The Video Watcher (13 page)

“Do you want something to drink?” I said.

“What do you have?”

“Beer?”

“Yeah.”

I got two large bottles of Becks—the 710ml ones—and as we sat in my room drinking them, Cam told me what he came here to tell me. None of it surprised me.

Two weeks before he'd had an altercation with the homestay
parents of the Brazilian girl. When he went to visit her, the homestay parents wouldn't let him see her. They accused him of calling the house ten or twelve times a day, and at two and three in the morning.

“That wasn't me,” Cam told me, “that was that fucker in Brazil, her old boyfriend.”

They'd told him that the girl was scared of him. When Cam tried to enter the house, the homestay father stopped him and the police were called. But Cam wouldn't leave, and they took him down to the station, and now he had some sort of restraining order.

“That's how you're going to help me,” Cam said, his tone already suggesting it was something that I wouldn't be agreeable to.

“The police think the girl went back to Brazil. But she didn't. She's still in Vancouver.”

“How do you know?”

“Because
we
tricked them. I knew that they wouldn't let me out when she was still here. So I told her to pretend to go home.”

“When did you tell her that?”

“When I was in the jail. I wrote her a letter telling her to tell them that she was going home and then wait for me to contact her.”

“Did she write back?”

“I told her not to. It was too dangerous. I told her to wait for me to contact her.”

“How do you know she got the letter?”

“I know.”

“How?”

“I wrote two letters. The first one was in English and I gave it to this ‘counsellor' to give to her. But the counsellor opened it and refused to give it to her. So the second one I wrote completely in Portuguese and gave it to my sister to give her friend. I'm sure that that one got through because no one ever mentioned it and the police believed me when I said that I hadn't tried to contact her anymore.”

“So what do you want me to do?”

“First I want you to go to her friend's homestay house and give her friend a letter I have. Then I want you to go to the Cambie next Friday and give the girl a letter.”

“How do you know she's going to be there?”

“The letter you're going to give the friend is going to tell her to be there.”

“Why do
I
have to give it to her? Can't you do it?”

He let out an exasperated sigh. “I told you—the restraining order. I
cannot
contact the girl.”

“Even the friend?”

“Even the friend.”

I asked him if this was a good idea.

“Why? Why isn't it a good idea?”

I didn't say anything.

“They're not going to catch me. Trust me. The girl and I have a
special
bond.”

I remained silent.

“No one's going to catch me.”

When I still didn't answer, he said, “No one can stop me.”

 

When Cam and I got outside it was night. The rain had stopped. The night air was cold. A long white gleam stretched down the road from the light at the end of the cul-de-sac. The faint roar of water going over the dam half a mile up the canyon came from the distance.

My canvas shoes were soaking by the time I got to the car. Cam started the engine and the wipers cleared the beads of water from the windshield. Condensation rushed across the glass, then slowly receded.

I thought about why I was doing this.

Nothing he had said could possibly be true—Cam could not write Portuguese, his sister had not given the letter to the girl, the girl was not still in Vancouver, the government was not looking for him.

But he was alone with these thoughts, and I knew what it was like to be alone with one's thoughts.

“Have you talked to Damien?”

“Yeah, last week.”

“He's not doing well?”

I laughed. “He thinks someone's trying to kill him at the hospital.”

“Tell him next time you talk to him that I
like
him. That I don't hold anything against him.”

“Sure.” I said.

As he said these things the Beemer careened around one blind corner after another, heading toward the turn off to Edgemont. The road ran along the eastern edge of the canyon, and across it the lights of West Van houses hung in the drenched darkness.

Cam turned on the stereo and Rage Against The Machine's “Killing in the Name” throbbed from the back speakers. When we got to Edgemont Village the streets were deserted, the street lights shone eerily and a neon sign saying “Drugs” glowed on the Pharmasave's roof.

“You know what my sister said to me tonight?” Cam said, turning down the stereo's volume.

