John Tavares
Courtney, with Regan in the passenger seat, sped down Bloor Street West in her father’s convertible Mustang. They celebrated the fact that Courtney had just received her Class G driver’s license, passing her practical and written motor vehicle tests, so she was now a licensed driver. The teenage friends, students at Forest Hill Collegiate, decided to drive the length of Bloor Street West and Danforth Avenue from one end of the city boundaries to the other, on a lark, late that September night, to celebrate Courtney acquiring her driver’s license on her first attempt.
The goth girl, whom Tyrell met on the Ossington 63 when he drove that TTC bus, recognized him from across Bloor Street and waved to him. He momentarily lost his grim visage and waved back. He walked back to Spadina station with his takeout coffee, for his attacks of drowsiness on the midnight shift, and a bran muffin, for his constipation, which he had ordered from the takeout counter of the fast-food restaurant down Bloor Street.
Tyrell smiled back at the young woman he also remembered as the Portuguese girl and waved hello. The Portuguese girl rode the bus regularly when he drove the Ossington route. Then he was attacked by a passenger. So, he decided to take a leave of absence for mental health reasons. When Tyrell returned to work at the TTC, the public transit agency, he decided to take a position as an information agent and fare collector at the toll booth in St. George station, near his apartment building, where most customers and commuters seemed civil and nice. Then he was transferred to Spadina station, which was still close to home but the pace was hectic.
Isabella stood on the boulevard near the parkette on Bloor Street around midnight, negotiating on her smartphone. The urgent cellphone calls had run all evening between her and Professor Cabral, with Damian at her side. “You deliberately took advantage of me, Professor Cabral,” Isabella said. “You know that I had a father who died from liver cirrhosis caused by alcoholism, and you knew that I was a teetotaler, and that I didn’t imbibe. You knew I was eager to obtain your insights on the economics of the stock market, and investing, yet you continued to ply me with that red wine.”
“It wasn’t red wine exactly; it was port.”
“Precisely, you’re practically confessing—you’re admitting you manipulated me and you conned me, and maybe even drugged me.”
“I ordered the port because you said you preferred something sweet.”
“That’s precisely what I mean. You plied me with port, which is sweet, and strong, and potent, because you knew that it would make me oozy and drunk. Then you ordered someMadeira, right—wasn’t it Madeira?—which was even worse.”
“But you liked the Madeira even more. I didn’t order you port to make you drunk. I ordered it because you said you’d like to try this fine smooth wine. When I gave you a sip of mine, you said you loved the taste. You liked the Madeira even better. You made yourself drunk, if indeed you were drunk.”
“But I was drunk. The server even noticed that I was intoxicated. She knew precisely what was going on; she knew you were a sexual predator. That is why she wanted me to leave the restaurant, leave you, go right away by myself home, why she wanted me to order a taxi to drive me home.”
“You were play acting. You were acting drunk and said you were staying at your mother’s house on Ossington. That would have been an expensive cab ride.”
“The point is—I was visibly intoxicated—because you insisted on plying me with a potent alcoholic beverage until my judgement was impaired. Why didn’t you simply let me order Diet Coke like I originally intended.”
“I ordered you your Diet Coke, but I guess that drink never arrived. We were in a fine restaurant, and I had ordered an expensive meal, and even though I assured you and reassured you I was picking up the tab, you insisted on ordering fish and chips.” Professor Cabral muttered to himself, beneath his breath, “Like the white trash you are.”
“The fish was cod, Bacalhau, which I can hardly pronounce I’ve become so anglicized. Cod fish is traditional Portuguese food,” Isabella said firmly, the large exhalation of breath muffling the acoustics on her smartphone. “Anyway, the server even tried to warn me. She said she thought I looked Portuguese.”
“There again I wanted to get you back in touch with your ethnic origins,” Professor Cabral said.
“By serving me potent wine when I warned you that I was sensitive, super sensitive, to the effects of alcohol—maybe even allergic. And the server told me she was Portuguese herself, that she knew Portuguese men, and that I should be on the watch and careful.”
“I tried to be careful with you,” Professor Cabral said.
“But you took me back to your condo, and you had sexual intercourse with me, when I told you I was a virgin.”
“But I had your consent. I asked you several times, and you became annoyed with me, when I kept asking.”
“But I was in no position to provide consent. I was intoxicated. I was clearly intoxicated. Wasn’t I intoxicated?”
“I didn’t notice. You weren’t intoxicated. And, if I did, I thought you were play acting, dramatizing, for attention.”
“You’re in denial. I tripped and slipped in the restaurant; the server and maître de noticed and wanted to call a cab because they saw how you were all over me, groping me, staring at my breasts during dinner. Then, the vendor at the hot dog cart outside the restaurant said I should take a cab home—that the age gap made him nervous and he didn’t like what he was seeing.”
