The Miracles of Ordinary Men

by Amanda Leduc

Timothy finishes his drink first, and places the mug on the floor beside the fireplace — carefully, as though afraid the cup might break. “Thank you,” he says again, once more so polite.

  “You’re welcome.”

  He fidgets again, and picks at a thread on his jeans. “I like your house,” he says, finally. “Does Joe-with-an-L like it too?”

  She shrugs. “I guess so. We spend all of our time here.”

  “Right. Because Joe-with-an-L lives with his mom.”

  “Is that a problem?” she asks, annoyed.

  Timothy looks at her, then away, and shrugs out a laugh. “It’s just — ”

  “Just what?”

  “You could do better. I don’t even know the guy, and I know you could do better.”

  “Better men, dear brother, seem to be in short supply.” Then she remembers Israel, the soon-to-be-date. Saturday. Seven. I will drive. She opens her mouth to tell him about it but Timothy stands, suddenly, and when he glances down at her he has the street look in his eyes and that’s it — he’s disappearing, again, right in front of her.

  “I have to go,” he says. “I’m going to go.”

  “You can have my bed,” she says, speaking slowly. “You can go in there now, Tim. I won’t bother you.” Please. Stay. “I promise.”

  “You said you wouldn’t keep me,” and he backs away from her, toward the door. The whites of his eyes are showing, and his breath comes fast and shallow. “You said.”

  “It’s just a night,” she says, standing, again speaking slowly. Stay. Stay. “Just — just rest for a night. I just want you to be safe.”

  He laughs — the high, terrified laugh of a madman. “No one can keep me safe,” he says. “No one, Lilah. You least of all.” He turns from her, wrenches open the door, and runs into the hallway, shoes dangling from his hand.

  She stands in front of the fireplace, silent. He takes the stairs down — flying down the stairwell and back into the night. Running away from her, now, always away. The rest of her hot chocolate goes cold. She puts her mug down, beside Timothy’s; she’ll have to get his clothes from the laundry, but for the moment she sits back down and listens. The motherfucking voices are still fighting, but they’re now on the move; they dwindle, fade away. For three seconds the world is heavily, achingly quiet.

  Then a breeze comes in, and she stands and shuts the window.

  —

  In the morning, Israel leaves a message on her machine. Delilah. I think Indian would be lovely. Don’t you?

  She showers and picks her outfit, and when evening comes she makes her way to the Indian restaurant, the famous one on 11th Avenue. She shivers in the high-necked black dress, the red silk scarf from Timothy, the boots that lace up at the back. Her hair is down because she likes the way it looks, white-blonde in the light from the street. The black feathered fascinator — a guilt gift from Roberta, who has great taste when it comes to matters of the millinery world — completes everything. She feels enchanting and subdued. Greta Garbo, Marlene Dietrich. Grace Kelly in Rear Window, on her way to break another man.

  Then she reaches the restaurant, and sees Israel at the window, and as she steps inside the door everything changes.

  “Delilah,” he says. He stands to greet her, and the words carry. “You’re late.”

  She flushes to the tips of her fingers. She is five years old. “I’m sorry.” She allows him to take her coat, to drape it gently over the last chair. His coat sits on the chair to her left. She can tell it’s expensive just by the way it hangs.

  “Not very late,” he concedes. He pulls out her chair and she sits. “But I am not used to waiting.”

  “Well,” she snaps, before she can stop herself, “I don’t rush for anybody.” She winces and tugs on her scarf. “Just so you know.”

  Israel laughs and sits down. “So you are not as polite outside of work. I wondered. We will overlook it, for tonight.”

  “Overlook what?” She wipes her hands against her thighs. “Being impolite or being late?”

  “Both.” He has beautiful hands, this man. Large. Long-fingered. He wears a silver ring on his right index finger, and when he motions to the waiter again the ring glimmers in the light. He orders wine for both of them and lets his menu lie open on the table. “You are young — I must remember this.”

  She thinks of Rainer and those long ago days in the mountains. “Why does everyone talk about my age like it’s some kind of fucking handicap?”

