacher, she was sure he thought nothing of her at all. The effect of this had been to convince her of her own inadequacy, to force her to confront her own insecurities in the way that every teenager is forced to confront their own insecurities on a daily basis. "What's the point of any of this?" she'd asked her friend once, when they were in the halls after class one day. "It doesn't matter," said her friend. "Well, I still don't like it," said Aaliyah. Believe it or not, being black in Canada isn't always easy. Aaliyah would never tell her father what'd led to her fight in the halls, a fight she'd handily lost but got her licks in anyways. She'd never tell her mother, either. There wouldn't be another fight in the halls that year, all throughout her eleventh grade; the next wouldn't be a fight but an ambush, staged outside, between portables that sat behind the school's main building. This time it was over quickly. The girls kept calling her 'nigger' between blows. Aaliyah limped home, skipping the last classes she had that day. This became a common occurrence, for her to skip classes to avoid dealing with her tormenters. No teacher or counselor would believe her if she complained, since the record showed that she was the one who'd started fights. She began to fear that she might die whenever the other girls next decided to attack her. She didn't tell this to anyone. She hadn't expected this, couldn't have expected this to have taken place when she'd come home from a summer at her mother's in Texas. She came to wish she'd never come back.

At night, the city of Vancouver neither came alive nor quieted, instead a restless energy seeming to infuse itself into the background no matter where you went. A lot of other cities have this sort of energy, but seeing as neither Luke nor Jordan have ever lived in any other major city all they could've done was imagine. But even then, at around thirty, they could sense, in some vague, instinctive way, that this energy was dissipating slowly, with each passing day that left it on its current path seeing more and more of what they'd always known taken and replaced with something foreign, something alien. That night, as Jordan and Luke spoke—they weren't yet arguing—about the future, there were larger forces at work, unseen, but surely there. They went to bed without having resolved their not-argument, her last words to him before switching off the lights something like, "I hope you'll at least think about it," but in the night as he lay next to her all he could think about was the lingering notion in the back of his mind that she was as uneasy about their future as he. All around them, the world they lived in seemed determined to pass them by, not only them but everyone like them, and none of them could agree on what to do to keep up. But how he was in love with her, still at that stage when they could look each other in the eye and he'd feel that lifting of spirits at the centre of his chest, still given as he was to notions of true love, even if he couldn't admit it, not to himself nor to her. In the winter, the city of Vancouver seems to assume a rather depressed, disconcerted character, as if meekly accepting its fate but yet unable to put itself through the paces of meeting it head on, like a prisoner on death row resigned to his impending death yet still needing to be dragged to the death chamber.

But if Kit had ever gone on to attend one program or another at the of the area's universities he could've belatedly worked his way into, he knew—or at least fully believed—it wouldn't have changed his life one bit. Still he felt the compulsion to do so. Still the mad dash of investors and others like them to wring every last penny from the city continued, whether ordinary men like Kit wanted it to or not. Across Surrey there were whole neighbourhoods largely empty, like some other parts of the metropolitan area where absentee owners had purchased newly-built mansions as stores of ill-gotten wealth, then left them to gather imaginary value. This had left ordinary young men like Kit to in a constant struggle simply to survive. But Kit was too young to remember a time when the city of Surrey hadn't been filled with so many immigrants from India, or the immediate children of immigrants from India. He'd been among the first generation to have come of age without any real memory of this city before it'd become whatever it was. It might not seem altogether appropriate for such a city as this to be characterised as having slums, a word which calls to mind images of mud-brick houses with corrugated-metal roofs overcrowded with brown people in far flung cities with shantytowns that seem to endlessly sprawl. But Kit would know otherwise; Kit would know that slums that'd spread out across the city and into the countryside are very real. "D'you think you can make it?" asked Josh. "Of course I can," said Kit, "I'm not that old." Although Kit and Josh were relatively young men, they were both old enough to appreciate the threat of age advancing on them, looming in the distance like so much glass and steel erected just as suddenly. But so were they young enough still to be able to recall how it felt to be so young, as well to be able to think their youths might still be reachable if only they should outstretch an arm in some feeble attempt. It's all a fraud, it's all an illusion, as in fact men like Kit and Josh were the sort of young men only concerned with where the next 'good times' would come from.

Not yet thirty, someone like Luke had no business being so jaded and cynical on the ways of the world, but it wasn't by choice that he'd come to be that way. No one willingly turns embittered on the city he'd grown up in, nor does anyone come to reject change out of spite. The truth, as he'd come to see it, is that he gave the city of Vancouver far more chances than it probably deserved. Although neither Jordan nor Luke were capable of appreciating the urgent and entirely temporary character of the change they were now living in together. But after the dust had settled from their grandmother's death and the rest of the family had scattered across the country, Luke and Jordan were at odds with each other, the secret they'd kept even from their own grandmother eating away at them. There weren't any major dust-ups. It'd turn out that the death of Jordan's and Luke's grandmother, the death of the last surviving member of that eldest generation was the catalyst for a new and pernicious form of change. But the young woman Jennifer who'd been working for years at the warehouse where Luke worked was continuing to offer an escape, for him at least. They were exceedingly friendly with each other, with Luke helping her wherever she needed help, rushing this way and that to pick orders, to handle damages, to do counts on obscure products in rarely-visited parts of the enormous warehouse where they worked. They kept on making small talk, in spare moments on the job. He'd approach the office, slide open the window in front of her desk, and before handing in his finished bills he'd say something like, "what's a place like you doing in a girl like this?" This would elicit a laugh from Jennifer. She'd say something like, "not a day goes by that I don't ask myself that question," although she'd say it in a way that suggested some insecurity, forcing a laugh. It was difficult and it was awkward, made all the more difficult and awkward by Luke's reservations. Even as they continued to form something vaguely resembling a friendship, through these little moments there were laid the seeds of something more. But there was more to it than that.

It was against this backdrop that Stephanie Wilkins had found herself keeping a small bottle of vodka in her office's desk, intending simply to use it as needed. The university had a policy prohibiting the possession or consumption of alcohol in their offices, outside of approved, on-campus locations, but this policy was impossible to completely enforce. "If everyone was like you then counselors wouldn't have any work at all," said a co-worker, another graduate student who also had taken to drinking periodically but who believed Stephanie hadn't. On a rare night off, with neither classes to teach nor her own work to do, Stephanie chose not to spend it at home catching up on much-needed sleep but to keep on working. She wondered why a young man would waste his time in going after her when there were so many more outgoing and attractive young women at the university. You see, Stephanie hadn't had much in the way of attention from men in her life. This isn't to say that she'd had no such attention at all. She'd had a boyfriend in high school but nothing since, consumed as she'd become in her studies and work. Whenever she looked in the mirror, Stephanie saw a bespectacled ghost, a pale imitation of the person she'd been just a year or two ago. After this young man had bought her a few drinks, she'd begun to see him a little differently, the dull haze of almost-drunkenness taking over. She went home with him that night, but wouldn't see him again, which suited him just fine. It was around this time that Stephanie began to led her deadlines slide, which hadn't gone unnoticed by her advisors and by the professors she worked for. It was a mounting pressure on her, one which was bound to come to a head, sooner or later.

It was around this time that Luke learned first of a particular event in Jordan's life that'd been a formative experience for her. When she was young, she'd tried to run away from home. (Although Luke had threatened to run away once or twice, his threats had always been hollow). This was when her family was still one, a short time before her mother and father had divorced. Jordan was around ten or twelve when this had happened. Her family was living in the small city of Cranbrook, deep in the Canadian Rockies, much closer to Calgary than Vancouver. She'd stolen enough cash from her parents to buy a one-way bus ticket to Calgary, the bus making it as far as the small town of Fernie before stopping. At Fernie, local police boarded the bus and found her, taking her back to her parents in Cranbrook. But what struck Luke, when hearing of this story, was that she'd taken a pet hamster with her, kept in the little plastic ball that pet hamsters can be put in and let to roll around on their own. It might've been winter around the time; winters deep in the Rockies are much colder and longer-lasting than in Vancouver. But the young woman Jennifer hadn't tempted Luke, and wouldn't, their friendship growing in the little spaces, in the little half-moments that their friendship continued to develop. "Starting to get the hang of things?" he asked, one day, after he'd gone nearly through his entire shift without her asking him for help. "It was never so busy on nights," Jennifer would say, "but I think I'm starting to get the hang of it." It was true, that he wasn't being asked to come by the office to help her with some miscellaneous task that needed to be rushed by the end of the day. Still he came by anyways, not only to pick up bills for orders but to chat with her. Before encountering each other for the first time outside work, Jennifer and Luke had been making eyes at each other from across the crowded warehouse floor, she in the office on one side of the building, his job frequently bringing him back to the office where she sat. He'd make jokes, and she'd laugh. And every time they'd come across each other, whether at work or outside, she'd begun to let her gaze linger lovingly on his body, on his biceps and on his shirt stretched tight over his barrel of a chest. Whenever she'd say, "thank you," it'd always seem warm and genuine. When Luke realised her looking at him that way, he'd say, "don't mention it," or, "just doing my job." That day, he promised himself that the next time they had a little moment, he'd act more composed, more natural. And he would.

All the important progress that Vincent had made personally over the past few years, all the ground he'd won against his personal demons had proven to be wasted, or so he'd come to believe. After finally making it into the union hall, Vincent had found the parking lot outside full, with late arrivals directed to park on the street. He found a spot—halfway down the block. There were groups of workers gathered in spots, although none of them waved out to him as he arrived. He wouldn't know when or where any of this would matter, no more than any other man or woman who'd come to the union hall on that particular day. A little bit of wind nipped at the edges of the scene, gently swaying tree branches and blades of grass this way and that. Although it was the middle of a typically dull and dreary winter, on this day the sky was mostly clear, with only the odd puffy cloud rolling overhead. Finally, he stepped into the hall and found the main hall filled with people. Where perhaps a dozen had attended the previous meeting and cast ballots in voting for bargaining committee, now it seemed to Vincent that over a hundred had crammed into the same space. A lengthy debate ensued, with several other workers voicing their concerns over the proposal; it mattered little what their concerns would be, because the union's bargaining committee had endorsed the new agreement and it wouldn't endorse anything substantively different. This was only a group of around a hundred and fifty workers, and the prevailing wisdom was that if a hundred and fifty workers refused to compromise or went on strike the larger world wouldn't notice. After having failed to avert the passage of a collective agreement that he bitterly opposed, Vincent had begun to consider other factors. "Are you going to work there forever?" asked his sister, in whom he'd taken to confiding in over the past few years. He liked to confide in her because she was familiar enough for him to trust yet distant enough not to worry about him. Crucially, she wouldn't tell their mother and father what he said to her. They spoke on the phone sometimes. "Right now I've got no choice," said Vincent, although he couldn't have possibly believed it. "You should find a new job," said his sister, "if you can't stand it there." But Vincent only said, "it's not the job that's the problem."

On the far side of Vancouver Island, a large island off the coast of British Columbia, there's a place called Long Beach, right on the edge of the Pacific Ocean, about as far West as you can get in Canada without jumping into the water and swimming all the way to Japan. It's a cold, windswept place, in the winter swells cresting so strong that if you're standing in just the wrong place you could be dragged out to sea before anyone knows you're gone. Between weekends, that February, Jordan and Luke packed up a little tent and one big sleeping bag into his truck and took the first ferry of the day from Vancouver, then drove far enough to be alone, finding a campground open despite the season. It was all so fake. But that's what made it so real to both of them. The first thing she said to him after they'd arrived came while he was kneeling on the ground and about to start hammering the tent's first nail into the dirt; she said, "I'm not looking forward to going home," then, as he stood and turned back to face her she said, again, "wouldn't it be great if we could just stay out here forever?" "Why can't we?" he asked, only half-seriously. "Don't tempt me," she said. "You do that to yourself," he said, then turned back to the tent. "I do," she said, "don't I?" But the playful tone in her voice suggested it wasn't the last time they'd have that discussion, whether seriously or not, over the next few days they had to spend alone on the island. "That's why I'm here," said Luke, "isn't it?" She looked over at him and smiled thinly, while he approached her. He rested his hands on her hips as he leaned into her, the ocean's salty spray stinging the nostrils even as far inland as they were.

But people like Christian Mullins are only a particular expression of the general impoverishment of so many people, such a vast and diverse array of people all consigned to the same fate by the same impersonal force. On this particularly cold and dangerous night, Christian, like so many others, doesn't go to one of the shelters which have opened their doors in anticipation of this weather. There's a vicious murderer on the loose, seemingly a current manifestation of old fears. It's been less than fifteen years since the conviction in court of the infamous Robert Pickton, a serial killer who'd scoured these very streets for victims. But Pickton had been far more discriminating in his choice—he'd killed only women, street-walking prostitutes and the like, killed them by the dozens, likely over a hundred. This, this new evil is different, though, in that it seems to strike without warning even against the very people who've come to expect it. "Well, I'm sure if any team can find a way to lose," said the younger Asian officer. "It's them," said the older officer, "you may have a point." The officers had stopped, standing in place on the other side of the alley, still on the sidewalk, seeming to conveniently look anywhere else by at him. But people had been dying on these streets for years, long before the so-called 'opioid crisis' had begun. A popular theory on these streets was that the crisis had been loosed on them, that these streets had been flooded with opioids as a means of clearing out the undesirables and making way for developers to do what they wanted. Christian shuffled slightly under the weight of a nagging injury, sustained several days earlier when he'd twisted his ankle looking into a dumpster for bottles and cans.

It was this place, Luke felt as though he could just walk until there's no more path left to walk on, but then he'd just wind up looking back on the places he'd been with all the muted enthusiasm of a half-suicidal singer sure that if he could only make it through each night then success and fame would surely be there in the morning to fix everything wrong in his life. It sometimes reached the point where words became unnecessary, an impediment to reaching all he'd ever wanted, all he'd ever needed. And when it reached that point, he looked ahead, instead, and imagined himself dangling by one hand from the edge of a tall building's roof. But it'd been months since he and Jordan had first been together, weeks still since they'd begun to 'come out' to their family together, and after they'd finished pitching their tent and setting out a few of their things around the campsite, they left, meandering down a trail that snaked around the edge of the park towards the beach, until they kicked off their sandals and carried them behind their backs as they walked along the edge of the ocean, right where the ice-cold water laps up against the sand, in the time it took them to make a lap down the beach and then back up a strange sensation occurring to him. But something had happened, something neither of them could take back. It led to a moment of crisis. "I feel like a different person when I'm with you," said Jordan. "Is that a bad thing?" asked Luke. "Not right now," said Jordan. "Is it ever?" asked Luke. "Don't worry about that right now," said Jordan, "don't spoil the moment."

Even during the current boomtime, jobs were hard to come by, with nearly every available job filled by Indians or offering pitiful wages, or both. It was an open secret in trucking that the wholesale filling of jobs with Indians and only Indians had directly caused a dramatic increase in fatal accidents on Canada's highways, from coast to coast. As the old adage goes, good workers aren't cheap and cheap workers aren't good. All this remained rather important to Clarence, who couldn't believe that the companies were allowed to keep on hiring these poorly-trained, inexperienced Indian drivers despite the dramatic increase that'd plagued the business over the past several years in accidents and deaths. It was something he'd been a direct witness to, losing lives on the country's highways even as so many politicians had kept on making it easier for these fly-by-night companies to keep on popping up. "I appreciate your help," said Clarence, while speaking with the union rep. The whole point of his having come down to the union hall had been not to seriously look for work, as there was never any work to be had at this union hall. This ran contrary to the various agreements held between this union and the companies with which it bargained, as all such agreements required the companies to first look for any available workers at the union hall before hiring outside workers. Their solution had been to employ agencies who sent temporary workers who weren't legally considered employees, and to Clarence's anger the union had been largely silent on the use of such temporary workers from agencies. "I can't stand all the Pakis that are everywhere nowadays," said another worker, "but you can't even complain about it." Clarence nodded and said, "they don't listen. They just keep doing what they're doing, no matter how if affects people like us."

Both Luke and Jordan had been to Long Beach before. He'd been as a child camping there with his family in the summer. Jordan had been there a few times, having grown up mostly on the island. But they'd never been there together; actually, they'd never been outside the Vancouver area as a couple before that trip shortly after they'd 'come out' to their family, and that first night after they'd arrived saw them having sex in that little tent with hardly any room for either of them to move, she clutching at his bottom while he made motions against her so quick and shallow it was as though he was just sort-of writhing in place. But they'd always been the kind of people who just have to do things the hard way, each of them, in their own separate lives, arriving at the same point at the same time just out of coincidence, if even one little detail had been different, if even one more obstacle had been there or not there in either of their lives then they wouldn't have wound up together. They had to work diligently, to go rogue and send out some of the most unexpected and inexplicable signals they could think of, until their mutual family, his mother and her aunt, her father and his uncle, and all the rest of them had no choice but to, not accept them but at least tolerate them. But then, by the time it'd reached that point, the sort-of detached, alienated feeling had set in, not between the two of them but between the little unit they'd come to have made up and the rest of the world, as though they'd spent so long working just to be taken as any other couple that it'd become impossible to see themselves any other way. But the little moments had by Luke and Jordan in the meanwhile were only a small portion of the larger course of events. To Luke, to Luke it seemed as though they could've stayed out of the city forever, reminded as he was by their trip of the earlier time in their lives when something entirely different seemed possible. It wasn't anything specific, save the smell of wood-fueled fire burning in the campsite's firepit.

By the time it'd all come crashing down, Emily had made something of a living, but not enough to have much of a safety net. And so it was that Emily returned to her first calling: the church. Hers was a non-descript church, occupying a hollowed-out shop in the middle of a row of shops, flanked on one side by a kick-boxing gym and on the other by an African grocery, that is, a grocery with images of an outline of the continent and a Ghanaian flag adorning the façade. The church had long occupied another building in another part of the city, although that building had been rather unremarkable itself. The church had left that building, which had been and continues to be owned by the Salvation Army, after their lease had run out without being renewed. Given the dire state of the church's finances, they had little choice but to lease the smallest property they could find, something entirely unremarkable for a church. In this day and age, in some parts of the United States there were churches with giant arenas where tens of thousands heard pastors deliver promises, promises devoid of spiritualism. This, this little church which made its home out of an old shophouse and which had fewer parishioners than worship leaders, this was the true spiritual front line for the way to the future, for the next generation. "I was born in Singapore," she said, speaking to her congregants, "and I came to Canada when I was already grown." It was a story she liked to recount in her sermons, as many of the congregants were similarly from outside the country. "And I never regret having come here with the rest of my family," she said, speaking from the lectern, as she looked out over the congregation. She saw exactly three people in the pews, aside from the band. "This is firmly the best country in the world," she said, deviating from the planned sermon to look Dwight right in the eye, "and I hope you all agree with me." She'd convinced herself that this was true even as her own personal problems, money and otherwise, had continued to mount.

When you're walking along the beach, there's that salty, sandy spray that gives the air everywhere you go a marine smell, mixing with the smell of the island's forests, a thick, earthen smell, the combination overpowering the senses. In the nineties, for a few years they had something that was special, something that seemed to them honest and true even as it was all a lie, an elaborate hoax that appealed to them specifically because it seemed honest and true. The questions they'd all raised, the aspirations they'd made all seemed within reach. They and people like them had a weapon, though, they'd all had at least one weapon at their disposal, at least one weapon they could've used whenever the stakes get so high in their lives that they can't afford to fail. As Jordan and Luke walked along the beach that first day of their time away, it seemed possible to him that peace might've been in their future, if only for a moment. "Why do you always have that look on your face?" she asked. "What look?" he asked. "You look like you're lost in thought," she said. "If I am, is that a bad thing?" he asked, before saying, "I could just as well say you always seem to be lost in the moment." And she asked, "is that a bad thing?" After this particular episode had well and truly closed, Luke and Jordan had returned to their home in the city of Vancouver with a new understanding of what the future might hold. But this was only the beginning.

It never really mattered how much of the workers wanted to form a union, since they wouldn't, and the company wouldn't be in operation in a few years anyways. Sharmila liked to talk about how much better certain things were in Barbados than in Canada, though it was never the climate. She complained that the food lacked flavour, that the streets were either too quiet or too loud, even that things were too expensive. Sometimes she complained about vague and nonspecific things, that life itself in Canada lacked a certain joie de vivre. If it were a play she might've complained that it was competently made but was missing the mise en scene that would've made it pleasurable or stimulating to take in. At one point, when they were working in cubicles directly across from each other, Martin made the mistake of inviting her to return to Barbados if she hated life in Canada so much. This earned him only a look of contempt, a roll of the eyes and an exaggerated groan, before she sat back down in her cubicle to take a call. She wouldn't speak to him for the rest of the shift, until the very end when she told him to find his own way home. He took the early morning bus which took two hours rather than the twenty minutes it normally took when she gave him a ride in her car. Late in the year, this meant walking a considerable distance to and from bus stops in the rain, ensuring that he made it home with his socks damp in his shoes. "Just getting in?" asked his landlord. Martin nodded. His landlord looked him over, then said, "you must've had some night out." Martin nodded again. He liked to come and go without saying a word, without making a noise, without being seen or heard by anyone. It wasn't that he had anything to hide, rather that he preferred simply not to draw attention to himself, at least when it came to work.

All of the temporary workers at the warehouse where Bhulwinder worked, who were mostly Indian like Bhulwinder, were assured they'd be hired on, with a full slate of benefits and much better pay. These implicit threats were made believable and real by the not infrequent news of mills and factories and yards closing throughout the province and across the country, news that filtered in through not only news but also through the various websites, through messages exchanged between workers, even through the little half-conversations that sometimes took place throughout the day and night. Bhulwinder, though a young man, was working for too poor a wage in order to furnish himself with the necessities of life. The onset of fall had meant the sudden and rapid descent on the city not of rain or cloud cover but a pall of gloominess that wasn't to lift for several months. It was as if some sinister force had absconded with the city in the night, only to leave in its place a city entirely different, one which looked exactly the same but which lacked in its essence, its soul. Men like Bhulwinder couldn't articulate it as such, but they were angry, too. "I don't know about any of that," said Bhulwinder, speaking with one of the other temporary workers, another man whose name Bhulwinder never learned. "The company could send us all home," said the other worker, "they control our visas." Bhulwinder, for his part, never told anyone how homesick he was becoming, how he was beginning to consider if he should've never come over to Canada at all. And this led Bhulwinder to tell the other worker, "so don't give them a reason to send you home." He certainly kept these feelings hidden from his family. An even bigger secret was his growing sympathy with unionising, which created an awkward and uncomfortable feeling in him, the juxtaposition of his desire to get a fairer shake with his need to keep quiet for his own sake. But he wouldn't have long to wait until forced to resolve this internal contradiction, whether he wanted to or not.

Although Carol had been living and working in the city nearly all her life, it'd only been over the past few years that she'd begun to notice changes large and small. It was as though the city itself had been seized of a virulent kind of malevolence, as if the city had been killed and then reanimated as a grotesque imitation of itself, outwardly identical but assuredly different. It matters little whether Carol would've stayed or gone, as she had no choice in the matter—her elderly mother had been needing her for some years now. Her elderly mother lived with her in the small apartment they could still afford, the small apartment not yet demolished, not yet emptied of its residents to make way for some new development. Those orange and blue signs were recognisable markers, one notifying the public of a 'rezoning application' and the other a 'development permit application,' both often going up at the same time, both going up even before the last residents or occupants had been evicted. Carol had heard the noise coming through the walls of the little apartment she shared with her elderly mother—on one side, people fighting, on the other, people having sex. The woman who lived on the other side seemed very emphatic about agreeing with her current partner, with Carol not-infrequently observing strange men entering or leaving the woman's apartment, Carol running into them when leaving for work or coming home. "Why don't you go over there and tell them to shut up?" Carol's mother asked. "I'll take care of it," said Carol, her voice low and flat as she avoided looking her mother directly in the eye. "Where are you going?" asked her mother. "I'm off to work," said Carol. "Where do you work?" asked her mother. "The same place I've always worked," said Carol. "Where do you live?" asked her mother. But Carol didn't respond, and simply left.

