“No, I think just taking this step has been a bit surprising for both of us. We just want to play it by ear for a while.” I wasn’t sure of that sentiment on Steve’s side, but we hadn’t actually talked about anything concrete since the engagement. Mostly we had played back and forth with calling each other fiancé. Steve’s big joke was trying to make the extra “e” audible.
It was going to make all those awkward meetings between people I hadn’t cared enough to keep up with for twenty years a whole lot easier. I too would have something to share with them as an accomplishment or marker.
Valerie’s enthusiasm for my engagement made me a bit cautious about flashing my ring around, and I took to shoving my hands into my jacket pockets as I strolled about, giving me what I hoped was a distracted, thoughtful sensibility, but likely looked as if I were planning to rob a convenience store.
The week before everyone was due to descend on us, Denise invited herself over to make table favours for our Homecoming soirée, along with two glue guns, glue sticks, a stack of shiny and matte papers, a slew of scrapbooking edging scissors and a package of googly eyes, which apparently she couldn’t resist. She promised she had not purchased any glitter, which someone had once dubbed the herpes of crafting, so I let her into my apartment.
The plan was to make memory signs. Denise had found pictures of professors who had since retired or died, and was mixing them with catchphrases from television shows and advertisements, and old photos of HUB and the rest of campus, together with photos sent to her by people who had signed up to attend. A dark green piece of construction paper went on to stiffer cardstock, and then some gold accents were added. The googly eyes were a nice touch of whimsy, pulling your eye to a lovely variety of reminiscences.
“I think we should stick some back-stands on to some of them, and tape the rest up on the walls, don’t you? We can set them on the serving table, and the two coffee tables, and even along the counter of the department general office across the way. Their roll-down gate will be down, but the counter could be a good place to put up the drinks station.”
“Have you invited any of the profs we knew?” I asked.
Denise sat still for a moment. “There honestly aren’t that many around anymore, but I did send an invitation to some. For instance,” she held up the memory card with a picture of Ted Bishop on it, “Ted said he would be there, but then he got invited to read at Toronto’s Word on the Street. Bella Spanner might be here, though she snowbirds down to Scottsdale, Arizona and is usually gone by late September. Dale Wilkie will be here and so will Marion Markham. Gary Watson said reunions were appalling things, and Juliet McMaster will be out of town.”
“This is going to be so strange,” I mused, looking at the photos of Leo, Shannon Murray, and Alan Knight bobbing for apples at a Halloween party. “If it weren’t for social media, I don’t think I’d even remember most of these people’s names, and I am certain they’d have forgotten mine.”
“You never know how important reaching back to a touchstone time can be for people, especially after twenty or thirty years,” Denise said, with a little too much certainty for my liking. “For instance, the entire Honours English class who graduated that year have all accepted. I am not sure I will recognize even one of them, but they sound eager to reconnect.”
“Are there a lot of undergrads coming?”
“Enough to make us a viable class for the Alumni Association, that’s for sure. There are more women than men returning, which must say something about the draw of reunions on the sexes, since we seem to be one of the oddly equal departments on campus. Quite a few of those are coming with husbands, but not all.”
“Are you going to be bringing anyone to the events as a date?” I asked. “I have to say I am relieved that Steve has agreed to come. People can spend all their energy trying to figure out our relationship and they may forget to ask about my career trajectory.”
Denise laughed. “I wouldn’t be so sure of that; these are trained researcher/readers, don’t forget. I was thinking of inviting someone, but then decided it was more trouble than it would be worth to think about someone outside the crew at the same time as maintaining order. So no, I’ll be lone Wolff-ing it.”
I applauded her pun, and finished glue-gunning the last pair of googly eyes to the sign in front of me.
“I wonder who will be the first to arrive,” I said.
That was probably not what I should have been wondering. I should have been thinking about who might be arriving with more than reminiscing on their minds.
38.
