Forty Words for Sorrow

Raised by Gram, the old bitch, who never made her feel like anything other than ugly and stupid. For one brief fantastic moment she had imagined she was attractive: that was when Eric first started paying attention to her. She even had sexual fantasies about him for a time, but in this as in other things, she absorbed Eric's attitudes almost by osmosis. "Edie," he told her. "You are made for something more important than sex. Both of us are. You and I are meant to push the limits of what human beings are capable of."

Edie dashed across the frigid parking lot to the Tim Hortons, where she had two chocolate doughnuts and a large coffee. Algonquin Bay boasted seventeen doughnut shops- Edie knew, because on a particularly aimless, empty day she had counted them, making a circuit around the entire city. The doughnuts really hit the spot, and by the time Edie headed back to the drugstore she felt much calmer.

Margo came rushing in a few minutes later, out of breath, stashing her purse and coat under the counter between the two cash registers. Edie didn't so much as glance at her.

Sometimes at work Edie could put herself into a kind of trance that made the time go faster. She would look up and it would be seven o'clock and she'd wonder where the afternoon had gone. But today the time dragged. She kept remembering what Margo had said, and that nauseating laughter; she hardly thought about the boy tied up in her basement or about his wounded leg. But when Quereshi asked her to keep an eye on the pharmacy while he went to the can, Edie dumped fifty diazepam into a plastic bottle she kept in her pocket.

When Quereshi came back, she asked him, "What would you give someone if you wanted them to be awake but lie absolutely still- without moving?"

Mr. Quereshi's smooth brown face wrinkled up like a walnut. "You mean to facilitate the performance of surgery and so on?"

"Right. So they wouldn't move no matter what you did to them."

"There are such drugs, it goes without saying. But we do not stock them. Why, Miss Soames- you are planning to operate on some poor soul?"

"I like to know things, that's all. I may go to pharmacy school, one day- I'm putting money aside."

"I myself matriculated in medicine, at Calcutta. But my diploma was not being recognized in this country, so I was forced to study pharmacy. Three credits, they granted me. Seven years of studies reduced to three credits only; it is a shocking waste. I would have been making an excellent surgeon, but the world is not a fair place."

"I feel like I could do something special one day, Mr. Quereshi." Very special. The night before, she had written in her diary: Soon I'll be ready to kill on my own. The runt in the basement would be no problem, but maybe I'll let Eric do this one. I think I'd prefer to start with a female. I can even think of a candidate.

"You would be well advised to settle on a course of study, Miss Soames. There will not be so many opportunities coming your way. The world discriminates not just against brown people, but also against women such as yourself."

Women such as yourself, well, she knew what he meant by that, bloody Paki. Plain women such as yourself. Women with fucked-up faces. He didn't have to say the words, it was in his superior tone. I wouldn't let the bastard operate on a dog, Edie thought, let alone on a human being. Quereshi handed her a bottle of pills, which Edie placed into a bag for the frail old woman across the counter. "Twenty-nine fifty."

"Twenty-nine fifty! It was only twenty-five dollars last month." The woman tottered a little, as if the price had infected her inner ear. "I can't afford twenty-nine fifty. I'm on a pension. I won't have enough for cat food."

"Well, maybe you shouldn't buy them." Or maybe you should strangle the fucking cat, I don't care.

"I need them. They're for my heart. I can't just leave them. I don't have a choice, do I?"

"I don't know. It's up to you."

"It isn't up to me. That's what I'm saying. How much did you say?"

"Twenty-nine fifty."

"That's a twenty-percent increase. More. How can a few pills suddenly go up twenty percent in the course of a month, that's what I'd like to know."

"I don't know, lady. They went up."

The woman came up with three tens that stank of talcum powder, and Edie handed back the change. "Thank you for saving at Pharma-City. Don't you get hit by any cars, now."

"What did you say?"

"I said be careful in the parking lot. There's a lot of cars out there today."

Quereshi was going to say something, she could feel it. He was sidling over to her, warming up for a sermon. Not that it was any of his business; he was just there to count pills. Store policy was none of his business.

"Miss Soames, tell me something."

Here we go. Edie started straightening the cash in her drawer, putting all the bills faceup.

"Miss Soames, I just want to ask you something. I just want to ask you if you are having a hobby, or some other line of endeavor you are pursuing. Music, perhaps. Philately or some such."