Caitlin had been gone for an hour, and I was still sitting in front of the fire, trying to decide if her proposal was an invitation to folly, or an opportunity for a richer, more adventurous life. When she’d suggested that I go to work for a friend of hers who dealt in large quantities of marijuana and hashish, my initial response had been that she was crazy; my second, that it might be fun; my third, that it was undoubtedly dangerous; and my fourth, and current, that I was definitely curious. How great was the risk? How great the reward? And who, exactly, was Caitlin’s friend? 

            Certainly, it was the only offer of employment I’d had since receiving Harry’s letter, over a month ago now, which had informed me that, due to bankruptcy, my ex-husband would no longer be making his quarterly payments on the money he still owed me for my share of the bookstore we’d once owned together—and that I had managed while Harry pursued his vocation of buying, and (occasionally) selling, the incunabula and other ancient volumes which were his first and only real passion. (The debt had been secured (if that’s the word) by the divorce order and a promissory note.)

            Of course, the payments would have ended eventually, but that had been years away, far enough in the future that I’d never thought about what I would do when the money ran out. Now I suddenly faced the possibility of having to get a job. The prospect appalled me. To put off thinking about it, I went back to the letter.

            Harry hadn’t shared every detail, but the gist of his story was that after his second wife, Helen, had had two children in two years, she’d left the bookstore entirely to Harry’s supervision. Never the best of businessmen, and having been spoiled for years by his two efficient (but dumb) wives, he was sadly out of practice. Between incompetence, indifference, and absent-mindedness, he had let the store slip first into debt, and then into receivership, as the economy slipped further into recession. He’d been forced to sell most of his collection to satisfy his bankers (an action that must have cost him a great deal of pain, although, to his credit, he said nothing about that part of it), but his friends and rivals in the antiquarian book trade were rallying around, planning to help him set up as a consultant, complete with a new computer and an impressive data base. Exactly what he would do, and who would pay him for doing it, remained vague, at least to me. What was clear was that I wouldn’t be getting any more money from him. 

            Considering his predicament, Harry’s letter had been a cheerful one, full of his plans to work out of the house that Helen had insisted he buy (in her name, I assumed) before their elder son was born. Despite understanding, and even sympathizing with, Harry’s yearning to found a dynasty, I was still a little bitter at having been sloughed off as speedily as he could arrange it, once he’d succeeded in impregnating someone else. The wound, though narrow, went deep, only partly assuaged by the extra share of the business his haste had garnered me; a gain which was now proving to be illusory. 

            Harry concluded his letter by repeating how sorry he was about my loss of income while being “completely confident you will cope with this problem as competently as you cope with everything else,” a sentence which amused me with its adroit combination of compliment and sly dig wrapped up in wishful thinking.

            Well, I’d thought dazedly, folding the pages and slipping them back into the envelope, what do I do now? Presumably, I could sue Harry for my share of the sale of the assets, but the thought of the wrangling that would have to be endured for the sake of an extremely problematic outcome, effectively deterred me. The only people who would prosper would be the lawyers.

            The awful truth reasserted itself. If I wasn’t going to court, I’d have to go to work, and the sooner the better. I wasn’t an extravagant spender, but I wasn’t much of a saver, either, and had only enough money in the bank to cover the next few months’ mortgage payments and living expenses. British Columbia was knee-deep in unemployed workers, and even openings for waitresses were scarce. (I’d never done it, but waitressing had always seemed one of the three ultimate fall-back professions, cab-driving being the second—which was not an option for me since I couldn’t drive, and didn’t want to learn.)

            Since I hadn’t had a job for years, I naturally had no unemployment insurance, and I’d have to go on welfare if my money ran out before I found something. My pride didn’t suffer at the thought of being on the dole because I didn’t figure I’d be there long, but having to explain my situation to some stony-faced bureaucrat whose primary function (since the government, true to its own peculiar logic, was cutting back on services to the poor just when they were needed most) would be to find an excuse to deny benefits, rather than a reason to grant them, was distasteful enough to make Caitlin’s suggestion a potentially attractive alternative.

