Saving Houdini Read Online Free PDF

between red and orange palms. Victor Avenue was still empty.
    He zigzagged along side streets to Danforth Avenue. Therewere plenty of people on the main thoroughfare of the neighbourhood: men in delivery trucks that had Model T hoods with pickup beds in the back; men and ladies on bicycles; a policeman on a bicycle (Dash looked away, quickly but casually). On the corner, there was a “Loblaws Groceteria”—not the Loblaws his father shopped at, but a little storefront with two windows, one full of cans and boxes, the other with pyramids of apples, stacked loaves of bread in paper wrapping, and a side of beef.
    A car pulled into a spot in front of him and the man behind the wheel parped his horn—to warn him to be careful or to say
hello
, Dash couldn’t tell—and then he got down from his car and lifted his hat.
    Dash was breathing rapidly. There were people walking here and there. A woman’s heels clicked along the sidewalk behind him. A dog barked somewhere. It was just a regular Tuesday morning … in 1926.
    There was a bakery across the road. The Rosshall Bakery. Its window was full of loaves of bread sitting naked on wooden shelves tilted toward the street. He looked both ways and crossed, almost in a trance. His belly went
gurrrrnk
and he covered it with his hand.
    “Shh,” he said to it, going inside.
    There were customers—mainly women—standing in front of the glass display cases with little paper tickets in their hands. He took one from the red metal dispenser on the wall and stood with them. He watched as each person in turn selected their breads and pies and buns and cookies and cakes. Some had their bread sliced to order, some bought little cardboard containersof breadcrumbs. Each order was carefully wrapped in white paper and slid into a bag or arranged in a box and tied with white string, and each one made his gut squirm more. Finally, his number was called. He stepped up to the counter.
    “Two hot cross buns,” he said, having noted that they were two for three cents. He had nickels in his pocket: maybe nickels were still nickels.
    The lady serving him used a pair of silver tongs to slide two buns out of the case and onto a tower of white paper sheets. She folded the paper around the buns and put them into a bag.
    “Three cents,” she said. He put his coin on the counter. She swept it up. “Your parents know where you are, sweetheart?”
    “I’m visiting,” he said. “That’s why I’m not in school.”
    She looked at the money. “What is this?”
    “Five cents.”
    “Is this American money, sweetheart?” She inspected the coin a little more closely, and he could see her face changing.
    “Oh, my mistake—it’s a souvenir from—”
    “Where are you visiting
from
, young man? This nickel says it’s Canadian …”
    “Um, Montreal? You don’t have the new nickels yet?”
    “Montreal.”
    “Yes,” he said, very quietly.
    She looked like she’d made a decision. She passed the coin back to him, then leaned down into the case and picked up a flakey-looking pastry sprinkled with big sugar crystals. “Do they have these in Montreal?”
    His stomach almost shot out of his nose and ran over the counter. “Oh, uh, not yet.”
    “No cherry purses in Montreal?”
    “I don’t think so.”
    “Why don’t you have one as a souvenir of Toronto,” she said, and she gave him the cherry purse along with the hot cross buns.
    She looked at him a little funny, but not like he scared her or anything. He thought maybe she was reacting to his clothes or his haircut. He wanted to stuff everything into his mouth at once. Something below his ear was painfully throbbing.
    “Thirty-two!” she called, looking away. “Thirty-two, please!”
    Dash walked out to the sidewalk, cleared the bakery window, and then shoved the entire pastry into his mouth. Big soft cherries burst hot and juicy in his mouth. He chewed it like a bear, moving his jaw around to accommodate it all. A kind of blissful relief