Enola told her to maintain her composure, lest somebody discover their coverup. Enola warned Kiara she didn’t want her father and mother to become involved—their precious reputations and pharmacies dragged into the ugly business, as she urged her to keep her shit together. She started cutting his body into pieces like she did when she worked in the meat department of her uncle’s grocery store or gutting and cleaning a deer or moose her father or uncle had shot when she went hunting with her father in northwestern Ontario. She cut the body into pieces, separating his head and limbs from the torso, cutting the limbs at the joints, the knees and the ankles, the wrists and the elbows, and put the body parts, the hands, the feet, the lower legs, the upper legs and arms, into plastic bags, which she double wrapped. She sweated and grunted as she cut and sawed, while Kiara sporadically broke into tears, wiping the tears away from her face, with the hem of her pullover. Then she put the body parts into his freezer. Meanwhile, Kiara sobbed and cried, but was too afraid to leave.
“Kiara, we did society a service—getting rid of a pervert.”
“How can you say that about him? He was a nice man. He never did anything bad to anyone.”
“He made pornographic videos.”
“He asked our permission and we acted willingly.”
“He made pornos, Kiara, disgusting, perverted pornos.”
“But it was soft core, and we wanted to be in the videos. And we’re adults—age of majority.”
“Are you, like, trying to be his lawyer? Cause, if you are—” She waved a bloody knife at Kiara, who broke down again, wailing uncontrollably. “Kiara, get your shit together. I need to get you through this. Don’t keep up this crying jag. In fact, keep it up, and I’ll lose my temper, and you’ll be next,” she said, pointing the blade pointedly.
Kiara bit the cuff of her wrist through the hem of her pullover, trying to stifle her own sobbing. After Enola looked around the house thoroughly, she said they needed to clean the house from ceiling to basement and required plenty of bleach. She took Kiara on the subway train to the Walmart at the Scarborough Town Centre. In the Walmart, Kiara looked distressed, fearing she would break into sobs and start crying spontaneously. Enola whispered Walmart had security cameras everywhere. She warned her to maintain her composure and a calm demeanor, or she would have to stab her in the heart. With her heckling laugh, sotte voce, Enola said, at this rate their plans for world domination and breaking into the porn business would be destroyed.
Enola had a shopping cart and a list on Konstantinos’ index cards. As she checked down the list in the brightly lit superstore aisles, she loaded the shopping cart with two backpacks, two pairs of hiking boots, bottles of bleach, and plastic garbage bags, which she paid for with Konstantinos’ cash. In a stall of the restrooms, with their plastic shopping bags doubled, they put the bottles of bleach into their backpacks. When they arrived back at Konstantinos’s house, Enola said they couldn’t leave the house until the cleaning chores were complete. They used bleach and buckets of water and cleaned once, twice, and thrice.
Then, at night, they made the first of a series of trips to the foot of Leslie Street and hikes through Tommy Thompson Park. They rode the streetcar along Queen Street East to the intersection and hikes to the foot of Leslie Street. Then they walked around the barriers to the gravel road that snaked along the manmade point.
The tip of Leslie Street was the Vicki Keith Point, named after a marathon swimmer, Enola said. “We should remember to call it that – she’s a hero. Imagine swimming across Lake Ontario. How tired and sore would you feel? She even hallucinated while she was swimming. Come on, Kiara, be inspired. Get your shit together. You’re going to make it. I need you to show some courage so we can get through this mess.”
Near the nesting and breeding ground of thousands of cormorants and seagulls, they disposed of Konstantinos’ frozen body parts. Enola thought his remains didn’t stand a chance against so many seagulls and cormorants. Before she tore through the black plastic, Enola said the ravens would pick at the garbage bags and then the other birds would join the posse scavenging his remains.
“When I worked as a meat cutter for my uncle’s grocery store, I used to love to make runs in my uncle’s pickup truck to the dump and watch the bears and eagles and vultures rip apart the spoiled meat the butcher told me to throw away before the big boss, my uncle, saw.”
