Extreme Vinyl Café (24 page)

And so it was Dave who organized the party on the final night. Well, not exactly party. It was more ... an event. It began on the final afternoon. Bruce Towler had been wheeling along the deck, looking for excitement, when he almost ran Dave over.

“OUT OF MY WAY,” he bellowed, picking up momentum.

“Hey,” said Dave, laughing. “What’s your top speed?”

Just then, Robert James, a ninety-three-year-old retired real estate agent from Boca Raton wheeled into view from the other direction.

“Robert,” shouted Dave, “can you go faster than this old codger?”

And that’s all it took really. The race was set for 8:30. On the promenade deck. Doris was given the task of spreading the word—discreetly, only to sympathetic passengers.

“Don’t let Derek catch wind,” said Dave.

Four others signed up at dinner, so they had to run heats.

By race time, there was a crowd of over one hundred waiting at the starting line, which was by the aft portside lifeboats.

Dave had lookouts placed strategically at each door. And Doris posted by the pool, a deck above, where she could watch over most of the course.

The first heat featured Bruce against a car dealer from Portland, Maine.

Before they started, Dave inspected each wheelchair.

The car dealer rubbed his arms with BENGAY and Bruce popped a digitalis. And they were off. Twice around the deck. As he crossed the finish line in first place, Bruce raised his hands over his head.

“WHOOPEE!” he said.

T
he final pitted Bruce Towler against Robert James, the real estate agent from Boca Raton.

Before they got it started, Bruce’s daughter, Kathy, got wind of the race and came hustling up with Derek, the two of them determined to stop it. Doris spotted them, and they were intercepted and diverted into the dining room. They had to watch through the portside windows, Derek beet red, perspiring and pounding on the glass.

It was like the chariot race in
Ben Hur
—the two wheelchairs smashing against each other as they looped out of sight around the first-class cabins.

They were gone for less than a minute, but when they reappeared there was only one chair. Bruce Towler was nowhere to be seen.

“THE BUGGER STUCK HIS CANE IN MY SPOKES,” said Bruce when he crossed the finish line a good two minutes later.

I
t was ten o’clock when the
Empress of Kumar
pulled back into Port Everglades. Dave and Morley were both on the upper deck as the ship eased through the seawall. Morley was leaning against the rail, looking back to sea. She was wearing a knee-length cream-silk dress covered with big green and white calla lilies. She was holding a glass of champagne.

“What are you thinking?” said Dave.

“Same thing I always think at the end of a trip,” said Morley, turning to smile at him. “Glad to be home. Sad that it’s over.”

The ship blew its horn. She jumped a little.

“Scared me,” she said. They were spending the last night in port. They were scheduled to get off in the morning.

On their way to their cabin, Dave and Morley passed Doris Schick and Bruce Towler. Doris was wearing a silver evening gown with a thousand silver sequins. Bruce Towler, sitting in his wheelchair, was clutching her silver sequined purse.

T
he letter came six months later.

It was from Bruce Towler’s daughter, Kathy. Handwritten.

I am having a hard time with this.

My father would tell me to get off the pot. I should do that.

He died last week.

That’s the first time I have written that. It is so odd to see it written down.

Dave was reading the letter in his record store, leaning against the counter with the letter in front of him. He was alone, except for a guy he didn’t know who was flipping through the blues section.

Dave looked up at the guy, and then he picked up the letter and counted the pages. He stared at them without reading for a moment. He was thinking of Bruce Towler. The afternoon of his big jump. Bruce hadn’t even hesitated, not for a second.

Dave glanced back at the letter.

As these things go, it wasn’t horrible. He drifted off watching
Extreme Wrestling
. He never woke up.

My father spoke of you often. He liked you a lot.

I don’t know if you knew he was sick. I thought he was going to die on one of those cruises. He said you were the one who convinced him to move in with me.

He was always afraid of losing his independence. I always thought he would only come when he couldn’t cope and he would feel defeated. He wasn’t defeated at all. In fact, since that cruise he was happier, more energetic and more, I don’t know, present, than he had been for years. He was a different person.

