The Devil You Know: A Novel by Elisabeth de Mariaffi Page A

February, he said.
    Because it’s February, I said.
    The gutters were running. I had a pair of red-striped mittens inone hand and I took off my hat and shoved them inside so I’d have less to carry. We’d been raiding the cash-and-carry line up at Hikers Anonymous, and I had two chocolate-mint PowerBars jammed in my pocket. David had a flask of Wild Turkey and we were doing a fine job taking turns with it. We walked down through the High Park zoo, breaking off chunks of the bars and feeding the animals. It’s true that for a llama, or even a yak, chocolate mint is not as natural a food source as peanut butter flavor might have been. Beggars can’t be choosers.
    We took a left at the Queensway and wandered up to where it turns into Queen Street proper. The light was all behind us now. There was a fried chicken shop run by Jamaicans at the bottom of Roncesvalles and a few junk stores that sold antiques but only the chicken place was open. The sun was heading west to the suburbs and beyond. Around the corner from my house there was a parkette with a little bench and an old grocery cart with its wheels stuck in the slushy mud. I pulled it out and told David to hop in.
    I’m too heavy for you.
    Who you calling a weakling, weakling? I said.
    I threw down the hat-and-mitts combo I’d been carrying around and braced myself against the cart handle. David climbed over the bottom end. I had to bear down with all my weight to keep the thing from tipping but once he was in I got him going okay.
    We’re on a downslope! I yelled. Jesus, I hope I don’t let go!
    Okay, now turn around and go back up, David said. Repeat! Repeat! A hundred push-ups!
    I swung hard on the cart handle to turn it around but the weight was too much and it threw the whole thing off-kilter. The cart went over fast. David just lay there on the sidewalk with his eyes closed.
    Are you dead? I said. I couldn’t breathe.
    You’re laughing! David said. My head is cracked! You cracked my head. Stop laughing. I’m dead now and this is sad.
    He got up and I made a big fuss of brushing the old road salt off his peacoat.
    Too late, David said. I know what you’re made of. He ran a hand down through my hair and left it there a moment, his fingers resting against my neck and shoulder. I focused on his ear to avoid eye contact. I could see the edge of my house just to the right of him, out of the corner of my eye. There was a row of spindly cedars along the fence line and they shook slightly.
    Wait, I said. What’s that.
    What?
    There’s someone there. I stepped back and away from David. Just there. I pointed to where the fence disappeared into the backyard. Some guy. Like a homeless guy or something. He went in behind the trees there.
    That’s wind. David put his hand up and caught a few drops of water coming off the overhead maple. There’s a breeze, he said. See?

    T he temperature dropped overnight. In the morning I stood in the bathroom pushing Tylenol down my throat and swallowing hard. The icicles had regained their shape and hung sharp in front of the window. I left for the newsroom and almost tripped over my hat on the way out. It was lying on the outer doorstep, soaked through and frozen. I remembered throwing them all down in the park, close by, when it was so warm the day before: the hat and the striped mittens. Had I picked them up again? The mittens weren’t there. I put the hat inside on a rad to dry and sank my hands deep into my pockets for the walk to the streetcar.
    The Free Press building is down near the bottom of Yonge Street, which means a fifteen-minute ride on the King car for me to get to work on a good day. The sidewalks had frozen over again so quickly that between my house and the streetcar stop I could skate along on my boot soles, and I did. On the way in, we stopped at University and a pregnant woman ran for the car and slid. She fell flat out on her belly and I watched from my seat as a couple of nice-looking oldmen helped her up.