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My eyes shot open to the blunt end of a baseball bat…then a bearded man in a red plaid shirt, and beyond it—a woman in black silk pajamas with two kids clinging to her legs.

I closed my eyes again, less a reflex than an unwillingness to realize my brother must have moved and hadn’t told me.

“Get up!”

The voice jarred me back to reality and I followed the line of the bat up the crooked arm of the lumberjack. I cleared my throat.

“Excuse me…I think I made a mistake.”

“Damn right you did. What the hell are you doing here?”

I thought about it for a second because it wasn’t a terrible question. What was I doing here? Besides the obvious?

I forced a smile, a habit of mine when confronted with an angry monkey—a habit which often made things worse.

“I was about to ask you the same thing.”

“Get the fuck out of my yard!” He was shouting now and jabbed me in the ribs, the way one might poke a small wild animal lying in the street, just to check if it were dead.

“Yeah, I’m going.” I looked up again with greater purpose this time, my eyes resting on the face of his wife, probably longer than he would have liked.

“You need to leave. Now! There are kids around!” He was shouting again, completely pissed, and I watched the two little kids jump behind the legs of their mom. I laughed at that, but couldn’t help myself.

“What the hell are you laughing at?”

“I was just thinking…You could have told your kids that you found the monster that had been hiding under their bed. It would have made a great story.”

His face contorted out of confusion. “Get the fuck out of here. Move it.”

He had a reason, I suppose. A flippant bum with luggage and eyes for his hot wife was sleeping in his backyard. But that was only a fraction of the story. The rest invited a bit more empathy, and possibly, an invitation to share a coffee in the morning sun under the emerging canopy of leaves in a garden that I’d sweated over myself.

I tried sitting up in the hammock and laughed awkwardly as I steadied myself. I reached down, planting my hand into the muddy ground, but my other leg slid after it. Now half of me was in the hammock, the other half in the mud with my ass in the air. I looked up at the lumberjack. “Maybe you can help me out?”

“No. Now. You’re leaving now!”

I looked up at the window again. The kids were clinging to their mom’s legs. And the woman’s face gave me nothing—I was just disturbing her breakfast. A beautiful Saturday morning turning ugly, thanks to me.

I shifted the rest of my twisted body out of the hammock, no longer caring if I was covered in mud, and ended up on all fours. Like any other animal.

Now the bat was hovering in front of my face and I had an idea: this scene rendered on a canvas. A monochromatic palette ranging from violet to plum, cut with slate grey—the colors of old bruises and a turbulent sky.

“Could I have a glass of water?” I asked. “I’m really thirsty after last night’s flight.” I recognized the look of incredulity on his face. “I’ll even hold the bat for you to watch over me while you’re gone.”

“Get the fuck out of here, idiot!”

I stood up and stretched, then the lumberjack stepped back, as if I smelled of piss. I didn’t, but that didn’t matter.

I noticed that his pretty wife was still staring at me—and not in a good way.

I slung the duffel bag over my shoulder and grabbed the handle of my beaten-up suitcase with its broken wheels. A smile came to my face as I considered that this shit piece of luggage carried a fortune in uncut precious stones. If they’d known, maybe they’d have found a clever reason to welcome me inside. And that would have led to barbecues, Sunday mornings on the golf course. We could have become what they call good friends.

I dragged my case over the flagstone path and listened as the wheel support scratched the limestone. I turned my head to see a jagged, irregular line I’d just carved, a memory of my visit. The man winced and shook his head.

As the cedar gate snapped shut behind me, I was tempted to look back, curious if the kids had followed their mom into the living room to get a closer look at the weird man who’d been sleeping in their back yard. I wanted to think I was above that now, above caring what others made of me. The thought that I was still considering this was disturbing enough.

I walked down the street. There was another five minutes before the bus stop would come into view and I looked around me with a smile on my face. Spring had come early, soft and humid, birds chirping, the leaves now in full bloom. Good things to come, I thought. Still, I felt a chill after the long and mostly sleepless night, and wondered how long I could stay on my legs before crashing. Then I thought of my parents in the city, wondering if I should’ve told them I was coming back, or whether it would be more fun to see the look on their faces when they answered the door.

I turned the corner onto the avenue and walked down the hill to the end of the street. Not much had changed in seven years: the bakery on the corner, the gas station across from it, the bus shelter. I went inside. Same aluminum bench, same schedule. But new graffiti on the plexiglass. I remembered initials in hearts; now it was Fuck you, a forest of nearly identical cocks drawn with a sharpie, and initial tags, left by kids who considered themselves artists because they were using one-point perspective.

