“Two things.”
“That’s all?”
“Alex, I was four! First, a photograph. Black and white. He’s standing on a jail roof looking down at the camera. He’s in a white suit.”
“Big black stripes?”
“He designed the building, my mother says. His first commission.”
“What did he look like? Have you got the picture?”
“No, but it’ll be somewhere at her place. Unfindable. She cleans up by filling drawers. He had a long face. Maybe it was the light or the angle, but in the picture his nose looks pressed in at the top, as if somebody took their thumb and—” Rachel took her thumb and pressed it in the air. “His eyes were sunken too. Unreadable. In the picture. A thin mouth. Like mine.”
“You don’t have a thin mouth.”
“Sure I do.”
“And Memory Number Two?”
Rachel laughed. “His closet. Giant shoes. Dozens of them. When he was away—he was always away—I’d crawl in there and go to sleep. I—Oh God!”
Silver jolted forward in his chair. “What is it?”
“I’m smelling it—!”
“Great!” Silver scrambled for his notepad. “An olfactory hallucination! Describe it!”
“Um, shoe polish, shoe leather, feet. Real, chemical, animal certainty.”
“Got it.”
“That was amazing!”
“Uhh-huh—” writing.
“Anyway, sleeping in his closet meant I didn’t know when he was actually gone for good. My mother always took his stuff when we moved.
“Ah—but she left him—”
“That’s right.”
“Your mother was conflicted.”
“Is. I used to imagine him catching up one day, with a sole flapping, and thanking us for having all those shoes waiting.” Rachel paused. “I just remembered something. Once from one of his trips he brought me my own pair of saddle shoes, in red and white. Not pair. Two lefts, in different sizes, a mix-up at the shoe store. I guess his mind was on something else. Just as well. They were too beautiful to wear. I displayed them on top of my dresser, like polished souvenirs of a world beyond ordinary symmetry—mother, father; left, right—where feet grew like that.” Again Rachel paused. “Gee, Alex, you don’t think Harry—”
“Could be.”
Silver was drumming his fingers on the smoked-glass table, jiggling that anthurium. To do this he had to slump down in his chairuntil he was practically horizontal. “Anyways,” he said. “What happened with Leon after your bad-move lunch with Sirocco?”
——
What happened was, Rachel worked the rest of the afternoon at Millpond Indemnity with her brain doing reruns of that Lunch in Hell.
She was not home long when Gretchen called, wanting to know if Rachel thought she should ask Nick Sirocco to lunch.
“Gretchen, don’t,” was Rachel’s immediate advice. And then she had to explain that she herself had just eaten that meal with him, to say how it had gone, and to pretend to be offended that Gretchen should refuse to believe her when she said that Sirocco had called her at work only that morning.
“So anyway,” Gretchen interrupting, “you will see him again.”
“Don’t want to.”
“Rachel, lip means spirit. It was a good thing you did.”
“I’m saying we were overeager on old Nick, Gretchen. He’s nothing but a little bully. An arm-breaker. An acid-tosser—”
“Rachel, you’re underselling yourself again.” Gretchen exhaled smoke. “So should I call him or not.”
“Call him, call him.”
Gretchen said she probably wouldn’t bother, she was too deeply in love with Ted.
And then Leon was home. He went straight upstairs to change. When he came down he said, “Let’s go to that restaurant in the Olde Mill tonight, The Buhrstone. Nick says they’re doing fabulous ribs these days.”
