TUESDAY: The TTC Panda

BY PRESTON LANG

Copyright is held by the author.

MICK WOKE up with just a tiny fleck of dread. Beer, panda, tequila, music, flirting, cab, streets. Had he made a fool of himself? Lost his wallet? Offended someone important? As he made coffee and checked social media, he started to feel better. Phone, wallet, and keys sat on the counter; no one was mad at him. In fact, the costume he’d worn to Hannah’s party was getting love on Instagram, where they called him Dr. Panda or Science Panda. Only Aisha labeled it correctly: Dr. Fredrick Ban-Ting-Wu. A portmanteau of two great heroes: the man who discovered insulin and Toronto’s only Canadian-born giant panda.

Mick remembered talking with Hannah in the kitchen. Alone between hanging pots and the spice rack, they fell into their old, elliptical speech patterns. She ran her hands over the soft fur of his head and told him that all girls went through a panda phase. Dressed as Aine, the Celtic goddess of love, she displayed a lot of shoulder, and her face was close enough that the slightest move on his part would’ve pressed their lips together.

Then Graham entered the kitchen and said it was time to vote on costume prizes. That must’ve been what gnawed at Mick on Sunday morning. Kissing Hannah would’ve been a huge mistake, and he was lucky to have avoided it. Thank God for Graham.

Mick went for a run and tried the new shawarma place for dinner. Then he read out on the terrace, staying offline until just before bed when he checked a few news sites. On the homepage of the Sun: Bad Panda on the TTC.

He clicked the video link. A short, middle-aged woman pointed angrily at a panda in a lab coat on a line 1 train. The video panned to the ground for a second. When it returned, woman and bear were locked in combat. The panda shoved the woman sideways onto an empty seat, but she righted herself quickly and cursed (bleeped out) at the panda. When the train stopped at Summerhill (Mick’s station) the panda got off.

The mask, which covered the head and shoulders was exactly like the one Mick had worn. The lab coat looked the same too, with syringes taped to the sleeves. Video quality wasn’t good enough to determine the eye colour of the animal, but he was Mick’s height and build. In the uncensored version, it got significantly worse. With full audio, it was clear the woman was outraged at a homophobic slur. Even at full volume, though, the panda never made a sound. Whatever he’d said came before filming had started.

Mick tried to piece together his trip home from the party. He’d shared a cab with two other guys. Anish sat in front, eyes closed, but Graham was alert and sober.  

“I don’t want to make a big deal about it, but as a diabetic, I think your costume is maybe a bit thoughtless.”

“Yeah?”

“Making light of what we go through. You have to think about who a costume might be hurting.”

Graham gestured to the syringes, and Mick realized they’d taken a wrong turn. He’d thought they were going up to his place before swinging east; instead, they’d turned on Dundas.

“Hey, hang on. Stop the car!”

It had been a beautiful summer night: air and exercise. The walk was clear in his mind: lab coat flapping behind him in the wind as he weaved his way home. At no point had he gone underground; at no point had he engaged in a fistfight with an angry, little woman.

On Monday, the story trended on local media.

When Panda’s attack!

Someone must know who this is?

Maybe no one would remember, and it would all blow over. It wasn’t that much of a story, was it? Mick went to the office and settled in with third quarter projections from Vancouver. He made sure to avoid Graham who worked on the same floor. Mick hadn’t remembered Graham when he was first hired, but they’d gone to university together with Hannah and Aisha.

In his youth, Mick had been awkward and hopelessly shy. University was the first time he’d been outside Manitoba. He’d blossomed, made real friends. and discovered that someone as amazing as Hannah could find him attractive. He’d done well in school then got a good job in the city. Was it all in jeopardy because of some rogue panda?

At lunch, there was still nothing more in the news, and Mick pushed through the afternoon until four, when Stella from HR tapped his shoulder and motioned him into a conference room.

A blogger had identified the TTC Panda. Stills from the attack were placed next to photos from the party.

His name is Mick Fuller, and he works at Foster-Shapiro.

He should be fired. Today. TUH-DAY.

Fired? He should be arrested.

Arrested? He should be buried under a bridge.

“It’s not me.”

“This isn’t you?”

Stella tapped her screen.

“The one on the subway isn’t,” Mick said. “The one at the party is.”

“Go home. We’ll call you tonight.”

“It’s not me.”

“If there’s anything important in your desk, you might want to take it with you now.”

A man with a professional video camera waited outside his apartment.

“Why do you have so much hate? What makes you so violent?”

Mick followed the story in real time. At six, Mr. Foster announced his termination, but the people wanted more. Some local politicians were “sickened to the core.” Others implored the city: “Please, Toronto, this isn’t who we are.” Police claimed to be gathering evidence.

When Hannah called, Mick grabbed it on the first ring. Maybe she knew who’d set him up.

“I can’t believe I ever really cared for you,” she said. “I feel sick that I had you in my home with people I respect.”

“I didn’t do it. Really, I didn’t.”

“Mick, you have to own up to this. That’s the first step.”

“I wasn’t on the subway. I took a cab.”

“Graham said you made the cab stop, and you got out.”

