The Most Precious Substance on Earth Read online

  “No, I just don’t eat garbage,” he says, laughing. He removes the teabag so it doesn’t over-steep and places the used bag on his napkin, where it leaks onto the table’s dark wood grain.

  “Have you been here before?” I ask.

  “Yep.” He sips his tea, either bored by my question, or lost in thoughts of baseball and trout.

  “I come here a lot. I like to work here ’cause I just can’t seem to get anything done at home…too many distractions…You know, like I’ll just watch The Bachelor when I’m supposed to be working…” I’m saying nothing in a lot of words.

  He sips his tea.

  “Actually, this is crazy, but I was here like a week ago, and my laptop got stolen from this very same table.”

  “That sucks.” There’s a long pause. We both contemplate the walls as though they are of great interest. They’re painted to resemble vintage signs, weathered text in once-bold colours. “Oh, so that shark photo.”

  “Yeah?”

  “How long ago was that taken?”

  “Um, like a month or two, I think?” I know exactly when it was. It was taken at the very end of June, two and a half months ago, on my last day of teaching. After I left the school, I’d gone for a long walk, meandering down the waterfront on my way to Gottingen Street, and on an impulse, I’d asked a stranger to take my photo. I liked the idea of an ordinary photo taken on a pivotal day. Only I would know the story behind it. The summer crowds hadn’t yet formed, but I could smell fish and chips and fried dough. While the stranger toyed with the zoom, I had a momentary flash of sheer freedom, a realization that I could spend whole days on the waterfront if I wanted to, doing nothing at all. But there were teeth at the edges of that freedom. And by the time the stranger had finally taken the photo, the feeling, along with my smile, had faltered.

  “It doesn’t look like you.”

  I don’t know what to say to this, because the photo does look like me, or at least, what I think I look like. But who knows how accurate that is?

  “Also, why did you add a shark to the photo?”

  Because it’s hilarious, dumbass. “It’s a metaphor,” I say. “And shouldn’t every photo have a shark in it?”

  He sips his tea. “And the smile—it doesn’t look natural.”

  “Wait, you mean the shark’s smile?” I ask.

  “No, yours. It’s unnatural. You’re just smiling for the camera.”

  “Isn’t that what you’re supposed to do?”

  We talk briefly about snorkelling and Indian food. He explains that it’s unlikely a shark would appear in the Halifax harbour. He tells me where to find the best Indian food in Halifax. In my head I recast this as an anecdote to work into a Toastmasters speech: Fellow Toastmasters, raise your hands if you’ve ever tried online dating! He finishes his tea. We don’t hug or mention meeting again. Date over.

  I buy a scone and pull out my borrowed laptop, grateful that my automatic backup saved all my documents to the cloud. I download what I need, but as I’m searching through the folders, I notice a file I don’t recognize: me.bmp. Curious, I download that, too. It opens in Microsoft Paint and shows a photo of a girl around thirteen years old. She’s dark-haired, brown-skinned, and fish-cheeked like a model, but from her eyes you can tell she’s hamming it up for the camera. She’s utterly confident, mid-strut in an orange-toned living room. Perhaps a friend the same age took the photo, in that limbo time between school and dinner. Around the image, she’s used the paintbrush tool to draw sloppy stars in white and red.

  Once I’m home, I change into sweatpants and the “Eat More Butter” T-shirt I got at Two If By Sea, a Dartmouth café where the croissants are the size of a healthy baby. I sit on my bed, smoking a bowl and watching an old episode of The Bachelor with no sound and eating discount birthday cake with my hands, wishing aliens would abduct me so I wouldn’t have to worry about unromantic things like online dating.

  As the Bachelor does damage control during a group date, one of the women frowns and then quickly smooths it into a close-mouthed smile, and I wonder what toxic thing he’s just said to her. I open another window to browse through the dating website while reflecting on its competing interests: 1) to help people find partners on the site, gaining positive word-of-mouth and promotional Success Stories; and 2) to prolong the search and thereby keep collecting membership fees. I had opted for this website over the apps because the longer self-descriptions in each profile made the process seem less gamified, less like flipping through a deck of cards—each card showing a potential vision of the future.