The Buhrstone was a restaurant with a revolving floor. It had two curving walls, one of glass, for the view—the millpond, and a greater sea beyond of townhouses—and a wall papered in a blown-up daguerrotype of a flour mill, for atmosphere. It was the kind of place that at noon on formica tables offered a daily special or club sandwich and at night on checkered cloths with candles in fishnet containers served ribs, baked potatoes with sour cream and ersatz bacon bits, salads with roquefort dressing, desserts from a wagon. Besides that old mill mural the distinctive thing about The Buhrstone was its floor, which was meant to depict the actual grinding surface of a giant, revolving millstone. In a real mill, of course, it’s the upper stone that revolves. Not here. The floor was poured concrete, grooved like a millstone, and scattered with genuine grains of wheat. The ceiling was the upper stone, probably only styrofoam but still menacing. The main problem—or, if you were a kid, virtue—of The Buhrstone, however, was that it rotated so fast it was not always easy to keep your footing. Somebody must have installed the wrong gauge sprocket. Dinnerware at The Buhrstone millimetred centrifugally, and occasionally a novice diner would stagger, pale, down one of the spokelike aisles towards the washrooms. Kids, who recognized it as the rotor version of a Chicken Chalet, loved the place. It was always busy. And since even old hands could take only so much, the turnover was a fastfood marketer’s dream. “Nick tells me,” Leon commented as he finished his shrimp cocktail, “Mortprop’s making a fortune out of this place.” Maybe that wrong sprocket was inspired.
Rachel, not hungry, the lights of the Millpond showing up relentless every few minutes out the long curve of window, poked at her baked potato. She was still in a state of nervous distraction from that disastrous lunch. When the mural came around, she studied it for swans. What she saw was an old mill rising a featureless two storeys of stone to the far right of a dark expanse of water. No swans. To the far left, a blasted dun landscape of stumps. To the immediate left, shadows in the dark of bushes, a half dozen unwashed, moustached men of uncertain age in cloth caps, high boots, poorly fitting jackets. The labourers, probably, who had built the place. In the foreground, on the near side of the water, the miller, a fat man on short legs in Sunday black, a broad-brimmed hat. Stiffly posing, vain about his mill. A pace away his rail-thin wife huddled with three small children, squinting out at The Buhrstone diners, the children peering from under their bonnets like dazzled midgets.
No swans.
Rachel dropped her eyes to Leon, who was eating fast and enormously, the way he did when he was keyed up. “When are you seeing Sirocco again?” she asked.
“Monday,” chewing. “I’ve got some things to do on the weekend first.”
“Like what.”
“Can’t say.”
After a while Rachel became aware that each time their table came around to the window, Leon would pointedly peer into the darkness beyond the floodlit rectangle of cork chips againstwhich in warmer days pansies spelled out Village-on-the-Millpond: A Nice Place for Nice People.
The twentieth or so time this happened, Rachel asked Leon what he was doing.
“Nothing.”
They ate in silence. From invisible speakers Rachel could hear orchestrated Beatles, and she remembered the spring that she and Leon had first moved to the Millpond, when he still had his old speech-writing job, had not yet started writing down his dreams, when they used to make love for hours on summer evenings with the windows wide open, summer laughter and conversation, catches of Cole Porter, the Dorseys, Beatles, wafting all the way from the Olde Mill balcony: Muzak, really, but snuggled in Leon’s loving arms and with the melodies coming and going on the night breezes, those old standards sounded just fine. More than fine. Tender, Aching, Magnificent, and True.
Rachel wiped her eyes.
When Leon had finished his ribs, he pushed his plate away with a greasy thumb and sat back, whistling between his teeth. After a while he mentioned that Mortprop Investments was planning to build a new mall in the Millpond.
“That’s good,” Rachel said. “The Mortrop Mall doesn’t make
it. Where?”
Leon pointed out over the illuminated cork chips. “It’ll be really something. If Nick has his way, a super-regional theme mall with a million square metres of leasable space and another quarter million for condos.”
“Really?”
“Right now Nick’s in a power struggle with the architect about the details. The guy sounds like a classic prima donna. Anything to leave his stamp. Ego like a hot-air balloon. Nick’s being more reasonable. Why fool with success? He wants a world-class super-regional. Four stretch-dumbbells in an octagon. Magnet stores pulling pedestrian traffic along eight spokes—Natural lighting used sparingly, for dramatic effect. Otherwise it swamps the store lights—”
“What does the architect want?”
