by Melissa Yi
Meant nothing to me, but I understood expensive.
So did Colin. "That's enough, Gordon. She said she'd take us out for a beer."
"What if I said I hate beer?"
I shrugged, ready to tell him to shove it. He'd really know something was up if I bankrupted myself for a drink. And I'd bet dollars to Dalmatians, he loved beer and just wanted to give me a hard time.
Colin gritted his teeth.
Jake cut in and whispered, but I heard him over the rumble of conversation and Faith Hill wailing away in the background. "I got the stuff in the truck."
Colin gave me a little nod. The stuff, not some stuff. It was the supply cabinet stash.
Jake glanced at me. "I mean, for later."
I hid a smile. Colin knew exactly what to do with it later.
Gordon snorted. "It better be good."
Jake clapped him on the back. "You trust me, right?"
***
HEAD JANITOR HOSPITALIZED
Gordon Pinchuk, head janitor at West Vincent High School, has been hospitalized with kidney problems, memory loss, and visual difficulties. His wife, Bernice Pinchuk, administrative assistant at the same school, claims he was poisoned. "I have no idea how or why this happened to my beloved husband, but I intend to get to the bottom of this."
Mr. Pinchuk has taken disability leave and his wife is on leave of absence while they adjust to the situation. Cards and well-wishes may be left at London Health Sciences Hospital, University Campus.
***
I was careful when I signed the school card. I couldn't lie and say, "Get well soon." I ended up putting, "Thinking of you in your difficult time, Birdie."
I was thinking of him while Ben served me a steak dinner.
"We make a hell of a team," said Ben, clinking my glass.
I kept my glass raised. "You're the brains. I would never have figured out how to fake those staff files, tape Bernice breaking into them, and catch her trying to blackmail everyone." He'd planted fake tips in everyone's files, not just mine, with the fake mortgage and gay Kevin.
Ben allowed himself a small smile. "You didn't have access to the files. I did."
My tongue tasted sour, and not just from the fancy wine. Ben would've gotten Bernice fired. Colin and I had permanently disabled a man using antifreeze.
Ben read my mind. "He would have killed himself with alcohol anyway. I bet he already had cirrhosis. If anything, you gave him a warning and saved his life."
Yeah, right. Some life. Could've been worse, I guess. Jake told us a doctor said booze was the antidote to antifreeze poisoning, so Gordon actually got off light, considering.
I couldn't believe that. I could still hear Jake's saying over and over again, "Why'd I give him the stuff?" and I imagined all sorts of fallout. I saw Bernice suing the bars and strip clubs the boys had hit from dusk to dawn the night before Gordon's vision started to blur. And even though Colin got rid of the evidence, I saw Bernice figuring us out and exacting revenge.
All I ever really wanted was for Ben and me to be happy. I thought it was easy: get rid of the Pinchuks and we'd play footsie forever. Instead, I watched Ben grind pepper over our steaks and realized his nails were cleaner and his fingertips were softer than mine. We'd never be the same. We'd never be together.
Ben set the pepper down beside his plate. "C'mon, Birdie. Let's just enjoy this, okay?"
I tried to smile. I raised my knife. It sliced through the filet mignon, leaving a pool of blood on my plate.
Originally published in Sleuth Magazine
Om
"Tell me again why you can’t make the breakfast meeting." Felix’s voice crackled through the cell phone.
Chris inched his Mazda forward while adjusting his Bluetooth headset. The traffic at the Old Port of Montreal was already pretty bad at 7:49 a.m., even without the cobblestone streets impeding his progress. "I’ve got an appointment."
"Move it."
"Not this one."
"Why not?"
A horse-drawn carriage had pulled out three cars ahead, the horse’s hooves clopping on the cobblestones. Who knew that the calèches started working this early? The tourists were probably still dreaming about croissants and café au lait. "Can’t reschedule it."
"Why not?"
"She’d kill me. I’m doing this thing for Reece." The words slipped out of his mouth before he figured out how soft it made him look.
"A thing for Reece! You already married her. She’s got you by the short hairs. What else does she want?"
"Felix—"
"Does she want you on a boat?"