“I walked home from there. I know I did.”

“Remember how you used to get blackout drunk?”

Once. It had happened once when she’d broken up with him because he’d said something careless about Nellie Furtado. He’d gotten wildly intoxicated and Aisha had to keep him from eating uncooked ramen, but he hadn’t been violent. Hannah had forgiven him three days later.

“I’m hanging up the phone now,” she said. “Don’t contact me again.”

Was it possible that he had blacked out? He hadn’t even had that much to drink. One beer with Aisha before the party. Then two more, no three when they got there, plus the tequila shot at midnight. Could he really have forgotten the subway: a shove and a slur? That’s not who he was. He wanted to issue his own statement: I’m innocent; I’m gentle; my best friend is a lesbian. He was smart enough to resist this urge, even though all of it was true. Aisha had been in his first-year calculus class. They’d both been odd, bookish, and naïve, and they’d spent hours talking and drinking tea in the common room of her dorm, figuring out who they were.

He wanted to call her, but he was scared that she would be hurt or angry, that she wouldn’t believe him. Still, he looked at his phone all night, rejecting every unfamiliar number, and he watched the video again and again, freezing it at key moments to see if he could catch something that would clear his name.

Around eleven, another picture from the party surfaced. It was Mick angrily cocking a fist at a different small woman: Aisha. She’d been dressed as Mohammed Ali McGraw. They were mugging for the camera, but they’d played it so straight that it looked like they were really ready to brawl.

History of aggression towards women.

What absolute human garbage.

Just after midnight, a citizen journalist uploaded video of himself ambushing Aisha coming off her shift at St. Matthew’s. He showed her the photo.

“Mick Fuller also hit you on Saturday night?”

For the first time, a voice rose in his defense.

“No. I was dressed as a boxer, we were fooling around. He’s a good guy. He didn’t hit anyone.”

“Did he ever use homophobic slurs around you?”

“No.”

“Maybe think a little harder.”

The reporter also had a leaked email from three days before the party, when Mick had written that Aisha could go as “D*ke McStuffins.” As a pediatric ER physician, Aisha called herself this all the time. In fact, she’d been warned not to say it around the children. Mick had merely suggested that she could fall back on it if she couldn’t think of a better costume idea. He’d even including the bowdlerizing asterisk, for God’s sake.

Just before one, Aisha called.

“You believe me, right?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“You know I wouldn’t do something like that.”

There was just a moment’s hesitation before she answered.

“This guy is smooth, the way he moves. You’re much more clunky.”

“This will exonerate me, right?”

Decent people would see him for the innocent he really was.

“You need to get a lawyer. I’ve got someone you can call, but she’s not cheap.”

Aisha’s attorney was a tall woman with a dramatic, grey streak in her dark hair. She spoke without doubt or hesitation.

“I can keep you from doing time in prison, but you need to show contrition. You need to apologize to this woman, apologize to the community. And you have to mean it.”

“I didn’t do this.”

“We’ll provide you with a template for your apology.”

“I wasn’t on the subway. They can check my card, can’t they?”

“I’m trying to keep you out of prison. But you have to listen to me, and you have to do what I say.”

“Could we subpoena local businesses that have cameras? We can get footage of this guy.”

“Subpoena local businesses?”

“There has to be a way to prove I didn’t do this.”

“So on a random night in August, there were two different men, your height and weight, who were dressed as …” She checked her notes. “Fredrick Ban-Ting-Wu?”

Mick made the apology, took the deal, and got probation. Immediate outrage swelled from a city appalled at such lenience. But as one fair-minded columnist wrote, “Sure, we hate the guy, but the slur isn’t audible, and it’s not clear from the video who initiated physical contact. If there’s just one bigot on the jury, he’ll walk.”

So Mick wouldn’t have to live in a cell, but he did have to live in a city that hated him. His neighbours smeared viscous substances on his door, and his landlord said he’d have to leave his sublet by the end of October. The coffee shop on the corner where they used to call him “sweetie” now refused to serve him. That was probably for the best because he couldn’t spend three dollars on a latte anymore. With what he owed the lawyer and zero income, he calculated that he’d be just about broke and homeless in six weeks.

So he stayed inside and became nocturnal, sneaking out at night through the garage to get food from self-checkout. Beans, rice, bread, blood oranges. Half a day might pass when he’d do nothing other than listen to music and search for online work, but before he went to sleep, he’d always check on the story. The Jays hosted a “Stop Intolerance” night where rainbow sprinkles were free. The short lady from the subway had been invited to brunch with the mayor. Above all, the Toronto Zoo was wounded and outraged. They were given a full page in the Globe and Mail: “A zoo is a collection of animals, just as a city is a collection of people. Each must find a way to exist in a spirit of tolerance and mutual respect.” At the bottom was Ting Wu, looking thoughtful and aggrieved: No hate in my name.

Some late nights, Mick would jolt out of a dream where he relived the attack. He saw his wrist cuff the woman on the side of the head and felt the rocking of the train as it eased into the station. But in daylight hours, he convinced himself that this was just a trick of memory, the result of watching the video a thousand times.

