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Oriana´s laughing with Isa, recalling a fish she kept hidden in a little tank under her bed, seeing that Isa had forbidden her to have the pet. And there in Oriana´s bedroom the fish had existed for a short while. Until Isa found it while cleaning out the mess in Oriana´s room. It´s a sweet moment but I wonder how angry Isadora had been at the time. She could have let her keep the fish ... no? Outside gray waves roll in menancingly. Not even the local surfers are out there today. It´s five months now since mid January and Isa still looks surprisingly slender. A few more weeks and she´ll really start to swell based on her experience with Ori. I can only nod my head and try to look in control every time Isa shares some experience about pregnancies with me. It´s raining and the drops spit and swirl in ways I don´t see in Renfrew; perhaps it´s the wind off the sea ... or the lamposts or the angle I turn my head while looking out our apartment´s kitchen window.

We have almost 5 thousand US at the moment and hopefully Pranav will continue to deliver. It´s Vanni that worries me. At some point I feel he´s going to press Cagnazzo to exclude us. And if Pranav keeps his cut, he won´t give a damn one way or the other. Yesterday I passed him as I headed up the stairs and he nodded but didn´t bother stopping. He seemed in a hurry and it would be easy for me to get paranoid. I feel balanced uneasily between curiosity and denial but in the end my mind circles around the possibilites without coming to any definite conclusion. I secretly wish that Cagnazzo would exclude us from this business after say, a major score by Pranav where we reap a nice mid five figures. More likely that I´ll end up begging him for a few thousand more as he tells me that I´m no longer needed in this matter. We managed to sell another apartment to a Mr. Ling however, who has a grocery store on Independencia. 55 thousand and we kept 2 thousand of that. So again, I need work.

Too small. Our apartment really is too small. Two bedrooms and one bathroom and with a baby coming ... I shift to one side so that I´m facing towards the wall. Where there once were cushions we now actually have a sofa and I can curl up fairly comfortably and read a book or stare at the ceiling. Behind me Isa and Ori are chatting in the kitchen. I fade in and out of their conversation. With the renovations above there was some problems with the plumbing and several large stains have crept across the ceiling leaving dark patches with ragged brown edges. At some point we´ll have to have someone strip the blisters off and plaster and repaint but after helping with the renovations upstairs neither of us feels like having workmen in here. A dark cream color ... the walls. Crudo is what they call that tone of paint here. A house on Stuart Street in Kingston. Parties where I was horribly uncomfortable in the late seventies. Well ... I was horribly uncomfortable for most of my three years at Queen´s. Should have stayed at U of T. That´s Toronto for anyone more familiar with Austin, Texas. I think it may have been a little easier in hindsight. But that khaki yellow color brings me back to Kingston. And those houses and the parties I´d desperately head to, hoping that somehow it might be different this time. Butter knives stuck in the elements on the stoves. What a disgusting habit. Hot knives. Smoking hash off of red hot butter knives. And now they help run companies or investment banks ... Well, maybe I exagerate a little. But most of those Queen´s graduates surely are doing better than me. House(s). Cars. Wive(s) / Husband(s). Children. I have no idea how that world works. I´ve been marginal and isolated for so long and yet I can´t help think of what some of their lives might be like. I wish Isa wouldn´t smoke. That smell brings back memories; most of them not very comforting.

My neck is getting sore. I roll onto my back so I can stare directly at the ceiling without twisting my head and neck. With a lazy, false ambition I imagine myself prepping and painting the ceiling. I´ll need dropsheets, some plastic ones as well to cover the computer, paint, rollers, brushes handles, putty knives ... It´s just mind play, however. I won´t be painting that ceiling and I drift towards other thoughts, imagining myself in an Eastern European country in the late eighties - the former Yugoslavia perhaps? The kitchen window is behind me and I´d have to sit up and turn around to see it but I can visualize its heavy frame ( cast iron? ) and rusted hinges and the balcony/patio it overlooks and the angled view one has of the sea to the right of our neighbour´s apartment. There´s a small hotel at the southern end of Plaza España - Hosteria Split on Yrigoyen just before the street ends at Libertad. A shabby, unassuming little structure tucked between apartment buildings. What would the windows be like in an aparment in Split, Croatia facing the Adriatic? Or is it just luxury condominiums nowadays? Do the apartment buildings there even face the sea??

I need to imagine something more exotic. Once you enter the world of fraud - can I use that word instead of crime please? - the only thing that keeps the routine of looking for a target and trying to exectute your plan interesting is the fear. At least for me. And I don´t enjoy the fear. It takes a toll on me even if I am more alert; by neccesity if nothing else. So I need to be somewhere else for a while to ease the constant worries of revenge ( Pranav, Vanni, Cagnazzo, Scarmiglione ... take your pick ) and money. Maybe Toby went to live in Croatia. Maybe he´s there now in Split, cashing in his krugerands and swimming in the Adriatic. Perhaps he´s sitting on a terrace or at a sidewalk cafe and look who´s coming to join him. Walking slowly in the summer heat. Kabe. They embrace and Kabe sits down and Toby orders him a beer ... or wine? Sangria mabye? Let´s pretend you can order a sangria in Split. Or something similar if not exactly the same. And speaking quietly and efficiently they hatch an elegant conspiracy. Lovable rogues. Why not? Why can´t I imagine them there? This building is nothing but a vessel full of fraud anyway. Like Fra Gomita, the jovial friar taking his bribes and letting his prisoners escape before meeting the end of a hangman´s rope for his uncovered corruption. And if Toby is whatever I need him to be ... so what? Kabe is real. And he´s somewhere, alive. I´m sure they came to some sort of rough deal with him. Why bother killing him? And he might be with someone like Toby, working up some sort of con. But it´s no longer an escape, this wandering path in my mind. I remember my fear and rage and Kabe´s precise cruelty. The memory assaults me like a slap, stinging my consciousness. An open hand against my cheek, repeating the blows. That sound. Yes ... the shutters. Like they were being slapped. Rattling and creaking their anguish in the chaotic wind. Shaking everything. Shaking me. A force up from the abyss, from the deep. Later, Isadora wipes the sweat off my face as I lay in our bed. I think Oriana did most of the lifting to get me there. She´s incredibly strong like her father. Although it may have been Isa that tried to hold me down as I shook as those highs winds worse within possesed me. I have to believe I´m learning how to fight it. But it´s incredibly frightening. For us all.