Chapter Eight

The third person in their family Jordan and Luke made a point of 'coming out' to was one of Jordan's sisters. Michelle and her husband happened to live not far away, in the nearby city of Chilliwack, about an hour and a half along the highway to the east of Vancouver. They'd moved to Chilliwack not long after their wedding. In the province of British Columbia, over half the population lived within an hour's drive of Vancouver. Michelle was currently on maternity leave herself, after having given birth to a young daughter, her third child. Although Michelle was the youngest of four daughters, she was the one whose life most closely resembled that of the normal, well-adjusted adult. Her husband was a teacher at one of the high schools in Chilliwack, while the job Michelle was on maternity leave from was an analyst at a local branch of a major Canadian bank. Although Luke didn't know exactly what duties Michelle's job entailed, he'd heard that they both moved out into the valley, in part, to get away from the rapidly escalating cost of living in Vancouver. As Luke, Jordan, and Michelle sat in the backyard of Michelle's house, they began were in no great need of money. Of course Michelle had heard about them, from the rest of the family, virtually from the moment Luke's mother had told him she knew about them the rest of their extended family finding out in short order. "Are there no eligible bachelors in Vancouver these days that you have to resort to incest?" asked Michelle, before taking another sip of wine. "You must've known that it's not only about that," said Jordan. "It's true," said Michelle, before turning and say directly to me, "but I don't know you well enough to say that. You'd have to be awfully, let's say maladjusted, to be the best man for her." Although Luke knew little of the strained relationship between Jordan and Michelle, he knew nothing of the many differences, many difficulties they'd had over the years.

All this remained unknown to Tony, who went about his life as though nothing had changed, drinking himself blind and stupid every night or nearly every night. This all came to a head one night when he was coming home from work and had a seizure in the apartment's halls. He was climbing the stairs to his third-floor unit, between the second and third floors when he suddenly stopped and felt a gurgling sensation coming from the pit of his stomach. He fell forward, dropping his shopping bags on the stairs, clutching one hand in a stranger's who happened to be there. He could tell the stranger identified himself as a member of the Canadian Forces. He couldn't remember any more than that. He woke up in the hospital, in the intensive care unit, without any knowledge of how he'd gotten there. "I know this might seem strange but I think you can still help me," said the young woman whose name Tony had learned some time ago. She stood by the bedside, watching as Tony'd been brought in. "What are you doing here?" asked Tony. "Who are you talking to?" asked Tony's mother. When Tony looked over again, the young woman whose name Tony had already learned was gone. It was as though she'd vanished into the night, like an apparition. "I don't," said Tony, "I don't know...where am I?" He tried to sit up in bed, but found himself restrained at the wrists and calves. "You were out of it," said Tony's mother, "you kept trying to pull the plug except there's no plug to pull. So finally the doctor gave up and put you in those." The floor seemed to cover in a thick sludge that rolled over, rising to Tony's feet, seemingly noticed only by him. He hadn't died, but he'd come close.

As summer was in full swing, a heatwave made it difficult for any of them to move or think. Deep in the Fraser Valley, the summers in Chilliwack were noticeably hotter and stickier than closer to the water in Vancouver, a fact which Janet openly acknowledged in saying, "you have to take the good with the bad," before wiping sweat from her brow and taking a sip from her drink, a glass of white wine. Left unmentioned by all was the smell of manure from the farms surrounding the city, Janet's house's location on the eastern fringe at the rear of a residential subdivision forever encroaching on farmland. "I suppose you've got something you'd like to say," said Janet. Although Jordan said nothing, Luke chose to take the lead. He said, "you've heard by now that we're together." "I don't mean to create the impression that I oppose your—" Michelle paused, seeming to search for the right word, "—relationship, if that's what you're asking." Luke said, "that's good to hear." But Jordan said, "you sure have a funny way of showing it." It seemed to be going wrong in new ways. "Should we start over?" asked Michelle. She was again looking at Luke, as if choosing conspicuously not to deal with Jordan. "It couldn't hurt," said Luke, before reaching under the table, his hand finding Jordan's, giving a quick but firm squeeze. Still lingering in the background was the vague but impossibly powerful sensibility that something had to be wrong.

There's always one thing or another to impress itself on her, as if to quietly and invisibly retard her advance along the path she never knew she was walking. It's all well and good to look back on life and realise what's been, but it's something else entirely to search one's thoughts and feelings in the moment to realise what's there. After the September 11th attacks had changed the world forever, a new generation would have to come and go before those events could well and truly be forgotten. In the meanwhile, young women like Aaliyah were to come of age without any direct knowledge of those events but with an intimate familiarity of the consequences of those events. But these things were rather distant and antiseptic to young women like Aaliyah; after she'd finally come home after a summer in Texas, Aaliyah settled back into life with her father, her white father, where she was a little closer to being a part of what she ought to have been. But the bullying, it didn't let up, it couldn't let up, and this was something that Aaliyah never told her father about. Although the girls who'd targeted her would never attempt another assault, either out of sight or in the halls, she would have to confront the possibility of such an assault every day. On the internet, she found stories of specific girls that had been brutally murdered by classmates, including stories from right there in Vancouver, which led her to believe that death could be waiting for her every day, around every corner. "What's really got you feeling sick?" her father asked, after she'd faked illness for an entire week just to get out of school. "I'm burning up," she said. "I'll get the thermometer," said her father, "again." For four days the thermometer had read thirty-seven degrees—normal. For a fifth day the thermometer would read thirty-seven degrees. But Aaliyah held fast. Her father wouldn't push the issue, until he did.

After Jordan and Luke returned home, nothing changed right away. In the heat of the moment, after they'd taken off on an unplanned vacation, heading right to the ferry terminal in Tsawwassen and boarding the next ferry to the island. On the other side, they drove right off the ferry and didn't stop until they'd made it all the way to Long Beach, on the far side of the island, where they looked out over the water with only the open ocean between them and the east coast of Japan. It made sense to either of them at the time—actually, it made no sense even then, which is exactly why it was it must've made perfect sense. These questions began to seize Luke's mind, even as Jordan kept on talking, saying things like, "I love the fresh air," and, "it's the salty smell I love the most." Luke only nodded along, occasionally saying things like, "if only we could stay out there forever," and, "too bad we've got rent to pay." This was before they'd gotten married, long before they'd had had children, and still they had yet to be consumed in their own fears and in their own neuroses. "I love you," he said. "Just like you to ruin the moment," said Jordan, "can't you just let it be?" Luke thought about it for a moment before saying, "no, I can't." It was a small thing, practically nothing when held against the moment, against the sheer weight of the task confronting them in their immediate futures. But there was more to it than that, as there was always more to it than that. In truth, Luke would only admit that he fell in love with Jordan simply because she was there, that every other consideration had been secondary. It would've been entirely adolescent, he realised, to have insisted that they'd had true love, that he felt something for her that'd been a genuine connection that'd transcended the limitations of their lives. He could only guess what'd made her fall in love with him.

Actually, Kit had slept with Reva, his boss, and had adopted a rather cavalier attitude towards his having slept with her for a while after. The big rigs and huge dump trucks which trundled about the city's streets had become so ubiquitous that it seemed more disconcerting and oddly unsettling when they weren't seen, the dump trucks in particular. A part of Kit's mind, his subconscious, had fixated on a specific configuration of trucks, the dump truck which towed behind it another half-dump truck, a second dump truck but without the truck permitting it to haul the rubble of an old apartment block or a disused school or hospital or church at double the capacity. This is the way their way of life had been carted off, dismantled and taken away in the backs of so many dump trucks that were needed to haul away homes, hospitals, and churches to make way for glittering but empty glass and steel towers. Although Kit doesn't think in such terms, he's capable of articulating these ideas in the vague and guttural way that men like him are. Sometimes, when the night is unusually quiet in the city, it'd seem to contain in its boundless dark an eerie energy which could conceal something more. After having come home from work one night and with his next shift not for a few days, Kit worried whether he'd be able to afford to pay his rent. "I've got a plan," he said, speaking with his friend, Josh. "I'll believe that when I see it," said Josh. They were speaking a few days later, when they were both scheduled a shift for the first time in almost a week. "There are a lot of jobs out there," said Kit. "But they all want brown guys who work for nothing," said Josh. He planned to appeal to Reva, who could give him extra shifts, or so he believed. In fact, she could do this, but Kit, blinded by his irrational feeling of love, which was an extension of his youthful attribute of general idiocy.

When Luke had been a child, nothing ever seemed to bother him all that much, or so he could recall. It's hard, sometimes, to tell what parts of your memories are faithful recollections of actual events and which parts are fabrications of the mind trying to make sense of the senseless. Most, Luke would prefer to imagine, are some combination of the two. But as a child, he always snuck downstairs when he was sure everyone else at home was asleep. That way, he could watch the late night softcore adult shows without either his sister or mother knowing. He was only ten or eleven, and he watched a program called 'Red Shoe Diaries' out of curiosity, or so he could recall now. It was an innocent curiosity, for him as a young boy to watch women with lascivious bodies, shapely and buxom, bared behind the lens of a camera, their chests heaving and their mouths hanging open in mock orgasm. Even before he'd learned to appreciate what he was watching, it was an object of curiosity for Luke to observe such things from the relative safety and comfort of the living room. Now, with expectations tempered by some years of experience, Luke thought himself better equipped to navigate life's impending difficulties. "I really love you," he said, "more than I ever thought it was possible to love someone." And he meant it, he meant it, even after having been in each other's lives all along still every moment they spent together feeling to him like the very first time. "I know you do," she said, "I love you, too." Although this was only one of many warm moments between them in the time before they were to get married and have twin daughters, there was still the lingering sense of a black cloud just over the horizon, gathering strength, preparing to unleash itself, to wreak havoc on their lives. And Luke, Luke chose not to say anything about it. This choice would become his regret.

The breakdown Stephanie had suffered as a child would portend a much harsher and more catastrophic breakdown as an adult. The nexus point through which private and public should fuse to become something that can encompass both but transcend either should turn out to be young people just like Stephanie. In the end, Stephanie will have decided to take a break from relentless work at the university. All this endless work and relentless travel would inevitably take its toll on her, leading to a complete breakdown. It's not all that important exactly how it happened, or even what happened, save the fact that it put her in the psychiatric ward of the local hospital for a few days. No one came to visit her on the ward, which made her anxious to leave. Exactly as she might've predicted, this spell resulted in her falling too far behind in her work and studies to keep up. Stephanie didn't tell her parents, didn't see any benefit in telling anyone in particular from her life exactly where she'd been in those few days. Her first instinct was simply to get out of the hospital and resume her routine of endless work as quickly as possible. It wasn't that simple, of course, because the staff at the hospital wouldn't let her leave so quickly, not without the consent of a psychiatrist. In all her years of relentless work towards some unseen goal Stephanie had never been given to flights of fancy. It recalled an argument—not so much an argument as a relentless agreement between the disagreeable. The psychiatrist she began seeing after her release from the ward believed she was suffering from one of a variety of psychiatric disorders, and relied on the prescription of a sequence of psychiatric medications to relieve her symptoms. But this was like using duct tape to stop water from flowing into a ship through massive gashes torn in it's hull by a catastrophic collision.

As notices came in the mail, first one, then another, then another, then the seventh or eighth Luke began to wonder what Jordan was hiding from him. At this point, he wasn't suspicious per se; rather, he wanted to know her as he thought he should've already known her. But then, most people don't need to get to know the object of their affection after they move in with each other, so he supposed this was the moment he began having doubts. In the night, the city they lived in neither came alive nor died a quiet death. The streets were never relieved of the restless energy that so governed life in a place beset by an almost schizophrenic crisis of self, given as those very streets were to bearing the burden of those who no longer lived on them. They'd known Luke and Jordan were living together, even as Luke and Jordan hadn't made it a point of telling them. All he knew, then, was the feeling of having fallen madly in love with her, and whenever he had doubts all he had to do was look her in the eye or approach her from behind and rest his hands on her hips while planting the lightest of kisses on her neck and all doubt would be pushed from my mind. Looking back on it, he can see, now, that she, then, had those very doubts, pushed from her mind whenever she felt their shared touch. In love with his cousin, my cousin in love with him, it made no difference in those little moments when all they had in the world was themselves. Then, it happened. A moment came when Luke and Jordan had made the fateful decision to get married, a decision which should prove to be inevitable in this time of such uncertainty. After they'd left Michelle's place in the distant city of Chilliwack, Luke and Jordan stopped at a miscellaneous greasy spoon just off the highway.

After casting his vote, he hung around to listen to the results, volunteering to count ballots. By a margin of two to one, the new agreement was ratified, and little would change for the workers. In truth, men like Vincent were something of a rarity in this day and age, committed to a contemplative vindication of their own sense of right and wrong. After the votes had been tallied (Vincent had been one of four asked to count votes on the spot, a duty which he performed adequately and with disinterest), Vincent left as quickly as he could. He was one of the first to leave, pulling out of the parking lot, avoiding direct eye contact with any of his brothers and sisters. It was only after he'd sped down the road and watched the union hall disappear in his rear view mirror behind a turn that he allowed himself to relax. But what connection does Vincent have to Jordan or Luke? He'd gone to high school with Vincent, all those years ago, although they hadn't known each other very well at all. Not for the first time in his life, Vincent had come to see things differently. He couldn't see any way forward, not for himself. He was on a treadmill, advancing towards the same obscurity, the same mediocrity every day without ever gaining any ground. It wouldn't be this way much longer, for Vincent was about to hatch a plan that would change his life but no other lives. He couldn't go home without a plan. He thought about leaving Vancouver, a lot of people had thought about leaving, but only a small number would actually leave. After having discussed his plans with his sister, he began to make the first moves towards realising these plans. He knew he had to save as much money as possible. He knew that'd take some time. But therein lay the solution. "If I put my head down and look out only for myself," he said to his sister, "I can forget about the union and just take as much as I can as quickly as I can, and I can get out."

Not long after she'd finalized her divorce from her second husband, Lauren started seeing someone. At first, she referred to him only as her friend, at least when talking with Luke about him, and even then only in passing, saying things like, "my friend Wade's coming back from out of town," or, "a friend of mine, Wade, he's looking at moving." It all came to a head, one night, after he'd met him for the first time. "You can do better," Luke said, after she'd asked what he thought of him. Wounded slightly by the insinuation, she sarcastically said, "but all my cousins live far away." And he said, "look, don't take this the wrong way, but you're not the best judge of character." "And you are?" "It's not about me." "You're the one who shacked up with his cousin." It all went downhill from there. But it's kind-of hard to keep it all in when he'd let it build up over so many years. It was a long time ago that Luke had learned not to push her buttons, something he'd learned only over many years of pushing exactly those buttons. You know, it's the way you can be at each other's throats for so long only to come to an uneasy, even unspoken truce, a truce contingent on never speaking about your past fights at all. And then it all comes undone simply because of one half-intended comment, a carefully negotiated peace torn to shreds. Actually, Lauren had never been too much of a bother, having more or less respected boundaries between them, the boundaries that Luke, especially as a teenager, could never quite figure out. But Luke never let it show, choosing instead to go back to work every day with the same look of stoic determination muscled onto his face. He certainly never told Jordan about the trouble with Lauren's new boyfriend, nor of Lauren's apparent disdain for their relationship. Every instinct in his body and in his heart, shaped over many years of painful and costly experience, told him to keep as quiet as possible, to withhold as much information as possible from those around him. This included his wife to be, the future mother of his children. It wasn't that he actively sought to hide things, rather that experience had taught him that nothing good ever comes from fighting like that.

As well, Christian has his own family, his own personal history comprised of the various people he's known one way or another over the years, although he doesn't know where any of them are, where any of them have ended up. A few people came and went while the officers were standing there, walking along the sidewalk, seeming to give the officers something of a wide berth. It wasn't altogether unseemly for the officers to be arguing over something like the local scores even as people were dying all around them. "...And then she asks me 'how do you live with a team this historically bad?'" said the older officer. "What'd you say?" asked the younger Asian officer. "I just said 'on a wing and a prayer,'" said the older one. They shared a laugh before moving on. While Christian Mullins sat writhing in a subdued pain just out of sight, the officers took a step, a step, another step away. In this there was the representation of a much larger conflict, a struggle not by force of arms but by the subtleties and nuances of a man's personal strains. But something happened that should compel such a man as Christian Mullins to turn away from his family, from what friends he'd had, and to embrace the relentless horror and the grinding terror of life on these streets. His whole body was covered in an erratic dirt and grime, while his hair was oily and clumped in places, the product of having gone several days since bathing. His stomach growled and groans, but he felt gripped in a fear that kept him from moving. His clothes were ratty and torn, dirty and wet, with his bare skin exposed in places. He sometimes wondered if the coldness and the dampness of the nights might've killed him dead and left him another corpse to be hauled off, but it never came. In the morning, in the morning Christian roused from his restless sleep to find the same stilted and scattered brick walls on the other side of the alley, and soon forced himself to look for food.

At night in the city you can never really see the stars, drowned as they are in a sea of pale, sickly orange light emanating from the streets. When men like Luke travel into the countryside and spend the night looking up at those very stars, it always seems to them as though they're on another planet. It's for this reason that Luke had always enjoyed camping, for the escape it offered from the urban environment in which he spent nearly all of his time. But that wasn't it. After having married Jordan and had twin daughters with her, Luke had come to feel powerless as his wife had begun to slip into a deepening depression, a deepening depression with no obviously immediate cause. The young woman Jennifer who Luke had encountered outside of work was entirely different from Jordan, and had always been, at least as far as Luke had known. Such a lovely young woman, though not so young as she looked, seemed so out of place in a warehouse filled with gruff, unshaven men and a few rather butch looking women. From the way she began to look at him, the way she caught his glance and seemed to find his eyes at exactly the right moment it became apparent to Luke that she was attracted to him; although Luke was rather dense when it came to the attractions and the attentions of women, even he couldn't escape the feelings she was beginning to develop for him. And he, he couldn't help himself, he couldn't be anything but friendly and warm with so lovely a young woman as Jennifer; he couldn't help himself from responding to her friendliness and warmth with his own. At work, she'd ask him to do something, like verify on the warehouse floor a given quantity of given items, with only minutes left in his shift. And he'd, he'd do it, rushing across the floor to check this and that, counting and scribbling down numbers, then handing back bills to her. The way she'd seemingly say, "thank you," and smile would strike Luke just so. He'd say something to the effect of, "don't thank me, I'm just doing my job," before leaving for the day. But that wasn't all.

Although it may offend certain people's sensibilities to concede or admit it, people like Clarence, people who share the views he does are rather sympathetic figures. "They're taking over the country," said Clarence, "and there's nothing we can do about it." He said this as he'd been speaking with one of the other now-unemployed workers outside the union hall, as neither of them had been much of anywhere to go. In this part of the city, an industrial quarter on one of the larger islands on the Fraser River's delta, the union hall occupied a spot between two major roads, the roads coming together at a roundabout on which the hall sat. "If you complain about it then they just say you're racist and ignore what you've got to say," said the other worker, nodding his agreement. This kind of attitude, common among such people as Clarence and his fellow worker at the union hall, was merely the product of so many years of hardship. When people of good conscience, when people of honest character have real, serious grievances with the way of things, then the way of things must inevitably employ some manner of neutralising their grievances. "I'm going to do something," said the other worker, "I'm going to find a new job somewhere, and I'll give whoever I work for no more loyalty than they give me. I'll just take whatever money I can get." Clarence nodded and said, "fuck 'em." The other worker was a much younger man, with a much longer future to look forward to and much experience left to accumulate. In this young man Clarence saw much of himself, even if he couldn't quite admit it, couldn't quite articulate it as such. The feeling of familiarity in the unfamiliar was, to men like Clarence as well as all other men, a deeply visceral and rather primal, basic feeling, the kind of feeling that all men feel at some point in their lives when they're not quite backed up into a corner but they're getting close. As a man Clarence was close to reaching a seminal point in his life, whether he realised it or not. It wasn't to be in Clarence's immediate future that he'd find work, but another crisis would emerge, one which he'd been deliberately ignoring for as long as he could.

And in Vancouver it'd become a small tradition to count the stars in the sky, on the rare night when neither the light pollution nor the weather conspired to prevent such a sight. Very little of what you see in the city seems genuine, seems sure of itself, even as the first glance on arrival might create the impression of a place so utterly confident that everyone in the world wants to be like it. Luke sometimes imagined what it might've been like for someone to have moved from the country into the city, to try and sleep under an almost starless haze after having slept a whole life under a sky with too many stars to count. Although it became readily apparent to Luke over the course of some months that Jennifer was becoming more and more attracted to him, that she might even be developing feelings for him, he was rather self-conscious about this possibility, as if it was strange and unbelievable for another women to become attracted to him when he hadn't done anything to elicit her attraction. "You work harder than anyone else here," she said. "I don't know about that," he said. "You do," she said, before asking, "why?" All he could think to say was, "why not?" But he was flustered at being in such close proximity to her, acutely aware as he was of the attraction she felt for him. The next time they crossed paths at work, she seemed nervous, looking him up and down, then taking a breath before asking, "why don't we get together this weekend for a drink?" Luke only said, "I don't think that's a good idea," then walked past her. He could've spurned her advances and outright told her he wasn't interested, but he didn't, not yet. At this point Luke believed, fully believed that he was in total control of his own emotions, of his own thoughts and feelings, even as he was in the process, the long and slow process of letting his control of these things slip.

Actually, the church Emily served as a pastor in had considerably more members than were present on this particular service, the weekly youth service which Emily and Dwight were permitted to run. The youth tended to be a rather fickle crowd, something which Emily and Dwight each understood but could never say, much less complain about. "We've all got something to be thankful for," Emily would take to saying in her sermons, before acknowledging the congregants who were in attendance by name. Although their church was officially declared to be non-denominational, Emily and Dwight would freely admit that their doctrines and beliefs made them Pentecostal, one of many such congregations that'd become so common across Canada and the United States. "We'll always have a last resort," said Emily, "but I wish there was something I could do to persuade him to come to church more often." She'd been thinking about her father and his reluctant, unenthusiastic conversion to the faith, something he'd done after so many years of poking and prodding from his wife, Emily's mother. Her mother was as enthusiastic as could be, going to their church's Chinese-language services every Sunday without fail, reading her Chinese-language Bible studiously, even after having read it through many times over. "All the years I've spent ministering to so many people," said Emily, "but still I can't minister effectively to my own father." But Dwight said, "at least he's here. At least he's made the choice to be here." And this, this is something that Emily could only agree with, without respect for her own personal reservations. She reasoned that her father's faith couldn't be evaluated by anyone but him and God, but what she failed to consider that

But the city Luke had grown up in had long ago decided people like him weren't welcome, even before he'd been born a transformation beginning that wound up turning the city from the sleepy, provincial backwater it'd been to, well, whatever it became. (No one seemed to know what Vancouver had become, and people who cared about such things could only agree that it'd definitely become something other than what it was). With so many sleek, glass-and-steel towers sprouting like a crystal forest, it seemed the city had become something else entirely. At work, Luke continued to happen into a deepening friendship with the young woman Jennifer, even as he was aware that her interest in him was not entirely platonic. The company paid for a fully-catered Thanksgiving lunch in the break room, complete with turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, and everything else that went along with a traditional Thanksgiving meal. It was at this lunch, held during normal working hours, that Luke and Jennifer found themselves talking, making small talk before moving on to heftier topics. "The desserts are the best part," said Luke, "little cheesecake squares, Nanaimo bars, cupcakes, and stuff like that." As Jennifer had only been working there for a few months, this was her first such lunch, while Luke had been there for years. "I should watch what I eat," she said, "a girl could lose her figure working in a place like this." Without thinking, Luke said, "I'm sure you'd still be very pretty." But then he realised himself, while she seemed to look rather sheepishly at him. "I shouldn't have said that," he said. "Well, thanks anyway," she said, seeming to understand exactly what he'd meant. There was more awkward small talk, before he excused himself and returned to the warehouse floor. The next time they ran into each other on the floor, they exchanged knowing glances, glances which prompted Luke to later assure himself that harmless banter crossed no boundaries and made no transgressions, that Jennifer and he would continue to be friendly co-workers—friends?—and nothing more. As his wife had begun her slow and painful descent into depression, Jennifer's friendship offered a ray of light. It was for this reason that he chose to continue their friendship, to continue acting in the very way he'd acted that'd elicited her attention. He was treading on dangerous ground, and he knew it.