            When she’d dropped in tonight I’d been job hunting for weeks and the word ‘depression’ had gained fresh meaning. As I read the Help Wanted ads in the Vancouver Sun day after day, I grew more resigned by the column inch to the fact that, with my MA in Fine Arts, I was either wildly overqualified or woefully under-skilled for everything listed. I’d already phoned every bookstore and art gallery in town, but the ones that weren’t going out of business were hanging on by laying off staff, not hiring them. And temporary help agencies wouldn’t take me because I knew nothing about computers.

            There were other difficulties. One chain store had refused to hire me as a stock-person because the personnel manager ‘knew’ I wouldn’t be content to remain in the position for as long as the company would want me to stay there, rejecting my pitch that I was willing to start at the bottom and work my way up. Without exactly saying so, she clearly conveyed the message that at my age (fifty-three), there was no ‘up’ to aspire to. (It was hard to tell when my age was a factor when I wasn’t offered a job, but as the number of non-offers grew, it was impossible not to feel, if only in self-defense, that it counted far too often.)

            My lack of success would have bothered me more if I’d really wanted any of the jobs I didn’t get, but every time I was passed over, I felt a sneaking sense of relief. Since moving to Vancouver I’d been trying to paint again, struggling, without much success, with how to translate from brain to hand to canvas, the beauties beheld in the mind’s eye. My technique had been shot to hell from years of neglect, but with practice I was getting it back, and had begun to wrestle with deeper, more elusive, problems. I hated the thought of wasting large chunks of my time doing someone else’s bidding. This was a drawback to Caitlin’s proposition, too, of course, but at least with that job I’d make a bunch of money fairly quickly (or for sure I wouldn’t do it), which I could then live on for a few years while getting eye and hand together.

            I’d confessed my lack of genuine interest in employment to Caitlin as we sat at my kitchen table, drinking wine and gazing out at the quick pink sunset, skeined like stained glass by the black lightning angles of the maple tree in my back yard. The lean silhouettes of winter were dissolving as the new leaves unfurled.

            “Nine-to-five is a bitch,” Caitlin had sympathized. She was rolling a joint and eyed me over it as she licked and sealed the paper. “I know of a job you might like.”

            She spoke so casually I wasn’t sure if she were serious. Stalling for time, for even a job sponsored by Caitlin triggered a spasm of temporal claustrophobia, I suggested that we move into the living room where a fire was laid ready in the grate.

            Slouched in my chair, the soft wavering light caressing my old and comfortable furniture, my rowdy plants, my dog-eared books, and my sleeping cat, the possibility that I might have to move because I could no longer afford the mortgage seemed, simultaneously, all too likely, and as remote as a dream. I loved my home; I couldn’t lose it. But I was unable to ignore the fact that hordes of hapless home-lovers have been, justly or otherwise, evicted down the centuries, and that my feelings for the place were irrelevant, except as a spur to earn some money.

            Resigned, I asked, passing the joint back, “What’s this job you mentioned?”

            “The guy who owns ‘Sweetmeats’,” referring to the chain of confectionery shops that Caitlin managed, “is looking for someone to open an art gallery and run it for him. Among other things.”

            I shifted somewhat more erect. “Say that again.”

            She said it again.

            “Sounds too good to be true. What ‘other things’?”

            “He wants to use it as cover for part of his cannabis-smuggling enterprise, and he needs someone to run errands of various kinds. There’s no end of useful things for someone who’s reliable to do.”

            Hadn’t I said it was too good to be true? Although I wasn’t surprised at the nature of the catch; Caitlin always had high-grade grass on hand (I obtained my own modest supplies through her) and I’d long since assumed that dealing at some level was at least partly the source of her by-now considerable income. Since she’d never mentioned the subject, I hadn’t either; the less I knew about it, the better.

            “How would it be used as a cover?” I felt a thrill of fear as I asked; play fear, like the rush of adrenaline on a Ferris-wheel.

            “I’d rather you got all that from him.”

            “Who is ‘he’, anyhow?” I’d known, of course, that Caitlin had an absentee boss, or patron; a person so invisible I’d never previously wondered about him. 

            “I told you, my boss. The guy who used to own the ice cream store at Rochdale.”

            “That den of iniquity! Can you trust him?”

            “Absolutely. And he’s very smart, very careful.” She shrugged, “What else can I say that won’t sound like a sales pitch? You’ll have to meet him, and judge for yourself.”

            Stalling again, I sat forward and monkeyed with the fire, using the poker to shift the logs into a more efficient heap as I attempted to weigh all the pros and cons. At a deeper level, I knew the exercise was futile. Whatever decided me to go ahead, or not, it wouldn’t be based on rational arguments alone.

