Architects Are Here

by Michael Winter

  These ones, she said, the frames have not been kiln-baked, or varnished.

  You say that disparagingly, David said.

  They’ve been rolled in cedar flakes for six months, she said.

  And we both imagined a girl in Poland rolling a little box for six months, as though she’s about to draw the winning lottery number painted on a pingpong ball.

  Then he put on a silver pair. He stared at himself. Something happened to him. His shoulders stiffened and he backed away from the mirror. He almost careened into the kiosk of revolving frames. He pulled off the glasses and handed them to her. I dont ever want to see these again, he said.

  He ordered the frames that had been rolled in cedar flakes. He gave her the prescription.

  In the car I drove. David was laughing at himself now.

  I put those silver ones on, he said, and a familiar feeling came over me, like a previous life. It was my father. Suddenly I looked just like my father.

  IT WAS AFTER NINE and we drove to a pastry shop David knew. The women were wearing things like negligees over tops. What used to be below was now worn on top, and the same was happening with food. People were eating desserts and then they ordered rare beef on a bed of arugula. I called Lars Pony and David held his pebble and thought about Sok Hoon. He was just leaving a message, he said.

  I said Lars sounded troubled.

  David: Are we a hindrance? We can skip him.

  It felt, I said, like I was talking to a wide-open sky.

  There had been a movie shoot earlier in the day. They were still taking down props. While we ate near a pillar, a square of gold mirror unglued itself and fell on David’s head. I watched it slice down like a guillotine and bounce off his skull, then his forehead bloomed one streak of red. A gusher. What was that, he said.

  A panel of mirror fell on your head, I said.

  A grip came over and picked up the mirror. Nothing happened here, he said in French. And handed David a fresh bar towel.

  You should sue, a waitress said, also in French.

  David stanched the flow and a woman passed by. She said something like, I’ll get my boyfriend, he’s a doctor.

  She brought back a handsome man from across the street. Youthful, lightboned and Panamanian. He tilted David’s head.

  Oh you need stitches, he said, you need five.

  A diagnosis in two seconds.

  I’m glad, David said, there was a doctor.

  He spoke quickly in Spanish to his girlfriend.

  He’s not a doctor, she said. He’s a boxer.

  The thing is, am I going to go bald.

  Dave, youre bald.

  I’m shaven, he said.

  We took a vote, the woman, the boxer and me. A unanimous decision that David was bald and would continue to be bald.

  I wasnt supposed to go bald, he said. This is news to me. I take after my mother’s father, he said, and he had a thick head of hair.

  There was something about David’s mother’s father that David connected with. He did not like his father, so he skipped a generation and took up his mother’s father. And now this surprise uncoupling. Baldness was supposed to swing David to the idea of stitches. The vanity of a scar. But instead he said to the hovering waitress, We’ll settle for a couple of free coffees and we’re ready for our savoury.

  BUT HE WENT THROUGH the bar towel and the bleeding would not stop. I drove him to a hospital and we waited in Emergency for two hours. The hospital made him think about his father, and so he phoned the hospital in Corner Brook. It was midnight in Corner Brook and he got an orderly who put him on to the nurse we knew, Maggie Pettipaw. His father was the same. There was no real need for David to come home. He could be this way for months. Then his pebble glowed and he had a message from his sister.

  When’s the last time you heard from her.

  He called her back. All he did was hold the pebble and it called her.

  She lives in New Hampshire. She wants to talk about my father. She says Richard Text’s in town.

  He would know where Nell was, I thought.

  Me: Do we have a map?

  We asked a nurse if there was a map and she came back with a revolving globe that must have come from a children’s ward. It was the kind with a light bulb in the middle that you could plug in. In fact, it was sort of like how I thought the world really worked, from an inner glow.

  Bethlehem, David said. Sasha’s right here working in a lab. You cut through Vermont and cross the Connecticut River and youre in New Hampshire. We take the 91 and it’s no more than what, two hundred miles.

  I didnt care either way. I knew Sasha as a youngster and so she’s remained a youngster.

  What’s Richard doing there.

  A high-level government visit, he said.

  Have you met him.