My eyes were fixed to the sign. “What?”

“She asked if I was taking my medication.”

“Yeah?”

“My
baby siste
r
!
”

I waited for him to say more, to elaborate. But again, except for the clacking of the dry wipers, the car was silent.

When we reached Grand Boulevard, my nerves were bad. I tried to swallow, I tried to take only large breaths.

Cam turned down a side street and coasted past a one-storey stucco bungalow where the front light was on. “That's the house,” he said, pointing.

Two more houses down he pulled to the curb. Leaning across me he took a sealed white envelope from the glove compartment.

“What if she's not there?”

He bit his bottom lip, hard.

“You don't want me to give it to them, the homestay parents?”

“No,” he said.

My wet shoes squished on the wet pavement as I walked back to the girl's house. Waiting for someone to come to the door, I noticed I'd squeezed the envelope too tightly. I tried to straighten it. There was still no response after a minute and I peered through the panel of frosted glass to the side of the door and saw in the distance a diffused patch of light. A blurred shadow moved across it. Footsteps came. The glass grew dark. The lock clicked, the door squeaked on its hinges.

The woman looking at me was squat and shapeless.

“Is Adriana home?”

She continued studying me. There were prints of windmills on the dress, and her face had been scarred by acne. “Who may I say is calling?”

“Um, Richard,” I said. It was the first name that came to mind, and I remember that it almost made me laugh.

“I'm afraid she's out at the moment.”

I asked if she knew when Adriana might return.

“It should be soon. Is there something I can give her?”

“Uh—”

“Or maybe you can come back later?”

“Yeah. Maybe that's better.”

I was at least at the end of the driveway before I heard the door close.

 

“Well—what happened?” Cam asked when I got in the car.

“She wasn't home.”

“Did you leave the letter?”

“Did you want me to?”

He looked at his watch. “Who was there?”

“The homestay mother, I guess… I told her my name was ‘Richard.'”

“
Richard.
” Cam laughed, and I laughed. I guess he and I both found the name funny. “How did she act?”

“I think she was suspicious. Do you want to wait?”

“We can catch her even before she gets to the house.”

“Sure,” I said.

The rain began again, drop by drop stippling the windshield. The drops ran together. Through the streaked glass, the road distorted and blurred. At one point Cam turned the wipers on, the radio blasting out the middle of “Semi-Charmed Life.”

He turned off the motor and it was again silent, except for the steadily loudening sound of the rain on the vinyl roof.

“What if she called the cops?” I finally said.

“Do you think she did?”

“She was suspicious.”

The sound of the rain grew louder, almost sizzling.

“Fuck!”

We both laughed. I guess he and I were thinking the same thing—how it'd appear to the police if they found two men sitting outside a female student's homestay house at ten o'clock at night in a dark car.

“We're fucked up.”

“Yeah—we're fucked,” I said. We laughed again.

“All I want to do is talk to her.”

But to pay just to talk to someone…

“It looks bad,” I said.

Cam now really began to laugh.

“I think we'd better go,” he said.

“Otherside” blared on as the motor turned over. Cam shifted into first and pulled away from the curb.

As he drove me back up Grand Boulevard toward the entrance to the freeway, I thought that I should feel better, that I should feel relieved that nothing had happened.

The street lights glided by overhead, one after another, lurid and faint. When we reached the on-ramp to the highway, I heard myself say, “Go back.”

Cam turned, he kept turning, he did a U-turn and started to drive back down Grand Boulevard.

“Are we going back?” I asked him.

“We've got to,
right
?”

I tried to speak.

“Right?” he shouted.

I grasped the door handle and pushed myself back in the seat. “Yeah.”

Three minutes later I was in front of the house again. Cam had parked beside a tall, dark hedge a block away. Giving me the letter, he'd said, “Tell her not to open it. It's private.”

“Sure,” I'd said, knowing that I wasn't going to say anything so suspicious.

