Touching Strangers Read online

  “I called a few times from work,” he said in the doorway. “No answer. I thought you were dead.”

  “Never heard it ring.” She turned a page. “Do you thinkGod is vengeful?”

  “Nah. He’s just a jerk.” He watched the little islands of foamfloat around her breasts as she continued to read. “I called fourtimes, Sam. Did you have a nap or something?”

  “No.” She put the book on the floor. “There was anambulance here. Paramedics. They took Pervy Doug away ona stretcher.”

  “What?”

  “Yeah.”

  “What happened?”

  “Don’t know. Maybe a hooker stabbed him.”

  Aaron swallowed. He sat on the toilet. “I saw him today. Helooked kind of rough.”

  “You didn’t touch him, did you? Shake his hand?”

  “Why would I shake Pervy Doug’s hand?”

  Samantha sat up and yanked the plug out of the drain.“Maybe you can go and ask Mr. Böröcz what happened.”

  “Are you kidding? I just got home. I need a shower.” Hestood and examined his face in the mirror above the sink. “I’mmaking an appointment with Dr. Zilber tomorrow.”

  “I don’t know how you can go there.” She tilted her headto one side, grabbed a bunch of her hair and wrung it like a dishtowel. “That waiting room is a horror show.”

  Aaron unbuttoned his shirt and inspected his torso for pockmarks, rashes, nodules, and other suspicious imperfections.“Yeah. Maybe I’ll ask him to make a house call.”

  “I don’t want him here, either.”

  “What? He’s a doctor, Sam. Doctors fix things.”

  “Nope. They find things.” She stepped gingerly out of thetub, her pasty thighs glistening with foamy lather.

  “Well, I need a dermatologist referral because I have cancerof the foreskin. Also, I’ve been feeling more paranoid than usual,so there must be some kind of growth bulging against my pituitary gland.”

  “You don’t have cancer or a tumour. I’m the one whoshould worry. My immune system is terrible. I’ll probably catchwhatever Doug has and die. Can you pass my towel?”

  He took the fluffy green mass of linen off the hook behindthe door and, as he handed it to her, he noticed there was something different about her pubic area. Little red dots ran along thecreases between her thighs and crotch, and in the space below herbelly button. Razor burn.

  “Did you trim your bush?” he asked.

  Samantha’s cheeks reddened. “What? Yes. So?”

  “The last time you did that . . . I don’t even remember the lasttime you did that.”

  “I do it every now and then. What’s the big deal?”

  “Nothing. No big deal.”

  He watched her dry her legs for a minute then went to thecloset and got a towel for himself. While in the shower, he continued to fret over Samantha’s behaviour until he began washinghis penis, at which point his mind became absorbed once againwith thoughts of cancer. The lake-shaped blemish was continually growing, warping, metastasizing—he was sure of it.

  And now here he lay, in bed but not asleep, thinking abouthis bloodline.

  Aaron’s older sister, Dawn, lived in Guelph with her husband Martin. Two years ago, Dawn had been diagnosed withbreast cancer. She was twenty-eight years young, had just secureda loan to kick-start the health food business she’d always dreamedof running, and was thinking about having a child, when a routine trip to the doctor turned into a prelude to a death sentence.

  She underwent chemotherapy, immunotherapy, radiation.The Dawn Aaron grew up with—the sturdy, stubborn, athletictomboy with an appetite like a professional wrestler—was transformed into a shrivelled hairless wisp, all bones and bulging eyes,a Martian under a heap of sick-smelling blankets.

  Aaron had seen her this way only once, five weeks after shebegan her chemo treatment. He spent the rest of that night vomiting into a bucket in his sister’s guest bedroom and woke up ona pillow covered in hair he’d shed through the night. As of now,he hadn’t visited or called his sister in over a year. The smudgeof guilt he felt in the back of his skull was overridden by selfishfear—which in turn made him feel more guilty, and even moreafraid, and so on. There was nothing he could do about the grimsecular trail of genetics, the dominos of death.

  His grandfather, Papa Cordic, had succumbed to prostate cancer at sixty-nine. His father had survived a bout of testicular cancer,only to die suddenly of a massive stroke at forty-seven. His motherwas alive but severely arthritic, confined to a wheelchair andlooked after by an endless cast of Filipino caregivers.