Leo called me from the airport, wanting to know how to get to my place. I persuaded him to find the 747 airport shuttle, which would take him to the LRT, and promised to be waiting at the top of the escalator at the east end of the University Station. If he was too cheap to get a hotel room, he was definitely too cheap for a fifty-dollar taxi ride.
I timed my arrival just right. Within minutes, Leo appeared, rolling a carry-on sized suitcase and hauling a bulging satchel. I offered to take one or the other, and he gratefully handed over the satchel, pausing to give me a bear hug first.
“Randy, you look great! I had visions of you all dolled up in some Chanel suit like Jackie Kennedy, I have no idea why, but I am glad you’re not. A pillbox hat would just not suit you. Look at your hair! It’s still brown! Tell me you colour it, please. Mine went absolutely grey the minute I stepped away from this campus, I swear. I’ve been colouring it ever since, thank god for the rise of the metrosexual or I’d just look like a desperate old queen.” He gave me another hug. “Oh, it is so good to see you!”
“It’s good to see you, too, Leo,” I said, and meant it. There was no way you couldn’t enjoy Leo once you were in his orbit. It was the exhaustion that set in later that made one leery of his company. For now, though, it was good to have an ally. And Leo was that. He might be flighty and flamboyant, but there were few people truer and more dependable on the planet. Something told me I was going to need all the allies I could take.
We hauled Leo’s possessions back to my place, sticking to sidewalks so his rollers could work, with Leo nattering the entire way about the flight he’d been on, the layout of his apartment in St. John’s which overlooked the Atlantic, a recent article about a post-theist church in Toronto he’d read, and his success teaching Douglas Coupland’s Hey Nostradamus to his first-year students. I was glad I lived so close to campus.
After I had settled him in, and made tea, we picked up again. Leo was as good a listener as a declaimer, and soon he had winkled out of me the entire history of my relationship with Steve. At heart, Leo was a romantic, and he was holding his hand to his clavicle in a manner befitting a Southern belle and beaming at me by the time I’d finished.
“I am so happy for you, Randy. Finding a soulmate in this world is not a given, you know.”
I stopped pouring tea to absorb what he’d said. Was Steve my soulmate? He was certainly the most constant element in my life, and with all the swirling memories of grad school happening, he compared most favourably to every man I’d ever known, especially since Leo played for the other side.
I looked at the warm diamonds glistening on my left hand. Soulmate was such a strong word, but it landed comfortably into my mind.
I smiled back at Leo, and topped up his cup of black currant tea. “Yes, I am really lucky.”
We sorted out Leo’s air mattress and sleeping bag, which we agreed could slide in on edge beside my bed during the day and be set up in the living room each evening. He had a list of things he wanted to see, including two or three old professors and a former landlady, and promised not to be underfoot the whole week. I gave him a set of keys and explained that if he came in after I’d gone to bed, he’d have to creep through my tiny bedroom to the bathroom. He agreed not to stay out past ten and I agreed to stay up till eleven. For the most part, we’d be at the same events for three or four of the days he’d be staying, so it would all work out.
I was
clearing away our tea things when Steve called. I invited him over to meet Leo and he said he’d be over in half an hour and wondered if he could take us both for dinner.
Leo opted for the Highlevel Diner, so Steve told us he’d park in the Diner’s lot and text me when he had arrived. We walked out the back door of my building, and through the alleyway to meet up with Steve. Leo moved in past Steve’s proffered hand and gave him a hug.
“I knew the minute I met you all those years ago that you and Randy were meant for each other. Besides, anyone who is smart enough to see Randy for the gem she is has got to be simpatico,” Leo trilled. I laughed out loud at Steve’s slightly shocked look, which amounted to one raised eyebrow, and then grimaced myself at Leo’s purported compliment which made it sound like I was some weird acquired taste, like the anchovy of women.
There was no lineup in the restaurant, a good thing since they didn’t take reservations, and we were shown to a table overlooking the hedge of trees masking the bridge for which the restaurant was named.
