II.

The Greyhound bus stop on the border of Canada and upstate New York had seen better days. In the frozen depths of hardest winter anyone on either side of the border had known for decades, it was cold and forbidding the hour before midnight. Tony Dupré's parka was zipped, and his mother had bundled him up in a long woollen scarf. The bus shelter was covered and connected to the rest of the station by a murky tunnel, giving it the semblance of warmth and insulation. But that didn't stop Tony's mother from declaring it a "death trap!" She had her cell phone in her ear and kept dialling up Tony's aunt in New York City. He thought she must be getting a busy signal, but he'd never seen his mother this frantic before. The bus left for the city at 11:45 p.m., and Tony—hyper on Mountain Dew and fun-sized Snickers bars—was almost having fun. It was the most adventure he'd had since his mom had moved them to Canada.

"Tony, stay close." His mom's voice was brittle. She was scared of the dark, he thought, even though there was plenty of light right under the bus shelter, enough to read his comic book by anyway.

"Mom, I'm fine," he said for the tenth time.

His mom had red nail polish, but she'd bitten most of her nails to the quick. The ends of her fingers looked like they were bleeding, or covered in red wax that was dripping. She bent down to him, eyes round like a cartoon's. "Tony, honey, I don't have a signal in here." She took his face in her hand. "I'm going to try outside, okay? I want you to come with me."

She reached for his hand, and he pulled away as only a petulant nine-year-old could. "Mom! I'm not going out there!"

"Oh, yes, you are! I'm not going to—"

He shook away from her. "I'm going to sit here, and read my comic book, and if you make me go out there, I'll report you for child abuse!"

There was the soft sound of a chuckle from outside the dingy tunnel. Tony's mom didn't seem to notice; her eyes were filling with tears and she was biting the ends of her nails again. Tony was about to apologize when she swept off toward the door to the shelter. She held up a palm. "Five minutes. You behave yourself for five minutes, I'll be right back, and if anything happens to you . . ."

"Mooooom . . ."

Tony opened up his comic book to page 12 where he had left off and started reading, stifling a yawn. A shadow passed in front of the dim light bulb by which he was reading, and he looked up. A large shape had covered the doorway that led out to the bus, where his mother was calling. Tony squinted. It looked like a big man in a dark coat. "Excuse me, sir, do you want to come in? It's cold out, and there's plenty of room in here."

The man turned, and all Tony could see at first was a painted-on face. There was a big gash where a smile should have been. Still, Tony figured, clowns had bad days, too. Maybe this guy had gotten separated from his circus troupe and was stuck, trying to catch up with them. That would make anyone's makeup run.

"Awww," said the clown, in an odd, nasal, grating voice. "How sweet." He moved toward Tony. "You're not here on your own, are you, kid?" As he moved closer, Tony could see he was wearing a purple coat and a green tie, and it looked crisp and new. He had been expecting polka dots.

"No," said Tony. "My mom's out there on her cell phone. Didn't you see her?"

The clown took a few steps closer and waggled a purple-gloved finger in front of Tony. "I don't know about your mooooom, but didn't she teach you not to talk to strangers?" He made a "move over" gesture at Tony and scooted down to sit next to him. "What're you reading there, buckaroo?"

Tony held out the comic book, though he moved over slightly. The clown had a weird smell, not cotton candy and bubblegum, something Tony didn't like. "It's a Batman comic."

"Oh, reeeeeeally?" The clown snatched the comic away from Tony and held it up close to his face, leering through the garishly-inked pages. It was like sulphur, Tony thought, rotten eggs? Gun powder?

"He's my favorite," said Tony, looking over his shoulder to see if his mom was coming in, or if the bus had arrived.

"Mine too," said the clown, lips curling upward in something between a grin and a sneer. "I'm his biggest fan." Giving the comic a final once-over, the clown threw it back to Tony and got up again. He started tapping his wristwatch with a finger, irritably, before ducking out the front of the shelter and back again. He rubbed his gloved hands together, moving from one foot to the other, like a marionette being jerked about on strings. "The bus is, uh, late."

Tony yawned again and looked at his own watch. "Yeah. I hope I don't have to wait too much longer. My mom—"

"You know, you're not really that irritating," said the clown. "You could be one of these modern punks with their iPods up their asses all the time. You could be talking back, face all a-smirk." Tony stared, eyebrows stitched together. "No, you're not bad. For a stunted whelp."

Tony shrugged. "A what?" The clown was cradling something now in his hands, something that flashed silver in the dull light bulb. Was he going to do a magic trick?

"Shhhhhh!" snapped the clown, holding up a hand to his lips. "I think I hear our bus coming."

"Really?" asked Tony, getting to his feet and stuffing the comic into his backpack. He ran to the front of the bus shelter and stood beside the clown, shielding his eyes as the searing white light of the Greyhound signalled its arrival.

"Oh, and little boy," said the clown, his voice stretched thin, "you can tell your mother not to worry—we aren't going to be late anymore."

"Gee, how do you know that?"

Tony's eyes had adjusted to the light, and he saw now that the Greyhound's driver was wearing a cheap, plastic clown mask. The man in purple at his side gave a wheezing, sinister, hacking chuckle. " 'Cause I'm driving! Remember to wear your seatbelt!"

Marie- Cécile sat at the window, her Bible open on her lap, candles lit. She tried to pray. She moved her lips like Ruth, but nothing came out. Nothing at all. She was blind, even though her eyes were open. She was cold, even though she was wearing her coat indoors. It would take weeks to get the death certificate. Settling the estate. They would try to contact her long-lost brother. She was the executor of the will. The shop was hers. The house was hers . . .

A heart attack. She'd been through his medicine cabinet, she'd been with him to the doctor's before, as a matter of necessity. No one talked about the drinking; she'd always thought it would be his liver that got to him first. He couldn't speak, so she never left his side. His interpreter. It was as if she'd been separated from her shadow. But that wasn't quite true, either. You needed sunlight to see your shadow; you never saw your shadow in the dark. But she was always with him in the dark, in the daylight, by moon, by cloud, rain, wind, fog. Year after year after year . . .

She hurled the Bible against the wall and screamed. She couldn't keep speaking to herself in her own head. But there wasn't anyone else. She had no friends, no living relatives. She had never before seen how empty her life was. What had the Joker said? "Boring, asthmatic life"? She stared at the wad of American bills on the dresser. She wasn't childish enough to think of it as tainted money, but she couldn't stop looking, couldn't stop thinking. Where was he now? "He would have laughed," she said softly, lighting herself a cigarette. "He would have said, 'I told you so.'"

So what? Who cared what he would have said, what he would have done? He was insane and dangerous and loathsome. He didn't give a toss about the sanctity of human life. He didn't understand loss. Why were her thoughts dwelling with some crazy who insisted on wearing a purple suit, instead of on the practicalities, the aching, pitiful realities, of preparing for her father's funeral, of living life without him?

She looked at her cigarette. "I could burn the house down," she thought. A day before, she had been so eager to burn a set of clothes that represented all she despised. What she despised and was fascinating, actually, and that's why she wanted to burn them. She stared at the cigarette in her hand, then puffed on it meditatively. "I'm going to get through this," she said with a shudder. The tears she had been hiding from everyone slowly jetted out of her eyes. She squeezed her arms in a hug around her torso, the bony forearms meeting the tight cage of her ribs, the heel of her hand digging into her belly. The scars there that no one knew about. The baby she'd never had.