  “You watch your mouth,” he says softly. There’s that hint of steel. “But that’s just what a young person would say. Maybe you’re not ready just yet.”

  She blinks. The waiter brings a bottle of wine and fills her glass. What kind of date is this? “Ready for what?”

  “Never mind.” He shrugs and places one hand on the table, then hooks his other arm around the back of the chair. “Let us begin at the beginning, then. Tell me about you.”

  “But I don’t know anything about you,” she blurts, hating the way it sounds. The wine is cool and sharp. “I don’t even know why I’m here.”

  “I come from Mexico City. And now I live here. What else do you want to know?”

  “Do you have any brothers? Any sisters?” Or favourite foods, a favourite colour. Suddenly everything sounds so juvenile, so strange.

  “I do not,” he says. “And you have a brother.”

  “Yes,” she says, surprised. “He lives here, in the city.” She drinks, and suddenly her glass is empty. “Did Penny tell you that?”

  “I pay attention,” Israel says. His hand around the wine bottle, more wine in her glass. “It’s amazing, what you learn.”

  Joe-with-an-L, she realizes suddenly, does not even know her brother’s name.

  “Mediocre men do not pay attention,” he continues. “Surely you’ve met enough of those, by now, to know the difference. Surely you know enough to long for something better?”

  She sips her wine, uneasy. “Well isn’t that a lovely thing to say.”

  “The truth is hardly ever lovely, Delilah. But no doubt you know that already, as does your brother.” He shrugs. “This is what you learn when you look deeply at the world.”

  “Is this what you do, then? ‘Look deeply at the world’ while we’re making you expensive coffee and shuffling papers around in the foyer?”

  “You could say that.” The waiter arrives with poppadums and chutney, places the dishes noiselessly on the table, and then retreats, once more, into shadow. Israel cracks a poppadum between his hands. “You might call it a . . . project. Or a hobby. Most people, Delilah, pay the world no attention at all. They do not watch for opportunity. They are content to let their lives mean nothing. But you,” he points a long finger at her, “you are different. I think so, anyway.”

  This from the man who, up until two days ago, had never spoken her name.

  “I think you’re crazy.”

  “People have said that before,” he tells her, unperturbed. “But they only say it once.” The waiter comes back and Israel orders for them both — jackfruit in masala, saag paneer. He finishes his own wine, refills it, and watches her. Lilah stares at the table and says nothing. She is mortified and furious, her fingers tight around the stem of her wine glass. Where is the sparkling conversationalist, or the girl who at the very least knows enough about decorum to watch her mouth in front of the boss?

  “You needn’t worry about being proper,” Israel says. Now her wineglass is empty again; he refills it. “We are not at work anymore.”

  “So you read minds now?” she mutters.

  “You’d be surprised how much a face can tell, Delilah. And is this a date? I am no longer so sure.” She glances up, blushing, as he continues. “You are so much quieter than the women I usually entertain.”

  “Well, maybe you’re not entertaining me.”

  He chuckl
es. “So I am not interesting, then?”

  “Interesting enough.”

  Outright laughter this time. “Delilah, Delilah. I have never met a woman like you.”

  “You can’t have met many women, then.” She spoons chutney onto her plate and dips in a poppadum. “I’m not that special.”

  “If you say so.” The waiter places another bottle of wine on the table. “Somehow, I don’t think that is true.”

  They stumble on like this until the food comes, and then Israel talks for most of the meal. He tells her about a childhood in Mexico — the colour, the food, parades down the Paseo de la Reforma. A mother who prayed a hundred times a day, a struggle with numbers at school.

  “You call them the times tables,” he says. “Even now, I find them difficult.”

  “Yes,” she says, surprised. “I know.” In return, she tells him about Thailand, about the hills, about sleeping drenched in opium and rain. About the café job she took when she moved back in with Roberta, about the man she met there and the job opportunity that took her to Toronto, then Montreal. She does not tell him about Timothy, or the phone calls.

  “And now you’re back,” he says.

  “I’ve been back for two years. Almost three.”