  But either way, we’ll develop carpal tunnel and tennis elbow, clicking touchpad buttons or scrolling down phone screens for the perfect match. We’ll corrode our organs with bottomless cups of coffee and pints of Rickard’s Red on endless first and second dates. Online dating is an embarrassing punishment for a mediocre crime: not finding love in the pre-internet world.

  The Bachelor cuts to commercial. The screen turns black, reflecting my face. I’m a contestant. I smile with the fakest smile I can muster. Blue frosting in my teeth.

  * * *

  My stolen laptop backs up twice a week, so I start checking the files on Mondays and Thursdays. On Monday, there’s another photo—likely taken with the laptop, of the same girl but now with a shimmery face and eyelashes so long and so false they make the photo look 3-D. Makeover! is scrawled shakily across the photo with the Microsoft paintbrush. I want to teach her how to use Photoshop. I want to Photoshop a shark into the background with a speech bubble and send it to her. Give me my laptop, or else. The next week, there’s a crudely assembled meme—a Shiba Inu with a knowing side eye. His doggy face has been cropped and pasted on to a loaf of bread, the photo topped with broken English phrases in Comic Sans: wow. so hip. much happy. That Thursday, there’s a pair of tanned, thigh-gapped legs on a beach, though it might only be a pair of glistening hot dogs set next to each other to resemble legs. It’s another meme—hot dog legs. The following Monday, there’s Grumpy Cat, grumping about Mondays.

  Is this girl, this lover of old memes, the laptop thief? Did she lurk behind the comfy chairs in Uncommon Grounds, waiting for a trusting dimwit to leave all her valuables behind when she went to use the washroom? Or did the girl merely buy the laptop from an amateur thief who didn’t know how to reformat a computer?

  There is no name on the photos, no identifying detail. But if I’m patient, I figure she’ll eventually upload a homework assignment with a name on it, and then I’ll call the police. Unless she’s the type of student who always forgets to include her name.

  * * *

  On Date #2—set up not through the website but by my mother—I tell the guy I used to be a teacher. He says: “Teaching is a good job for a woman.” And: “Just so we’re clear, if this works out, you’ll move to my house in Moncton and get a job within a practical driving distance.”

  When my mom calls to see how the date went, I tell her what the guy said, and she says, “Teaching is a good job for a woman.” She reminds me that Moncton is a city with the highest tides in the world and the lowest housing prices in Canada, as well as dinner theatre and a tourist attraction where your car rolls uphill in an optical illusion. “Give him a chance. How can your dad be happy when his only daughter is unsettled?”

  * * *

  If this were a horror movie, every Monday and Thursday I’d check my online backup and find something more terrifying than before: An animated GIF of a screaming mouth. A suicide note with no signature. A JPEG of the inside of my apartment, with a shark pasted onto it.

  Instead, today there’s only a video of the same preteen girl in a pale yellow leotard and a grey hoodie, dancing with bare feet on shag carpet. I drag and drop a screenshot of her into Google Images, to do a reverse image search. I find only pictures of other girls in yellow leotards, who otherwise look nothing like her. I go back to the video. She’s in a basement, I
think, judging from the small window high up near the ceiling that leaks golden light into the otherwise dark room. She wheels her arms, touches her toes, eyes closed the whole time. The leotard creases at her flat waist. Once again, because of the laptop’s missing sound card, I can’t hear the music. Watching her stirs in me a bodily resonance, an unlikely mix of bliss and urgency. I imagine the soft tick of hi-hat. I feel the song’s beat through each snap of movement, each flex of a limb.

  * * *

  Date #3 is with a doctor. We go for a glass of wine at Obladee, a local wine bar, since coffee dates might as well be job interviews—except if you get the job, you must marry the interviewer and have sex with him for the rest of your life. The doctor has red hair and sunburned arms. Shouldn’t doctors know about sunscreen?