  You havent?

  And I told him that I’d met him once, briefly, early one morning but hadnt known it was him.

  You never met him in Corner Brook?

  I squeezed my forehead and knew I must have seen him there, but all that came to mind were the stories Nell had told me. Can you tell the nurse, I said, that there’s a tightness in your chest.

  Why would I say that.

  It’ll shave an hour off the wait.

  But he wouldnt. David didnt fool with his own health. That was his only truth, never to pretend an injury, for that injury will seek you out and smite you. He did not possess morals over swiping craftily an alternator from a salvage yard, but he would not bend the truth about his own health. It was connected to his God-hunch and praying. So while we waited, every twenty minutes or so, I darted out to check on the dog. I gave her a walk to see if she needed to empty herself. Then a Haitian doctor suggested a needle and Dave’s head was sewed up—the boxer was right, five stitches.

  FOUR

  IT WAS MIDNIGHT and Lars Pony was standing on his front step, waiting. His appearance made me wonder, made me slip into a Wyoming state. Lars did not look good, but he looked better than he had. His short black hair had gone grey. He was wearing brand-new white sneakers. He was looking like someone who was trying desperately for the part of Lars Pony, so much so that I left the dog in the car.

  I’ve lost sixty-five pounds, he said, and shook hands with David Twombly. He remembered him from Corner Brook. What he didnt say was that we all gave his son, Lennox, a bit of a hard time. That’s a nice wound, he said to David. Lars had his own wound, a wrapped hand he’d hurt in preparing a hose from the garage.

  He did not show us in, for no woman lived here. We stood on the porch.

  He’d been married in Toronto. He and his wife had loved each other. I’ve met her, she’s attractive, a Newfoundlander. Lars is a tall man and his wife’s eyes came just to his shoulder. Lars told me once that they ate in silence once a month at the Royal York. When the music began Lars snapped his fingers and the band played his song. They danced on an empty dance floor all night. He had his work clothes and then, during these evenings, his dress clothes. My Wyoming. They are lovers, the waiters said to new diners. And the waiters felt sorry for their children. They love each other so much, they did not have time for their children. The waiters saw the kids at a Sunday brunch. This was fifteen years ago.

  His wife, Nora, was gone now and so were his children. He had two children, one in university and the other working in the tar sands of Alberta. Lennox. They did not write. Nora had left him for a woman, and they were living in Mexico. They swam at night in the sea while the tall hotels prepared bedrooms. A fortune teller in the park, strings clamped to her table, to hold the cards down. The Germans, shirts off, one tries to fetch up a carp. She sent postcards to their son.

  LARS BREATHED IN SLOWLY and then exhaled, like he was drinking coffee. They said they’d be here for dinner but now it was midnight. It was the one thing he’d been waiting for. Last week he had come to the end of it. He had thought of a way with a hose through the back window. Shut the porch door with a towel under it and turn the car on, thirty mi
nutes should do it. Then Gabriel English had called him and it cheered him. He had a friend. But they were late and there was nothing to do now, with a supper cooked and beds made for the men upstairs. He was on the porch with a beer and his breath had a shiver in it. He could bark like a dog he was that lonely and there was no reservoir left to muster a defence against loneliness. Then a car with the slowing sound of looking for an address.

  Gabe had not heard about Lars Pony’s wife. How men, absent from day-to-day scrutiny, can change on you. Gabriel had been his friend at Auto Trader. Lars had taught him how to take pictures, the simple questions you asked and how to get out of the clutches of some people who apparently sold their cars in order to have someone to talk to. Now I’m the one who has clutches, Lars thought.

  They sat there outside on his step, and Lars was good for a couple of beers, and sometimes that’s all you can ask of a wounded, older friend. Lars Pony had the base of his fingers wrapped in clean gauze, a gauze that seemed to be the exposed limit of a dressing that was keeping his frame together.

  You want chicken.

  We’re good Lars.

  Dave was sensitive to a trouble in the air but at the same time not impressed. He took out his pebble, I’m going to call Sok Hoon.

  Gabe: Do you have email?

