Caught (10 page)

He’s the one. He was over at that picnic table with a young lady. Had an order of fish and chips and a sundae. Gave me his name, Dave, so I could call out when the food was ready.

So you took his order, Patterson said.

And I called out over the lot when it was ready, she said.

What about his appearance? Patterson said. The woman said that he had been wearing a powder blue shirt and a pair of jeans.

A child came up beside Patterson and asked for a custard cone. The boy was wrapped in a sand-caked towel and his lips were blue. He was shivering and Patterson could hear his teeth.

The woman took a cone down from a dispenser attached to the wall and flicked a handle on the custard machine but kept on talking over the noise with her head turned to the side. The machine shuddered and growled. A thick column of ice cream spewed out and the woman lifted the handle and the machine clanked and she turned with the cone. She gave it to the boy through the window and took his change.

He was a good-looking young fellow, she said. Dark hair, and the eyes on him, blue like the shirt. The shirt brought out the colour. I would say handsome, definitely. He looked like that picture in the paper you got there. Few freckles.

What would you say was his height, Patterson asked.

He was tall. He rested his elbow on this window ledge here giving his order, and he had to hunch over, crick his neck to the side. He had a sense of humour.

What did he say funny?

Oh, I don’t remember exactly, she said. And she smoothed her hair with both hands.

He gave me a compliment about this funny old paper hat I have on.

He was bent over talking to you at this window, Patterson said.

He took his order over to the table, they sat in the shade, a young lady was with him, like I said, drove a maroon Buick, and after a time he came back up and got his sundae, which he asked for two spoons.

How long ago?

You just missed him.

Did you happen to see which way they were going? Patterson asked.

They were at that picnic table, next thing they were gone. I’d say — what, Eleanor? Twenty minutes? Half hour? It looked like they might be heading up toward Quebec.

Thank you for your help, ma’am.

That’s all I can tell you, Officer.

Patterson thanked her again and used the pay phone in the convenience store to call in the Buick. Then they sent out the three ghost cars and Patterson went back to his hotel to wait.

The late show that night was
How to Marry a Millionaire
. Patterson laughed when Marilyn Monroe took off her glasses at her vanity table and walked right into the wall and bounced back and without delay tried again for the door.

He had a shower and came out into the bedroom with a white towel wrapped around his waist. He ran his fingers over the muscles in his arms and chest. He’d lost another pound.

The phone startled him when it rang. Sergeant Farrell, with the New Brunswick detachment, said they’d located Slaney. One of the ghost cars had picked him up hitchhiking and offered him a ride to Montreal.

Patterson hung up and settled into bed and switched off the light. In the dark, he spoke a single word out loud to the room. Gotcha.

Montreal

Slaney arrived in
Montreal and wanted to be in the noise of a pub, warm and amber-lit, full of glass glint and after-work racket.

He wanted a phone. He wanted to eat something soaked in old, coagulated gravy, something they had added to all week. He’d tried a couple of places already but he was having a hard time finding something with enough substance that you might try to call it soup.

He ducked down a slippery set of concrete steps smelling of drainpipe and pigeon shit into a place with a gold and black sign swinging over the door that said
YE OLDE CELTIC PUB
.

The waitresses were in denim miniskirts and tie-dyed T-shirts, starbursts of fuchsia and lemon and turquoise. Trays of beer balanced on one hand, level with their chins.

Slaney picked up the padded leather menu. He tapped the corner of the menu on the bar, gave his order, and made his way to the back where there was a pay phone.

Carved in the wooden brace over the phone with a ballpoint pen was the promise of a good time if Slaney, or anyone else, were to call Charmaine. He dropped some coins and dialled the number that had been in his mother’s suitcase. He listened to it ring. A guy named Dick answered.

Hearn’s expecting your call, Dick said. He told Slaney about the sailboat and said it was just a matter of Slaney flying to Mexico to meet up with the captain.

They’re thinking six days to Colombia from Mexico if the winds are good, Dick said.

Hearn told you all this? Slaney said.

I wasn’t talking to Hearn himself, Dick said. There’s a chain.

