Day 8

"I know a place." She says confidently, letting a twinkle of mischief show in her eye. "Cops can't bust you there if all you're doing is minding your own business. Lots of space. I’m going to be setting up a bit of a, you know, camp there.” Dave looks at her skeptically.

“What like, one of those tent cities or whatever? Or are we talking a personal party here?” He gives her a leer that is not unfamiliar. Maggie dispels that notion by pretending not to notice. She shrugs mysteriously.

“Like I say, I just know a place. I think me and a bunch of folks will be there a while. If you want a place to stay, or just want to join the party,” She shrugs again. “Whatever. Maybe you’ll wanna show up.” She gives him an address: 177 Bellview Place.

Maggie has this conversation several times over the next few hours. She knows some colourful characters. She talks to Joe Joe who plays the recorder, improvisationally, at Queen & Galway. Pete, Shannon, Mike and G-Man, the squeegee kids from the block over at Cork. Gerard Rutherford, who she calls Macumazahn – or Mac, for short – with his meticulously-kept notebook of tiny, fine scrawls in pure, cursive gibberish. Hector and Randy with their shared wife Jenny – heavy drinkers but could be counted on to do so discreetly. A band of leather gypsies stopping through town who seem clean enough not to get them arrested but enthusiastic scavenge artists with an instinct for domestication.

By the time the sun sets that evening the sidewalk outside the 177-179 block of Bellview Place is teeming with life. Some creative soul has spent not an insignificant amount of effort chalking a sidewalk mural that reads “WELCOME TO OUR SLEEPOVER!” The small crowd is made bigger by the curious passer-bys who want to know what’s going on. Buskers and hippies have appeared out of nowhere to participate in the mobbier aspects of the evening and mingle bravely with the drunks and the crazies. Residents of the neighbouring apartments have come down and are distributing beers and bags of chips. Nobody knows what’s going on, but the atmosphere is congenial and the air is warm so the mood defines its own purpose.

A sea of sleeping bags, blankets and tarps has been strung up and down Maggie’s alley, climbing up the fire escape and wrapping ‘round the front of 177 to sprawl across the first few meters of the postage-stamp of lawn there. Maggie has put a row of stolen film-location traffic cones along the 5-meter mark of 177. Later in the evening they need to be spiked into the ground with tent-pegs to maintain the perimeter. The whole party is lit with the somewhat harsh glow of the buildings’ outdoor motion controlled security lights.

The scene is that of an idyllic community function for the first five hours, before the norms go home and the buskers pack up, leaving the obsessive unwillingness to let the party end to surface and decay. The flighty good cheer of more than one young street kid or self-styled gypsy hobo has grown thin in the 11-th hour fatigue of an acid trip taking its last stand. Hector and Jenny are laughing and shouting drunkenly with a man who must have a home somewhere, from the dress of him, but their shouts are too loud and those wishing to sleep grow irritable and shout back. Joe Joe and three men Maggie has never seen before keep slipping to the back corner of the alley to light their pipes and drift off. Someone has thrown up on someone else’s sleeping bag though nobody can say who, and the victim is complaining bitterly. Maggie, who has managed to avoid drinking since dinnertime, watches the scene with a keen eye from her darkened corner curled up on her ottoman under the fire escape. This is what she wanted. The embarrassing and filthy underbelly of the party. The deflated balloons and abandoned favours. She wants the lost, the forgotten and the ignored. This is what will piss them off.

No matter how late the streetie finds himself on his feet, he is always up and moving by dawn the next morning. It’s a survival instinct, or else a genetic response to sunlight. Maggie’s alley starts to empty at 5am the next morning. The walking dead shuffle off down the street in search of Tim Horton’s and public washrooms. A few bodies remain, utterly annihilated by the evening’s indulgences. Maggie has to insist that some of the newly erected infrastructure remains. The scent of flesh and piss has to stick if anyone is to come back the next evening. She’s keen on that part – they have to come back. This ain’t over.

After a few hours members of the working public start to descend from their luxury ant farms and look askew down the alley as they walk by, pretending not to see. They give the sleeping bags on the front lawn a wide berth. Faces peek out from higher floors, looking with anxiety down at the humanity that still sprawls in the alley. Even participants in last night's revelries seem to have some doubts as to the current state of Sleepover Alley. Good, thinks Maggie defiantly. We make you uncomfortable? She taunts mentally. Why don't you call the cops!

Maggie stands guard over the "stuff" that others have left behind - blankets, hockey bags and other necessities of dubious value which nonetheless one can't afford to have go missing. Just Dave - still expecting, she thinks, some kind of personal invitation from the small woman - has gone to get her a coffee. When the only people left in the alley are either unconscious or smoking joints on the third floor of the fire escape, Maggie lets herself rush to the back corner and throws up. Her morning sickness. Every muscle in her body participates in the heave, as if she's going to vomit forth a demon from the very bowls of hell. Her eyes tear up and the milky white contents of her stomach leak out her nose. Somewhere between gasping for breath and emptying her soul onto the concrete the first shadow of fear crosses her mind.

"What the fuck. What the fuck?" She repeats. "I can't be knocked up, can I?"

"No." I tell her, unqualified. "Not by any denizen of this earth." She laughs wetly and nervously before throwing up again. She's thinking, better not be anything of any other earth either. Strange enough things have happened to her in her life that she can only laugh so hard at strange notions.

"I'm sick. I'm just sick." She repeats out loud, as if this is the good news. Then an idea comes to her. "It's withdrawl." I don't bother to tell her this has been carrying on for three days, drunk or sober. She's clinging to this idea. "It's just some fucking withdrawl." She holds a hand up in front of her face once the heaves have subsided enough for her to crawl to her feet. It shakes. She makes a fist. "I need a drink."

I can't argue with this, but the liquor store isn't open for another two hours so Maggie has to tough it out with a coffee and the increasingly greeby company of Just Dave. Soon enough, she thinks, she'll have better things to worry about.