            “Isn’t it risky?”

            “I don’t do any actual smuggling, and neither would you. In fact, you’d rarely be doing anything that was illegal in itself. The danger is a criminal conspiracy charge. That’s the risk you’d be paid for.”

            I knew I’d forgotten something vital. “What kind of money could I make?”

            “You’d have to talk to him about that. Enough to make it worth your while. His philosophy (he’s very interested in things like philosophy) is that the easiest way to make money himself is to make sure everyone around him is making money, too. So don’t be shy about asking for what you want, and stick to your guns until you get it.”

            “How do I decide how much I should want?”

            “How much is the risk worth to you? That’s what you have to think about. It’s worth a lot to me.”

            I wanted to ask her exactly how much, but that would have been tacky. “I guess I’ll have to think about that for awhile. If I think about it at all.”

            “It’s a good way to make a living,” Caitlin said judiciously, “but even so, no one in their right mind would do it, if it didn’t pay extraordinarily well.”

            “Well, of course,” I concurred, not revealing that what attracted me, almost as much as the money, was the pleasing image of myself as a swashbuckling adventurer.

            “Would you at least be interested enough to talk to him?” Caitlin prodded me.

            “Probably—but I’d like to sleep on it.” There must be all sorts of questions I should be asking her, but after food, wine and sansemilla, my mind was in neutral, absorbing data, but not computing it.

            “Okay,” Caitlin said. “I’ll come by tomorrow morning and you can tell me then if you want to talk to him or not. If for some reason I can’t make it, I’ll call—but I won’t say anything about the job, only when I’ll see you next.”

            Her sudden caution quickened a little worm of something queerly like loneliness in my gut, a cool trickle of the paranoia hormone; so essential for survival, so difficult to control.

            Soon afterwards, Caitlin had gone home, and I’d been considering the idea ever since, powerfully attracted by the chance to run a gallery (for which I was already making plans), and not much deterred by the illegal side of the business, which remained vague and unreal. At the very least, I should talk to the guy. Having reached this conclusion several times, I finally banked the ashes, closed the fire-screen, and went to bed, my tabby cat, Lilith, pattering up the stairs behind me.

 

            Once in bed, however, I couldn’t sleep. Lilith crouched on my chest, purring loudly, and my thoughts chuntered along in high gear in the darkness, in apprehension, if not in outright fear. Conspiracy. It had a sinister sound. And didn’t I remember reading somewhere that it was easier for the Crown to prove conspiracy because the rules regarding hearsay evidence were looser? But what did that matter, really? The essential question was: How likely was I to get caught?

            Caitlin had been working for “Sweetmeats” for well over ten years, and as far as I was aware, she had never been arrested. I was confident that she would have told me, sooner or later, if she had been, for we were pretty close, far closer than I ever would have predicted the first time we met.

            A cousin of Harry, Caitlin had arrived unexpectedly at our wedding reception after saying she wouldn’t come. The minute her parents had boarded the train, she’d changed her mind and hitch-hiked from Winnipeg to Toronto, coming straight to the hall from the road. When I expressed alarm at her chosen mode of travel, she informed me in a snotty tone that she was with her boyfriend.

            “I’m not stupid,” she loftily pronounced, “It’s perfectly safe if there’s a guy along.”

            At twenty-five, I was too inexperienced to realize how very inexperienced this statement revealed Caitlin to be (I thought she was right). I also didn’t realize how young she was, her self-confidence fooling me into thinking she was in her early twenties. I was astounded when Harry later told me she was only seventeen.

            “How can Dot and Ira let her run wild like that?” I’d exclaimed.

            Harry looked up from the signed first edition of The Wind in the Willows that a book-collecting colleague had given us as a wedding present, “How would you stop her?”

            Remembering Caitlin’s remote and resolute expression, I acknowledged that I’d be no more successful than her parents in dealing with a person so outwardly uncaring. Despite the fact she’d been a wan, skinny creature, too thin for her height, her straw-coloured hair lank and uneven around her neck, her sharpish nose reddened by a cold she’d picked up in Wawa while waiting for a ride, she aroused not pity but a wary respect. Her steady green gaze, the set of her shoulders, indicated someone with a strong sense of herself, someone who couldn’t be coerced into behaving as others wanted, but only persuaded, if that.