There was a rational explanation that vindicated him. Someone knew what he was planning to wear to the party. But who? No one, except Aisha. In the same email where he’d suggested she dress as McStuffins, he’d told her his costume idea. Their friendship had always been a sham. She’d hated him from the day they’d met, then fifteen years later, she’d bought a panda mask and hired a man to impersonate him on the subway. Insane as it sounded, that was the only possibility.

Eviction day was a mild Friday, and Mick went to the zoo. It wasn’t crowded, and he strolled among large cats and snakes until he made it to the Asian zone. Ting Wu was awake. She walked around lazily following her mother. When she saw Mick, she stopped and they locked eyes. It was a moment of connection, where they saw each other honestly. He waved, she took two steps in his direction, and a family of tourists recognized him.

“It’s the panda guy.”

“Hey, you shouldn’t be here.”

The mom called zoo security. Mick stood still, eyes on the animal for another half minute.

“Have you no shame?” the father asked. “Have you no shame, sir?”

A small crowd gathered, and someone threw dirt at him, but he didn’t move.

What Mick learned, looking into the eyes of Ting Wu was that a panda is vicious and stupid, but it isn’t likely to rip you apart if you hop the moat and confront it directly. For that you need a polar bear. As Mick walked to the North American zone, his phone rang. It was Aisha.

“You’re getting evicted today, right?”

“I guess.”

“Go back to Winnipeg. You still have family there?”

“Not since my mom died.”

“I can buy you a bus ticket.”

Thirty-five hours on a Greyhound to the frigid city that would hate him as much as he’d always hated it. No home, no family. Yes, Aisha continued to devise fresh hells for him.  

“You did this to me,” he said. “You were the only one who knew what I was going to wear. You could get a lab coat and syringes at work.”

“Mick, this is ridiculous.”

“You were the only one who could’ve leaked those emails.”

Aisha was silent for a moment.

“I wasn’t going to tell you this, but about a week ago, Graham started dating Hannah.”

“What?”

“The emails you sent me were from your work account. If he had — “

“Oh, my God.”

Graham worked directly for the manager of Mick’s division. He had easy access to all email accounts.

“I’m sorry, Aisha. I’ve got to go.”

The last day of October meant Halloween. The streets were full of witches and Spidermen, Trudeaus and Taylor Swifts. Mixed in with the old standards were more than a few TTC Pandas. They’d snarl and put up their dukes: adorable toddlers and jovial dads. Mick used his last twenty bucks to buy a simple harlequin mask. Then he rolled into Graham’s high rise with a group heading to a party on 26. Mick went on to 33.

The lock was easy to pick. The insulin was stored in the fridge, syringes in a drawer nearby. Mick filled three and sat on a high stool in the kitchen. He could see the front door, the hallway that led to the bedroom, and the living room, where a plastic suit of armour lay on the coffee table. The good Sir Graham had a party to attend that night with his lady love. At seven o’clock, he entered the apartment, smoothly gliding towards the bedroom. Mick came out of the kitchen and stood with his back to the front door. Graham turned.

“How did you get in here?”

“You have a chance to make this right.”

“I’m calling the police.”

“Are you going to tell them what you did to me?”

Graham didn’t answer, but he also didn’t dial.

“You did it for love,” Mick said. “People will understand that you lost your mind over a woman like Hannah.”

At the sound of his beloved’s name, Graham shot Mick a quick, guilty look.

“Just confess,” Mick said. “I’ll forgive you.”

For a moment, it looked like Mick might get his life back. He’d be magnanimous and tell everyone to go easy: Graham had been shaken by a force he couldn’t control.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Graham said.

“It’s going to be so much worse for you this way.”

“You’re sick, and you need to leave my apartment.”

Graham reached for his phone, and Mick injected himself in the stomach with one vial, then another. Graham froze as Mick dialed.

“911, where is your emergency?”

The last shot was tough, but Mick got it all inside his body before he spoke to the operator.

“Graham just injected me with something. I don’t know what it is.”

“Where are you calling from?”

Mick gave the address clearly.

“No, stop it,” Graham yelled.

“He’s coming at me again,” Mick said. “Help me, please!”

Mick ended the call.

He wasn’t supposed to wake up, but he did. In the psych ward, he discovered his plan had failed. No one believed Graham had tried to kill him. In fact, Graham had saved his life. The only criticism he received was from those who thought he should’ve let Mick die on his carpet. 

 Soon Mick was transferred to a permanent facility outside of the city. This solved his housing problem, and no one on the inside cared whether he’d ever misbehaved on the subway. Hannah and Graham married and became religious. After Hannah had her first child, Graham began to visit the asylum every two months to pray for Mick’s soul.

Eventually, after much pleading from Mick, Graham brought him a panda mask like the one he’d worn that fateful night. They wouldn’t let Mick wear anything that covered his face, so they cut that part away and let him wear the scalp and ears as a sort of toque. He’d walk the grounds and search for food, but he never found a scrap of bamboo.

***

Preston Lang is an honest, Ontario-based writer. His short fiction has appeared in Grain, N + 1, and Queen’s Quarterly.