***

Two days later Dan Malloy's boss asks him to come have a "talk" with him. His boss, a legal bureaucrat by the name of Victor Kuczlyk, is a heavy-set politico who has been installed as the Director of the downtown Legal Aid clinic because they told him it would be a good idea to get some "non-profit" experience under his belt before they bring him in as Deputy Minister of an unspecified Provincial ministry. This is the kind of deal made over drinks and loud music in the penthouse of a suburban hotel during a Party convention. There are no promises and no paperwork, but lots of well-lubricated camaraderie, hand-pumping and winking. We'll get you there, buddy. The Party takes care of its own, am I right? Victor Kuczlyk likes the Legal Aid clinic because none of his cases ever have to go to court. They either settle or are dismissed. It's soothingly clean work. It is virtually impossible to look bad doing it. It's peaceful in a way which almost makes the lousy pay worthwhile. Almost, but not quite.

"Close the door, Dan." He waves a hand at the door as if trying to dismiss it from the room. Dan closes it dutifully and takes a chair, slinging one ankle over a knee in feigned confidence. He looks at his boss with a wide-eyed intelligent look that gives him the air of a caffeinated puppy. Victor Kuczlyk has to look away to avoid becoming annoyed. "How did that business last week go, Dan, that trespassing case-"

"179 Bellview Place?" Dan offers. The case has been at the forefront of his mind for days. It needles him like the biggest fish to ever get away.

"177 Bellview Place." Kuczlyk corrects him. Dan is immediately put on guard. In less than ten words, sides have just been taken.

"Right." He acquiesces vaguely. "It went as expected. Charges against my client were dropped. I filed the papers on Wednesday."

Day 7

Maggie calls Mr. Malloy sometime after 4p.m. from a payphone outside Chad's, where she has spent the last five hours nursing gin and a bruised ego. She’d have called earlier, but woke up cranky and disoriented in a park she’d never slept in, plagued by strange dreams and waves of nausea which she has started sardonically referring to as morning sickness. I’ve immaculately conceived one of those fucking insects from Alien, she tells herself, Isn’t that just my luck. It takes several hours of drinking and at least one high-volume tirade against landlords, but her nerves are soothed now and her indignance has been fortified by a good sense of bravado or self righteousness or both. They caught her at a vulnerable moment yesterday, sure. But today she's up for a fight.

There's something in Dan Malloy's voice that immediately sets her on the defensive. "Ah, Miss Kilcraegie." He says in the soft, gentle voice of a doctor with bad news.

"Call me Maggie." She says cautiously.

"Well I have good news, Maggie." Dan sighs, making Maggie wonder if she misheard 'good' for 'poop' or 'bloody terrible'. "All charges have been dropped. Your record is as clean as a whistle." Maggie exhales sharply.

"Whaddya mean 'dropped'? They haul me downtown for a day and then fucking change their mind? Wha'the fuck is that supposed to be about?"

"You..." Dan's voice trails off, and when it returns it's low and rushed. "You were right about the property line. The owners of 177 had no grounds to charge you, so..."

"Yah I fucking knew that." Maggie didn't really know that - she had only hunches. But she's mad now. She had wanted a fight. Wanted to prove them wrong to their faces. Now she just feels robbed. "You can't tell me they didn't know that when they charged me. That's just bullshit"

"Somebody knew, Maggie, but they... they don't want anyone else to know. You know, like a judge. Or a jury." Despite his discretion, Maggie can hear the irritation in his voice. This burns him too.

"I begyerpardon? What the hell does anyone care about a scrap of concrete five feet wide?" She says. "Wait… there’s more to this, isn’t there?" It dawns on her slowly - her wit has dulled with her nerves.

"It's not my job..." he starts. Maggie frowns at him through the phone.

"Yah, yah. Of course, right. Well, okay." Maggie winds up the conversation. "Well thanks for the representation, Dan Malloy. You're a scholar and a gentleman. Have a nice life." She goes to hang up.

"Maggie! Wait, Maggie, hang on." Dan Malloy takes a deep breath. "What are you going to do?" He asks conspiratorially.

"What do you mean 'do'? I'm going to do the same thing I always do." She doesn't elaborate on what that is. "Why, what are you going to do?"

"I can't do anything Maggie. This is out of my jurisdiction. But you know... you know..." he lowers his voice again. "They can't do anything about 179 at all. Not even the five meters," he hisses those words, "of it that they built their building on." Maggie smiles.

"No shit." She says in wonder. She knew the lots were fishy, but five whole meters of a building that size was just more than she'd hoped for. "Mr. Dan Malloy, let me say that our time together has been both entertaining and edifying. We should do this more often. Can I call you next time I get arrested?"

"Next time?"

"Just covering my bases, Dan." She grins in a way that frightens the passer-bys. She sees the way to get her fight and that has just made her day 200% better.

The streets this evening are filled with companionable hipsters and imported sight-seers engaged in eating, drinking and visiting. It’s hot, even for August, and the city has been seeking voluntary brown-outs in most neighbourhoods to ease the load on an overburdened energy grid. The demographic of the Cannery, young, healthy and unlikely to bake to death in their apartments, have seized the initiative with enthusiasm and are cooling themselves with locally-brewed beers on crammed patios which have achieved the physical impossibility of all being on the corner of side-streets. Buskers have set up shop outside every pub that doesn’t have its own band and a number of street vendors have opened their suitcases to the public, taking the place of the shopping attractions during closing hours. Maggie stops to speak to one of these, a street artist to whom she is known, a man called just Dave. He looks up, recognizes her and waves.

Maggie as a rule has two modes; one in which she is aware of herself and absolutely intent on obliterating that sense in any way she can, and one in which she pretends to be someone else and plays that role with an aggressive panache that is at once frightening and captivating. Maggie tells herself this is ninjitsu - hiding in plain sight. Because of this Maggie is both very well known and utterly unknown to most denizens of the street. They know her by sight, but by some other name and in some other role. This isn't uncommon on the street; it isn't a place where anyone has much interest in their own identities and histories. The street is a place very much concerned with right now. You enjoy or exploit what providence has placed in front of you, exactly as you see or feel it at that moment, because it won't be the same ever again. The streets are too uncertain to worry about truth.