But there was always more to it than that, there had to have been more to it than that for young men like Martin Hall and his not-girlfriend Sharmila. Sometimes, customers would ask him where their office was located, and he'd respond by telling them that he was in 'B.C.' Some customers heard 'D.C.' and took that to mean Washington, America's capital, a notion which he and many of the others who worked at this call centre chose not to disabuse the customers of. For some reason, Martin found it vastly amusing that many of their customers believed these things. At the start of every shift, they received a crew talk from the department's night shift supervisor, and every crew talk was the same. They were instructed to stick to the script, the script they'd been given training on during their single week of paid training. Another co-worker, an overweight, middle-aged woman from Newfoundland would talk at length about the minor league hockey team they had in St. John's, which was of some interest to Martin but would prove to be barren ground for conversation starters. "I might request a transfer to her department if she doesn't come back soon," said Martin. "You could do that," said the woman from Newfoundland, "or you could just do your job in the department that you're assigned. You wouldn't want to make life unnecessarily difficult for your employer if you want to get hired on at the end of the season." This was something that Martin hadn't thought of; he'd assumed he would be, and this he kept on assuming. Even at such a young age, Martin was inconsiderate of the larger picture, given as he was to obsessing over the here and now. Outside, the winter's sky seemed to blend into the mountains like a thick sludge emanating from the city, an unusually calm but cold period breaking over the city. Every moment one spent outside was a moment spent confronted with the overwhelming malaise that made it hard for all but the most youthful and energetic to move, slowing every step forward, thickening every breath drawn in and pushed out.

It'd always been an open secret that the dominance of Indian workers in certain industries have resulted in the collapsing of wages and the worsening of safety. This wasn't the way life in Canada had been presented to men like Bhulwinder, although it wasn't altogether surprising either. Bhulwinder was young enough to still have some hope for the future, but old enough to be somewhat wise on the ways of the world. He rose early in the morning, long before the sun rose, and he arrived home late in the evening, long after the sun had gone down. He never took vacations, not that he was entitled to take any, his nominal employer augmenting his pitiful wages by something like two or three per cent in lieu of vacation. He wanted to be hired on as a permanent employee, and this desire kept him coming back to this particular warehouse day after day, six days a week on the promise that one day his hard work might be rewarded by his being bestowed with the sought-after title of permanent employee. But it never happened, it never happened. In the meanwhile, Bhulwinder neglected, or was made to neglect nearly every aspect of his own personal life, relatively young as he was still without a wife children, still focused as he was on working through each and every day with a certainty that he'd sometimes lacked. "It's troubling to think about it," said Bhulwinder, "best to avoid it if you can." But then it happened, as such things must inevitably happen to men like Bhulwinder.

After an unusually mild winter, mild save the occasional stretch of frigid temperatures, a few more months were to pass under rain and cloud before the first real break of warm and sunny weather. On her way down the hall, Carol took care to avoid the little spots in the floor where even the lightest of steps can provoke creaks and groans from the floorboards. She always felt the compulsive need to avoid drawing any undue attention to herself, to flit about as if a ghostly apparition materialising out of nothing. Unseemly figures could've often been encountered in the halls of this building, and she preferred even to avoid looking at them, to avoid them looking at her. Inevitably, though, she'd come across those who wouldn't, couldn't help themselves, like one young white woman who had no key but always found a way in, at least as far as her as her boyfriend's suite. "Come on, Michael," said the woman, "open the fucking door!" The woman then kicked the door hard, over and over, before pausing to catch her breath. She kept kicking the door, over and over, until an elderly woman living in the suite directly across the hall came out. This was witnessed by Carol, whose mother had shouted at her to do something about the commotion. "...You can't keep doing this," said the elderly woman, speaking to the young woman who'd tried to kick in the door, while holding her aside. It wasn't an unusual sight, yet it seemed to Carol altogether disturbing. Too many people had been evicted from their apartments, not only here but across the city, for any of them to be altogether comfortable in raising a stink. But this, this young woman kept on arguing once she'd made it into her suite. "Yeah like you're one to talk," said the young lady, "you drink every day. Just because it's legal doesn't mean it's good for you." And she, she might've had a point, if not for the obvious fact that she was a hopeless addict herself. It was a solid fuck you, nah fuck you standoff. By the time it was through, the night had passed and Carol had made it through the halls like any other day, heading down the stairs. Her life at home had become this kind of routine, but for the gradual worsening of her mother's mental faculty. It wasn't even certain what the problem was, save her mother's advancing age. "What time of year is it?" asked her mother, only a few days later. This came after her mother had forgotten her birthday, which Carol hadn't complained about. But soon she'd be forced to take action and seek help.

Chapter Nine

Soon Luke began to consider something he felt he should've considered long before. So inwardly obsessed had he been that the very thought of her considerations had escaped him. And whenever he looked toward the city it seemed to him as though the skyline had sprouted a new tower, like a weed from between concrete slabs on the sidewalk. As he went about the task of caring for two daughters and a wife—the girls, changing diapers, feeding, and Jordan, tending to her depression, making sure she was taking her medication as prescribed—there was something that'd come to be abundantly clear even to a man so narrow minded and limited in focus as him. After a particularly long and hard day at work—more than fourteen hours on the clock, plus a lengthy commute home made lengthier by an accident on the highway—Luke was too tired and hungry to notice much in the way of subtleties. "I'm sick of this tiny apartment," said Jordan, "we need a bigger place for four people." After retrieving a beer from the bridge and taking a first swig, Luke turned to her and said, "I don't disagree, but there's nothing anywhere close that we could afford." Jordan kept talking, and said, "we need two bedrooms, one for the girls and one for us." Luke took another swig from his beer, this time drinking almost half the can in a single swig, and then said, "that'd be ideal, but there's nothing in the city that we could afford." It'd become like them to talk past each other, which Luke attributed to her psychiatric problems. This took place after they'd had their children, after they'd gotten married quickly, well after they'd gone through the process of 'coming out' to their mutual family. A few days later, Luke and Jennifer were at the shipping office, in which she worked and to which he reported several times per day. After receiving his next assignment, he was about to leave when she looked him up and down and said, "I think you look great too." Luke only said, "thank you." She seemed to have made a point of wearing the same thing she'd worn at the company's Thanksgiving. "You don't have to thank me," said Jennifer, "I've got eyes." "Still wanna pass that drink?" asked Jennifer. "You don't give up, do you?" asked Luke. "Doesn't seem like it," said Jennifer, smiling at him all the same. She then said, "might be your last chance." Luke thought about it for a moment, and in that moment he was genuinely tempted, seeing her offer as an alternative to spending more time at home with a depressed wife and two diaper changes. It was this temptation that made him feel more guilty than anything, and it was this guilt that compelled him to decline her offer again. There wouldn't have been anything wrong with two friends having a drink, which was what he told himself, even as he drove home that night, deliberately taking a longer route than usual to allow him extra time to think.

But Tony Zhou's mother couldn't afford any of the few apartments available for rent in the city of Richmond, not on her own; the increasingly common practice of working, middle-aged adults living with roommates, sometimes three or four to an apartment, was too unpalatable for her. So she moved, to the outlying suburb of Langley, the only place where she could afford a place on her own, and then only a small, one-bedroom basement suite. The rain often fell in a continuous thrum, a constant pattering against every hard surface. Chinese people living in the city of Richmond were not all like Tony and his mother. But there was more to it than that. There was always more to it than that. Only a few more years were to pass before Tony's mother would die, giving him little reason to hold onto anything at all. Eventually, things came to a head. One night, after a particularly long and sorrowful drinking binge, Tony realised the young woman from his apartment, from Tony's bedside must've disappeared, given how long it'd been since he'd seen her. It was around this time that Tony had found work as a temporary labourer at a warehouse; although Tony was one of many temporary workers, there had been and would continue to be a small number of permanent staff, with a full slate of benefits and vastly better wages. "I wonder where she's gone," said Tony, "she's been here a while." It seemed as though he was the only one who saw her. "Don't know who you're talking about," said his landlord, "don't care neither. You're five days late on the rent. That's all I care about." His landlord probably thought this was an attempt to avoid the issue, to change the subject, but Tony genuinely wondered. He wouldn't have much longer to wonder.

Though Luke and Jordan shared a bed, they rarely bid each other goodnight before turning out the lights on either side of the bedroom in time with each other. Most nights she would be asleep when he came home from work, and most mornings (afternoons?) when he left she'd still be in bed. That night, though, they both lingered under the vague sensation that they were in for something other than what they expected, something that couldn't be expected even as they'd come to believe it should've been. He frequently came home to find the daughters in dirty diapers. "Did you get up to much today?" he asked once. "I'm on leave, you know," she said. "Did you go to that parenting class?" asked Luke. "That was Tuesday," she said. It was a Wednesday. "Did you go?" he asked. "Sure," she said. It seemed as though she'd fallen into a deep depression so rapidly that it was as though she'd become someone else almost overnight. At work, things were different. The young woman Jennifer, only a few years younger than Luke, seemed to have a relentless energy about her, her energy seeming such a stark contrast with Jordan's moroseness and bleak outlook. It was in this spirit that Luke again found himself drawn to the young woman Jennifer, not intending to pursue any sexual or romantic affair but simply enjoying her company. She continued to persist in asking him out, whether for drinks or dinner or even just for a cup of coffee at the nearby greasy spoon, and he kept on politely declining. It made Luke rather uncomfortable, even as he kept finding excuses to go back to the office whenever he could. "Listen," Jennifer said, "I don't want to make you uncomfortable." But Luke only said, "don't worry about it." A few days, perhaps a week or two later, he stopped by the office lost in thought, handing in his bills and asking for new ones without thinking. He thought of his wife and their two young daughters, of his wife's mounting depression, and at the exact moment he passed his bills off to Jennifer he was wondering if his daughters were being fed when they needed to be. Luke's and Jennifer's hands brushed with the lightest of touches, breaking Luke suddenly from his stupor. "If you want to talk," she said, "I'm here." But Luke only shook his head and said, "I really can't," before turning away.

In the streets at night there were raccoons and skunks that searched for food in the remains of the day, only occasionally happening across one another. It's marvellous how the natural world's persistence and resiliency permit it to infuse itself into even the barest of urban wastelands, with weeds that sprouted between cracks in the cement sidewalks and with animals that survived on the detritus of the day. Aaliyah knew what a skunk smelled like only by happenstance, from the time her father had run over a skunk with his car; the outside of the car smelled with a thick, noxious odour for weeks afterwards, no matter what her father had done to try and get it out. It mattered little that he'd tried nothing at all. Despite the nothing at all he'd tried, the thick, noxious odour had persisted. Her father was there to pick her up at the airport in Vancouver, and when she sat in the passenger seat of his car she would've sworn she could still smell that dead skunk. The great accomplishment Aaliyah had made over this past summer was that she'd turned sixteen and was thus no longer required by the terms of her mother's and father's arrangement to spend any more time in the states. Things with the other girls at school soon came to a head. After having missed a week by faking illness, Aaliyah returned to find the girls who'd bullied her waiting. But they didn't ambush her, not this time. In the halls between second and third period, a couple of times there were a pair of girls confronted her. The girl said, "hey there's the nigger," before asking, "or do you prefer niggress?" A little further down the hall, another girl asked, "do all your dads have to come whenever you get sent to the office?" But this time it was different, not in that Aaliyah chose to fight back but someone chose to fight back with her.

But Luke couldn't keep on working fifty, sixty hour weeks forever. Sooner or later, he'd suffer a breakdown, a breakdown that'd be typically subdued of its emotion. A few weeks had passed since their last argument over the subject when Luke came home to find Jordan in the apartment alone, only to find her still in bed. Although it was well into one of the hottest and most humid summers in recent memory, still it seemed much hotter and drier in their apartment. Deep in the interior of the province, massive fires burned hundreds of thousands of acres of forest at a time, seeping thick, noxious smoke through river valleys and along mountain passes into the city. It'd looked, then, very much like a low fog that permanently settled, allowing only the sun's sickly, pale glow through. The daughters, Sylvia and Sandra, were the most beautiful things in the world to Luke, which was something he sincerely believed. Before they had their daughters, Luke would've never believed any of those fathers who'd proudly shown off their daughters as the most beautiful little girls in the world. He carried pictures of the daughters in his phone of course, but also old photographs in his wallet to show to co-workers and others. "None of them really know what it's like," Jordan said, "none of them really know what I'm going through. Sometimes I think you don't know what I'm going through." She said this after Luke had complained to her about his having to work so long. "Sometimes it seems like all you do is work and sleep," said Jordan. "I don't think you're wrong," said Luke, before getting a beer from the fridge and taking a drink, "but at least they're sleeping through the night." Sylvia and Sandra were both more or less docile, their crying having quieted for the moment. The girls were now a little more than six months old. It turns out, Luke would learn, not all infants are equally unruly or disturbed in their early months, and Luke's and Jordan's daughters were quicker to adapt to the customs and difficulties of their lifestyle. Of course, this left Jordan with the bulk of the responsibilities. She was to return to work eventually, although with little in the way of work to return to the prospect of having to return to work only seemed to elicit in her a deepening depression. But even this wasn't all it seemed. But sometime after, perhaps a few weeks, the old Jennifer returned, the warm and friendly young woman with the long blonde hair and the big smile, although the next time she and Luke were to see each other at the office she'd seem different. "I'd really like to talk to you," she said, "we can go for coffee at lunch." Luke thought about it for a moment, then said, "outside, at the bench," referring to a lone picnic bench that sat on a grassy area between the building's east side and the smoke pit on the property's far east. There, they'd share more than he would've wanted to. To Luke, it was all happening so fast. He wouldn't, couldn't have known whatever Jennifer might've had going on in her life, so he saw only the lovely, beautiful young woman with whom he was becoming drawn to. Even still, he promised himself they were only friends, that they'd only ever be friends, and it was this promise that would sustain him through his continued closeness to her.

Seeping from every drain, from every open manhole, and from every drain was an impossible blackness, a desperation thick and black as a barrel of West Texas crude. It was around this time that Kit went home from work one day without being scheduled for another shift, not the next day nor any day that week. Some young men who find themselves in this situation keep on trying, calling every day, asking about other work sites, but something motivated Kit not to try. It mattered little, in the end, whether Kit was to go back to school, as there was no degree program that could've offered him a step up. If he was to go back to school, he'd have found something unfamiliar to him and to the background from which he'd come. It wasn't his fault. It couldn't have ever been his fault. The connection between Kit and Luke is the most tenuous yet; Kit had sometimes delivered pizza to Luke when the latter had lived in a small basement suite in the city of Surrey nearly a decade prior. By the time this year is through, much will have changed in their lives, in the lives of those who love them and in the lives of those who don't. A cruel thing it is for ordinary men to suffer the indignity of dwelling in obscurity, while the world marches on as it inevitably must. "Whatever," said Kit, "there'll be others there." He was referring to the gathering of young men to take place at the nearby park, a few nights from then. "Have you heard from her recently?" asked Josh. "Not other than what's gone on at the job," said Kit. "This is pathetic man," Josh said, "she's a bitch." But Kit said, "you're right," then thought about it for a moment before saying, let's go out and get drunk." For a night at least, these issues would all be tabled, allowing boys to be boys.

Still, Jordan's maternity benefits were sure to expire soon, in a few months. This would necessitate her return to work, if only she had much of a job left to return to. "I'll start my own business," said Jordan, "I'll sell organic food." But Luke said, "there are already too many people doing that." Jordan said, "vegan organic food then." Luke said, "there are still too many people doing that." This elicited a strained reaction from Jordan, who took one look at him and sighed. This conversation was had after the bottom had begun to fall out on the city's schizophrenic obsession with housing, when prices had begun to fall but still the news bragged that they were on the upswing. There were still too many expensive cars driving the city's streets, driven by too many people who spoke no English and smoked cigarettes smuggled into Canada from one of the same three countries. The modest apartment in which they lived stood among a forest of glass and steel towers, some incomplete, others complete but largely unoccupied. It'd been this way for a few years now, with the talking heads on the evening news gleefully declaring the rising of prices even as there seemed to be fewer people living in these towers than ever before. "What's even the point of all this?" asked Jordan. "What do you mean?" asked Luke, trying his best to see through the cloud of depression that'd come to envelope her at all times. She hadn't yet been to see a psychiatrist, despite Luke's exhortations. She hadn't even begun to see a GP. All in all, to Luke it seemed as though she was entirely uninterested in seeking any kind of medical care for her mounting depression, which baffled Luke and left him ultimately feeling rather helpless. But then this was probably by design; even she was not yet ready to admit she had a problem, so used as she was to the striking out on her own.

The graduate student Stephanie had promised she'd never return to her hometown, no matter what. This she had promised herself on numerous occasions, on first getting of the bus when moving to the city and many times since. The city, it seemed to exhibit an impossible pull on her, knowing as she did that no one who wanted to make anything of themselves ever remained in such small cities as the one where she'd been born and raised. Soon after her release from the hospital, she'd come to sit back in her little apartment, wondering what, or if anything at all she could do to earn herself back into the very line of work that'd precipitated her sudden and violent descent into almost-madness. Her roommate kept coming and going, seemingly in at only the oddest hours of the night. The other graduate students and her advisor at UBC weren't much help, not that she was friends much with any of them. She came to feel very alone at exactly the moment when she'd needed someone more than ever. "There's a break coming up," she said to her parents, both of them on the line when she spoke by phone, "I was thinking I'd come home for a visit." But her father said, "oh dear, we were thinking of coming down to Vancouver to visit you." And Stephanie was in no condition to refuse, much as she'd have liked to. The drugs she'd been prescribed following her brief stay in the hospital were dulling her thoughts and making it hard to do things she might've done. Her parents knew nothing of her troubles. "This summer," she said, "when I'll have the free time." Her mother said, "it's agreed," then paused before saying, "we love you, no matter what." Stephanie said nothing for a moment, the awkward silence that settled seeming much longer than it was. Then she said, "thank you," followed by, "I'll see you soon," before hanging up. The summer seemed to her to be far enough in the future that it might as well have been years away, leaving her not to have to even think about it at the time. In the months until then, she'd figure something out, or so she believed.

A few more nights will have to have passed before Christian and some of the others will be able to consider themselves as having survived the current cold snap. It doesn't really matter whether there were any killers lurking in the shadows, since the real killers were working in plain sight. The police officers have gone, disappeared out of sight down the block. In their wake the seem to leave a trail of disturbed air, with ordinary life resuming. Next, Christian saw a small parade's worth of people rushing this way and that, the whole lot of them seeming to have somewhere to go even as they must've been as aimless and lifeless as he. From his strategic position just inside the alley in which he spent many nights, he can hear bits and pieces of conversations that are had by residents of this neighbourhood, Vancouver's Downtown Eastside. "Where could a child hide in a small city like this?" asked one woman. "Not so small anymore," said another man. Both hurried along. After they'd gone, Christian slumped slightly, allowing himself some small moment of relief. A few more people were to die on this day, here on the streets of Vancouver and on the streets of other cities across the country, their deaths obscured behind a bright kind of darkness. There were those who would bitterly argue among themselves, consumed in petty differences even as this bright darkness enveloped them. This was but a few blocks from a plot of land that occupied a huge lot in the middle of one of the poorest urban areas in the country. This plot of land had recently been cleared and ringed by rented fencing, with signs advertising units for sale at prices no one anywhere in the city could afford. But then this was not unusual. But the evil presence which Christian had begun to suspect seemed only to grow, in the months that were passing this evil presence gathering its strength in preparation for some final event.

It recalled the meeting they'd had with another of Jordan's sisters, the second of three, which took place well before they'd had children and gotten married. This particular sister, named Sophia, was a couple of years older than Jordan, and lived in the States, in the city of Chicago. It'd been pure happenstance that Sophia was on her way through Vancouver around this time, and had a layover just long enough to come out to meet them. (This was, of course, long before they'd married and longer still before they'd had their two daughters). Sophia hadn't brought her daughter, who was left at home with a sitter while she'd gone on her trip. After meeting Sophia at the airport, they'd gone for lunch at a nearby restaurant. "It's probably a good thing that I haven't heard from you until now," said Sophia, "I can imagine some of the heat you've gotten." At first Luke was taken aback by this, which prompted him to ask, "how can you imagine it unless you've gotten it yourself?" But Sophia said, "relax, I'm not here to give you grief. I think it's gross to sleep with your cousin, but there are a lot of things I think are gross that I'm not going to try and stop people from doing." "This is weird," said Luke, "this is really weird." "What?" asked Sophia. "I didn't expect this," said Luke, "I wouldn't have ever expected so many people to be okay with us." But the tension that cut across their meeting was palpable. The question was obvious, and Luke had been expecting it for some time now. "Why haven't we seen your sister?" asked Jordan. "I don't really want to," said Luke. "Why not?" asked Jordan. She then said, "doesn't she live in Campbell River on the island?" Luke said, "yes, she still lives there I think. I just don't want to see her right now." An awkward and uncomfortable conversation ensued, one which made it momentarily seem as though Jordan's depression had lifted. It occurred to Luke that Jordan was in her element when dealing with such matters, when talking about the various ways in which a family could fracture. "I don't endorse her life choices," said Luke, "I don't want to normalise certain things she's done." He saw the look of mild confusion on her face, and chose not to explain any further. It matter little, anyways, as their next meeting with a particular family member wouldn't take them anywhere close to reconciliation. At their meeting Sophia had gone to great lengths to stress her own success, which struck Luke as rather odd but which he said nothing about.

But Clarence was too old to learn, not in the same way that the younger man might've been. In his sixties already when he was cast out of work, he was simply too old to get another job, or so all the trucking companies would've told him; they were interested only in hiring young Indian men. He took to declaring all politicians in on the con, frequently interrupting dinners with his wife to complain about something he'd seen, some story he'd read in the news or on some website, but never on the local news telecasts as the local news telecasts had always been suspiciously silent on the topic. Neither Clarence nor his wife had voted in the most recent federal election, having become disillusioned not only with all political parties but with the political process itself. It'd been several years since he'd voted in any public election. He might've been led to believe by superstition or by maladjustment that the Conservative party would've been sympathetic to their plight, but Clarence was old enough to recall the Conservative party's forebearers, the so-called Progressive Conservatives, as the progenitors of the Canadian government's current policies with regards to open immigration and trade. It mattered little, in the end, for men like Clarence, who were becoming embittered precisely at the age when they were supposed to be becoming more enthusiastic than ever. Still, Clarence would sometimes look to the future and see only deeper depression and despair. When his wife came home one day, she brought news, news he wasn't interested in hearing. "We should go and visit him," said his wife, "before it's too late." But Clarence said, "not interested," and kept on watching TV. "It wouldn't kill you to shut that thing off and talk to me," she said. "It might," he said, "I can't take that chance." But she only let out an exasperated groan and turned to make for the bedroom, slamming it shut behind her. He thought about it for a moment, but then turned his mind back to the TV. It was over, for now.