  He had blurted it out and he knew it was selfish. Lars let Gabriel check his mail on his wife’s computer. They were using him for his communication devices. When was the last time someone had called him. Well, it was Gabe, a week ago. There was energy in Gabriel’s focus at the computer. Lars watched him as he looked to see if anyone cared if he was alive. There was desire to live in Gabe. He stared at the screen until it refreshed itself and the word Ntark leapt at him in the newness of its bold lettering, a new message for Gabriel. It was an attachment. It’s Nell’s typing, Gabriel said, all caps: SORRY FOR CHEWING YOU OUT LIKE A SLIPPER. Nell had drawn a dog and a moccasin (she had that kind of software). Chewed me out? The dog’s tail was twitching. Twitch marks, who came up with those? Nell’s illustrations looked like they were done by someone who’s had brain damage.

  David came in and Gabriel read it aloud. He realized he was the dog. Are you sorry for chewing me out like a slipper.

  David: Does it say where she is.

  I dont know how to look for that.

  David keyed in some commands and came up with a server list that traced the email to Los Alamos.

  That’s where Richard lives, he said.

  I EXTENDED MY WYOMING and thought of Los Alamos. Where they did not wear labcoats. They wore turtlenecks in winter, Nell said once, when we were tired of the Toronto winter. And now in the bloom of summer, short sleeves and golf pants and soft shoes with no laces. Nell had told me that. She often described what people wore in a given climate or country. They wore two ID tags, one on the shirt pocket and another on a retractable cord at the hip. The doors recorded when people entered and left. Richard Text was peeling off neoprene gloves when he got the call, and he swiped his hip card to accept the call. He had the pale skin of someone indoors. They want me when. For how long. For who. Okay he wants to make a tour of the plant or does he want to interact with the plant. That’s the Bethlehem facility with the cold reactor, that’s the one we’re talking about? I can oversee that.

  FIVE

  SO SHE’S BACK with Richard.

  David: And Richard’s in New Hampshire with my sister.

  Is that a common event?

  Gabe no event is now uncommon.

  We left the dog with Lars Pony. The dog had a pink neck from the temporary rope. Dye.

  You boys have rooms upstairs you can use.

  David:We have people waiting on us, Lars.

  Do I have to keep her chained on.

  You could bring her into the house.

  Lars looked at her. No she dont even want to look at the house.

  Dave’s son is allergic to dogs, I said. That was our excuse for dropping in on Lars and our polite method of moving on. We’ll call on you, Lars. Sok Hoon had said come on over she was having a party for the Prince of Wales.

  What’s his name, Lars said.

  The Prince of Wales?

  The dog’s name.

  She doesnt have a name.

  David:The dog’s name is Bucephalus.

  So you’ll come by.

  We’ll visit.

  Bucephalus! It made me laugh but then I wondered if we were being bad. Was it wrong of us to drop off a dog and leave. But I could tell David wasnt curious about Lars, and during hours of exhaustion I cave to David’s level of attention to the world, even though that attention is sometimes elitist.

  The Prince of Wales. He was involved because of the fabric that covers water. He likes things like that. He was winding down a minor Canadian visit.

  WE DROVE into NDG and ended up opposite a small private French school. We parked on the road. In Sok Hoon’s driveway stood the black Land Rover. Beside it a security car with two armed men. A woman from the party was throwing rose petals onto their laps and the driver was pressing the button to wind up his window. It was about one in the morning, the front door wide open and music, as if music had opened the front door.

  You sure this is it.

  This, David said, is the exact address of my ex-wife.

  He was admiring the moxie of Sok Hoon to create a new life.

  Should we just leave everything in the car.

  Let’s risk it.

  We had to talk to the men to get in. They were RCMP and they were impressed when David said the Land Rover was the same one Osama bin Laden uses. The men were wearing headsets and took a digital picture of us. They made a copy on a printer in the back of the security car and laid it on a stack in the back seat. Then they got out to look at us and we all walked over to the Land Rover. There was technology in the dash.

  This used to be my Rover, Dave said to me. As though they were deaf or new speakers of English. There is something about the British speaking English that makes them sound now like it’s a second language to them. I own this house, David said, with Sok Hoon. This Victorian with pressure-treated weave fence.