"How’d you know I’m going on a boat?" He frowned. He hadn’t found the parking lot yet. Reece had told him to park for $15 on Queen Street.
"Does she want you doing yoga on a boat?"
He just about hung up. "How’d you know that?"
"Easy. She told me."
He frowned. "When were you talking to Reece?"
"Yesterday, I guess. She came by the office. Must’ve been looking for you. Anyway, she told me all about it. Yoga matinale pour célébrer le solstice d'été." Felix’s French accent was terrible, but his hoity toity inflections hit the mark. "Are you serious? You’re blowing us off for a bunch of sun salutations on a boat? For summer solstice?"
"Shut up."
"I can smell the hippie from here."
He hung up, but not before Felix’s cackling rankled in his ear for a few crucial seconds.
Yeah, it was dumb. But he’d do a lot dumber stuff for Reece. He loved everything about her: the way she braided her blonde hair without even looking in the mirror. The way she stuck her tongue out a little when she opened their mail with the diamond letter opener he’d bought her. The way she punched the air in victory after taking a perfect picture on her phone. She wasn’t like every other gorgeous women he’d met, obsessed with shoes and money. Reece was always racing off to hike a mountain, Rollerblade the Lachine canal, or ski and snowboard Mount Tremblant. Now that she’d added yoga to her list and begged him to join her, he couldn’t say no.
She’d hugged him. "It’s our one year anniversary. It’s at sunrise, so even you can’t be working yet, right? And it’s free."
He’d laughed. Like it mattered if she dropped some bills on a yoga class. Reece had grown up without a lot of money, so she still cared about stuff like that.
"I promise you’ll feel better after." She’d glanced at him and bitten her lip.
"Okay, okay," he said, kissing her temple and breathing in the smell of her shampoo. It smelled fresh and sharp. Eucalyptus oil, she’d once said.
Chris snapped back to real time and took a left into the parking garage. He lowered the window and jabbed the button for a ticket, sending a stab of pain through his left neck. He set the ticket on the dashboard and rubbed the spot between his spine and ear. It’d been bothering him a lot lately. "It’s just stress," he’d said, but Reece had made him go see a doctor and bullied them into a private MRI last week. "You’ve got to take care of yourself. I can’t afford to lose you, Chris," she’d said, holding tight to his arm. For some reason, that had made him feel kind of old.
Which was ridiculous. Forty-eight was the prime of his life. It wasn’t 26, like Reece, but he was just as strong as in college. Sure, he didn’t have time to work out much, but he could do this yoga whatever, no problem. And he might make the end of the breakfast meeting too.
He squeezed the Miata into a "Compact car only" space just as his phone buzzed with a text.
Are you coming, slowpoke? :)
Reece, of course. He would’ve known, even without the accompanying photo of her standing on one leg on the deck of the boat, with a drink in her hand. The picture was dark enough that she was in silhouette against a dark blue sky, but he’d recognize that body anywhere.
Coming, he texted back. He could never think of anything witty to say to her. He closed his message icon, ignoring the voice message from an unfamiliar number that had come in while he was driving. Th
en he paused. Reece had somehow replaced his usual background photo of her face with a black and white shot of her back, naked to the waist.
Good thing he hadn’t come across that at the meeting. Chris grinned, shook his head and pocketed the phone before making his way out of the cool, concrete parking garage that smelled like urine. As soon as he stepped outside, into the fresh June air, he remembered how he used to run in college. He got up to a half-marathon before his MBA then the real world sucked all his time away.
He crossed the street to the Spa Ship. It looked like they’d docked an old tug boat and converted it. Still butt ugly, like a few rectangles squatting on top of a barge, but when he stepped aboard, he was pretty impressed at the renovations: windows along the length of the boat, wide corridors, high ceilings, and ample light. The boat rocked lightly under his feet. Nothing he couldn’t handle.
A pretty brunette stepped forward to greet him. Before she could speak, Reece raced down the hallway with her arms wide open. "Chris! You made it!"
"’Course I did," he said, wrapping Reece in his arms and lifting her in the air like she was a kid. His neck spasmed again, and he set her down slowly, as if he’d meant to do that. He covered it by kissing her. She kissed him back, sliding her tongue into his mouth for one teasing second, but something seemed different about her.
