If Sylvie Had Nine Lives by Leona Theis

Author:Leona Theis [Theis, Leona]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Freehand Books
Published: 2020-11-15T00:00:00+00:00

What Erik Saw

STANDING IN THE SHOWER with his eyes closed, a few days after his second surgery in as many weeks, Erik saw two bright kidney beans of light facing each other, a dark line between them. A bad sign, said his ophthalmologist. Erik and Syl made the six-hour drive to Edmonton for a second opinion, which echoed the first.

What Erik saw as he lay on the operating table for the third time, his head clamped motionless and his left eye still as stone because they’d stuck him with a needle to freeze it, was the business end of a medical instrument probing inside his eye. A small round tip of something pale and brown moving about.

“Ah,” said the surgeon when Erik told her about it afterward. “Hardly anyone sees it. One percent, at the outside.”

“I’ll consider myself lucky then.”

“I’m glad you see it that way.”

“Perceptive, too,” said Erik. “So to speak.”

The surgeon looked him directly in the eye, the one that wasn’t covered with a bandage, and set a hand on his shoulder, a light pressure, steadying. “That will depend entirely on how things heal up.”

Let this be over now, please. Three weeks ago, a Tuesday morning and he was on his way to the reno in Lawson Heights, the truck box weighed down by a thousand-dollar toilet he’d just discovered was cracked, his mind working on who he could hold responsible for the damage. Sun flashed bright on the river and spikey heads of purple thistle in the ditches stood tall above the grass, the punk of posies. Forget about the crappy toilet, this was the kind of drop-dead gorgeous day this place will hand you one after another in the summertime, making the blizzards in December and the week of minus forty in February worth it. Thank you, Saskatoon. The truck phone rang beside him and he reached for the receiver. Cynthia, who was doing electrical on the Lawson Heights job, and who happened to be Syl’s cousin, was calling to ask where he was. She was cooling her heels at the site without access to the house and she needed to pee and maybe this time she’d put her waiting-around time on her invoice.

“You should’ve gone to the other job first.”

“Well I didn’t.”

“Julia should be there. She’ll let you in.”

“Julia’s not.”

“She will be. Right away if not sooner.”

“Word is, she won’t be showing up at all today.”

“She what? I’ll be there in fifteen.”

“Make it ten, or I’ll have to squat right here in the driveway.”

“Twenty.”

Three times he slipped past other cars on streets where it’s all right so long as you don’t get caught, and ten minutes later he was within a block of the job. He rounded the final corner and was suddenly driving through a storm of black flecks. He stopped in the driveway and blinked and blinked again. You get one set of eyes. Blink. One set. Cynthia was knocking on the side window and Erik was reaching for the phone again. He

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