            Not that I’d wanted to persuade her to do anything right then, except leave the party and stop lowering its tone with her jeans and peasant blouse and dirty bare feet in thong sandals. I didn’t say anything, of course, but I’m not very good at hiding my feelings and after the shortest possible exchange of correct phrases, Harry led Caitlin, and her silent, equally skinny companion, over to the buffet table, where she immediately started pushing food into her mouth with the concentration of some small starving animal.

            I didn’t see her again for several years, but I certainly heard a lot about her via the family grapevine. How she’d refused to live safely and cheaply at home while attending the University of Manitoba, but opted for the University of Toronto. How she’d found a summer job in an ice-cream store located on the ground floor of Rochdale College (a high-minded experiment in alternative education which had quickly become notorious for its extra-curricular activities—drugs and runaways). How she’d moved into the building itself. How she’d then proved everyone one wrong by graduating near the top of her class.

            Perhaps because of her reception at our reception, and despite the University being less than a mile away, Caitlin never called us during this time, nor we her, but just after she returned to Canada after touring Europe and Asia for a year or so, she phoned out of the blue to ask if she could stay with us for a few weeks while deciding what she wanted to do next. Of course we said yes, as much from curiosity as hospitality.

            She looked quite different from the scrawny kid who’d threatened the decorum of our wedding. She was older, of course (twenty-four to my thirty-two), but now she was beautiful—sleek, tanned, sophisticated, her white-blond hair cut in a polished cap, her mouth lightly lip-sticked, slightly mocking, her green eyes slanted. She was altogether a fascinating creature with her greyhound elegance, her cool demeanor, and her far-fetched tales—of being broke in Rome and trying to sneak a free bed in a tourist hostel, and having to fast-talk her way out of being arrested for trespassing; of having her first acid trip in Bedlam (or, at least, the psychiatric wing of a teaching hospital in London) as a volunteer for a research project on LSD, receiving ten pounds and the “experience of a lifetime” for her daring; of numerous affairs with Algerian rebels, Basque craftsmen, English masochists, and French kissers; of nude swimming in Goa, opium dens in Bombay, and sweet-talking gurus everywhere (none of whom had converted her, she was quick to make clear)—stories which she may or may not have expected Harry and me to believe. Not that she cared if we did; she was clearly telling them for her own pleasure, not ours. I wanted to believe her, and I didn’t want to want to, half-entranced by her, and resenting my enthrallment.

            Beside her I felt dull, plump, and clumsy, and for two days I avoided being alone with her, taking refuge in the store when she was in the apartment, taking refuge in the apartment when she was in the store with Harry. On the afternoon of the third day, Caitlin discovered me alone, shelving a recent shipment of books. Harry was off at some auction. He’d politely invited Caitlin to go with him, but she had politely declined.

            Without greeting or preamble, she asked, “Do you want me to leave?”

            Trapped, I looked away from her glass-green gaze down at the glossy covers of the novel in my hand, and stupidly refused to understand her. “There's plenty of room,” gesturing at the empty aisles. The book flew out of my grasp and splayed on the floor. Caitlin and I almost banged heads diving for it.

            Erect again, feeling even more foolish, I picked up several more copies, and turned to place them firmly in place, in alphabetical order, by author.

            Behind me, patiently persistent, Caitlin said, “I don’t mean this second, I mean do you want me to stop staying with you and Harry?”

            “God no!” I blurted out, hastily trying to temper my vehemence by asking, “What makes you say that?” As if I couldn’t guess. I squatted to place the last volume on the bottom shelf. 

            “Well, you seem to be avoiding me,” she observed dryly, “or is it only my imagination that almost every time I enter a room, you leave it?”

            I could feel myself blushing. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean be rude—only for some reason, you make me very nervous. I’m afraid you might not like me.”

            “I don’t know if I like you or not, you’ve never given me the chance to find out.”

            “I guess I haven’t,” I said, suddenly seeing things from her point of view, and feeling bad that in my self-preoccupation it hadn’t occurred to me that Caitlin might think I was hostile to her. I’d thought my fascination was only too obvious.