Just Dave sells puppets, little foam animals pose-able by virtue of their wire skeletons. They peek over the edges of Dave’s rather ingenious display device, a series of briefcases which fold out of each other and sit perched on the seat of his bike. Each creation bears his artist’s signature on the bottom: DAVE 2007 in a thick black sharpie. Dave’s stuff is cute, clever and entirely professional, but nevertheless Dave doesn’t get many customers. It’s an unfortunate case of the pitch not matching the delivered goods. Dave’s approach to marketing is kin to that of a carnie – aggressive, loud, and just a little threatening. Those potential customers who go in for that particular sales pitch approach his stand with a swagger, thinking there’s a game to play and they’re going to have one over the guy. They don’t want to buy funny-coloured dogs with top-hats. Dave doesn’t look like an artist, he looks like a bike thief. Long, greasy graying hair, baseball cap, twenty-year-old jean jacket. Shitty sunglasses, and a redness of the face that comes from drinking at 10am. He won’t stop smoking, ever. His teeth are the shade of bile and even on a good day he smells pretty ripe.

"Heeeey, little Miss Felicity!" He greets her with open arms, forgetting both the name she gave him, which was Fuchsia, and that she is the last person on this earth who will hug him or anyone else. She deflects the embrace by crossing to the far side of his bike-case, where she idly pokes at his wares, pulling out a tap-dancing ant that catches her eye.

"Just Dave." She grins. "You're back in town early."

"Yah? Yah had to leave San Francisco a little earlier than I had anticipated. Martha's being a fucking cunt again, no offense. Threw me out and tried to steal my jacket. I had to get some friends to get it back for me before I could fuckin' leave town." He tells the story conversationally with only a touch of agitation. "But fuck that, that's history, you know? That's what they never tell you, you know. History doesn't repeat itself, you know, it never happened. It's just a... a figment of our imagination. We think we were then, but really we're just here, now. That's the only way to get by, I tell ya. Only way." Dave has one hand deep in his pocket and the other gestures with a two-centimeter butt of cigarette. He hops from foot to foot like a five year old who needs to pee.

"Yah, yah." Maggie nods as if in agreement, but the reality of ninety-eight percent of the conversations she has with streeties is that they aren't listening to you any more than you're listening to them, so you can say any old shit as long as you nod and don't do anything threatening. "Hey look, Dave. Where are you staying these days?" Direct questions are the exception in the otherwise solipsistic streetie discourse.

"Hey? Glendale & McInder, until the 13th of September. Buddy's renting me a room then." Maggie pulls up her mental map of the city and notes there's no mission, church or shelter at Glendale & McInder.

"The bus depot?"

"Only for the bike rack and locker, little Miss." Maggie knows that one. She nods.

"That's where Curious George got his ass kicked." That one even made the newspapers - 39-year-old George Chen In Coma After Savage Nighttime Attack.

"Yah, well let's just say that I know better than that demented dipshit where to put my bag." Big talk. Glendale & McInder is a dangerous neighbourhood for anyone. Too much competition, too many players want first crack at the new arrivals - prostitutes, con men, pick pockets, drug dealers, you name it.

"You ever think of staying here?" She looks him in the eye, aware that the following line of questioning will take some forceful talk to drive it home. No surprise, he guffaws mockingly.

"'The Cannery'?" He sneers. "You've got to be joking me. These fucking yuppy... hippy... whatevers would call the cops before I sat my scrawny ass down."

"I know a place." She says confidently, letting a twinkle of mischief show in her eye.

Day 6

Dan Malloy finds himself in the city archives first thing Tuesday morning, pulling the planning records for the Cannery, 1975-1995. He's following a hunch which, at the time it was pitched to him, seemed better thought out than it does now. At the time, it seemed as if the girl - Maggie, it turns out her name was -.was privy to concrete information. Now, by the clear light of day, he found himself wondering why a street girl would have any idea about lot sizes or permit statuses.

Dan Malloy has decided that Maggie Kilcraegie is without a doubt an odd duck. She seemed prepared to spend the night in prison until the moment the two female attendants came and informed her that she was going to have to change and bathe. Dan had never seen someone flip-flop so quickly. Suddenly she was willing to identify herself and, unexpectedly, post her own bail. He shouldn't have been so shocked - after all, plenty of homeless people had money and resources; just not the wherewithal to use them - but it was dawning on him moment by moment that he'd incorrectly diagnosed her as an angry, drug-addled street punk.

“Maggie Kilcraegie.” The outgoing officer had read as he input the name into the system. “No outstanding warrants or fines. You’re all clean, Miss Kilcraegie,” He looked up at her over the rim of his glasses. “In a matter of speaking.” He looked back at the screen. “Wait a minute. What have we here?” A few more keystrokes, some clumsy maneuvering of the mouse. “Well I’ll be damned. Your parents have filed a missing child report, young miss. I’m afraid you’ll have to…” Maggie, looking younger than ever resting her chin on the high counter of the bookings desk, bit her lip and interrupted,

“Keep reading.” The duty officer did. He frowned. “That report is at least fifteen years old. I’m not missing and you have no right or duty to report my whereabouts on that file.” Maggie fixed the officer with the same look she'd given Dan, the one that brokered no argument without being overtly threatening. The officer said nothing, but looked at her and clicked a few more times. The printer spit a form out, and he drew an X where Maggie was to sign.

“There.” He said quietly. “You’re found.”

Maggie offered Dan no explanation and refused all attempts to entreat her to see the street councilor he'd lined up. She slowly shrugged on her knee-length black leather jacket with a momentary pained wince that made Dan suspect the arresting officers might have roughed her up a bit and then took his card and promised to call him the next morning to check in. Then she hobbled off into the night, leaving him with nothing but the growing, unfounded sense that he'd been had.

But Dan Malloy is, if nothing else, a man of honour. He stands in front of a pile of blueprints scattered across the map cabinets of the planning office and taps his pencil against his bald pate, bored. A promise is a promise, he sighs to himself. The Bellview Place plan from 1975 stares at him from under its laminate dressing. There's 179 alright; at the time a big abandoned textiles factory. The neighbouring lot is zoned a parking lot. Dan pulls out the next sheet.