For the sake of repercussions, Luke chose not to answer any further questions. It was just as well, as later when the both of them went to had gone to see Sophia the matter seemed to fade into the background, both Luke and Jordan beside themselves. "It's like this," said Sophia, "I feel like nothing would surprise me anymore, certainly not the two of you shacking up. I would say that you're both around thirty and can make your own decisions, but that's beside the point. I just hope when it ends one or both of you lets the other down easy." Although Luke wouldn't have seen fit to say anything at all, he was pressured by the anticipation of the moment. "What if we get married?" asked Jordan. She went on to ask, "what if we get married and we invite you to the wedding?" Sophia wouldn't answer the question, instead saying, "let's not dwell on possibilities that are never going to happen." But this only made Luke more determined to persevere in his relationship with Jordan, no matter the cost, no matter the effort it required. But he couldn't see that Jordan wouldn't have necessarily felt the same way. This far outside the city of Vancouver, there were still construction sites abuzz with activity, filled with migrant workers and with dump trucks hauling off the torn-down remains of old apartment blocks. The stagnating of the runaway housing market had yet to reach this place, which meant there were still sprawling townhouse and apartment projects being rushed to completion so that their sales contracts could be honoured. Luke marvelled at the frantic pace with which these very people now rode the edge of a wave, exactly several months behind its cresting to the east. Even though they all saw it coming, they'd still all drive willingly off the cliff, each of them determined to ride the crash all the way down rather than moderate their worst excesses. But there was more to it than that.

As Emily approached the lectern to deliver her first sermon since returning to the church as a pastor in months, she made a quiet promise, not to herself but to the scattering of congregants before her. Behind the lectern on either side there stood poles from which flags draped, on Emily's left a large Canadian flag, on her right an equally large white flag with a cross at the centre. Although Emily gave the best sermon she could, it seemed to her as though the specific facets of her sermons had become unimportant, that the specific words she'd speak were secondary to the emphasis of faith. The downside to this was that it ensured many of the congregants, many of the youths who made up the bulk of the congregation would be rather fickle in attendance, in reading their Bibles and in knowing their Bibles. But if it was true then whether or not it was difficult or made life in running a church difficult was immaterial. In fact, this very notion she frequently worked into her sermons, this day's sermon included, assuring both the two congregants and the rest of the worshippers that no one was obligated to attend church, any church, and that nothing but a sincere faith was necessary to obtain salvation. "'...for by grave you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast.' For this reason, you should be sceptical of anyone who would say they alone offer the gift of salvation, which can only come from God." She paused through the sermon, quickly looking across the congregation, such as it was, from one wall to the other. "...And so you can see that salvation must be accepted as a free gift, offered to you through the blood sacrifice of Jesus Christ." There was more to her sermon, much more, including the requisite opening of Bibles and directions to specific verses. The sound of so many Bibles being opened and so many pages being flipped at almost exactly the same time had long been a sound comforting in its familiarity to Emily, but now felt hollow, empty in its imaginary ritualism.

It seemed rather strange to Luke and Jordan how so many of their family were comfortable, yet not-comfortable with their choices. But there was more to it than that. There's always more to it than that. In the time it took Luke and Jordan to make it home—a time made unnecessarily long by one of Vancouver's customary and infamous traffic jams—they both came to realise their place in the growing divide between them. "Why do we have to keep doing this?" asked Jordan. "We don't," said Luke, "not if we don't want to." "Well, I don't want to," said Jordan, "do you?" Luke said, "not really." After all that'd happened, after all they'd been through together, there was little left for the both of them to accomplish in putting themselves through the motions. But until they could only convince themselves that they believed in what they were doing, that they were still the same people in love that they'd been only a short time ago. On the long drive home after having visited Sophia, there was little further conversation between them, the only conversation a brief not-argument on where to stop for gas. (Vancouver was the epicenter of high gas prices in Canada). The more to it than that, well, it was something that became lost on the rumbling of the wheels of Luke's truck against the highway. Luke and Jordan were still madly in love with each other, even if their being madly in love with each other had been somewhat tempered by the gradual revelations made in their meetings with her family. There were no doubts yet. There were no doubts yet, not yet. Both Luke and Jordan would insist they were as in love with each other as the day they'd become a couple, as the first time he'd brought her romantic gifts, a small stuffed bear and a heart-shaped box of chocolates along with a handwritten note declaring his love. As he tightened his grip on the wheel of his truck, he recalled that very moment, he recalled the way her eyes had lit up and the way her cheeks had reddened slightly. It was this recollection that'd sustain him for some weeks.

The next time Martin and his not-girlfriend went into work together, they found themselves assigned to different departments for the first time, which meant no chance to hang out at work. Although the work was usually rather boring, and most customers were rather easy to deal with, there were those who seemed hell bent on making their jobs miserable. One such customer called in and threatened to hunt Martin down if any unauthorised charges appeared on his credit cards. There was a particular customer who supposedly called up to try and have phone sex with some of the female representatives; depending on which department was talking about him at any given time, the customer liked feet, schoolgirls, or even incestuous roleplay. No one seemed to ever have actually heard from this customer, and he may or may not have been strictly rumour. Every workplace has its own myths, like the creatures that populate the lakes and forests in sparsely populated regions and in densely populated urban areas but always conveniently out of focus, the Jersey Devils, Loch Ness Monsters, and Chupacabras of the world. It'd be some time before Martin and Sharmila worked the same department again, a few weeks, by which time Martin would have little time left working at this particular call centre. "Funny seeing you around here," Martin said the next time he saw her at work, "you come here often?" But she only rolled her eyes and looked away. This wasn't to be the end of their not-relationship, of course, and Martin was too young to recognise the obvious signs. But there was more to it than that, there was always more to it than that, Martin's youthful blindness leading him to do something he'd later look on and cringe in memory.

After a particularly long and hard day, one day, Bhulwinder and the others witnessed a particular event, a particular worker who'd demonstrated a strong work ethic over the past several weeks. The worker, whose name Bhulwinder didn't know (it was Jasdeep), had faltered at work, and had attempted to call in sick for his shift on the next day. As they were nominally employed by the agency, the company had no obligations to them. Jasdeep was never seen at the warehouse again. But that wasn't the most unsettling part, to Bhulwinder as well as to several other workers. No, the most unsettling part was how Jasdeep had become a non-person almost immediately, even as he'd worked at the warehouse for several months still unable to recall another instance in which anyone had been given any help. "Don't you speak his language?" asked the supervisor. "No," said Bhulwinder, "there are many languages in India." Bhulwinder chose not to point out that he'd been working around this supervisor for many months, long enough to know these things. Like many but not all Indian immigrants into Canada, Bhulwinder spoke Punjabi. "I can't believe there are still so many people who don't know any English," said the other man, before quickly adding, "not that I mind all that much, I'm just saying." But Bhulwinder spoke not-perfect but pretty-close English, and said, "I don't care what you say. I agree everyone should learn English. We come to an English speaking country, so we learn English." (There were a lot of recent-immigrants who felt this way; it was far more common for native Canadians to think it racist to say than there were recent-immigrants who thought it was). But a few more days and nights were to pass before the other worker, too, would disappear, this one for reasons unknown to everyone. In a day and age when nearly all workers were treated as disposable tools, to be manipulated according to the whims of the businesses who went to great lengths to make it appear as though they weren't employing them, used for however long it took to convince the tax man.

All these events in Carol Chang's life had taken place over the course of the preceding month, with Carol having become long accustomed to these violent encounters. It wasn't unusual to see the warped curvature of blue and red lights flashing in the street, with only the slightest scratch of a match head against a hardened surface needed to spark a towering inferno. For so young a woman as Carol, the possibility of achieving something in life, of making something of herself seemed as remote as ever. But therein lies the deception: such a possibility had never truly existed in the first place. Stuck in the apartment with the piss-stained walls and the smell of cigarette smoke seeping from the carpet and the pipes always leaking from spots in the ceilings above the halls had become something of a fate for her. In the lobby there were two people sitting to the side, talking. They were a gruff, elderly man who'd been the building manager even longer than Carol had lived there with her mother, and an overweight lady who looked to be in her thirties and who never seemed to leave the building at all. Sometimes Carol would encounter these two in the building, either in the halls or in the lobby as now, the two always together, always. Usually they'd say nothing to her, even seemingly refusing to acknowledge her but sometimes both, occasionally one glancing at her while nodding slightly, very slightly, only just perceptible. "...I gotta be at the school for parent-teacher conferences," said the overweight lady. "Those are coming around?" asked the manager. "Every year this time," said the overweight lady, "and it's always the same shit." The manager said, "I never had no kids." The lady said, "that's why you've lived so long. I bet I'm not gonna live past fifty." She then lit a cigarette and began smoking, even right in front of a sign posted by the manager declaring the common areas to be smoke-free by building rules. Finally, one day, Carol couldn't help herself. Finally, one day, she snapped.

Chapter Ten

Not far from Luke and Jordan there'd lived an old couple in a modest house. The old couple who'd lived there had lived there for decades. Now, like so many others in this city, they'd determined to sell their debt-free home and move to a cheaper, quieter place somewhere on the island. A 'for-sale' sign appeared on their front law one day; it'd later turn out the home was bought and sold several times even before that sign went up, each transaction raising the price just a little bit. It wasn't as though it meant nothing to Luke at the time, much as he'd have insisted he was too consumed in personal issues to notice that sort of thing. No, he saw that sign every day for a week as prospective buyers came in, all of them seeming to speak no English, most of them Chinese. Finally, on the Friday that week, a new sign appeared stuck over the old one, the new sign reading in bold, orange letters: 'SOLD OVER ASKING.' It seemed fitting that Luke and Jordan should've begun having doubts about each other around this time. But they never showed. Like the last gasps of a dying star, Luke couldn't forget what'd been said between Jordan and him, even as he put on as though he already had. Now, in the last moments of the beginning of the rest of their lives, they were both like a phantom, an illusion, impossible to gather but definitely there, maybe. And when he saw her next, rather than avoiding her he took her in his arms, spun them both around, and lifted her up, as if to whisk her away to a new place where none of this mattered. "What's gotten into you?" she asked, seemingly out of a genuine disbelief mixed with pleasant surprise. "Every day I realize how much I love you," he said. It was as though both Jordan and Luke had been through something not altogether unlike the lengthy consideration now facing many others like them. The old man Ricardo and his wife Martha had been compelled by some unknown force to reach for the only way out they could think of, and had bailed. They weren't the first, and wouldn't be the last.

His mother couldn't afford any of the few apartments available for rent in the city of Richmond, not on her own; the increasingly common practice of working, middle-aged adults living with roommates, sometimes three or four to an apartment, was too unpalatable for her. So she moved, to the outlying suburb of Langley, the only place where she could afford a place on her own, and then only a small, one-bedroom basement suite. The rain often fell in a continuous thrum, a constant pattering against every hard surface. Chinese people living in the city of Richmond were not all like Tony and his mother. But there was more to it than that. There was always more to it than that. Only a few more years were to pass before Tony's mother would die, giving him little reason to hold onto anything at all. Eventually, things came to a head. One night, after a particularly long and sorrowful drinking binge, Tony realised the young woman from his apartment, from Tony's bedside must've disappeared, given how long it'd been since he'd seen her. It was around this time that Tony had found work as a temporary labourer at the very warehouse where Luke had been working for years; although Tony was one of many temporary workers, Luke had been and would continue to be among the permanent staff, with a full slate of benefits and vastly better wages. "This is what I'm going to do," said Tony, after a particularly long and hard night of drinking had left him unable to make it in to work one day. He was speaking to his landlord, who demanded to know what he was doing to make good on his owed rent. "I'm going to give you another couple of weeks," said the landlord, "and then I'm going to start eviction procedures." Tony didn't know, couldn't know that it wasn't so simple as that, that in the province of British Columbia a tenant couldn't be evicted for simply falling a month behind on the rent, but that doesn't matter. What the law says doesn't matter, it's what people think it says that matters, in every part of the world where people live. "I'm going to come up with the money," said Tony, "and I'm going to—" "I don't care how you get it," said the landlord, "just get it, or you're out." Tony started, saying, "but if you—" The landlord was already gone. Tony responded to this threat the same way he responded to any other threat: he drank that night until he blacked out.

After having come home from another trip out of town together, Luke and Jordan had to confront the immediate possibility of their own future. The little apartment they'd come to share was too crowded even for two of them, and they both knew it. Don't think much of the last days of their lives, seeing as how these have been the kind of days that may or may not have happened. Avoiding the issue, they all became something other than what they were. "That kind of bargain doesn't come along very often," said Jordan, one night while they were together on a rare evening after work. "But I don't know if I want to go that far just to get it," she said, seeming to talk to herself as much as to him. In the midst of all that'd come to be, it seemed hardly inappropriate to just sit through the conversation and emerge out the other side. "It's not so easy to just pick up and go, you know?" she said. But no matter how much poking and prodding was enough to get Jordan to admit what'd been bothering her, in all that time since they'd gotten married—not in secret, but without telling anyone until after it'd been done. This was the logical culmination of events in the months that'd preceded the death of their grandmother in that little hospital's room, their marriage having come well after her death, well after they'd finished 'coming out' to their mutual family. In the little apartment they'd come to share, there was hardly enough room to think. In this city, it was not uncommon to be living in close quarters with complete strangers, but it was still the sort of thing you could never quite get used to. He'd have thought they'd be more of a happy couple based on the way they took to each other at thirty the same as they might've at thirteen; both of them thought the passion and intensity of two lovers hardly able to keep their hands off each other was proof to him at least that they were meant to be. But this city was and had always been more than simply a collection of glass and steel, just as men and women were and had always been more than flesh and blood.

After having been bored out of her skull for the last summer, she'd resolved to spend future summers entirely in Canada with her friends. Of course, there was only one further summer before she'd graduate from high school and no longer have summers off. A few more hours had to pass before Aaliyah would feel as though she was well and truly home, a few more hours before the summer spent abroad would fall behind her. As was typical of Aaliyah after having spent any time at all in the states, she came home with a taste for the exotic banality that made Americans different from Canadians, for the little things that might not be readily apparent to a visitor foreign to either country's culture. After having left the plane and walked along the airport's international arrivals, Aaliyah followed the well-rehearsed routine of presenting her passport and being whisked through customs, on the other side finding her father waiting. He had a small stuffed animal in one hand, and a bunch of balloons in the other, offering both to her after having awkwardly hugged her. He then took her out through the airport's lobby, the two of them quiet, saying virtually nothing until out to his truck, then nothing again until halfway home. From the moment her father had turned the key the radio had begun blaring hard driving rock, the kind only listened to in this day and age by men in denial of their steady advance through middle age. Her father had immediately put his hand to the dial and turned the volume down, however declining to turn the music off altogether. At school things had become hardly different, but for the one girl who'd stood up to her abusers. "Why don't you leave her alone?" shouted the girl, a girl named Amelia from Aaliyah's biology class. But the other girls kept up their abuse, at first ignoring the other girl. But Aaliyah was transfixed. "Hey!" shouted Amelia, before throwing a can of coke into the middle of the crowd, missing any of the girls' heads but striking the edge of one girl's binder, rupturing, spraying coke over them all. "Are you okay?" asked Amelia, once the other girls had left. "I'm fine," said Aaliyah, "you didn't get me with that one." This was the beginning of a new friendship, although one which would be dealt with by the other girls soon.

Finally, Luke and Jordan went to see another of her sisters, Janet, who lived in Victoria. Janet worked at an insurance firm as a saleswoman, while her husband, named Arnold, was an officer in the Royal Canadian Navy and worked at the nearby naval base in Esquimalt. Actually, Arnold had met Janet when he was attending the Royal Military College in Kingston, Ontario, while she'd been attending the civilian Queen's University in the same city. They'd moved, together, to Halifax, after he'd graduated and been assigned to the naval base there, Canada's largest. It was fortunate that they'd graduated from their respective schools at the same time. "You can call us whenever you want," said Janet, "we may or may not answer, however." It was confusing to Luke, how to interpret this latest introduction, from a woman only a couple of years younger than him. "You're not thinking of getting married?" asked Janet. There was a pause before she asked, "are you?" Jordan and Luke exchanged nervous glances. Jordan asked, "so what if we are?" Emboldened, Luke asked, "would that be the worst thing in the world?" Janet threw him a sideways look, one that suggested he was not far from the mark. She said "well, I think you're perfect for each other." Luke would've taken offense, but for his having become used to this sort of treatment, this sort of attitude from their mutual family. Actually, he much preferred this uneasy truce among former combatants to a genuine exposure of long-buried sentiments. It was almost over anyhow, or so Luke believed, and when it was over the rest of the family would have no choice but to accept them, regardless of their own personal thoughts and feelings. This line of thinking made sense to him at the time, even as he was in the midst of realising just how far off he really was.

After Christian had been raised a young man in a smaller city not far away, he'd left home even before finishing high school, fleeing and alcoholic stepfather and a co-dependent mother. It'd been a disturbing and deeply confusing time in his life, when he'd sought relief in all kinds of drugs. It is a matter of course that he'd found himself homeless even long before he'd taken to living on the streets themselves. "But what happened to all the people?" asked one young woman. "They're all gone," said the young man, "and now they can be gotten rid of." After the two had passed, a few more walk past in either direction without saying much of anything to one another. Christian struggled against the wall, pushing his back in an attempt to stand, but couldn't manage more than a couple on inches off the ground before collapsing back down. An ambulance's sirens wailed in the distance, seeming to draw louder and louder, in a flash the ambulance speeding past, so quickly that if Christian had blinked he'd have missed it. The sirens faded down the street. Many of those whose lifeless bodies had been pulled from the street began their descent into madness and death in a doctor's office, with some scribblings on a piece of paper illegible to them. The death toll had been catastrophic. Nothing had changed in the aftermath, of course, as the lives that were lost belonged to the dregs of society, to those who were deemed disposable by the real power, by that which requires no insidious, hidden force to carry out its edicts. Sometimes Christian would be so trapped in his own thoughts, so mired in an hopeless depression that he came to believe he was somewhere other than the place where he was. "Do you play the guitar?" asked one man. "I play the banjo," said Christian, a banjo suddenly materialising in his hands. He was perched on the edge of a rocky cliff, overlooking a valley with a river that wound lazily between mountain ranges into the distance. "That's just the way we scare you straight," said another young man. "You must've been the belle of the ball," said Christian, smiling, standing tall, wearing a top hat and a clean tuxedo. And then the streets reappeared in a haze.

Although Luke and Jordan loved each other and had come to be in love with each other, it'd seemed to him as though love wasn't enough, not anymore. It'd been only a few years since they were young enough to wilfully and knowingly pursue relationships that couldn't possibly work simply because they were in love, but in those few years they'd both changed radically. Although neither Luke nor Jordan knew it, the members of their mutual family had been in regular contact with each other ever since the death of their grandmother, not always for reasons associated with their ongoing affair. It'd been over a year, and the whole lot of them had been working out the details of handling of the recently deceased's estate, such as it was. At the time of the country's mounting and schizophrenic obsession with housing prices, the principal part of their grandmother's estate was her home. There was no conflict, no bitter recrimination in setting out through the process of liquidating her estate and dividing it according to her will; although the process took more than two years, that was rather the nature of such a legal process. It didn't help that their grandmother had and left behind a condominium that'd needed emptying of a lifetime's worth of miscellaneous crap, nor that few had pitched in to help emptying her condominium of said miscellaneous crap. Luke had been there to help, doing much of the manual labour in moving heavy furniture and big boxes full of garbage. Most of the time, it'd been only him and Lauren, with others pitching in only occasionally. Now, after having gone to see Janet for the first time since their grandmother's death and subsequent funeral, Luke and Jordan both felt ill at ease even if they never let it show, not to each other or to anyone else. "Look," Janet said, "I don't care if you two have your fun. Just make sure you don't have any children, for God's sake." Luke nodded slightly, but Jordan only rolled her eyes.

Now, living in this little trailer park had become a brief respite from the threat of homelessness and eviction. Clarence had tried to find work, but few employers were willing to take on so old a man when there were many, much younger men willing to work for much lower wages. But it wasn't as though this state of joblessness was the only overarching concern in Clarence's life. He and his wife had had four children, the four of them now scattered across western Canada. Two, a daughter and a son, had completed university and begun working, while a third, another son, had never entered university and thus had never stopped working, not since he was sixteen. The fourth, though, was in jail, in the nearby city of Maple Ridge. The fourth, Clarence's youngest son, was named Morris. Morris had gone to jail for the consequences of a lifestyle common to young men from working class backgrounds in many parts of Canadian cities like Vancouver. (In fact it was a small wonder that only one of his children had gone to prison and two to university, rather than one to university and two to prison). Although Clarence's wife went regularly to visit Morris in prison, Clarence never went, not anymore, not after his last visit over a year ago had resulted in some old wounds being brought to the surface again. After her most recent visit, she'd come home to try and talk with Clarence about their youngest son. "He's not doing so well," said his wife. "Is that a fact?" asked Clarence, without getting up from his chair, without even looking at his wife. She stood behind his chair, in the part of their trailer home where the living room and the dining room became one. She said, "yes, it's a fact. He's been badly injured of late, but he won't say how. He's recovering in the prison's infirmary, but—" "He'll be fine," said Clarence, again without looking or getting up. "You can't say that," said his wife. "You said he's recovering," said Clarence, "so that must mean he didn't get any permanent harm." The old man believed only what he wanted to believe, and he knew it.

After all that'd happened between Luke and Jordan, after they'd fallen in love and made the mutual but altogether implicit decision to make it work, Luke thought there was nothing wrong with anything they were doing. Although Janet's and Jordan's mother was born and raised Catholic and had made some effort to raise them Catholic (or so Jordan had explained), Janet was the only one who seriously took to Catholicism as an adult, with children of her own. This was evident in the many pictures she'd proudly posted on various social media of her children being baptised as infants. But there was something that Janet had said that would stick with him, something that he'd remember for a long time. "Whatever you do," Janet had said, "just let her down nicely." She'd said that to Luke while Jordan was inside, using the washroom, the other two staying outside on the deck. This only made Luke determined to stand by Jordan, and made him immediately determine to marry her, although it'd take some time yet for him to work up the courage to broach the subject with her and some more time still to propose to her. "I won't ever let her down," said Luke. "Of course you won't," said Janet, "but when you do, just try and be gentle about it. I don't know if she can handle another heartbreak." It was at this moment that Jordan appeared, her emergence from within the house prompting Janet to drop the subject. Luke said nothing more on it, not right away, choosing instead to ponder what she'd said, disregarding the implications of it, rather inwardly focusing on keeping himself from becoming outwardly indignant at the mere suggestion that he and Jordan had anything other than the true love he'd believed in ever since he'd entered adolescence all those years ago.