  Aaron lay wondering if Fate would deal him the cancer cardas well, the cruel irony of a spotted penis not lost on him. Heremembered the time his sister, then sixteen, had come homefrom swimming in a neighbour’s backyard pool. Aaron, thentwelve, had come out of his bedroom and headed for the bathroom to pee. As he passed Dawn’s room, he saw that she wasinside, topless, digging through her dresser drawer. Her nakedbreasts hung there like sideways cones. She didn’t see him. Hewatched her in silence, embarrassed and excited, then went tothe bathroom and masturbated for the first time. The image of Dawn’s nipples—his sister’s nipples—grazing the ridge of heropened sock drawer stuck in his head to this day like a photograph tacked to a wall.

  He’d lied to Samantha earlier. The truth was that he didthink God was vengeful. His sister had paid the price for his perverted childhood indiscretion, and one day he would too. He puthis hand on his groin and held it there. Wind rattled the windowpane. He wanted to cry.

  Beside him, Samantha turned onto her belly and let out ablubbery-lipped sigh. She wasn’t asleep either.Aaron stared atthe pink polka dot panties that covered the hump of her ass.He was struck by the odd conviction that she’d been readinghis mind.

  *

  Every time Samantha swallowed, her ears clicked. Inside herhead, the noise was as loud and sharp as a pistol being cocked.Could Aaron hear it? Is that why he was still awake? There wasobviously some fluid build-up in her sinuses or ear canals. Sheknew there were eight bottles of eardrops in the medicine cabinet, some of which were past the expiration date; others had hadtheir labels rubbed off years ago. If the clicking got any worseshe’d pick a bottle at random and take a chance. She should neverhave gone outside.

  On the other hand, there was Luca. If she hadn’t thrown outthe blueberries she’d never have bumped into him. She felt awarmness between her legs just thinking about it. She sighedloudly and turned onto her belly, as if hiding her crotch fromview might hide her thoughts from Aaron.

  She felt bad for not telling Luca that the apartment he’dmoved into was a terrarium of death and disease. She remembered the day Ms. Fenster’s decomposing corpse was carted outof there, her filmy arm hanging over the gurney like somethingscooped out of a fish tank. Poor Luca was living in unliveableconditions, and Samantha wanted to help him. She wanted tosave him. Maybe tomorrow she’d write him an anonymous letter telling him, politely, to get the fuck out. It would be for his owngood—and maybe hers too.

  She opened her right eye and snuck a look at the clock onAaron’s night table. 1:37. She was nowhere near sleep. Aaron’seyes were closed and his hand was on his crotch. Did he knowshe was awake, too? Was he thinking about masturbating? Notlikely. He was probably trying to mentally ward off penis cancer.If he ended up asking Dr. Zilber to make a house call, she’d bereally pissed off. It wasn’t that she had anything against Dr. Zilberpersonally; it was more that she had a grudge against doctors ingeneral—male doctors in particular.

  The incident with Dr. Geary was what had sparkedSamantha’s distrust of anyone in a lab coat. It was a basic case ofpost-traumatic stress disorder, though Sam considered herself ahypochondriac long before Dr. Geary added iatrophobia—thefear of doctors—to her collection of personal issues.

  When she was fifteen she’d been diagnosed with a bladderinfection. Two weeks later she felt f
ine—the antibiotics hadworked, the symptoms had disappeared—but Dr. Geary had toldher that a follow-up was necessary to ensure all traces of theinfection had been killed. She booked an appointment during herlunch hour, and went by herself to the clinic in the strip mallaround the corner from her high school. She knew somethingwas fishy when she saw the doctor himself, and not his receptionist, sitting behind the check-in counter.

  “Welcome, Samantha,” Dr. Geary said, beaming. “Ruth hasgone home sick. We have the place to ourselves.”

  Samantha thought back to her quiet, passive, and unquestioning teenage self, so skinny and pale. She was still very pale,and not so skinny, but her whiteness seemed to radiate innocenceback then, whereas now it was like cement plaster.