            “Let’s go upstairs and have some lemonade,” I suggested. It was the middle of a very hot, very muggy August afternoon, the slowest time of day, when I often closed the store for half an hour to do the banking or shopping. I turned the “Open” sign to “Back At”, set the hands of the clock-face to two-thirty, and locked the door.

            As I was squeezing the lemons, Caitlin retrieved a joint from her room. “Do you mind if I smoke this here?”

            From the occasional sharp odour drifting down the hall each of the previous two evenings I’d known she was smoking grass, but I’d said nothing, partly because of general muteness where she was concerned, and partly because she was being discrete enough that saying anything hadn’t seemed necessary. Harry might not have noticed the smell, and wouldn’t have cared, if he had.

            “No, that’s all right.” I opened the kitchen window, then dropped ice cubes into two tall glasses, and filled them with the cloudy yellow liquid. Handing Caitlin her glass, I drank long and thirstily from my own. Caitlin lit up, toked deeply a couple of times, and held out the joint to me. 

            I explained that I didn’t get off on it.

            “You might on this.” She wasn’t trying very hard to convince me, her arm bending, about to take the joint back.

            “I guess it won’t hurt to try it again,” and lifting it from her fingers, I dragged in a lungful of aromatic fire. When I finally stopped coughing, I began to giggle. The world had become so benign that a second toke seemed in order, and I inhaled, and coughed, again. After that, I was flying.

            “What the hell have you given me?” My alarm was real, and yet insubstantial. “I’m never going to be able to look after the store now.”

            “Don’t worry, I’ll help you . And the high will smooth down pretty soon.”

            “You still haven’t told me what’s in it,” taking a third, and shallower puff, tasting several spicy flavours. 

            Caitlin grinned, “Just a little cocktail—some Kashmiri hash with some Colombian flower-top and a dash of tobacco. That’s what makes the rush jittery at the beginning.”

            “Those names mean more to you than they do to me.”

            “My dear, where have you been?” She widened her eyes in hammed-up astonishment; reminding me of an owl with her black pupils surrounded by a narrow ring of grass-green, gold-flecked iris.

            “Right here.”

            “For how long?”

            “Since we were married—seven years.”

            “You’ve lived seven years on Spadina Avenue, and you don’t know what Colombian flower-top is?”

            “Well, I’ve heard of it, of course.” 

            I’d been in sympathy with the turmoil of the ‘60s and early ‘70s, and its ethos; I’d  signed petitions, donated money and found jobs to help draft dodgers get landed in Canada, apprehending the world through the songs of Leonard Cohen, and Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, the Doors, and the Grateful Dead, discussing every turn of events at sit-ins and demonstrations taking place hundreds or thousands of miles away. But when the students at my own university went on the march, I was in my studio, grinding pigments, and when they picketed the U.S. Embassy I was in the Ontario Art Gallery, copying Breughal. In those days I had time only for my work, and later, there was Harry and the bookstore.

            When grass and hashish came around, I’d sampled them, but until today, I’d never been truly stoned, and had been indifferent to the experience. Beyond enjoining a rudimentary caution, even the fact that the drugs were illegal hadn’t made much of an impression.

            “A deprived adulthood,” Caitlin kidded me.

            “You can’t experience everything in this life.”

            “Maybe not, but you can try. Have another toke.”

            “Why not?” matching her mood. “But first—,” and I fetched the egg-timer and set it for ten minutes. “Otherwise we may still be up here when Harry gets home.”

            “He wouldn’t mind,” Caitlin asserted with all the authority of ignorance.

            “Not about the smoking. He’d mind the store not being open.”

            “Oops, I forgot about that,” and she giggled. Sunlight beaming through the strip of stained glass flowers at the top of the kitchen window surrounded her bright head in a rainbow nimbus.

            I giggled with her. “Some help you’re going to be. Do you want a piece of strudel?”

            After that, we were friends, and even when she went back to Winnipeg, we kept in touch. I’d write to her, and Caitlin would telephone me.

            She called one night to say she was moving to Vancouver, where she’d landed a job managing a small shop specializing in desserts, chocolates, nuts and candies, owned by the man she’d worked for at the Rochdale ice cream store. He’d offered her, “The chance of a lifetime,” she enthused, “a future with a growing company. He’s planning on opening a string of stores, here and in the States. I’m going to be an executive,” she’d concluded with self-mocking solemnity.