Afterwards, Emily Liu found news. The house she'd been working on selling for some months had been looked at recently by a prospective buyer, and now that very buyer had put agreed to put in a firm offer. It was well under asking, but it was an offer. It was moments like these that made Emily regret turning into the real estate business in the first place, a decision she'd made at the peak of the city's housing schizophrenia. It was a rash decision, one made on the urging of her father who'd long wanted her to give up on the ministry and take a real job. He'd said this in secret, not wanting her mother, his wife to know that he'd said this, knowing how it would crush her mother to know that he'd said it. In order to strike up a middle ground, to satisfy both, Emily had found part-time work as a realtor, beginning work at exactly the peak of Vancouver's housing insanity, when no one who actually lived in the area could afford even the tiniest of apartments, never mind the sprawling, cookie-cutter mansions being erected on every available plot of land. "I'll be able to keep my job now," said Emily, speaking with Dwight later that Sunday, "for a little while at least." There'd already been layoffs at many, nearly all real estate firms, with not enough sales for too many salesmen. But Dwight had plans of his own, and it was these plans that would eventually lead him to reach for his dreams. "Well if you own a bar then you get to set your own hours," said Dwight, "that's the advantage of all this." All Emily could think to do was keep on working. After the sermon had ended, the two congregants who weren't in the band had left without staying for the customary coffee and tea which the church put out after every sermon, leaving Emily and Dwight alone with the band. "I just needed one more sale to make my night," said Dwight, "I kept lowering the price, but no one would buy it." Emily smiled, and they shared a warm but strained embrace. She appreciated his attempt to empathise with her difficulties. But no amount of empathy would avert the coming crisis.

In time, Luke would see the same election banners as everyone else, the same banners in the same colours that sprouted seemingly at midnight on the very day the election campaign had been called. Now, in the time after Luke and Jordan had 'come out' to their mutual family but before they'd married and had their daughters, both were faced with the prospect of encountering the entire family in one spot. The ferry between Victoria and Vancouver normally took about an hour and a half, plus driving time on either end, only this time to take much longer due to the two-sailing wait on the way home. Luke and Jordan parked in line, then left his truck to wander around the yard. It'd be the first time they presented as a couple to the rest of the family, not considering their grandmother's deathbed and subsequent funeral. Although Jordan looked forward to it with great enthusiasm, Luke wasn't so sure. "We don't need to tell them that we're going for sure," said Jordan, "we can just ask when and where—actually, we already know where—and then go." Luke nodded, but said nothing. He preferred only to listen at times like this, having begun the arduous process of coming to understand the woman with whom he'd begun to fall in love. "There are going to be a lot of people there I haven't seen in a while," said Luke, "and a few I haven't ever seen." "A lot of people I haven't seen in a long time too," said Jordan, "I've got nieces I haven't seen in months or years." Of course, they'd only just make it back before nightfall. So close to the water, the wind whipped at their clothes and tussled their hair, with the sound of trees rustling accompanying the lapping of the sea against the shore.

A few more nights would come and go, until Christmas day passed, a few more nights later the New Year coming and going without much fanfare. After the calls had tapered off—Christmas shopping meant another surge of calls during the post-Christmas returns period—Martin found himself taken off the schedule. He and all the other seasonal workers were cut with only a day's notice. None were 'hired on' as permanent employees, despite the company's promise that they could've been. Of course, they didn't know this, which led most of the workers, Martin included, to believe that they simply weren't one of the lucky ones. He completed his shift and then turned in his headset and his temporary employment identification, stamped as it'd been on his first day with 'TEMP' across the front. He'd keep on seeing Sharmila for a few months, until he completely ruined his own chance at forming anything resembling a relationship by becoming angry with her over her sudden disappearance from his life. After they'd gone out together several times, following his unceremonious termination as a temporary worker, she suddenly seemed to stop seeing him altogether. "I'm not happy," he said, after having gotten hold of her on the phone one night. "I can tell," she said, "but what do you want from me?" He took a breath, gathered his thoughts for a moment, and then said, "look, I don't know how to say this, I'm not very good at this kind of thing, but—" He wanted to come out and just tell her how he felt, but he suddenly felt as though there was something inside his throat keeping him from speaking. "Why are you acting this way?" she asked. He said, "because I—" He caught himself before saying anything more. She'd keep on seeing him, for a little while at least, even after he'd stopped working with her. But there were larger concerns soon to take over, in his life at least.

After moving his truck ahead in the line once, Luke and Jordan sat with the windows rolled down, this time choosing to remain in his truck. "You don't want to go," said Jordan. "You got it," said Luke. A pause. They both listened to the ambient noise at one of the busiest ferry terminals in the province, the omnipresent thrum of one engine or another fading in, the seagulls squawking over pieces of trash, even the very faint voices of others talking in their vehicles, along the sides of the lots, along the fences set up to separate the vehicle lanes from the passenger centre where people went to spend far too much on cafeteria-grade meals and various knickknacks. "But you'll go anyways," said Jordan. "You got it," said Luke, "you're two for two." Jordan said, "you don't have to do something you don't want to do." Luke said, "what kind of boyfriend would I be if I let you face all those questions alone?" More than a year and a half later, after Jordan and Luke had married and had their twin daughters, they'd both look back on the reunion as a seminal moment in their still-young relationship, although they'd look back on it in different ways. Still Luke refused to allow anyone to drive his truck, and he remained at the wheel all the way home. This wasn't out of any misplaced sense of masculinity. No, it was because this was his truck. He'd bought his Ford F-150 used, after having found it at a dealership. He'd paid far too much for it, although if asked he'd justify this by pointing to its low mileage—under 100,000 kilometres despite it being six years old—and good condition. It had a few of the features which'd become standard on even the most utilitarian trucks in recent years; power windows, plus a CD player, the latter of which was important to Luke because he still made audio CDs off music pirated from the internet. He preferred alt-rock, the kind that had made rock music briefly listenable in the 90s after the 80s had brought rock to its nadir.

A particular supervisor often picked up on little threads that meant nothing, although this particular supervisor would probably insist that he was doing his job as well as anyone else. There was a philosophy called 'management by walking around,' which this supervisor may have followed rigidly even if he was unaware that such a philosophy actually existed or that there was a specific name for it. That said, most Indian immigrants were just as ignorant of the country to which they'd moved, and many spoke little or no English (or French, one would suppose) on arrival. "I have a wife," said Hakim, "but my wife doesn't work. She can't work because she's a woman." He went on to explain that he worked two jobs, as a menial labourer at various job sites and as a taxi driver in his spare time, to support his wife and their children. In a few months, Hakim would be involved in a car accident; he'd hit another driver from behind at a red light, only for the driver behind him to plow into him as well. This meant the insurance company, the only insurance company in the province of British Columbia, wouldn't cover him. "They think women should work outside the home," said Hakim, referring to the beliefs of Canadians in whose society he'd come to settle, "but then who will take care of the children?" Even Bhulwinder wouldn't have known what to expect if he'd have found a woman to marry. His own mother and father were still in India, having only recently begun the lengthy process of emigrating to Canada by way of Bhulwinder's residency. It was a complicated and tiresome process. But Hakim's sudden disappearance would rankle Bhulwinder, and would compel him to put himself and his family at risk, even as his family was completely unaware of the things he was doing, who he was speaking with, and the risks he was taking on behalf of them all.

A few years later, they'd both look back on this moment in different ways. By the time Luke had been through the next few years, by the time he'd married Jordan and had twin girls with her, much would have changed, although little of it readily apparent to him. It wasn't that moment in particular that marked the beginning of his being given to one notion or another of true love, not even close. No, after coming home from work one Saturday night to find Jordan crying quietly in the corner of the living room, seeming to ignore their daughters' cries, Luke realised something had gone amiss. He tried to tend to the daughters at the same time as his wife's obviously worsening depression, but that proved impossible, prompting They were hungry, which he could tell from the way they cried, and their diapers were in need of a change. From the pungent stench it became readily apparent they'd been in need of a change almost all day. Still he thought of the young woman Jennifer. He and she had kept on trading glances every now and then from across the crowded, busy warehouse floor. Most of the time, these glances kept on being warm and genuine, absent any sexual or romantic overtones. But still she kept on trying to get through to him, for reasons Luke couldn't even begin to fathom. "If you want to talk," she said, one day, a few weeks later, "I'm here." They were again at work, with Luke having taken to spending his breaks outside, in the cab of his truck. She'd caught him on the way back in. it was implicitly understood that this offer was meant to take place not at work but in a restaurant afterwards. "Thanks," he said, "I just might take you up on that." She smiled weakly. It occurred to Luke that she might've needed the company, that she was asking for herself as much as for him. But Jennifer was a considerably more complex person than Luke had come to know. She had tried to date over the past few years, but had found no men with whom she'd been able to make a genuine connection. She'd felt so lonely and so distant, even as she'd come to surround herself with people. And then, from her point of view, Luke had shown her at least some small warmth. This warmth would inevitably lead to something more, like the falling of a single flake of snow in just the wrong spot triggering a colossal avalanche.

But Carol's life had always been something of an anomaly, even in a place like Vancouver. She'd lived for many years in a small apartment somewhere on the city's east side. Although the forces at large seeming to take the city in their grip were merciless and dispassionate, it seemed difficult for so many people to make their way out. It was like trying to extract more blood from less stone. On the news, whether on TV or on the internet, they'd often see footage of civil unrest in other countries around the world, the unrest inevitably sparked by some radical increase in the price of one living expense or another, such as rents, food, or fuel. Even as these things had come to dominate her life and the lives of those around her, still she couldn't, wouldn't do anything beyond working herself tired and sore to keep a roof over her head and food on her table. Carol's elderly mother would be there when she came home, still in her bed, still complaining about one thing or another. Sometimes Carol wondered if her mother kept on complaining through the day and night, without respect to her presence. Soon, just after Carol had arrived at her bus stop, the bus came. Carol found a seat in her usual spot, the spot she always took on this bus that never had more than a few passengers at this time of the night. The city was reduced to a series of bright lights slurring past, blurring into the deep darkness. After having witnessed her mother seem to slide irrevocably into senility, Carol began to lay plans for the future, for her future and for her mother's. "When are you going to get a job?" asked her mother. When Carol said nothing, her mother went on to say, "you go out and party with your friends so you must have a lot of time. You should get a job." This time Carol said, "I'll think about it," before leaving for work again, another night shift at the diner. She'd think about it, as she was to fill coffee mugs and deliver trays of artery-clogging bacon and eggs, only she'd think about it in ways her senile old mother wouldn't have known.

Chapter Eleven

Actually, Jordan and Luke had been with each other before, although back then it'd been only a casual encounter. Every summer, the whole family gathered at an acreage in the countryside out near Cultus Lake, about an hour and a half along the highway east of Vancouver. It was one of these gatherings that some people chose not to attend and some were unable, but most were there. He was fourteen at the time, and she was seventeen. She said, "this thing's lame. Let's get outta here." She then took him by the hand and led him out back, through a thicket of trees along the edge of the property until no one could see them. She led me to a clearing that had a small bench. "This place is lame anyways," she'd said, "let's have some fun." Although Luke was only fourteen, he knew exactly what she meant. He followed eagerly, until she'd led him into a clearing in the forest behind the property where the rest of the family had gathered. In this clearing there was a small shed, and it was in this small shed that they'd first had sex, awkwardly and uncertainly, fumbling about each other's bodies like such teenagers inevitably must. It was over quickly. It never occurred to him—and hasn't in the years that've passed, despite all that's happened in the years that've passed—why she must've chosen him. Certainly, this was long before they'd fallen in love, long before their expectations in life, for life, had become tempered by the cumulative effects of so much experience. Although it was the first time either of them had sex, at the time it wasn't anything familiar, the way they both explored each other's bodies with only the faint awareness that they might've been doing something wrong, that there might've been those in the family who might've thought they were doing something wrong, regardless of whether they actually were.

It wasn't very clear whether the seizure had been the product of his drinking or whether something more sinister was at work in his body. Regardless, he kept on drinking, during the day and through the night. In the time it'd taken Tony and the others to have their way through this confusing and disjointed period, much had changed in the world at large even as nothing had changed in the world at large. As far as drinking went, he simply couldn't stop. Tony was only tangentially related to Luke and Jordan, by a matter of degrees their lives removed from his. From the way they'd touched each other's lives for the very short period they'd known each other, Tony and the young woman who seemed homeless most of the time and jobless all of the time, they'll have a connection that'll last much longer than either of them could've ever foreseen. She'd reappeared since the last time they'd seen each other, seeming to flit in and out of existence at exactly the wrong moment for Tony to become doubtful of his own perception of reality. In the evening, outside his apartment building, he'd encountered this young woman again, several more times in fact. "Can you imagine what it'd be like?" she asked him, the first time he'd seen her after her long absence. The abruptness of her question immediately struck Tony, even after he'd been looking for her for some time. "What are you talking about?" he asked. They were in the lobby of his little apartment building, with the darkness of the night seeming to emanate from beyond the building's glass door. "If you'd lived somewhere else," said the young woman, "you never helped me, and I'm here now. What if you'd helped me? Would I be somewhere else?" But Tony still couldn't, still wouldn't understand her. "My mom's getting evicted," he said, finally, "and I might be too." The young woman, whose name Tony still hadn't and wouldn't ever learn, said, "I can help you." Soon, the two of them hatched a plan, Tony finally learning to work with her, a turn of events and a change of character which he'd come to regret.

Although sexual relations between cousins wasn't illegal in Canada—in fact, it's not illegal in nearly every country, with China and some American states the only parts of any importance in the world to completely outlaw it—Luke and Jordan were both, even then, acutely aware of the taboo. After they were finished, they both put their clothes back on and quietly returned to the rest of the family. Before they reached the fence separating properties, she turned back to face him and said, "now don't tell anybody about what we just did, right?" Then she put an index finger first to her lips, then his. Even at fourteen he—and at seventeen she—knew how to keep a secret. They'd only see each other a few more times over the next few years, at the annual family get-together plus the odd meeting by happenstance in between. They saw each other every time strictly as casual lovers, and only whenever the circumstances permitted, still meeting a little less than once every two years. It came to be a regular facet of life that whenever they met, they'd hook up, always finding some excuse to have a moment alone together, somewhere. "Do you ever think anyone knew about us back then?" Jordan asked, one Sunday, when they were at home together while an unusually heavy rain fell outside. "No," said Luke, "absolutely not." "What makes you so sure?" she asked. "What makes you think someone knew?" he asked. The girls were asleep, sharing their crib in the bedroom. It was a quiet moment, quiet but for the heavy rain lashing against the city outside, seeming to strike their apartment's windows in waves and surges. But it wasn't only his sister's poor choices in life that bothered Luke. If that was the only issue, then he wouldn't have cared what she was doing. It was the way Lauren had fostered a co-dependent relationship with her, always coming to her rescue, having trained her to expect rescue and having been trained, in turn, to rescue. If his sister was only ruining her own life, then Luke wouldn't have cared. The peak of this had come when his sister had announced her intention to have a child she blatantly couldn't afford, and wasn't fit to care for. But there was more to it than that. Luke asked Lauren about her giving more money and had received only a stinging rebuke to mind his own business. Still caring about his own mother's welfare, he'd thought that was exactly what he was doing. He concluded, at some point, that the only thing he could do was wash his hands of the whole thing. And then he'd entered into a relationship with his own cousin, one which had made it harder, not easier, to wash his hands of family. "Let's move away together," said Luke, "we'll find a place somewhere on the other side of the country. We'll move to Toronto or something." He was seized of the sudden need to get away from something, anything at all. "You still haven't called your sister yet, have you?" asked Jordan. "I thought you said you were going to do that," said Luke. "I've been putting it off," said Jordan.

Although her father was white, Aaliyah's mother was black, the two of them having married when he'd moved for a ten year period from his native Vancouver to the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex. Children shouldn't have to think about such things, they just shouldn't. But they do. Although the summer would've been unusually warm and humid for Vancouver, for the pacific northwest, every time she'd returned home from the dry heat of the north Texas plains on which the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex had been built she felt a chill at first contact with the cool, moist air in Vancouver. Aaliyah's father worked in the IT department of a gigantic logistics company, having moved to Vancouver after living and working in Dallas. It was in Dallas that he'd met Aaliyah's mother, a black woman who worked as a janitor at a university in the area. They'd met in a bar. It wouldn't have really mattered if they weren't connected at all, nor if they'd been closely related. By the time they make it through this late-summer's heat, much will have changed in the world around them even as it'll seem to them that nothing's changed at all. Soon, the rumours which'd targeted Aaliyah came to target her friend Amelia as well, something which Aaliyah could've predicted. Graffiti appeared on the bathroom walls, on the insides of stalls declaring them to be lesbians, lovers. Someone smeared first Aaliyah's, then Amelia's locker with pink paint. "I knew this would happen," said Amelia, "I don't care." But still Aaliyah said, "they might try to attack us. We should watch our backs." The two kept on walking to and from school together, until there was a day sometime early in the new year when the girls were ambushed again. This time Aaliyah wasn't alone, not at first. The other girls separated them, then made Amelia watch as they beat up Aaliyah. Afterwards, though, Amelia helped Aaliyah home, and the two would remain close, Amelia refusing to give up on her new friend.

But Luke wouldn't have known how to respond. "I've always loved you," said Luke, although he must've known it wasn't true. After having been raised on a steady diet of domestic upheaval and unremittent shame, it seemed to Luke to be the right thing to say, the right thing to aspire to. Their daughters, Luke was determined, wouldn't have to grow up under such stress. Their daughters, Luke had determined, would live in a happy home, would grow up with a happy family. It's for this reason that Luke chose to make nothing of Jordan's mounting depression, even as her depression was obviously mounting even to him. They'd never specifically agreed to pursue anything resembling a real relationship with each other, and it must've come as some small surprise not only to the rest of the family but to themselves, to each of them when they found themselves agreeing to marry, marrying, having children, and more. When Jordan moved to Vancouver for other reasons, they soon after found themselves seeing each other more often, until it became obvious at some point that they were dating, and shortly after that in a relationship. They'd moved in with each other well before they 'came out' as a couple to their family; when asked why they'd decided to move in with each other, each said something to the effect of the roommate you know is better than the roommate you don't. It'd later emerge that the family, or at least many of them, had suspected something was going on between them as soon as they'd moved in with each other, but none of them said anything about it at the time. Whether or not this derived from Jordan's having told one of them, neither of them knew exactly, with so much having become lost to the passage of so much time.

A man walked by quickly, then paused on one side of the alley. He spoke into a cell phone that might've looked to most people too old to still be in use, a flip phone with an extendable antenna. "...And if you want it you know where you can find me," said the man, "if not then don't waste any more of my time." The man then closed his phone and put it back on a clip on his belt. But then he reached for his belt and grabbed a different phone, this one another old flip phone. He flipped the second phone open and raised it to his ear, speaking again into it. "What?" he asked, his voice curt and his brows furrowed. With his free hand he drew out a cigarette from a pack in his pocket, stuck it on his lips, and then with one of those cheap coloured-plastic lighters lit it. "If you want something you've gotta pay for it," said the man, "you know the price. One hundred fifty for an eightball. Fine, now it's two hundred. Hey, that's not my problem. Everybody's got problems with supply these days. Look, even at two hundred I'll be losing money on this deal. Fine, fine, I'll meet you at the usual spot. I don't care, you go there and wait." Then the man hung up this phone, placing it back on his waist before resuming his walk down the street. It was a small thing, only two or three paces before the man disappeared beyond the side of the wall, out of Christian Mullins' sight. The sudden chill that'd set in wasn't the product of a burst of air, as if descending on the street like a thick fog, but bespoken of something far more sinister. By now, though, all that had passed from public fascination, leaving men like Christian to suffer in silence. The main point in having released so many noxious poisons into the bodies of so many poor people had been achieved, more or less, and now the deaths that'd been occurring in scores amounted to the purging of so many undesirables from the streets of a city in the midst of radical change. His descent into total dissociation would prove to last many more years, only to leave him chasing shadows in a futile bid to stave off death.

For Luke and Jordan, one of the few things they could immediately agree on in the time after they'd 'come out' to their mutual family but before they'd gotten married and subsequently had children was the need to display openly to their family, like any other couple. "If we can show that we're totally over the fact that we're cousins, then maybe the rest of them will get over it as well," Luke had said, "I'll have to book it off well in advance, but I can do it." In the time that'd passed since she'd first broached the idea of attending as a couple, Luke had warmed up to it. He'd spent some weeks thinking about it, each week working through every day with his mind wandering while his body kept on working. At work he was like a machine, his body having been trained by his mind to repeat a series of rhythmic motions, over and over, passing the hours. "Will you get it?" asked Jordan. To Luke she seemed to have perked up a bit, with a meagre enthusiasm having crept back into her voice for the first time in the months since the birth of their daughters. "They don't like giving single days off in the summer," said Luke, "it's one of the busiest seasons, second only to Christmas." In truth, his work was busy almost all year, with only the months of January and February and maybe into the first week or two of March qualifying as slow. "Will you?" asked Jordan. "It'll probably be on a weekend anyways," said Jordan. "Probably," said Luke, before reaching for her, putting his hand on her shoulder, with the back of one finger lightly tracing a path along the nape of her neck, along the edge of her jaw before pausing on her lips which seemed as soft and supple as they'd seemed more than fifteen years earlier when they'd first kissed, only moments before they'd first made love. She smiled, a thin smile that was only there for a half-moment, in that half-moment Luke becoming convinced. These were the little moments that convinced him the two of them were going to last.

For Clarence, difficulties continued. His wife approached him and said, "I wish you wouldn't talk like that about our son." She paused for a moment, then said, "I wish you'd look at me when you talk to me." Clarence took the remote control in his hand, shut off the TV, and then threw the remote back on the table in front of him. "Fine," he said, then stood to face her, "now what?" "All you do is sit around and watch that TV," said his wife, "you don't even—" "I don't even what?" asked Clarence. "You don't try to get a job anymore," said his wife. In the end, Clarence would find work, serving coffee and doughnuts at a nearby Tim Hortons that was just off the Trans-Canada Highway which cut through the city of Langley. He worked alongside not teenagers trying to save money to buy their first car but other aged men and women in their sixties and seventies, most of them looking to sustain themselves and their meagre pensions. It was rather dejecting to Clarence in having to resign himself to his fate. He'd continue fighting with his wife through this time, although they'd never come close to divorcing. Despite easy divorce having become the fashion in Canada, Clarence and his wife each could never find it in them to see their fighting as anything more than a temporary problem that disappeared as soon as they fell asleep at night, every night, without fail. There was more to it than that, there was always more to it than that, but the important part had been had. Clarence wouldn't see his son, not for several years more, in the meanwhile much changing in their lives. The winter's rain would only occasionally give way to the lightest of snowfalls, coating the roads and the fields with a thin layer of snow which inevitably melted in less than a day. All that would ever remain would be the piles of dirtied and muddied snow-ice in the corners of grocery store parking lots or in alleys behind dumpsters and stacked broken pallets. This too would melt, but only over the course of the weeks, in the meanwhile serving as a constant if partly hidden reminder of the ugliness of the season's weather.