The house looked warm and dry. To anyone seeing me standing there—a soaking wet man in the middle of the road at night—I must have looked insane, like one of those maniacs in the slasher films waiting outside the teenage girl's house.

The letter tucked under my arm, I again walked up the driveway and climbed the chipped cement steps and rang the doorbell. I wiped the dripping bangs from my eyes. There was a siren far off and I thought the woman might have called the police. I got ready to run. The siren grew louder, then faded into the sound of the downpour.

Blurred shadows were moving behind the frosted glass. They became larger, and more focused.

I tried to make my hair neat, I tried to look friendly.

The lock clicked. The door was pulled back.

The same woman.

“I'm sorry to bother you again,” I began.

This time she was more nervous. “That's—okay,” she said.

“Is Adriana now home?”

“No, she isn't. But I'm sure she'll be here any moment. You're wet. Do you want to come in and wait?” Down the hall behind her, a man sat at the table in the kitchen watching.

“Um. No. I better go. But can I leave this for her?”

The woman took the crumpled letter.

“Thank you,” I said. “Tell her I'll call her tomorrow.”

“Okay,” the woman said.

Trying not to rush but rushing, I stepped down the cement stairs and walked up the driveway, then down the dark street toward the car.

When I was sure I was out of the view of the house, I ran.

 

 

 

 

 

6

 

 

Kris came out
of the washroom, her hair wrapped in a bath towel. “Don't just stand there. Be useful.”

“What do you want me to do?”

She glared at me. “Do I have to tell you? There's luggage to be loaded.”

“Is it ready?” I asked.

Kris only looked at me and shook her head. She turned and went back into the washroom.

A travel bag and a suitcase stood by the door in the front hall. I tried to pick up both. The suitcase was too heavy so I took the bag out first.

The clear weather that morning made me feel better. The previous night I hadn't really slept. I would wake up every hour or so with a shaking feeling deep inside. At one point I turned on the light and looked at my hands, hoping to see physical proof that something was wrong with me.

There was an autumn coldness in the morning air, and as I walked back to the house, I realized that I was looking forward to my return to UBC in a week's time—the crisp mornings with steam rising off the pool at the Aquatic Centre, the men in Plant Operation uniforms clearing the lawns with their leaf blowers, the fresh girls in their tank tops and shorts.

When I stepped inside the house, Kris was waiting. “You didn't see my travel bag, the one with the fish logo on it?”

“I—” I looked outside.

“Go get it! I need it!” she shouted.

“You said—”

“I said ‘suitcases.' Not ‘bag
.
' And take this one when you go. I suppose I have to tell you that.”

Kris remained silent for the first forty minutes of the drive. I slouched back in the passenger seat with my knees pressed against the dashboard. I tried to avoid any thoughts of the “vacation.” This yearly family reunion at Harrison had been fun during the time when my grandparents had gone. But since they stopped going, and it was only Becky and Kris, it had become tension-filled, a sort of morbid reenactment of the previous years' situations and conflicts. The only thing I was looking forward to was seeing my cousin Emily. The previous summer was the first time that she'd been old enough to hang out with, and we had played pinball in the games room, working together by telling each other which target to shoot for, and had ended up getting the highest score.

I was still thinking about this when Kris said, “Did you happen to see the weather forecast?”

“No.”

“I thought they said we were going to have sun.”

“I don't know.”

“It doesn't look good.”

Far ahead in the blue distance, rising above the silvery grey cloud, was the dome of Mount Baker.

Four more miles passed in silence. Then Kris said, “How's your friend doing?”

“Which one?” I asked, but already suspecting which one she was interested in.

“The one I met earlier this summer.”

“Damien?”

“Not
him
,” she said grimacing. “Good-looking, tall.”

“Cam?”

“Was that his name?”

When I said “Yes,” she nodded, as if in agreement with her own thoughts.

I switched on the radio and tuned through the stations until I found one playing Blind Melon's “Galaxie.” The station had static, and I got it as clear as possible before settling back in the seat.

