Cipher

by John Jantunen

  I set two Styrofoam cups on my desk and filled them from the Thermos of coffee I brought with me each day. I sipped at mine while he told me about Desmond and the complaints he’d been getting from female students and of the suspicions he had about the rather unlikely union between him and Donna, who it was true, he confided, was a little eccentric but a smart girl nonetheless and quite a looker besides. The last bit, about her being a looker, he mumbled into his first sip of coffee as if he didn’t want me to hear but felt, for reasons of his own, that it needed to be said. He asked me what I thought he should do about it then gave me a conspiratorial sort of glance as he drained the rest of his coffee in one short gulp.

  “Let the kid have his fun,” I told him and immediately knew that his visit had more to do with Donna than it did with Desmond. The reasons he’d kept to himself were drawn broadly in the stilted way he set his empty cup on my desk and the clipped tone with which he thanked me for my time and in the staggered breath he took before suddenly pushing himself up from his chair and hurrying towards the door. I wanted to call after him, to assure him that there would be other Donna Klimpts, equally smart and eccentric and good looking, who would smile at him and sometimes brush against him in the hall, making him blush and feel younger than he had in years, but I didn’t, worried that he’d take it as a threat.

  So Desmond and Donna’s arrangement was allowed to continue. As winter broke into spring Donna stopped avoiding him in the hallways and was seen, by a number of reliable witnesses, holding his hand as they sat together eating their lunches on the bleachers on all but the coldest days. It was on one of these occasions that Donna said something to Desmond that would have, if not a great impact on the events that were to unfold, at least enough of one to make sure that in the fallout Curtis wouldn’t be able to pretend that he hadn’t been warned.

  She said, “I think I have fallen in love with you, Desmond.”

  Desmond responded the only way he knew, which was to ask the question tugging at his heart: “Does this mean I can stop paying you?”

  Her eyes must have betrayed what she truly felt but Desmond resisted the urge to turn sideways lest what he saw would rob him of the sudden warmth he felt radiating from his chest.

  twenty-two

  Standing in front of the Herings’ burned-out house, facing Curtis, the person responsible for every happy moment he’d had as boy and as a man, Desmond thought of Donna and the last time he’d seen her. It was at the bus station. She was at the crest of a small crowd of family and friends come to see her off to Banff where she’d found a summer job as a waitress. He’d stood apart, wishing they were alone and that he could feel her tears on his cheek as she kissed him goodbye. When it seemed that the moment had passed for such things, she walked over to him. Seeing that he was about to cry, she frowned and took his hand in hers. She turned so that all he could see of her face beyond the curtain of hair draped over it was the dark cluster of freckles that had skipped her from his top twenty to number 61. Looking back at him, she said, in a voice too small for anyone else to hear, “Thank you.” She squeezed his hand so that he knew she meant it then ran back to the waiting bus, the rumble of its engine speeding the final hugs she gave to her mother and her father.

  And if it didn’t happen exactly like that, he wished it had and wishing made it so. Every time thereafter, when he took Curtis’s picture, or interviewed him when he was promoted to reporter, he finished by asking, “But what about the girl?” meaning the one who made it all worthwhile. Asking the question, and seeing the way Curtis shook his head, curling his top lip, Desmond knew that Curtis would never find her, and this made him feel the lucky one, his deformity and the pain he felt getting out of bed on cold or wet days notwithstanding.

  Addled with these thoughts while he faced Curtis in front of 17 Mann Court, he wanted to say something to let Curtis know what he was thinking. He couldn’t find the words and instead lapsed into the dialogue he’d dreamed up while he’d waited in his car.

  “So what’d you think of Coffee’s?”

  Curtis, just like in his dream, played along. “You eat there a lot?” he asked.

  “Once or twice.”

  “She said I’d find you there. The woman at the front desk.”

  “Darlene. I told her if you ever stopped by, to send you to Coffee’s then give me a buzz.”

  “Why would you do that?”