  “Why?” Israel spoons the last of the jackfruit on his plate. “If it was so wonderful — why come back?”

  “My mother got sick. I moved home for a while, to help.” She laughs; she can’t help it. “And it drove me crazy, so I moved here. Now there’s practically an ocean between us, and I’m still only a few hours away.”

  “And now you are a secretary.” The sentence thuds onto the table. “Do you enjoy your job?”

  “Yes. I’ve dreamed about being a secretary since I was five. Doesn’t everybody?”

  “Then why are you there?” he asks.

  “Why didn’t I get a bonus?” she blurts. “At the end of last quarter. Everyone else got a bonus. Even Debbie.”

  “Debbie,” Israel taps his glass before he continues, “is an exemplary worker. This is what Penny tells me.”

  “So — what? I’m not? Do I need a fucking degree to organize your desk?”"

  “I was a good son,” he says idly. “Once upon a time, I was exemplary. But there is more to this world, Delilah, than following the rules. The Debbies of the world, exemplary or not — they will not matter. Is that what you want? Do you not want a future that reaches higher than an annual bonus?”

  Five days ago, she knew nothing about this man apart from his taste for coffee. Five days ago, he was only The Boss. “What could I do that would make things any different? I make barely enough to pay my own bills.”

  The waiter brings them tea. Lilah crumples her napkin onto the plate and watches it unfold, slowly, like a flower. This is what she’s learned, from years of travelling and searching and needing something else: that there isn’t something else, that some people will forever look at the world and see broken things that they can’t change. One moment of clarity, fuelled by opium and mountain rain — it’s an illusion, nothing more.

  “Opportunity is not about money,” Israel says. “God does not mete out miracles only to the rich.”

  “I haven’t seen much evidence of God in the last few years,” she says. God. Why is it that her life always leads her here?

  “Perhaps,” Israel shrugs. “Or perhaps God has just been . . . waiting.”

  “Waiting for what?”

  He reaches across the table and takes her wrist, then turns her palm up so that the veins are illuminated in the light. “Who knows? God is very patient.”

  She stares at his hand, transfixed, and shivers as his thumb traces a circle at the base of her palm. She pulls away. “Well. Whatever.” Suddenly desire is a hard knot in her stomach. She can’t speak, she’s so surprised.

  Israel smiles again. “Yes,” he says. “I know.”

  —

  He gets the bill and leaves a fifty-dollar tip on the table as they ready themselves to go.

  “It wasn’t that great,” she says as they leave the restaurant. “The service. Did you really think so?”

  “The service was mediocre,” he says. He places a hand on her back and guides her to one of the cars parked by the side of the street. “But they will remember the tip, and next time, the service will be better.”

  A bald man sits behind the wheel of the car they approach. He reads a book by the light of a dashboard lamp, and looks up as they draw near. He opens his door, slides out, and nods to them both. “Mr. Riviera. Madam.”

  “Emmanuel,” says Israel. His hand moves in circles across the small of Lilah’s back. The sudden soft rhythm in his voice says that these men speak Spanish all the time. Lilah wonders how far back they go, how much Emmanuel knows. Maybe Israel is a promised land of mystery to everyone. A man of shadows, a man who fades into the world just like her brother. “We are ready to go now.”

  “Of course, of course,” says the driver. He opens the door and helps Lilah in. She slides across the seat. The car smells of leather and wealth. Israel climbs in beside her and lays a hand on her knee.

  “Home,” she says, and she tells them her address. She thinks of Timothy, hunkered down by a grate somewhere in the city.

  They seem to drift down the street, and every hunched figure on the sidewalk has Timothy’s face, Timothy’s hands. Lilah closes her eyes, dizzy from the wine, or the man beside her, or both. She wants to go home and crawl into bed, or sink back into the city and look for her brother. Timothy Timothy Timothy, soft in her head like a song.

  She almost falls asleep, lulled by the hum and Israel’s hand against her neck, but when the car stops, she realizes that they’re in a different part of town and blinks, suddenly unsure. “I thought we were finished.”