“When I was a lad, this was a ski shop called the Abominable Snowman,” said Leo, who had been born in Edmonton. “I remember the door to the shop was at an angle on the corner of the shop, which I found fascinating. For the longest time, I wanted to be an architect, someone who had the power to move the ordinary forty-five degrees, just because of that door. Of course, by the time I got to university age, this restaurant was opening, and now, of course, it’s the institution and no one recalls the layer before. Just like no one going into that trendy coffee shop down the street will recall Pharos Pizza,” he gestured elegantly in a southerly direction. “I suppose this entire weekend is going to be filled with this sort of stop-and-start memory dump.”
Steve nodded. “That’s what reunions are all about, eh?”
“I am hoping people don’t find the lack of their old haunts to ruin their homecoming. There is a lot of the university that has changed, but there are bits that still look as if we just walked past them yesterday.”
“But you have just walked past them yesterday, Randy, so how do you know what people will make of it all? In the short walk from the train station to your apartment, I passed only three buildings I knew from before. That new theatre building, the fancy Telus Centre, all the student housing, some of the new condos along the street; even HUB looked like it had received a facelift. And how about the underground train station itself? That wasn’t even being talked about when I was here, at least not to the likes of me.”
Leo was right. A lot had changed in the twenty years since we’d been students. Maybe Denise had been right all along in determining this was an important exercise for us. Memory was such an elastic thing. Our collective sense of time would shift and sort the past into something manageable for us all. Or else it would drive us all to drink in requiem to our lost youth.
We ordered, and just as the waiter left, my cellphone rang. The number said Telus Public Phone, and it occurred to me that Denise had asked me to leave my number on the reunion materials in case people needed to connect with us. I excused myself, and took the call, walking back outside the restaurant to be polite.
“Randy? Randy Craig?”
Guy’s style had always been that of a distracted rock star: seemingly casually thrown together, but calculated to turn heads. His voice was the same, laconic but resonant. My breath felt as if it was suspended in my body, while my intestines were turning to water.
“Guy? You’re in town?”
“Yes, just booked into the Garneau Hotel, this shiny new boutique place where I think there was a flea market the last time I was in town. I had thought it would have more of a campus vibe than the Chateau Lacombe. Seems there are quite a few alums wandering the halls. I couldn’t wait to connect with you, though. How are you?”
He had been away a long time, and had no inkling of how the university flavour had spread across the river, overtaking the old Hudson’s Bay building with the Faculty of Extension and some of the Business division. Grant MacEwan had moved its full resources downtown, as well, and was a bustling university itself now. He’d have actually felt more at home in the Matrix on 106th than he was going to feel in Old Strathcona. Not that I cared whether he felt at home or not.
“Just fine, Guy. You’re here for the reunion?”
“Yes, you are coming to it, aren’t you?”
Was he toying with me, or did he not know I was helping to organize it? Maybe he wasn’t keeping tabs on me, after all.
“Yes, Denise Wolff is the Class Organizer and I’m helping her, so I will be there for sure.”
“Well, I was wondering if there was going to be some time for you and me to get together to talk old times?”
He was fishing, trying to see if I knew about his unattributed use of my work. I was having a hard time trying to keep emotion out of my voice. Letting him know my feelings would give him even more the upper hand. I took a deep breath.
“You know, Guy—” I began, but he cut me off, sounding distracted.
“Randy, let me get back to you.” The line went dead.
I growled my frustration, startling a cyclist going by, and headed back into the Diner. Steve looked up at me with only slight curiosity, and I just shook my head that it was nothing. I could share the conversation, for what it was worth, with him later. Leo noticed nothing, and was still prattling on about things he was recalling and missing about Edmonton.
The food was great as usual, though Leo threatened to cause a scene because he couldn’t find curried chicken on the menu.
“Don’t they realize I dream about that curried chicken?” he wailed.
“So do I, Leo, but I think they just got tired of cooking it.”