  “She has a thing for me. Likes to feel useful.”

  Curtis shook his head, remembering why he disliked Desmond so much. He looked at the house in front of him, untouched by the fire from across the street, and wondered what his dad was doing right then and whether his sister had called to tell him he was back.

  “You already miss it?”

  “What?”

  Desmond motioned towards the bomb crater that was 17 Mann Court.

  “You were following me.”

  “Only until I knew where you were going.”

  It took a moment for Curtis to get what he meant and when he did he nodded, solemn.

  “It true what you said in your article? That the Indians did it?”

  “You read my article. I’m touched.”

  “Is it true?”

  “That’s the general consensus.”

  “You said there was a connection, the police weren’t saying.”

  “I’m not at liberty —”

  Curtis grabbed Desmond by the shirt, his hand wound tight inside it so that he could feel chest hairs snapping between his knuckles, and pushed him up against his car. Desmond let out a gasp that sounded more like a whimper, and his face scrunched so that Curtis knew he’d hurt him.

  “Who set the fires, Desmond?”

  “I —” he croaked, and Curtis slapped his face, hard, with the back of his hand.

  “I don’t want to have to hit you again.”

  “I don’t know. They told me not to ask. I didn’t.”

  “Who told you?”

  “A cop. My contact on the force.”

  “An old guy, fat, doesn’t shower?”

  “No. He’s young. He, uh, he has a moustache.”

  Curtis thought about it for a moment, trying to get it to make sense.

  “You mind letting me go?”

  In Desmond’s red puffy eyes and the way he shifted his shoulders trying to ease the discomfort in his back, Curtis caught a glimpse of the man he truly was and he suddenly felt bad for pushing him up against the car and for throwing rocks at him when he was a kid and calling him names. He released his hand and took a step back.

  Desmond sniffled and wiped his nose on the cuff of his jacket.

  “You want to tell me what’s going on?”

  The pleading in his voice, so out of place with the Desmond he’d grown to hate, disarmed Curtis and the story came out of him like it’d been recorded. He told Desmond about his first night back in Regina, about yours truly sitting at the table when he woke up, about Terrence disappearing, about Clive Winkle and Walter Hering and Lawrence Madding’s chair and about how he’d barely escaped the fire at the ranch, omitting only Amy and the gun and the motorcycle accident that had started it all.

  When he was finished, Desmond had a good idea of what kind of trouble Terrence was in but not what he could say to make Curtis forget about him. He unwrapped a stick of gum and took his time getting it to his mouth. He chewed it until the flavour had begun to wane then snuck a peek at Curtis, worried that he’d hurt him again if he took much longer.

  “Walter Hering, you said.”

  “That mean something to you?”

  “It’s just that Walter Hering died in the fire.”

  He pointed at the house across the street so that there’d be no mistake about the one he meant.

  “Couldn’t be.”

  “I’m just telling you what they told me.”

  “How
old was he?”

  “Seventy-five.”

  “It was his son then.”

  “Makes sense.”

  “What does he have to do with Terrence?”

  Desmond started to say he didn’t know then reconsidered. He thought of Donna again and what he owed Curtis because of her. He shook his head, trying to buy himself time to think of something that would make Curtis leave Regina and never come back.

  “He did something bad, Terrence did. Some might say it was evil, the ones who believe in that sort of thing anyway.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “It’s best if I don’t say.”

  “For who?”

  Desmond shrugged, hoping that Curtis would get his meaning.

  “You going to rough me up again?”

  Curtis shook his head. Desmond straightened his shirt and spit out his gum and reached up so that he could put his hand on Curtis’s shoulder.

  “Forget about him, CM. He deserves what’s coming and even if he doesn’t, it’ll happen anyway.”

  Sliding his hand back to his side, certain that he’d done all he could, he returned to the Neon. He drove it in a loop towards the road and it was only then that he remembered what he’d wanted to say when he was waiting: the last line in the dialogue he’d dreamed up when he’d thought words would be enough. Behind him, Curtis straddled his bike, the engine running. Even if he called it to him now he wouldn’t be able to hear so he whispered it to the car.