“Do we need that on?” Kris said after about a minute.

I waited until the end of the chorus, then turned it off. I took my knapsack from the backseat and dug out my Discman. As I was putting the headphones on, I heard Kris say something about me having a lot of repressed anger that I needed to deal with. Spacehog's first album was in the Discman and I turned the volume up loud and tried to focus on the chiming sound of the guitars, then the bass line.

 

As had happened in previous years, Kris's war with the hotel began almost as soon as we arrived. It was lunch time and the desk clerk informed Kris that our rooms would not be ready until four.

“Four! What type of hotel has a four o'clock check in time?”

The clerk, a short young woman with her hair tied tight in a bun and a hawk-like nose, responded by aggressively typing something on her computer. “Let me. Check one thing.”

“I
knew
that couldn't be right,” Kris said in a softened tone.

“I'm sorry. We are busy this weekend and the room won't be ready for at least another hour. But the concierge can store your luggage for you. And you are welcome to use any of our facilities.”

“How can I use your facilities,” Kris said, “when I can't even change into my bathing suit?”

“There are change rooms at the pool.”

“Great! I pay three hundred dollars, and then have to use public washrooms to change!” She turned to me. “I can see this is the last year
we'll
be coming
here
,” she hissed loud enough for the desk clerk to hear. She turned back to the clerk and said, “I think I'm going to need to speak to the manager.”

 

Twenty minutes later Kris and I followed a bellhop to rooms on the fifth floor of the West Tower, Kris again in a good mood.

“These hotels,” Kris joked, “the stress they put you through just to check into your room, you need a vacation afterwards.”

The bellhop let out a nervous laugh.

Our rooms were next to each other on the poolside of the tower. I carried my knapsack into my room, and Kris disappeared into her room with the bellhop and her luggage. When the door swung shut, I was startled by the silence. I pulled open the drapes and the sliding door, and stepped out on the balcony. Down below, middle-aged bathers were already filling the adult hot pool. On the other side of the footbridge, children were frolicking in the Family Pool. Emily didn't appear to be anywhere.

When Kris knocked on the door I was lying on the bed. I blinked a couple of times and sat up.

“Are you in there?” I heard her shout.

I walked over to the door. “Coming,” I shouted.

Kris had already changed from the slacks. She wore a purple long dress with black geometric patterns on it.

“That was a nice bellhop,” she said.

“Really?”

“He's going to UBC too.” She stared past me into the room. “Can I come in?”

I stepped aside. She went into the washroom, flipped on the lights, studied the room, then flipped off the lights and went out into the main room.

“Isn't it the same as yours?”

“Roughly,” she said still looking around.

I waited for her to suggest that we switch rooms.

“I guess it's the same.” She looked back at me, then away. “Um,” she said as if trying to remember what she wanted to say. “Are you coming down to the lobby?”

“Is Aunt Rebecca and Emily here yet?”

“I don't know. I expect they'll wait for us in the lobby when they come. Are you coming down?”

“In a bit. I just want to have a rest now.”

I lay down on the bed again and thought about what I wanted to do. After fifteen minutes I couldn't think of anything.

 

Kris was sitting in the armchair beside the large flagstone fireplace, with Aunt Becky on the adjacent sofa. They leaned over the end table, talking. I sat on the hearth in front of them but neither one noticed me. An elderly woman was doing a crossword at the other end of the sofa, and next to her a girl in her early teens dressed like a Goth stared glumly at the carpet. Far down the lobby, a couple in bathrobes stopped to read something on the wall and the woman slid her hand into his back pocket.

“Trace,” Aunt Becky said. “There you are!”

“He
has
changed,” she said to Kris as she stood up to hug me. “How's my nephew?”

“Fine,” I said, feeling her small breasts push into me.

“Jack would be proud,” she said and stepped back to look me over. “Em, aren't you going to say hello to your cousin?”

