Take Five

by Batten, Jack;

  “Oh my god, what happened?”

  It took ten minutes to tell Annie about most of my morning adventure. I skipped over the part about Ceramics Monthly and its subscription sticker because I was saving it for later. When I described the search of Grace’s condo, me in the guise of a judge, Annie’s eyes went wide, then narrowed. Damn, I should have left out the unlawful details. I wound up my recital with an account of the short session in Judge Keough’s courtroom after lunch when he put the sentencing over for three weeks. Then I braced for the storm sure to come from the other side of the table. Why did I mention the masquerade? Did I have a death wish? Or was it all the new domesticity, living together in our very own house? Had it made me honest and transparent even with information I knew wouldn’t make Annie swoon with delight?

  She leaned over and took a deep drink from my martini. In the single swallow, she finished off everything left in the glass. Then she sat back.

  “Crang, my love,” Annie said. Her hands were folded in her lap, and her tone of voice was deliberate. “I know you’re addicted to fairly stupid stunts like this pretending to be a judge. And I’ll concede the stupid stunts are always in a worthy cause. Nothing I can say will change that side of you, and I’ve given up on even dreaming I could rein you in. Stuff that the rest of the civilized world might consider dangerous, if not idiotic, is actually basic to your nature. Therefore, eliminating all that from discussion, I want you to promise me just one thing. And I’m dead serious about this. Please, I mean pretty please, don’t ever get caught by the fucking cops.”

  A swear word passed Annie’s lips about once every eclipse of the moon. This was a solemn moment, and she was letting me know she meant business. I started to form a response that was appropriately contrite, but I was too slow off the mark.

  “Now that I’ve unloaded,” Annie said before I opened my mouth, “would you mind uncorking the champagne. I intend to get a tiny bit swacked tonight.”

  I fetched the champagne from the fridge and pulled out the cork with a mighty pop. On my way back to the dining room table, I picked up a pair of champagne flutes and got Ceramics Monthly out of my briefcase.

  “Before you begin the course of action involved in getting swacked,” I said to Annie, “may I request a service?”

  “If it’s the service I think you’re talking about, don’t we usually take that up post-prandial?”

  “This is something where we leave our clothes on.”

  I put the magazine on the table and poured the Veuve Clicquot. Annie and I clinked flutes and tasted the bubbly.

  “Hmm,” Annie murmured, her eyes shut. “That is so lovely.” She let a moment go by before she opened her eyes and said, “Since when did you develop an interest in pottery?”

  “This is where the service I mentioned comes in,” I said, picking up the Ceramics Monthly. “Right here.”

  “That probably figures, but I don’t see how.”

  I told Annie about the rest of the events in Grace’s condo, the part about the subscription to the ceramics magazine.

  “I’ll do it,” Annie said before I finished.

  “Do what?”

  “You want me to phone the magazine’s subscription department and bamboozle them into giving me Grace’s current address.”

  “Your opinion is this doesn’t qualify as a stupid stunt?”

  “I’m about to impersonate somebody on the phone. That’s the logical method of ferreting out the information, if I’m not mistaking what you’ve got on your devious mind?”

  I nodded.

  “Normally I’d think twice about deceiving a complete stranger,” Annie said. “Especially when it’s on behalf of a client of yours who doesn’t rank among your top ten favourites.”

  “True,” I said. “Grace isn’t somebody who grows on a person.”

  “But since the phone call relates to the question of getting the seventy-five thousand dollars you worked very long and hard to earn, I’m willing to suck it up for the cause.”

  “I’ll be in your debt.”

  “And I won’t let you forget it, fella.”

  7

  Annie wanted to know where Ceramics Monthly was published. In what country?

  “The U. S. of A,” I said.

  “Down there,” Annie said, “aren’t magazine subscriptions handled by anonymous companies in some place like Omaha, Nebraska, and probably never respond to anything as mundane as a phone call?”

  “Ceramics Monthly’s too small for that,” I said. “On the masthead, the number for the subscription department is the same as for the editorial department.”

  “Cool,” Annie said. “My next question, if I’m pretending to be Grace, what accent do I attempt?”

  “You should sound like any girl who grew up in Toronto. That’s how the genuine Grace comes across.”

  Annie took a swallow of champagne and got out her cell.

  “Hold on a sec,” she said. She tapped a bunch of numbers into the cell, muttered something I didn’t catch, started over again with more tapping of numbers until she seemed to be satisfied.

  “Blocked out my name and cell number,” she said. “Otherwise the folks at Ceramics Monthly might wonder why the real me is calling instead of the Grace me. Catch my drift?”

  “Puts you one step ahead,” I said. “As always.”

  “Another thing, we’re now on conference call. Meaning you can listen in as long as you’re quiet as a mouse.”

  “You’re calling Atlanta, Georgia, by the way.”