He took a step back to check her out. She whirled in a circle for him to admire her before she curtseyed in front of him. She was wearing a pale blue tank top that showed off the muscles in her arms and some sort of loose red yoga pants with crescent moons embroidered on the legs. "Do you like my new pants? I liked Anya’s so much, we traded."
Right. Anya. The yoga teacher. It seemed kind of weird that they’d be swapping clothes, but he figured it was a girl thing. "So you had a good sleepover on the boat?"
"It’s called a yoga retreat, and yes, it was a-MA-zing!" She practically sang the last word. "I’m so psyched that I’ve got one more night here. You don’t mind, do you? I feel kind of guilty, because it’s our anniversary…"
"Doesn’t matter to me if we celebrate the twenty-first or twenty-second of June." Actually, he was planning to work late to make up for this yoga thing. "I booked us a table at Aube."
"I love you," she said, and kissed him again.
"I love you." He leaned into the kiss. Something still seemed off. Not just the pants. But she grabbed his hand and ran the length of the hall, calling, "Come on! We can’t miss the class!"
He had to sprint to keep up with her, keeping his other hand on his cell phone so it wouldn’t bounce out of his short’s pocket. It buzzed in his hand, signalizing a missed message, but he figured Felix could wait. Why the guy would wake up at 7 a.m. to harass him repeatedly about yoga just showed that he really needed a life.
Reece threw open a set of glass doors on the far end of the boat, revealing a concrete deck covered in at least 30 women and their yoga mats. Most women were lying down, but a few were stretching. He recognized the downward dog that Reece was always hanging out in. He started edging toward the rails, but Reece tugged him to a black mat right in front of the teacher, who was set up on the far end of the deck, near the round hot tub that was covered by a tarp. "I saved you a spot."
"Uh, thanks." He recognized Reece’s flowery pink mat beside his. On the other side of Chris was the only other guy in the class, a 20-something dude who was wearing a bun on the top of his head. No kidding. A big hair bun like Wilma Flintstone, anchored with a neon yellow elastic.
"Welcome, bro," said the bun guy.
Chris nodded. He thought about snapping a picture of the bun guy to send to Felix, but figured it would just trigger another round of stupid phone calls.
The bun guy turned to check out Reece, and suddenly the guy wasn’t so funny any more.
"That’s my wife," said Chris.
"Yeah?" The bun guy looked at Reece, who was talking to a tiny woman with curly black hair who was wearing a skin-coloured, form-fitting shirt and pants, but still didn’t look as good as Reece. "Congratulations, man. She’s smokin’. She and Anya are something else."
Chris nodded instead of punching the guy in the face. "Did you do the sleepover last night?"
"You mean the retreat? Nah. Mucho dinero, man."
Good. It obviously kept the riff raff out.
"It’s cool that they’re doing this part free for the solstice. We gotta honour Mother Nature, you know? This is the only planet we’ve got. Our blue marble in the universe."
Frig. Chris would rather sit through a thousand meetings than spend another second with this yob, but as if she read his mind, Reece grabbed his hand and yanked him toward the teacher. "Chris, you’ve got to meet Anya!"
The teacher’s dark eyes bore into his. She could have been more than five foot two, which was a foot shorter than Chris, and she was probably half his weight, but she stood with her feet planted on the deck like she was a well-rooted oak tree instead of bobbing on a boat like the rest of them. She smelled like something that made Chris want to sneeze. After a second, he remembered that it was called patchouli. I can smell the hippie from here. Chris bit back a smile.
Anya shook his hand with surprising force. "Welcome, Chris. Thank you for sharing your solstice with us."
"Thanks." He couldn’t wait for this to be over, but Reece threw one arm around him, the other one around Anya and squealed, "This is so cool!"
"If this is your first visit to Ship Spa, you’ll have to sign a waiver," said Anya. She picked up the brown clipboard beside her mat and handed it to Chris.