Some months would pass before they'd get married, and Luke would think of it throughout that time. But after their daughters had been born things had kept on worsening, while Luke had felt powerless to stop it. It'd been an awkward conversation between Luke and his GP, a middle-aged woman who'd been his GP since he was a child. He brought up the subject on a visit for unrelated reasons, a visit to get new prescriptions for the inhalers he needed. Still, there were other moments, moments when Jordan's still-ongoing depression gave him pause. One day he came home from a twelve-hour shift to find Jordan having done none of the chores, none of the housework she'd agreed to do. She'd fed the girls and changed their diapers, although Luke still found the girls in need of a change when he checked on arrival, but apparently nothing else. "You have to do these things," said Luke, later that evening speaking with her directly, or at least as directly as he could manage. "I've done some things," said Jordan, before asking, "do you think I just sit around all day?" Without thinking, Luke muttered, "sometimes it seems like it." He immediately regretted saying it, but kept himself from saying anything further. "You need help," said Luke, "this isn't normal." Jordan seemed to consider it for a moment, before saying, "you could be right about that," her voice dull and flat, without affect, without warmth or affection. But the young woman Jennifer, a considerably more complex person than Luke could've known, was caught up in her own personal difficulty which Luke wouldn't have known about. It was around this time that Luke began to realise his feelings for her, feelings which he'd been unaware of but which'd been there for some time. In her grief, she seemed so vulnerable, so small, to be looked out for, to be protected from something. But he swore he'd never act on these feelings, even as he became acutely aware of their growing inside him. They spent more time together in the break room, as well as outside at that lonely bench halfway to the smoke pit. Mostly they would talk about work, sort-of, trading humorous observations about their co-workers and their personal lives, with Luke talking a lot about his daughters as if he was the first father to love his daughters so. He would take care to avoid talking about Jordan, more out of respect for his wife's mounting depression rather than any desire to mislead Jennifer. But there were moments of gravity as well. "If you're going through anything right now," he said, trying his best to empathise with her, "I'm here." And she said, "thanks," before quickly shifting the topic to something else. It was probably obvious, he realised, to her when he'd begun to steal glances at her, when he'd been passing the office and quickly looked inside to see if she was at her desk. He realised this was a dangerous path to tread, but he couldn't help himself. As Jordan had begun to withdraw from him, he began to instinctively look elsewhere for warmth.

Actually, in East Vancouver the sight of so many hopeless causes and struggling souls, even the presence of a churches was enough to maintain the community's spirit. It recalled a time when Emily had been on the SkyTrain, riding between a downtown office and her family's home in the city of Richmond, when she'd spotted in the SkyTrain a young man who looked strangely familiar, who looked exactly like she thought a man she'd seen in the neighbourhood outside and around her church. "Are you ready to go?" asked the voice on the other end, which belonged to someone whose name Emily had momentarily forgotten. "Everything's set," said Emily. "That's not what I asked," said the voice on the other end, which Emily suddenly recognised as this very young man who'd once looked so strangely familiar. It was as if she'd been suddenly shaken by the immersion in a lake of fire, with her whole body seized by searing pain, the worst pain imaginable. Then she woke up. This was only one in a series of disturbing nightmares Emily had begun having around this time. The nightmares had been quite shocking to her at first, only to become less shocking over a few months. But this, this was only because she'd become accustomed to them. After having closed her most recent sale, she'd determined to get out of the real estate business, after having spent so much time and so much effort for so little gain. For her, the real estate business in Vancouver had proven to be like any other gold rush: by the time you hear about it, it's over. But in a city notorious for its poor wages and extreme costs of living, not only in housing but in gas, food, and the other essentials, it wasn't so easy as simply finding another job. Her work as a pastor would continue, with it the pittance she was paid for that work. When she succeeded in finding work, it came in a place she'd never expected, and at some personal cost.

Still the coming reunion was to be a tense moment for both Luke and Jordan, even as there were to be many people there neither of them had seen in a while, in years. It was a difficult enough thing to admit that they were together, it'd been difficult enough not to 'come out' but to make the decision to 'come out' to their mutual family. In the end, Luke knew he would put aside all these considerations and go, regardless of how uncomfortable it made him. It was a good thing to look forward to, and he knew that it was only his expectations that might've made it something difficult. The real trick, Luke knew, was to act like any other couple. But after they'd gotten married and had their twin daughters, now months after they'd brought the girls home, Luke was determined not to repeat the mistakes he'd made earlier in life. In those months, Jordan's depression had seemed to worsen by the day, no matter what Luke did or said. It was rather disconcerting for Luke to be so unable to lift his wife's spirits. He came home after long days at work to frequently find the girls in need of a diaper change, which he quickly learned to do without complaint, without mention. The girls were proceeding through their first months of development at a normal pace, one which Luke nevertheless worried about. When first Sylvia, then Sandra began to crawl on the floor at around six months, Luke was thrilled. He'd taken to watching them, placing one or both on one side of the living room in their tiny apartment, then enticing them to crawl across it to him. He'd been doing this for only a few weeks when first Sylvia, then Sandra crawled across the living room to him. "This is wonderful," said Luke, before turning to Jordan and saying, "you've got to see this." But she was in the bedroom, having stayed in bed all morning. Luke took the girls and put them in their playpen, then went into the bedroom. "I'm starting to worry about you," he said, standing over Jordan. She was still in bed, although she'd been awake for some time.

The workers at the call centre would eventually form a union, several months after Martin had left. The major issue which motivated them to vote in favour of certifying was the overwhelming reliance on temporary workers from agencies. Sharmila would tell Martin that she'd voted against forming a union, though she'd done so for no particular reason. You see, Martin had a problem with women—actually, in forming relationships with anyone, whether sexual or platonic. After having grown up in a broken home he'd taken to trying at relationships with women he was blatantly unsuitable for, like the older Barbadian woman who seemed not to have much interest in him at all. A few years earlier, he'd lusted after his middle-aged biology teacher during the twelfth grade. A few years earlier still, he'd had sex with one of his classmates from his ninth-grade English class, only to learn she'd slept with almost anyone who asked. In the end, he'd forget about Sharmila, just as he'd forget about the temporary job he'd worked over the holiday season. Their last conversation they'd had together saw him again complaining about their not seeing each other very much over the past few weeks. He wouldn't have been able to step outside himself and see how that looked, to Sharmila or to anyone else. "I had no idea you felt that way about me," Sharmila had said. "I told you so many times," he said. "You never said that," said Sharmila, "and if you think I'm gonna get serious with a guy who's just gonna be out of my life in a couple of months anyways, then you're outta your mind." A few more words were exchanged, but there was one highlight which Martin would remember. "I go out with a guy for coffee or lunch a few times," she said, "and all of a sudden I find myself in a relationship. You're nuts." In time, Martin would come to realise this was true. By then, he'd have gone to university himself, flown around the world on a backpacking trip, and yet still never really learned what makes for real relationships. This was his personal tragedy.

Events would come to a head some months after the birth of their twin daughters, not with any specific event but with the gradual deterioration of his wife's health. Jordan began seeing a psychiatrist, on referral from the very same GP Luke had seen since he was a child. The psychiatrist prescribed a regimen of antidepressants and group therapy sessions, the latter of which Jordan bitterly complained about but kept on attending anyways. All Luke knew how to do was try and be as supportive as possible, to continue working without complaint. But there was a reason for Luke's determination to be as supportive as possible of his wife, of the mother of his daughters, and it hadn't anything to do with some sense of personal loyalty to his wife. Rather, he could recall having grown up in a broken home, with parents who were always at each other's throats, him and his sister always caught in the middle. Moreover, he could remember being made by one to turn against the other, his mind filled with hatred and lies. Even before he'd married Jordan and had twin daughters, he'd have thought himself incapable of inflicting the same experience on a child. But Luke's burgeoning not-relationship with the young woman Jennifer felt impossible to stop, to Luke. Soon, he began spending extra time hanging out at the office where she worked. Her office, the shipping office, was situated on one side of the warehouse, with sliding windows which were meant to allow quick handling of bills and order sheets instead permitting him to chat with her without even setting foot inside. He was chatting with her, when one of Luke's supervisors approached from within the office. "Why don't you just come in and sit down?" asked the supervisor, a gruff man named Paul. "I don't know what you mean," Luke said. "You spend so much time hanging out at the office," said Paul, "you may as well just come in and have a seat. Or you could go out there and get some work done. Aren't you married anyways?" Luke said, "I'm just, I mean, I'm friends. I'm not—" He looked back to where Jennifer had been sitting only to see that she was no longer there. Instead, she'd gone to the copier, a few metres away, and stood in front of it while looking half-longingly back. "So what'll it be?" asked Paul. "I'll get to picking these orders," he said, and turned back to the floor. Luke rationalised his behaviour by assuring himself that he wasn't pursuing any kind of romantic or sexual relationship with the young woman who'd captured his feelings, his feelings, only this reassurance was beginning to seem hollow even to him.

None of this impressed itself upon Bhulwinder, who was too consumed in his own life to worry or wonder much about the lives of others. But many more were to pass before anything would change; in fact, change would come without anyone noticing it, neither silently in the night nor audibly in the light but over so long a period of time that it might not've come at all. Bhulwinder was a rather young man, not so young as many of the other Indian workers at this particular warehouse but at around thirty still too young to be considered an old man. With an election on the horizon, Bhulwinder didn't like the fact that there were many political parties who nominated Punjabi candidates and seemed to expect Punjabi-speaking immigrants (that is, naturalised citizens) to vote for them strictly on the basis of the colour of their skin or the language that they spoke. Colourful billboards and signs, orange, blue, and red were to go up along critical roads, a few of which would feature text in Punjabi as well as English next to the ubiquitous and obligatory smiling, black-and-white photograph of the candidate in question. Where applicable, the candidate in question would make prominent his wearing of a turban and the thickness of his beard, as had been the case in previous elections. But when Bhulwinder made off after work one night to the store, it was precisely the sight of one such banner that made him quietly angry. It wasn't that he wasn't (yet) a citizen and thus couldn't vote; he wouldn't want to vote even if he could've. "I'm going to see what I can do," said Bhulwinder, after having agreed to look for work closer to home, "but I believe I can still keep it here." After meeting with a few of the others, a few of the other workers outside the main entrance, he'd gotten their agreement to consider the possibility of joining a union, which had to be done in secret. He didn't really care if this course of action would get him fired; after having come to believe that he'd maybe made a mistake in coming to Canada, that there was no better life in Canada he might've now been hell-bent on getting himself fired. There were only five other workers at the meeting. It seemed real progress was being made.

Eventually, Carol would find her way to work, then as every other night working late into the night, into that ill-defined time neither nighttime nor morning. If her elderly mother knew how to send text messages, or wasn't so deathly afraid of cell phones, then Carol was sure she'd be bombarded at work with all manner of messages demanding this and that. Carol worked in a restaurant—more like a diner, off the main drag that cuts across the city of Burnaby immediately to the east of Vancouver. It was one of the few such establishments open twenty-four hours; in this part of the country at least, the American phenomenon of twenty-four hour liquor stores, pharmacies, and even barbeque restaurants was largely unknown. At this time of the night, there were vanishingly few customers, those that came consisting of the usual mix of students, truck drivers, and shift workers on their nights off. "...More coffee?" she asked one young man who took up a table for four all by himself. "Just leave the pot if you can," said the young man, offering a weak smile as he looked up from his books. Actually, Carol preferred nights at this diner over days, in no small part because fewer customers made for easier work. She went to another table where another customer, a long-haul trucker she'd never seen before, was finishing up. He'd left cash on the table, and when she went to pick the cash up he said, "it's all to you," before nodding and standing up to make his way out. She counted the money, thirty dollars on a twenty-one dollar bill. The customers at night tended to be bigger tippers as well. When Carol returned home to find her mother gone, she rushed into action. But it was too late, it was too late.

Chapter Twelve

Luke didn't remember when Jordan's parents had split up; in fact, he couldn't recall her ever having told him why they'd split up. It was something she never talked about, not with him. Likewise, he'd never told her why his parents had divorced when he was only a few years old. "You don't even have any friends," she said. "Because I spend every waking moment of my life working to pay for everything we've got," he said. It wouldn't matter much what'd set off this particular fight; all couples fight at one time or another, whether that fight takes the form of a minor disagreement or a major difference. To Luke, the sight of his wife, the mother of his children sitting on the couch at home after he'd been at work for another twelve-hour shift had rankled him just a little too much, his mutterings on that day becoming louder, easily audible through the quiet of an after-evening rain. "I'm taking my fucking medication," said Jordan, "and I'm going to that useless fucking group therapy. I don't know what else I'm supposed to do!" But Luke took a step back and said, "this is not the way it's supposed to be." And Jordan said, "I don't care about how it's fucking supposed to be!" She then took a plate in her hands and smashed it against the floor, the ceramic shattering into a hundred pieces. The girls started crying, seemingly at the same time, while in the distance the faint sound of pans clattering against a tiled floor could be heard. From beyond the living room wall, there was a pounding, along with a muffled voice that could be vaguely heard and which Luke might've imagined said, "keep it fucking down over there! People are trying to sleep here!" All Luke could think to do was pound just as hard back while shouting, "why don't you all shut up and mind your own fucking business!" Soon after this would result in the police being called, not the first time the police would respond to a domestic disturbance in this building over the past several months, only the first involving Luke and Jordan.

But this wasn't the end of Clarence, nor of his hardships, for the next several years he and his wife making their way through the most difficult times in their lives. His regular visits to his son in prison had become substantially less regular over the past few months, before stopping altogether. For the first time in many years, Clarence had become accustomed to a certain level of outrage, and it's his having become accustomed to this certain level of outrage that should come to render him harmless, reducing his outrage to that of the common crank, neutralising him and others like him. But there'd been more to it than that. There's always more to it than that. When Clarence and his wife received word that their son had died in prison, she grieved while he only seethed. Their son hadn't been killed in a fight or prison riot, rather had died of a drug overdose in his cell. This turned out to be the decisive moment in Clarence's failing marriage. Clarence didn't care much, wouldn't show much care for the death of his son. "I just can't believe you," she said, after they'd first received the news. (It came in the form of a phone call from a prison official). "What's so hard to believe about it?" asked Clarence, without getting up from his recliner, without pulling his gaze off the television. "Your son is dead," said his wife, fighting through tears. "Wasn't much of a son," said Clarence. "Only because you weren't much of a father," said his wife. This, this finally roused Clarence's anger. "I wasn't much of a father?" he asked, while standing and turning to face his wife. She said, "you were always away when everything important happened, and—" "I was making money to pay for everything you have," said Clarence. "What have we got left?" asked his wife. Clarence said nothing. "We've got a fucking trailer," said his wife, "and a car that breaks down too often. And I've got to do all my shopping at the thrift store." By the time this argument was through much would've been said that couldn't be taken back.

Neither Luke nor Jordan knew who called the police, although later Luke would decide it was likely one of the neighbours. "We can place her under arrest for disturbing the peace," said the policewoman, "and damage to property." He thought about it for a moment or two, then said, "I don't want you to do that." But the policewoman said, "we've got complaints from some of the neighbours, and that's enough to justify an arrest for disturbing the peace." Luke said, "I don't think that's necessary. She's got some problems that would be made worse by that." "Well, you could just keep it down," said the officer. "The kids are all right," said Luke. "How old are they?" asked the officer. Luke told her. "Please try to be careful," said the officer, "it's important that young kids have a stable home. Trust me, I know." The officer's voice had softened, as had the firmness of the look in her eyes. Luke nodded, and said, "thank you." The police would inevitably leave without making any arrests, and would advise Jordan to try and be quieter. Just before leaving, the blonde officer would hand Luke a card for family counseling services offered through the local mental health module, the very same module through which Jordan had already begun counseling. Luke took the card and put it in his wallet, between an old gift card he'd never used and a business card for a dentist's office he'd never visited. Inside, Jordan was beside herself, hardly able to summon the courage even to face him. After seeing to the girls, Luke approached Jordan again, looking to say something, anything at all, but realising there was nothing he could say.

But Emily had been living this way only for a short period, a few years, before which she'd led a very hard life. But something else was about to happen, something that'd change all their lives forever. When once she went to go to church and prepare to deliver the day's sermon, she'd not known that already she'd lost someone very close to her, someone so close that she'd feel guilty not having known already that he'd died. Death is a natural part of life, but knowing this didn't make death any easier for Dwight or Emily to handle. Emily had been taught that Christians shouldn't fear death, owing to their having accepted the free gift of their own salvation by way of grace. Still, there was a part of her that couldn't help but believe herself having wasted an opportunity to do good work. That last sale Emily had made would prove to be her last, as she'd quit her job as a realtor before making another. She hadn't another job lined up, which forced her to rely entirely on the pittance provided by her ministerial work for the church. It all came to a head one night, one otherwise quiet night when the winter's rains had abated and when the moon's light seemed particularly sickly and pale. "...Same street," said Dwight, "I think that might be a little bit too close." They were talking about the youths who seemed to come and go from their church. "I don't mind helping him with his problems," said Emily, "it's what friends do, never mind what pastors are supposed to do." But then her mother, the pastor of the church's much better attended Chinese-language service, said, "you can't save everyone, and you'll only run yourself ragged trying. Do the best you can, by all means, but don't get too down on yourself if people drift away." But Emily, brimming with newly-strengthened faith, said, "I don't accept that." Dwight, at her side, said, "come with me to the auction." She reluctantly agreed.

As they left, as the police left Luke with the daughters, Jordan came out, running after him. The police made only a half-hearted attempt to restrain her, but then they disappeared. In the end, Luke stayed. Luke might've imagined a particular sequence of events that could've followed any possible arrest, and chose to pre-empt those events. This is what Luke imagined: after placing Jordan under arrest, the police took her to the police station nearby and held her overnight. In the morning, she was brought before a judge and released on bail, with a court date set for four weeks later. Although she was allowed to return home, the police cautioned her against it. Knowing that it would've changed nothing in the short term, and only made their lives worse, he'd chosen to ask the police not to arrest her or anyone else. It might've been a mistake to move in with each other, get married, and have children in the span of a couple of years, Luke realised. But he wouldn't ever admit this to anyone, not to his family, not to any of his friends or coworkers, not anyone. That was how Luke knew what to do when it came to raising children; he simply took whatever his mother and father did in raising him, and did the opposite. He sat on the edge of the bed, next to Jordan, and put one hand on her back. "I don't know what's happening to me," she said, "I'm not supposed to feel this way." But Luke said, "no one's supposed to feel any way." He paused to think about it for a moment, then said, "I'm sorry for the way I've been treating you." It was one of the hardest things he'd ever had to say. At least some small part of him didn't mean it. She looked up for a moment and said, "that doesn't matter." Then she kissed him, and for a moment it seemed to him as though she was better. But this was only a momentary illusion, one which was made particularly ambiguous to Luke by the night. At work, things between Luke and Jennifer had rapidly come to a head. Although Jennifer and Luke had been more or less avoiding each other after With her deep blue eyes and blond hair braided into a crown that flowed into a long braided ponytail that reached to the small of her back, Jennifer looked on that day to Luke like she was Swiss or German. By contrast, Luke looked as always, as though he'd just rolled out of bed, with his unkempt hair and ruffled clothes. At another company function, this one a barbeque, they found their way to each other, but couldn't seem to pin each other down. "Do you want to talk about it?" asked Luke. "Do you?" asked Jennifer. "But I thought you'd want to," said Luke, "you always seem like you've got something to say." They were both in trouble with their feelings, but Luke could only guess what Jennifer's trouble was as she wouldn't come out and say it. After allowing a moment to settle, Jennifer stood up and spoke.

Some of them were rather slow and difficult. In terms of ability, they presented a great diversity, although this wasn't the purpose in having them here. Bhulwinder would become a Canadian citizen in a few months, although he'd be disappointed to learn that citizenship would change nothing for him. He'd still be consigned to the same low-wage jobs, still denied the permanent employment he'd been promised for some time now. He'd still have to live in the same basement apartment, beneath an Indian family who were mortgaged to the neck and using his rent to subsidise what they couldn't really afford. After work one night Bhulwinder met with representatives of a particular union, telling them about the agreement between him and the other temporary workers. "You can help us," said the man, "and in doing so you can help yourself." "I'm not so sure," said Bhulwinder, "I'm afraid." "Don't be," said the man, "you've got rights, just as everyone's got rights. It's the law." But Bhulwinder said, "I hope you're right." In India there were many labour unions who were faced with issues that were qualitatively the same as those in Canada, who were the target of laws aimed squarely at making it harder for them to do their work. When he was confident that their work in helping the other workers to join a union was progressing at a good pace, Bhulwinder allowed himself to relax his attention to detail, allowed himself to lower his guard. But the company was more devious, much more clever than that, and had already begun to try and sniff out the source of the current unionisation drive. There were some harrowing moments, when Bhulwinder began to consider that they might've found him out; when he started to become more argumentative with his supervisors, when he'd started to grow a backbone in expressing his thoughts. "You shouldn't treat people like that," he said, after a supervisor had derisively called out two workers in the presence of many others, during a crew talk. "Simmer down now," said the supervisor, a man whose girth and complete baldness made him look like a high school football coach who yelled at his students to run harder while he would only stand there and gain weight. "You should treat people with more respect," said Bhulwinder, each word that came out of his mouth making him feel stronger and better able to confront the man. When the supervisor reluctantly walked back his comments, Bhulwinder felt like he had won. But then he was caught.

It seemed like the right thing to do. Luke had always thought about the right thing to do, even if he hadn't always done that thing. It'd become obvious to everyone that something was amiss, but no one would say anything, no one in their mutual family at least. This was one of the reasons Luke felt motivated to continue to work on their marriage, on their relationship, such as it was. Sylvia wanted to hug Luke at all times, while Sandra was too interested in exploring her environment to bother much with physical contact. But this was well after, years after they'd been to that first family reunion together, and a major motivation on Luke's part for making this relationship, this marriage work was the need to show them that it could. For all their differences, Luke and Jordan had always had at least one thing in common, besides a set of grandparents that is—they'd both always been the sort of people who do the opposite of whatever certain people say they should do. That night was a quiet and uncertain night after the police had left and Luke and Jordan had momentarily reconciled their differences, with the daughters seeming to fall asleep as soon as they were put to bed. Luke watched his wife fall sleep, then turned over and stared into darkness for a few hours before finally falling asleep himself. It was an awkward and uncertain time, both Luke's and Jordan's awkwardness and uncertainty in life seeming not to diminish but to coalesce around the identities which they'd each spent half a lifetime dwelling within. In truth, this was their failing, their tragedy, the same as the failing and the tragedy of every other would-be family that struggles. But at work, things continue to develop between Luke and the young woman Jennifer. "I value your friendship," said Luke, after Jennifer had come down from her impromptu speech, "I'm really attracted to you as well, I don't know how to say it." His voice was quivering a little, like a teenager's, as they spoke privately. "I know you're married," said Jennifer, "but I can't control my feelings. I think I love you." She paused, then said, "I know I love you. I love you." And Luke said, "I think I might have some feelings for you, even though I shouldn't." But he regretted it as soon as he said it. It was in this frame of mind that he finally agreed to meet her for dinner, not after work that day but a few days later. Luke repeatedly assured himself, as he drove home that night, that it wasn't a date, it wasn't a date, wasn't a date. Luke wasn't sure what to expect, besides a frank and direct talk about their feelings. There was some part of him that thought there was at least a chance they'd end the date in bed, and it was this possibility that disturbed him and excited him. He knew that he shouldn't have said the things he said, but that didn't seem to matter to him, to either of them anymore. He was no longer in control, rather at the mercy of a sequence of events that'd taken on a life of their own. he resolved to use their upcoming not-date to make a stand, one way or the other.