            One consequence of her new career was that, as “Sweetmeats” expanded, Caitlin began travelling for the firm, visiting Toronto for a few days every few months. We’d cram in as much time together as we could between her appointments with wholesalers of almonds, or white chocolate, or (presumably) Colombian flower-top, talking incessantly over drinks, or while she helped me set up a display of the bestsellers which provided most of the store’s cash flow.

            When I wrote to tell her that Harry and I were divorcing, Caitlin promptly phoned to suggest that I stay with her until the decree was final. “It’s like a little death. You’ll need some time to get your head together and figure out what you want to do. Harry can afford to pay your way back for the hearing,” his heartless cousin had declared.

            Under severe pressure from Helen to get matters settled in time for the child to be born in wedlock, Harry had acceded to this condition with the feeblest of struggles. On the other hand, he was lucky he had Helen to counteract his guilty limpness of will with a few stiff demands of her own, or I might have extracted an even larger settlement from him.

            Long before the decree was granted, I’d succumbed to Vancouver’s beauty and climate, and once my income was assured, used the small inheritance left me by my father years before, as a down payment, and bought a house around the block from Caitlin; our back yards were just down the alley from each other. And now, after years of living as I pleased, painting by day and reading by night, it looked as if the bills were coming due.

            Still wide awake, I went down to kitchen, heated some milk, mixed in a couple of capfuls of Kahlua and took the drink back to bed. Pillows plumped behind me, I slowly sipped while I considered again the pros and cons of becoming a criminal.

            Morally, there was no problem, since I used the stuff myself, and technically, of course, I’d broken the law every time I toked, and been a trafficker every time I passed a joint to someone else. I’d even dealt an ounce or two at times in order to secure my own supply at a lower cost, but that had been an amateur activity, springing from a love of getting high, rather than from a desire to make money. The job Caitlin had suggested would be like turning pro; was I ready for that?

            I’d be generously paid Caitlin had said—but how much was that? How much should I ask for? How great was the risk of being caught? Or, to tune it more finely, how could I estimate my chances of getting away with it? Whenever the subject came up in the news, it seemed that the police were able to intercept only about ten per cent of the trade in illegal drugs. Even if they were lying, they’d be more likely to exaggerate their success than minimize it, so the true risk could be much less than ten per cent. But, still, in a certain sense, the odds were fifty-fifty—either you were caught, or you were not.

            But it would be hell to be caught. I could remember wetting my pants as a four-year-old when my mother came into her bedroom just as I was extracting a five dollar bill from her purse. I was swiping it for its pretty colour, not its monetary value, although I don’t think that makes any difference, morally. I was never severely punished for anything, so I’m sure all I received was a lecture delivered more in sorrow than in anger, but I still hated the memory of that rush of guilt, looking up at her with the money in my fist. Why risk feeling that again?

            This sensible question contained its own answer. Of course I wouldn’t risk it by embarking on so foolish a career; of course I would tell Caitlin, “Thanks, but no thanks.” A constriction loosened in my chest, a familiar sense of release that quickly died. If only I didn’t have to get any kind of job, but could have all my time free to paint, as before.

Although it hadn’t been doing me much good, I thought glumly, the futility of my last few years of effort flooding through me. In all that time, I’d started many pictures and finished only a few, none of which I really liked. Dimly, I could recall when painting had been fun, back when I’d been in art school, and when I’d first taken it up again, before I’d become obsessed with my inability to express myself as I wanted to. Why couldn’t it become fun again? Maybe working at something else for a while was just what I needed, a break in routine to give me fresh energy and a new slant on my work. Perhaps it was fortunate that I had no choice, that I had to leave off painting for a while and get a job.

            But I didn’t have to take the one Caitlin had suggested, I wasn’t that desperate. My decision finally made, I finished my drink, and switched off the light, drowsiness stealing over me. Sooner or later, I’d find a regular job. And it couldn't be that bad, could it? I was an early riser; I could adapt to the nine-to-five routine; sure, I could.

            My eyes snapped open. If I went to work for Caitlin’s patron, I might get caught; if I went to work for a regular company I was caught from the outset, and might never make enough money to win my freedom until it was too late. I might be stuck until I was old enough for the Old Age Pension. Ugh. Being part of a dope-smuggling ring, I’d at least make enough bucks to quit in a few years. Besides, curiosity alone dictated that I meet the fellow and find out what he had in mind. I could still refuse to go ahead with it, if I didn't like him or the set-up. On that thought, I fell dreamlessly asleep.

