Around four o'clock the band stopped playing and to fill in the time I
began to sketch in a notebook from the crocodile suitcase. The
handsome man who had been reading the book began to walk towards me,
and asked me what I was drawing. It was a totem pole with faces
looking in opposite directions. I handed it to him. He looked at it
for a while, then gave it back to me. He then picked up one of the
canvasses that was leaning against the bushes and said it seemed to
depict good and evil in the same face. He covered one half of the
face with his hand and I saw happiness and generosity. He covered the
other half of the face and I saw a sinister screeching demon. I had
not before noticed this quality of duality in the painting.
He said his name was Lenny. He asked me if I wanted to go and get
something to eat. I nodded, pleased. He said he had to go home and
get some shoes so he could get into the restaurant, and he would be
back in a few minutes. He lived close to the square. I worried that
going home to get shoes was a pretext for getting rid of me, that he
had changed his mind, so I waited skeptically continuing to draw the
totem pole. I noticed yet another oriental man wearing the same suit
and carrying the same briefcase floating gracefully across the street
and disappearing into the shopping complex. What did this mean?
Lenny returned, and we walked to a restaurant, in a direction opposite
that taken by the oriental men. As we waited for the table, I told
him about one of the paintings he had been looking at. It was a
portrait of Erin, beautiful dead Erin. She had been stabbed in the
abdomen many times in her townhouse near the school we both went to in
Toronto. This had happened nearly twenty years ago. Her murder was
still unsolved.
Recently, triggered by a picture of Erin accompanying a memorial fund
announcement in the boarding school newsletter, I had began to have
memories of being in her townhouse when she was killed. She led me
down a long hallway, and lit a joint. I inhaled and the hallway
seemed very long and full of echoes. The hallway led into a dining
room, where some men were waiting. Erin was very worldly and knew all
about guys. I thought we were going to have a party. But they jumped
us and they killed her. I was knocked on the head and woke up in my
room in the boarding school with a skull full of fuzz and buzz and the
housemother was asking me if I knew anything, anything at all about
Erin. I said no.
Lenny was interested in my story about Erin Gilmour, and I was glad to
have confided in someone who seemed to take me seriously. I had
called the Toronto homicide squad to tell them what I knew. I had
seen the face of the man who had molested me then hit me on the head
while his buddies killed Erin. I could hear her screaming. The first
time I called they said they had re-opened the case. When I called
after that, I kept getting an answering machine and no-one would
return my calls. For some reason the investigation was being stymied.
I was being shut up. I called the school to ask about Erin, but they
said she had been killed two years after I left the school. They must
be participating in the cover-up.
I began to live with Lenny. Something strange was happening. One day
his eyes seemed blue, and another day his eyes seemed green. Some
days he seemed taller than others. Some days his arms seemed more
muscular than others. Some days his hair was slightly curly, and
other days it was straight. I began to think about the identical
oriental men I had seen going into the shopping complex, and other
times that I has witnessed identical people walking about the streets
of Guelph. I began to realize that I was living with more than one
man, and they all looked alike. Their movements were very similar, as
if they practised being alike. They used the same expressions, and
their personalities were very similar, but the longer I lived with
them the more I realized that they were in fact several people.
Guelph was a clone colony.
From listening to secret broadcasts on the television and radio I
learned more about the clone colony. Whenever I turned on the radio
or the television, I heard voices talking above the regular
programming. Someone was interfering with technology to help me know
what was going on.