Working in the shadows of a dozen largely empty towers had become commonplace, banal even, for young men and women like Carol Chang the prospect of having to compete with these great empty monuments to nothing inspiring not fear but revulsion. Carol was too young a woman not to have ambitions in life, even as her job, her having to care for an invalid mother, even her general lot in life would've seemed to largely preclude such ambitions. Her own health would begin to fail at some point in the indeterminate future, despite her avoidance of drugs, alcohol, and smoking. And the streets, the streets told a different story. As the city was seemingly in the process of emptying itself of real people, Carol and others like her sometimes, oftentimes wondered where all these newcomers were staying. None were seen. This particular crisis made it even less likely that she'd ever be able to put her ambitions into action, her ambitions receding behind her a little further with every day she had to work at this job, with every day she had to care for her invalid of a mother. But all this remained rather distant and antiseptic to young women like Carol, young women robbed of their youths in being made to work so strenuously for the benefit of another. It was around this time, before this next crisis was to emerge, that Carol would have a particularly bad, bitter fight with her invalid mother. It wasn't really a fight, as a fight would involve the trading of fire between mutual combatants, and all that happened this time was the shouting of obscenities in more than one language. It was a sure sign that Carol's mother was truly angry, when she reverted to her native language which Carol didn't fully understand after having grown up speaking English, English, almost exclusively English. Her invalid mother had disappeared, only to be found wandering the streets seemingly dazed and confused. The police took her to the hospital. Carol was called. She went during the day. "I just want to go home," said her mother, when Carol finally arrived. "I want to take you home," said Carol, "but they won't let you go." She met her mother on the psychiatric ward, where the paramedics who'd found her had taken her. She was certified under the BC Mental Health Act, which meant she wasn't free to go, not right away. "They're not going to let me go home," said Carol, "they want to keep me locked up somewhere forever." Her mother paused, then said, "they're all working against me. Don't you work against me as well." By this time Carol knew it was a lost cause.

By now, the bottom had fallen out on the city's housing psychosis. Across the street from Luke's doctor's office in the suburb of Richmond, a whole city block had been cleared to make way for a massive development which'd been to include three towers of gleaming, glass and steel condos. But then the developer couldn't guarantee funding, and the contractor had pulled out, leaving the land cleared but bare, surrounded by fences proclaiming the imminent construction of luxury apartments that would never be. It was an eyesore, a huge parcel of brown land left unused for want of some complicated and entirely imaginary instrument. But therein lay the truth, hidden in plain sight behind so much glass and steel. There'd been no one moment when Luke or Jordan had realised what must've come next. In the aftermath of their grandmother's sudden but not unexpected death, the rest of the family had seemingly scattered back across Canada and into the United States as if nothing had happened at all, the death of the last surviving member of the eldest generation seeming to make no difference in their lives. Well, at least Luke had known all along that there was to be one small difference in their world following the death of their grandmother. In the time before his marriage to Jordan, there was the still-upcoming family reunion to overcome. Still madly in love with Jordan, Luke couldn't have conceived of becoming involved with anyone else. He was convinced, totally and completely convinced that they were meant to be, even if he couldn't have understood or articulate what that might've meant.

But before the daughters were born, shortly before they were even married, there was the issue of what to do at the upcoming family reunion. Both Luke and Jordan had confirmed their intended attendance, simply by texting his mother, Lauren. Luke's and Jordan's objective in going to the reunion was to show the rest of the family that they were like any other couple, to put a brave face on it. "If it'll be that simple," said Luke. "We can leave anytime we want," said Jordan, "if we want to." Luke nodded and said, "and we will, eventually." Although they'd been living together for some time, a few months, they'd yet to declare their relationship to anyone in their family. (When they'd first moved in with each other, they'd said to anyone in their family who'd asked that they were simply becoming roommates to save money in the impossibly expensive Vancouver rental market). After having gone from one member of their immediate family to another and 'come out' to each of them, word had gone around quick enough among those who'd counted. But it wasn't so simple, it couldn't have ever been so simple as that. "I don't care what they say," said Luke, "and I don't care what they think. I think it'll be good to see everyone we haven't seen in a while. Besides, I think there'll be a lot of people who don't care, or who support us." Where once Luke would've been hesitant even to show his face, now he'd become more confident of himself, in ways even he couldn't begin to understand. "Do you really believe that?" asked Jordan. "I'm starting to," said Luke.

When the day came, they drove over in Luke's truck, arriving after most of the others had already arrived. The drive was to be only a couple of hours, in total, but it felt to Luke as though it took much, much longer. There was limited parking, even on an acreage, and Luke had to park his truck a little further away than he'd expected. Inside, there was an awkward and uncertain atmosphere, with perhaps a quarter of the attendees even knowing who they were and what made them, according to their own beliefs, something to be rejected out of hand. Inevitably they were introduced, sometimes by themselves and sometimes by others, as someone's son or daughter. Luke introduced himself as 'Lauren's son,' while Jordan introduced herself as 'David's daughter.' The house itself in which the reunion was being held sat on a small acreage not far outside the city of Chilliwack, about an hour and a half outside Vancouver. It was the very same property on which the reunion had been held around fifteen years prior, when Jordan and Luke had first had sex. Then they were only teenagers, uncertain exactly what they were doing but absolutely certain they should've been doing something. "I have to admit," said Vicki, "I admire your courage in coming here." "Thank you," Luke said, without thinking. Vicki turned to Jordan and said, "you should know there are lots of other men you're related to here. And I know you have a particular affinity for incest." This time Luke thought for a moment before saying, "duly noted." He wanted to put himself between Jordan and her mother, out of some perhaps misplaced—perhaps not misplaced at all, it was hard for him to understand—need to fight her battles for her. They were in the house's living room, with a half-dozen others, most of the rest in the kitchen or out back, but Luke wouldn't have known what to say to any of them without Jordan at his side.

"Oh just let them be," said David, "they're not hurting anyone." It was uncharacteristic for David to openly comment on such things, in the middle of a crowd at least, and his momentary outburst drew the attention of everybody in the room. "I'm going to get a drink," said Jordan, before turning for the kitchen. Vicki said, "yes, that should solve all your problems." But Jordan kept walking, and in seconds was out of the room. Until she came back, Luke was to face the sharks alone. Although she was sure to be back in a minute or two, it made Luke feel in that minute acutely aware of himself. But he wasn't about to threaten the delicate order of things, nor their purpose in coming there.

Chapter Thirteen

An elderly woman named Bernadette Quinn had spent nearly all her life with her husband, whom she'd met after he'd come home from serving in the army during the Second World War. There were a lot of young men coming home from the service at that time, and all of them would soon be looking for work at one of the many mills, factories, or yards then operating in the area. Although Bernadette had lived nearly all her life in the city of Vancouver, it'd only been relatively recently, only a few years before her eventual death, that she'd been made to leave her apartment in favour of a smaller, rundown, cheaper apartment in New Westminster. Many people had already been expelled from the many apartment buildings demolished in Vancouver, those buildings demolished to make way for new largely empty condominiums. At the time, the sale of her house and the purchase of her new condo had involved about equal amounts of money, effectively trading one for the other. (Of course, if she'd stuck with the house then her estate would've been worth considerably more during the peak of Vancouver's schizophrenic obsession with housing and land, but there's no use in dwelling on what might've been). During this time, her health had begun to worsen, although it was all physical and not even the slightest mental. One of the last things she'd said to anyone in her family before going into the hospital was the same thing she'd taken to saying periodically whenever someone came over to see her. She'd said, "I need a new body," always followed by a hearty but tired chuckle forced though coughing and wheezing. In the confines of her little condo, she'd lived out the remaining years of her life, towards the end rarely venturing outside. Actually, she'd accepted that there was little in life left to be lived, that she'd been through everything she was to go through, and that all that was left was to slip peacefully into death, or so she'd thought.

Now she'd come to lie in bed, in a hospital bed at the Royal Columbian Hospital in the small city of New Westminster. She'd been here for a few weeks when things had taken a turn for the worse; death is a natural part of life, but in this moment Bernadette came to secretly fear death. This had become a secret not because she wouldn't tell anyone, but because she couldn't, her worsening condition having left her unable to speak, to move much beyond the occasional spasm of the muscles in her legs or arms. In this state, she was conscious, in that she was still capable of some kind of thought, still capable of conceiving of herself as an independent life, still capable of recalling her own memories. It hadn't always been as though she was a burden to others, nor a piece of meat to be fought over by jackals and vultures. A few more hours were to pass before her death. A few weeks before she'd entered the hospital, she was steadfastly resistant of the notion of going into the hospital in the first place, afraid as she'd been of not going home. "Oh, I don't know about any of this," said Bernadette, when asked by one of her children over what'd proven to be the last Christmas dinner in her life, "you can't say what's going to happen in the future." But still her adult children had persisted. "I'm not unwell," said Bernadette, "I just have a hard time moving, that's all." But her children persisted, explaining why they thought she should be in an assisted living facility. "I won't go anywhere," said Bernadette, "there's nothing anyone could do at any of those places that would help give me what I really need." One by one, her objections were overcome, on this particular occasion, on occasional visits that'd come before this, and on the one or two occasional visits that'd come after.

Now, this was the time in which everyone under her in the family would seek their own. After a suitable period of mourning, the rest of the family, led by her children, would begin the process of sorting out her affairs and managing her estate, such as it was. But she wasn't dead yet. As the others in her family, some of them at least, crowded into that little hospital room to spend one last moment with her, she became only vaguely aware of them, as if there was something entirely unseen but acutely felt drawing her away. They continued to speak, but from her point of view it was their voices, not hers, that became slurred into a distant babble, into a single, discontinuous noise. One of the very last conversations Bernadette had before coming into the hospital had been a brief but poignant exchange with one of her adult children, only one, with some of her grandchildren sitting nearby. (Actually, her grandchildren were all mostly grown as well, between the ages of sixteen and twenty two, with the eldest having had one child, a daughter). "If you want to live long enough to give them memories of you," said Bernadette's child, a daughter named Clara, "you have got to move into a facility." But that wasn't the end of her family's efforts to goad her into the hospital, into some assisted living facility, but it was the exact moment at which she began to become open to the idea even if she wouldn't show it. It was something else entirely that would lead to her death in the hospital, her death technically premature but at such an advanced age not altogether unforeseen. Something as simple as an infection contracted by unknown means, one of the so-called superbugs that circulate around hospitals, a natural consequence of the concentration of so many sick people in so small a space.

Now, Bernadette was too far gone for her family's presence to yield much of a reaction, notwithstanding her inability to perceive them. She became vaguely aware of their touch, of the warmth of their hands on hers, of their fingers lightly brushing against her forehead, but these sensations seemed less important to her than her impending ascension into something. She'd long ago lost her sensations of hunger and thirst, followed by her ability to speak. What happens in those moments immediately before death? It probably doesn't matter. Any physical pain that is experienced is probably meaningless, as it must inevitably be followed by relief from that pain. Whether the dead go to a place of immeasurable pain or relief becomes irrelevant, as Bernadette had lost the ability to choose between salvation and damnation, lost that ability by way of her deteriorated condition. The last thing she could recall with any degree of certainty was the sudden emergence of a young child's voice, a child too young to know much of anything about death. She vaguely recognised the voice as belonging to one of her grandchildren's children, a young boy who was only three years old at the time. The voice could be heard to excitedly say, "I don't want her to go!" But even this was something unimportant. A child so young won't be able to remember these things when all grown up.

What thoughts run through the mind in those moments immediately before death? The only people who can say are all dead, so they can't tell. Although Bernadette had been a faithful, church-going Christian nearly all her life, even she would've admitted in her advancing years a fear of death. Christians, she would've known and fully believed, aren't supposed to fear death, for a true Christian would know or ought to know that in salvation even the possibility of death is negated by the grace of Jesus Christ through whom there is only everlasting life. But all this was rather distant and antiseptic for Bernadette, who remained besotted by an unfathomable pain even as she passed beyond such things. Now, she was immersed in a woozy, dreamlike sensation, the whole world around seeming to have been immersed in a thick, amber haze. It was as though the whole world, the narrow yet boundless world in which she'd come to live had been filled with honey, one which restrained movement and seemed to slow the passage of time, stretching out her final moments into hours, days, even years, until the life that she'd lived and all the time that it'd passed seemed to her to have receded into the distance like a town she'd been on the horizon at the end of a long desert highway. But Bernadette, for one, couldn't come to believe anything but the impermanence of her own body in the face of such overwhelming evidence to the contrary. There was a slick, shimmering surface that seemed, to Bernadette, to cover her even as she'd left her body and had already begun to slip into the darkness that lay behind her.

What do the dying reflect on before they become the dead? It's sometimes said that their whole lives flash before their eyes; although this was not Bernadette's experience exactly, still she found that her last sensory experiences were the faces and the voices of the people around her seeming to re-emerge not from around her but from some unknown and unseen place beyond. There were the little moments she'd long forgotten, as well as the big moments she'd never forget. In the category of the former, there were the moments from her childhood, miscellaneous moments like the touching of a hand against a smooth surface or the raising of voices in a unanimous cheer or roar. In the category of the latter, she saw her wedding over seventy years earlier to a penniless young man, a young man just as penniless as she and the rest of her family. She saw the births of her first, second, and third child, followed by the adoption of a fourth. She saw her husband returning home from a long day of work, only for him to privately tell her that he'd been laid off from his job at the local shipyard, after which she'd reassured him that they'd make it, they'd always make it, they'd do what they had to do to make it. Finally, she saw him working again, shortly thereafter, though she wouldn't have been able to recall exactly where. There were milestones, children's graduations followed by grandchildren's.

What must be the final sensory experience before death? Although Bernadette found herself experiencing no pain, nor the fear of pain, there are those who would go to great lengths to avoid pain, their own pain and the pain of others. A red light cast its surreal glow on every patch of wall, reflecting through translucent plastic and thin glass overlaid with a fine metallic mesh. A young man walked with an older woman along a dimly lit street in the middle of the night, not along the sidewalk but right down the centre, with their held hands over the yellow dividing line. A thick fog settled, without allowing for the light to penetrate its thickness. A body lying on the grass outside, with two suit-and-tie wearing men standing, looking over the body, seeming to evaluate its raison d'etre. A shadow lurked in the corners, just out of sight but surely there, seeming to be waiting for the perfect moment to strike. All these things Bernadette became vaguely aware of, her senses sharpening, becoming more attuned to a higher plane of existence even as they'd long begun to fail, one by one. What she came to experience was much like the deafening noise that can only be described by someone who's lost their sense of hearing, like a painting made by an artist who'd been born blind. There were only a few more moments left in her life, but these were the moments that seemed to stretch over a hundred thousand years. Finally, she was gone.

In the end, it mattered little what happens to the dying, because they're not around to suffer the consequences of their suffering. After Bernadette Quinn's death, there was still a whole sequence of events left for her next of kin to work their way through. In death, the dead leave much behind, as they inevitably must. In death, the dead allow for the growth of those whom they leave behind, as those whom they leave behind must continue to care for the dead long after they've passed. A funeral would come, followed the next day by a burial, in turn by a lengthy and arduous process of minding for the deceased's financial and personal affairs. The sale of her property was what most in the family were concerned with, as this meant her children and grandchildren were each entitled to a portion of the sale. They were to find this a more difficult process than they'd imagined, as the peak of the city's mad had given way to a slow but stale death in which sales had fallen off but prices had yet to follow. But Bernadette moved on, to a place where she there was no more death, or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things had passed away.

Chapter Fourteen

The last time Luke had seen his grandmother alive was a few weeks before her sudden but not altogether unexpected death. It was at Christmas, the first Christmas he'd spent with the family at her home in many, many years. After her death he'd wished he'd gone to more Christmases there in the years since his childhood had ended, but then that was true of most of the rest of the family wishing they'd gone to more Christmases, Easters, Thanksgivings, or just weekends here and there. As for Jordan, well, Luke could recall her telling him at one time or another she'd brought a few boyfriends to meet their grandmother. "All the jerks I'd brought over," she said, "but I never brought over anyone worth it." And she'd said this in a perfectly casual tone of voice, as if to dare him to read something into it that wasn't there. They'd already been together for months when their grandmother had died, and still hadn't told anyone in the family. Luke would probably have liked to think if there was one person who would've accepted them for who they were, it'd been her. But that was probably not true. "You never want to be around when I breastfeed them," said Jordan, "or when I pump." Luke said, "it's a private thing." Jordan said, "we're in private now." Luke asked, "shouldn't they be off...that stuff by now anyways?" But Jordan said, "they're not even a year old." Luke said, "I'm tired, I've been working so much lately. Can't I just have a few minutes to myself?" Despite the medications she'd begun to take, despite the group therapy she'd begun to attend, she was making no progress. At work, the young Jennifer was still there, still trading waves and knowing glances across the warehouse floor with Luke, their not-affair offering to Luke a possible escape from the depression at home. It seemed Jennifer had made a point of coming out onto the floor more often, wearing her oversized safety vest over her flannel shirt and tight jeans. She laughed and she smiled and she seemed as ever to be the opposite of what Luke's wife had become. It was as she approached him one more time and observed his looking right at her; before she could say anything, he started. "Friday?" he asked. "Friday's good," she said. He nodded, then looked her up and down, momentarily distracted by her shapely figure and her bright blond hair. She smiled, but then in her smile she seemed as fearful with anticipation as him. At once, Luke had come to regret having finally agreed to go out with her, even as he looked forward to it. He'd never been so conflicted in his life.

The young man Bhulwinder didn't regularly speak with anyone from back home, although he regularly exchanged emails and messages on one of various social media platforms. They asked for updates on his work, as well as on his housing and employment, asking to know for when they inevitably moved to Canada as well. They also asked rather mundane and trivial questions, about things like the weather, the food, the traffic. He provided rather mundane details, answering all their questions in a dispassionate manner, but concealing from them his growing doubt in the surety of the path he was on. It wasn't anything immediately obvious, yet he felt the nagging suspicion that his mother and his father on the other end of every call were themselves doubting the path he'd chosen, that they were beginning to suspect they'd never be offered the chance to get into Canada. The election, they asked about that as well, but Bhulwinder assured them he paid the election no mind. But Bhulwinder didn't tell them about what he'd done, about the possibility of losing his job even before any of them had come. There was a part of him that didn't want them to come, and it was the same part that'd created in him the desire to return home. He'd come to Canada, enticed by a recruiter in India who'd promised easy access to good jobs. This recruiter had promised him wages equivalent to 700 rupees per hour, which had sounded impressive to him when few in India earned that much in a week. This was a wage he'd come to earn, although it was one that was inadequate to live off. This was the same recruiter who'd promised his family would easily and quickly follow his work permit, which hadn't happened. His future was secure, so long as he was given work to do. And then he wasn't. Bhulwinder was fired. It was rather unceremonious; they took him into one of the offices on a Friday and simply told him they were letting him go. "You can't do this," he said, "it's illegal." The supervisor who sat across from him, the very same supervisor who'd backed down when confronted in front of the others, said, "we've got cause." The supervisor then proceeded to lay out the case, weeks of supposedly deteriorating performance and open insubordination documented on forms and internal memos Bhulwinder had never seen. "This is all wrong," Bhulwinder said. "Well," said the supervisor, "if you have any new friends who can help you, see what they have to say." The man could hardly contain his self-gratifying grin. All Bhulwinder could think as he drove home was that he should've seen it coming.

After Luke and Jordan had at each other for what wouldn't turn out to be the last time, neither she nor he had much of a clue what to expect next. In any other relationship, Luke would've half-expected to come home to find a couple of boxes with his name on the sides stacked in the hall outside, and whatever couldn't fit in the boxes to be thrown in a dumpster whenever convenient. But he knew Jordan better than that. Even Jordan knew herself better than that. No, he came home to their little apartment a night or two later to find her as she'd been, their apartment filled with total silence and an uncomfortable tension seeming to pervade every moment. Sometimes he thought to say something, anything at all to her, but after the things he'd said, after hearing the things she'd said the better part of him knew there was nothing left to be said, so he held his tongue. But like the city their lived in, their marriage was never what they thought it was; in fact, it's come to seem to him that their marriage was everything other than what they'd thought it was, just like the city they lived in. Not at all like he remember it'd been when he was a child, the city of Vancouver wasn't like anything, at all. It was, it'd become a place deeply confused and confusing, just as it'd been all along. But there was more to it than that, as there'd always been and would always be more to it than that. "Did you go to your depression class?" asked Luke. "It's not a class," said Jordan, "it's a group therapy." "Fine," said Luke, before asking, "did you go to your depression group therapy?" "No." "Why not?" "I didn't feel like it." "Don't they kick you out if you miss too many sessions?" "I've only missed two." Luke took a breath and let out a sigh, barely audible, only slightly against the din. "Will you be here when the manager comes in to inspect the place?" Luke asked. "So what if I am?" asked Jordan, "where will you be?" "At work," said Luke, "I'm always at work." Except that wasn't true. Finally, a few days before their not-date, Luke was in the general vicinity of Jennifer's office when he caught her eye. He approached her desk and he said, "listen, about this Friday..." And she said, "something's come up?" there was a hint of resignation hiding in her voice, suggesting she was accustomed to being blown off. She let out a barely-audible sigh as well. "No," Luke said, suddenly feeling empathy for her, "just, why don't I meet you there?" She perked up and said, "sure, whatever you want." Luke smiled, and Jennifer smiled back, a moment of warmth that gave Luke a temporary enthusiasm. Before he left for the day, he passed by the office one last time, spotting Jennifer still poring over her work. Their eyes caught for a moment, and they exchanged knowing glances, knowing glances that reminded him of the very glances he'd once traded across a crowded hospital room with his cousin, now wife, Jordan. But this traded glance made him suddenly aware of himself, suddenly anticipating the moment. He felt as though he was becoming divided against himself. And he was.

In the end, though, Carol would keep on caring for her invalid mother, with no outward difference in her behaviour or mannerisms. Inwardly, and she was rather ashamed of this fact, she began to secretly wish her mother would die. In her mid-twenties, she was acutely aware of the burden placed on her by her own future. She was too young to feel so old, too young to be running out of time, yet she was. It was only a matter of time before something was to happen that could change her life irrevocably, in the meanwhile her remaining time slipping away with every shift worked, with every pot of coffee served to every long-haul trucker, with every shift spent wondering when next she'd be free, if ever. In the end, though, Carol's mother would be released from the hospital, to go home with Carol. The doctor and the social worker spoke with Carol and the three agreed that her mother needed to be in an assisted living facility, but with no spaces available and a lengthy waiting list in the area the only option was simply to send her home. A social worker would drop by once a week to check on things, and every day when Carol was at work another would deliver food. Carol started working during the day rather than at night, something she immediately disliked. When she came home one day to find her mother struggling to move, seeming to struggle to breathe, all Carol could think to do was call nine-one-one. "She's stopped breathing," Carol said to the operator, "I don't know what to do." She was watching as her mother seemed to roll over and convulse. "Help is on the way," said the operator, "just keep on the line." It'd later emerge this was a negative reaction to one of the medications her mother had been prescribed while in the hospital. "You have to hurry," said Carol to the operator, suddenly afraid as she was that this might very well be the end. "Help is on the way," said the operator. When the paramedics arrived, they resuscitated her successfully, and took her away. The last thing Carol said to her mother before leaving was, "I'm sorry it came to this," something she said knowing full well her mother wasn't going to come home this time.

This time, though, there were to be no police coming to their apartment, as both Luke and Jordan kept their voices down. As they spent the last moments in their sham of a marriage avoiding each other, problems they could only try to address kept on worsening. In truth, Luke couldn't understand anything, not one aspect of what Jordan was going through, but nor could he understand why she wouldn't simply pick up and go. "I've been doing a lot of thinking," said Jordan, "and I'm beginning to wonder if all this wasn't a mistake." At that moment, Luke felt a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach, the kind of overpowering dread that he'd been fearing for some time. "What do you mean by 'all this?'" he asked. But even this was an outright lie, an absurdity, given that he was as sure of himself and the life he'd chosen, they'd chosen together as he'd ever been. "I'm not sure," said Jordan, "it's like I can't see any way out." Luke asked, "out of what?" She wouldn't, or couldn't say. Although it'd been some months since she'd begun to take medications and attend group therapy sessions, it was still too early to tell whether she'd get any therapeutic value from either treatment options. In the meanwhile, though, Luke would be forced to keep on working through the days, working eight, ten, even twelve hours a day, five or six days a week, coming to use work rather than home to recharge his emotional and psychological batteries. The way in which he could treat his body as a machine, to direct his body to perform a series of motions well-rehearsed left his mind free to rest and relax. Eight, ten, twelve hours could pass in this fashion, his muscles smoothly expanding and contracting, expanding and contracting, without requiring any effort, any thought. If not for the need to be with his daughters, he might've tried to live at work. He wished he could've lived at work.