Across the road, a girl was unpacking crates at a farmer’s kiosk. I had time before the bus came, so I crossed over. I expected the usual spring vegetables—fiddleheads, lettuce, asparagus—then a flash of red in the green crates appeared.

“Isn’t it early for strawberries?” I asked.

“First week of season.”

She had a strong Québécois accent, and dropped the definite article, which I thought was strange considering the French used it like butter.

“And you know,” she began to say, her voice rising, “it’s also the global warming.”

She seemed pretty sure of it, frightened almost, like she’d just heard it on the news. I smiled. “I see...so you don’t need to grow them in greenhouses?”

“Quoi?”

“Serres chauffées.”

“Ah, ben oui. Of course.”

They were $3.50 a quart, so I dropped a fiver on the counter. She poured the strawberries into a green plastic bag—a color chosen to make you feel less guilty about the plastic. She picked up a calculator, an orange thing the size of a large paperback.

“It’s a buck-fifty change,” I said.

She ignored me.

“A dollar fifty,” I repeated, slowly, in case she didn’t know what a “buck” was.

She glared and started over.

Math. I thought I was an idiot because I couldn’t do differential equations. I inhaled deeply and smiled. “Incredible machine, isn’t it?”

“Hein?”

“That orange thing in your hand. Does it tell you the correct change?”

“C’est une calculatrice.” Again, the glare.

“Amazing.”

She pushed the coins toward me on the counter and quickly withdrew her hand. I must have had that early-morning-homeless-leper look—my arms being laden with still-wet mud.

Back at the shelter, I sat on the bench and leaned against the plexiglass, tilting my head up toward the sun. I was greedy for the warmth, the way we are in the spring in Canada. Along the boulevard, a long line of sugar maples had burst into chartreuse while the spicy scent of pig shit drifted in from the farms. I inhaled deeply, thinking how if people didn’t know it was pig shit they might begin to appreciate it, rhapsodize about it like it was foie gras. It was an honest scent at least, and preferable to the synthesized and carcinogenic lavender spray people kept next to the toilet. I sat like that for several minutes, enjoying the quiet, the change of scenery, the soft breeze on my cheek, the sound of a bird in a tree calling out for a mate. I took a deep breath, closed my eyes, and just sat there.

Thought of that monastery back in Thailand and how if I really wanted to, I could go there to leave the chaos, and never look back to think about what I’d be missing.

If I really wanted to do that.

It could be permanent.

Then the thought came to me; the idea that you can’t serve two masters. I hated clichés like this, mainly because they replaced thinking, but it felt real this time.

I took another long deep breath, thought how I no longer felt a heavy sense of loss, that I didn’t need to look back at what I’d missed or might be missing.

Then the cellphone in my pocket buzzed.

Seven thirty in the morning on a Saturday and someone was calling. I inhaled deeply and exhaled while thinking my breath had the power to make the sound go away. It kept buzzing. Then I remembered I still had my Spanish phone—early afternoon there. I counted seven pulses. Thought it might never end, so I pulled it out.

It was from Thailand—land of old enemies and a lost love. The thought of the latter made me pick up.

“Hello?” I answered.

“Max?”

I recognized the voice, but not the tone. It was Murph, and my body began to tense.

“Yeah?”

“I want you to listen closely. And don’t say a damn thing. Is that clear?”

I swallowed hard. “Uh huh.”

“Brett asked me to call you because he’s sick and tired of your shit.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Shut it, Max. Don’t play a fool. We know what you’ve been up to and this is our first and final warning. Just stop what you’re doing...”

I looked at the green bag. “I’m just eating strawberries...”

“I said stop it. Enough of the games. We know what you’ve been doing, and we know where you are.”

A pause. I waited for it.

“I still have my biker connections in Montreal, and believe me, you don’t want them knocking on your mom’s door. So stop everything. Now.”

Click. The line went dead.

My mouth went dry, the wind stopped, and the passing cars fell quiet. I pictured my parents’ house. Two bikers walking up the lawn, past the statue of Mary in the Grotto, knocking on the door, my mom answering, my dad close behind, grabbing his walking stick, ready to attack, like it was the war again.

And it was all because of me. More or less.

I did the math, and traced it back—who I’d spoken to, who might have tipped the first domino. I had a good idea of who it was, but it didn’t add up. None of it made much sense. All I’d done was go out of my way to help someone, and now that act of kindness had followed me here. Unable to shake the people who had their own convoluted sense of justice.

In the end, it’s never your sins they come for. It’s everything else.

I stood at the bottom of the escalator heading up to my first econometrics class. She was near the top when she turned and smiled, and remained like that—in a way that made me think I must know her from somewhere. I looked behind me. Nobody. I turned back to see her smile morphing into a gentle laugh.