“Are you ready? A park with shopping walks, basically, under glass. He’s talking about a return to the grand Victorian arcade, with vegetation. The only thing between you and the sky is the minimal steel framework and the glazing—”
“Doesn’t sound so bad—”
“Not per se, maybe. But he’s just showing off. These guys are like barbers. Compelled to make every customer a walking ad for a haircut. People don’t like that. The architect gets famous, but if nobody shops there Mortprop is out a lot of money. That’s Nick’s point. So he and this guy are really locking horns. Nick doesn’t like to be stopped. The guy could end up in cement.”
“Cement?”
“Joke. Anyway, whatever the final details, we’re talking about a major mall. A truly major mall.”
“And you’re helping to put together the land for Sirocco?”
“Business. Can’t say.”
“Where?”
“Northeast corner. South side of the 303.”
“What’s the theme?”
“Nuclear Winterland.” This from the waitress, who had come by for their dessert orders.
Leon gave her a dirty look. “Two coffees.” She went away. To Rachel Leon said, “Arcadia Centre.”
“Sounds more appropriate for the architect’s mall than Sirocco’s.”
“Whose side are you on? The irony of it is, most of these old-time Syndicate guys are still living in the fifties. They wouldn’t know a super-regional from a postmodern hole in the—”
“Syndicate guys?”
“Yeah, aside from not arguing with success, who controls the brick and cement business? That’s Nick’s other point. Glass can get expensive. So what if when they built the Millpond they broke every green space statute on the books? They pay off the town council one by one, maybe throw in a new library, and that’s the end of that problem. Why go to a lot of trouble putting a park under glass when it’s not even either necessary or to the point? Anyway, a park is basically dogs and Frisbees and dirty diapers in the trash cans polluting the ponds. And yet these old guys are just as likely to listen to this big wheel architect as to Nick. The power of a name, eh?”
Rachel reached for Leon’s free hand, but it had moved sideways for a piece of garlic bread. “Leon, let’s move back to the city, OK? This place is really closing in.”
Leon was stunned. “Are you serious? Just when I’m getting my teeth into something gigantic?”
“You’ll hate selling real estate!”
“So? Want to hear what a one-bedroom condo downtown costs these days?”
“Leon, this won’t be good for us. Only last night you said business was for psychopaths and protoplasms—”
“Why do you always quote me out of context? Think what a North American drawing card like this could do for prices in the Millpond! Think what a house right up against the West Edmonton Mall must be selling for right now!”
“Leon, please!”
He shrugged. “You just told me the Mortprop Mall doesn’t make it. So what are you saying? Rachel, listen to me. Adaptation is what life is all about. Anything that can convert gills into lungs and crawl out of the sea can adapt just fine” Leon thought for a moment. “They’ll probably put up a good fence.”
“Leon, the Syndicate.”
“The Syndicate’s everywhere, as everybody and his kid knows. Nick’s a civilized guy. This isn’t black shirts and white ties. It’s just where the financing happens to come from. Who else in this country would have the kind of money for a project like this?”
Leon waxed philosophical. “You know, Rachel. Looking down from that helicopter Sunday, I could see so clearly that PAGO hasn’t quite got it right. It isn’t that there are scary things out there. What’s scary is that the out there itself doesn’t really exist, except to separate you from the next guy. Or to drive your car through. It’s not a place to be. It’s not a ‘place’ at all. This is the realreason agoraphobics are afraid of being crushed by open space. The point about the Millpond is not that the houses are jammed too close together with no parks, the point is that everything is perfectly convenient by car and that there is exactly enough space between you and your neighbour to guarantee you both the freedom to do exactly what you want. He can fire up the barbecue behind his seven-foot fence and you can go in and watch porn. You’re both happy. If everybody’s got a TV and you’re far enough from the next guy that you can handle the backbeat from his stereo after eleven with a set of earplugs, what’s the problem? It’s like front lawns. They’re not there to be on, except with a lawn mower. They’re a space. To separate the house from the sidewalk.”
