Meridian squinted at her laptop screen to make sure she’d read the instructions correctly. She had. Her application for a rewards card had thus far resulted in one cryptic error message and one timeout upon pressing the submit button, neither of which had made any particular sort of sense. And yet. Here she sat, filling the required information out in full.
Again.
When—
There was a faint tip-tap-tapping at the other end of the room.
She stopped, mid-word, fingers hovering over the keyboard all a-tremble. Her gaze flitted around the room suspiciously… but she heard nothing more. There was nothing.
She grumbled wordlessly. Fixed her attention back on the keyboard.
No sooner had she begun typing out the second half of her street address, than there was a crinkle-scritch-scratch in a corner where there should have been nothing of the sort. Meridian’s gaze whipped over to the spot, glaring at it in challenge.
All was still.
And then—
A rat leaped out from behind the armoire before stopping abruptly to sniff at the air half-seated, rubbing its forepaws together in what Meridian could only characterize as being an apprehensive sort of way. She watched the scene unfolding before her in shock, eyebrows up to her hairline.
It was one thing to imagine having a rat as a house guest, but quite another to live it.
As the shock began to wear off, only to be replaced by a sense of flighty alarm, a groundhog appeared, this particular visitor struggling to lug a strange lump of fabric along the floor behind it. This was quite beyond what she was able to take in silently. Meridian leaped to her feet, letting out an entirely involuntary shriek of indignation.
They were nine storeys in the air.
Nine.
The unlikely party squeak-grunted at the sudden outburst and scurried away, nearly bumping into one another in their haste to escape.
Kiko came running in from the kitchen. “You alright?”
“I—” It had all happened so fast, Meridian began to doubt what she’d seen. “There was a groundhog in our living room.”
A sharp laugh. “Good one!”
“Right?” Meridian agreed faintly, feeling like she wanted to sit down. “There was a rat, too.”
At this, Kiko’s eyebrows knit together and she gave Meridian a searching look. “Baby, help me out here. You’re speaking literal nonsense.”
Meridian looked down at the palms of her hands, shaking her head and drawing in a steadying breath. “I—I don’t know what to tell you. There was a rat. Then there was a groundhog. I yelled, they ran, and they left… that.”
She gestured at the floor between them.
“Oh my god,” Kiko gasped, caught somewhere between mirth and horror, “what is that?”
Meridian shook her head, still at a loss for words.
“What did a rat need a satchel for?” Kiko asked, as though it were a reasonable, everyday thing to wonder.
“It was the groundhog’s,” Meridian corrected her weakly.
“Oh, of course, that makes sense,” Kiko replied in mock-seriousness. She considered for a moment. “I’m gonna open it.”
It looked like a rumpled old t-shirt where it lay on the floor, and as soon as Kiko picked it up gingerly between thumb and forefinger, a package wrapped in plain brown paper slipped out and thudded to the floor with a thwap. Kiko gave the shirt-satchel another delicate shake for good measure, but nothing more was forthcoming.
They both stared down at the nondescript parcel.
“Should we…?”
Kiko grimaced as she let the rest of the question trail off.
Meridian gave her a worried frown.
They both looked back down at the would-be gift.
Kiko let out a huff of air. “Ah, fuck it—how dangerous could it be?” She dropped into a crouch and hesitated a moment, hands trembling; then she seemed to steel herself and in one swift movement ripped away a section of the paper. “Oh,” she said, somewhat put-out. “It’s just a notebook.”
Meridian let out the breath she’d been holding.
Kiko spent the rest of the evening pouring over the contents of the accidental gift, describing all the interesting pages aloud—which was just about every second one. Its unassuming black hardcover binding belied its puzzling jumble of contents. It began to seem less an ordered notebook than the dumping ground of some author’s every errant thought.
“It’s bookmarked on a recipe for the quote-unquote Best Ever Chocolate Chip Cookies,” Kiko announced, turning the page, “which is followed by a bad but serviceable sketch—in full colour—of a washing machine with its door open. Then there’s a dirty limerick about the Tulip Festival, and it’s—” she snorted out a little laugh, “it’s pretty funny. Man… who is this person? Because the next few pages are notes about… ancient Rome I guess? Hmm. Cool.”
“Isn’t there personal information written at the front? I’m sure the notebook’s author must be searching for it.”
Kiko gave her a look of genuine amusement, holding up the front page of the notebook. “See for yourself.”
In uppercase letters, the author had scribbled GET THE HELL OFF MY LAWN! over the fields where someone else might have carefully penned in their personal details.
The private sort. Or someone with a strange sense of humour.
“Hoist with their own petard,” Meridian remarked dryly, as Kiko let out a sympathetic laugh.
——
She had been doing her best to concentrate on her project the whole morning through, but the notebook had taken up the greater part of her attention, and her mind had continued to drift to its contents. Around noon, Meridian had dutifully unglued herself from her desk in the apartment and taken a short walk to buy groceries. She was on her way back to the apartment carrying a bag filled with vegetables, when she decided to take a short detour through a nearby park. The walking paths shaded by trees cut the bulk of the heat from the sun, and also made the coyote blocking her path when she rounded a corner that much more dramatic a sight.
