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To bring every skyscraper down, like one 9/11 after another. To sweep away all the dams. To turn cities back into swamps (Paris was once a marsh, and so was London). To save most animals from extinction …
    I blinked, wiped the images from my head, gazed up at the sky. Among the clouds was a leaping dolphin, its body a graceful S , flanked by a leaping lion, its forelegs fully splayed. Hamlet, my doctor told me, saw camels and weasels and whales in the clouds before he went mad.
    On the door of the clinic was a bilingual sign, whose font 8 English said ANIMALS MUST BE HELD OR LEECHED . The air inside had a slightly sour tang—the smell of medicine, ofanimal fear—and muffled whines and whimpers drifted in from the back.
    I was in no mood to see a beautiful human but was now in the presence of one. A woman in a white frock with long wavy Pre-Raphaelite hair who stood by a bay window, tall and straight and queenly, with unfeasibly long legs. I was distracted not only by her, but by the male receptionist, who had bleached white teeth and skin bronzed with a chemical tanning agent.
    I asked for syringes, cephalexin and pethidine, armed with a cock-and-bull story about a near-fatal injury to my cat, caught in a hunter’s steel trap. To my surprise, the receptionist gave me what I wanted after getting a curt nod from the doctor. I thanked her but a swinging door was already closing behind her.
    As my bill was being rung up, I wondered if I should talk to the vet about my patient’s wounds. Or even bring her in for an examination. A medical doctor would be required by law to notify authorities; a veterinarian had no such obligation. At least in the States …
    « With the tax, that’ll be $114.44, » said the receptionist. « For an extra ten bucks, I’ll give you a tick bath. »
    I laughed. Then asked, in a low voice, « You wouldn’t have any diazepam, would you? Or something like that? » This was a tranquilizer, for me, because it seemed like I’d forgotten how to sleep.
    « Yes, we do. But you’ll need a doctor’s— »
    « Can you toss some in? » I gave him what I hoped would pass for a seductive wink and camp little moue. « Just, you know, like a sample? »
    The receptionist bit his lip, looked both ways. Then spun in his chair and opened a metal cabinet. « On the house, » he said in a stage whisper, handing me an aluminum blister pack.
    Zieline, it was called. Two would knock out a thousand-pound horse. « Uh, I don’t want to sound fussy or anything but … you wouldn’t have anything milder, would you? For humans? »
    « Oh my God! Wrong pack. » He spun round again and rooted through the cabinet. « How about these? »
    “Perfect, thanks.” I counted out six American twenties. Left a seventh on the counter, worth two tick baths. « Joyeux Nöel . »
    On my way out, a poster on the door caught my eye: a missing-girl flyer. A dead girl, most likely. I looked closer. A fourteen-year-old with short dark hair and glasses, last seen at the Maison d’Hébergement Jeunesse in Ste-Madeleine: CÉLESTE JONQUÈRES .

    She was still sleeping when I got back, struggling and muttering like a dreaming dog. I put away my purchases noiselessly, placed the DVD player and crossword puzzle on the chair beside the bed, set up the TV on a kitchen chair at the foot of the bed. Punched it on, fiddled with its wire antenna until finding one semi-clear channel among twelve of snow. Then went back out, to my neighbour’s, for my daily theft of wood.
    When I returned, my foundling was bathed in the vampiric light of the TV, her teeth gritted and tears making glossy tracks on her face. I made some comforting noises—the kind made for pets and babies, the kind I used to make for Brooklyn—and patted her cheeks with a Kleenex. She responded with a series of groans and spastic movements that both perplexed and troubled me. Was she mentally retarded?
    « Are you … in pain? » I asked in both languages, sitting on the edge of the