Hummingbird Read online

  HUMMINGBIRD

  a novel

  DEVIN KRUKOFF

  © Devin Krukoff 2018

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical – including photocopying, recording, taping, or through the use of information storage and retrieval systems – without prior written permission of the publisher or, in the case of photocopying or other reprographic copying, a licence from the Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency (Access Copyright), One Yonge Street, Suite 800, Toronto, ON, Canada, M5E 1E5.

  Published with the generous assistance of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Alberta Media Fund.

  Freehand Books

  515 – 815 1st Street SW

  Calgary, Alberta T2P 1N3

  Book orders: LitDistCo

  8300 Lawson Road Milton, Ontario L9T 0A4

  Telephone: 1-800-591-6250 Fax: 1-800-591-6251

  [email protected] www.litdistco.ca

  Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

  Krukoff, Devin, 1976-, author

  Hummingbird / Devin Krukoff.

  Issued in print and electronic formats.

  ISBN 978-1-988298-37-5 (softcover).–ISBN 978-1-988298-38-2

  (EPUB).–ISBN 978-1-988298-39-9 (PDF)

  I. Title.

  PS8621.R79H86 2018 C813’.6 C2018-902947-1

  C2018-902948-X

  Edited by Rosemary Nixon

  Book design by Grace Cheong

  Printed on FSC® recycled paper and bound in Canada by Houghton Boston

  For Raina Jean, the bravest little girl that I know.

  All time is all time. It does not change. It does not lend itself to warnings or explanations. It simply is.

  —Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  CHAPTER ONE

  When the Connors moved out, I felt like I should have been consulted, or at least warned. I didn’t know them in the traditional sense. We’d never spoken. I’d only gleaned their names from the buzzer outside the front entrance and the occasional piece of stray mail. But we’d been living in adjacent units for three years, and in that time our routines had gradually synchronized. I ate when they ate, slept when they slept, pleasured myself when they pleasured each other, spent so much time with my ear against the wall that my neck had a permanent crick. Our abutting bedrooms gave me intimate access to their lives, and not just their sex lives. From my mattress on the floor, I could hear every word they exchanged in bed—muffled but clear through the flimsy drywall and insulation. Whether they were making weekend plans or squabbling over money or wondering if they’d ever manage to conceive a child, I was listening. When they eventually got pregnant, I was the first to hear the news and raised a glass to the wall. For the first time in my adult life, I was almost happy. I had a book in print. A place of my own. A growing family to vicariously enjoy. From my balcony, I could almost see the ocean. The disorder in the apartment was useful, or familiar at least. I was accustomed to the dishes in the sink and the empty liquor bottles on the counters. I didn’t mind navigating towers of second-hand paperbacks or kicking through piles of old shirts and underwear on my way to the bathroom. It’s true that my place could have been nicer or bigger, but it had the essentials: a sitting room, a galley kitchen, a bedroom, and a four-piece bath. As for all the neighbours, I appreciated the sounds of them going about their lives—a spoon rapping against a pot, a body shifting in a bathtub, a vacuum cleaner grinding. People shouting, laughing, fucking all around me. I might not have spoken to any of them directly, but we communicated in other, more subtle ways, and I took comfort from the notion that we were part of the same community.

  Of course, I wouldn’t have wanted to actually live with any of them. In the past, whenever I’d been forced to room with strangers, I’d avoided the common spaces as much as possible. I never had trouble renting, as people sensed I would be a quiet tenant, but they inevitably came to resent how little they saw of me—holed up in my room for days at a time, pissing into empty pop bottles, eating from cans I’d stabbed open with a knife. They might not have known the lurid details, but they knew enough to get nervous. When I could finally afford a place of my own all that pressure to assimilate, to be normal, disappeared. If I wanted to be alone, I could be alone. All I had to do was slip a monthly cheque under the superintendent’s door.

  The Connors’ departure changed everything; not all at once, but gradually, through events that hardly seemed connected at the time. They cleared out in the early morning, while I was still sleeping, having made no mention of their plans in earshot of the common wall. By the time I woke around noon—hungover, disoriented—a new tenant was lugging boxes down the hall. He looked old and unwell, with melted features, unkempt hair, and yellow jaundiced eyes. After watching him haul a television past my spyhole, I stepped onto my balcony and sent out a psychic ping but received nothing back, no glimmer of where the Connors had gone, no idea why they’d abandoned me. The day was bright and calm, the neighbourhood quiet. Not even the pale man—a shut-in who lived on the top floor of the low-rise across the way—was stirring. I lit a cigarette and scanned the sky for birds, not noticing that my new neighbour’s balcony door was wide open until it suddenly crashed shut.

  “No consideration!” the old man shouted from the opposite side of the glass.