Bellview Place, 1985: 179 is unchanged, as is its parking lot. But some development on the north side has been sketched in as approved but unbuilt; a row of townhouses facing Tremond St., stretching from MacDonald to Yew St. Dan smiles to himself at the optimism of this map. The block is designated a "Neighbourhood in Transition" and references the 1984 New City Plan. New blocks of development are cheerfully littered all up and down the grid. The 1990 map seems to reflect some political stagnation: the Tremond St. townhouses seem built but nothing else is. The reference is now to the 1988 New City Plan Revised. Dan wishes he were sitting on the patio of a cafe somewhere, sipping an iced chai latte. It's a beautiful day outside the walls of the archives.

Bellview Place, 1995 features the outline of the complex that is destined to become the 177 Bellview Place complex. The plan designated the old parking lot and gives a high density, meaning a tall building will be built on the lot. The only other information available is the name of the developer, R.W. Richardson Associates. Dan chews his pencil now. There's nothing noteworthy here.

Caught up now in the narrative of the developing neighbourhood, Dan idly shuffles over a few meters and digs out the latest survey. He wants to know how the story ends. The 2005 offers a satisfying climax to the thirty-year building period. The map looks like a moderately well-executed game of Tetris, with interlocking geometric shapes wedged in wherever space can be found. Not surprising: the neighbourhood has been a hot real estate commodity since redevelopment really picked up in the late nineties. Approved developments overwrite old lots in heavy black lines and new boulevards have been artfully arranged where once single monolithic blocks existed. The apartments at 179 and 177 Bellview dominate the map, while the townhouses on Tremond St. seem to have been redefined as larger mid-rise buildings. Dan frowns.

The alley where his crime was allegedly committed is clearly visible on the map; a narrow gap between 177 and 179 that ends abruptly against the back of a Tremond St. six-plex. What bothers him, however, is the orientation of the Tremond St. building. Not only is there no back gap for fire vehicle access like there should be, but the western edge of the building is several meters too far west, causing the abrupt end to the alley. Dan flips back to the arrangement of the 1995 plan.

What he sees makes his heart leap. The lot newly zoned residential, the parking lot that was destined to become 177 Bellview Place and the source of his current caffeine hangover, ended a clear five meters further west than the building was built. Maggie was right. Not only was the abortive alley she lived in the property of 179 Bellview, but so was nearly 4800 square meters of the 177 Bellview building itself. Dan Malloy stands up straight and starts tapping his foot. He's shot up with an excited shot of adrenaline. His brain churns out the possibilities of this error. A building of that size, 16 storeys and probably 110 good-sized units, doesn't get built without a lot of money and a lot of labour. You don't accidentally extend an undertaking of that kind onto someone else's lot. Construction watch-dogs weren't notorious for being hawk-eyed, to be sure, but usually we're talking a foot or two here or there. Maybe some cheating when it comes to width of fire escapes or gauge of wiring. An extension of this kind probably housed 30 full units. Given the current cost of condos in The Cannery... that's an awfully profitable mistake.

Dan Malloy's weakness is his naive enthusiasm for justice. He took his graduate degree in social justice in Latin American economies (Dept. of Political Science, University of Windsor). He was in Quebec City for the Summit of the Americas back in '01. He was once in love with a girl who called herself 3:14 and chained herself to a tree in Tamagamy. He collects Daredevil comics. Today, he makes full-sized photocopies of the zoning and surveys of Bellview & McDonald and starts putting a case file together to discuss with his boss. He thinks he’s on to something worthwhile.

Day... 5...

“You have no right to be here - bother me like this. Here’s your out; take it!” What she means is, you’d rather go home, so go! But what it sounds like it a threat. The policewoman sighs and gestures at her partner. They both begin to approach. Maggie braces herself, determined not to move.

“Ma’m, you are under arrest for trespassing. Please set down your weapon and put your hands on your head. Representation will be provided for you by the city. Your rights will be explained…” Maggie spits.

The policewoman takes Maggie by the right arm, twisting in such a way that she has to release the dowling rod. Suddenly deprived of her cane Maggie lurches onto her bad leg and pitches off-balance sideways. The policeman catches her from falling with a quick and helpful arm around her back, catching her under the armpit, but he can’t have known about the newly re-opened wounds there around the limbs she shouldn’t have. Maggie lets out a howl of pain that startles the two cops into dropping her.

“Shit.” The policeman mutters, seeing some kind of assault charge filed in his near future. Maggie has fallen to her hands and knees and is swearing violently through clenched teeth. The policeman takes out a handset and activates some static with a squeeze of the thumb. “28^th, dispatch, we need a paramedic at 177…”

“No!” Maggie exclaims, on her haunches now and mentally preparing to climb to her feet. “No doctors! I’m fine, shit, fuck, I’m fine!” The whites of her eyes overwhelm the green irises. The policeman looks skeptical but pauses his request with a “Hold on.”

“I’ve just got a bum leg, alright?” She continues. “For Christ’s sake, don’t waste anyone else’s time on this farce.” She heaves herself to a stand using her good leg and makes a very good show of looking capable of remaining upright. “I’m just a fucking gimp, alright? Keep your hands off me and I’ll be just fine.” The policeman radios in a cancellation and looks at her expectantly. It’s not likely that he sees the fury burning in Maggie’s eyes. Pick your battles, she tells herself. Today she can’t fight them, but there will be other days. Other days when she will not let her weaknesses hang on the end of her sleeve. Today, she goes with them.

***

They book her into a holding cell deep in the bowels of city hall, past the vaulted front doors, the four storey glass lobby, the spiral staircases and the miniature cityscapes. It’s a different side of city hall, one you access through subterranean parking lots and service entrances. They traveled a full twenty minutes underground before the car had arrived somewhere that they could let Maggie out.

The cell is spacious and painfully public. It’s built to hold crowds of up to as many as sixty people. Fence wire is held tightly in place with a heavy steel cage frame. Plastic benches are bolted the floor around the perimeter of the enclosure. The distant walls are painted hospital green, with hospital blue visible where the paint is flaking off the concrete. Maggie is entertaining herself wondering why anyone would bother overwriting a hideous blue with a hideous green when her council arrives, the only being she has seen since the duty officer escorted her to this cage four hours ago.