  Dr. Geary led her down the hall into an examination room—not the one she was used to but one that was much larger, full ofrobotic contraptions. He told her to pull down her pants. She did.He told her to take off her underpants, too. Nervous, she did.Finally, he told her to lie down on the table, and once she did, hehelped her ankles into stirrups so that her legs were spread apart. Her vagina felt cold. She was embarrassed of her pubic hair. Sheturned her head to the side and stared at a poster that showed thegrowth stages of a human foetus, wishing she was somewhere else.

  Dr. Geary stuck something inside her, some kind of tube.She expected him to remove it quickly, but he didn’t. One of hishands was on her thigh. He wasn’t wearing gloves. She wantedto push him away from her. She wanted to jump off the table andrun. She wanted to cry and scream and kick or die.

  But she didn’t do any of those things. She just laid there,breathing steadily, waiting for it to end.

  She sprinted all the way back to school, her knapsack crashing against her hip. She felt like there was a well inside her,something deep and vacuous, something that needed to be covered and locked and fortified with bricks and mortar. In the parking lot she tripped over a chock and scraped her knee. Her jeanswere torn. She went to the nurse’s office and that’s where shefirst saw Aaron, sitting on what the students called the sick couchin the waiting area, hunched over with his hands in his hair. Hewas fair and blond, like an angel. She sat beside him. He lookedat her and looked away quickly. His hands were small. She couldsee his pulse in his neck.

  “I fell,” she said, and realized she was crying.

  He looked at the tears in her jeans, the patches of blood. Heput his hand in his pocket, pulled out a Band-Aid, and held it outto her.

  She looked at it and laughed for some reason. She was laughing and crying at the same time. When she reached out and tookit from him, their fingers touched briefly. Her scalp prickled.The contact was thrilling, and also comforting. She felt as thoughshe were in a trance as she peeled off the paper film and stuck theBand-Aid on her knee. It covered only a small portion of herscrape.

  They both looked at it and laughed.

  The nurse stepped out of her office into the waiting area.“All right, Aaron, what is it this time?”

  Samantha watched him drag his feet into the nurse’s office.He looked out and made eye contact with her just as the nurse closed the door. She knew she wanted to be his friend. She trusted him and his tiny hands. Still did.

  She opened her eyes again and saw that Aaron had shifted tohis side. He was drooling onto his pillow, finally asleep.

  She told herself she wasn’t allowed to think about Luca andhis grubby sausage fingers anymore.

  STAGE 3: STRANGE VISITATIONS

  Nuggles was under the radiator, coughing up a hairball. Hesounded like a dying frog.

  “I guess that anti-hairball formula isn’t working, is it Nugglyboo?” Martha Haggerty said from the bathroom. She rolled onelast curler into her hair and blew a kiss at her reflection in the vanity mirror. It was 10:30 in the morning—time for a joint and thenbrunch. She went to the bedroom and searched through herunderwear drawer for her weed stash, but found nothing.

  Nuggles continued to hack and gag in his heated sanctuary.

  “Mommy’s gotta go buy some catnip, baby,” Martha said. “Don’t you go dying on me!”

  She grabbed her purse and left the apartment; thought aboutlocking the door but decided against it—she’d only be a fewminutes—then took the elevator up to the sixth floor. Appliedthe secret knock to the door of unit 608: rap (pause) rap-rap(pause) rap-rap-rap-rap-rap!

  Zack Pike answered the door, decked out in an oversizedYankees jersey with a silver chain as thick as a bike lock hangingaround his neck. “Miss H! What up, girl? Come in, come in. Mycastle is your castle, or whatever.”

  Martha smiled and entered, and was overwhelmed with thefunk of marijuana smoke. Her eyes watered as he led her into thefog. She’d been a weed smoker for close to thirty years now, butZack’s place was hard for even her to handle. She was pretty surethe air in his apartment contained more THC than oxygen. Itwas like sitting inside a massive bong chamber. You could probably get high by rolling up and smoking the fibres of his crustyrug. She focused on the episode of Spongebob Squarepants playing on the small TV on the floor while Zack pulled two baggiesof weed out of a shoebox under his coffee table.

  “All right. I’m runnin’ kinda low myself, but I got DurbanPoison or . . .” He squinted at the curled piece of masking tapestuck haphazardly on the bag. “Django Haze.”

  Martha sniffed. “Give me half a quarter ounce of the Django,please, honey.” She wiped her eye with her pinkie.

