The Glass House

by David Rotenberg

  “How do—”

  “There was an old desktop computer hooked up here.”

  “But now—”

  “Now it’s gone.”

  “Maybe he has a laptop or an iPad or a smart phone,” Theo suggested.

  “Or maybe he yanked his old desktop out of the wall after he spoke to Trish.”

  “Why do you—”

  Eddie directed the older man’s eye from the wall hookup to a tangle of wires. “Remember when we all used to have those coiled snakes beneath our desks?”

  “Ten years ago.”

  Now the wires were there, but no sign of the computer.

  “So?” Theo demanded.

  “Probably didn’t know how to destroy the hard drive, so he took it with him.”

  “Okay, so now what?”

  Crazy Eddie was on his knees scanning the side of the desk with his flashlight. “Something there?”

  “Yeah, tape.”

  “Tape?”

  “Well, actually tape residue.”

  “So?”

  “So he may have taped his computer warranty extensions to the side of his desk. I used to do that when I first got suckered into buying them.”

  “And this helps us why?”

  “ ’Cause, my ancient gay friend,” he said as he riffled through a stack of scrap paper in the desk drawer, “if we can find the warranty, then I can identify the computer, and if I can identify the computer I can find it—if it still exists.” Then, pulling a torn warranty from the pile he said, “Yes, yes, yes.”

  At 10:15 a.m. Eddie located the computer and called Trish. “So, what do you want to know?”

  “You have full access to his computer?”

  “Why else would I be calling? What do you want to know?”

  “Get me a printout of everyone who’s been buried in that potter’s field.”

  “Hey, I can’t hear you—what’s that noise?”

  “Airplanes. I’m down on Lake Shore Boulevard.”

  “To see the air show, maybe find a nice pilot to take you for a ride?”

  “Eddie!”

  “Right. What do you want from this guy’s computer?”

  She repeated her request for the names of everyone buried in the potter’s field.

  “Be more exact.”

  “Okay. Everyone buried there on or around the time the Junction joined the big bad city.”

  “Year?”

  “1902.”

  There was a pause, and Trish asked, “Okay?”

  “Piece of digital pie.”

  “How long?”

  “If it’s on his computer, you’ll have it on your BlackBerry in ten minutes—tops. I could include several celebrity strippers with that—both male and female if you so wish.”

  “I don’t—just the list of those buried there.”

  “You mean thrown away there.”

  After a pause, Trish said, “Yeah—thrown away there.”

  Eddie suddenly sensed that he was being watched and turned to the door.

  Marina was standing there—in her nightgown, sucking her thumb.

  “Eddie, you still there?”

  Keeping his eyes on Marina, he replied to Trish, “Yeah, we’re still here. Gotta go, Trish. You need anything else?” But before she could answer Eddie hung up and walked over to Marina. His foot lift clacked. He gently took her hand from her mouth, but she pulled it away and stuck her thumb back between her lips.

  Then she began to cry.

  “Why are you crying, sweetie?”

  Around her thumb she said, “Because I’ll miss being with you.”

  • • •

  While Trish waited those ten minutes, her mind wandered to Decker. How Decker had changed her perception of so many things.

  39

  TRISH AND DECKER

  THE SNOWBIRDS ROARED OVERHEAD AND executed a midair dive that had the throngs along the Lake Shore roar with approval. Trish pushed her way through the crowd. She checked her BlackBerry—no message yet from Eddie.

  A drunk called out to her and pointed at his crotch.

  Trish used to forgive Toronto its sins. She’d lived in London and Tokyo and was used to the trials and tribulations of large cities. But in both Tokyo and London, when things got too hairy she’d retreat to the galleries or the theatre—and understand that’s why she put up with the big-city nonsense. But of late Toronto was more and more hectic—crazy—and she couldn’t find a reason to put up with it. She knew that Toronto was at that uncomfortable stage of growth where the inevitable problems of large cities—violence, inconvenience, rudeness—were on the rise, but it had not yet grown enough to offer the rewards that only a large older city can present to its citizens.

  She didn’t use to see the problems. Sure, she knew about the shootings in downtown malls—young men with weapons and something to prove—that at times ended with innocent bystanders caught in the crossfire. Even the Mafia-style execution across the road from her favourite coffee shop on College Street hadn’t fazed her—but now it did. Since she’d gotten close to Decker they did.

  Like the hoarding, she thought.

  Decker had a troublingly discerning eye for hypocrisy.

  She remembered going with him to Koerner Hall (one of the few truly world-class venues in the city). The concert featured three famous elderly Cuban jazz musicians. At intermission the musicians came on stage for a question and answer session.

  Each of them complained bitterly that the communists had destroyed their beautiful country. They were particularly vehement about what had happened to Havana, which they had adored.

  It was the reaction of the Toronto audience that drew Decker’s ire. As the musicians criticized their communist government, Decker said, “See how this audience is pulling away from these men? Before the intermission they were stars.”

  Trish had seen it.

  “They don’t want to hear it, Trish.”

  “What?”

  “That the communist paradise is hardly that.”

