Toque - A knit winter hat thing. If you’re Canadian you know what they are, okay?

“Shit,” said Erik Thorbiornsen, as he searched frantically through his pockets. He kicked the door to apartment 306 and swore again. Going down on one knee, he opened the bag that had been dropped on the floor when he first realized his keys were missing. A quick search revealed that although his bag contained two notebooks, a battered calculus textbook, five pens, a box of Smarties, the internet bill from October, and three empty pop bottles, there was a distinct lack of apartment keys.

Standing back up and dropping the bag again, Erik hit the door. “Ray! Dammit, Ray, I lost my keys you asshole. Unlock the goddamn door!” He pressed his ear against the door, but couldn’t hear any roommate-related noises. Thursday, after five . . . He frowned. Ray had the entire afternoon free. When Erik had left at a run for class, Ray was lying on the couch, playing a video game, and had shown no sign of leaving the apartment for anything short of a fire.

Had Ray gone to annoy Dustin and Ash? Erik frowned. He could always walk back to campus and check, but a quick glance at the snow only just starting to melt on his shoes made the idea about as appealing as playing strip poker with Ray, Dustin, and Ash when he was the only one who’d been drinking.

Optimistically, he hit the door again.

“He went out about twenty minutes ago. I don’t think beating the door up’s going to help you,” said a friendly voice behind Erik.

Erik jumped, jerked around to face the owner of the voice, and hit his head on the door. He bit his tongue on a curse and put a hand to the back of his head, probing carefully.

The owner of the voice regarded him curiously, her eyes purple from coloured contacts. Her hair was white blond except for her bangs, which were dyed blue and hung past her chin. She was wearing ripped jeans and a very transparent shirt . . .

Erik blushed. “Sorry . . .” he managed to weakly croak, running a finger under the collar of his shirt. “I didn’t mean to disturb you.”

She grinned. “The entire floor could probably hear you with all the noise you were making.”

The blush deepened. “Sorry,” he repeated.

“It’s okay,” she said, smiling casually with genuine good-humour, honestly not appearing to have been upset by the noise. “You’re Thor, right? Ray’s roommate?”

“Thorbiornsen. Erik,” he corrected automatically. “But, yeah, the rest is right.” He smiled at her rather uncertainly. If he weren’t Ray’s roommate, why on earth would he have been pounding on the apartment door? Of course, he wouldn’t be surprised if someone large, disgruntled, and illegally armed came pounding on the door one day while he was home and Ray was conveniently out . . . He shook his head. “You, uh, a friend of Ray’s?”

“Oh, no. Well, not really. I’ve just seen him on the elevator a couple times. He’s very chatty.”

“That’s one word for it,” Erik muttered.

“You’re dripping.”

“Huh?”

“Your clothes. They’re dripping on the carpet.”

Erik looked down and, sure enough, there was a widening puddle of moisture at his feet. Self-consciously, he began to brush snow off his shoulders. “It started snowing on my way back from campus. Really heavy stuff.” He eyed the girl with a mixture of awkward shyness and hope. “Could I, uh, use your phone to call someone to unlock the door for me? I don’t really want to be sitting out here until Ray’s back. It’s kind of cold. And, well, outside . . .”

“Well, they charge whenever they have to come around after hours. You can wait in my place until Ray comes back, if you like.” She smiled up at Erik, looking very charming, very warm, and very dry. “Ray said he was just getting something for supper, I think, so I’m sure he’ll be back soon.”

Chatty, thought Erik in disgust. But he smiled at the woman, picking his bag up. “That’d be great. Thanks. You’re in . . .” he trailed off hopefully.

She laughed and pointed to the apartment next to Ray and Erik’s – 305.

“Oh hell, no wonder you could hear that noise. I’m so sorry.”

“It’s okay,” she laughed and patted his arm absently.

Erik laughed as well, in embarrassment, and after a minute moved his arm away from her hand.

As she opened the door to apartment 305, ushering Erik inside, she said, almost as an afterthought, “My name’s Magdalene Blood.”

For a moment, Erik’s mind was utterly blank. “Uh,” he said.

“You can call me Magdalene, though. We’re neighbours, after all, so I’m sure we’ll run into each other a lot. Sit down, please.”

“That’s . . . an unusual name,” Erik said as he took his shoes off, looking around the brightly coloured apartment for something that was at least a distant cousin of a chair. He thought that saying “My apologies” or “My condolences” or even “Wow, your parents must have been high” would not be tactful. “Well, we can’t help what we’re named,” he essayed, and grimaced. That hadn’t sounded much better.