It stared at her and she froze, breath and sound caught in her throat.
It took a step forward, and the muscles in her legs seized, heart pounding, but she stayed rooted to the spot, watching its advance. Several steps away from her it flinched, nose twitching as it sniffed the air, and then its whole bearing changed.
It bounded the rest of the distance, tail wagging madly, and Meridian managed only a garbled cry of alarm as the coyote butted her hip and snapped at her purse, pulling it away from her side in its jaws. She let the purse strap slip off her arm in shock.
Tail still wagging madly, the coyote stuck its snout inside her purse and growled, rifling around, until it came back up for air, depositing something at her feet.
The notebook.
The coyote looked up at her expectantly, then down at the notebook, then back up at her.
Meridian looked back at the coyote feebly.
It let out a bark that sent a jolt of fear through her, and she let out a ragged breath. When she made no other move for several heartbeats, the coyote looked back down at the notebook, whined, and nuzzled it further toward her boot-clad feet.
She had read plenty of news stories warning Ottawa residents about how dangerous coyotes could be, but at this point, running away seemed like a more dangerous option than giving the wild animal her wary attention.
“O—okay…” she breathed, bending down to pick up the notebook.
The coyote just kept staring, expectant.
She slipped the elastic band from the cover and opened it, watching the coyote’s eyes go impossibly wide, its tail wagging madly.
The coyote placed its paw suddenly on the exposed paper of the notebook (opened to the page for the cookie recipe that Kiko had left bookmarked), and with another bark, made to scratch at it, then withdrew its paw altogether and whined. She suddenly understood. It wanted her to give it the page. She began carefully tearing it off, still in a daze, still fearing for her safety, and the coyote turned in a circle, entire body trembling with the force of its wagging tail.
She gave in to the absurdity of the situation.
“You want… to play fetch.”
She forgot to make it a question.
The coyote’s tail went pin-straight, and it crouched before her momentarily, eyes wide.
Giving the wild animal an incredulous look, Meridian tried balling up the page in her fist.
The coyote watched her with rapt attention, gulped, then went back to panting with a hoarse whine of anticipation.
Meridian let out a deranged chuckle, still rather terrified, and then… threw the paper ball. Not very far, of course, but far enough that it disappeared behind a cluster of bushes.
The coyote burst into action, bounding after the paper ball with puppy-like abandon. Before she had any time to consider escaping in the other direction, the coyote was bounding back toward her and placing the ball down at her feet. Then it thrust its paw onto the next page of the still-open notebook in her hands.
“Again?” Meridian asked weakly.
The coyote turned in a circle, tail wagging.
“Well alright then. Here’s—” She glanced at the page shakily, “a sketch of a washing machine.”
Meridian balled it up, threw it, and again the coyote gambolled off into the foliage. Though this time, when it had retrieved the paper ball, it stared back at Meridian from a distance, and then disappeared further into the trees. She waited a minute or two, but it didn’t return.
She finally looked down; at her feet was not the balled-up recipe but instead a single sheaf of paper, somewhat soggy in one corner, where the coyote had been carrying it in its mouth.
A cheque with her name on it, signed and dated.
For two thousand dollars. And forty two cents.
The coyote had paid her for some coyote-reason that she could not possibly fathom.
It was official.
She had gone mad.
“Thanks…” she whispered weakly, to the empty park path.
The trees rustled in the breeze.
———
“It was weirdly tame,” Meridian was explaining later that evening, Kiko lounging on the couch beside her. “I’m telling you, it came out of nowhere and just—”
“Paid you to play fetch. I know. You’ve said,” Kiko cut in with a chuckle.
“Like, the signature was illegible, and even the name printed on the cheque seemed fake… according to Google, Pat Boregan III doesn’t exist.”
“But the cheque went through.”
“It did,” Meridian confirmed, giving Kiko a look of wide-eyed incredulity. “I just—” But she stopped short, unable to put the rest of her feelings into words. She closed her mouth and shrugged.
They sat, for a moment, in companionable silence.
Then Kiko sighed. “Look, I have to bring this up: Did you really have to give away the cookie recipe?”
“I feel like two thousand dollars was a fair exchange for it,” Meridian pointed out with dry amusement.
Kiko turned to give her a level look. “It wouldn’t have been… but those extra 42 cents…” she shook her head in grudging admiration. “Clever lil scamp knows the value of a great cookie.”
Meridian rolled her eyes but smiled anyway.
“Question is…” Kiko continued, leaning forward ever so slightly, all matter-of-fact. “What should we do with it all?”
“Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”
“Probably.”
“Well then, on three?”
“On three.”
“One, two, three… invest in the coyote’s bakery startup!”
“Weekend in Montréal!”
They stared at one another fondly, trying not to laugh.
Then—
There was a tip-tap-tap at the balcony window.
.
July 28, 2021.
The 61st episode of The Side B Anthology podcast.
An original short story by Janique EA Bruneau (Jea).
This standalone, queer short story is part of the jumble that has been stowed haphazardly in The Glove Compartment sub-anthology, as it doesn’t yet fit with another narrative.
If you feel so inclined, I would gladly welcome a comment below, or a tip.