He's a little man, her council, and young. Younger than Maggie, she thinks. He has the bearing of a squirrel, this little man. He's barely half a head taller than Maggie's own 120 centimeter stretch, though the fluffy island of hair holding forth against the vast expanses of premature baldness perhaps gives him some height he has not fairly earned. He has thick square hipster glasses and fuzzy sideburns that accentuate the squatness of his head. He smiles confidently as he approaches the cage with a guard, but he has a tendency to twitch that betrays his nerves. Young and new, Maggie thinks. Paying his dues doing the good work before the lure of private sector cash finally crushes the last of his idealism.

"Hello, Hetty." He smiles at her openly, a look of honesty that almost makes Maggie feel bad that she'd wouldn't give them her real name. "I'm Dan Malloy. I'll be helping you out today." The guard fiddles with the lock on the door and lets the little man stick his head in. Maggie doesn't say anything to him, but waits to see what angle he has brought with him. "You can come with me so we can have a little chat, alright?" Maggie hops down off the bench and limps over to the door. Dan Malloy frowns. He gives the guard a suspicious look, but the guard is a faceless obelisk that does not contain any secrets to betray.

Maggie works the guy out before they get to conference room 2A. His inexperience shows in how he has a wallet with actual cash in the back pocket of his pants and in the quality of the blazer he has worn to a face-to-face with an unknown streetie. His politics are displayed on the sides of his fair-trade sneakers. His gullibility is unfortunately given away by the seriousness with which he is taking representation of a bum with a trespassing fine looming. He looks at her in the eyes, not averting his gaze, as if he actually gives a shit how this is going to work out.

"Can I get you anything?" He offers as they sit at a table in an otherwise empty room. "Have you eaten anything?" Maggie resists the urge to sigh or roll her eyes and just shakes her head instead. Truth be told, she has felt off all day and the idea of food makes her stomach brace itself as if its about to revolt. Dan Malloy looks disappointed and slips some papers out of his book bag. "The charges levied against you are trespassing with a minor mischief misdemeanor. The city requires only a fine be paid or equivalent public service. You will have to complete 12 hours of counseling with an appointed representative - I have someone from the Streets are for People network lined up - and to show up for the court date. So if you'll just-"

"I'm sorry, Mr. Dan Malloy," Maggie interrupts. "I thought you were my council. When do I get to speak to someone about contesting these charges?" The little lawyer looks up in surprise, not expecting even this little eloquence from a girl who looks like a well-worn sleeping bag. Maggie smiles sweetly and tries to let intelligence show in her eyes.

"Well I'm your - contest the charges? I'm afraid this is an open and shut case Miss.... ah.... King. Counseling and some public service is the usual plea for someone in your... circumstances." He adjusts his glasses and wriggles his little nose with a squirrelly sniffle.

"I have no doubt that these are really great plea terms Mr. Dan Malloy, but I don't have any intention of pleading for a moment's mercy. Not guilty. Want to write that somewhere? I'll sign that." Maggie looks at his papers with a feigned innocence. Dan Malloy smiles at her and gives her a sly look, one half conspiratorial and one part patronizing, like a skeptical agent who wants to believe what he's hearing.

"Call me Dan, please. Who are you?" He starts slowly.

"Why, I'm Hetty King, Dan." Maggie says with some sarcasm. He sighs.

"Right, right... fine. Let me explain the charges. You were found by two on-duty police officers on the site of 177 Bellview Place after the owner of said property asked you to vacate the premises. There's no room for debate there. As for the mischief charge, that holds no water and will be dismissed at the first opportunity. So where do you want to fit a not guilty plea?"

"I wasn't on the grounds of 177 Bellview."

"Both police officers have entered their paperwork saying you were. You won't get anywhere calling them liars."

"I think you'll find I was fully and squarely on the grounds of 179 Bellview, Dan. The man who came to scare me away - I've never seen him before. I don't believe a minute that he had the authority to tell me where to be!" Dan Malloy looks curious, so Maggie has tossed him the biggest treat she can think of. She uses her best "aw gee" voice and looks at him with her big green eyes (pupils only slightly dilated). She knows what he sees: Some smart, pretty young girl down on her luck and being unfairly marginalized by a society that can't look after its sick and its poor. She has nowhere else to go, no one else to turn to. Here she is, articulate and presentable, sort of, whose only crime was getting in the way of The Man, not fitting into the System. Dan Malloy is, against all reason, becoming hooked.

"Now listen, Miss. King, lets assume a minute that we," She notices he doesn't say "you". "That we have some wriggle room here - and let me emphasize that I don't think that we do - even if we did, if you don't agree to this plea now than you will be booked into more permanent lodgings down the hall. Unless, of course, you're ready to give us your real name and a contact we can approach for bail." He looks at her pointedly, but her look says only that she's still listening. "The only way out of here right now is this plea or bail." He repeats. Maggie makes a show of looking like she's considering these two horrible evils.

"Do you think you can do this, check the lots of 177 and 179 Bellview?" She asks with a shy glance. She pretends to be studying his papers because she's starting to feel nauseous. She needs to extract promises from him before she blows her image as a basically-nice-girl by vomiting somewhere.

"Well, sure." He says slowly. "But..."

"179 is owned by a tenant’s association. They'd leave me alone, I know they would." She focuses on a spot on the table. She's starting to experience vertigo. She tries to control it by distancing herself from the feeling - Since when do I suffer from vertigo? She wonders absently.

"I'll check the lots, Miss. King. But please, consider speaking with the councilor. She can..." Maggie starts nodding to shut him up. Now she is going to puke.

"Can I use a washroom?" She asks in a weak, wet voice. He hasn't finished assenting when she gets up and runs for it, the guard barely on her heels. She manages to direct most of the mess into the bowl. At least I got him to promise to help first. She thinks. And then, I haven't even had anything to drink today. This is fucked. She spits up a quantity of smooth, milk-white vomit that seems impossible, given what she has eaten and drunk lately. But she's too sick to give it much thought. As for Dan Malloy in the guard; they look away, embarrassed. Meth, they figure. They think they've seen it before.