  “But what about the girl?”

  twenty-three

  Yes, what about The Girl — Amy — who was paid for sex but who wasn’t a whore and didn’t need a heart of gold; who could be as wrathful as any woman, or Mann, scorned? What of his girl?

  For a moment in her teens she was connected to Curtis in a way that only she knew. Featured on opposite sides of the same page in The Leader-Post’s sports section — she on the front, he on the back — it was a sign of her lopsided fade into obscurity that she’d never again get as close to his shine. Above her picture — leaning over a pool table, the look on her face as serious as the cleavage pressing out from under her low-cut jumper — the headline read, “Regina Teen World Junior Nine-Ball Champ!” Flip the page over and Curtis wears an aloof expression, his vague smile cast against a wall of chests wearing University of Regina football jerseys under the headline, “Teen Phenom Runs with the Bulls.” I’ve searched both articles for evidence that what happened between them was somehow preordained but have found nothing. Curtis didn’t say anything about playing pool and Amy didn’t mention that her uncle was Clive Winkle and that she’d honed her skills at The Hole.

  Two years after the photos were taken, Amy had forsaken nine-ball for a degree in social work but didn’t hesitate when Clive asked her to play Curtis Mays wearing the slinky little number that he’d bought for the occasion (and that Amy got to keep as part of the deal). This Amy, the woman she had become, was not just two breasts and a cue. Trying to breathe a trifle more life into her, I’ll add that she had a reason other than gratitude to her uncle for agreeing to be Curtis’s birthday present: she despised him.

  I have tried to trace the circumstances that would have led to her feeling such contempt for a person she hadn’t even met. Having no access to Amy herself (she left Regina for the anonymity of Vancouver not long after she awoke next to Curtis wearing little more than a tan and a smile), I am left with only a few sparse facts coupled with what I know about fame and envy.

  I start with the flip-sided newspaper articles. If you were to cut out Amy’s article from the front page so you could, say, put it on the wall over your bed or, more likely, so you could slip it under a clear sheet at the front of a scrapbook in anticipation of more to come, you would find, on the reverse, “Teen Phenom Runs” with the rest of the headline cut off and a thirteen-year-old Curtis Mays staring off-camera into his bright future. I hang the article, so excised, from the light over my desk and spin it — a perpetual mobile driven by the twin engines of success and failure — then Google Amy Patterson. Two million plus hits, so I narrow it down to Amy Patterson Nine-Ball World Junior Champion Regina. Four hits: three from The Leader-Post and one from the World Nine-Ball League web page. I click on the latter and an error message comes up: Page No Longer Available. I peruse the other three. The first, “Teen Billiard Queen Qualifies for World Juniors,” was written the week before the successful tournament (and did mention The Hole and how she liked men in uniform). The second was the aforementioned article and the third I didn’t bother reading beyond, “Teen Champ Calls It Quits After Early Loss at Nine-Ball World Championship.” Next I give Curtis Mays the same treatment. 930,000 hits. Attempting to remain scientific, I narrow the search. Curtis Mays Running Back Regina. 148,903 hits.

  Sifting through Curtis’s digital shadow I imagine Amy in her room packing for university after the ill-fated trip to the World (no longer Junior) Nine-Ball Championships. I see her chancing upon her scrapbook, discarded under her bed and watch as she opens it, staring at the lone article, suddenly embarrassed by the way her budding womanhood bulges from her jumper. I see her removing the article, unsure just yet what she wants to do with it, and catching sight of Curtis on the reverse. She holds it up to the light and I see her mouth twist as she notices, superimposed against the window, how it looks like Curtis, it does, it actually looks like he’s staring at her breasts and his futurebright smile is a leer. I imagine her tearing up the page, severing his head just below the chin, and watch as she crumples the pieces together and drops them on the floor for her mother to find: the wrathful gesture of a daughter admitting that her mom was right all along.