  Zack placed some buds of weed on his digital scale. “Yousick or something? Here.” He picked a balled-up handkerchiefoff the floor and tossed it at her. It was decorated all over withthe phrase FUCK THE POLICEin red. Reluctantly, she dabbedat her leaking eye.

  “I’m okay,” she said. “It’s probably just, the, uh . . . my a llergies.”

  Zack stuck a pre-rolled joint in his mouth, lit it, and continued to weigh out her order. “You better hope you don’t havewhat buddy in seven-oh-five had. Ambulance drivers came andtook him away on a stretcher, yo!”

  “Paramedics, yeah.” She coughed. “I heard. Hopefully it’snothing serious.”

  He blew out a massive cloud of smoke. “It’s gotta be seriousif they took him away. Dude couldn’t even walk outa here? That’ssome scary ass shit.” He filled her baggy until it was bulging, ziplocked it, and held it out to her. “There you go, Miss H.”

  “Thanks.” She paid him, and he stuffed the bills into thewaistband of his boxer shorts.

  She stood up to leave.

  “Let me ask you,” he said with a strained voice, his lungs full. “You ever talk to that chick in four-oh-four?”

  “Who?”

  “You know. The cute dark-haired girl. Lives with that faggy blond guy.”

  Martha anxiously fingered with the zip-lock on her baggy ofdope. “Oh, I think I know who you mean. I never see them.Well, I see him around sometimes. I think they like to keep tothemselves.”

  Zack stared at her for a moment, nodding, then shifted hisfocus to the TV, put his hands behind his head, and reclined onthe couch as though she weren’t even there.

  She heard Spongebob say, More soup for your armpits? as shelet herself out.

  The cabbagey smell of the hallway was like fresh seaside air toher lungs. She took the elevator to the ground floor, and insteadof going home, she decided to pop over to CanPrice for somesausages and eggs. Her brief stay in Zack’s smokehouse had givenher some serious munchies. She tucked the bag of weed in herpurse and left the building. She was gone maybe forty-five minutes. When she got back home, she instinctively stuck her key inthe lock on her door, then remembered she hadn’t locked it.

  Nuggles was always clawing at the door so he could pretendto greet her, then take off down the hall in hopes of escaping thenext time someone opened the front door. This time, however,he wasn’t there.

  “Nuggles! Mommy’s home.”

  Silence.

  She tossed her keys in the
ashtray on the counter, and put thegroceries, along with her baggie of Django, in the fridge.“Nuggles! Where are you my baby boy?”

  Still nothing.

  She went into the living room and saw his striped legs underthe radiator. “Oh, there you are! How’s my handsome kitty?”

  He still didn’t stir.

  She crept in for a closer look and sunk down onto her knees,her hand quivering at her mouth. Nuggles had dug his nails deepinto the rug, and his tongue was sticking far out of his mouth likean elongated piece of chewing gum. His eyes were slits. Shetouched his body. It was hard and stiff as a piñata.

  *

  Robert Böröcz had just sat down to clip his toenails when hewas interrupted by a furious banging on his door.

  A squawky female voice said, “Hello? Mr. Böröcz? Are youthere? Open up.”

  Mr. Böröcz grunted. He switched off the TV—it was ashame, really: Maury Povich was just about to read out the results of the paternity tests—and hobbled to the door with only threetoes clipped on his right foot. He swung it open, and MarthaHaggerty practically shoved a furry orange dead thing in his face.

  “Picsába!” he shouted, backing up.

  “Look what they did to my Nuggles! Somebody killed my Nuggles!”

  Mr. Böröcz held one arm out in front of him as if he wereholding an invisible shield, and with his other hand he coveredhis mouth. “Miss Haggerty, what you say to me?Who killyour macska?”

  Martha’s eyes blazed as she held her former pet by thearmpits and shook it, causing its tongue to waggle like a rubberband. “I left my apartment for a few minutes to get some, uh,groceries, and while I was gone somebody broke into my apartment and poisoned him, or threw him against the wall, or . . . orsomething! He’s dead.” She turned the cat around and looked athim herself, as if to confirm it, then added, “They killed him!”

  Mr. Böröcz stepped back into his apartment and lookedaround for something he could use to wipe the sweat off his forehead. There was a grey dishtowel slung over the back of an armchair. He grabbed it and dabbed at his face.