Day 2

That night Maggie staggers home drunker than usual – maybe just as drunk as usual, but feeling worse for it. Exposing her wings, even privately, always makes her deeply uncomfortable; painfully aware of herself. That’s the last thing she wants to be. So we share a few pitchers at Chad’s and say nothing while the crap Sunday night act plays bad renditions of Farewell Nova Scotia. Last call is at 1 instead of 2, but Maggie is too far gone by the time we leave to know.

***

It’s with considerable shock that Maggie awakes the next morning to find a bunch of guys in her alleyway.

Maggie has lived under the fire escape for four years, a comparatively stable home for a streetie. There she sleeps on her ottoman, an eerily flesh-coloured beast which might once have been red or at minimum rust-coloured, which is usually turned back-out, facing the wall. She keeps a tarp in the springs of the chair which she will place over the landing of the fire escape if it looks like it might snow or rain during the night. She had a cat, sort of, that she called Mog, but it stopped coming by last June and she now suspects it belonged to the college kids in the basement of the six-plex that backs her alley. She owns one change of clothes which she keeps in a plastic LCBO bag that she carries with her everywhere. She wouldn't go so far as to keep anything under the fire escape - nothing she wanted to continue owning, in any case. The remainder of her belongings are always stowed on her person.

The alley which contains Maggie's fire escape is contained on three sides by the blank stares of red-brick apartment buildings, making it an utterly illegal place to put a working fire escape. This is fine for Maggie (though not, I bet, for any burning inhabitants of the apartments on the east side) because it severely limits the chances that anyone would ever try to escape fire via what is, essentially, her rooftop. That nobody in four years had tried to so much as smoke a cigarette up there leads us to believe that the doors on all floors have long since been locked by a lawsuit-conscious but not especially bright landlord. But, if you want a brighter note, nobody in four years has burned to death up there either, at least as far as we can tell.

The neighbourhood which contains Maggie's alleyway is nice, nicer than it was when we arrived. It was the corner of Bellview and McDonald when we got here, now it’s “The Cannery”. Gentrification has a funny place in the hearts of streeties. It's code for "eviction", "fines" and "cops". But it isn't all bad, because on the other hand, it means you're a whole lot less likely to get robbed, assaulted or have your spot taken. Maggie has not, to date, been evicted, fined, arrested, robbed, assaulted or had her ottoman appropriated. The Cannery is in the east end of the city which used to be the old manufacturing district until the place stunk so much that the city shut it down and all the manufacturing jobs went to the suburbs, or Indonesia. Now it’s being slowly cleaned up and converted into cheapish loft-style condos and office buildings. The influx of the youthful, artist and immigrant brought with it first trendy coffee shops, followed by restaurants and art galleries. In recent years there have even been proper boutique-style stores opening, quirky bohemian places with monosyllabic names frequently adorned by punctuation that shouldn’t be there – Tröve, S’ilver, Ælîyñ. The district’s turn-of-the-century roots have been brought out and commodified. Our street lights look like gas lanterns, and certain popular corners have cobblestone crossings. It’s not a likely place to take up residence in an alley, but like I said, it wasn’t quite like this when we got here.

“Beat it.” The head dude says to her, obviously the leader of the lot. There are four of them, two guys in worn blue jeans and dirty white t-shirts, one cheap brown suit with a clipboard and this guy, a round mustachioed jerk with no hair and lots of anger. He doesn’t look at her directly as he makes his demand and the other three stand off at a distance doing their best to look in disparate directions. “Get the fuck off my property, go.”

Maggie, groggy and confused, uncurls and squints in the direction of the intruders. It isn’t like her to sleep in like this. Even after the latest nights, she is up with the sun. She has never been caught unaware before. Ever.

A vague fear lurches in her chest now as she remembers her night – there was a dream. Someone stealing her kidneys. She had a vivid flashback of clutching her middle, desperately trying to hold all the pieces in.

“Wake up, you stupid fuck!” The man who has woken her kicks the back of her chair and Maggie scrambles to her feet. She fixes him with a defiant stare and snatches a dowling rod that she has been carrying around for the last few days. It has been a prop, a toy, and a crutch. Now she wields it like a sword. The mustachioed man takes a step back.

“Go fuck yourself.” She spits at him. “I claim the venerable squatter’s god damn rights. I’m here, and here I will stay. Get fucked!” She pokes her dowling rod at him to emphasize her points. Maggie’s interactions with the public skirt an affected line between barstool prophet and David Mamet gangster. She does her best Fisher King via Danny Devito.

“What the fuck?” The man takes another few steps back and chews angrily on his hairy upper lip. “Listen girlie, you get the hell out of here or I am going to call the cops. Got it? The police. I’m going inside and if you’re not gone when I get back I’m’a gonna have you taken away in fucking handcuffs, comprende?”

“No comprende, senior.” Maggie sings out. “Don’t let the door hit you on the ass on the way out!”

“She’s some fucking crackhead! Fucking batshit crazy! Fucking bitch!” The man turns as if explaining the situation to his entourage, but he’s just tossing obscenities at Maggie. Maggie hops a few times on her good foot and swings her stick threateningly.

“Good luck!” She screams after him. As soon as they’ve vanished around the corner she freezes on the spot and stares like a wide-eyed statue.

“I think he’s really going to call the cops, Maggie.” I whisper to her. “Maybe now’s a good time to move.” Maggie has stayed in her unlikely neighbourhood for reasons she would never admit. “My stuff is here” she insists, though she cares so little for her stuff that she regularly forgets it in the dingy washrooms of bars she frequents, or under her seat at the movies. Maggie stays because this is familiar ground to her; not the alley and the fire escape, but the bourgeois artsy scene. Roots don’t mean a thing to Maggie, until she thinks about pulling them up.

“I’m not moving.” She says absently, apparently stunned but I see the wheels behind her eyes cranking out strategies. “This is my place. I live here. They can’t make me. I won’t let them.”

“Come on Mags, we can find another place. This neibourhood has more dead ends than a suburb. There’s nothing here but trouble.” Maggie’s jaw locks like she’s got tetanus.

“I’m not letting them kick me out.” She repeats. This has become a matter of principal. Maggie excels at removing her nose to spite her face. “I am here!”