A grapevine, Slaney said.

Only a few people got Hearn’s number, Dick said.

You got his number? Slaney said.

I’m going to give it to you right now.

You must be pretty high up in the chain.

Pretty high, Dick said. There’s fifteen of us.

Mexico, Slaney said.

The hull’s been refitted for the cargo, Dick said. Faux wood panelling. All Slaney had to do was get his arse to Vancouver.

There’s going to be a party, Dick said. Hearn is dying to see you, man.

Forgive me, Dick, but have we met?

Dirty Dick, he said.

I can’t put a face, Slaney said.

Richard Downey, Dick said. They used to call me Dirt.

The hockey tape, Slaney said.

I had hockey tape on my glasses.

You had tape across the bridge.

Somebody shoved me.

Stepped on your glasses.

Ground them into the dirt.

And the shoes.

So what?

The platform heels.

Your mother wears army boots, man.

Dirty Dick, Slaney said.

I’ve been keeping up with you in the papers, Dick said.

Dirt, I remember you, Slaney said.

I don’t go by that anymore.

How you been? Slaney said.

It’s Richard.

Okay. Richard. How the hell are you? Get your glasses fixed?

The papers got you figured in Montreal, Dick said. Hope you’re not in Montreal, man.

Slaney wrote Hearn’s number on the back of his hand with a pen dangling from a string near the phone and he thanked Dick and hung up.

A waitress with orange hair pushed her bum against the swing door. She had a tub full of dishes. After a moment she came back out and put down a paper placemat and a napkin and fork and knife before a guy in a suit. There was a pencil behind her ear. Slaney put some more money in the phone and he dialled Hearn’s new number and he let it ring. Then Hearn picked up.

How’s it going, man, Hearn said.

It’s cool, Slaney said.

So, we’re cool, Hearn asked. It’s cool to hear from you, man. Hear your voice.

Montreal, man, Slaney said.

Listen, Hearn said. Tell me about it. Slaney was pretty sure Hearn was cooking something. He could hear a frying pan, something spitting.

They’d always had a way of not talking that was, in every respect, exactly like talking. They already knew what the other would say. Talking was after the fact.

What’s the French for soup? Slaney said. I’m trying to get myself a proper drop of soup.

The waitress behind the bar took an ice cream spoon out of a bowl of cloudy water and flicked it clean. She leaned so far into the freezer one foot lifted off the floor and her white polyester slip was visible under her skirt. The lid bumped down on her back. Cold light and steam poured upward from the freezer.

Consommé, Hearn said.

I said consommé, Slaney said. But it was just water. I’m here now in an English place trying to get a drop of soup.

Good to hear your voice, man.

You got someone there? Slaney said.

My old lady.

Your new old lady?

The new one, yes.

Where’s your old old lady?

This is the real thing, Hearn said.

I thought the other thing was real.

She was real, all right. The waitress emerged from the freezer and the lid thumped down behind her. She had pale skin and a sprinkle of freckles on her cheeks. Her eyes were a blue so dark they seemed unfocused. Her hair caught the light and looked electrified.

The new one is different, Hearn said.

Different, that’s deadly.

I’m different when I’m with her.

You’re both different.

Never mind, man. I try to tell you something.

Go ahead.

Never mind.

No, go ahead.

I’m trying to express something.

I’m all ears.

I try, every once in a while, to say something to you.

Get deep, I hear you.

Never mind. Slaney? Never mind.

Philosophize. I’m here for you, man.

Slaney?

Go ahead.

Everything is not a big ha-ha, Hearn said. The waitress held the ice cream scoop above a piece of pie and pulled the trigger with her thumb. A ball of vanilla ice cream dropped onto the top of the pie and slid sideways.

Lay it on me, Slaney said.

Never mind.

What does she look like? This was the question Hearn had been wanting him to ask.

Built? My son, Hearn said.

Built is she, Slaney said.

Believe it.

Stacked?

Personality too.

You respect her mind, Slaney said.

But, you know.

Built, Slaney said.

Personality too.

Tits? Slaney asked.

