You’re asking what did I expect? I’ll tell you what I expected. I expected warm, sunny days and gentle people with flowers in their hair— I put flowers in my hair for christ sake. Those were the instructions.

I’d come all the way from Thorold; I expected laughter, okay? clean teeth, love shouted from open windows, negative ions and positive messages cast into the wind on bits of homemade biodegradable parchment.

I expected clean streets.

I expected, I dunno, life.

Someone sleeps under the carpet outside my door; a soiled blue lump of industrial grade nylon moving up and down with each convulsive rasp. I’m told it occasionally it hums Icelandic lullabies.

My room has this in it: a bed, my backpack.

My backpack has this in it: half eaten protein-bar, toothbrush, facecloth (my mother’s insane suggestion), underwear (the facecloth wasn’t enough humiliation; she wanted me to take everything I own, at least take a few things, she said, that’s how normal people travel. Ha! I said. A fat lot you know. I’m a snail, I own nothing but the clothes on my back. And anyway, whatever I need I’ll buy when I get there. With what, she said. I’ve got some dough, I told her, plus I’ll get a job. Life is simple, man.), my sister’s copy of Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (not exactly what I thought), wallet.

My wallet has this in it: $112.68.

The toilet and sink are down the hall. An old woman runs this place, thirty, forty maybe, all vacuous smiles and answers to questions no one’s asked.

“How much is the room?” I say.

“Listen, you gotta hold down for about, uh…. ten, maybe fifteen, seconds when you flush or it’ll back up on ya, okay, hon?”

“Okay. How much is the room?”

“Don’t worry about Billie under the carpet out there, she’s like a pet. Try not to step on her.”

The room is $80.00 a week. She tells me this when I ask where I can get a can of Lysol.

Children with scabs and tiny yellow picture frames hanging from string around their necks stand in line at the free clinic; they know where to get free food. Freedom rules, they whisper.

The day after Lysoling my room I come in to find my walls splattered with mud, my bed strewn with the hands and feet of mannequins; no torsos, no heads.

Turns out it’s an X-shaped guy named Mike; tattoos of spiders crawling over both arms, his neck, across his shaved head and into his mouth; not a very negative ion sort of chap. Anarchy and seduction are the same game, Mike says. He tells me to meet him at Love Burger; I can’t find the place and it starts to rain so I head back to my room but I’m too late; it’s gone. All that’s left is a piece of carpet on the street and when I lift it I see a swollen-face child, hugging my backpack, humming lullabies.