“Oh, no,” Magdalene Blood laughed, “you don’t understand – sit down, silly!” She grabbed Erik’s wet arm, briskly removed his sopping wet jacket and scarf, and dragged him away from the door. As Erik was distracted by some kind of sculpture made out of old CDs, paperclips, and pieces of lint, Magdalene Blood calmly pushed him down onto a bright green . . . thing. It was vaguely like a cushion, had a lot in common with an amoeba, and was at best a chair’s third cousin from a family line that had been big on inbreeding. It was large, squishy, and Erik wasn’t sure if he’d be able to stand up again. With Magdalene Blood still smiling at him, her hands on his shoulders, he tried to find somewhere to put his legs.

“Better,” she said. “You comfortable, Thor?”

“Um,” Erik said in what he hoped was a polite, noncommital voice.

“Great!” Magdalene Blood beamed at him and moved to take his sweater off.

Erik choked and grabbed her hands. “Hey!”

Magdalene Blood smiled at him, neither offended nor – Erik noted dourly – repentant. “You’ll dry off and warm up faster if you take it off.”

“I can manage that myself,” Erik said roughly, and let go of Magdalene Blood’s hands. With the woman still watching him, her eyes rather too interested, Erik peeled off his sweater. Wearing only jeans and a T-shirt, he abruptly wished he had about five layers between himself and the smiling woman. Ray wasn’t the only crazy person in the building. Maybe they’d put him in the wrong building by mistake, and it was one of the other apartment complexes that housed sane students . . .

“Would you like tea?” Magdalene Blood called, and Erik abruptly realized he was alone in the little living room and the woman had gone into the kitchenette.

“Sure,” Erik choked out, draping his sweater over a thing that looked a bit like the one he was sitting in, except it was black with purple spots that looked a bit like eyeballs. When his sweater wasn’t eaten, he began to relax. Maybe Magdalene Blood was just friendly. Like Ray.

With no concept of personal space. Like Ray.

And completely insane. Like Ray.

Erik winced at the thought of someone like Ray running around, with sex appeal added to the cheerfully overbearing personality and general insanity. He shifted about in his seat, which only tightened the grip the green thing had on him. Desperately, he began to look around the apartment, searching for something to distract him.

There was a lot to look at, certainly. It reminded him a lot of some of the rooms in Dustin’s house, especially his mother’s workroom (where they had gone to get drunk for the first time at age fifteen, the weekend the McClouds had gone to Halifax). There were colourful wall hangings (one almost identical to the one Erik had thrown up on, the weekend the McClouds had gone to Halifax), prints of famous works of art by mentally unhinged artists, a suspicious looking plant with white flowers and seemed to be lying in wait for something, handwoven blankets in blinding colours, the weird sculpture, of course, and dozens more like it, paintings, one wall covered entirely in newspaper . . .

“Here’s your tea,” Magdalene Blood said abruptly, pushing a round cup without a handle into Erik’s cold hands. His fingers wrapped gratefully around the warm cup, and Magdalene Blood sat the teapot down on the floor between them, making herself comfortable on a pile of tasselled pillows at the foot of the large sculpture.

“Thanks,” Erik mumbled, and started down at the liquid in his cup.

It was pink.

“Ah . . .” He squinted at the steaming liquid and tilted his head slightly. Still pink. “Didn’t you say you were making tea?” said Erik. He tried to sound polite and curious. He succeeded in sounding hopelessly confused.

Magdalene Blood smiled. “It is tea. Made from snow rose leaves. Hand picked in the Chinese mountains by – ”

“A sect of devoted, tea-drinking monks who’s only contact with the outside world is for the purpose of selling their tea over the internet?”

“How’d you know?” she asked, favouring Erik with a particularly bright smile.

“Lucky guess,” Erik said before taking a sip. He supposed that if you tried to eat a rose, it might just possibly, maybe, taste something like Magdalene Blood’s tea, but why would you eat a rose in the first place? More than anything, it reminded Erik of the tea Dustin’s mother made them drink during cold season, supposedly brewed from birch bark. That stuff hadn’t been pink, though. Silently, he offered a prayer of forgiveness to Mrs. McCloud. “It’s very nice. And warm,” he said, lacking anything more honest to say. She was staring at him expectantly, in a way that made him twitch, so he quickly changed the subject. “So, uh, your name, it’s very unusual, you were saying – ”

“Oh, well, you know how it is with some parents, they just don’t understand the way the modern world works, and so they saddle some poor child with a name that doesn’t suit them at all – ”

This, Erik thought, was very true.