  “Another glass?” he asks after I’ve savoured my Nova 7—tart, coral pink, and delicately sparkling. I sample it every week at the Seaport Market, pretending I’ve never had it before. I consider a second glass, but I haven’t eaten, so I suggest a walk instead. He doesn’t like this. “Or how about mini-golf?” he asks. His smile looks like he’s pretending.

  “I didn’t know we had mini-golf in downtown Halifax,” I say.

  “Oh, it’s just outside of town. I have my car, so we can drive there.” He smiles again, exposing his pointy incisors, which seems like an obvious sign that I should not get into his car.

  “Could we do that next time, maybe? I’d still be up for a walk, though. Like, just around the waterfront? We could get ice cream at COWS…”

  He extends his arm smoothly across the table for the cheque, paying for both of us while I’m still reaching uncertainly for my wallet. We go for the shortest walk ever from Barrington Street to the waterfront, his legs long and moving fast, with me like a squirrel scrambling to keep up. Then he selects a bench under some trees, facing the water, and he sits very close to me, legs touching. He puts a broad hand on my knee, and my stomach cramps with repulsion. How to uninvite this uninvited hand? I shouldn’t have let him get the cheque. An unleashed dog approaches—a black lab holding a stick between its teeth. With some relief, I see its friendly owner wave from way down the boardwalk. I scratch the dog’s ears and his tail wags.

  The dog points his nose at the doctor, and I wonder what it is he’s sniffed out.

  “Nice doggie,” says the doctor. He doesn’t touch the dog. “What do you want, doggie?” His voice is as flat as Saskatchewan.

  Obviously, the dog wants somebody to throw the stick, so I throw the stick. The dog bounds away. I wish I was a flea buried in his fur, so I could run away, too.

  “Well, how about I give you a ride home?” says the doctor.

  “Oh, that’s okay, I live really close.” Not true.

  “It’s late, though. You’ll be cold.”

  “No, no, I need the exercise. I have a sweater.”

  “My car is parked right over there.” He points to an expensive black vehicle in an empty lot.

  “I’m literally five minutes from here.”

  “All right then,” he says, tersely.

  We stand up. He holds his arms out for a hug, so we hug. He clutches my shoulders and his hands feel like talons. He kisses me on the mouth, off-centre, hard-lipped, unwelcome.

  The next day I get a text. I’m barbecuing, want to come over? I could come pick you up?

  I send him a simplified version of my polite breakup text formula: Hey, it was really great chatting with you yesterday. I don’t think we’re quite a match, but I wish you luck on your search!

  No response. He didn’t say what kind of doctor he was, and now I will never know. Pathologist? For weeks after, I search The Coast for news of murders.

  * * *

  I log into my dating profile one morning and my shark photo is gone. In its place is a photo of a young white woman straight out of an L.L. Bean catalogue, standing in a field and wearing a gingham shirt, her long chestnut hair falling in beachy waves. There are new likes, new messages—so many it’s as if I’ve taken a deep sip of a strong drink. My dopamine surges. Hope.

  But then I realize these likes and messages aren’t for me. They’re from older men in New Brunswick, rural Nova Scotia, P.E.I., even as far away as Maine. I open up the messages and see that someone has already responded to them. Hi, I’m Carly…say the responses. When I check the People You Like section, it shows that someone has logged into my profile, expanded the age range and distance radius in my search criteria to the maximum, then swiped right on dozens of these men.

  Someone has hijacked my profile, but for what purpose? Catfishing? General meanness? I’m sure whoever did this isn’t the girl who took my laptop. Because why would she care about any of this? It’s the kind of prank that might be funny if it were brought up hypothetically in conversation. The kind of prank a boy might post as a brag on an internet forum: I hacked into the dating profile of some lady in her thirties and matched her with a bunch of seventy-year-olds! How hilarious.