I glanced around. Becky was glaring at the girl in Goth wear. “You'll have to excuse her, Trace. She's in the
too-cool-for-school
phase.”

The girl's expression soured.

“Come on. Get up. Give your cousin a hug.”

The girl, after another second of resistance, threw herself to her feet, almost violently, and staggered forward. She reached with her right hand, her arms still pressed to her sides, her fingers limp. The hand in my hand felt like a dead person's.

 

The gray light over the top of the curtains made spike-shapes on the ceiling. I got up and went out on the balcony. The air out there was cold. Over the hill the sky was a pale blue and three bathers were out down below.

Though I wanted to go straight into the hot water, I made myself swim first. A white towel was spread out on one of the lounge chairs, but no one was around. The water wasn't as cold as I expected, and by the time I reached the shallow end only my face felt chilled. I pushed off the wall and did a crawl back toward the deep end, halfway down flipping on my back and gazing up at the morning sky, listening to the eerie muffled sound my kicks made, and when I stopped, what sounded like bubbles rising. The image of Paul Ramsey's bloated corpse floating came into my head. I pushed it out with Jason Voorhees'.
Kill her, Mommy! Kill her. Don't let her get away.
And laughed. I neared the wall and stuck out my hand and grabbed the edge. Beyond the fence a steep slope rose, covered in trees. The leaves had already begun to change. Fleetingly, the feeling of being here as a child returned—the enjoyable feeling of being frightened by the thought that the Sasquatch could come out of those trees in the night, come lurching across the lawn to the ground floor room my parents always had.

I lingered on the edge long enough to catch my breath, then did a front crawl to the shallow end.

It wasn't until I had got out and was relaxing in the hot pool, my head rested on the stones as my legs floated on the surface, watching the swaths of steam rise and disappear in the morning air, that I realized I was actually enjoying the vacation. I hadn't wanted to come here this year. But the change of scenes had been good. The trip with Cam in the car was a long ways away.

I was still sitting there when I heard the approaching sound of female voices.

“O
kay
—Emily, but what do you want me to do about it?”

She and Aunt Becky appeared on the foot bridge.

“Put the towel over there,” Becky said. She was wearing a yellow one piece, and I thought about the sensation of her breasts pressing against me.

Emily tiptoed to a large rock by the edge of the pool. She set the towel down on it, and undid the belt of her bathrobe.

“Aww,” Aunt Becky gasped, stretching and stepping down the stairs into the hot pool.

“Good morning. You're up bright and early.”

I nodded.

“I guess Kris isn't up yet?”

“No.”

“Em, Trace is here.”

Emily had gotten into the pool behind Becky. She was crouching low in the water.

“You disappeared early last night,” Becky said to me.

“I was tired from the drive.”

“You're lucky you didn't have Em here for a bed partner. She was up till one watching—What was that movie called?”

Emily said something. She was standing behind Becky.

“What was it—for heaven sakes, stop mumbling.”

“Anyway,” Becky said turning back to me. “This movie was
weird
.”

I nodded, trying not to look like I agreed or disagreed.

Becky glided over to the far side of the pool and lay back in the water.

Emily crouched in the middle of the pool, holding her arms tightly in front of her. She looked more normal than when I'd seen her the previous night. She didn't have any make-up on, and she wore a navy two-piece bathing suit.

“So was the movie good?” I said.

She didn't seem to hear me, and I said a bit louder, “Was the movie good?”

Not looking at me, she frowned. “Not really,” she said. She went to the side and sat on the ledge. She kept both her arms crossed in front of her.

“Just something to do?”

She reached with her right hand and pulled up the cup of her bathing top and re-crossed her arms. She shrugged. “I guess.”

 

At lunch Emily had put make-up on again, but it wasn't as severe as it had been the day before; she looked less like Marilyn Manson and more like the Emily I remembered. For most of the meal Kris told Becky that the food prices were ridiculous. After we finished, I asked Emily if she wanted to see if they still had the pinball machine.