Going Fast (41 page)

“I certainly do, sir.”

“Then turn right around and forget you ever saw the guy.”

“I was told you would tell me the truth.”

“That is the gospel truth.”

“Amen.”

Garth stood in the doorway of Jean's bedroom, braced like a deckhand stepping into an unforgiving gale. It would be weeks, he figured, before she learned about the pay cut, and in the meantime, he wanted to renegotiate his allowance.

“Why would you bring that up?” Jean spat from her bed. “After all I've been through with those pigeons!”

“I just —” Garth started.

“Any other man would have handled them. But no, I'm left here to worry myself sick while you're at that stupid newspaper being demoted!”

Jean was so stupid, Garth reminded himself, that she did not realize that the demotion meant a salary cut. She arrogantly assumed that her life would stay the same. Garth backed off the oriental carpet, wondering how Jean was connecting pigeons with his meagre allowance, fixed and non-indexed at five bucks a week. Five bucks a week was something back in 1974, Garth reasoned, but now it was as insubstantial as vapour, with beer at twelve bucks a case and a lousy sandwich at three dollars. Five bucks through twenty years of inflation and double-digit interest, twenty years of GST, PST, and clawbacks.

“You know I have an appointment with Dr. Zimmer.” Jean dropped her voice, exhausted by an undetected ailment. “God knows what he'll find.”

Garth made a sympathetic sniff, which was more for himself than Jean, who, once through with Dr. Zimmer, would visit a
tanning salon. To save on cab fare, she often accepted a ride home with Harvey, the real estate agent, whose office was in the same building as the salon. When he wasn't wearing his orange blazer, Harvey favoured yellow golf shirts and shiny beige pants. Garth hadn't bought a new shirt in years; he looked as shabby as Albert Conrad in his white Velcro sneakers. Always short of cash, Garth hid whenever someone in the office collected money for a worker who was pregnant or retiring. What could you do with five bucks when model glue was priced at five-fifty a tube and paint at seven dollars? It was twenty-one dollars alone for his Red Baron series.

“Dr. Zimmer says I am an amazing woman the way I am holding up under the stress. If you worked for a decent company like the one Harvey works for . . .” Each word was a crack of the whip driving Garth back into his sanctum of airplane models and faded formations. “If you had something to show for all of these years, you wouldn't need an allowance.”

It wasn't just about money, Garth realized, since they had nothing when they married. For the ceremony at city hall, Jean had borrowed a suit from her cousin; her father had worn a plaid shirt with ketchup stains. No, this was payback for something bigger. Was it all of those years of reporter's wages, out-of-town assignments, night shifts, and card games? His obsession with his job? Jean was an unforgiving woman, and he, on every imaginable level, had somehow fallen short.

Hey diddle diddle
. Garth cleared his throat and left her room.

He could tolerate his wife's harangues, but that didn't solve his principal problem. Garth needed disposable income, so little by little, over the years, he had learned how to steal. He had started with false receipts for items that went through the
Standard's
petty cash unchecked: twelve bucks for a meal he'd never shared with a staffer, eight bucks for a taxi ride he had never taken to a meeting with advertisers.

After a while, he could count on fifty bucks a week, enough for beer, food, and gloss cote, money that Jean never saw.

When no one noticed, Garth knew that he could do better. That is when he had thought of Helen Anderson, his mother-in-law, who was in a nursing home, diabetic and delusional. Garth had signing authority for Helen, cashing her paltry cheques and paying her bills. Helen's freelance byline started appearing on a regular basis on the Lifestyles pages, where it blended with reams of innocuous drivel. What to do with a cranky cat? Seventy-five bucks. How to select the best apples for pie? Another fifty.

Garth could produce a Helen Anderson submission in ten minutes by pulling a story off the wire and inserting a local, albeit manufactured, quote from someone in the city. Before long, Helen consumed the freelance budget for Lifestyles, her copy blurring into one forgettable bore, the process becoming so easy that, after a while, Garth stopped writing and simply submitted the bills.

“Where y'all from?”

Ownie heard the grocery clerk greet an elderly customer.

“We're from Can-a-da.” The matron gave each syllable its due.

“Uh-huh, isn't everyone?” The grocery clerk — whose tag identified her as Jeweline — cackled as she packed canned ham, cocktail crackers, and travel-size shampoo in a bag.

