Lake on the Mountain. Jeffrey Round

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      When she called next, a month had passed. Kendra was all seriousness — she was pretty sure she was pregnant. Dan panicked. There was a flutter in his voice. How sure? Very — a girl didn’t say these things lightly.

      Dan froze. He wondered if she were making a pitch for marriage, trying to snag him or at the very least a quick citizenship. He didn’t voice these thoughts. After all, he’d been considering marriage himself. She reluctantly agreed to meet for coffee the following day.

      It was a gloomy afternoon, sleet pelting the campus. Kendra stirred her mint tea, looking out the window from time to time. Yes, she’d had the results. Yes, she was definitely pregnant. Dan saw his future going up like the little wisps of steam rising from the greenish tea and vanishing between them.

      “I’m sorry,” he said.

      A look of concern passed over her face. “It’s not your fault,” she said. “I can’t believe I’ve screwed up like this. I’ve always been so careful.”

      She felt conflicted, regretting the situation she’d dragged him into and stricken with guilt over her neglect. Her bravado, the North American hubris she draped herself in, had fled.

      Dan wanted to know what she was going to do. She shrugged. There was no question of telling her parents. They would cut her off financially — and who knew what else. “At least they don’t do honour killings any more,” she said darkly.

      Dan grimaced. He didn’t know what honour killings were, but he could guess. Had she told Arman? She looked aghast. No! Arman would be furious — he might even tell her family. Didn’t Dan know her brother well enough by now? Anyway, she’d already decided to have an abortion.

      Dan’s stomach spasmed. It sounded worse than the spectre of marriage. He haltingly suggested an arrangement between them, wondering yet again if she were trying to snag a citizenship.

      She turned her mocking eyes on him, reminding him even more of Arman. “You’ve got to be kidding,” she said.

      “Why?”

      She saw his hesitation and reached out a hand to him. “I didn’t expect you’d be emotional about this,” she said.

      “Am I?”

      She nodded vigorously. “Oh yes, clearly you are. No offence, but I have ambitions to be more than a housewife, and I think you may realize one day that you’re gay.”

      Dan’s eyes flickered away.

      “Besides,” she continued, “no one in my family has ever married outside our culture. It would be a disaster.”

      The double slap came as a shock. “I’d keep it,” he blurted out. “I’ll raise the child.” He had no idea what that entailed, and years later he often wondered at his outburst, but somehow the thought of saving the baby was foremost in his thinking.

      “You’d do what?”

      “I’ll look after it. I’ll raise it.” The idea had taken control of him, driving his impulses.

      Somehow it was imperative to make her understand this baby meant more to him than anything in his life so far. He rambled on, spinning himself deeper and deeper into his daydreams, his improvised fables of fatherhood. He thought she’d refuse, but her whimsical side won out. To his surprise, she agreed to consider it.

      She began to scheme. She had an aunt, rumoured to be a lesbian and considered even more of a renegade, who lived in California with a bunch of crazy artists. The aunt could take her in for the final months of the pregnancy, which, she calculated, would coincide with the end of school and summer holidays. If all went well, she wouldn’t be showing before then.

      Her light-hearted smile returned. It was an adventure. Suddenly she was Holly Golightly making an impromptu appearance at the Go-Go-A-La-Mode, clearing everything up for him where he thought he’d come to rescue her. Afterwards, Dan was never sure if he’d made up his mind or if she’d made it up for him.

      “Let me think about it,” she told him.

      Years later he related the story to Donny, who sat quietly through the tale of youthful courtship and terror.

      “So you fucked her to be with her brother?”

      Dan looked sourly at him. “No — I fucked her because I was drunk.”

      “Ah! That’s different. I’ve always said we’re all just one beer away from being straight.” Donny winked. “I think it’s cool that the kid owes his life to a pint of Heineken. You should have named him after it.”

      The prospect of a child to look after made a huge change in Dan’s life, far greater than he could have imagined. He suddenly found himself willing to do anything as long as it would bring in money. Anything but hustling — that part of his life was over. There’d be no lonely middle-aged men this time to take him in and provide. Providing was what Dan would be doing.

      It was agreed that Kendra would return to school in the fall, after the baby’s birth. In the meantime, Dan would do whatever he could to bring in money. She would remain independent and they would live apart. Custody agreements could be drawn up later, but she already knew she didn’t want to raise a child.

      Dan had signed up for a third year at university, but even before his acceptance came through he realized he wouldn’t be able to afford the tuition. Somewhere along the line, practicality won out.

      He bought a newspaper and dug out the classifieds. With his limited experience and incomplete degree, there was little he was qualified for that would support a family. The smiling man who answered his call and greeted him an hour later made him feel he’d been waiting for someone like Dan forever. That probably wasn’t far off. The sort of people who tracked insurance scammers were little short of sociopathic misfits, Dan learned. While there was no shortage of those in the city, few were capable of holding down jobs, and the ones who were seemed even more dubious specimens of humanity than the supposed criminals they were tracking. If they were good at exposing scammers, it was because cheating was in their blood, low-life losers who thought, pissed, and shat scams till they became experts at them.

      Dan accepted the comedown in expectations — from stalking bones in the Sahara to stalking flesh-and-blood rats in the gutters of the city — with equanimity. At least he was making money. He reported to the townhouse on Queen East near Logan each morning at seven a.m. before hitting the road with his assignments. This meant tracking a wide range of people who were in some way disabled — from those who’d lost the use of limbs, through those claiming whiplash and soft tissue injuries, to people with repetitive strain syndrome. Some had found themselves dismissed from their jobs outright. Others were luckier, having had the relative good fortune to have their mishaps occur at the workplace, making it harder for their employers to get rid of them. All became targets for insurance companies looking for an excuse to opt out of paying benefits.

      While waiting for lawsuits to be settled, some disappeared and were last heard from at Tijuana addresses or luxury chateaus up north. Others were luckier in having spouses support them for the duration. Still others, having lost their income, got swallowed up by welfare rolls or were glad-handed from relative to relative while waiting out the endless doctor reports and psychiatric assessments — the company doctors always finding reasons why the claimant should be working and the lawyers’ doctors finding equally valid reasons СКАЧАТЬ