When Kiara sobbed and cried, Enola snapped and slapped her with the palms and back of her hands. “What is your problem? Were you in love with this guy?”
“He didn’t deserve to die,” Kiara sobbed.
“I acted in self-defense, Kiara. Get your shit together, or I’m going to slap you around like you’re my bitch and I’m your pimp.”
They disposed of the last of his remains, part of his left leg, including his foot, his penis and testicles, frozen hard as a rock, wrapped in black plastic garbage bags. They made three trips over two days. By the end of the second day the seagulls, cormorants, ravens, and even hawks seemed to have eaten and picked apart the wrapped human remains they discarded in the lagoon, but they couldn’t be certain because of the dark and shredded pieces of black plastic garbage seemed scattered everywhere.
“I used to take hikes down this road, snaking along Leslie Street Spit, trying to figure out what was wrong with my life—what direction I was heading. The only discovery I made: this manmade park is probably a good spot to kill someone and dump their body.”
Kiara cringed and shivered as they walked along the dirt road on a point made from the landfill of skyscrapers in the financial district. Then Enola insisted that Kiara accompany her back to the house for one final meeting. Kiara broke into sobbing, broken by gasps and exclamations, again. Enola clenched Kiara’s shoulders and insisted Kiara tell her what the matter was. Caught in the clutches of Enola, Kiara felt too afraid to say she feared she would maim or kill her. Enola tried to reassure her she didn’t need to worry; however, if she didn’t keep her mouth shut, she would have to come back, hunt her down, and kill her. Enola threatened to inform Kiara’s parents.
“That would be a disgrace, wouldn’t it? Your parents would have to send you to a nunnery? Or I guess Taj Mahal would be the East Indian equivalent, wouldn’t it? Or you’d help the homeless with Mother Theresa on the streets of Calcutta.”
“Enola, shut up!”
“Oh, I forgot. Mother Theresa died.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Trying to provoke me? You want to get into a knife fight?”
“No. I don’t want to fight. Please leave me alone.”
Enola gave her some cash, even though Kiara insisted she didn’t want any of Konstantinos’ money. She offered her his Ironman wrestling mask and the lacey eye masks, but Kiara merely put the costumery aside. Enola took his external hard drives and data cards with the videos and pictures from their video shoots together and put them into her backpack. The evidence was in the videos he filmed, Enola said.
“If you say anything, I’ll tell your parents what you did on camera with a dirty old man. Do I need to make myself any clearer?”
Enola felt confident she needn’t worry because Kiara was equally guilty and complicit. Besides, she concluded, self-defense was only natural and acceptable, since he exploited them.
Kiara became teary and cried again. “He was a kind and gentle man. He paid us.”
“Sounds like he paid you more.”
Enola started to rage, and Kiara—who was intimidated, bullied, and frightened—decided she was safest if she kept quiet. Enola said she was giving Kiara half the money he left in the house, so she shouldn’t think she was ripping her off, which was the least of Kiara’s concerns. Enola decided to take the hard drives to her own apartment for her own protection. The cash allowed Enola to rent a storage locker where she stored the external hard drives and data cards with the videos and images from their photoshoot and video sessions.
Then Enola decided to move to Vancouver. She rented an apartment and struggled to find work until she found a meat and poultry packing plant which hired her to work as an industrial butcher, based on the experience she possessed as a meat cutter and packer in her uncle’s grocery store and the glowing references he gave her. When she started to have uncontrollable vomiting and nauseous from eviscerating chickens, she was forced to quit. Then she discovered she was pregnant from a one-night stand with a co-worker, after she worked overtime on the cleaning and evisceration processing line. Finally realizing the nausea and vomiting was from morning sickness, she tried to return to her job, but human resources said she lied on her job application form and refused to hire her back to the poultry plant. She took some pastry chef courses at a community college, which her employment insurance covered. Then she found work in an ethnic supermarket in Vancouver’s Chinatown, cutting and packaging meat and poultry. Soon she felt empty and lonely. When she realized she had no friends and family in Vancouver, only acquaintances and one-night stands with co-workers, she moved back to Toronto to try to resume a normal life again.