  I gave Annie the number, and she dialed it.

  “Ceramics Monthly,” a woman’s voice said. The voice dripped with the Old South.

  “Hi there,” Annie said. “I’ve got a major subscription problem, and I wonder if I might resolve it with the right department.”

  “Oh heavens, sugah, you’re talking to the right department. This late in the day, I’m all the departments. Everybody else’s gone home.”

  “Wonderful!” Annie gave the impression she’d just picked the Kentucky Derby winner. “Name is Grace Nguyen, and I swear my neighbour’s swiping my copies of your darling magazine. But I don’t want to go around accusing anybody if the magazine isn’t even being mailed to the right address. All I know for sure is I’m not receiving Ceramics Monthly.”

  “Can’t have that going on, can we, sugah. Give me that last name again. Spell it, I mean.”

  “N-g-u-y-e-n. Nguyen.”

  We could hear a computer clicking at the other end.

  “You callin’ from Toronto, Canada, sweetheart?”

  “The true north strong and free.”

  This seemed to be exciting news to the lady in Atlanta.

  “Let me guess. Nguyen, that name?” she said, making a hash of pronouncing Nguyen. Everybody gets it wrong where the n meets the g. “You’re, like, Eskimo?”

  “Approximately,” Annie said.

  “Never talked to one of them before. Wait’ll I tell my kids.”

  “I can give you a couple of my people’s words, if you like.”

  “Oh, sugah, that would be so edifyin’,” the woman said. “But hold on to that for a minute. I got your whole file on my screen. It shows Ceramics Monthly shipping out to you in Toronto every month.”

  “Know what I was thinking?” Annie said. “Both houses are on a corner where two streets meet. Me on the south side, the neighbour I’m suspicious of on the north. But I don’t know whether his house is numbered on the cross street or on my street. See what I mean? What number do you show for me?”

  “We show 32 on a street with a kind of peculiar name you don’t mind my sayin’, sugah. Maybe it’s a Canadian thing. We got 32 Highbury Road for you. At funerals, d’you folks put the body in some, uh, elevated ground?”

  I gave Annie a big smile and a double thumbs-up. I stopped myself. What was I doing with my thumbs up? I always thought it was a ridiculous gesture. I deactivated the thumbs.

  “Highbury Road is the right address,” Annie sai
d. “And, yes, we have some peculiar old burial practices in parts of Eskimo Canada.”

  “Fascinatin’, girl, it really is.”

  “You know,” Annie said, “I think I’ve got an idea about my next step.”

  “I think your next step should be speakin’ to your mailman.”

  “Just exactly what I was going to say. Instead of bothering you when you’re all alone at the office.”

  “No problem, sugah. Now, how ’bout those words?”

  “Huh?”

  “In Eskimo.”

  “Oh, yes,” Annie said, running her tongue over her upper lip. “I’ll give you ‘thank you and good night.’ Ready?”

  “Do it real slow.”

  “Merci et bonsoir,” Annie enunciated with precision.

  “Oh, sugah, Eskimo sounds so foreign. You’ve made my night.”

  “My pleasure entirely,” Annie said. She clicked off the cellphone.

  I said, “Excellent work, Agent Cooke.”

  Annie took a long drink from her flute.

  “Don’t suggest I do something like that again,” she said.

  “Annie, you were great. A natural.”

  “That’s the problem,” she said. She broke into a wide smile. “I might get to like the flim-flammery.”

  “Probably never have occasion to do it again.”

  “It could become addictive.”

  “You know,” I said, “that address the nice lady gave you is more than familiar.”

  “Come on, sweetie, you’re probably mixing up Highbury with Highland, something like that. There must be a dozen Toronto streets that start with High. Or Hy.”

  “I’ve seen it on a list.”

  “Forget it for now,” Annie said, rising from her chair. “You go get our barbecue set up.”

  “What barbecue?”

  “The one I bought today,” Annie said. “Fella, you have to get with the program. We’re homeowners now. All homeowners have a barbecue. Ours is in the big box in the alleyway.”

  “You’re kidding, right? About me setting it up?”

  It had long been established in our relationship that I was the one who suffered from mechanical klutziness. Actually, Annie did the suffering. I’d learned to live with the klutz factor.

  “I was kidding,” Annie said. She patted me on the cheek. “Remind me again about your skill set in domestic areas.”

  “Make a great martini. Fast at picking up the bill in restaurants.”

  “You left out stacking the dishwasher.”

  Annie needed ten minutes to assemble the new barbecue and set the thing aflame.

  “Easy peasy,” Annie said.

  “Had’ve been me out there, the neighbours just missed a massive explosion.”

  Annie oversaw the baking of a nice piece of tilapia. I set the table, tossed the salad, poured the champagne and stared out the window at the dying of the light.