 

            Next morning Caitlin came by in time to share strawberry crepes for breakfast. In tacit agreement, we talked of other things during the meal—our gardens, an upcoming antique furniture auction, a friend’s one woman show of bronzes, a party—but after our plates had been cleared away and our coffee cups refilled, we got down to business.

            “Sure, I’ll talk to your friend, as long as it’s understood I can still say no.”

            “Of course. However, just in case you decide to go for it, he wants it set up properly from the start. So he’s going to put an ad in both of the Vancouver dailies—I’ll give you the wording in a moment—and you send in your resume.”

            “Just as if it were a real job.”

            “It is a real job, and this way, if anyone ever asks you how you met him, you can tell the truth, you answered an ad in the paper.”

            While admiring the brilliance of the solution, the problem it addressed still bothered me. “What do you think the chances are that someone might be asking?”

            “It wouldn’t necessarily be a cop,” Caitlin addressed the unspoken part of my query, “You’ll need a story for your friends, too.”

            “But what are the odds it would be a cop?”

            Caitlin shrugged. “Since I’m in the business, obviously I assume they’re not very high, and none of us has been busted yet. He’s very careful, he thinks everything through, and makes sure we’ve always got fall-back positions and procedures in place.” She paused, as if considering her next words.

            “Something wrong with him?” I asked, a shade sarcastically. So far, she’d made him sound a paragon of bosses. 

            “Nothing, really, it’s just that it’s difficult to say that someone’s in a wheelchair without making too much of it.”

            She was right; the fact immediately stuck out, whether it was significant or not.

            “How come?”

            “He had polio or something, years and years ago. Don’t worry, he’s far from helpless. He can even drive a car. In fact, except for stairs, he’s as mobile as we are.”

            “Isn’t he a touch conspicuous to be dealing drugs, though?” 

            “He’s not dealing on the street,” she reminded me, amused. “Anyhow, he told me that one of the first things he learned when he started going out in his wheelchair, was that most people, including cops, are too conscious of the wheelchair to really see him. And it’s true; I’ve been with him a couple of times when someone has asked me something like, ‘Does he drink coffee?’, as if he were deaf and retarded as well as crippled.”

            Almost proudly, she added, “He started dealing by coming through Customs with a couple of pounds of hash strapped to his legs. They didn’t even open his suitcase. His kamikaze expedition, he calls it now. That was before they started using dogs, of course.”

            “I hope he doesn’t expect me to do anything like that,” alarmed by the very idea. I admire foolhardy courage—in someone else, that is. I’m of a Falstaffian turn of mind, myself.

            “Oh, no. His methods are much more sophisticated now.” She took a leather-bound notebook from her purse, and scribbled several lines on a page, which she tore out and handed to me. “This is what the ad will say. Be sure to put your name on the outside of the envelope, eh? He’ll be a tad annoyed if he has to open a whole bunch of applications until he finds yours.”

            “Of course.” I felt a half-hearted empathy for all those who’d never get an answer, reflecting on how many of my applications had suffered a similar fate.

            “You should memorize that and burn it,” Caitlin said, as I tucked the note in my shirt pocket.

            “Really?” I was half-laughing, thinking that she was taking precautions to the edge of the ridiculous.

            Caitlin remained solemn. “Really. You want to develop the habit of never leaving anything incriminating around.”

            “You sound like someone in a spy novel.”

            “Spies and dealers have a lot in common.”

            “I guess they do,” still amused by her sober pronouncements. “All right, I’ll read it over one more time, consign it to the flames, and eat the ashes, okay?”

            “I know it seems melodramatic, but you really can’t be too careful.” Clearly, she was expecting me to take the job. She stood up, shaking her beige linen suit into line with a lithe shimmy of breasts and hips. “Time to go. I’ll tell him you’re willing to talk it over, and then phone in the ad. He’ll be in touch.”

            After Caitlin left, I re-read the note, and as promised, burnt it, rinsing the ashes down the sink, feeling more silly than professional. For the rest of the morning, my attention was continually riven between a truculent canvas that turned every colour on my palette to mud, and fantastic fantasies of myself cavorting in exotic tropical cities, discovering great artists, and facing vague perils with daring and aplomb.