Date with a Sheesha (7 page)

“It’s a potential murder case,” I informed her. “The death occurred in Dubai.”

“Uh huh. So there’s been no talk of marriage between you and Ethan?”

Normally at this point in the conversation I’d attempt some 45

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skillful deflection and say something like: What about you? Why haven’t you been dating anyone? Will you be taking your nun’s vows soon? Instead, I was silent. Errall wasn’t totally off base.

“Hah! I knew it.”

“It’s not that,” I quickly said. “I mean we have talked about that, in a far-off, conceptual-only kind of way. But…”

“Yeeeeeeesssss?”

“He thinks we should move in together. He thinks that’s the next logical step.”

“And you think…what?”

I nodded. “He’s right, he’s absolutely right…”

“That sentence has a bigger but than you do.”

“How do we decide who will move in with who?

It’s…it’s…it’s bloody impossible.” I could feel pent-up frustration bubbling to the surface. I wasn’t running away from my relationship with Ethan Ash. I truly did love him and wanted to be with him. What I was stuck on was how to make it work. For both of us. And Simon.

“What’s the problem? Just pick a place. Why are you sweating the small stuff?”

Like her office, to Errall, much of the world was black and white. Me? I lived in a world of many vivid colours. (I am half-Ukrainian after all.) The problem was, they didn’t always quite go together.

“It’s not that simple,” I told her. “Ash House is brand new. It’s not only where Ethan works, it’s also his and Simon’s home. It would be crazy for me to ask him to leave it. And even with Jared as his partner in the business, a big part of its success is the fact that this isn’t just another care institution for the elderly. It’s a home. Those people are like family to Ethan. They treat Simon like she’s their own grandchild. If Ethan and Simon moved in with me, things would never be the same. Not for the residents. Not for Ethan. Living elsewhere was never part of his dream for the business. Being there is part of it. And part of who he is.”

“Okay, I get that. So then you move into Ash House.”

I felt the subtle but unmistakable turn of my stomach whenever the topic of leaving my house came up. Just as Ethan was indu-46

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bitably tied to Ash House, I was tied to my own home. It is my castle, my private getaway on a little travelled street in a quiet corner of my prairie city. It’s the house I bought with the money left me by my much-loved Uncle Lawrence. That house is the only solid piece of him I have left. It is a home perfectly fashioned—

inside and out—to suit all my needs and moods and wants. I love my house. Barbra and Brutus love it. And right next door: Sereena Orion Smith. Now there’s something I could never replace. The walls, the floors, the surrounding landscape, every room, and every piece of it oozes with memories. How could I ever leave it?

“I can’t, Errall. I just can’t,” I spit out the miserable truth.

Instead of mocking me, as I expected her to do, she sat quiet, staring at me in tacit, silent agreement. She got it.

This was one of those rare moments where, without question, I fully understood my friendship with this woman. And, truth be told, she’d been part of more than a few of the memories that made my house so important to me.

“It’s been so perfect up to now,” I told her. “We’ve been treating my place as our ‘city’ pad, and Ash House as our ‘country estate’.”

“Oh puh-lease.” Evil Errall was back. That didn’t take long.

“That is so gay. Ash House is less than ten minutes out of town.

Country estate? Give me a break.”

“But it works,” I told her, ignoring her jibes. “If we’re out late on the town, or if we want some privacy, we stay at my place. As long as Jared is available to stay over to babysit Simon and the oldsters. Otherwise, we stay at Ash House. That’s where we sleep, more often than not, actually.” I shifted in my seat, and wondered why my hand was fidgeting on my lap. “Jared’s been really good about giving us a night off here and there. But I know it’s important to give Simon a stable environment. One that includes her dad, her own bed, her own room with her things in it, all under the same roof. She has a lot of built-in babysitters, but Ethan prefers to be the one who tucks her in at night. I get that. And if we need some space, some alone time, we can each stay at our 47

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own place.” I hesitated, then added: “It’s good. It really is.”

“But it sounds like maybe it isn’t anymore?”

I sighed. “Maybe not,” I admitted. “I like being on my own.

Always have. It’s the introvert in me, I guess. But introverts get married or move in with other people all the time. I wonder if having separate homes has become a crutch, an excuse not to take the next step. It’s just too easy when we’re having a spat, or I’m too tired to deal with a house full of octogenarians, or Ethan doesn’t want the hassle of my two dogs and his two dogs, or whatever, for us to say, hey, why don’t we just stay at our own places tonight.”

“Is there a problem with ‘too easy’?”

I gave her a look of uncertainty. I’d asked myself the same question over the past months. My answer was always: of course not. But now, I wasn’t so sure. “We’re not building a life together.

We’re building two lives that criss-cross every now and then.”

She nodded. She probably already knew this but wanted to see if I did.

“We need to move forward. I know it. So we’ve started talking about moving in together. We’re both adults. We’re accommodating guys, flexible in most things. But this one thing—who moves in with who—I’m scared that it’s starting to tear us apart.”

She shrugged her shoulders. A silent Errall was not a good sign. She regularly had an opinion about everything. If the answer to this question eluded even her, I knew I was in deep trouble.

“By the way, the answer is no,” she told me.

“Huh?”

“As much as I’d love to look after Barbra and Brutus, as you’ve already been told, but have obviously forgotten, I’m leaving for a week of sun and fun in Zihuatanejo. I can’t look after the dogs.”

There was only one option left for a babysitter. Now I really was in deep trouble.