“Isabella, why are you calling me? What do you want with me, aside from tormenting and harassing me?”
“I’m recording this conversation, Professor Cabral, and I’m seriously considering reporting this incident to the Police Service, and having you appropriately criminally charged. The university should be no place for sexual predators.”
Professor Cabral hung up the telephone. Damian couldn’t resist laughing, involuntarily, after the prof hung up the telephone. Having listened to the cellphone call on speakerphone, Damian said, “Looks like you’ve got him between a rock and a hard place.”
“But he hung up the telephone.”
“Because he needs a timeout. He needs time to think this scenario through and to reconsider his options.”
“You think? He promised he would write me a letter of recommendation to graduate school. He said he would make certain I got admitted. He said he would push the admission committee. No other prof even offered me a letter of recommendation.”
Damian had already walked across Bloor Street to pick up a pizza slice. He returned to the parkette where they rested on the sculpture of the dominoes. He offered her a piece of the slice of pepperoni pizza he bought from the Pizza Pizza takeout restaurant near the street corner.
“You said you needed the money to finish your last year of university.”
“But it’s true. It’s all true. My father is dead from alcoholic cirrhosis,” Isabella said.
“I thought the Europeans, especially from the Mediterranean, could really hold their liquor,” Damian replied.
Isabella continued speaking as if in a daze, as she continued to eat her piece of the pizza slice. “My mother would never pay for my tuition and rent; my stepfather is practically a deadbeat. He thinks of me as nothing more than a Portuguese peasant girl when I’m actually part Oji-Cree and Scottish, on my mother’s side. Even my mother calls me peasant girl.”
“I wouldn’t hold it against her,” Damian said. “She doesn’t like your goth girl style—that’s all.”
“And I really was a virgin when we had intercourse on the floor of his condo, surrounded by these boxes of vinyl records and the racks of compact disks and cassette tapes. There wasn’t even a bed in his condo.”
Damian sipped his coffee and ate the crust of his pizza.
“That because his condo is an investment.”
“Then why doesn’t he let someone like me stay there?”
“I don’t know, Isabella.”
Damian added another packet of sugar to his extra-large takeout cup of strong, dark coffee, into which he had already squirted hazelnut flavored syrup, from the convenience store at the street corner.
“How can you be a virgin when we had oral sex together.”
“But I was drunk then, after I went clubbing, with friends at the Madison. That was the first time I had oral sex with anyone.”
“For real?” Damian asked.
“Why do you think I thought I needed a tranquilizer or a drink, or at the very least a bottle of mouthwash.”
“Vodka was all I had. I’m not a pillhead or a pill pusher. I thought you enjoyed the oral sex.”
“Yes, I enjoyed it, I suppose, but I only did it because you were so insistent and kept asking. Semen has such a horrible and disgusting taste.” Isabella buried her face into her crossed arms on her lap.
“I told you I should have a drink of pineapple juice. They say pineapple juice helps, but I’ve never tested the theory.”
“I was worried and even convinced I had contracted some horrible sexually transmitted disease; my mouth felt raw and my throat hurt afterwards. I went straight to the university medical clinic. They sent me for sexually transmitted infection testing, and they took swabs, urine samples, and blood tests,” Isabella said.
“I don’t know why you didn’t believe me. I told you I was clean, disease free, and recently tested, and I’m not lying.”
“The nurse at the clinic even asked me if I wanted a rape counsellor and the police.”
“She did? She must be woke or politically correct or a prude or something.”
“Damian, can you just shut up about it. I was crying and the nurse was worried.”
“Why were you crying?”
“Because I was a virgin and I was worried you had given me oral gonorrhea or chlamydia or syphilis,” Isabella said. She glanced at her cellphone. “Do you think he’ll call back?”
“He will. If not immediately, eventually. You just need to apply pressure.”
Shortly after he uttered the words her cellphone rang on a ringtone that sounded like the haunting melody of a Leonard Cohen song. Professor Cabral blurted into his smartphone and his voice echoed from the speaker of her smartphone a few miles away.
“Isabella, I’m truly sorry about what happened last Friday. This is not the outcome I expected, and I’m truly sorry you feel this way. But what is it exactly you want and how can I make this right? I’m an economist not a psychologist.”
Psychology was indeed Damian’s major in university. He had worked in the traffic signals department of the city for a summer job while he studied to become an optometrist. Then Damian had a huge row, a violent conflict, with his father, during which extremely expensive diagnostic optometry equipment was broken. His optometrist father wanted him to join his optometry practice, but Damian dropped out of university. When he made amends with his mother, who seemed delighted he had had a fight with his father, she agreed to pick up the cost of his tuition and residence. Damian returned to university, but he switched majors from health sciences to psychology. Damian returned to what he originally wanted to study—psychology.