One night he even came to the movies with us. That might sound strange. You would have had to know him.

But of course you did.

Dave was nodding.

I was upset with you on the boat. I thought those things you did with him were—I feel so silly now—I thought they were dangerous.

He was so grateful for having met you. He said he never would have had the courage to leap if you hadn’t been there that day. And I think he meant more than the jump.

I hope you don’t mind me writing. I wanted you to know and I needed to thank you.

Here is my address. If you were ever this way, I would love you to drop by.

It was funny the things you set in motion without meaning to. It was like a big game of pool. You hit the balls and they start colliding and you never know where they are going to end up. All you do is take your best shot and stand back and watch them. And hope for the best.

I
t was a week later, a Sunday afternoon, just as Morley was leaving to pick up her mother for dinner, when Dave said, “Have you ever thought of asking her to live here, with us? I would be okay with that, if you did.”

Morley was about to make a smart remark. And then she stopped, and saw he was serious. She came over to him, looked at him carefully and said, “Thank you.”

It seemed to make her happy. She looked happy.

Dear Mr. McLean,

On a recent car trip, my husband was scanning the radio dial and came across your program,
The Vinyl Cafe.

“Wow,” said my husband, “that’s still on the air?”

He says he figures you either have something on the president of CBC or you are the luckiest guy in show business.

Betting on the latter, I was wondering if you could pick my next round of lottery numbers?

With fingers crossed,
Angela

P.S. Just to be clear—if we win, we are not obligated to share our winnings with you or anything. Sorry.

Dear Angela,

Please find enclosed a series of my favourite numbers, ranging from one to one hundred. Take a close look at “ thirty-six”; it’s one I’m particularly fond of. I am also including a story about lottery tickets.

T
here is no good time for bad news.

When something bad happens, people often say, “It couldn’t have come at a worse time,” but there
is
no better time when the news that comes is not the news you want. Bad news always has bad timing.

Stephanie’s boyfriend, Tommy, hung up the phone and walked into his bathroom and stared into his bathroom mirror. He stood there for a long time. When he was finished staring, he went into his bedroom and picked up his grey hoodie off the floor. His toque was on top of the fridge. He fetched his toque, grabbed his notebook from the couch and headed out. Hands in his pockets. Shoulders hunched.

He didn’t know it, but he was going to see Steph. He didn’t go right there, though. He walked around for a good hour before he realized that’s where he was heading.

Steph was in her kitchen when he arrived at her apartment. By the stove to be precise, holding a handful of pasta over a big pot. She was wearing an apron that said,
Procrastinate Now!
Tommy went to the back door, knocked on the window and walked in.

Stephanie was surprised to see him. He had said he was going to stay home and write.

She said, “What are you
doing
here?”

And, right out of the blue, just like he had appeared, just like the phone call, Tommy said, “My grandpa died.”

Steph ran across the kitchen and gave him a hug. She said, “Are you okay?” Tommy dropped his canvas bag by the table. All Tommy said was, “I just don’t believe it.”

T
he first time Tommy took Stephanie to meet his grandpa was on his nineteenth birthday. A family dinner. It was a bit of a deal that he took her. He had never taken anyone before. Especially not a girl. She was nervous. She had talked way too much, but his grandpa liked her. He sat with her after dinner and talked about the war.

Tommy reached for Stephanie’s hand. “He was at the barber’s. He had … a stroke. They didn’t even take him to the hospital.”

I
nk.

That
was what Tommy was thinking about.

Ink on his fingers. Ink on his shirt. His grandfather was plagued by ink. Now the old man had died and all Tommy could think about was what was going to happen to his grandpa’s pens.

Stephanie said, “I was thinking about them too. Anyone would think that. That would come to anyone’s mind.”

Tommy’s grandpa was ink stained.

H
e was the only person Stephanie knew who used a fountain pen. He had a collection of pens that he kept in a wooden box on his desk.

“This one is a Parker 51,” he said holding up a sleek grey pen with a hooded nib.