“I guess.” The old lady smoothed her polyester pants as her pale green top — nine bucks at Manatee Mall — sparkled with vacationing rhinestones. “Sudbury, On-tar-i-o,” she added as though that made a difference.

Ownie was sitting on a bench near the exit, waiting for Turmoil, who was storming the aisles in search of broccoli and brown rice.

“My husband had a family from Sudbury last week,” said Jeweline. “He drives the Executive Minibus” — she paused for recognition — “to and from the airport. I bet y'all came in on his bus. It's purple with green dolphins, real nice.” The old lady nodded numbly as Jeweline rang in Evian water. “Duke drives four to midnight, then delivers flowers until noon. Ten days on, two days off.”

“The flowers down here are lovely.”

“Uh-huh, honey.”

As she bagged a newspaper, Jeweline glanced at the front page, which was sprinkled, for the benefit of snowbirds, with
Canadian content, such as: Q
UEBEC
T
OWN
S
ETS A
R
ECORD FOR
W
ORLD'S
B
IGGEST
S
NOWMAN
. “I'd like to see one of them snowmen,” said Jeweline as she rang in coffee filters. “How long he been blind?” The clerk gestured toward the old man clinging to the matron's elbow in ballast-filled shoes.

The old lady looked startled, as though she had been scalded by a sip of tea. As Jeweline rang up the total and waited for an answer, the customer touched her pants, then decided that Jeweline meant no offence. “It's been a gradual thing,” she explained. “The last twenty years. Now he has cataracts.”

“Nothing they can do for him?” Frowning, Jeweline handed over change.

“No.” The snowbird shook her head, white as unbaked meringue.

“Well, you have a nice stay down here.” Jeweline squeezed the man's arm. “Y'hear.” He nodded in a jaunty skipper's cap. “Just be glad you didn't bring none of that snow with ya. I swear you two can't be from Canada because you both look like movie stars.”

Smiling, the couple wobbled by a pyramid of bedpans and Depends. “Lovely day.” Ownie nodded.

“It certainly is,” the old lady said brightly, then whispered to her blind husband, “I bet he's from Canada.”

“Fresh-cooked chicken in our deli.” The manager's voice carried over the PA system, drowning out Ownie's thoughts. “Four dollars for a whole mouth-watering chicken. Save yourself the time and trouble of cooking on a hot day. Take home this delicious meal.”

Ownie picked up a newspaper and turned to the obituaries out of habit. Mary Carter, 92. Moved to Paradise in 1970. Hiram Tate, Godfrey Jones. They were all the same: 79, 80, 76, originally from Pittsburgh, New York, or Somewhere Else, which is where he wouldn't mind being right now.

Last night, out in that trailer, miles from the comforts of
habit and place, in the same spot where Carlos had been eaten by a lion, Turmoil had charged across the kitchen and stuck his face in Ownie's. “See see that!” Glaring, he pointed to a quarter-sized spot on his cheek. “Thass frossbite!!”

“Too bad.” Ownie had shrugged.

“Thass what ah got livin in your country.” Turmoil made it sound as though it was Ownie's fault, as though the trainer had voted for six months of winter, for slush and sleet and mind-numbing cold. “Mon, ahm lucky ah didden die up there. Ebbyone with assma, pneumonia, whooping cough. Ah checked, and the avrej temperture is seven degrees, seven degrees widt fog and rain. You cahnt grow nuthin in that.”

“That's where I'm from. I'm used to it.”

“You could live ten years moh in this weather.”

“The old man lived to ninety-four; that's long enough for me.”

“Ah tell you what we do.” Turmoil lowered his voice, shifting to a tranquil place of soothing sun and endless beaches, a place without frostbite or fog. “Ahll buy you a nice litt'l house where you cahn see the dolphins; you cahn ride your bicycle all year long. Your wife, she cahn come to visit.”

He laughed and Ownie felt a chill, realizing that Turmoil had resented, since the day they had met, anyone near him, anyone who had filled the space between them. He had hit both Suey and Scott; he had laughed when Louie had his lights put out. He had melted down when he found Ownie with Jonathon, the hockey player, and now, he was trying to move Ownie
here
, where he'd be alone and at the big man's mercy.

“You see!” Turmoil promised. “Iss the happiest years of your life.”

