Saying nothing more to her for the time being, Sergey decided, would spare her any further suffering and tears. Meanwhile, she sat on the front steps to the house, waiting for Donatella to return. After pouring herself a coffee, he got two coffee mugs ready for the girls, to help soothe the hurt. When he next checked outside, the girls were arguing and quarreling outside on the veranda. They were lovers, all right, not just friends, or best friends, he saw, realizing even more profoundly the depth of his error, his blunder.
“Another faux pas, or something along those lines.” He could not bear to watch or hear the girls fighting and arguing. They continued quarreling and fighting, as they slowly walked down Eglinton Avenue West. They walked a few footsteps every few minutes along the sidewalk that ran alongside the row of townhouse and brick houses, and, every few minutes he saw a hand lash out, and the spectacle caused him to gasp, as he worried about sparing the neighbours the commotion. After he finished his cup of coffee, he resumed his watch from the doorstep, but they were gone. All he found was a blood stains on the doorstep.
“Jesus Christ.” Trying to stay calm, unemotional, reserved, he walked along the yard path to the sidewalk. He looked up and down the length of the residential street, wondering if any neighbours had caught wind of any potential disruption to their well-ordered lives. His beloved niece and her friend were nowhere in sight, but had left a trail of droplets of blood, as if from a nosebleed, or who knew what else. He walked back up the steps and went inside the house. There was a loud engine revving, and he saw a city police patrol car slowly cruising by. He slammed the side door and returned to his mug of cool coffee and the mound of unwashed dishes from the sink that he had stashed in storage bin in the closet and the additional stacks of dishes that had accumulated seemingly overnight in the sink. He finally noticed the pile of bills, paperwork, and mail that he had allowed to pile up unanswered and unopened. He had spent literally days tidying up for the girls’ arrival. After he had been laid off—he didn’t like the sound of fired—which, after all, was potentially revocable and being appealed by several union representative and a lawyer he had been forced to hire, he had let the normal domestic chores slide. He didn’t bother to vacuum carpets, sweep floors, dust furniture or the computer, scrub the toilets and sinks, or clean anything, or even shave, or get a haircut, for weeks. Instead, he had sat in his reclining chair like some severely injured car accident victim, reading science fiction and fantasy novels, detective fiction, pornographic potboilers, anything to lose himself.
Only later in the early evening did he manage to rouse himself from his torpor and actually left the house. The telephone rang and he saw from the caller identification box his sister had mailed him for Christmas the call came from Humber College residence.
“I love you, Sergey,” Anastasia said.
Why was she cold calling him like this, he wondered, as he cleared his throat.
“Don’t you understand? I love you, I want you, and I want to live with you.”
He was starting again to see the error of his ways, although he wasn’t certain if he was committing actual error or sin or if it was Catholic guilt. He didn’t know how to deal with her and he abruptly hung up the telephone, much to his regret.
Along the broad sidewalks of Eglinton Avenue West where he strolled to the twenty-four hour convenience store he regularly patronized. He bought some groceries, mostly less than nutritious snacks, potato chips, roasted peanuts, ice cream sandwiches. As he stepped through the sliding doors, withdrew some cash from the automated teller machine, offered pocket change to a homeless man checking the coin boxes of a bank of pay phones, and set of the bell from the gasoline pumps behind him, he had noticed the silhouette of a shapely female’s form following behind him. But he thought nothing of it, until he had turned onto the side residential street and then heard lightweight, fast-paced footsteps rapidly behind him, the crunch of the soles of work boots on asphalt behind him. Wearing a bandanna to cover her face, Anastasia seized him by the arm, wrenching it behind him, and pushed him down to the pavement. He smelled her before he saw her, the spiced rum, the fumes from the beer and hard liquor exuded by her breath and body spray exuded by the pores in her body. His niece. She started punching him in the head and the blows from her clenched fists landed against his body. She grabbed him by the collars, dragged him around, manhandled him, and pulled his jacket up over his head. With his head covered, she managed to bring him down to the residential street he sidewalk, so that the plastic bag of groceries fell to the ground. The bottle of lemonade smashed, scattering fractured and broken glass, spilling the juice. Large sized bags of tortilla and potato chips were scattered about. In a squatting position, she started kneeing him in the head abruptly, deftly. Then she rose and stood back on her small feet and swiftly kicked him in the head with those constructions boots, which she had used for tree planting work earlier that summer. The blows landed about his ears, eyes, bruising them, his mouth, causing blood to trickle from the corner of his lips, stinging his open cuts. The impact of the steel toes caused him to lose and break a few teeth. The kicks showered against his temples and skull, causing bruises the shape of goose eggs. Then she fled while he groaned and mumbled his apologies and she continued weeping unabated tears.