Isabella thought of him as a counsellor, a life coach. She just couldn’t understand how someone could work in a department of traffic signals as a summer job. Damian had carefully coached her as to what she should say. When he heard her say twenty thousand dollars instead of the fifty thousand dollars they had originally agreed upon as a reasonable settlement, he grimaced and cursed to himself.
Damian was ready to blurt his disappointment and shout the number she should utter. She told Professor Cabral that he should meet him at the tiny municipal park, the parkette, at the edge of the university campus, with the domino statues, with twenty thousand dollars the following evening at 9 pm. Did he have any problems with these instructions and her request for compensation? No, he replied, he was perfectly fine with the amount, as long as she agreed not to raise the matter again, as long as she didn’t personally contact him again, as long as she didn’t expect him to get her into graduate school.
“Do you really think you’ll be able to quit me and walk away?” Isabella asked.
“Isabella, after what you’ve just told me on the telephone, you’re just another student to me. In fact, you’re worse than that but I believe in conflict resolution, I believe in the sixties ideals of peace and love, and all that implies. Just please go your own way, though, like the Fleetwood Mac song says.”
When he mentioned the song, Isabella remembered his massive music collection in the empty condo. Distracted, Isabella absently replied, “Yes, I could go my own way.”
“And I’ll agree to your request even though it sounds like extortion.”
“Well, then if it sounds like that to you maybe I should go to the police and allow them to decide.”
Damian nodded at her from across the sidewalk and muttered, “Well played.”
But Professor Cabral overheard Damian’s voice. Professor Cabral’s manner suddenly became severe and academic. He asked why it sounded like she was talking on speakerphone. She said she was tired after a long day of studying, and her head needed a rest.
“Then why don’t you just get some rest,” Professor Cabral said.
“I’ll be able to rest after you pay me for the tuition I owe,” Isabella said.
“OK. Fine. Understood. I’ll meet you at the park on Friday night at nine.”
“And no funny stuff.”
“Isabella, I have a position and reputation to protect. I should be asking why the drama, why the urgency. Can’t we work it out?”
“Don’t you just want to get it over with?” Isabella asked.
Damian nodded in agreement, where they sat on the edge of the park bench, and mouthed, “Make him pay tonight.” He whispered to her, “Tell him: no delays, no funny stuff.”
Professor Cabral agreed he just wanted to move on. He could see no reason for delay, but raising the money would take him a few hours, since he didn’t have that kind of cash at home. He would meet her then shortly with the money, in just under two hours at midnight.
Damian whispered in her other ear encouraging her to make the midnight deadline firm. Damian whispered he was confident Cabral had the cash in some safe at home, since he was married to some real estate heiress before they separated and she moved to London, England to hook up with some avante garde painter and multimedia artist.
Isabella shook her head, pushed him away, and punched his thigh. She said she didn’t want to be unreasonable. She joined Damian as he strolled across the street intersection to the convenience store. She returned to the parkette before the midnight deadline with Damian.
They sipped takeout coffee from the 7-11 convenience store across the street on the domino statues until Professor Cabral arrived in his sleek silver luxurious-looking car, which Damian said and Isabella confirmed was a Jaguar.
Professor Cabral surveyed the scene carefully from across the street in his Jaguar and finally emerged from his car with the backpack of money. “You didn’t say you were bringing a friend,” Professor Cabral said.
“For safety,” Isabella said.
“Get real,” Professor Cabral countered.
“I believe I’m the aggrieved party who should have safety concerns. Anyway, I recognize you,” Professor Cabral said, motioning to Damian, “as another student.”
Damian stretched his arms, covered his face, and stared away.
“You tried to get into an advanced game theory class in our graduate department without anywhere near the perquisite academic requirements.” Isabella glared at Damian, who turned crimson. Professor Cabral rubbed the stubble on his chin thoughtfully. “Game Theory. Hmm. Now I think I know what’s going on. Anyway, I suppose I can play that game for just this night alone.” Professor Cabral handed Isabella the backpack and the money and reassured her the cash was all there. “I visited two different automated teller machines for three different bank accounts, including a joint account I held with my former partner, to get that cash.”
Professor Cabral shook his head. Then he told her he never wanted to see her again as soon as the semester ended, and she started to cry. “Can you please ask her not to cry,” Professor Cabral said, as Damian wrapped an arm around her shoulder.
Damian warned him not to harm her. Professor Cabral said he wasn’t in the mood for playing games with a princess. They were extorting and blackmailing him, and he threatened to call the police. The lanky youth and middle-aged man somehow got into a pushing and shoving match until Isabella placed herself with her upraised hands between the two men and managed to separate them.
Isabella reassured her prof the matter was settled and Professor Cabral decided it was most prudent to move on. Isabella huddled in her zippered hoodie and Damian tried to comfort and console her. Professor Cabral drove off after he warned them further.
