The Miracles of Ordinary Men

by Amanda Leduc

  She is like a detective, or an exotic birdwatcher — stalking the streets, looking for the flash of his pale skin, the hooked nose they both share with Roberta. Some days, she wanders the streets alone. But usually she finds him. She brings him food and clothing: a hat, a jacket for the rain. Maltesers, because they are his favourite. A toothbrush from Roberta, who lies awake at night in Victoria wracked with thoughts of gum disease.

  He likes Stanley Park, and the streets that line the sand of English Bay. He haunts the bakeries scattered around the West End, because the bakery women feed him leftover cupcakes and sometimes the grates pump hot, flour-filled air into the cold stretch of early morning.

  “How can you see anything?” she asks him one morning at five. The air is thick with flour. Timothy, hunched up against the side of the bakery, looks like a snow-dusted child. “This can’t possibly be good for you.”

  “It’s just flour,” he says. As always, she is frightened by how small his voice is, by how much he is now the one disappearing. “I think it’s nice.”

  “Nice,” Lilah echoes. She fingers the red fringes of her scarf and stares down at him. “This isn’t what I would call ‘nice,’ Timmy.”

  He doesn’t look at her. “That’s not my name.”

  “Of course it is. For God’s sake, Tim. Grow up.”

  He ignores her. He is good at ignoring her now. She makes a deep irritated sound in her throat, an impatient hmph, and then stops when she realizes that she sounds exactly like Roberta. “Mom’s worried about you,” she says. “We’re all worried about you.”

  “Worrying will only take you so far,” he says, in one of his hard, unyielding flashes of clarity. “You can’t spend your life thinking about me.”

  “But I can,” she shoots back. “I do.”

  “Even in Europe,” he says, his voice dull. “Even when you were travelling in Thailand, when all you ever did was yell at Mom and hang up the phone.”

  “Yes,” she says, simply. “Why do you think I came back?”

  “You were meant for better things,” Timothy says. He is eighteen years old now, but the sound that comes out of him belongs to a little boy. He clenches his hand into a fist and then lets his fingers unfurl. He is thin and bedraggled, so dirty. So pale.

  “And you?” she asks, her voice bitter. In three hours she’ll be trapped behind her computer. It is five o’ clock in the morning, and the grey expanse of pavement stretches out before them both. “What were you meant for?”

  “I don’t know.” His voice shrinks even further. The silence that sits between them is dark and practised, like a game. “That’s what I’m trying to find out.”

  —

  Lilah works in an office on West Georgia, typing notes and taking calls. The other receptionist, Debbie, takes the front desk, the one closest to the door. Debbie has purple hair and wears black shirts with skulls on the collar. She gets away with the skulls because of her minute-taking skills, and because her smile is brighter than one might expect from someone who listens to so much heavy metal. Penny, the office manager, likes to have her facing the front, a fresh face to greet those who might come in. Lilah does not smile as much, so her desk faces inwards toward Israel’s door. Debbie has a lover and a dog and climbs mountains in her spare time. She is the only person in the office who gets Lilah’s sense of humour.

  Apart from the flour-dusted welcome of the morning, today is a day like any other. Lilah takes calls and schedules meetings, drafts spreadsheets, makes coffee. During lunch, she sits at her computer and looks at vacation spots. Bermuda. The Bahamas. Tenerife. This despite the fact that she is administrative sludge and can’t afford bus fare, never mind a plane ticket.

  Halfway through lunch, Penny catches her ogling a yoga holiday. Namaste in Dahab, Egypt. Beaches, Bedouins, and meditation twice a day.

  “Are you on your break?”

  “Lunch,” Lilah says. “Actually.”

  Penny sniffs. Sniffing is a peculiar art, one that Penny has mastered well. She nods to the screen. “Dahab. That was lovely.”

  “Was it,” and Lilah is already losing interest. “I’m still deciding.”

  Penny nods. “Good beaches.” Penny dyes her hair black and is paler than the moon outside the window. Her mouth slants down to the left, and her words follow the same curve. Penny would speak only in italics, if she could.