Leo sniffed, but from the way he was slathering housemade relish on his burger, I had no worries about him enjoying his meal.
Once we had satisfied our initial hunger, we settled in to discuss the upcoming weekend.
“Am I the first to arrive?” Leo asked.
I nodded. “Most of the events begin on Friday, and I think people are either coming in tomorrow night or Friday morning. There are some general campus tours and a couple of guest lectures that you could attend tomorrow, in between your visits and pilgrimages.” Leo laughed.
“That is what it is, isn’t it? A pilgrimage to our collective youth. You know, I just might take one of those tours.”
“The campus, especially out to the west end where all the new science and engineering buildings are, has really changed,” Steve said. “A tour of the nanoLAB and such might be kind of interesting.”
“Would you have time to join me, Steve? I know Randy has to teach, but we could do a tour and then have lunch on campus.” Leo turned to me. “Is there still decent food in the basement of CAB?”
I shrugged. “Not really. Why don’t you pick a tour that leaves you done by 12:30 and I can tootle over and take the two of you to the Faculty Club for lunch? I am a member now, doncha know?”
Leo whistled and Steve looked a little surprised. I had forgotten to mention it to him, in all the craziness that had been happening.
“Sounds like a divine plan, darling!” Leo pulled out his cellphone to get Steve’s number, and send him a connecting text. Steve reciprocated by pulling out his own phone, which buzzed with Leo’s text, and then again.
Steve looked sombre as he read the second text in. He grimaced and made his apologies.
“Can you settle up, and I’ll pay you back, Randy? I have to head out right away. We have an incident on Whyte.”
“An incident? How intriguing!” said Leo.
“I wouldn’t say that, Leo. Homicide is a lot of things, but never intriguing.” With that, he bunched his napkin by his plate, rose to leave, taking a quick moment to give me a kiss on the cheek. “I’ll call you later.”
Leo waited only seconds after Steve had left the building to speak. “Isn’t he just scrumptious?” he remarked. “And I don’t care what he said. Murder is obviously fascinating, at least from
a vantage point of being completely removed from it personally. How else do you explain the popularity of detective fiction?”
I smiled and nodded. “I hear you. But I agree with Steve. Having been a bit too close to it from time to time, it’s not something I’d want to ever be involved with.”
“It doesn’t mean you don’t watch Masterpiece Mystery, does it? Alan Cumming is so dishy, I watch it religiously, just for the introductions.” Leo was moving into archness, a little of which went a long way as I recalled.
I suggested we get the bill and head home for an aperitif. I had some brandy left over from the previous Christmas, and a decent bottle of wine. Leo agreed with alacrity, and soon we were back at my place, sipping wine and reminiscing about life during dissertation and thesis writing.
“So who all is coming to this bun fight, and will I know them all?” asked Leo.
“You probably will know everyone across all the faculties, if I know you. As for our crew, there are approximately thirty-five coming with an additional thirty or so Honours students, though the Alumni Association office warned us to be ready for at least ten more per event, because apparently last-minute decisions get made about going to reunions. I think there is probably an element of talking a partner or spouse into joining you as an ally in running the gauntlet.”
Leo laughed. “You’re really not selling this all that heartily. I take it Denise was the push behind the plan?”
“You got that right. I just helped send out emails and count up responses. Denise has been the one to organize the Friday party, and coordinate the Sunday brunch and liaise with the hotels where people could get reunion rates.”
“Which I for one am so glad I ignored and invited myself to stay with you, Randy. This is so much more fun than sitting on my own in an anonymous hotel room.” Leo looked admiringly around my living room. “You have become quite minimalist in your middle age, haven’t you?”
This comment led to me explaining about some of the not-so-salubrious adventures I’d had over the years, one of which had been the ransacking of my apartment. Leo was gloriously aghast and kept pressing me for more details, but I didn’t like to dwell on the past.
Another Margaret (The Randy Craig Mysteries Book 6) Page 21