other, farther places if he should ever feel the need. This is the place where land and water meet, where the shoreline is forever shifting, waves ebbing over the rocky sand or crashing against the roots of rust-coloured arbutus, cold and wind tearing away layers of bark. The buildings of downtown rise above it all, winking through the mist, attracting boys and girls from the suburbs, the Eastside, the North Shore.
This is the damp Vancouver that Danny knows. The Vancouver he hurries across, where the shadows and crowds and fog provide cover for the men who populate his open nights. This is the Vancouver where he sometimes sees glimmers of old lovers through the rain; one stands ghostlike in half-lit alleys, blue eyes pulsing through the gloom.
Tonight the hot air opens his pores. He walks along the seawall in Stanley Park, under the shade of Douglas firs and cedars, avoiding the piles of fallen needles and dust that have collected in the dips and cracks of the concrete. He can hear a car radio through the trees. “This may be the hottest summer on record, folks. Temperatures will remain in the thirties for the next week at least. Watch out—1982 is turning out to be a scorcher!” Danny looks up at the dark sky—cloudless, with stars barely visible from this swath of green that flirts with nature but is really a city park, made and marked by machines and the humans who travel its paths. By the men who walk with disguised purpose between trees in the night.
He turns onto a narrow gravel trail and his stomach clenches in expectation. Branches brush his ears, poking the thin skin like sharp words. His shoes press down on the rocks and dirt, his steps making as little noise as a raccoon’s pointed, furry paws. He wonders if the police tape is still there, past the trees on his left. A ripple of fear builds in the bottom of his spine and snakes its way up into his neck, his ears. He thinks about turning back. Perhaps the murderer is waiting for one more victim, maybe a nervous, jumpy Chinese man. He passes a group who look over their shoulders at every sound.
“Someone told me it was Wayne. You know, that short guy from back east.”
“I heard it might have been someone he was sleeping with.”
Danny shivers in a gust of warm air. And decides to stay in the park. If he left he would be scared and lonely. Here, he’s only scared.
The first time he found this trail, he was living in a tiny, ground-floor apartment on Pendrell, where clouds of flies and the smell of cat pee drifted in through the window. For a week, he wandered from bed to toilet to stove, unsure of whether he should lounge in his underwear or clean the mould that grew on the sills. He finally went outside, where at least the streets looked familiar and walking from one place to the next was a simple decision. He stumbled on this path while exploring the park on an overcast, chilly night. His parents disliked the outdoors, especially in the dark, when fences and garages blended into the bush and the yellow eyes of unknown animals glowered from their perches between trees. And so Danny, restless, with nerves standing on end, decided to walk every trail he came across, touch each species of evergreen he passed. Eventually, he came to a clearing where three benches sat in a triangle. There, behind a thicket of vine maples, he saw two men clasping hands under branches that curved above their heads.
It was then that he began to come to the park every week.
Tonight, his nostrils twitch. He can smell the men, some standing in groups of two or three where the trail widens and forks to the left and the right. There’s no mistaking the smell that collects in arm hairs, the smell that is musk and breath and cologne all at once. The smell that lingers on Danny when he returns home, a slight smile playing across his lips as he lies alone in his double bed.
As he walks, he begins to forget the news, the eyes of his plain-faced mother as he sat eating the food she cooked. He forgets that he rushed out of his parents’ house unceremoniously. His muscles ache and his blood rushes, thinned by the heat around and within him. He continues to walk, and is exactly as he appears: a