The K Handshape (16 page)

I had to ring the doorbell twice before he answered. He was in singlet and shorts and sweating.

“Hi, Chris. I’m just in the middle of my workout.”

“I came to see how Paula is doing; I didn’t hear from her.”

He slapped his hand to his forehead. “Oh God, I forgot to call you. My cell was out of juice and I intended to call you the moment I got in but what with one thing and another it fell off my radar. So sorry.”

“What happened? Where is she?”

He had made no attempt to ask me in and frankly that was fine with me but it was awkward standing on the doorstep.

“She’s at the hospital. They decided to keep her in.”

“Why’s that?”

“During the prep for the biopsy, they discovered her heartbeat was irregular. They had a name for it — atrial fibrillation. Apparently it was up to 140 beats a minute.”

“My god, that’s high.” He started to wipe his face with the towel he’d draped around his neck. He did look worried.

“I know. They were afraid she might have a stroke. They want to control the heartbeat and find out what’s causing the problem, so there you have it. She has to stay in until they bring it under control.” He frowned. “It’s going to be tricky with Chelsea but her grandma has agreed to come up and stay. She’ll want to see Paula anyway.”

I tried not to be irritated that he’d phoned Mrs. Jackson and had supposedly forgotten to call me but I pushed the feeling away. He’d made his point.

“Did they say what was causing this?”

“They think it’s a result of the rheumatic fever she had as a kid. Somehow, don’t ask me why, it’s been missed up to now. Maybe the stress of having this biopsy aggravated it.”

Half-heartedly he stepped back from the door. “Do you want to come in? I’ll be done in a minute. I find doing a good hour on the treadmill relieves stress.”

“I think I’ll whip over to the hospital. Where’s Chelsea now?”

“With Suri. We’d already planned that she’d have a sleepover tonight to give Paula a bit of space… Oh Chris, maybe you could take her some clothes and toiletries. She wants her own PJs and a robe. She wasn’t expecting to be kept in and they stuck her in one of those ugly hospital gowns. I myself won’t be able to get there until tomorrow.”

“Quite right. You’ve got to get rid of all that stress first.”

He gave me a nasty look but didn’t say anything. I think we were both afraid to let go of all controls given the circumstances.

“I’m going to finish my workout. You know where the bedroom is. Let yourself out.”

He turned on his heels and trotted off in a miasma of sweat, disappearing down the stairs to the basement, where he had his state-of-the art gymnasium.

I shucked off my shoes and ran upstairs. Having grown up in a cramped post-war prefab in downtown Toronto, Paula had always wanted to design her own “Barbara Stanwyck” bedroom. The kind where there’s a monstrously large and high bed, piled with fat white pillows, only scarlet silk lingerie is allowed, and the butler brings up morning coffee in a silver pot and hands over letters on a plate.

I too have always wanted to have letters brought to me on a plate; it sounds kind of delicious. Now what I get are mostly bills or begging letters and they arrive in the afternoon anyway so I have to fish them out of my letter box when I come home. The butler has long been pensioned off.

I went into the bedroom. What Paula did have was the space, white walls, and furnishings, a king-sized bed, currently unmade with the fat white pillows piled in a heap on the floor. There was a chaise lounge, complete with a turquoise angora throw for the days when the weather was inclement and you wanted to read your mail. Outside a long balcony ran the length of the room. Nobody had thought to collapse the sun umbrella and it flapped in the wind, dripping rain from the edges.