Come on, man.

Just wondering.

Yes, tits, Hearn said. These tits. Do you remember Maeve Brown? Like Maeve’s. Only somehow better than Maeve’s. Her nipples are like Maeve’s.

I never saw Maeve’s nipples.

Yes you did. Maeve Brown’s nipples. You must have.

When would I have seen Maeve Brown’s nipples?

Everybody’s seen them. Weren’t you at that party?

I’ve been incarcerated.

I know that.

Maybe that party happened while I was in jail.

I know you were incarcerated, Slaney. I know that.

Better than Maeve’s?

I’m sorry, Slane. I’m sorry, man. I’m sorry.

Better than Maeve’s?

She’s nice. That’s all I’m saying.

And your other old lady?

She’s gone.

I liked her.

She was okay.

There was something about her.

You go out with her, then.

What was her name? Michelle?

Maureen.

There was something about Maureen.

Can you be serious here? The waitress put the pie down in front of the man and she gave the plate a little twist so the best angle of the pie faced the customer.

This one is from down home.

From the bay, Slaney said.

You should hear the accent on her, Hearn said.

The bowels of the bay.

I can’t understand her half the time.

I’m sorry about your father, Slaney said. There was a roar in Hearn’s kitchen from the deep fryer. Hearn had a basket of chips. Slaney could hear Hearn shaking them out of the wire basket.

He was a good man, Slaney said. Nobody knew that would happen. A stroke. How could anybody know?

Made himself from nothing, Hearn said. And what did I do?

You couldn’t see a stroke coming, Slaney said.

I never got a chance to say goodbye.

I know.

I would have liked to see him.

I know.

Say something. Explain my actions.

I hear he communicates, Slaney said.

Squeezes your hand yes or no. That’s all.

You hear from Jennifer? Slaney asked.

I have to tell you, Slane, Hearn said. She’s married. She got married.

My God, Slaney said. The force of it. Slaney felt faint is what he felt. He slammed a shoulder against the wall and waited for the darkness in the periphery of his vision to clear. He looked for a chair but there was no chair. He needed to go home, to reverse everything. His equilibrium was askew. A surge of pain in the wrong places, limbs he didn’t have, his organs, his tendons. He didn’t know what he was feeling, queasy and unequal. He was unequal to this news, unable to believe it.

She got married a month ago, Hearn said.

Slaney pressed his hand down over his eyes and tried to get the sway out of the bar. It was all swaying and he tried to make it be still. Jennifer hadn’t answered his letters but he couldn’t believe that she was in love with someone else. If she had married somebody it was a kind of lie. A deceit that would cost her everything she was. She hadn’t believed he’d come get her.

Dirty Dick heard she married a guy Decker from home, Hearn said. Went to Gonzaga, few years older than us.

Slaney was thinking Jennifer must have been coerced or brainwashed or bewitched. He needed to tell her to stop her foolishness. She was stubborn and spoiled rotten but they could have worked around all that. She had suffered a lapse of faith; they could have fixed it. But a marriage? She had married somebody. A marriage would be hard to undo.

He couldn’t summon what he needed to roar against it. He wanted to throw back his head and howl as loud as he could. Put his fist through the wall of the bar, out to the parking lot, and beyond, into someone’s face. Whoever the guy was, the husband, he wanted to grab him by the throat. He wanted to put his nose right up against the other guy’s nose and just say a few things.

Or sit him down and gently explain. Tell the guy: Listen here. If he could illustrate for the guy the intensity of what he felt, what he and Jennifer had been through, how deep that love was — the guy would step aside. The guy would say: She’s all yours, buddy.

What bullshit it was that a marriage had taken place. This guy had no idea. But Slaney couldn’t draw up what was required to reverse everything.

Somebody, perhaps the girl Hearn had there, had turned on a radio. Slaney could hear the weather. The weather was going to be the same.

Where is she? Slaney said.

She’s in Ottawa. The guy got something out there, a steady job.

I see, Slaney said.

Maybe she wants a safe place for her kid. She probably doesn’t want to be caught up with all of this.