“Not their fault, though, poor dears, they are a product of their society, after all. But it can make it so difficult for one to feel comfortable with one’s idea of self, you see.”

“Ah . . .”

“And so I chose my own name when I left home. One that reflected who I truly am.”

“Magdalene Blood is you, is it?”

She smiled and sipped her tea. “Very much so.”

“I . . . see. And where exactly is home? Vancouver? I have a friend whose parents are from Vancouver, you remind me a bit of his mother – ”

“Saskatoon.”

One of Erik’s eyelids twitched. “Saskatoon as in here Saskatoon?”

She nodded, filling her small cup again.

Slowly, Erik surveyed the tiny apartment. Cluttered, yes, but certainly neater than his and Ray’s. Still, it was basically the same crummy little two room apartment. “If your parents live here in the city,” he said carefully, “why are you living here?”

She gave him a Look. “Who wants to live with their parents when they don’t have to?”

“Oh. Of course. Crazy me, thinking of ways to save money,” Erik muttered.

“So,” Magdalene Blood smiled, “are you from Saskatoon? I have a little brother your age . . .”

“Um, no. I’m from up north.” At this conversational turn toward normal, Erik almost relaxed again.

“Oh, around Prince Albert, then?”

Erik stared at the woman in disbelief and thought of the city a few hours north of Saskatoon, where he, Ray, and Dustin had briefly stopped on an unfortunate road trip earlier in the year. He’d been propositioned twice, Dustin had nearly run over an old woman, and Ray had fallen in the river. He shuddered. “Further north,” he said with a sigh, and once more changed the subject before the car of sanity plunged off the road into a pile of flaming debris. “I like that sculpture. Where’d you get it?”

Magdalene Blood looked over her shoulder and gave a dismissive snort. “That? That was my final project for sculpture class last year. I was trying to convey the impermanence of happiness in modern society. “She shook her head. “What was I thinking?”

“It’s not that bad,” murmured Erik. He thought it looked a bit like an albatross, one made out of CDs, paperclips, and lint.

She made a dismissive gesture and returned to her tea.

“So . . . you’re an art major, then?”

She nodded and smiled at him over her cup. Then silence, blessed silence, descended as Erik drank the suspicious pink tea. After a while, Magdalene Blood began to look at him again. Uncertainly, he poured himself another cup of tea and began actively listening for the sound of someone getting off the elevator. A normal person wouldn’t be audible, but Ray would be. Unless he was coming in the window again, the moron.

“How long have you and Ray known each other, Thor?”

“Um,” Erik blinked. “Just a couple of months, I guess. We’re only in first year. Never saw the guy before in my life, until I moved in.” Met with Magdalene Blood’s calm, unblinking stare, he felt compelled to elaborate. “His family lives in Ottawa, y’see.”

She smiled. “It’s okay. You can tell me. It’s already very obvious, the way Ray talks about you.”

“It is?” Erik echoed.

“Of course, he doesn’t say anything outright – he’s Catholic, isn’t he?”

Erik shrugged. “I dunno. Maybe. I guess.”

“Are you Catholic?”

“Um, no, not last time I checked, anyway . . .”

“Organized religion always makes these things so difficult, don’t you think?”

“Ah, sure . . .” Erik frowned. “What things, exactly?”

“Relationships, of course!”

Erik stared at Magdalene Blood and shook his head blankly.

“The raised voices, the way you two always go out together, the noise at night – ”

“What?!” Erik choked on his tea.

“It’s okay, dear, I really don’t mind.” She smiled sunnily at him. “But I wouldn’t let those girls in 307 know if I were you – very religious, they wouldn’t approve at all.”

“Of what?! There’s nothing to approve of!”

“You and Ray, of course.”

“We’re roommates.”

“Oh, Thor.” She gave him a patronizing smile.

“Look, I don’t know what that idiot’s been telling you, but I’m not gay.” Red-faced, Erik scrambled to his feet after a short battle with the green thing. He grabbed his sweater, tying it hurriedly around his waist.

Magdalene Blood got to her feet. “I know things can be difficult, but denial is very bad for you, Thor. It’s unhealthy.”

Erik grabbed his jacket and scarf, jamming his feet into his still-damp shoes. “I’m not in denial!” he snapped, pulling the door open and stalking into the hallway just as Ray stepped out of the elevator, whistling cheerfully. Erik had never been so glad to hear his roommate’s too-loud whistling or see his round face.