  I imagine his leer seared into her mind so that every time she sees it in the paper, spreading from the sports page like a cancer, it reminds her of what she could have been. I see a second scrapbook and her amazement at how rapidly his clippings (for she no longer has to use his name to remind her of who he is) fill the pages where her clippings couldn’t. I see her poring over each of the articles, looking for clues to piece together why he should succeed while she should not, and see her stopping, staring, transfixed, at a line, harmless unto itself, but a line that gives her a direction; an answer to a question, forgotten by Curtis the moment it was spoken.

  “Pool,” he’d said, oblivious to the trouble he’d just caused himself, “When I’m not playing football, chances are I’m down in my granddad’s basement shooting nine-ball.”

  So he likes pool, does he? I imagine the devilish grin and the plot thickening with her uncle as an unwitting accomplice. Clive, who can’t stop talking about the teen phenom, who’s at every game, who, she thinks, has an unhealthy crush on The Boy. She makes sure he finds out what he likes to do when he’s not playing football. I imagine the satisfaction that she feels when the hour is up and he’s barely managed to sink a dozen balls, none of them anywhere near the nine, and the smirk as she sees that the real him can’t take his eyes off the dip in her neckline either. She packs up her pool cue and slips out the secret door. In the dressing room reserved for the talent, she changes into a loose sweater, a pair of jeans and sneakers so she isn’t there to see Clive pat him on the shoulder, ushering him into the back alley. Doesn’t hear her uncle say, with a chuckle that would have sent an icy shiver down his spine if he wasn’t feeling so hot from the match, “Something to look forward to, huh?”

  If she had heard him, would it have changed her answer when his best friend, a guy with a silly nickname and the greasy hair and scars to match, tracked her to the apartment she was sharing with two roommates and offered her five grand — five-thousand-fucking-dollars, she’d whispered to herself afterwards — to be that something-to-look-forward-to again?

  After Terrence leaves she goes into her room and shuts the door. She finds the dress on the same hanger it’s hung on since the night she wore it six years ago, although it’s seen almost a dozen closets. She sniffs at
it, thinking that it should smell musty but it doesn’t. She tries it on, to see if it still fits. It does, even better than the last time because she’s a woman now and it’s a woman’s dress. She models it for herself, I see this so clearly I could have been watching from a corner of the room, turning left and right, craning to look at her rear, and she calls herself a whore but laughs when she says it because she knows it isn’t true.

  twenty-four

  Awakened in a strange bed by a noise in the middle of the night, Amy cursed herself for falling asleep as she’d waited for a sound to tell her that the man who had paid her had left the kitchen where he was sitting as she walked past to use the bathroom, the man she had been paid to please fully pleased and snoring; the smell of their sex curdling on her, forcing her out of bed in search of soap and water.

  Then minutes? hours? later she was shaken from her sleep by a noise, a chair falling over and something heavy hitting the floor then three sharp clumps: feet kicking at the floor, refusing to be dragged away without a fight. Lying in bed she listened to the muffled voices of men trying to be quiet like brothers whispering to each other while lightning flashed through their bedroom window. In the space of one thunderclap the storm quieted and Amy slid out of bed. She picked up her shoes from beside the door and carried them through the kitchen. She passed the toppled chair and the ashtray, its butts still splayed on the floor when I arrived, and the gun on the table. She crept down the hall, trying to remember where the front door was.

  A sudden brightness, not unlike lightning, drew her into the room with the easy chair. She pulled apart the curtains and saw a car racing up the driveway towards two men dressed in black and wearing hoods or masks, she couldn’t tell which. They were holding Terrence’s limp body between them while a woman with long black hair, her fine features unobscured except by the dark, shouted something from the passenger seat. Cramming Terrence into the trunk and slamming it shut, the two men hurried to the open back doors, the car already tearing towards the road.