Lost Girls (31 page)

''Sure, sure.''

He keeps his eyes on me as I rise, with what I assume to be his upper lip rolled thoughtfully beneath his whiskers.

''I was just wondering if your Tripp told you the funny part,'' he says, stubbing his cigarette out in the stainless-steel bedpan he pulls out of a cupboard next to him.

''All he told me is that Krystal got hurt at school, that he drove her in here to get stitches, and then took her home. Where's the funny part in that?''

''Well, now, it's not surprising he left that out of his story. But didn't he tell the nurse who was doing the paperwork that he was her father.''

''What?''

''Filled out the form just that way. 'Patient delivered by father, Lloyd McConnell.' But I saw him standing there myself and I knew damn well it was Thom Tripp. My own son's been in the fellow's class, y'see. Lucky for him that particular nurse was new up from Toronto and couldn't have told the difference between Tripp and The Lord High Mayor, but when she told me later how strange that girl's father was behaving, all sweaty and worked up, nobody knew what she was talking about. I mean, why would he even
try
pretending he was McConnell? What's the point in trying to fool anyone about that?''

''Were the authorities contacted? The police, I mean, or the high school?''

''Why would I do that?''

''Because Tripp might have been considered, I don't know, dangerous. Impersonating a young girl's father--''

''Now, look here. While in hindsight what Tripp told our nurse that day makes a little more sense, at the time there was no way to know he was
dangerous
. We get some very strange people in here. Some have become strange over time, others were strange to begin with. If I was to call the cops every time one of them walked through our doors, I'd be on the phone all day.''

''Well, thanks again, Doctor. You've given me something to think about.''

''Like whether you're going to want to call a witness to tell a funny story like that?''

''Among other things.''

I pull open the door.

''Sure you won't join me?'' he asks, shaking the cigarette pack once more and sticking one in the middle of his beard, but I shake my head no and let the door close behind me, walk out past two new faces sitting in the waiting room. A man holding his wife's pale hand as she rocks back and forth in pain but with eyes fixed on the TV. A greasy-spoon waitress using two kinds of paper towel to sop up a puddle of spilled coffee. One absorbs, the other disintegrates. At this the husband turns to look up at me with both helplessness and accusation, uncertain as to who to blame for his wife's suffering, for cheap paper towels that always let you down. My face must offer no answers, for in the next moment his eyes return to the screen. ''It's the quicker picker upper!'' the TV chirps as I push through the Emergency Room doors and out into the stabbing rain.

Night. Sleep comes riddled with dreams whose hectic events and grisly climaxes leave me sitting up on one elbow, eyes blinking at the door to check that the chain lock still sits in its groove. Try to remember the details but they're gone, leaving only the panicked impression of being unable to move, to escape. But soon the body demands that I try again, and I lower my head to the pillow hoping that this time I'll be left alone until morning.

But it's still night when I next wake. A shattering sound outside the door. The phone.

So I'm pulling on pants, socks, shoes, buttoning up a shirt. Dipping two fingers deep into the thermos and making barnyard sounds with my snout. Slam the door behind me but the sound is buried in the next ringing that rains down from the floors above as much as from below. Only when it finishes do I allow myself to breathe again, a smacking gulp, and with it a flood of circulation in my ears like poured sand.

It won't let me move. Feet gripped to their places by invisible fingers reaching up through the floor. Staring down to where the peeler's room would have been in my dream, to the far end of the hall that, even as I watch, pulls away into the shadows left by an unreplaced overhead bulb.

Lower my eyes so that I won't see whatever it is I can almost make out walking forward from the dark and throw myself forward, hands waving first for balance and then to swing me around the banister and down the stairs. A blind dance that goes on long enough for the phone to twice repeat its alarm. Each ring slightly closer to the last as though it knows that I'm here beside it now, a hand unconsciously clenched to my chest to calm the sudden pain there.

Then I wait. Maybe it'll stop without me having to do a thing and then I can pull the cord from the wall or leave a nasty note for the concierge and go back to bed. But it rings three more times to remind me that none of this will happen, that it won't stop until I answer. So I do.

From out of the watery static comes the peeler's voice, trembling but insistent. Heard not so much from a place at the other end of the line but from upstairs, from within my own ear.

''You like the show the other night?''

''Fantastic. I love these customer service follow-up calls too. But can I tell you something? Your timing stinks.''

''I know you.''

''Congratulations. But why are you going to all this--''

''I know what you like.''

I hang up carefully, place both hands over the receiver as though their weight alone might prevent it from ringing again. In my ears the chatter of accelerated blood. A single set of headlights flash past on the street outside, through the grime that coats the narrow windows on each side of the door. But no more ringing. Not even the rumbling of Muzak bass lines coming through the wall from the Lord Byron Cocktail Lounge. No way I can go back to my room in a hotel so quiet.

Besides, now that I'm down here maybe a drink would do me good. Maybe two. The depressants clashing with the stimulants and having it out once and for all. What I need is ice bobbing in golden syrup, a rock glass slippery with cold sweat. The delicate spray of ginger fizz.

Through the leather door to the Lord Byron and straight over to the bar, making a point of keeping my eyes from the rest of the room. Place both hands flat on the varnished wood, raise my chin to the barman, who scuffs over with his gut leading the way, a square of curling black hair peeping out through the space of a missed button on his shirt.

''Slow tonight,'' I say.

''Empty as City Hall on a Friday afternoon.''

I nod. We nod together, the barman once and me a half dozen.

''You're the lawyer, aren't you?''

''That would be me.''

''No wonder you need a drink.''

''Double rye-and-ginger, if you don't mind.''