“This is my Waterman.” He took a glass bottle of ink out of the drawer and unscrewed it. Then he sniffed it.

“You have to be careful,” he said, looking at her over his glasses. “Ink can go bad.”

He took an eyedropper and used it to fill the Waterman. When he’d finished, there was a smudge of ink on his forehead. He handed Stephanie the pen. His initials were engraved on the gold clip. Then he got a piece of paper and laid it on the desk.

“You have to break a pen in,” he said. “The paper wears the nib down for the way you write. It’s a gold nib.”

Stephanie looked at him. He nodded.

“Go on,” he said.

She sat down and wrote her name.

“Imagine,” he said. “Paper wearing down gold. You probably write with a safety pen.”

“A ballpoint,” said Stephanie.

“
Uh
,” he said. “You might as well write with a nail.”

He gave her one of his pens. It was a Waterman, tortoiseshell, with gold inlay. The first thing she wrote was a letter to him. Thank you. She sniffed the ink every time she filled the pen. She had no idea what bad ink smelled like.

L
ewis J. Waterman was an insurance man. So was Tommy’s grandfather. Waterman got drawn into the pen business after
a leaky pen messed up one of his contracts. Tommy’s grandfather, who was also Lewis, didn’t go anywhere without
his
Waterman.

T
ommy stayed at Stephanie’s for dinner that night. It was while they were doing the dishes that Stephanie said, “Hey! What’s going to happen to the ticket?”

Tommy said, “I hadn’t thought about that.”

His grandfather’s famous lottery ticket. He had owned it for ten years.

“Longer,” said Tommy. “Longer … for sure. I remember it from when I was a kid.”

T
here were different stories. Lewis bought the ticket after he had touched a bride. He bought it the day he found a four-leaf clover. He bought it with a hundred pennies that he had found, “heads up.”

He had a whole routine with pennies he found. If they were “heads up,” he kept them and made a wish. If they were “heads down,” he would give them away—because “heads down” meant bad luck. So he had to give them away “heads up,” to cancel the bad luck.

Tommy and Stephanie were sitting on her couch.

Tommy said, “When I was a kid, if I was with him when he found a penny, he would give
me
the wishes. Then he would make me tell him
what
I’d wished for. I told him you weren’t supposed to tell. He said you were allowed to tell grandfathers.”

Tommy stood up and started pacing. “I asked him about it when I was older.”

Stephanie said, “I don’t think he really believed it.”

Tommy nodded.

Stephanie said, “Weird that he’d still do it, though.”

Tommy said, “He told me he did it because he had heard that it still worked, even if you didn’t believe.”

S
o Tommy’s grandfather had a lottery ticket. It was one of those scratch tickets from way back. There was no date on it, not even an expiry date. The prize was one million dollars.

That’s what he used to say. “Imagine. A million dollars.” Then he would say, “What would you do with a million dollars?” And you had to tell him what you would do.

Lewis would listen, ever so carefully. And when you were finished, he would say, “Are you sure that’s what you would do? Is that your
heart’s desire
?” And you had to go through the whole thing all over. It was all very serious because this, he told everyone, with absolute conviction, was a
winning
ticket. It might sound crazy, but he was a very convincing man.

The ticket was of considerable concern to the family. You might even say an obsession. It underlined shared points of view and it provoked differences. It got to be so everyone in the family, everyone, except perhaps the small children, had to have an opinion about the ticket. And when you settled on your stance, you had to defend it. Tommy’s family argued about the ticket whenever they got together. They argued about it at family dinners. They argued about it at Christmas.

“Lewis!” shouted his brother. “A million dollars isn’t what it used to be.”

“It’s still a million dollars,” said Lewis.

“But if you had put it in the bank instead of leaving it on the
mantel, you’d have collected interest. All these years. You know how much you would have?”

“Maybe I’d have nothing,” Lewis would say. “Tommy, pass your mother the peas. You’ve read what happens to lottery winners. That man in Niagara Falls. That family in New Brunswick. I still have the million. How much does one man need?”