  And Trish looked at the people around her and felt that she was not part of this—whatever this was.

  Then there were the times he had been with her in a crowd in Toronto and abruptly asked, “Are these really your people, Trish?” Actually he hadn’t asked, he’d demanded an answer to his question.

  She’d never answered but instead would ask, “Are these your people, Decker?”

  “No,” he’d answer.

  Then she’d ask, “Is that why you’re so alone?”

  He’d hem and haw about not being alone, about living with Eddie—which he would eventually acknowledge was “sort of being alone.” She would then press him by saying, “And is that because you have no people?”

  He’d always look away, and she’d always say, “Don’t do that; just answer the damned question.”

  To which he’d always say, “What’s the damned question?”

  To which she’d always reply, “Is that because you have no people?”

  He’d nod slowly and mutter something about not playing well with others.

  It always amazed her that he’d start that conversation, since surely he knew where it led—but over and over again he’d bring it up. And that conversation had changed her, and she knew it.

  Before she began to spend a lot of time with Decker, she’d felt part of this city. Now as she walked along the lake shore—with the roar of the air show overhead—she knew in her heart that she didn’t feel part of this anymore. As she passed by the Sunnyside swimming pool, which on hot days was crammed with bathers, she remembered that she often used to swim there. Now she couldn’t imagine doing that.

  The fact that there hadn’t been a winning sports team in the city for what seemed like generations often added to the melancholy of her day. Made her buy more and more things and stuff them into more and more nooks and crannies in her condo.

  Her BlackBerry buzzed, and she ducked under a Lake Shore overpass so she could see the screen. It was
from Eddie. She read it quickly—there it was on Eddie’s second page of text: Seamus Parees, buried potter’s field, March 17th, 1902.

  “St. Patrick’s Day,” she said aloud. “Jeesh!”

  She felt her entire world spinning. The air show thundered overhead—but she didn’t hear it.

  40

  MUSICIANS IN SOLITAIRE

  LATE ONE AFTERNOON WHILE DECKER was blowing the dust off his hands at the end of another hundred-pie day, he looked up and there—as unlikely as the arrival of the three oriental kings at the manger—were three African Americans getting out of a Range Rover. The largest of the men hopped out first and waved to Linwood.

  Linwood passed right by Decker without acknowledging his presence and moved as fast as Decker had ever seen him move, his arms wide as he greeted the three Americans.

  Decker watched as the men embraced like long-lost friends, which later that night Decker found was exactly what they were—long-lost friends and jazz musicians, the largest, and the leader, named Marcellus.

  For the first time since Decker had arrived in Solitaire, Linwood did not take him on a walk as the night took the day.

  That evening Linwood lit a campfire far out in the desert behind the bakery. The three Americans and Linwood sat there staring into the flames and of all things listening to early Duke Ellington records that the Americans had brought and Linwood played on a hand-cranked record player.

  The scene was so out of kilter with any reality of Solitaire that Decker knew that he couldn’t put it together; like the Brooklyn Yankees, these images didn’t mesh. Then Linwood turned up the volume and indicated to Decker that he could approach the campfire—but not too close.

  He got within twenty feet, and Linwood signalled him “no nearer.”

  The music from the record travelled unimpeded across the vastness of the open desert, seemingly only contained by the brilliant stars overhead.

  Decker vaguely recognized the tunes—standards by now—although he couldn’t name a single one. The musicians—and Linwood—clearly knew every note.

  No one spoke. They all just listened and allowed the music to move them.

  When the side ended, Linwood flipped the record over, and as the music picked up again there was movement on the far side of the fire. The eyes of wild dogs reflected the flicker of the flames. Then Decker heard a rustling behind him, but he knew better than to look into the eyes of the wild dogs that would surely be there.

  The music played—the dogs’ rustling seemed to find the counterpoint to the music’s rhythm—then one of the Americans began to scat to the Ellington. A second musician did the same, but this time he was countering both the rhythm of the dogs’ rustling and the drone note the dogs’ movements created.

  The Ellington and scat singers and the rustling grew as one wild but oddly orderly thing until the Ellington came to a wonderful dissonant stop.

  Then silence.

  A long silence.

  Finally Linwood turned to the leader of the musicians, who had not sung a note, and said, “You can’t hear the music anymore can you, Marcellus?”

  The large black man stood and began to move from the fire.

  “You came a long way just to walk away from me now.”

  Marcellus turned back to Linwood. “I stretched the chords so far apart that I lost it.”

  “It?”

  “The music. I lost the music. It became noise and I couldn’t find my way back to the music.”

  “So what did you do?”

  “For a while, nothing.”

  “Then?”

  “I couldn’t stand it anymore.”

  “And?”

  Marcellus didn’t say anything.

  “Then you turned to heroin.” It was a statement, not a question, from Linwood.

  The black man nodded.

  “Did it help?”

  “For a while. I could hear it again, Linwood. I could hear it!” The man’s voice was hoarse with anguish.

  “But now it’s gone again?”

  “Noise. All I hear is noise.”

  “You can’t even hear the Ellington?”

