The Video Watcher (14 page)

I wasn't sure if the shrug she gave me was a “yes” or a “no.” I stood up and put my napkin on the table. But as I pushed out my chair, Emily rose too.

We remained silent as we went downstairs. I had to stop at the front desk to change a five dollar bill into quarters. As we waited for the concierge, Emily stared at the floor and stepped on the lace of her right shoe with her left shoe, and tried to pull it loose.

Nothing had changed in the games room—the same ping-pong table in the middle of the room; the same shuffleboard markings on the floor by the far wall; even the fluorescent lighting tubes seemed burned out in the same places.

The pinball machine was still to the right of the door, and I could tell immediately by the checker marking that it was still Williams' “Diner.”

My right pocket was lumpy with quarters, and I took one out.

“Do you want to go first?”

Emily looked glumly at the machine. “You go. I'll just watch.”

I dropped in a quarter and the machine came to life, the streamlined American-style diner illuminated on the back box, “Credit 1” flashing in digital writing near the bottom. I poked the button on the front and a steel ball popped into the ball lane.

I rested my hands on the side of the machine and fluttered my fingers. “Sure you don't want to go first?”

She shook her head.

I pulled back the plunger and let go. The ball shot up the lane and disappeared under some ramps at the top of the field, then reappeared, and rolled through a gate and hit the top bumper.

“Order up!”

“Do you remember how to play this?”

The ball ricocheted between the three top bumpers, rolled out and sped down the field.

“Could you please give to me a Hot Dog and a Root Beer.”

“Don't you remember anything?”

She only shrugged.

One of the five customers pictured in the centre of the playing field lit up: a man, wearing a turban, called Haji.

I let the flipper down, then fired. The ball hit the drop targets for both the chilli and the hamburger.

“I think I'm supposed to knock all these down.”

“What's the point?” she asked, as I dropped the target for the hot dog.

“Of this game?”

“Anything
—
what's the point?”

I tried for the iced tea, but missed.

I lost that game. I played another. I played two more without either one of us speaking.

“I know whatever I tell you, you're going to tell her.”

“Who?” The ball rolled between my flippers.

No response.

“Your mother?”

A nod.

The ball shot into a ball lane.

“I barely know her,” I said. I slapped the plunger. As the ball bounced back and forth at the top of the field I remembered that I was supposed to light all three entrance gates. The ball settled in the left one and I used the flipper buttons to take the light off that gate.

“
Okay
,” she said, making it sound like a threat.

The ball rolled into the first bumper.

“Then don't tell her what my friend and I are planning to do.”

“What—what's that?” I tried to sound calm.

She laughed.

The ball hit the flipper and rolled down it, half up the inner lane. I had the flipper raised and the ball came back down and went over to the left side.

“I'll have the Texas Chilli and Fries!”

My finger crushed the button, holding the ball still.

“Do you mean like—” Her manner was freaking me out. It reminded me of Cam's at the beach.

“Hurry up, partner!”

“Nevermind.”

“Have you, have you talked to someone?”

“You sound like
her!
”

“What? What do you mean?”

Order up!

I'd like an Iced Tea and a Frankfurter.

“Like some
pervert
sucking on me is going to help me?!”

My finger slipped. The ball dropped off the flipper and disappeared into the dead ball slot.

Andale! Andale!

Emily had turned and walked out.

I stood standing at the machine. “Game Over,” flashed on the back box.

I walked into the hallway. I looked back and forth. It was silent except for the churning of the ice maker.

 

Only the top of the hill now had sunlight, the rest of it in shade. High voices of children and the murmur of people came up from below. I picked up the hotel glass at the side of the chair and finished the watery dregs of a gin and tonic. The 375ml of Gordon's, which I'd bought after finishing pinball, was now almost empty.

Give it time.

Someone knocked. I hesitated, not knowing if it was someone else's door or my own. Kris shouted.

“Coming,” I shouted back.

Standing, suddenly realizing how wasted I was, I giggled.

“Ba, ba, ba, Can't You Hear Me Knocking…” I staggered inside and through the room. At the door I turned the handle and pulled—the chain was on. “Wait a second.” I reclosed the door and slid the chain off, amused that I couldn't remember putting it in place.

Kris came in the room. “They're gone.”

“What?”

“They're
gone
.” She started to pace.

I closed the door and locked it.

“Where?”

“Home. I don't know. Back to Kelowna.”

The room wobbled. I lowered myself into the chair at the desk and slid down in it. Any good feeling had now gone.

“Did Emily… Did something happen?”

Kris threw up her hands.

“They just said they were going home?”

“They didn't say anything.”

“How do you know?”

“I just talked to the front desk. They checked out—have you been drinking?”

“Uh…” I tried to remember where I put the Gordon's bottle.

“I guess we had some kind of fight.” Kris said still walking from one side of the room to the other.

“Becky and you?”

“She told me she'd found Emily taking some of her pills out of her cabinet. I said the girl looks a bit messed up—not exactly like that. I said something like… like she looks troubled. That's the word I used, ‘troubled.'”

“And?”

“Aaand—then she suddenly started going on about all this stuff from our childhood. How I thought I was better than other people. How Janet and I thought we were so special. How our parents favoured us. How she never got anything. How Janet and I wrecked everything. How
she
never had three divorces—”

Kris continued to speak. I was glad that I wasn't sober.