Professor Cabral drove off and barely avoided colliding in his Jaguar with the Mustang as Courtney, with her college freshman friend, turned into the intersection on the wrong traffic signal. Then she tried to put her car into reverse. Professor Cabral slammed on his brakes and honked his horn and several other motorists yelled at Courtney.
Isabella counted the money as they sat on the domino sculptures in the darkness. Isabella felt relieved, a bit euphoric, and even incredulous he had actually paid her twenty thousand. Isabella had agreed to pay Damian a certain significant percent of the lump sum, originally eight thousand dollars because Damian had expected her—and they agreed—she should ask for fifty thousand dollars. But she thought twenty thousand dollars was a more realistic and practical amount. Then they quibbled back and forth about his cut, his percentage, until Damian realized it wasn’t an issue he wanted to negatively impact their relationship. Damian decided to settle for the two thousand dollars since he wanted to remain friends with Isabella and possibly even friends with benefits. Anyway, he enjoyed the sensation, the thrills, the scheme induced. Damian placed the money, the fifty-and-one-hundred-dollar bills, in his wallet, and walked away, heading home to his apartment above a storefront in Kensington Village.
Damian didn’t notice the traffic signs because he had been distracted by the police cruiser racing down Bloor Street with its sirens wailing and red and blue lights flashing. He walked into the intersection and pedestrian crosswalk as Courtney and Regan continued their high-speed crosstown journey, celebrating the fact Courtney had just passed her driver’s test and received her driver’s license.
Courtney saw how light the traffic appeared before, during, and after she struck Damian. There were no witnesses, she agreed with her friend Regan. So, she fled the accident scene and sped away in her father’s Mustang. Damian lay unconscious from the crushing blow to his body and head.
In the aftermath, Isabella felt dirty and guilty over the whole tawdry affair, but she was also broke. She still owed student services at the university tuition money. She had student loans to pay, residence rental payments collecting interest, from the time she decided to give the university dormitories a try, which increased her debt and then she had credit card bills.
Isabella saw Damian was breathing but he was unconscious. She saw no blood or bruises. She assumed he was stunned but would survive his motor vehicle collision injuries. She took the wallet from his pocket. Then she slipped out the bills she had given him, the neat, unwrinkled currency that reminded her of the casino when they had visited Niagara Falls over the Labor Day weekend. She replaced the wallet in his pocket, and tightened the hood of her hoodie of sweatshirt, assuming her hoodie and loose gym clothes and the sunglasses would protect her identity against closed circuit cameras.
Then she walked to the nearby subway station. Outside Spadina subway station and the bus terminal, Isabella made an anonymous call from the payphone, informing the dispatcher about a pedestrian accident, urging the first responders to hurry because the accident victim required urgent care. Then Isabella went through the turnstiles and down the escalators and along the train platform and rode the last westbound subway to Ossington.
Tyrell had been walking down the street with a takeout McDonalds bag in his hand, a Big Mac and French Fries, along with a large Coke. He couldn’t believe his eyes. He recognized the pretty undergrad since she rode the Ossington bus nearly every school day for the first three years she was a student at the University of Toronto. She was always friendly, sociable, and paid her fare with a monthly student transit pass. They chatted about the weather, city politics, public transit, and his dream of attending university.
Isabella was an antidote to the inevitable nasty work encounter Tyrell had nearly everyday during which invariably a TTC customer called him the N-word. He felt saddened and disturbed by what he witnessed.
Tyrell walked across Bloor Street at St. George to his apartment and ate his takeout meal in the darkness of the kitchen before he fell asleep in his bed. He simply couldn’t bring himself to report the scene he had witnessed to authorities, even though it appeared to be a serious accident. Anyway, even as he stepped through the foyer, he could see the fire truck and the paramedics attending to the accident scene after Isabella had scurried away.
He felt so stressed and such a loss of appetite and heaviness and lethargy that he quietly fell asleep on his couch in the darkness of his living room. He dreamed that virtually the same accident scene had occurred but instead Isabella had been the victim of the accident victim. In his dream, the young man had taken the money from her handbag. But he had seen the reality of what he had seen—there was no denying his senses and vision—he realized when he woke to the grey light of autumn dawn coming through his apartment windows.
He splashed the lukewarm water over his craggy features, shaved, and toweled his face. He looked at the leftover cold fries, left over from his partially eaten meal, which he usually devoured since that was never enough food to satiate him. But he felt the harsh realities of life and remembered the last time he hadn’t finished his fries he had learned his city cousin, who also drove a city transit bus, had died of a heart attack. He looked down through his high-rise apartment window at the intersection. He scrutinized the accident scene, a bit disappointed, a little bit heart broken, at what he had seen the previous evening, a gritty urban scene that had been washed away by the overnight rain.