It was a blind man’s night as I made my way from the nearest parking lot to the College Building on the university campus. At the end of January, the sun sets well before six p.m., and the invis-48

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ible new moon had dropped not long after that. Colin Cardinale, the man overseeing the antique carpet symposium— being held in Saskatoon, and soon-to-be curator for the permanent display of antique carpets to be housed at the U of S’s Department of Antiquities, had agreed to meet with me that evening to discuss Neil’s itinerary in the Middle East.

The College Building, a national historic site, is one of six buildings surrounding a popular campus green area known as The Bowl. I remember many warm spring afternoons, sitting on the verdant, sun-dappled lawn of The Bowl with friends, waiting until the last possible minute before going inside to write a final exam. The buildings are stunners, transporting students, professors, and visitors back to another time and place. Designed in 1909 by Montreal architects Brown and Vallance, they were constructed in the classic Elizabethan E-shape in Collegiate Gothic style. Just being surrounded by those buildings made us feel important. These same kinds of buildings could be found at Cambridge, Oxford, and Princeton. Sadly, for a number of years, the College Building had been closed and sealed off from the life’s breath of students, condemned due to structural issues. It sat at one end of The Bowl, a lone, empty sentinel. But eventually, with the exception of the exterior stone walls, two main corridors, and two stairwells, the balance of the building, including the roof, had been demolished and rebuilt. It was one of the largest heritage restoration projects in Canada, re-opening in 2005.

It had been many years since I’d been a student at the U of S.

In the intervening years, there had been many additions to the ever-expanding university real estate. Fortunately, this was one part of campus I could still navigate, even in the dark of a winter night, without getting hopelessly lost. I easily found the main entrance of the College Building, down a gentle slope in the landscaping that opened into what is called Student Central. Yet, despite its lofty name, the place was deserted, and only barely lit.

I was guessing, at this time of night, most of the students were back in their dorms, hitting the books or getting something to eat before resuming their studies.

Cardinale had asked me to meet him at the Museum of 49

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Antiquities. I was reluctant to admit that I hadn’t even known there was such a place in Saskatoon, and agreed without asking for directions. How hard could it be? I had anticipated finding scores of students milling around whom I could ask for help. But finding none, I was on my own. After loosening the scarf from around my neck and unzipping my jacket, I ventured into the bowels of the building, following signs that beckoned me forward.

It seemed the further I went, the darker it became. Although I applauded the university’s eco-friendly lighting policy, come on already! No wonder no one knew about this museum. It was impossible to find without a flashlight.

As I progressed, hallway to hallway, the sparkly newness of Student Central slowly but surely gave way to grittier, older architecture, no doubt a remnant of the original construction.

Stark, clean walls of lumber and plasterboard gave way to cement, tile, and marble, some surfaces boasting intricate stone carvings and miniature murals, the historic significance of which utterly escaped me.

After several minutes of stumbling about, I finally found a helpful building directory. Adjusting my line of sight to make the best use of the dim lighting being offered me, I studied the dia-gram. Where the heck was I? Where the heck did I have to go?

Eventually I figured out that I was on the wrong floor. As luck would have it, not far from the wall map were the doors of an aged elevator. An accompanying sign instructed me to take it up one floor to find the museum. I pushed the button and waited.

And waited.

The doors finally opened, like the yawn of a tired old man. I stepped inside and pushed the button to take me to the first floor.

The elevator, albeit reluctantly, did its job. Several years later, it expelled me at my intended destination. A right turn and I was standing before a welcome sign announcing that I’d arrived at the Museum of Antiquities. An Hours of Operation notice told me the place had closed at four-thirty. But when I tried the door, it swung open easily. Cardinale must have left it unlocked for me.

I stepped inside and, for a moment, was astonished by what I 50

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saw. Immediately before me were full-scale Greek and Roman sculptures, friezes of the Parthenon, and groupings of pottery and weapons and other interesting items that were completely unfamiliar to me. Although here too the university was saving money on its power bill, the subdued lighting only served to enhance the contents of the museum, making everything appear grander and augmenting the otherworldliness of the room’s ambiance.

The museum was long and narrow. At one end were several impressively large, latticed windows overlooking the black outside. The floor was tiled in muted beige, and I saw now that the ambient lighting came from rows of overhead spotlights set on low. There is a smell that belongs only in museums, places that house things from the past, and I smelled it now. It made me think of musty buildings, rusted metals, and archaeological digs in ancient lands. Like anything different from what I was used to, the unfamiliarity of it gave me a quick, sharp thrill that tickled me deep down.

Breathing in happily, I walked further into the space, admiring the collection of busts and coins and pots and pans. Then I stopped short.

I’d found the last thing I’d ever expect to find in a museum.

I heard a noise behind me.

I jumped.

My eyes were temporarily blinded by a shining light.

My skin shifted when I heard a low, hollow voice utter two words you never want to hear coming at you from the dark: “Get him.”

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Chapter 4

I must have looked like a cat on newly polished marble floor.

Once I got all my limbs pointed in the same direction, I peeled out of there. What the hell was going on in that museum? My brain raced as fast as my feet, trying to come up with possible answers.

But my desire to get away from the creepy disembodied voice overruled everything else. I didn’t dare take the time to check over my shoulder, so I could only imagine what was back there.

I made a mad dash into the dark halls outside the museum.

There were only two choices for escape: straight ahead or to the right. The proverbial fork in the road. Unfortunately, there was no time to assess my options. I didn’t know what lay straight ahead; right was where I’d come from. I went right.

I scrambled down one hallway, then another and another, quickly losing my bearings but not my enthusiasm for escape.