Pontypool Changes Everything by Tony Burgess

the moment of injection. The moment comes and goes and Helen returns to the kitchen sink. She turns her back to it and leans long enough to push herself into a walk through the kitchen again. Her walking, not quite a pace, and not without some meaningful gestures, is what she concentrates on, experimenting with the pleasure of appearing not so crazy.
    “I think … I think . . . Lester, I think Ernie is doing
really
well at school.”
    Les is reading the advertisement for a hair-loss treatment on the page opposite the Liv Tyler interview. The interview continues seventy-five pages later, but Les thinks he may never return to this particular pointin the magazine again, so he’s taking his time before moving on. Helen has left the kitchen again, and she exits down the hallway. But she returns too soon to have actually left for any other reason than the opportunity to come back to the kitchen.
    “He’s really good with math, y’know? He gets that from me, I think. I have a cousin who’s an architect. But he also gets it from you, you’re good with numbers.”
    Helen disappears and returns again, this time having retrieved three notebooks from a room down the hall. She sits across from Les, who has moved on to the conclusion of the Liv Tyler interview. Helen stacks the books in front of her and opens the first with a formality that reminds her of her own mother.
    “Look at this . . . Oh my god! . . . This is totally neat . . . He’s doing algebra … I knew it . . .”
    Helen looks up, irritated. Les is flipping through the magazine now, comparing the icons that signify the conclusions of articles, wondering whether the feeling of conclusion is just an effect of their appearance on the pages.
    “Oh, look, he does drawings here in the margins . . . That’s cool . . . He could draw for the comics . . .”
    Les looks up, closing the magazine on a finger to mark his place.
    “Do some of the Boy. I think I need some of the Boy — let’s split a tenth, honey.”
    Helen closes the notebook and returns to her narrow shelf. “I wonder if he forgot those books this morning. He needs his notebooks.” She opens the lid of a packetwith a fingernail. “A student can’t take notes without a notebook. How come he left his notebooks here?” As she sets up a small blue jar of distilled water on the counter she flips two antiseptic swipes out of her pyjama pocket. “Maybe he has a locker. Maybe the books he uses at school are in his locker.”
    Les is distracted. He’s looking at a large photograph of Lena Olin that fills a tall page in an old issue of
Interview.
A bar of sand clings to the side of her bare foot.
So wrinkled,
he thinks.
Not age, just . . .foot wrinkled.
    “Sweety, I’ve only got a quarter left . . .”
    Les rumples his nose with a loose fist; the skin of his face, now arid, folds and bends without resisting.
    “Sweety, how … uh … how much do you have?”
    Les scratches the back of his head with the vigour of a porch dog. He has been preparing to ignore this question long before it has occurred to Helen. Not that he won’t answer, and she won’t mind asking two or three times, it’s just a kind of protocol of married life.
    “Hmmm … I thought I had at least a half. . . Well, let’s do a Tee anyway, right honey?”
    Les is drawing bubbles on a photograph of a martini glass.
Mmmmm. Hmmm.
    “ OK , yes, a nice half-Tee, that’ll be nice for us. Uh . . . Les, how much do you have left?”
    Les draws the stick of an umbrella leaning out of the martini.
    “Sorry, sugar. What did you say?”
    Helen snaps a blade through a pebble of heroin, pinning the halves on either side of the tiny knife withher fingers. She asks again with a voice that is patient and refreshed.
    “Oh, I was just wondering how much of the Boy you have left.”
    Les pushes the magazine to the edge of the table, conscious of what it would take to send it sailing onto the floor.
    “How much of the Girl