There was a walk-in closet off to the side and next to that an ensuite bathroom with Jacuzzi tub, two sinks, and a bidet. I checked out the closet first, which contained a dresser as well as a clothes rack. It seemed uncluttered, which wasn’t how I remember Paula to be. Since Chelsea was born, she’d tried to be tidy, but she had a messy fallback she couldn’t overcome. I found a carryall tucked in one corner and did a quick scout of the drawers for underwear and nightclothes. Even though Paula and I had been best friends since we were teens and had shared bathrooms and swapped clothes, I felt a bit squeamish going through her private things. The first two drawers I opened were empty, and with a bit of a shock, I realized why the closet appeared tidier than usual. There were none of Craig’s clothes hanging up, only Paula’s. Uh-oh. I went into the bathroom for a robe. There was a slinky red silk one hanging on a hook behind the door. I grinned. Barbara Stanwyck lives. I folded it and put it in the carryall. The marble countertops were bare of any “stuff” and I opened the medicine cabinet to see if I could find a toothbrush. There wasn’t much in there. No razors, no manly deodorant, only a stick of Secret anti-perspirant. So Craig wasn’t sleeping up here. It didn’t necessarily mean anything, but Paula hadn’t mentioned it. Usually we shared every minutia of our mutual lives, from buying new shoes to ideas about repainting the living room, changing the cat’s food, and so on. I grimaced at my own reflection in the mirror. Paula had learned to keep details about her life with Craig close to her chest. He had probably moved his bedroom down to the basement where he could get up and relieve his stress on the equipment whenever he needed to. There was also a separate entrance into the basement where he could come and go as he pleased. Oops, that wasn’t a very charitable thought, but then does the leopard change its spots?

I went back into the bedroom. There were a couple of books on the night table. One was a recent release by one of the pioneers in the study of serial killers that I’d recommended to Paula. Underneath that was a paperback novel that had recently won the Giller Prize. The bookmark indicated she hadn’t finished it so I popped it in the bag.

I straightened up the bed and replaced the pillows. As I let myself out, I could hear the whirr of the treadmill and the thump thump of Craig pounding away.

CHAPTER TWENTY

Visiting hours were still happening and the parking lot was full. I circled a couple of times before somebody left and I dived into the spot. Grabbing the carryall I hurried into the lobby, which was a swirl of people, nurses in pastel uniforms lacing through them, the ubiquitous cleaner slowly sweeping his wet mop around the edges of the entry. I checked the directory and headed to the cardiology floor. There were about four or five nurses at the nursing station, all too busy with very important things to notice me. I hung over the counter for a few minutes then interrupted a couple who as far as I could tell were discussing the latest episode of
American Idol
. But I could have been mistaken; it may have been that they were deciding who should be voted off the floor and sent home.

“What room is Paula Jackson in?”

One of the nurses, a round-faced, irritable-looking wench, frowned at me. “When was she admitted?”

“This morning.” I waved the gym bag. “I have her clothes.”

“See you,” said her friend and she drifted off to compare favourites with somebody else at the other end of the counter.

The nurse checked a list in front of her. “Room 522. Go down the hall and turn right. But I’m afraid you only have half an hour. We start clearing the visitors at eight forty-five. Our patients need their sleep, you know.”

I checked my sarcastic retort that I’d never heard of such a novel idea. The nurse, whose name tag said Irma, wasn’t really the
problem. I was tired out of my mind and an awful lot had happened since five-thirty this morning when Leo had called me. Including this situation with my best friend. I walked quickly down the hall wishing I’d stopped to buy flowers or chocolates, which she liked.

Paula had the bed closest to the door in a room with another woman. The fellow sufferer’s curtains were closed but I know she had a visitor because I could see trousered legs beneath the curtain. They weren’t talking though. There was no sound at all except the hiss of the oxygen that Paula was hooked up to. She had her eyes closed. The signs of her stress were etched deep in her face. I touched her lightly on the foot.

“Hi, Paula.”

She opened her eyes at once. She licked her lips. “Hi, Chris. I’m so thirsty. Can you give me some water?”

I ministered to her, helping her to sit up in bed, trying to avoid disturbing all the plastic tubing that she was connected to.

“How’re you feeling?”

“Thirsty, drugged, worried, any of the above.”

“Chugalug that water then; we’ll take care of one of those, at least.”

She drank deeply, then smacked her lips. “Well it’s not a fine shiraz but it sure tastes good.”

“I brought you your nightclothes and toiletries.”

“Good girl, this gown is the pits.”

“Where do you want them?”

“Leave the bag on the floor for now… Did you pick them out yourself?”

“What, the clothes you mean?”

“No, the flowers that you failed to bring. Yes, of course, the clothes.”

“Yes, I did.”

She grimaced at me. “So you noticed I am all by my lonesome?”

It was like Paula to get to the point. I was relieved that I didn’t have to tiptoe around the elephant in the room that nobody was talking about.

“When did that happen?”