  “Noise. I hear noise.”

  Linwood approached the man and put a huge arm around his shoulder. He turned to the other men and said, “My people will supply you with a place to sleep and food. Marcellus and I will be back in a day or two—maybe more.”

  One of the musicians protested: “Where are you going?”

  Linwood opened his arm to the expanse of the desert now lit brilliantly by the piercing stars and slender moon—and shrugged. Then he and Marcellus strode off, two large men slowly becoming tiny dots in the vastness of the African desert.

  That night Decker was awakened by the sound of music. One of the jazz musicians was working an electric piano, while the other played a soprano sax. They were riffing on a Dylan tune, half mocking, half adulating. Decker got out of his bed, and as he did he heard the old bedsprings produce notes that fit with the music from the players. He pulled the mattress off the springs and plucked one of them. It completed a diminished seventh chord started by the jazz musicians. Then, to his astonishment, he was plucking notes one after another from the springs, and every one fit perfectly with the music coming from the jazz players.

  He’d directed musicals but had never played an instrument, never sung, never been able to find harmonies—or rhythms—and here in the Namibian desert in a town called Solitaire after he could not count how many pies he was able to find the harmonies on the bedsprings—and the rhythm on the bedsprings—and music from the taut wires that only minutes ago were nothing more than something to keep his mattress off the floor.

  41

  AFTER THE MUSICIANS

  DECKER ROSE EARLY THE NEXT morning, as he always did, and was surprised that the musicians’ Range Rover was gone.

  He looked back behind the kitchen and walked far out into the desert. He couldn’t find any sign of the campfire. He thought that maybe he had gotten disoriented, so he headed out in the opposite direction and once again found no sign of any campfire, let alone record player or Duke Ellington records.

  Finally, confused, he gave up and headed back to Solitaire. He was surprised to see Linwood standing outside the kitchen.

  “Late. Not good to be late.”

  “Yes, I guess.”

  “You guess?”

  “Yeah, okay. I’m late. It won’t happen again. Where are the musicians? I thought you were going to be gone for a few days with Marcellus.”

  “With who?”

  “Marcellus. The jazz musician. The one who lost the music.”

  Linwood took a step back.

  “Don’t look at me like I’m crazy. We were out in the desert, and you were playing Duke Ellington records, and I played along with the two musicians who were left behind when you and Marcellus went for your walk.”

  “And how was I playing this Mr. Eglinton’s music?”

  “Ellington, not Eglinton, and on your record player.”

  “My record player? In the desert? And how did this record player get electricity?”

  “You had a hand-crank generator . . . and . . .”

  “There’s a lot of sugar in those apple preserves. I warned you about eating too much of them.”

  Linwood turned from him and began to walk away, then turned back, smiled and sang the opening refrain of “Satin Doll”—but he would answer no more of Decker’s questions. Although he did say, “Bedsprings are really quite difficult to play well—we should get you a guitar.”

  The guitar—the music—proved to be the portal that allowed him access to waking dreams on command.

  All he had to do was play the opening chords of “Highway 61 Revisited” and he was up in his dreamscape—awaiting Seth’s call for help.

  42

  EDDIE AND MARINA—THE ODDEST DANCE

  “YOU THINK I’M STUPID.”

  “I don’t, Marina. I just think you’re on a different—”

  “Path. Y
es, you’ve said. But you do think I’m stupid.” She paused, then said, “When you live in so many different worlds it’s hard to talk right in just one.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “No you don’t. Of course you don’t.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  Marina turned away. Then, as if to herself, she said, “All your life you look for the glass house. All your life. But you’ll be lucky if you even sense the trees—let alone find the clearing. But I’m in all of them at once. Here, the forest, the clearing, the house. I was born in all of them—I’ll die in all of them. All of us will.”

  “All?”

  “Do you remember the boy who pooped in the pool?”

  It was hard to forget. It was a terribly hot and humid August day, and Eddie had agreed to take Marina and her friends to the large public swimming pool in High Park just south of the Junction. If there was ever a good visual for the phrase “motley crew,” they were it. Eddie in his cut-off jeans (as close as he could come to a bathing suit) with his foot-lift contraption in full view. Marina wearing an old, way too large sundress because she refused to allow anyone to see her belly button—what she referred to as her “very centre.” And her two friends. One blind and terribly thin, wearing a bathing suit that was too loose so one of his extraordinarily long testicles hung out, and Josh, whose almost three hundred pounds circled his middle and legs in bags of flesh. It was Josh, who bore the cruel facial markings of Down syndrome, who had gleefully defecated in the pool, which drew shrieks from the young bathers around him and angry accusations from their parents: Look what he’s done! Why’s someone like that allowed in a public pool without supervision? An afternoon ruined by you and your cretin!

  Everyone was ushered out of the pool, and the offending fecal matter was removed. Then the entire pool was drained and scoured. Eventually, water began to be put back into the pool, along with excessive amounts of chlorine.

  The whole process took several hours—hours of intense summer heat and rising anger from the kids who had been promised by their parents that they would be swimming.