  “Did you?” Israel smiles. “But that would hardly make me a gentleman.” He opens the door, pushes one foot outside. “Surely, Delilah, you can stop for one more glass of wine.” He pauses and shrugs. “But of course, Emmanuel can drive you home. It is up to you.”

  Lilah bristles. “Fine.” She follows him out of the car and steps onto the pavement. She does not wobble.

  “Emmanuel,” he says. “I will call for you.” Here they are, the two of them, in front of one of the most expensive apartment buildings in the city. “Delilah.” He takes her hand. “Come inside.”

  They walk through the lobby and into the elevator without speaking. This elevator is gleaming and sleek and rises soundlessly into the building. Lilah watches the two of them in the polished surface of the elevator mirror. She looks calm, composed. Classy. Her cheeks are flushed from the wine and the almost-sleep in the car. Israel is busy punching numbers into his phone.

  They ride to the top floor. The elevator opens directly into his apartment, and the first thing Lilah notices are the doilies, which are everywhere. Lace on the hall table, lace on the TV stand, a garish purple mess that hangs on the back of the door. The lampshade over the hall light is an inconceivable shade of orange.

  “Does your mother live here?” she blurts before she can stop herself. Israel looks confused, and then follows her eyes to the lampshade.

  “Ah. No, no, my mother died some years ago. But she made these. They are lovely, no?” He fingers the doily on the table. “A woman is not a woman until she can create works of art like this.”

  Lilah snorts and then hurriedly coughs. “I don’t crochet.”

  He shrugs. “Yes, well. North American women — they are different in many ways.”

  “Such as?”

  “You have forgotten your place here,” he says. “Women. You expect too much. You need to learn.” He smiles. “But that’s why you’re here, Delilah. This is what I will teach you.” And that’s when he hits her. He smacks her mouth with the back of his hand and her head snaps back. The world is blurred. He pushes her against the wall and her
head cracks against the door. She focuses long enough to see Israel above her like some ancient god, lightning pulsing in his fist. He hits her again and pain blossoms along her cheekbone. She tastes blood at the corner of her mouth, hard and metallic, like fear.

  Eight

  He drove.

  Chickenhead had glared at him for the first five minutes, then curled up on the passenger seat and ignored him. The sun rose slowly as he made his way across the bridge. He drove past his mother’s cul-de-sac and thought about stopping to check on the plants, then decided against it and wound the window down instead. The air smelled of spruce and rain and earth. He drove, and Joni Mitchell sang of strangers and trembling bones.

  The summer he turned twenty, he’d loaded the old Jeep with books and had driven across the country, just because. The cassettes thrown over the passenger seat soon outnumbered the books. He listened to The Eagles. He beat the steering wheel in time to Jethro Tull. He bought a second-hand guitar at a dilapidated music store in Kelowna and knew “House of the Rising Sun” before he was through the Rockies. By the time he got to Winnipeg he was sick of it, and stashed the guitar in the back.

  He’d forgotten — maybe he’d never known — how big the country was; how seamless and yet different the landscape, sliding from mountains to flat and back again as he climbed the rocky Ontario roads. Further east, in Trois-Pistoles (a history stemming from three coins lost in the river — he stopped because he liked the name), a grizzled old boutique owner pushed Hejira into his hands.

  “The road,” he said. His name was Remy. He had a clubfoot and a burn scar that stretched all the way down the left side of his face. “The road, oui.” He wouldn’t let Sam speak French, though his English was passable at best.

  “You listen,” he said. “Écoutez — you like.”

  He accepted the tape — the old man was a keen disciple, because he gave it away for free — and listened to two songs, then took it out and went back to Jethro Tull.

  But he didn’t throw it away, and when he got back to Vancouver he kept it because it reminded him of Remy. Gradually, it began to remind him of the entire trip — mountains and lakes and hot sun over the prairies. Hejira hadn’t been meant for the prairies, of course — Joni had written it with the road from Maine to LA in mind — but it worked. Snow and pinewood trees and Benny Goodman — he’d had sunshine and cedar and seventies psychedelia, yet somehow it was all the same.