Ownie heard a commotion at the foot of Jeweline's aisle. “I can do it myself,” insisted a leathery woman who was arguing with a man in a paper hat. They were fighting, Ownie realized,
over who should push the woman's grocery cart. Caught in the crossfire were two loaves of French bread.

“Nooo.” The man sounded like Darth Vader. “I
have
to do it.”

Unflappable in blue glasses, Jeweline turned away from her register. “Let him help, honey.” When the woman released her grip, Ownie watched the man commandeer the cart out the door, trailed by the unhappy owner. He must be eighty, Ownie figured, and he has one of those things — one of those voice boxes — in his throat. Curious, Ownie scanned all of the checkouts, working his way from Express down to Customer Complaints. Christ! All of the checkout boys were seniors, a paper-hatted army of shrunken men with white hair and the clubby, take-charge air of Rotarians. It reminded Ownie of the time that he had walked into an after-hours bar in Boston and discovered that all of the waiters were dwarfs. He'd be damned if he'd end up like this: spending his final years drifting between discount malls, playing shuffleboard, driving a tricycle, never belonging, never having any sense of purpose or place, like a wise guy on witness-protection.

Aisle three looks like Teddy, Ownie decided as the shock wore off, just fatter. Teddy only ran about one-fifty. He and his wife went to Florida one winter. “You know, Ownie, they've got whole trailer towns down there just for seniors. They've got big signs, N
O
K
IDS
, and if they catch you bringing one in, they'll string you up. How would they feel if they came back here after six months, after everyone had pulled a hellish winter, and they saw a sign with N
O
O
LD
P
EOPLE
? I wonder, Ownie, how would that sit?”

After Ownie and Teddy joined the navy together, they went to Halifax for basic training. Back then, the city was a blur of hammers and drills and destroyer-grey paint. Guns boomed, and the downtown was like a United Nations of merchant seamen: Greeks, Belgians, Danes, everybody keen until the
food ran low and the wounded men started coming home, legless reminders that war was real.

At the start, a Norwegian whaling fleet, stranded when the Huns invaded their home, cut the city up pretty good, strapping blond sailors with nothing to do but smile at the girls and eat fish and chips. They looked like they came from a place with light and sun, with their yellow hair and blue eyes. They looked like they ate good food and never got fat. It was all an illusion, the girls discovered too late, since Norway was cold and barren and far away.

Teddy got tinfished in '44. They ran his picture in the Charlottetown paper along with the names and address of his parents. When he returned, he looked nothing like his picture, not after a year in a POW camp, living on bread, nerves, and the odd bowl of skilly. It was the skilly that did it.

When they were kids, Teddy lived at the race track, helping the grooms sweep stalls and roll bandages. One of the trainers, a guy named Flaherty, would give Teddy a carrot to stick in his pocket for his favourite horse. One day, in a moment that Teddy never forgot, Flaherty let the boy jog Flashfire along the outside rail. He gave Teddy the lines and said, in a voice that seemed to possess all the wisdom of the world, “Feel the rhythm of the gait in your arms and shoulders, feel the wind in your hair. Listen to the shoes cracking on the surface.” Well, that day, Teddy was Peter Pan and Jackie Robinson rolled into one.

Teddy was skinny as a rail with sores on his feet when they brought him into New York on a troopship. For years, he swore he'd never drive a German car, not after choking on that horse-meat soup. Nowadays, with more wisdom than Ownie seemed to possess, he stayed at home. Teddy said he'd take the cold before he'd end up somewhere he didn't belong. At least he'd know who he was and what he was eating.

Ownie put down his paper as Turmoil rounded the corner.

Ownie walked the beach behind Turmoil's mansion, collecting his thoughts. A girl in a Pocahontas bathing suit was panning for seashells, placing each find in a plastic bucket. “Look, Mommy.” She waved an empty casing.

“All right, baby!” The mother was power-walking twenty-foot arcs around the girl, hooked to hand weights, too engaged to notice what the child was holding. “Keep it up.”

Ownie figured the girl was about four, maybe five years old. When Butch was that age, his mother put him in dresses: frayed sheets of dying flowers with cracked buttons, raggedy hand-me-downs scrubbed bare with lye. “How come he wore a dress?” Ownie asked years later, figuring it was past the statute of limitations.