  “Hmm,” Lilah says. As though it is actually something to consider. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

  “Of course,” and just the tilt of her head makes Lilah hate her, “if you really want a beach, Delilah, you should book a holiday in Greece.” Sniff. “More expensive, yes, but completely worth it.”

  “Yes. I expect so.” Lilah closes down the holiday page and opens her data sheets. She’s already been to Greece — she’s already been to a lot of places, not that Penny would know. But a friend’s floor on Naxos is no doubt not quite what Penny has in mind.

  “I’ll need you to go get more coffee,” Penny says. “We’ve run out.”

  “Regular?” Lilah reaches for her pen. Dictation, all types. It’s the best kind of skill.

  Penny frowns. “No.”

  Lilah pauses, pen in mid-air. Kopi Luwak. “Really? But I just bought — ”

  Penny tosses her hands out. “I know. Colin tells me the man drinks at least eight cups a day. Honestly, I don’t know how he can sleep at night.” She shrugs. “But he’s the boss. So everything else can wait. You’ll need to be back before two. Debbie has to take minutes, so you’ll need to work the front desk.”

  “Of course,” she says. Then, because Penny isn’t moving, Lilah switches off her computer and pulls her coat from the chair. “Do you want me to get anything else?”

  “No.” Penny grimaces. It hurts her, this coffee excursion. All this money, all this manpower, and all for coffee beans that are shat out by South American cats. Not cats, though, because Lilah looked that one up. Palm civets. The things they must do for the boss. “Just get it and come back.”

  “Sure,” and she hides her sudden rush of cheer. Coffee girl, yes, but coffee girl on the company dime. Things could be worse. She leaves the office without smiling, but as soon as she’s out of the front door she can’t help it — she opens her arms and breathes it in, that salty brine whiff of the world.

  Inevitably, though, time spent weaving through the streets of downtown Vancouver is time spent looking for her brother. She can’t help it. Timothy will disappear again now, and maybe one of her friends will be the next to see him. Like The Actor, who saw Timothy a week or so back and bought him lunch, then called Lilah to tell her about it.

  “He looks good,” The Actor told her with his typical sensitivity. “I mean, considering.”

  “Considering what?”

  “Well, you know.” Pause. “At least he’s not starving, Lilah.”

  “You could have brought him home,” she said, nearly shouting into the phone. “What good is one Happy Meal going to do?”

  “You can’t assume he’s in trouble just because he’s on the streets,” he said. “For all you know, this is the life that he wants.”

  “Right. Begging and sleeping in doorways. Some life.”

  “He didn’t beg, Lilah. I offered.” The Actor. Conversations like this are the reason why they stopped fucking, why they don’t talk anymore.

  She said something in response to this that she doesn’t remember, something that was mean enough to make her call later on and apologize. The Actor was out — she left a rambling message. The machine cut her off at the end.

  Today, on the coffee run, Timothy is nowhere to be found. This is not surprising, not least of all because the homeless do not frequent Yaletown. Normal people can’t afford the coffee they sell here. On this opposite end of Davie Street there is nothing but ocean, condos, and grocery stores that sell square watermelons and imported French
baguettes. And coffee merchants who sell the longed-for Kopi Luwak, at three hundred dollars a pound.

  Timothy would not show his face here. Partly because he’s always hated Yaletown. And partly because he does not want to show his face anywhere — she didn’t say it to The Actor, those few days ago on the phone, but Lilah knows at least this much. He is the Loch Ness Monster now, Bigfoot, Ogopogo. Disappearing into the world and leaving nothing but stories.

  —

  The new man in the office — the boss, yes, although Penny speaks of him as though he is temporary, a passing storm — is Mexican, but his name is Israel, like the favoured son of long ago. He has a high forehead, and dark hair that thins at the top. He may hold baldness back through force of will or he may embrace it. Either way, he is a man who makes decisions forcefully, the kind of man Roberta would be afraid to know. He likes expensive coffee, black. Penny has given grudging permission for Lilah to take this out of the stationery budget, because everyone wants to keep him happy.