  And he stared at it as if he did own it, but I knew that he probably didnt.

  Enjoy yourselves, the RCMP said.

  David looked at the front of the house.

  Is the Prince of Wales actually present in the house?

  The shorter man held up a piece of machinery and looked at it. He’s thirty-two feet southeast of us, he said. Perhaps the Prince wears a chip, like a dog.

  We ploughed through glamour, through tinsel and lights and flamboyant scooped numbers. We brushed our way out of the front hall and David found Sok Hoon on the lap of a woman in a green sleeveless gown. This was Allegra Campinghorst. Allegra, I said. And introduced myself. He was the one, David said, who helped write those letters.

  Then you need a glass of whisky, Allegra said. And it was the voice. It was her radio voice.

  She helped us find glasses above the breadbox and poured out some whisky. Her gown was ridiculous in the crush, but it was a gown made from insects, she said. It was a fabric woven of insects and wood. Well, cellulose.

  Tiny desserts floated by. Several millionaires looked at their watches—they were visiting millionaires, as Montreal does not breed rich men. David kissed Sok Hoon and said goodbye to Allegra. Then he slapped the shoulders of a few men who greeted him, I thought, a little coldly. He knew these people, some of them, they were the successful graduates that Sok Hoon and David had gone to McGill with. Connections.

  Ambiguity leads to richness, Sok Hoon said.

  Be persuasive, I said. Cheers.

  An expression, Sok Hoon said, has to be sandwiched by an impression.

  Then, close to my chin she said, The only opportunity with David is to degrade him.

  The Prince was standing in the next room. He was intently listening.

  Look at his tie, Sok Hoon said. That’s a regimental tie. And who else can get away with a double-breast
ed suit. Look at the flare of his shirt collar.

  This made me touch the opening of my own shirt.

  I plan, I said, to spend most of this summer drunk.

  Sok Hoon:Thing is, when youre single, the best thing you can ask for is a fight.

  I’m not single, I said. I’ve got Nell.

  And Sok Hoon looked at me with a tenderness I thought might break her own heart.

  We walked through the rooms past the Prince—I tiptoed—to the back deck.

  Sok Hoon: Maybe I’m naive but I’ve never had casual sex. I was naive when I hooked up with David. And I’ve never not been present. Always present.

  Me:You mean youve never fantasized?

  That’s not what I meant.

  It was colder here, as if we had entered water. It was different air. We watched David and Allegra, beyond the Prince, move in on each other.

  Me: She looks like she’s hunting David down.

  David, Sok Hoon said, likes to get in the middle of perverted things.

  Sok Hoon was half Chinese and she grew up in Vancouver, or Hongcouver as she herself described it.

  David came over. I’m just going to go in and look at my son.

  Dont let him get up.

  There’s discipline, David said, and then there’s quashing the human spirit.

  Sok Hoon’s parents had met as crew on a sailing vessel in the Pacific. They survived a rogue wave and that’s where Sok Hoon was conceived, in the Indian Ocean. Perhaps her work at glazing over water is connected to a rogue wave conception. They were employed by tycoons who needed craft pushed from one group of archipelagos to another. They bought and sold fibreglass hulls out of Honolulu. So many marriages end in Hawaii, Sok Hoon had told me once, when she was still married and, I thought, happy. The year-long round-the-world voyage is fine out of San Francisco. But the monotony kicks in for one partner, usually the wife, by the time Honolulu rears out of the Pacific. Her mother is from Honolulu. Honolulu probably means Resentment. The marriage cracks, the boat is sold. It happened to her parents. So they sent Sok Hoon to private schools in Vancouver and then to McGill where she did a degree while hooking up with David and making a living in Toronto for three years organizing environmental credits for industrial polluters. They tried moving to New York but understood they could live a richer life in Toronto. They had Owen and then David fucked up, big time. Affair, she said. That affair was her Hawaii. She moved back to Montreal—her Chinese grandparents live here and offer support. Her work is in Asia now, the fashion industry is big there, and she also gets an unspecified amount from David, though often in the past year it is she who is making deposits in the joint account.