  I looked at the cigarette in my hand. I’d been smoking on that balcony for years. The Connors had never complained. I considered shouting this at the old man’s door, or slamming my own door by way of response. Instead, I dropped the barely smoked cigarette into a glass of water and gingerly retreated into my apartment. The ceiling creaked as someone upstairs moved from one room to another. A toilet flushed and human waste rushed down through a pipe in my wall. I sat down with my laptop. An arrow became a hand, the hand became a cursor, and soon I was deep in the machine. I touched icons and windows swelled open. Message boards filled with sympathetic voices. My stress levels gradually diminished as I leapt from website to website, following a familiar winding path through Reddit and YouTube and Twitter to a celebrity news site, where every piece of gossip felt essential. By the time the light started fading in the windows, I’d all but forgotten the new neighbour. Then a hard craving for nicotine pulsed through my body and drove me over to the common wall. The old man was thumping around in his unit, moving furniture from the sound of it. I looked at my cigarettes. Only one thing could trump that compulsion. I went back to the laptop and touched a bookmark in a corner of the screen. A pixelated door appeared. An age verification button shaped like a keyhole. I clicked on the keyhole and was presented with a number of coloured doors. I selected the pink door and found myself in an actual pink room. Onscreen, a girl with red hair lay on a pink bed, looking straight into my eyes. She couldn’t have been older than twenty, wearing a cut off T-shirt and low-slung jeans. Her name, a banner at the top of the screen informed me, was Jasmine.

  Jasmine touched her breasts.
She touched her face. She popped the button on her jeans and gave the camera a mischievous smile. Her eyes flicked from her webcam to the comments being left by users like myself on a little scrolling window beside the video feed:

  Shake it bb

  show yr pussy

  RU HORNY???

  PLZ SHOW YR PUSSY

  There were eight of us lurking on the periphery of the pink room, our faceless avatars displayed alongside the comments, my alias—Midsummer Knight—at the top of the list, a little crown beside my name identifying me as a power user. I knew most of the girls on the site, but had never seen Jasmine before. I didn’t contribute to the comments, content for the moment to watch.

  After a minute, Jasmine leaned forward and typed: hey midnite, how r u?

  My face grew warm. My fingers hovered over the keyboard.

  Hello, I typed back.

  i’m lonely, she wrote. wanna go priv8?

  I composed and deleted several replies without sending them. Someone asked to see Jasmine’s ass and she wagged her behind at the camera, proving that she was a real person sharing this exact moment in time with us, a person who, for a price, would be willing to do real things to her body, show what we asked her to show, touch where we asked her to touch.

  Next door, the old man had gone quiet. I went to the bathroom and came back with a roll of toilet paper, checking the drapes to make sure they were shut tight.

  Jasmine was still onscreen, the lurkers going on in their usual vein.

  PUSSY PLZ!!!

  so beautiful

  I will come for you now …

  She sat back on her haunches and played with her hair, trying not to look bored. My finger stroked the touchpad. I double clicked and my credit card went through automatically. The other lurkers disappeared and the scrolling posts were replaced by a blank chat window with a blinking cursor. Jasmine gave the camera a sly smile and leaned forward.

  hey midnite

  Hello, I typed back.

  i had a feeling about you

  Did you?

  mmmmm. where do you want to start baby?

  A little conversation.

  Disappointment flickered across her face, as if she’d rather have jumped straight to the show.

  what do you want to talk about?

  I don’t know, I admitted. I’d done this plenty of times before but felt strangely self-conscious, as if the camera feed went both ways, and Jasmine could see me as well as I could see her.

  Where are you from? I asked.

  hollywood.

  I chuckled, knowing that the colour-coded rooms (I pictured them joined by a common hall, like cells) were in my city, a twenty-minute walk from my front door. They might not have advertised this fact on their website, but the information hadn’t been hard to find.

  I decided to play along.

  What’s the weather like in Hollywood?

  hot, she wrote back with a grin. She was lying on her belly with her legs folded up behind her, ankles crossed

  What do you do in your real life? I asked.

  real life?

  When you’re not on here. Do you have any hobbies or anything? let’s see … i like having sex, watching porn …

  I laughed and shook my head, determined to break through, to make her real. What about your family? Do you have any brothers or sisters?

  She stifled a yawn. nope.

  I stared at the screen for a minute, not knowing what else to say.

  so what do you do for a living? she finally asked.

  I’m a writer

  wow that’s exciting

  No, it isn’t.

  sure it is

  I’m sorry, I wrote. I’m terrible at this.

  at what?

  Small talk.

  so why don’t we do something different?

  Before I could answer, Jasmine swung her legs around and brought the rest of her body into view. She unzipped her jeans and flashed a triangle of panties—pink, like the walls of the room. She reached for her keyboard.

  want me to keep going?

  Yes, I wrote back, helplessly.

  She shimmied her jeans down and kicked them away. I caught a glimpse of colour on her inner thigh—a tattoo, an iridescent wing.

  are you hard? she wrote.

  Yes, I admitted.

  are you touching it?

  Yes.

  tell me what to do.