As he turned toward apartment 306, Ray’s steps slowed to a stop as he took in the red and damp Erik and the attractively flushed Magdalene Blood. Absently, he took off his toque and brushed it against the side of his leg. In his other hand he was carrying a plastic bag – takeout. His eyebrows rose and he began to grin alarmingly. “Hey, Thor. What’s up?”

“I lost my keys on the way back from class and you were out so she invited me into dry off and have tea and could you please unlock the door now Ray?” Erik spat out without pausing for breath.

Magdalene Blood rolled her eyes and waved at Ray from behind Erik. “Hi Ray.”

“Hey,” Ray grinned back at the woman, looking slightly confused. “I have to take care of my roommate. Later, okay?”

Magdalene Blood smiled in a way Erik didn’t like. “I understand,” she said.

If it were possible, Erik’s blush would have deepened. “Ray! Door!”

“Cool, Thor, cool,” Ray said as he unlocked the door.

As soon as he heard the lock click, Erik said a hurried goodbye to the now-grinning Magdalene Blood, thanked her for the tea, grabbed Ray by the arm, and dragged them both inside. The door shut with a slam and, leaning against it, Erik bolted it shut, panting.

Ray surveyed his roommate for a minute before flopping on the floor to take his boots off. “She’s our neighbour, Thor, not an invading army.”

Erik shot his roommate a dirty look. “You know her?”

“Kind of. I’ve talked to her a couple times. She’s cute. I could have her in the palm of my hand, I bet, if I talked about Japanese artwork. Well, made up something about Japanese artwork. Over coffee or something.”

“No, you couldn’t of,” Erik said flatly.

“What, did your mother give you that contract about relationships with older women too? Look, that’s easy to bypass, there are a couple loopholes –”

“Contract? What? No, no! She thinks you’re gay, dumbass!”

Ray frowned. “Why the hell did you tell her that? I wasn’t serious, Thor, you don’t have to go telling girls lies about me just so you can get laid –”

“I didn’t tell her anything, Ray! She’s thinks we’re gay, moron.”

Erik watched with a slight feeling of satisfaction as several different expressions crossed Ray’s face, causing his mouth and one eye to twitch as he stood up. Slowly, he unbuttoned and removed his jacket, apparently mulling this revelation over. Then, his face brightened. “Girls like gay guys, don’t they?”

“You’ve got to be joking.”

“It’s like straight guys and lesbians, right?”

“Ray . . .”

“Look, our good neighbour’s going to think what she wants, she’s obviously crazy and badly in need of a hobby –”

“Ray, if she’s crazy we could become her hobby. I think we already are.”

“You’re overreacting. Your paranoia’s coming out again, very unhealthy.”

“Ray.”

“Look,” Ray sighed, stretching. “I’m a ninja. You’re practically a Viking. A malnourished Viking who could stand to put on some muscle, but a Viking nonetheless.”

“I’m half-Welsh. And I’m not a Viking.”

Ray ignored him. “She’s a lone art major. It’s fine, we’re fine, stop worrying.”

“This is why I hate you, you know,” Erik said sullenly, still leaning on the apartment door.

Ray waved a hand, dismissing Erik’s comment as irrelevant. He went to put his jacket in the closet, then paused. “Did you say you lost your keys?”

“Yeah, or else I wouldn’t have been waiting for you to show. Shit, they charge you if you lose your keys . . .”

“Well, you got into the building somehow, right? Hold on a minute,” Ray said, and began rummaging through his jacket pockets.

“I was lucky, someone was on their way out just as I came in.” Erik elbowed Ray aside lightly so he could hang his jacket and scarf up. After fifteen minutes of watching Ray searching through jingling pockets he asked “What are you doing?”

“Looking for your keys.”

“Ray, there is not a pocket dimension in your jacket pocket.”

“Of course not.”

“Ray . . .” Erik sighed.

“Here!” Ray announced abruptly and pulled the battered Crow Lake key chain Erik had owned since he was ten out of one of the pockets. He tossed the keys to Erik, who caught them clumsily.

Turning the cold, slightly wet keys over in his hands, Erik’s eyebrows rose. “Pocket dimension?”

Ray grinned. “Don’t be stupid, Thor. I found them in the snow by the bike racks on my way in.”

“You saw a set of keys, on the ground, in bad light, in the snow, during a storm?”

“Keen ninja vision,” Ray slapped Erik on the shoulder. “Come on, I got Chinese for dinner. It’s probably getting cold.”

Sighing, Erik slumped his shoulders and followed his roommate.