In the movies this might've been the moment when he'd have turned back and followed his heart to find her, then make some impassioned plea to give them, them another chance, but he didn't live in the movies and he never has, much as he'd sometimes like to. And therein lay the problem; for a couple of people raised on a steady diet of divorce, daytime TV, and disdain, it seemed Jordan and Luke were entirely confronted with the truth that'd been there all along, that everyone else had been able to see whenever they showed themselves openly, for anyone. "Are you fucking serious?" she asked. "Yes," he said, unable to think of anything else. These repeated angry arguments and tearful reconciliations had proven to be particularly taxing on Luke as well as Jordan, to the extent that he found the brief time in which they played out to be far more draining than the ten, twelve hour shifts at work. "You can't expect me to do that," she said. "I think it's going to be time for that very soon," he said. "We can't keep doing this," he said. "I think you're right about that," she said, seemingly lucid and altogether sensible, if only for a moment. It could take months for medications to have an effect, which meant all that'd been proven so far was that her earliest medications weren't the medications that were to be effective in helping her overcome her steadily worsening depression. Luke might've thought that depression, whether post-partum or otherwise, amounted to simply being sad all the time, but that wasn't the case, not with Jordan.

Earlier, much earlier, when Luke and Jordan had gone to the reunion even before they'd married and had children there had been not altogether what either of them had expected. After the early part of the day had been spent making the rounds, seeing to one person or the other, they'd both settled in. After having made their way across the house, the large, single-story house at the centre of that acreage, neither Jordan nor Luke felt the least bit deterred from their relationship, more confused than anything else. "You know," said Luke, "we're not too far away from that old shed." Jordan said, "if it's still there." Luke said, "wanna check?" But Jordan said, "you must be joking." Her voice was momentarily absent the playfulness she'd normally had. They kept on moving through the house, pausing to introduce themselves to a group of old men who were in the middle of agreeing with each other that the designated hitter corrupted the purity of an elegant game.

After finding a spare moment when they were alone, he took her hand in his and gave a quick but firm squeeze, then quietly said to her, "I love you." She said, "I know," though she seemed to think about it for a few moments more. She said, "I love you—" But she was interrupted by the approach of another, a distant cousin neither of them could remember and who approached with a smattering of others in tow. There were no other places for them to go for Luke and Jordan to be alone, nowhere except that thicket of trees that were still there from around fifteen years prior, but then neither Luke nor Jordan had come here to pretend they were fifteen years younger than they were. "Listen," said David, "I hope you don't let them get to you." Luke said, "it's fine, it's not as bad as I'd expected anyways." David said, "the truth is that most people don't really care." Luke said, "I think that's true." David said, "and Vicki's only doing this because she's all Catholic and shit. She's resentful of the fact that all her children have left the church." Luke said, "so what you're saying is that if I want to earn her good graces I should try and get Jordan back into the church?" David said, "it couldn't hurt."

But that wasn't going to happen, Luke knew, as he wasn't Catholic and would never consider becoming Catholic. "I'll keep that in mind," he said. "I hope so," said David, although from his tone of voice and the slight look in his eyes it seemed as though he was fully aware of Luke's true intentions. A few minutes later, Jordan came out, joining Luke and David around the barbeque. She brought two beers, one for David, one for Luke. Soon it was time to eat, although with so many people in so small a house there'd been eating almost continuously since the first guests had arrived. Even as they were surrounded by people, both Luke and Jordan kept on exchanging nervous glances, the very same nervous glances they'd once exchanged across a crowded hospital room, as if they hadn't been through the last year of their life together at all.

Chapter Fifteen

Also at the Royal Columbian Hospital, one of the largest and oldest in the province of British Columbia in the small city of New Westminster, a suburb of Vancouver, there existed a rather extensive maternity ward, one which delivers more babies every year than most other hospitals' maternity wards in the province of British Columbia. A couple had come here to deliver their baby, as many couples do, although for different reasons. Their names, Bridget and Dallas Matthews. Both in their late forties, they'd been trying to conceive a child for a few years, after having met and married in their early forties. For couples like them it wasn't so easy as it might've been when they were twenty years younger. After many months, even years of trying, they'd finally succeeded. But even this was only beginning of their efforts, with both Bridget and Dallas fearing many possible complications during pregnancy. Both Bridget and Dallas had agreed not to dwell on the negative possibilities but to overcome them when, or if they came up. Still, both Bridget and Dallas found it easier to agree on things like names as the delivery date neared. At Bridget's age, they were advised to deliver in the hospital due to the comparably high risk of complications when women have a baby into their forties. It was for this reason that a doctor was on hand to perform the delivery, rather than a midwife as is sometimes offered. Finally, with Bridget having gone into labour shortly after arrival, it seemed to both of them that their day was finally due. But there was more to it than that. There was always more to it than that. In this day and age, older couples were becoming more common, a natural consequence of the upending of the family. "Are you sure this is such a good idea?" asked Dallas, during one of those many not-arguments they'd had on the subject over many months, even years. "If not now, then when?" asked Bridget. It'd been, then, only a few days after Dallas had first expressed his doubts, doubts that'd been festering for some time, only to be reassured over the course of the next several months, the time it took them to conceive a child.

It wasn't uncommon to see older couples in the maternity ward, as it wasn't uncommon to see couples who couldn't speak a word of English between them. It wasn't known what kind of world these couples were bringing their children into, so concerned as they all were with advancing some highly specific goal that they were left hardly able to see anything resembling the larger picture. The halls were like the halls at any other hospital across the country, slick and highly reflective patches of linoleum covered by irregular tracks rutted in by so many carts wheeled along by porters and janitors. The whole hospital was lit by the flickering of so many harsh fluorescent lights. Although there were many older couples delivering here at the Royal Columbian Hospital, there were many younger couples as well, only the younger couples tended not to speak English, nor read English. This was something that the hospital had accommodated, to the extent that it had, by posting certain signs in more languages than just English and French, the country's two official languages, and keeping handouts in additional languages as well. On their way in through the maternity ward, Dallas had noticed some of the rooms being filled with Indian and Chinese couples, speaking one of their languages excitedly. This wasn't unusual, and didn't register as such, to Dallas, who'd been living in the area nearly all his life and who'd grown used to this, but still it was something that struck him as rather unseemly. "If you don't want to do it anymore then you have to tell me right now," Bridget had said, shortly after Dallas had first expressed his doubts. "I might need more time to think about it," Dallas had said. But she'd said, "there might not be any more time." The implicit threat had been allowed to stand.

By the time this argument had been resolved, precious more time had been lost in both their lives. The room they checked into on the maternity ward was like any other hospital room, with a single bed surrounded by medical equipment, and a wall behind consisting of a bank of switches, outlets, and dials. Delivery was to take around ten hours, and during this time Dallas would have to step outside several times. Although it wasn't necessary to have a doctor present to perform all deliveries, Dallas and Bridget were to have a doctor performing their delivery, in order to avoid the higher risk of complications. The relatively high risk of complications in a delivery from so old a mother meant there were doctors and nurses coming and going, with a continuous activity around them. "It's not so easy a thing to go back on what you've agreed on," Dallas had said, earlier, before they'd conceived. "You owe it to me to tell me if you don't want to have a child anymore," Bridget had said. They hadn't agreed on names before coming into the hospital; in fact, names were a topic they'd hardly broached over the past few months. They'd thrown across numerous names, and they'd agreed on a general sensibility, that the names of their daughter or son would be ordinary, nothing unusual. "I don't have any time to waste on a relationship that won't give me children," said Bridget, "and neither do you. Even you said you wanted a child. If you no longer want that, I need to know." "I do," said Dallas, "I'm just having doubts. Isn't it normal to have doubts before doing something important?" "I don't care if it's normal or not," said Bridget, "if you're still committed to doing it, then just tell me that." "I am," said Dallas, at that moment feeling very much like he was growing into himself, "I guess I'm just nervous." Although she could tell that he wasn't being fully honest, that his doubts were not quelled by their momentary almost-confrontation, she chose not to press the matter, narrow minded as she was. And so it was that they'd kept on trying, several months more passing before they'd successfully conceived, each month intensifying Dallas' doubts, yet also compelling him to suppress them further.

But now, in the maternity ward at the Royal Columbian Hospital in the small city of New Westminster, both Bridget and Dallas had tabled their concerns for each other, with the moment of their child's impending birth seeming to control every thought, every impulse. This was to be the only child they'd have, together or either of them, the focus of so many years of pent-up frustrations and barely-concealed insecurities finally given form, in one way or another. Neither of them could see the future, but they'd both arrived at peace with one thing or another. It took a lot of pushing and a lot of crying, the whole mess unusually bloody, or so either of them would've guessed had they not been involved in it, had she not given birth to the child herself. By the time it was through, there was only quiet, with Bridget too exhausted to speak or move much. The baby was quiet as well, never screaming or crying, not during their whole time in the hospital. It'd turn out that their concerns were largely unfounded, but not unjustified, as their future and the future of their new child was uncertain. Bridget, if asked later, wouldn't have been able to remember much of anything, not anything specific at least, the whole experience having become something of a blur. The details she became able to recall were as follows.

There was a final push, then the beginnings of a cry, although Bridget couldn't remember whether the cry came from the baby or her, or perhaps even one of the others in the delivery room. There was a shout, "it's a boy!" The doctor put the squirming, slimy, misshapen lump of a baby on her belly. Still hooked up to blood pressure monitors and other medical equipment, Bridget was unable to simply take her son in her arms. A momentary panic ensued, as Bridget was unable to move and was forced to simply stare at the new person that'd just come out of her. Then a nurse appeared, seemingly having come out of nowhere; Bridget can't recall the nurse having been there throughout the delivery, although she was so dazed that she hadn't noticed. The nurse took her son, to do this and that, during which time Bridget continued delivery of the placenta. Her contractions continued while she delivered the remains of the afterbirth. When this was finished, Bridget looked at the placenta which the doctor had placed in a tray on a cart, and she thought it strange how the placenta resembled a full-sized organ, like a liver. A few minutes later, perhaps no more than fifteen, her son was returned to her, wrapped in a blanket, permitted her to hug him for the first time. He was so small, yet alert, seeming to take in every detail of his surroundings. Dallas shared the hug, both new parents overcome with joy. (Eventually, Bridget and Dallas would name their son Ben).

While they were sharing their first moment as a family, the doctor kept on working, repairing minor damage done to Bridget's body by the whole process. There were miscellaneous tears, particularly in the muscles between her vagina and anus, which is rather common during vagina births. Bridget felt nothing of the doctor's work, having had an epidural, but at some point she looked down to see the doctor sewing. It was a rather odd but not at all disconcerting sight. Soon, after the doctor had finished this and other minor work to Bridget's body, the rest of the family were allowed in. Another nurse was there to help Bridget in preparing to breastfeed her newborn son, showing her how to hold him up to her breast; this was only practice, as Bridget, like all new mothers, wouldn't begin until milk began to 'come in,' which would take two or three days, perhaps more. Still, her son seemed to instinctively latch on, even though the only product of her nursing was an early milk substance called colostrum, rich in antibodies but lacking in much nutrients. The whole family watched her every move, until it became time for them to leave. The doctor said she needed rest, which prompted everyone save her husband to go home. Although Bridget had been happy to have much of her family on hand, in truth she was exhausted and very much relieved to have the room emptied of most of them. Even the doctor left, allowing them a moment of peace. Bridget handed Dallas their son, and then made for the bathroom for the first time since checking into the hospital. A nurse huddled immediately outside the bathroom, advising her there would be a lot of blood, that it was normal. Bridget decided not to look.

It wasn't the end, of course. It was then time for sleep. Dallas held their son for a little while longer, then laid him to rest in a bassinet which the nurse said was to be kept immediately next to Bridget's bed, then sat in the chair next to it. Bridget slept for a few hours; it'd been the early afternoon when they'd checked into the hospital, which meant she was up and alert in the evening. While Dallas kept on dozing, Bridget hurriedly took to calling nearly everyone on her phone's contacts list, a sudden and unexpected adrenaline high keeping her from sleeping much more that night. She wouldn't have been able to remember the first thing she'd said to Dallas after having given birth, but she could remember the first thing she'd said after waking up on that tremendous adrenaline high. Although he'd been sleeping fitfully during this time, he'd remained alert when awake through the whole process. "Maybe this'll work out after all," he'd said, while holding their son and looking into his deep brown eyes. She'd only said, "maybe it will," too beside herself with excitement to say anything more. Exhausted, all she could do thereafter was sleep.

Chapter Sixteen

Although Luke was only one man, and an ordinary man at that, he'd learned a few things over the past several years. Across the city a small apartment block stood as the last remaining obstacle to a developer's published plans for the area, with the remaining residents fearing eviction at any moment. Meanwhile, the developing antagonism between Luke and Jordan over nothing at all had reached a new climax. "...And I never even see you around here anymore," said Jordan, "you're always—" "Working," said Luke, "I'm always working, because we've got rent to pay. I wish you wouldn't give me grief for being away all the time when the only reason I'm away is to keep on feeding our daughters." But this was a pointless and meandering argument, one which they'd been having for some weeks, only since Jordan's deepening depression had compelled her to lash out again. But she kept on taking her medications and seeing her psychiatrist, as well as going to her group therapy once a week. She kept on bitterly complaining about it all, but still kept on taking her medications and seeing her psychiatrist. "Do you think we got married too soon?" asked Jordan. "Absolutely not," said Luke. "Are you sure?" asked Jordan. "More sure than I've ever been of anything in my life," said Luke. "I'm glad to hear it," said Jordan, before looking away and out the window, seemingly lost in thought. There was no easy way for Luke to help, which made him feel particularly helpless. "But I can't stand the way you look at me," said Jordan. "What way?" asked Luke. "That way," said Jordan, "you're doing it right now!" "I'm just looking at you," said Luke, "it's the same way I've always looked at you. I don't know any other way!" This was all part of the endlessly tiring circle of arguments they'd been having for some time now, arguments which Luke might've been tempted to attribute to Jordan's persistent depression but which he couldn't say out loud for fear of provoking another round. He liked to work, he worked too much during this time, his work simple and relaxing, a tremendous physical exertion but which seemed effortless in comparison to the war at home.

Although Luke was trying to be considerate, he was hopeful, noticing as he did the change in her demeanour. It'd take potentially several months for her to find a combination of medications that could have an effect, by which time Luke might've thought her post-partum depression would've resolved itself. But his thinking was flawed. He couldn't consider that there might've been no end to what'd had a clear and obvious beginning, that her depression which'd been caused by the birth of twin daughters might not be resolved by the growing of twin daughters out of infancy and into childhood. He'd come home again, a few days later, to find Jordan already asleep, then a few days after that to find her wide awake, sitting on the couch, seeming to have taken no notice of his arrival. Luke had stepped in through the front door with delicate care, only to rouse her from her restless sleep. "Have you gotten anything done today?" Luke asked. "Not really," said Jordan, "I've fed the girls of course." Luke approached the crib and found both Sylvia and Sandra quiet but eagerly looking up at him. He smelled their dirty diapers, but he chose not to mention it to Jordan. Instead, he began to change them, continuing to talk all the while. "You haven't gone out?" he asked. "I know," said Jordan, "I should've." "So why didn't you?" asked Luke. When she didn't reply immediately he felt emboldened. While changing diapers, he said, "the doctor said you have to take steps to work through this. If you don't put in the effort then you can't expect to get any better." He immediately regretted saying this, and expected her to lash out at him in response. But she said nothing, rather letting the matter rest, Luke for a moment holding his tongue.

Their daughters' first birthday was less than a month away, forcing Luke and Jordan to confront the immediate possibility of her returning to work. There was little work for her to return to, with the restaurant where she'd worked having failed and her old job no longer there for her. The cessation of her maternity benefits would leave his income their only sustenance, not enough for a family of four. In the midst of the city's housing market having turned, there was little work to be found, with most of it minimum wage reserved for new immigrants or seniors supplementing their meagre pensions. Still, anything was better than nothing at all, which prompted Luke to broach the subject cautiously. He said, "there's a lot of 'now hiring' signs all across town. You could find work as a receptionist." But Jordan had already looked for work, and had found that no one was hiring anyways. "You've got to try something," said Luke, "you can't sit here all day, not forever. It's good that you're here for the girls but you should look forward." Jordan had stood and made across the living room for the girls, coming to stand next to Luke as he finished in changing their diapers and setting them back in their large crib. "I wish you'd be more sympathetic to what I'm going through," said Jordan. "I'm trying to be," said Luke. He expected another heated argument to erupt at any moment, having come to feel as though he was on the verge of an argument at any moment. "There's got to be something more than this," said Jordan, "I just know there is." Luke asked, "what does that mean?" Jordan said, "this isn't working. I know I'm a bad mom and a bad wife—" "You're not," said Luke, wanting to be as supportive as possible, "you're not either one." "It's nice of you to say that," said Jordan, "but I'm just not capable of the things I should be. I'm just not being a good mother or a good wife. I can't explain it, there's just something inside me that I can't deal with." Although Luke continued to try and reassure Jordan, in truth he knew there was little he could say or do, in the short term at least. There was more shouting, more thumping against walls by the neighbours, more time wasted on pointless conflict when both Luke and—even in her depressed state—Jordan knew the real fighting hadn't yet begun. But as Luke drove to the bar where he was to meet Jennifer, he couldn't escape the mounting anticipation that all was to be lost. He'd never before felt this way, so strongly attracted to a woman and yet afraid of her all the same. He kept the music turned down, so that the only sounds were the traffic rumbling and sloshing through the rain around him, as well as the pattering of rain against the roof of his truck. He recalled the last thing Jennifer had said to him at work, as he was turning in his RF scanner to the office at the end of his shift. She'd said, "I hope to see you there." He'd only said, "you will," before heading out to his truck. He stopped at home one last time, to shower and quickly change. When Jordan had asked what he was up to, he'd said, "going to the bar with a friend," which he justified at the time as technically true. Even as he'd been on his way out, the forlorn sort of way that Jordan looked at him seemed to create the impression that she knew he was up to something but couldn't muster the energy to ask. He knew it was a mistake, but he went anyways, at once regretting his actions.

At the bar with Jennifer, Luke had grown uncomfortable with the whole situation. But then Luke left the bar. He didn't find an excuse; he simply said to her, "this is wrong," then paid the bill before turning and making out the door. He wouldn't look back as he went out to his truck, and then drove right home, unsure what to expect. He felt guilty not only about pursuing an emotional affair but as well about misleading the young woman with whom he'd pursued an emotional affair, for having been dishonest with everyone involved, himself included. Even by the time he made it home he still hadn't made up his mind what he'd tell Jordan, or even if he'd tell her at all. Even when he turned the key and opened the door to their apartment he still hadn't figured it out, leaving open the possibility that he might have to conceal his actions from his wife indefinitely, as she couldn't handle it in her depressed state; this, he knew as he approached the girls' crib, would eat away at him for some time. "How was your night out?" asked Jordan, seeming to make the effort. "Fine," said Luke, "it was fine." Then, one of the girls spoke. "Daddy." He turned and looked at the girls, Sylvia pointedly standing and looking up at him, Sandra still sitting but looking up all the same. He couldn't tell which of them had said it. Although Luke would've believed it better to patch up his marriage for the sake of his children, still he felt a nagging doubt in this possibility. He faced a new set of difficulties, a new series of tasks that loomed over him, that seemed to obstruct the way to the future. But there was more to it than that. There was always more to it than that. The exact moment in which Luke fell in love with Jordan, not the same as the moment in which Jordan fell in love with Luke, can never be known, not by him or by her and certainly not by anyone else. When he went on their home computer, he found in the browser's search history terms like, 'whats the point of living after kids' and 'why dont i love my kids.' It was this that finally motivated him to act. He planned it in advance, but quickly and carried out his plan rapidly. After taking the daughters to one of Jordan's sisters, telling Jordan the purpose of which was to give him and her a free weekend to relax, then drove her to the emergency room at the Vancouver General Hospital. It was only when they'd turned the corner and into the hospital's front lot that she'd realised where they were headed. She didn't resist it much. It was fortunate that there were a handful of open beds in inpatient psychiatry, which meant only a short time passed between her admission to the hospital and her arriving on the psychiatric ward. (Many patients must wait to receive a room, during which time they'd be kept on one of the medical wards, under twenty-four hour watch by security). He left a short time after she'd been taken to the ward, given that it was outside visiting hours. He left promising to return when visiting hours opened in the morning, at eight o'clock. He promised to bring the girls. He'd bring them, he wouldn't have been able not to bring them to see their mother, knowing as he did from extensive personal experience when he was young the importance of a child having both mother and father during these earliest, most formative years.

Earlier, more than two years earlier and long before Luke and Jordan had their daughters, the family reunion in Cultus Lake had not yet ended when some choice words had been given to Luke. At the reunion, they'd made their way through the living room and the kitchen and dining rooms, only to step out onto the deck behind the house. It was there that most of the critical moments had been had, even as they were surrounded by people still both of them feeling very much as though they were alone. There were two large barbeques outside, both running full blast, with a steady stream of food going on and coming off like an assembly line, with a rotating cast made of the same few men manning the barbeques at all times. After David had told Luke not to let the naysayers bother him, it'd suddenly begun to bother him, in the same way telling someone not to scratch an itch makes him want to do nothing but scratch it. Luke approached a group of men standing around the barbeques, and took a beer. "It's fine," said the man, "no one really cares. You live your own life." It all seemed so strange to Luke, to so recently have experienced a profound rejection at the hands of many—but not all of—their own family, yet now to be told that their relationship was no big deal. Lauren was there. Of course Lauren was there. She came out to see Luke and Jordan in the yard, approaching Luke's side with a glass of wine in her hand. "Whatever you do," said Lauren, speaking to Luke directly, "just make sure you don't hurt anyone. And for God's sake, if you have children make sure you get a proper ultrasound first!" "I'll keep that in mind," said Luke. "For what it's worth," said Lauren, "I hope you know what you're doing. I never did." It was an awkward and uncertain moment, one in which both Luke and Jordan believed themselves capable of something they might never have been but had committed themselves to anyways. "Could rain at any moment," said David, having come out to the relative sanctuary of the barbeques, "might have to stop grilling and move these inside." "I say keep on at it," said Luke, "if it rains, it rains, and you get wet."

Soon, Jordan and Luke found themselves not alone but as close as they could expect when surrounded by people. They were stopped at a Tim Hortons just off the highway back into town, there for coffee. "Let's get married," he said. "Are you proposing?" she asked. "I am," he said, before reaching into his pocket and pulling out a felt box, opening it to reveal a wedding ring. He'd bought it a few weeks earlier, and had been carrying it around, waiting for the right moment. She paused for a moment, then said, "let's do it now." "Right now?" he asked. "Right now," she said, "as soon as we get back to the city, let's drive to city hall and do it immediately." "That's not very romantic." "I think it's the most romantic thing possible." Luke thought about it for a moment, then said, "let's do it." They found they couldn't get married at city hall, but reached out to one of the many private marriage commissioners willing to do a quickie ceremony, at a nondescript office somewhere within city limits. They bought a certificate at a local drugstore, then went to the office and were married, the whole process taking less time than test-driving a new car or signing a contract for a free cell phone. Although their marriage was to be a difficult one, marked by battles with mental illness and almost continuous economic insecurity driven by the rapidly changing world around them, they'd at least have each other.

The End