  Afterwards, I closed the laptop, flushed the toilet paper, and paced in front of the closed drapes. The need for a cigarette had returned, stronger than ever. I’d just taken out my pack when someone knocked at the door. I didn’t move. The knock came again, three firm raps, and I eased over to the door on the balls of my feet. Through the warped lens of the spyhole, I saw the superintendent’s tight perm, the unforgiving slot of her mouth. She knocked again, her knuckles just inches from my face. I kept as still as possible, breathing through my mouth, aware of the tacky residue of semen on my stomach. She had the key to every apartment in the building. I pictured them on an iron loop at her waist, dozens of perfectly notched invasions. I rested my hand on the doorknob. The superintendent lifted her fist to knock one more time, then paused, as if sensing danger on my side of the door. She gave a small shake of the head, then turned and passed out of sight.

  When she was gone, I sank down to a crouch, my grip on the present moment weakening. The air in the apartment rippled and I found myself on a carpeted floor, looking up at my father’s delighted face. In his hands was a puppy the size of a well-fed gerbil. “Found her in a dumpster,” he said, grinning as if he’d conjured the creature from thin air: a blind, deaf thing with a pulsing sucker for a mouth.

  “It’s all right,” he said. “You can hold it.”

  I shook my head emphatically.

  Dad laughed and dropped the animal in my lap, going off to look for my sister. The thing looked eyeless, tiny legs pistoning like parts on a windup toy. Its claws stabbed me, got traction in the folds of my shirt and propelled it up to my face, where it latched on my chin and attempted to feed. I flung the creature away with a shriek. It hit the wall with a decisive thump, just as my father and sister came back into the room.

  “Jesus!” Dad yelled, scooping up the squealing puppy. “What is wrong with you, Felix?”

  My apartment jerked back into focus. I could still smell the old house, still feel the thick carpet under my feet. My legs ached and I stretched them out on the laminate floor, wondering how long I’d been squatting there. Long enough for it to get dark. The hairs on my forearms quivered. I sensed Mathilda hiding somewhere in the apartment. Not the puppy I’d thrown that day, but the dog she became, a thick-necked, broad-chested animal who threatened anything that passed through her visible zone of dominion—a jogger, the mailman, a plastic bag animated by the wind. A humming insect swerved around my head, leaving me slapping at nothing. I heaved myself up and walked stiffly to the window, sparkles shooting from my knees to my toes. I listened for the Connors out of habit, missing their soft mutters, their careless laughter, their headboard tapping rhythmically at my wall. In the lit windows of the low-rise across the way, everyone was staring at a screen. My body strained for nicotine the way a submerged lung strains for air. After one last glance through my spyhole, I threw open the door and hurried to the stairwell, jogging down three floors to the back entrance of the building. The door closed heavily behind me. I fumbled with my lighter. Flame hit paper and I took a long and gratifying drag, then walked off quickly through the parking lot, making a moving target of myself to discourage anyone from talking to me. At the street, I kept going, mothlike and fluttering, heading instinctively for the brighter lights of the downtown shopping district. Individual strangers approached on foot and I felt myself drowning. But as the crowd thickened, my discomfort grew almost tolerable. I ducked into a twenty-four hour café, where I ordered a small coffee in a quavering voice and carried my cup to an isolated table beside one of the broad windows looking out onto the street.

&nb
sp; This was what normal people did. They went out. They bought coffee.

  I lifted my cup, but my hands were trembling so violently I had to set it back down without taking a sip. Outside, men dressed like boys and women dressed like hookers surged through the streets, mingling like dangerous tides. Two middle-aged men in ball caps and school jackets burst into the café, laughing. I hunkered over my cup as they ordered sandwiches, then sat down at the table next to mine. I pretended to look out the window, a hard tremor settling in my core. If I turned my head, I was certain I would find them staring at me. I was just considering what to do if they attacked, when my attention shifted abruptly to the view outside. A familiar figure was moving towards the window. She looked different out on the street, younger somehow, in an oversized sweater with the hood pulled up, but there could be no doubt who it was. Jasmine. She met my eye through the glass and I could tell that she felt herself recognized, or was aware, at least, of the possibility. Then her eyes flicked away and she passed out of sight.

  “Go,” one of the men at the next table muttered.

  I glanced over, but neither one of them was looking at me. I stood up so fast that I nearly knocked over my coffee and headed for the door. Jasmine was at the end of the block, her hands jammed into the pockets of her hoodie. I followed at a safe distance, passing clusters of pedestrians with night-blurred faces. After a couple of minutes, Jasmine jaywalked across a busy street and joined a small crowd at a bus shelter. I crossed at a light, then doubled back and came up on her from behind, my eyes on the back of her head. She was smaller than I would have guessed from what I’d seen online, with the compact build of a gymnast. She looked down the street at an approaching bus and I saw her face in profile—heavy eyeliner, upturned nose, a small well-defined mouth. The bus pulled up and she climbed on nimbly, as if weighing nothing at all. A strong pair of invisible hands shoved me through the door, and I fumbled through my pockets for change. Jasmine was sitting alone near the back. I paid the driver and walked past several empty spots to her bench. She’d taken the window seat, leaving the aisle free. I hesitated a moment, then sat down beside her. She sighed and tilted her legs deliberately away from me as the bus started moving again. I tried not to think about her shaved pubis, the hummingbird tattoo on her thigh.