Maggie considers fortifying her Alamo but decides she hasn’t much time. She leans on the dowling stick on her bad side and waits. The sun is coming over the southern corner of the east apartment building and the air buzzes with heavy heat despite its being no later than 10a.m. As the sun lifts away from the edge of the building and illuminates her whole alley, Maggie considers, some day, tracing the progress of the sun in chalk, so she can tell time. When the sun seems to be reaching its peak, she considers seriously that it may be time for a drink.

She paces back and forth. Her leisurely gait is hampered significantly by the pronounced limp on her right side where one twisted leg leaves her lop-sided, taller on one foot than on the other. This is the result of more neglect: an old broken leg never properly set, sustained in adolescence before she’d finished growing. She rolls through the lame half of her step like a cart with an oblong wheel, sometimes exaggerating the motion with a rightwards teeter. In some places, a certain hours, she feels safer appearing drunk than lame. Right now she does it to entertain herself, a drunken dance while waiting for her fate.

At high noon she stops and faces the mouth of alley with a romantic sense of timing that pays off, in this case. A man and a woman round the corner slowly, cautiously, wearing the black uniforms of the city police. Both are tall, fit people who are nevertheless sweating as if the alley were a Turkish bath. Maggie, under her leather jacket, hoodie, t-shirt and tank top, does not sweat. She extends the stick like a samurai waiting to strike.

“Ma’m, please put down the stick.” says the woman in a patronizing tone, placing a hand on her own club. “You are trespassing, do you understand? You will have to come with us.” Behind her, standing next to the male cop, is the fat little man with the moustache and the filthy mouth.

“I have passed on nobody’s tresses.” Maggie growls, staring down the length of her stick. “Not one of these tresses is marked privately as property. Show me the deed! I won’t be moved without a deed!”

“Knock it off, Mags.” I whisper to her. “Think straight: these are the cops. You can’t win by intimidating them.”

“Ma’m, I will not argue with you. Put down the stick now before we add assault of an officer of the law to your charges.” The woman sighs, wondering what she did to have her Monday morning begin on such a shitty note. It was lunch time – she should be at Tim Horton’s by now if there was any real justice in the world.

Maggie twirls the stick around in her right hand and plants it at her side, taking one step to the left. She extends her arms as if to show that no threat remains in them.

“Officer, I repeat: I am completely within my rights. This property is not properly marked as private, and no complaint has been made against my presence. I will not be bullied without cause. I have committed no crime.” Her demeanor has changed. She almost seems rational.

“We received a call from the landlord of 177 Bellview Place complaining of a vagrant on his property.” The policewoman gives the official spiel, taking a chance that the bum in the alley can understand what’s going on. “Sir, is this the individual you refered to earlier?” She asks without turning around. The landlord assents.

“That’s her alright.”

“So put down the stick,” she continues, “And come with us. You will be told how to proceed after we’ve dealt with some paperwork down at the station.” Maggie smiles, undaunted.

“With pardon to the esteemed Lord of the Land,” Maggie’s expansive hyperbole rears its head, briefly. “But I am not on the lands of 177 Bellview. Is the landlord of 179 Bellview, perhaps, adding his complaint to this gentleman’s?” The policewoman grinds her teeth in annoyance.

“Ma’m, I am not going to argue semantics with you. Put down the stick and come with us. You can put your complaints on the record.” Maggie’s face clouds over.

It's a beginning...

We peel back the oleaginous foundation of Maggie's garments millimeter by excruciating millimeter, separating fabric from scab as selectively as we can. She grits her teeth and squeezes her eyes shut but remains mute. Infections have bred like fruit flies down here under her final layer. Down here under the yellowed tank top pulled taught across her shoulders, pus and blood have welded themselves to the unwashed cotton and built a protective husk over the worst injuries. Pulling the shirt off is opening seeping abscesses and irritating the infections anew. But I tell her that it must be done once in a while, however much it might hurt and expose. She knows this, and so does nothing worse than sulk and grunt through the painful process.

She can't see her back but she suspects the worst of it: There's a new mould growing under here, something black and dusty crawling down the spines of her hidden appendages. The mould was growing through the undershirt, and the smell had begun to hang about her over the last few weeks. I ‘tsk’ scornfully. This revolting mess is the result of her own anger, her own neglect. She will wash only a few times a year when I insist, and even then the job can not be properly completed. She will not allow the task to be executed anywhere she might be seen, which rules out the public washrooms and baths that would be more hygienic than where we are now - hiding behind a dirty old ottoman under a fire escape in a dead-end alley. Nor will she accept help from anyone but me, and I can't reach the red and cracked undersides of her shoulder blades. We take what measures we can to stem the worst of the damage.

The shirt has been removed and Maggie shivers with exposure despite the sticky-hot evening air. I sigh, resigned to the task ahead of me.

"Give us the bottle, Mags." I tell her quietly, maybe a bit sternly. Maggie reaches into the inner pocket of the leather jacket she has bundled on her lap and pulls out a steel flask etched with a magical dancing fairy - a cheap Renaissance Faire trinket that she finds hilariously ironic. She unscrews the top and takes a deep drink, then passes it to me.

"This is a damn waste of good gin." She tells me. I splash the liquid onto a kitchen sponge and start dabbing at the scabby rash that lines the creases where her tank-top cuts into her flesh from armpit to shoulder. She winces.

"Isn't." I say gently. "It's a waste of terrible gin." She smirks at that. I take a drink myself and pass the bottle back to her. Small mercies.

I wipe away some of the pus that has started to ooze out of the old injuries right where her wings meet her shoulder blades. The physiology of her condition is largely unknown to both of us, but it's pretty clear that there is a flimsy, wrist-like joint just under the skin there. She can roll the protruding cartilage in all directions from that point, just as one might draw circles with a stationary hand just with motions of the wrist, flexing a forest of tendons. But the joint is thin and weak, and the skin of her back quickly turns into the thin webbing that covers the remainder of the limb. The result is a network of split, torn skin at the joint that gives out whenever the wings are jostled with too much pressure - such as the weight of a too-tight tank top.

