Eye for an Eye by Bev Robitai Read Free Book Online

on
the table and open it for him. His hands flicked deftly through her
things, until he reached the lamb docker which he extracted and
held up.
    ‘Can you tell
me what this is, please?’
    ‘Ah, it’s –
well, it’s for…’ invention failed her. ‘It’s a lamb docker, you
know, for removing their tails and things.’
    ‘Are you
planning to work while in Canada, ma’am? Do you have a work
permit?’
    ‘Uh, no. Er,
I’m not planning to work, but, um, I’m visiting some relatives who
have a farm and I thought I’d show them what we use for the job
back home in New Zealand? We lead the world in a lot of
agricultural technology.’
    He replaced it
and continued searching. His hands delved into the pocket of her
pack and she saw his face change. He pulled out a handful of wilted
grass and looked at her knowingly.
    ‘And this would
be for your personal use, would it ma’am?’
    ‘Oh, that’s
just grass! No, I mean real grass, that sheep eat, not marijuana!
Honestly, it’s perfectly innocent.’
    He sniffed it
carefully, then tasted a piece and spat it out.
    ‘That’s
grass!’
    ‘Yes, that’s
what I was trying to say. Just grass, not drugs - really. I’m
sorry, it was a stupid thing to bring but I thought it would remind
me of home while I’m here.’
    He sighed and
chalked her bag. ‘We’ll have to dispose of it as a bio-hazard. OK,
now go through that door over there, please.’
    She stuffed her
pack closed and walked cautiously through the green door, wondering
what the next trap would be.
    Once she was
through, she was relieved to find herself at the airport exit, with
all Customs officials behind her and no further barriers between
her and the city.
    Outside, the
heat and humidity were stifling, and quite a shock to a body tuned
to mid-winter. She peeled off her light jacket and stuffed it into
her pack, then found a shuttle bus that would take her downtown
where she was booked into a cheap hotel not too far from the
waterfront. The bus driver piled her bags into the luggage trailer
and waved her aboard.
    She was
astounded that the trip took almost an hour, despite the driver’s
seemingly breakneck speed along a twelve-lane freeway that led to
the heart of the city. Huge green exit signs flashed past every few
seconds, and she wondered how anybody managed to make sense of it
all. It wasn’t until they left the freeway that she suddenly
yelped, seeing that the driver was headed for the right-hand side
of the road. Then, feeling foolish, she realised that in Canada,
traffic drove on the right not the left. Once she managed to make
the mental adjustment, she was able to prise her fingers off the
grab rail on top of the seat in front.
    The
air-conditioned bus took her to the drop-off point downtown at
Union Station, where the driver told her to ‘have a nice day.’
Robyn thanked him politely, and shouldered her pack for the walk to
her hotel.
    Within two
minutes she had broken into a sweat, which soon had her T-shirt
feeling wet and uncomfortable. Her feet heated up inside her
running shoes until she imagined puffs of steam emerging with every
step along the hot sidewalk. Every so often she passed drain
gratings, and soon learned to hold her breath against the ripe
sulphurous fumes that rose from them. The traffic roared past her
in a blaring cacophony of sound formed from engines, horns, sirens,
and the throbbing bass beat from a hundred blasting stereo
speakers.
    Robyn looked
around her and let out a whoop of joy. This was the big city! What
a great place!
    The hotel
brought her back to earth again. It was a shabby old brick building
on a side street, four storeys high in a u-shape with a patchy lawn
in the middle, rank with weeds. Robyn’s room was at ground level in
the corner of the u, where judging by the paleness of the
vegetation struggling outside, the sun never quite reached. The
window had wire mesh and bars across it, and wouldn’t open more
than two inches. An ancient radiator had left