My Temporary Life (22 page)

He asks his question in a way that makes me want to leap out of my chair, and grab him and push him against the wall. The quiet insinuations from the other officer, the way the man and woman in the park looked at me, patronized me, and now Macklin’s blatant attempt to bait me into admitting to something that isn’t true. I hold the arms of the chair very tightly, and watch as the two of them confidently sit there, judging me.

“
I found it. It was lying in the park. I picked it up, and then forgot about it. I didn’t even realize it was in my pocket.” I lie, all the while staring at Macklin’s face, daring him to doubt me. It’s as though my anger is propelling me forward. “Now gentlemen, I’ve been very patient with you. I realize that you have a job to do, but by now you must have checked me out, and found that I’ve never been in any kind of trouble. So, I would ask that if you don’t have any more questions, I’d like to go home.”

They don’t budge. It probably only takes seconds, but feels much longer, and I can feel a small drop of sweat, dripping slowly, from my forehead. They just keep looking at me, and then Macklin smiles. “This is a small town, Malcolm, and as you saw from our concerned monitors earlier, we look out for each other here. So, I suggest that you do go home, all the way back home to Vancouver. And, if I see you near that school again, I will charge you. And, I can guarantee you that charge will not be one that a good businessman like yourself will want following you around. Is that clear, Malcolm?”

The first officer stands up and opens the door, and as I nod, I hold my anger back and walk towards them. When I make my way to walk to the left, back the way we had come in, to the back door of the police station, Macklin speaks again. “Out the front door please, Malcolm, out to the entrance on the main street. You have nothing to hide, do you?”

I turn and walk past the closed office doors, as a couple of other officers, who’re sitting at their desks, look up at me, probably trying to memorize my face. I hold my head high, staring straight ahead, and make my way out to the lobby. The officer at the front pushes my wallet towards me on the counter. As I turn and walk to the front door, I notice the officers’ pictures, all lined up on the wall with their names on small placques below them. I don’t let them see my reaction when I quickly glance at the picture that’s at the top, above the rest of them. The resemblance to Heather is uncanny. I let the heavy door close behind me and I wait until I’m outside, before fully realizing that the plaque below the picture, with the distinguished looking senior officer looking sternly into the camera says, ‘Inspector John Postman, Commanding Officer.’

My usually perfect navigation system is off from being too tired, too hungry, and I take two wrong turns before I realize that I’m walking in the wrong direction. Eventually, I find my way back to the main street of the town, to where we’d driven the night before. I have to get to Heather, find out what happened, but my hunger gets the better of me, so when I pass a small corner store, I stop and pick up an apple and a sandwich.

I walk fast, back down the road towards the highway, and our motel, trying to stay warm in the cold night air, trying not to think about where I spent the past few hours. As I get closer to the motel, I picture the rental car, sitting in front of our door. I visualize it, hoping that it’s there. I’m close enough to see that the lights in our room are off, and that there is no car, before I realize that Heather has the key to our room.

Claude is sitting on an old chair in the office, sipping on a drink, when I come in. His thick, grey hair is again ruffled and unruly, and the smell of alcohol and tobacco fills the whole room. “You’re a popular man today, Mr Malcolm. Had two different cops here looking for you.”

“
It’s been a long, long day. I’m sorry, but I don’t seem to have my key. Can you let me in my room please, Claude?” I ask him, plead with him. I just need somewhere that I can go and think.

He slowly takes another sip of his drink, and pauses, as though wondering what he’s going to say next. “I need to tell you that the last thing the old lady and me need is somebody staying here who’s going to cause us trouble. We’re respected here, upstanding citizens.”

He pronounces the words as though it’s funny to him that he’s respected anywhere. I’m too tired and frustrated to follow where he’s going. I stand in the doorway, glancing over to our door, wondering where Heather is. “What did the cops want, Claude?”

He looks at me as though I’ve asked him something that’s really funny. “That’s what I’m trying to explain to you, Mr. Malcolm. I know cops. I’ve always known cops, and I don’t want to know them anymore.”

He pauses, looking at me directly for the first time, and then sighs. “I don’t tell cops nothing that they don’t need to know. I don’t know what they wanted with you, but whatever it is they’re not getting it from me.”

I start to thank him, and then see the calculating look in his eye. I let him have his moment and wait for him to try and close the deal. “All of a sudden you’ve become a high risk occupant, Mr. Malcolm. I believe that this particular situation entails what is commonly referred to as a small surcharge.” He says it smugly, confidently.

I pull some bills from my wallet, and quietly hand them to him. “Can you open my door now please, Claude?”

“
It’s open. I didn’t lock it after the last cop left, the one that was on his own. He wanted to look around in there.” He quickly pockets my money as he says it.

For a split second, I think of punching Claude, in his drunk, conniving, head, and taking back my money. I think about aiming for the wall behind his head and driving my fist through him. I know that my anger isn’t really with him though. He’s just an old time hustler, trying to take advantage of a situation. And, it’s a long way to the next town, and the next motel, especially with no car. So, I turn and walk away, leaving him with his little victory.

The room looks just as we left it that morning, with both our suitcases lined up beside each other. I look in the bathroom, the drawers, the cupboards, trying to find a note or some trace of Heather, trying to see if she’s been back. If the cops did look through our things, then they put everything back the way it was before. They were very careful, very tidy. It looks as though nothing has been disturbed. I walk back into the parking lot, thinking I’ll see something, some sign of her. There are no other cars, no other people. The highway is quiet with just the occasional vehicle speeding by. The office light is off now and all I can see is the glow of a lamp, coming from the back of the house, where Claude is probably holding my money in one hand, and his drink in the other, laughing alongside his girlfriend.