After the benign task of cleaning up the worst of the pus, I start in trying to wash out the joint itself. Maggie draws a sharp breath even as I touch the sponge to the swollen, red mess. I haven't even begun to apply pressure yet. Here a crust of pus and blood has scabbed over wounds which have never really properly healed in ten years. Bits of fuzz and rotted fabric have been partially grown over, causing hard, painful boils and infections. Greasy deposits of dirt fill the rocky terrain of older scabs and scars. She takes another drink.

I do what I can to clean and disinfect what we can reach, a long and painful process that nets very little improvement. I then rinse the sponge out in the bucket of water we've filled from the hose in the back alley of the western apartment complex. I try to wash away the mould that is growing down the tendons of her wings and blooming over the torn and ragged web of pinkish membrane, but I can't reach this well either. In the end I have to simply squeeze out the sponge and hope the trickling water will catch the areas we missed. When we've done all we can Maggie climbs up to sit on the back of the old ottoman with her back to the wall and waits for her wings to dry, her jacket held defensively in front of her breasts although nobody will come back here and see her. We spend the next half-hour emptying the flask.

"If you'd just learn to stretch them out, Maggie." I tell her, talking about the root of our troubles: the wings. "Just, extend them a little. You could clean them much easier." I tell her, though she knows this.

"I can't." She says, no argument brokered. "If we can't reach them, they'll just have to rot off. How much longer can it take?" She will throw the most outrageous hyperbole in your face to disguise the fact that she means it.

"With your luck?" I snort. "You'll find a proper groom before that happens."

"Groom." She muses. "I like that. Like I'm a horse, some damn thoroughbred beast in a menagerie. Groom, nice."

I roll my eyes and get ready to leave. "Whatever, better a groom than me. You like smelling like rot and yeast? Fine. Great. Why not?"

"At least you keep secrets, Kyra." She grumbles, but she's thinking about it now, through an off-kilter skew of gin, pain and unaccustomed exposure. I'm no longer needed, so I'm gone; and Maggie finishes the last of her drink as unnoticed and alone as she has been all along. Her shoulder blades itch now and she strains once more to reach her own back, swearing although she always knew she wouldn't reach.

***

Maggie has lived under the fire escape for four years, a comparatively stable home for a streetie. There she sleeps on her ottoman, an eerily flesh-coloured beast which might once have been red or at minimum rust-coloured, which is usually turned back-out, facing the wall. She keeps a tarp in the springs of the chair which she will place over the landing of the fire escape if it looks like it might snow or rain during the night. She had a cat, sort of, that she called Mog, but it stopped coming by last June and she now suspects it belonged to the college kids in the basement of the six-plex that backs her alley. She owns one change of clothes which she keeps in a plastic LCBO bag that she carries with her everywhere. She wouldn't go so far as to keep anything under the fire escape - nothing she wanted to continue owning, in any case. The remainder of her belongings are always stowed on her person.

The alley which contains Maggie's fire escape is contained on three sides by the blank stares of red-brick apartment buildings, making it, in fact, an utterly illegal place to put a working fire escape. This is fine for Maggie (though not, I bet, for any burning inhabitants of the apartments on the east side) because it severely limits the chances that anyone would ever try to escape fire via what is, essentially, her rooftop. That nobody in four years had tried to so much as smoke a cigarette up there leads us to believe that the doors on all floors have long since been locked by a lawsuit-conscious but not especially bright landlord. But, if you want a brighter note, nobody in four years has burned to death up there either, at least as far as we can tell.

The neighbourhood which contains Maggie's alleyway is nice, nicer than it was when we arrived. It was the corner of Bellview and McDonald when we got here, now it’s “The Cannery”. Gentrification has a funny place in the hearts of streeties. It's code for "eviction", "fines" and "cops". But it isn't all bad, because on the other hand, it means you're a whole lot less likely to get robbed, assaulted or have your spot taken. Maggie has not, to date, been evicted, fined, arrested, robbed, assaulted or had her ottoman appropriated. The Cannery is in the east end of the city which used to be the old manufacturing district until the place stunk so much that the city shut it down and all the manufacturing jobs went to the suburbs, or Indonesia. Now it’s being slowly cleaned up and converted into cheapish loft-style condos. The influx of the youthful, artist and immigrant brought with it first trendy coffee shops, followed by restaurants and art galleries. In recent years there have even been proper boutique-style stores opening, quirky bohemian places with monosyllabic names frequently adorned by punctuation that shouldn’t be there – Tröve, S’ilver, Ælîyñ, that kind of thing. The district’s turn-of-the-century roots have been brought out and commodified. Our street lights look like gas lanterns, and certain popular corners have cobblestone crossings.

It’s not a likely place to take up residence in an alley, but like I said, it wasn’t quite like this when we got here. Maggie stays, though, for reasons she would never admit. “My stuff is here” she insists, though she cares so little for her stuff that she regularly forgets it in the dingy washrooms of bars she frequents, or under her seat at the movies. Maggie stays because this is familiar ground to her; not the alley and the fire escape, but the bourgeois artsy scene. Roots don’t mean a thing to Maggie, until she thinks about pulling them up.

Watch this space?

Starting November 1st 2007, I will be publishing my progress to my NaNoWriMo 2007 novel in this blog. Although a blog is still not an ideal novel-reading format (you will have to start down at the first entry, tolerate revisions as they come up and similar) it is still more ideal than mixing it in with my old blog.

My novel will be an urban fantasy yarn about issues surrounding homelessness and street life - societal responsibility for its poor and downtrodden, public space, choice, and politics. It will also be about metamorphosis, escape, leadership and hope. Too theoretical for you? All right, it's the story of an alcoholic street girl who has found herself burdened with flaccid, useless wings; and how she gets caught up in the fight for the rights of the street community against political and commercial interests; as told by her imaginary friend.

All readers are welcome, as are comments - but please bear in mind that a NaNo novel is a rough draft, a far cry from a finished product, and riddled with known problems that the writer simply can't find time to edit out. In that light, I appreciate encouragement, but am not likely to find criticism very helpful since I won't have time to edit out the problems at this stage.

Welcome and, I hope, enjoy.