  But keeping him happy is not the same thing as being happy that he’s around. Some of her colleagues have begun to call him the Hass Avocado. The imported boss. Twice the price and half as nice, just to have him in season. Penny grumbles about the budget, about the extravagantly expensive fountain pens he keeps in his lapel. But even Penny can see that things are changing. Two months ago the walls in the office trembled with talk of redundancies. Then Israel came, his hands full of promises that had less to do with milk and honey and more to do with profit, hours, and people retention. And milk and honey came anyway. Jobs that stayed and bonuses for everyone but her.

  Instead, Lilah has been assigned to Israel, like a servant, and so when there are meetings, she is the one left to sort through his mail. He doesn’t require much more than the coffee — a clean desk in the morning, someone to field his calls. Mr. Riviera is in a meeting. I’m sorry, but Mr. Riviera is out for the day. Mr. Riviera has left the office — can I take a message? Occasionally he asks for someone to go through his papers and re-organize his desk. Not much. Not hard. Lilah is careful and ordered, efficient, and so polite that Roberta wouldn’t recognize her. Sometimes Lilah can’t recognize herself. She has travelled to more countries than her mother can name, and slept with scores of men. Now she works as a secretary, and Timothy lives in the alleys of her city, and every day she waits to find his body in the street.

  Today, just before she leaves, the Hass Avocado comes to her desk. Debbie flies out of his office and waves Lilah to attention, just in time, and then Israel Riviera marches through the door and up to her.

  “Delilah,” he says. It’s the first time he’s ever said her name. “Penny tells me you’re the one to get my coffee. I wanted to say thank you. It has not gone unnoticed.”

  “Oh.” Debbie is waving frantically behind Israel’s back — a warning? What? Penny probably pointed the finger in the hope that Lilah would get in trouble. She shrugs. “It’s no big deal, really. I like the walk.”

  Israel traces his fingers across her desk. His smile is, surprisingly, somewhat endearing. “That may be — but I am appreciative, all the same. I am not so foolish as to think that a person who requires an expensive drink such as that one might not be seen as a . . . a diva.”

  She would snicker if he wasn’t so serious. “I think divas are usually women. So, um, no. I don’t see you as a diva at all.”

  Unexpectedly, he laughs. Apparently the Hass Avocado has a sense of humour. “I see. That’s good, then. I will be sure to remember that in the future.” He runs his hand across the desk again and back. And then once more. Lilah doesn’t know what to do.

  He nods. “Yes.” Lilah raises an eyebrow. “I would like to take you for dinner, Delilah. To show my appreciation.”

  She blinks. Across from her, Debbie coughs. “Lilah. Call me Lilah.”

  “But it is such a beautiful name,” he says. “Delilah Greene.” He has shining, crooked teeth. One front tooth is slightly discoloured, which gives the smile a flawed, off-kilter charm. “Yes. Delilah. I would like to take you to dinner, to thank you for my coffee.”

  It is not a question. “Um.” Debbie, at her desk, is trying not to smile. Penny — Penny is nowhere to be found, thank fuck. “Um. Okay. That would be lovely.”

  “Very well,” he says. “Shall we say Friday? I will pick you up at seven.”

  “I have plans on Friday.” This is a lie, a very bad one, and for no reason other than that it irks her, being told what to do. Debbie covers another cough with her hand.

  “Ah,” Israel says. “Then I will pick you up on Saturday at seven.”

  “I can meet you.” Saturday. Seven. I will drive.

  “That’s silly,” and his voice is smooth, even jovial, but she can hear the thread of steel that has the office in thrall. It turns her on, just a little. “I have a driver — he will take us anywhere we wish to go.”

  “I like walking.” Because she is stubborn. Because Roberta would definitely say yes to the car.

  For a moment he stands immobile on the other side of the desk, a frown at the edges of his mouth. Then he laughs. “Fine. North American women — you are all so bold. So silly. But all right. You can meet me, and I will drive you home.” This time, he does not wait for her to answer. He turns and strides back into the inner office, and then the door shuts, and the air around them is charged with the scent of man and spice.

