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was going to do now that her husband had been sentenced to stay in Canada.
    “Go back to work,” Carmen said. She was running out of money. “And you? What are
you
going to do with your life?”
    I hadn’t realized it until that moment, but ever since Angel had met my gaze, I’d felt a hot, secret tugging—to be somewhere else. I couldn’t remember the last time Vernal and I had danced, or confided in one another, made love, or made anything but small talk. We weren’t doing well, in the marrow of things.
    I told Carmen that sometimes I thought I wanted a different life. Carmen dipped her knife into her Caesar and swirled it twice.
    I should have tossed the visitor’s application form in the recycling box, but instead I completed it the same day Carmen brought it home to me. I checked “No” beside most of the questions: no criminal record, no outstanding warrants, no communicable diseases, no plans to smuggle contraband (weapons, drugs or books) into the prison. Under “Marital Status” I left a blank.
    Fourteen days later, I was approved to visit Angel Corazón Gaviria. Carmen suggested I come with her to the Valentine’s Day social; I knew I could get away without Vernal asking any questions, because he had his own plans—to go sailing and dry out in Desolation Sound with two of his partners. I told him February wasn’t the best time of year for boating, and he reminded me I’d said the same thing about August.
    Vernal didn’t own a car (he claimed he’d rather drink than drive), and mine was too small to transport Carmenand her entourage to the prison. Carmen said her new friend Thurma, who had moved to Vancouver to make sure her incarcerated boyfriend “stayed out of trouble,” would find us a ride.
    Thurma, dressed in an African-style tent dress imprinted with stampeding giraffes and flying monkeys, picked us up at the apartment Carmen had rented in the west end. Thurma could have been Frenchy’s double, but I didn’t know Frenchy back then. At every red light she opened her purse—scarlet leather, black onyx clasp—and brought out a tube of Day-Glo orange lipstick, which she reapplied to her lips. By the time we stopped at the Pay ‘n’ Save to gas up, my own lips were drained.
    Thurma ground the gears as we jerked away from the gas station in the VW van the colour of her lipstick. She confessed she’d never stolen anything with a gearshift before, but that she’d found the van idling in front of a bank. “I loves to steal,” she said. “I
looovvveeees
to steal.”
    This is something else Frenchy has in common with Thurma. Frenchy would steal your last tampon. I know.
    Carmen said it didn’t count as stealing if the owner left his keys in the ignition, but that didn’t make me feel any better. At that time, I wasn’t used to stealing as a lifestyle. I slunk lower into my seat, afraid we would be arrested; Vernal had taken a five-day weekend, and I’d have to wait until Thursday for him to bail me out.
    We pulled into a lane behind a high-rise apartment building, and the van sputtered to a stop. Thurma leaned on the horn until a tall, delicately built Native woman, with black hair so long she could tie it in a knot and still siton it, pushed open the Emergency Exit Only door carrying a canvas bag that said “Born to Shop” and a bundle that turned out to be a baby.
    Bonnie climbed in the back beside me, clucking to the bundle, whom she addressed as Little Shit Shit, and who was dressed in a beaded deerskin jacket and pants and moccasins decorated with porcupine quills. I held tight to Bonnie’s arm to keep her from crushing Little Shit Shit against the door as Thurma jerked back onto the road.
    “Baby likes your bracelet,” Bonnie said, clucking her approval of the silver band with a frog design. Vernal had taken it from a client, in lieu of a retainer, and given it to me on my birthday.
    Baby sneezed, without letting go of the bottle stuck between his lips, and his eyes watered.