Their coffees came. The waitress gave Leon a look of goodnatured contempt. She went away.
“Mental space,” Rachel suggested.
Leon nodded, sipping. He was on to his next point. “And you know what the other side of the coin is?”
“Fear?”
“No, the other side of the coin. Home. The idea of home. Modern Man doesn’t need physical space and physical home, he needs mental space and mental home—”
“Mental home is right.”
Leon sighed. “So what a place like the Millpond offers is these two illusion, home and space, in perfect symbiosis—”
“What’s symbiosis? I keep forgetting.”
“The meaning of home—sanctuary—” speaking slowly, as for a group of note-taking underachievers— “grows out of the scarynothing of space, and the meaning of space—freedom—grows out of the frustrating constrictions of home—”
“Is that how you feel about our home, Leon?”
“Why do women always personalize everything?”
“But Leon, there has to be more to life than fear and frustration.”
“Right. There is one way to transcend this symbiosis of illusion. Know what it is?”
“Love?”
“Turn of the twentieth-first century, remember. Stick to the turn of the twentieth-first century.”
“Relationship?”
“That’s just jargon for love. I’m talking about present-day reality.”
“I give up.”
“Spending. Spending affirms the freedom of the outside. At the same time as it asserts control. Unfortunately, where freedom actually occurs, such as it occurs, is in the home. At home you can spend your time, energy, seed, just about any way you want.”
“Your seed.”
“But you can’t spend money at home.”
“What about door-to-door salesmen, the Yellow Pages, ordering online, and that weird TV channel with the china figurines?”
“These methods all make people anxious, and anxious people don’t spend half what they do if they’re totally relaxed, like virtually in an alpha brain state. No, what is needed is the domestication of space without the drawbacks—namely the cooping, the loss of anonymity—of home. What is needed is places able to combine onlythe positive features of home and space, where people can spend money in a state of tremendous relaxation, even euphoria.”
“You mean shopping malls—”
“Right. The thing about malls—” Leon paused to look at her. “Why are you crying?”
“I’m not crying, I’m tear-ing.”
“I see. Why are you tear-ing.”
But Rachel could only shake her head, face in a grimace of salt.
“As if I didn’t know,” Leon swinging around to find the waitress.
“Know what—Leon, please,” Rachel blubbering now, a hand on the arm that supported his weight while he squeezed into his pants for his wallet. “Let’s go and see Dr. Silver, together—”
Leon’s head drew back and he went into a long blink. “What? Who?”
“Alex Silver, from your high school. He’s a psychologist here in the Millpond.”
Leon nodded, slowly, absorbing this. “You’ve already seen him.”
Rachel shook her head.
“You took Wilkes.”
Rachel continued to shake her head, adding a why-would-you-think-that expression.
“OK. Tell me again,” Leon methodically, “why I should go. Because you’re still on Harry.”
The waitress gave Leon the bill. “You guys know Harry too?” she said.
They both looked at her.
She laughed, tossing her head as she walked away.
“Leon, we need help as a couple.”
“This is news to me. You need help. You go see Silver. Maybe he really is Harry—as you believed before you decided Harry was my father—and your problems will be over.”
“Both of us, Leon. Please.”
“Hey, Rachel. Listen,” Leon here with the slow menace of the completely reasonable male. “If anybody’s off the rails right now it’s you, not me. You realize that, don’t you. It happens all the time. I get myself together and you go all alienated and strange. I move on, outgrow it, whatever, and the next thing I know you’re into some dippy variation on what for me is a dead horse. Remember when I got into music and you had to have a flute?”
“Leon, so we could play together!”
“A flute and electric guitar? Or when I fooled around on the market a little and you bought all those stupid term deposits and had to cash them early and lost the interest—”
“Because you wanted to buy a house in the Millpond!”
“Ah, and you didn’t?”
“Leon, those aren’t the same kinds of things at all!”
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