Loose afro, high cheekbones, a slender face, guessing her ancestors descended from Ethiopia. I raised my hand—a half-wave, still uncertain. She nodded and waited for me at the top.

“Hi,” I said when I reached her.

“Hello...” she replied, still smiling. I trusted my gut and put aside my cynicism. Her name was Seta.

A few days later, we ran into each other in the library vestibule in the rush between classes. We stood there, smiling at each other, not moving, a stream of people brushing past us. The words came easily, though I don’t recall what they were. Don’t think she did either. It was the disappearance of time that disarmed us both.

“An hour passed? Really?” I asked.

She nodded rapidly and smiled. “Guess I missed my class.”

“I guess so.” I was about to ask her if it was worth it, when a faint voice in my head reminded me to keep my mouth shut.

We looked at each other like we’d just stepped off the same ledge. What’s next?

‘Next’ was her place. Almost every day, we’d work through econometrics problems that resembled haiku translated into Greek—three-line problems with not a number to be found: sigma, lambda, theta, beta, phi…and infinity. I’d be lost halfway through the first line and would have to go back to the beginning again, over and over…with no amount of coffee helping me to focus. My mind would wander into game theory, geometry, and other out-of-context ideas which were far more interesting. I’d occasionally pitch one of these ideas to Seta and she’d listen closely, smile, and call me a genius. I wasn’t. But for a brief moment I felt like one.

I’d find myself watching her from across the coffee table, wondering if she could hear my thoughts. There were times she’d repeat whatever I was thinking. I’d pick up the phone to call her and it wouldn’t ring because she’d just picked up to call me.

“Synchronicity,” she once told me.

I nodded my head. “You’re reading my mind.”

At the end of the semester, we were sitting on her fire escape smoking weed. She told me it was her first time, but she looked like a pro. Said she wanted to loosen up for the party we were hosting that night. Seta was taking slow drags, holding it in just long enough, letting the smoke drift out her nose, looking at me like there was nobody else she’d rather be with. I felt the same. We were discussing game theory and talking about the possibility of parallel universes when she smiled curiously, lifting her eyes, like a spark had been lit and she’d received a mystical insight.

“I’m thinking that there are actually four parallel worlds, Max… or four quadrants.”

“Okay. Go on…”

She inhaled, held the smoke in, then slowly let it out. Words came out in spurts.

“Not just—what we see.”

“Right…”

“First—there’s the spirit world, where good and evil are always in battle. Then the next world, which I guess you’d call heaven. No battles, just peace.”

She took a sip of her wine and passed me the joint.

“What about the other two worlds?” I asked.

She stared at me, eyes red and watery.

“Ugh, yes...” She shook her head and raised her eyes, searching for the idea.

I laughed. “You mentioned the two quadrants of the spirit world. What about the here and now?”

“That’s right...the world we live in, Max. You and me. We feel things more than others. Don’t we? We ask where is God when the world can be so unjust? But I’m thinking maybe it’s not God at all. Maybe we’re creating this world unconsciously.”

I handed her the joint. She took a short pull while I gathered my thoughts.

“So, you’re saying our universe is just a product of our own free will?”

“Pretty much, yeah.”

“Agents of our own destiny?”

“Yes.”

“And that of others?”

“How do you mean?” she asked.

“I mean how the smallest thing we do or don’t do can change someone’s life for the worse, or the better.”

She tilted her head, curious.

“You know...” I continued, “It sometimes feels like a burden on my conscience thinking how I might have changed someone’s life for the worse, just from some flippant comment.”

“Very funny, Max.” She slapped my knee with the back of her hand.

“I’m not joking.”

“I know you’re not. That’s why I’m with you.” She looked content. Comfortable. Like a cat sleeping in a warm window of light.

I thought about what she said: Why I’m with you—not, why I love you, but with you, as in here and now, on the fire escape, or possibly something more abstract, like we were a couple.

“What are you thinking, Max?”

“I think you answered the big question with your theory.”

Her eyebrows rose. “Really?”

“Absolutely. If we’re creating this world unconsciously, then that explains how good and evil can exist simultaneously. The mystery isn’t why God would allow evil, but how good can still exist in a world where God seems so absent.”

She tilted her head back and looked at the sky, as if that’s where answers to unanswerable questions came from—I loved that about her, the way she actually listened and thought about abstract ideas. Then she searched my eyes. It looked like admiration, validation, a cue for me. I’d been waiting four months for a moment like this. Now, with her brown eyes focused on mine, I tossed aside my concerns, my long history of miscommunication, and leaned in gently. Then...

The phone began to ring. Right on cue.