He scanned the list. Asthma, diabetes, or a heart conditions? Nah. High blood pressure? Well, it was up a bit when he had his neck looked at, but they’d just asked him to come back and have it checked again, so that didn’t really count. Knee injuries? He’d had the right one scoped a few years ago, cleaning out the cartilage, and now it was as good as new. He jotted that down and checked the rest of the list. At least he knew he wasn’t pregnant. He glanced sidelong at Reece, wondering when she’d feel ready to take that plunge. He wouldn’t mind a couple of rug rats. He read, "I agree to assume full responsibility for any risks, injuries or damages, known and unknown, which I might incur…" Blah blah. He signed it.
His phone buzzed again.
Anya glared at him. "This is a phone-free zone." She turned to the rest of the class. "Just a reminder to turn all your cell phones off or switch them to vibrate."
For a yoga teacher, she seemed pretty tense. Chris wanted to check his messages—he had three of them, including one from last night that he’d missed somehow—but with Anya’s eagle eye on him, he just turned it off without reading them. That reminded him of the background photo switch, though, and he pointed to the phone and whispered to Reece, "Nice back."
She giggled. "Thanks."
"How’d you change it on my phone when you weren’t around last night?" Even with his phone’s PIN number, how could she access his phone remotely?
She glanced at Anya, who was handing the waiver to a middle-aged, chubby black woman, and whispered, "I found an app that switches the background photo on a timer, so I put it on your phone when I stopped by your office yesterday. I wanted to remind you of me, even when I’m not there."
"No need." He kissed the top of her head. Something still seemed a little strange to him, but maybe he was light-headed from the incense that Anya had just lit.
He shoved his phone back in the pocket of his loose-fitting shorts. Reece gestured that it would fall out. She pointed to her phone parked neatly at the back right corner of her mat. He lined his up at the back right corner of his own mat, liking the symmetry.
Anya cranked the music up. Before, it had been some sort of electronica beeping quietly along with the sound of the waves, but now it was a chorus of people singing, "A-ooooooooohm….Ah-OOOOOOhm."
Man, he was glad Felix wasn’t here.
Reece tugged him down on to the mat.
The bun guy was sitting in lotus pose, ankles crossed in h
is lap, with his eyes closed.
Kill me now, thought Chris, but then Reece smiled at him, and he didn’t mind so much. It was only 90 minutes. He could do anything for 90 minutes. Especially for his woman.
Reece sat down with her legs straight in front of her and bent forward, practically laying the front of her body along her thighs and shins. Chris trailed his hand along her back, remembering the picture she’d sent. Would she keep changing the background on his phone? Maybe do a little virtual striptease for him?
Anya knelt behind Reece and placed her hands on either side of Anya’s spine, just above the waistline of her new, red yoga pants. Reece sighed and pressed forward, deepening the stretch and closing her eyes.
Chris drew his hand back into his lap and sat on his mat cross-legged. That was the best he could do. Most other women were sitting cross-legged too, or had one ankle tucked in their lap. Only the bun guy and about five other women sat in full lotus pose, so he didn’t feel too bad.
Anya whispered something in Reece’s ear, and she rose up, sitting straight-backed, legs still on the floor, arms high in the air, before placing her hands on the floor, behind her butt. She lifted her glorious ass off the ground, arching her back and looking up at the ceiling, so that only her feet and hands touched the ground. Her head and the rest of her body formed a perfect line in space. Then she came down to sit on the ground, tucked herself into full lotus pose, and grinned at Chris.
He grinned back. What could he say? He was a sucker for this woman. Always had been, always would be.
Anya said, "Before we begin, I want to stress that you should only do what feels right. If your body says to stop, you stop. You can ride your edge, challenging yourself, but only to a point that feels comfortable. Never pain."
The guys at the gym would just laugh at that. No pain, no gain. But the bun guy nodded along, all serious, and Reece squeezed Chris’s hand. She mouthed at him, "I love you."
"I love you," he whispered back.
Anya raised her voice. "Let’s begin in a comfortable sitting position. Easy pose. Sukhasana. If your knees are higher than your knees, sit on blocks or on a blanket." She glanced at Chis, and he looked down. His knees had bounced up almost as high as his armpits, while Reece’s were level with her cute little hips.