When she finally stopped, she laughed and said, “Also—they think you're gay.”

I pretended to laugh.

“Anyway,” she said standing, wiping her eyes. She let out a loud sigh.

“Did she go to a psychiatrist?”

Aunt Kris stared at me. “What?”

“Did she go to a doctor?”

“She told you, huh?” Kris said. “I guess the guy did something… inappropriate. They're going somewhere else now.”

“Anyway, nothing to do now I guess but enjoy
our
vacation,” she said. She smiled as if trying to keep tears out of her eyes. “I made reservations at The Copper Room for seven.

“Okay,” I said.

She blew her nose in the washroom and left.

 

The next day I slept as long as possible. When I woke it was late morning. I put on my trunks and went to the pools. There weren't many people in the large one. But it wasn't the same as the previous morning. I didn't have the clean empty feeling after I swam. After two laps, bumping into someone on one of the laps, I stayed in the deep end and watched the other guests.

The sun was bright and the glare from the water made me squint. A boy of about nine or ten chased an older girl with a Super Soaker water pistol on the pool deck. She was eleven or twelve, and taller than the boy, and something about how she ran screaming reminded me of how Emily had been two years before.

As more people arrived the pool became too crowded for me to swim, and I got out and went to the hot pool. It too was crowded. It was hard to find a place to sit and I crouched in the middle. The leaves on the white-barked tree beside the pool were already about to turn yellow. A few dead leaves drifted on the surface of the pool. I thought of the time I'd come up here two years ago, the summer my grandfather died, the Labor Day Weekend before my Grade-11 year. The night I returned to Vancouver my house had been egged by Patrick Ian and his friends. Cam had told him that I'd said he and the head of the basketball team were bum buddies, and egging my house was his revenge. Even though I didn't like it at the time, it was now a good memory.

When I thought that I was hot enough that the walk through the cold air wouldn't bother me, I went to the change room, showered, and dried off in the sauna. I was lying in there when I became aroused by the idea of me and someone being alone in there and what we could do, and I went back to the room. But when I got up there, another scenario entered my head.

Afterwards, expecting that Kris was already up and was looking for me, I searched the lounge and The Lakeview Terrace. When I didn't find her in either place, I had the crazy thought that she might have left without me. I checked that the car was still in the parking lot. The air was crisp outside; the sky was clear. I decided to take a walk after breakfast, so I went back to my room for my UBC sweat top. On the way back to the Lakeside Terrace, I paused by Kris's room and put my ear to the door. A hum of a blow dryer came from inside, and I heard her cough. She would probably go to the Lakeside Terrace for brunch; and without knocking on the door I went down to the restaurant and got a table for two. It was by the window. The maples across the road were swaying in the wind, the leaves flying off them. I adjusted the cutlery and waited for Kris.

When the waiter returned, he asked if I was going to have the buffet—he was a stout man with strawberry-blond hair and a walrus mustache, and I recognized him from previous visits.

“No. Can I just have a side of bacon and side of hash browns and a glass of orange juice?”

“As you wish.”

The lake, which was large and surrounded by mountains, was very dark and blue—it looked cold. A local person had told us that it was colder than one expected and that people often drowned in it. A large island sat three miles out, and I wondered if you could swim to it. On the shore, a woman in cotton jersey and jeans was walking a small dog. Something about her style reminded me of photographs I'd seen of my parents.

The waiter soon returned with my bacon and hash browns.

“Are you alone?” he asked as he set the plate on the table.

I glanced around the restaurant. “I think so,” I answered.

He took the other setting off the table. Just as he left, I remembered the orange juice.

Andale! Andale! Order up!

I ate and wondered which of the five customers in
Diner
I most resembled. I guess if I had to be one I would be the Texan.

The hash browns and the bacon were very good. The hash browns, the shredded kind I like, were salty, and the bacon was just crispy enough.

“Could you please give to me a Hot Dog and a Root Beer,” I mumbled to myself in an Indian accent.

When the waiter reappeared, I caught his attention and reminded him of the orange juice. He was very apologetic and said he wouldn't charge me for it.

“Will there be anything else?”

“No.”

“Are you staying with us here?”

I nodded.

“Do you want to put the meal on your room?”

“I'll pay,” I said.

As I waited for the bill, I wondered what would happen if I had put the meal on the room and gave him someone else's number. I checked that he hadn't charged me for the orange juice and added the price of it to his tip.

I scanned the restaurant as I walked to the door, checking if Kris was maybe sitting somewhere else. I started to walk to the room to see what happened to her, then changed my mind and went down the stairs and out through the front doors into the driveway. I figured that if I ran into Kris, she would probably want me to accompany her to brunch, and I didn't want to sit for another hour in a dining room. The breeze had grown stronger but it wasn't cold enough for the sweat top so I tied it around my waist. The water of the lake looked choppy. I could see a few powerboats farther out bouncing about. As I walked along the boardwalk toward the town, I imagined it being in the Alps, and I (as someone like Heidegger or Kant) was taking a vacation. During my first year in university I'd taken “An Introduction to Philosophy,” and though I hadn't done well in the course I'd enjoyed reading about the lives of the philosophers and imagining myself as one of them, transcending everything, being logical, clear and precise.