Kevin lives in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside, and not the good part; not Chinatown, not Gastown. The single room he rents is walking distance from a homeless shelter and he feels compelled to volunteer there on the weekends when he isn’t fixing toilets or air conditioners. During the week and in the mornings before his work, Kevin runs. It feels good to him, he can clear his mind, leave his past behind him, and feel with his whole body the experience of moving forward, of advancement.
Kevin spends much of his free time alone exercising his preternatural gift, the one that makes his imagination real, and he has been trying very hard to develop some means of combining it with martial arts without the help of a martial arts instructor. He doesn’t want to get close to anyone because when he first left home, his time on the road was one blunder after another that left someone in the hospital or dead, and he has no desire to be the cause of anymore death. Any man’s death, he is happy to kill the alien who had killed a woman he was growing to love. That alien is as good as dead.
Kevin speaks limited French now and he uses it in the morning before his run around the neighborhoods of the DTES, where everyone still asks him if he plays for the Grizzlies even though the NBA team left the city over a decade ago and he has told many of them multiple times that he does not, when he stops at a small cafe for a croissant. He usually jogs to his gym where he only recognizes people as the regulars of the establishment, he doesn’t really know anyone’s name and rarely says more than hello to anyone. He makes money helping a local handyman and it is enough to afford a small apartment that is centrally located to the places he needs to go. He mostly saves his money; he avoids alcohol and never indulges in fancy eating or clothing. He has managed an impressive savings and he is unsure how he will use it. Maybe he will start out on the road again, explore eastern Canada, but he is in no rush.
Today, when Kevin leaves his apartment for his morning run, he does the cursory sweep of the area and the people moving by – just in case the alien has found him and planned an ambush – and when he sees all the usual white faces, he puts his earphones in and jogs down the sidewalk with the sound of James Taylor in his ears. And while he is out, he notices something strange in a group of joggers that he is accustomed to seeing. Among the group of mostly middle aged men and a handful of middle aged women from a local rehab, Kevin sees a woman much younger, maybe in her twenties. She has a muscular frame and she is tall with skin the color of caramel. She has something in her ear that Kevin notices right away; maybe it’s just headphones, or maybe she’s communicating with the alien. Kevin is standing on the sidewalk as the group passes when the woman looks him in the eyes for a brief second that convinces him that she is after him. He tries to remain nonchalant as he jogs off in the opposite direction, but steals glances behind him at the young woman in the group as they turn onto the next street. Kevin is sure that he sees the woman, just as she turns, stare back at him, and when he jerks his attention back to the scene in front of him, he is confronted by the pole of a street light. He hits it hard enough that he needs a minute to recover, then he continues his run very cautiously, keeping a lookout for anyone who might be keeping an eye on him.
Kevin’s jog is short, he is eager to get back to his apartment. He wants to look in every corner of his bedroom for listening devices or cameras, in case the woman had doubled back when he left and was spying on him for the alien. He doesn’t find anything, nothing in the vents, under his bed, in his closets; every corner is clean. He locks all three of the locks that he added to his door as he leaves for work, this morning he is fixing toilets in a local apartment building. It is old and he wonders why anyone would pay the rent to stay there, but in the apartments where he is fixing toilets, he sees the occupant’s poverty and he feels for them. The poverty that he had known in rural NC didn’t feel harsh. In fact, he appreciated that his toys were the nature in his yard; the trees were his jungle gym and the lake was his pool. That life taught him that even with very little material possessions he could find happiness if he looked hard enough. But the poverty in a city like the DTES seemed so mean and threatening. Big rats crawled over everything and the roaches were mouse-sized. The people selling drugs shared stairwells with little girls playing games. All those thing existed where he was from, but the remoteness of his home made it invisible unless one went looking for it.
After work, he makes his way back to the small TV room of his apartment, and he imagines targets and then knives that he throws into them. He imagines a replica of the alien that he uses as a punching bag. Eventually he falls asleep in his arm chair with his TV on, and he wakes up with the sun, just in time for his morning run before work, without the aid of an alarm clock.
Out on the sidewalk, the group goes by again, but they are missing their new addition from the day before, the tall muscular woman. Kevin looks off in the direction that the joggers had left behind, and this time he is confronted by the tall young woman. He reacts as he had the day before when he ran into the light post.
“Hey, I saw you yesterday, thought I’d say hello.” She isn’t as tall as Kevin, but he doesn’t have to look down at her. Kevin takes a deep breath to regain his cool as the woman introduces herself. “I’m Anish, I just started working at the rehab. You live around here?”
“Yea,” Kevin manages as he takes off in a jog. “It was nice to meet you but I gotta get started so I can make it back before work.” Kevin picks up speed, but soon notices that Anish is running next to him.
“I’ll jog with you. Those guy’ll be alright, they slow me down anyway.”
Kevin purses his lips; he is getting nervous. He knows what comes next.
“So what’s your name?”
Kevin wonders if he should lie, It’s the best thing to do, he thinks. Under pressure he struggles to come up with an alias, and then says the first name that comes to mind,
“Elroy.” Elroy?
“Like from the Jetsons?”
“That’s it.” Kevin feels stupid, the name sounds made up. No real person has the name Elroy.
“Well it’s nice to meet you…” Anish stops abruptly. “Elroy, lookout there’s a car coming”
Elroy? Who is that…, Kevin thinks, and then in a split second remembers, but by then he is in the middle of the street and a car with a distracted driver is headed right for him. In an instant, Kevin imagines a road that curves up and over him that keeps the car on its trajectory and Kevin safe from harm. The car keeps speeding on and then swerves as the driver looks back astonished by what had happened. People on the street stare in amazement.
Kevin looks slowly back at Anish who doesn’t look amazed or dazzled, but she is obviously impressed. “How in God’s name did you do that?” She asks.
PRL Serials 