I pick up the phone that’s on the table beside the bed. It rings several times before he picks it up. “Mr. Malcolm, did you think that surcharge included room service?” He cackles so loudly at his own joke that I have to hold the phone away from my ear.

“
Claude, the woman that was with me, when was she here today? Did she come back? Did you see her leave?”

There’s a long pause. He must be taking a pull from his drink, or thinking of a way to extort a further surcharge from me. “There was no woman. There was you, and then two cops earlier, then one by himself, later. That’s all I saw.”

“
The woman that checked in with me; we talked about her; you asked me about her, remember? Did she come back to the room? She would have been driving our rental car, Claude. You would have seen her.”

He answers right away. “I told you already, Malcolm. I didn’t see a woman.”

I give up. I hang up the phone, realizing that he probably didn’t see Heather at all. I was so careful hiding her and helping her come into the room undetected. I walk around the room once more, lifting up her suitcase, checking everywhere, looking again for a note, or some trace of her. I check the garbage can in the bathroom. I lift up the television set. I open and close the drawers again but there’s nothing. Nothing.

I open my suitcase and search around for a minute before I finally find the cellular phone that Terry gave me. I try turning the power on. I push every button on the front, waiting for the little light to activate. I push the volume control on the sides, trying to power the little phone to life. Finally, I pull off the back and see that the battery is missing. I try to remember if I put the battery in the phone before leaving Vancouver. I can’t remember. I throw the phone back into the suitcase and collapse on the bed.

I’ve been asleep for some time when, suddenly, I’m awake, wide awake. There’s a small gap between the curtains on the front window. The light from the street is streaming through it and shines on enough of her face for me to know that it’s her. She’s sitting on the chair, facing the bed, quiet, as though she’s been sitting there for a while watching me. I don’t panic. I sit up and try to wipe the sleep from my eyes, try to focus.

“
You grind your teeth when you sleep. Did you know that?”

I remain silent, watching her.

“
You grind your teeth, and sometimes make a little sound. Then, you make another sound that sounds like you’re making an apology for the first sound. I could have heard that sleep on a tape recorder, and known that it was you.” She laughs softly, in a nice way. It’s the same warm laugh that I loved when she first mistook me for a banker, back at the party.

I wait, still. There’s no point in asking the questions. She knows what they are already. I just pause, knowing that she’s come back, so there has to be answers.

She laughs again, nervously this time. “I feel like we’re back at the lake, when I first told you about Emily. There are no stars this time though that I can make you look up at. No stars.”

I get out of bed and stand up and stretch. I pass her on my way to the bathroom and I’m not sure if I want to hold her, or hold onto her until she tells me everything that she knows. She tenses up as I make my way past.

The water from the bathroom sink is cold in my hands and feels good as I splash it onto my face and drink it. She hasn’t moved when I sit back down on the other side of the bed. The clock radio on the side table says one thirty a.m. “Where have you been, Heather?”

“
I’m sorry you had to go through that at the police station, Malcolm. It wasn’t fair. When I saw those people coming towards you, I knew that I couldn’t stay. I’m sorry. I just left. I had to.”

I watch her, believe her. She slouches over. I still can’t see all of her face in the half darkness, but I keep listening.

“
I went to the library. I didn’t want to come back here alone. I took a chance that I wouldn’t be noticed, and it worked. It was good. I saw something there. I remembered something.” She sits up straight now, looking right at me and that’s when I notice it. There’s a mark on the side of her face. I see it in the light as she meets my eyes, looks at me.

I lean forward, trying to touch her face, trying to touch the mark. “What is that? What happened to you?”

She touches it quickly, and pulls away, as though just remembering it. “It’s nothing. I saw someone I thought I knew, and left the library quickly, and walked into a door. It was stupid, no big deal.” She turns her head to hide it, dismissing it, wanting to continue her story. “Listen to me, Malcolm. I know how to get closer to her. The schools have a library day, every Thursday and Friday. That’s tomorrow. Tomorrow is Thursday. I saw the sign on the wall when I was there. I remember now. I went there as a kid too, every week, one day a week was library day.”

I keep looking at her, trying to see the lump on the side of her face, trying to understand.

“
She’ll be there. I know she will. They take the smaller kids the first day, then the older kids on Friday, that’s two days from now. We could see Emily, on Friday, in two days.”

Her eyes are glassy with tiredness, but there’s a little bit of optimism in her smile. I barely dodged the bars of the jailhouse, and she somehow walked into a door, but all of a sudden we have a way to move forward. We have more of a plan. I keep sitting on the bed, trying to inspect her face, almost cruelly waiting for the tears to come. She keeps sitting upright in the chair, watching me, silently pleading for my forgiveness. Then, the tears do start coming down her face onto her cheeks.

I get up and walk to the other side of the bed, pulling the covers back. She quietly starts to sob, as I stroke the side of her face, gently touching her. I take her top off, and slip her into the bed, covering her over, before climbing in myself. I raise my arm and let her pull her body beside me, joining, as though we’re one, just the way we do back home, back in Vancouver, with our view of the water. A part of me still wants to know more, but the other part of me feels the pain from her. My heart is melting, and I’m not sure if it’s from sharing our common head and feeling her sorrow, or if this is what it feels like when you love someone. I squeeze her tight to stop her from shaking, shivering, and let my eyes close, fairly confident that she’ll still be beside me when I wake.