His eyes linger on me for a second, his belly pointed accusingly in my direction, but eventually he turns to pull a forty of Canadian Club from the lit-up bar display and pours me a biggie.

Now I can turn. The room isn't entirely empty but it's close, only a single guy in a fluorescent orange raincoat in the front row and a table of three polyester button-downs at the back, speaking in the too-loud tones of employee complaint. Salesmen probably. Compiling all the bullshit they have to put up with from head office, how these road trips north are useless, getting new orders up here is like trying to suck blood from a stone. It's a bar occupied by those serious about their purpose, here to
drink,
no messing around. None of us have ordered beer.

The stage is empty and the dj leans against the outside of his booth smoking and making a great show of tapping the ashes onto the carpet, even though four tin ashtrays sit within arm's reach of where he stands. But he's got to get back to work in a second (the Stones' ''Paint It Black'' coming to its closing repetitions), so he grinds what's left of the cigarette out on the tabletop next to him and steps back into the booth, pulls the mike too close to his mouth.

''All right, gentlemen, it's
show time
again here at the Lord Byron and this time up, something a
little bit
special. Please give a big Murdoch welcome for Lori and Michelle!''

But nobody welcomes the two women who hammer up the steps to the stage in white leather heels and teddies with blue satin ties around their middles. No applause when the dj lowers the needle and tinny sugar-pop crackles out over the room. ''Lollipop,'' the novelty tune with the girl harmonies and the
POP!
in the middle. The drinkers take no notice. Don't consider the advanced age of the two dancers who are now linking their elbows together and spinning each other around in a show of exuberant youth. Aren't looking at the cheeks of smeared rouge, dyed hair pulled back into girlish pigtails, falsely blond and falsely brunette.

Lollipop, lollipop
Ooo, lolli, lolli, lolli

They toddle to the edge of the stage and pick up props, two oversize, rainbow-swirled lollipops, and pretend to take swiping licks at them. It's meant to be funny, a campy bit of strip-club humor. But nobody laughs or applauds. All of us fully occupied by the grave business of drinking.

Halfway through their act I step off the stool and escape to the bathroom, pull the vial out of my pocket, and spill out half its contents over the porcelain back of the toilet. Not a fair fight anymore, what with this stacking the deck in the stimulant's favor. Tap out another line for the hell of it and one more to hear the fat lady sing.

By the time I make it back to the bar and circle my finger in the air for another round the lollipops have been ditched and the music changed to The Beatles' ''Michelle'' in apparent honor of the stripper of the same name, though it's impossible to tell which one she is. The satin ties have been dropped to the stage and a sleeping bag hauled out, both of them rolling around on its quilted puffiness, undressing each other while making sulky faces at the room. It's a slumber-party routine, forty-year-olds playing naughty teenagers. Because I'm the only one who watches them directly, they settle their eyes on me as they pull each other's straps off their shoulders and let the material shimmy down their chests.

After a time I'm distracted by the sound of crunching bones that seems to fill the room. Coming from me. Rear molars grinding each other down to powdery stumps. Turn my head away from the stage and tell myself to
breathe normally,
look straight ahead through the raised levels of liquor bottles and into the tinted mirror behind them. The dancers are still visible from this angle. In fact there's nothing else but them, glowing slightly in the reflected darkness.

But now something's different. Instead of women sloshing together on the stage the mirror shows two girls, the hair natural and cheeks flushed with real blood, their bodies a smooth assembly of muscle and skin. Close my eyes, wipe the smear of sweat from around my mouth, throw back what remains of my drink. Open again and they're still there. Lean and vivid, smiling back at me between the Day-Glo liqueurs and straw-colored scotches. Turn to the stage and it's stretch marks and raised veins. In the mirror two girls: one light, one dark.

Michelle
my belle

The phone behind the bar starts to ring. Once, but loud enough to entirely block out the music, the call of ''Let's
see
it!'' from one of the button-down salesmen and the gasp I release at its splintering bell. In a single motion the barman picks it up and turns with the receiver held out to me.

''For you.''

''Me?''

''You'd be the one, pal.''

''Male or female?''

''Definitely female.''

''Take a message.''

I knock the barstool over in a clattering spin as I step off but I don't stop to pick it up. Keep my head down, yet I'm still aware of some of the customers turning to watch me, a silent swiveling of heads like robots in a department-store window display. It's too dark to be moving this fast and before I make it to where I think the side door might be I slam a knee into a table near the stage and send a geyser of beer onto its surface, green in the gelled light. One arm held in front of me like a linebacker running with the ball. An open palm to push through the door, the spilled-beer owner's chest, whatever unseen thing might get in my way. Then my hip crunching into the handle of the fire door and I'm out.

The rain has recently stopped, water gurgling down the storm drains under the curb. There's the blinking of a failing streetlight bulb. An old metal ice-cream sign creaking on its hinge outside a vacant storefront window. All the feeling numbed from the outside in, moving to freeze the muscles around my heart once and for all.

I'm way too old to be this high.

Tat, tat, tat.

Knuckles on glass, behind and above.

Turn back to face the hotel, eyes crawling up the stained brick. There, beneath the leering gargoyle faces of Murdoch's founding fathers. Standing in the backlit window of the honeymoon suite with the taped-up photos and printed newspaper columns visible on the walls behind them. The girls in the cotton dresses with eyes poured full of shadow. Waving down at me.

I run.

Leather soles skidding over wet pavement, mouth gaping in a scream that, if released at all, doesn't reach my own ears. Floating above myself at the height of the street's rooftops. A well-tailored madman, running from nothing.