“Just a couple of weeks ago. Craig says he gets too restless. We’ve always had different sleep patterns. He’s a night owl and you know
me. I turn into Cinderella after ten o’clock. So he suggested he take the guest room in the basement.” She lay back on the pillow and sighed wearily. “It’s not what you think, Chris. It’s a temporary thing. I’ve been so worried about this lump; I’d have kept him awake anyway.”

I held my tongue. If your wife was facing the possibility of a life-threatening illness, wouldn’t that be a good time to be sharing her bed, holding her? Comforting her, maybe?

“Craig said he’ll come over tomorrow morning. Now, according to Nurse Ratched down the hall, they’ll turf me out of here soon, so tell me everything. What are the doctors saying and so forth. And Chelsea is fine, by the way. She has her sleepover with Suri and your mother is coming up from Toronto tomorrow to stay at the house.”

Paula smiled. “Is she? What a mom. I haven’t talked to her yet. She’ll be worried about me. But I’m worried about her. She hasn’t really recovered from Dad’s death yet.”

None of us had. Al Jackson had been my surrogate father ever since I essentially invited myself into the family to get away from my own mother when I was fourteen. We’d all been devastated when he’d dropped dead of an aneurysm over a year ago. Al was the man I considered to be my real parent.

Paula leaned back against the pillow. “This isn’t exactly how I expected to be spending my evening. Anyway, I’m doing just fine for now, so you can take off your whey face.”

“Hey, no insults allowed to faithful retainer.”

She grinned at me. “No insult, just true. When you’re worried you go sort of…”

I grabbed her toe. “Shut up or I’ll pull you out of bed and then what?”

“Okay. Okay. So what’s been happening? Distract me, tell me about the dark side. It’ll make a change from thinking about death all the time.”

I told her the gist of what had happened so far and we chewed it over for a while. Like me, Paula was passionate about her work, and it was true, the longer we talked, the more she seemed like her old self.

“What about our innocent bystander, Mr., what’s his name, Torres? Could he be in the frame?”

Her question wasn’t as out of order as you might think. There have been a sufficient number of instances of the bad guy returning to the scene of the crime to warrant us police being wary. Whatever you do, don’t come across a dead body if you can help it. And if you do, don’t run away. That will bring even more suspicion down on you. Sorry, but it’s the truth. We’d question Jesus himself raising Lazarus from the dead.

I shrugged. “My feeling is he’s what he says he is.”

“What about this Zach fellow? Is he the anonymous letter writer?”

“I don’t know. All possibilities are open at the moment.”

A disembodied voice came over the intercom.

“Visiting hours are now over. Will all non-personnel please leave the building.”

Paula and I looked at each other.

“I think that means you,” she said. “I would gladly leave but I don’t know how to disconnect the oxygen.”

The person who belonged to the legs we could see beneath the neighbour’s curtain stood up and the curtain swayed as he eased himself out. An elderly grey-haired man appeared, smiled at us, and walked to the door.

“His wife had a heart attack,” whispered Paula. “She’s not really conscious but he told me he sits there just in case she regains consciousness and she needs him. He’s been here since I arrived.”

Neither of us had to spell out the contrast between his devotion and Craig’s. It rested unspoken in the air. The intercom snapped on again.

“Last call. All visitors please leave the building. Visiting hours will resume tomorrow at one o’clock.”

“Have you connected your phone?” I asked.

“Not yet. We were in a bit of a rush. Craig had a squash game he couldn’t cancel. I’ll have to do it tomorrow.” She reached up and tapped me rather hard on the chin. “I’m going to be fine, Chris. This heart thing is from stress. I’m not as concerned about it as I am about the lump and I won’t hear anything about that until next week. So go home, you look exhausted. Call me in the morning and tell me all the news. I might have more to tell you myself by then.”

I bent over the bed and gave her a hug as best I could.

“Sleep tight.”

She hung on to me for a long minute. “Will do. Thanks for coming, Chris.”

“Cut the crap, ‘thanks for coming.’ We’re long past the thanking each other stage. We’re blood sisters. You don’t thank your blood sister. You take her for granted.”

That got a smile out of her. When we were fifteen we had pricked our respective thumbs and mingled our blood in a solemn oath that we’d concocted from some adventure book we were reading.