  The poor internet security on my dad’s old laptop is likely to blame. I change my password, unlink my PayPal account, and message customer service. I feel stupid and vulnerable. I think about deleting the account, but without it, the days ahead are empty. So I spend hours installing antivirus software, setting up a password manager, restoring my profile. I spend hours more blocking dozens of men who remind me of someone else’s grandfather, who have sent messages to the stock-photo woman, telling her how pretty she is.

  * * *

  On Date #4 I’m asked: “Why are you still single?” It’s not the first time I’ve been asked this question. How has nobody snatched you up?

  “I’m selective,” I say.

  There might be some truth to this. At university, I dumped a guy after two months because he wouldn’t watch an Alfred Hitchcock movie—not because he was afraid, but because it was in black and white. “You’ll regret this,” he said. “I’ve dated girls way hotter than you.”

  Another guy had a running gag about building the perfect girlfriend. “If I could build the perfect girlfriend…” he’d say, and then list the qualities of mine he wanted to change—the length of my hair, the courses I’d signed up for, the amount of time I spent talking about baked goods.

  Another, while walking me back to my dorm room late at night after a party, pointed at a bush and said, “That would be a good place to rape a girl.”

  Another I dumped because he always rubbed his thumb against his fingertips when talking about money, as though he couldn’t contain the itch of wanting to have it. And later, when he shoved his fingers inside me, it seemed so greedy; I knew he would take whatever he could.

  * * *

  Four weeks after my laptop is stolen, the girl uploads a close-up selfie with a name signed at the bottom: Teena. I type the name into Twitter, Facebook, then Instagram, and I find her—Teena Mitchell, the only Teena in Halifax. She’s posted the same selfie to her Instagram account, which also has a photo of her standing on the modest lawn out front of a row house, hand on a thrust-out hip.

  I call the police on their non-emergency number. “I don’t know where the house is exactly, but I know she’s in the metro area, I have her name, and I have a photo of her,” I say.

  “Who is this, Nancy Drew?” asks the man on the phone. He laughs and laughs.

  But a couple of days later I get a phone call from a police officer who says he’s downstairs and has my laptop. I buzz him up. “Here it is!” He hands it to me. “Great detective work.”

  “How did you find the house?” I ask.

  “Oh, we recognized it right away. It’s part of an affordable housing project down on Gottingen. I went over there, and the kid just started crying, ‘It wasn’t me! I’m innocent!’ ” He says the last part in a high-pitched imitation of a child’s voice, slapping his thigh.

  In my hands, the laptop feels heavy and unfamiliar. I turn it around. The
re’s a neon sticker over the Dell logo, that says Just dance dance dance.

  * * *

  I meet Date #5 at Uncommon Grounds. It’s safer here: It’s walking distance from my apartment. There’s no alcohol except in the rum cake. The only thieves are little girls.

  He buys a bar of dark chocolate with bits of pistachio and dried apricot, and unwraps it delicately, like he’s Charlie searching for a golden ticket. He places the chocolate on top of the wrapper, on the table between us, and motions for me to have some. “I like this place. Good food and sweatshirt options.”

  “It’s a great place,” I agree. “The scones are massive.”

  “Massive scones—amazing!”

  We’re quiet for a moment, and I feel a tenuous kind of peace. A square of chocolate melts against my palate, and I can see that he’s mulling over what to say next.

  “So, you said on your profile that you used to be a teacher. Can I ask why you don’t teach anymore? If it’s not too personal…”

  “Oh no, that’s okay. I guess I just wasn’t prepared for…You have so much influence as a teacher. Over children’s lives, I mean. And in the classroom, you have to be teaching, of course, and doing teacherly tasks like handing out photocopies and telling people to stop talking, but you also have to be constantly aware of how fragile your students are. Sometimes it’s almost a high, and then other times it’s like being an air traffic controller—just…too much.” I’ve surprised myself by being honest. Usually if the topic comes up, I say the marking and lesson prep were cutting into my me-time.