Read Online Transits by Jaime Forsythe - Free Book Online Page A

dividing parking spaces, past the signs and arrows. At this hour, all the stoplights blink yellow. He runs through a crosswalk and approaches a corner where two stores stand side by side: second-hand books and second-hand clothes. Déjà Vu, reads the sign on the clothing store. Lila owns this store. She used to leave handmade fliers by the mailboxes in their building. Andy is startled when he thinks he sees Lilastanding in the display window, but as he passes it is only a featureless mannequin, sporting a blonde wig and polka-dotted dress.
    Lila in grade two, in a jumper and pigtails. The picture snaps into Andy's consciousness suddenly and neatly. She sang to herself,
the bear went over the mountaainnn… to see what he could see.
Seven-year-old Andy swung his velcroed feet, annoyed, concentrating on colouring a sky. He wanted to finish before the bell, but his wrist was getting sore.
    Andy is on his mother's lawn and he can't breathe, so he stops abruptly, gulping in the mossy air. It's like he has just flipped open one of his mother's fat photo albums and there he is, naked in the tub, or eating cake with his fists, some scene he has never tried to remember before. What about running past Lila's store had allowed his mind to scan backwards?
    The next morning, Andy looks at himself, impressionistic in the wavy reflection of the toaster. The heels of his mother's slippers swat the hexagons on the kitchen tile.
    â€œI almost forgot!” She is waving a manila envelope. “This came for you.” She hands him a letter opener with a mallard duck on the end.
    Andy slices open the envelope. A typed letter and some forms.
    â€œAnything interesting?” his mother asks. The ends of her sentences curl hopefully.
    He skims. It's from his landlord. He reads: “Dear Mr… fire caused on first of July two thousand and two by an internal error…blah blah, you should be eligible for insurance… etc.”
    â€œWell, that's marvelous news.” The skin around his mother's eyes crinkles, more than it once did, when she smiles. “I wonder what he means by internal error? The oil furnace, I'll bet. The girl down the way was saying how her sister had a problem with hers.”
    Andy's heartbeat quickens as he begins to read the forms. They are going to make him face his shot memory. FIRE PROOF OF LOSS, is the title.
A loss occurred on the ___ day of ___, 20___, at ___ A/PM, caused by ____________.
Next, there is a table. He is meant to fill in each item he lost, its cash value, and add up a total loss or damage at the end. He tries to think in the way the insurance people must want him to. He didn't own any expensive technology. The hospital hadcomputers he could use if he wanted. His stereo was ten years old. He had a sizable CD collection. How could he prove he'd lost what he said he did? What if he claimed to have owned a hot tub, a pony, and three diamond rings? How would they know otherwise?
    To enter Lila's store, he has to step through a curtain of clicking beads. Circular racks groan reluctantly as customers muscle them around. A border of faded record sleeves frames the walls. A teenage girl, whose tattoos spill out from her sleeveless blouse, releases a hat from a hook near the ceiling while an elderly lady waits, clutching her purse.
    The girl lowers the pole and turns. “Can I help you?” she asks Andy. The question strikes him as a deep one. He shakes his head to clear it.
    â€œIs Lila here?”
    The girl gestures towards a doorway blocked by hanging fabric. A handwritten, safety-pinned sign reads:
Staff only
. The old woman has lifted the hat from the pole and fondles it greedily.
    He lifts a corner of the fabric. Lila holds a hose attached to what looks like a vacuum cleaner, but instead of sucking it breathes clouds of steam. The room is filled with several large piles of clothing: a garbage dump of polyester and plaid, ruffles and pleats.
    â€œAndy?” Lila says.