  “Well,” says Debbie. “That was interesting.”

  “Yes,” Lilah says. She draws the word slowly over her tongue, like a kiss. She can’t say anything else. The room shimmers with energy. She stares across the desk at Debbie, and remembers out of nowhere nights in Thailand, dancing small beneath the stars, the ocean loud in her ears and the air hard with possibility. Everything starts now, says a voice in her head. It is Timothy, so loud and so clear that she turns her head to face him, even though she knows he isn’t there.

  Nine

  Two days after the resurrection of Chickenhead, Sam’s mother died. His stepfather called him at the school, his voice sounding detached and bewildered. Collapsed. Just like that. The paramedics had come and taken them to emergency, but Carol was gone long before they got to the hospital. There was nothing they could do.

  Sam stood with his fingers locked around the phone and pictured this: a stretcher, his mother inert under a starched white sheet. They would have stepped carefully through the house, manoeuvered the stretcher around each plant, each precariously balanced vase. The house would have been disheveled and unready, as it always was in the morning. Too bad, he could almost hear his mother say. Too bad it hadn’t happened in the afternoon, when the house would have been washed in sunlight and gracious to visitors. Even those of the unexpected, paramedic variety.

  Too bad it hadn’t happened on Sunday, in front of a guilty mother and her wide-eyed kid, when miracles had rung through the air.

  “Sam?” His stepfather sounded impossibly old.

  “Sorry, Doug. What?”

  “I have to make more calls.”

  “Oh. Of course.” His mother, the stretcher, nothing they could do. Of course. They were, after all, only paramedics. They did not have wings, they couldn’t bring cats back from the dead. “Do you want me to come over?”

  “There’s nothing to do.”

  He’d wanted to visit them this morning. Had thought of dropping in for tea, then decided against it. Running late, not enough time. “Is anyone there with you?”

  “What? Oh. Janet.” Doug’s sister. Janet and his mother didn’t get along. Hadn’t, Sam realized. Hadn’t gotten along. The floor shivered under his feet and he steadied himself against a desk.

  “All right,” Sam said. “I’ll call you later — ” but Doug had already hung up. Sam fell into a chair and ran a hand across his face. He looked blankly at Lisa, the new student teacher, until she blushed and crept out of the room. The wings draped
softly over either side of the chair — heavy, white, useless. This, said the voice in his mind. This is what happens now.

  After a long while, during which there were whispers and the shuffle of shoes, the opening and closing of the staff room door, someone put a hand on his arm. He drew his fingers away and followed the curve of a shoulder up to a worried face, blue eyes. Stacey, the vice-principal.

  “Sam,” she said. She smelled of lavender, like Julie. Close your eyes. Swallow. “Go home. It isn’t good for you to be here.”

  “I have a class.” But he let his head fall forward, almost into her chest — Stacey was fond of low-cut blouses. The skin above her breasts was freckled, as though someone had flicked a brush of light brown paint against her flesh, one final flourish.

  “Is there anything I can do?”

  “No.” He wanted to laugh, it sounded so awful. “My stepfather will have called everyone. There’s no need.” He pulled himself out of the chair and reached for his jacket.

  “I’m so sorry,” Stacey said. “Had she been ill?”

  Now he did laugh. “No. She wasn’t. Not that I knew, anyway.”

  “Oh.” Another stumbled apology. He stared at her and felt the world contract to this room, this floor, the jacket he held in his hands. He wanted to draw the wings over his face and let her words bounce off muscle and blood and feather.

  “No,” he said again, his voice soft. Then he opened the door and stepped into the hall. He saw the flash of Emma’s hair at the end of the corridor and turned into the stairwell before she could spot him.

  Stacey followed him outside, her hand never far from his elbow. She stood patiently by his car as he crawled in and nestled the wings against his seat.

  “Will you call us at the school when you get home?”

  “Of course,” he said, although this was silly. What was he going to do — drive the car in front of a truck? The next few kilometres would probably be the safest of his life.

  “All right.” She closed the car door very carefully, as though afraid that it would shatter under anything less than a delicate hand.