Neighbourhood Watch

cheek – the oil runs into the boss’s mouth. Steve kicks the door and takes off.
On Ontario, a guy in the crowd. In his pockets, blackened hands, balled in a fist. He’s all alone and he wants to cry.
Roxane is immersed in her book. A large public square. People look like they’re walking fast, the way they do here. They look down at the ground and keep moving. Only the pigeons are still in the midst of hurried steps. The pigeons are restful. They leave tracks on the ground like little stars. The people rushing by trample the stars.
Roxane lifts her head, looks outside.
The children are playing in the schoolyard, in their snowsuits, like cosmonauts. It’s like they’re floating. It snowed. The day is calm. The air is white and damp.
The lights flicker in the classroom. The teacher has just come in.
Roxane looks for the page she folded at the corner. Anastasia. Reassuring eyes looking back at her.
* * *
There’s a test. She didn’t know or forgot. She doesn’t understand the questions. AT ALL. Like they’re written in another language.
She puts her head down on her desk. Anastasia looks at her.
‘Roxane?’
She jumps.
The teacher is standing beside her.
‘Are you working?’
‘ … Yes.’
‘You haven’t started yet?’
‘ … ’
‘Do you understand?’
‘ … ’
‘You have to complete the sentences with the words “I,” “you,” or “we.”’
‘Yes.’
Understand nothing nothing nothing.
‘Okay?’
‘Yes.’
The teacher looks at the picture of Anastasia. ‘Russia again. She’s pretty, isn’t she?’
‘ … ’
‘She looks a bit like you, don’t you think?’
Roxane looks at Anastasia. Yes. She looks like her. It’s true. She looks like her. ‘ … Yes.’
Roxane is excited. Finally she looks like someone.
The teacher closes the red book.‘Concentrate, dear. Make an effort. You have to understand your own language before you learn others, don’t you think?’
‘ … ’
* * *
The TV pyramid shows winter scenes. Live. Kelly and Kathy, under their mountain of fabric, are huddled between their dogs, only their eyes sticking out. Two pairs of sea-blue eyes in the grey-white of Rue Ontario. Survivors that the winter meteors avoid at the last minute.
‘Death by snowplow is a heroic death.’
‘Any death is heroic.’
‘Then we’re all heroes?’
‘Yep.’
‘Me in particular.’
‘Me in particular!’
They kiss as they await death. Mouths are warm. A lover’s tongue is reassuring.
‘Hey!’
A guy’s voice, a metallic voice.
He’s standing, backlit, splitting the street in two. They don’t see his glassy eyes. They don’t see his fists balled in his pockets. But they figure it out because of the bitter cold that settles deep inside them.
Kelly speaks in what she hopes is a steady voice.‘Don’t worry, man. We’ll pay you in – ’
A kick to the face. Kelly’s nose cracks, broken, starts bleeding, while the dogs start barking.
‘Fucking psycho!’
Kathy covers Kelly with her body. A flimsy human shield. The guy spits on them. In the language of the street, that means they’re done talking. He wants money. He walks away, leaving the perfect promise of his imminent return.
With the end of her sleeve, Kathy tries to soak up the blood streaming from Kelly’s nose. They don’t say anything, because there is nothing to say.
Like a rock in the middle of a torrent, the two bodies entwined under a pile of fabric.
The day goes by, but the cold remains.
They should go somewhere far away, but this is their home. This piece of cardboard is their country. Everywhere is nowhere, except here.
Kelly and Kathy slowly go to sleep. The dogs stand guard.
* * *
In her bedroom, Roxane is reading under the covers. By flashlight, so they forget she’s there. Beside Anastasia’s picture, a block of text:
‘With its e-nor-mous land mass, Russia is home to a va-ri-e-ty of races, and the stan-dard for fe-mi-nine beau-ty va-ries wide-ly. Howev-er, there are cha-rac-ter-is-tic traits, such as pale skin, grey-blue eyes, blond or chest-nut hair, plump-ness from lack of ex-er-cise and the se-clu-sion de-mand-ed by win-ters that last seven or eight months. With their pale faces, their de-li-cate fea-tures are some-what fa-ded like the fea-tures of the face of the moon, and these blur-ry lines make for faces with a Nor-dic soft-ness and nor-thern grace.’
* * *
‘Jesus, it’s cold!’
Meg hops leg to leg, faster and faster. She stumbles, almost falls. The girls smile, Meg too. She’s lost a tooth; there’s a big gap right in the middle. She couldn’t care less. She laughs anyway; it warms her up.
From the corner of the sidewalk, Mélissa spots her at a distance. She’s there, laughing hysterically. Her mother, laughing with the other girls.
Night falls. Their day is starting. Fishnets. She must be freezing to death.
Mélissa slows her step. She wants to see her. She wants to be seen.
On the other side of the street, Mélissa stops across from the group of prostitutes.
One of the girls notices her, taps Meg’s shoulder.
‘One of yours, Meg.’
Meg stops laughing and turns toward Mélissa.
‘Fuck.’
Meg looks down at the ground.
Her mother’s ‘Fuck’ crosses the street and slaps Mélissa in the face. Two sketches of women, frozen, facing each other. Trying to find each other.
Slowly, like a mountain climber, as if she were scaling a slippery slope, Meg raises her eyes to her daughter.
Eyes forming a bridge from one to the other, from either side of the sidewalk, they look at each other. Fuck the fifty metres, fuck. Suspended above the world, for another moment, they look at each other. Mélissa is warm. It’s been a long time.
Meg gently places her hand on her neck.
From the other side, Mélissa watches the maternal gesture. Tries to decipher it. Cover your neck. She’s saying cover your neck. Definitely, that’s what she means, cover your neck, you’re going to freeze. Mélissa pulls her coat up over her bare skin.
A car goes by and cuts the bridge in two.
* * *
‘Sure is quiet next door! Bet they drank their pay last night, eh, Dad?’
The TV is on in the little apartment. The TV people are talking over each other, all jumbled. Steve is crashed on the sofa in