  Twenty minutes and much of the champagne bottle later, we were cutting into our tilapia. Annie had coated it in a sauce of her own devising.

  I chewed a chunk, thought about it and said, “Piquant.”

  “You’re talking about the sauce?” Annie said.

  “Uh-huh.”

  I chewed another chunk of fish.

  “The aroma’s not bad either,” I said.

  Annie reached for my hand and squeezed it.

  Both of us ate mostly in silence for a few minutes.

  “Know where I saw the address listed?” I said. “Hundred percent positive.”

  “We back on the subject of Highbury?” Annie said.

  “Read it on the list of addresses of the houses where Grace and her partner ran their grow ops.”

  Annie thought for a minute. “If your memory’s reliable,” she said, “isn’t that bad news? Suppose the Highbury house was one of Grace’s grow ops, the cops would have seized it a long time ago. Not very likely Grace would go back there.”

  “Correct on all surmises, my very own Dr. Watson.”

  “Watson?” Annie said. “If I play your pretend sidekick, there’re several females I’d rather be.”

  “How about Nora Charles?”

  “Love the way Myrna Loy played her in the movies.”

  “Not to mention William Powell doing Nick.”

  “Nobody better.”

  “If we’re pretending I’m Nick Charles right now,” I said, “I’d point out to Nora that the champagne bottle seems to have emptied itself.”

  “Fix us martinis,” Annie said. “That’s what they do in The Thin Man.”

  “Why not.”

  I dumped the empty Veuve Clicquot bottle in the recycling box in the alley. In the kitchen, I took care of the drinks business. Two vodka martinis, mine straight up with a twist, Annie’s on the rocks with three small olives, a toothpick driven through their centres.

  “Returning to the subject of Highbury, if you can stand it,” I said, “Grace must’ve had a good reason for switching her subscription to the new address. Maybe she lives there, maybe not.”

  “And to find out, you’re going to knock on Grace’s door, wherever that is?”

  “I’ve got a city street map in the car’s glove compartment.”

  “Or you can look it up on Google Earth.”

  “Yes, I can.”

  “But you’ll probably do it the good old analog way.”

  “Almost certainly.”

  “But, please,” Annie said, “not tonight.”

  “Tomorrow is my plan.”

  “Good,” Annie said. “Because I’m kind of thinking right about now I’d love a little snuggle. It’s been a very long day.”

  “Can it wait till I load the dishwasher?”

  “In words of one syllable, no.”

  So Annie and I jettisoned what was left of our martinis, went upstairs and snuggled away the rest of the evening.

  8

  The voices of Metro Morning drifted up from the radio in the kitchen when I came awake. I couldn’t make out what they were saying, but I could tell it was the Metro Morning crowd from the rhythms of their speech. Metro Morning was what we listened to every morning, even after Annie got kicked off the program.

  By the time I showered, dressed and made my way downstairs, it was coming up to ten minutes before eight. Annie was sitting at the dining room table, the radio beside her, a cup of coffee in her right hand, a stopwatch in her left. Metro Morning’s host was introducing the guy who reviewed movies. It was the job that had been Annie’s until a few months earlier. When the movie guy began to talk, Annie clicked on the stopwatch.

  I fixed my breakfast in the kitchen. A glass of orange juice, a banana sliced over a bowl of Bran Buds, a raisin bun from Cobs Bakery on Bloor. I spread raspberry jam over the bun. The kitchen was open to the dining room and up three steps. Slanting sunlight beamed through the big rear window and gave the table a summery, companionable look. The movie guy sounded excited about a new Martin Scorsese movie.

  I did an adroit balancing job with the orange juice, cereal and raisin bun, and got them down to the dining room table in one trip without misadventure. Just as I sat in my chair, the host was thanking the movie guy with effusive praise. Annie clicked off the stopwatch.

  “Exactly five minutes and thirty seconds for the whole item,” she said.

  “Your point being that five and a half minutes was the length you worked at when the producer dismissed you for going too long with your reviews,” I said, feeling proud of myself.

  “Technically it wasn’t for going too long. More for not talking fast enough.”

  “Brief age of speed radio at the CBC.”

  “Damn producer had everybody talking like chipmunks,” Annie said. “I couldn’t step up the pace, he axed me. The idiot.”

  “You’re not still holding a grudge?”

  “By email,” Annie said. “Axed me in an actual email.”

  I made crunching noises with my cereal.

  “But now they’re back to regular human sp
eech,” I said.

  “The producer got switched to another job, but in all the readjusting, the bosses neglected to hire me back.”

  “I might ask,” I said, “why are you revisiting the painful piece of employment history at this time?”

  “Just to remind myself how fragile the life of a freelance broadcaster and writer can be.”

  “You’ve always been aware of fragility in the business.”

  “True that,” Annie said, “but lying awake last night, I decided to take a little detour in my work trajectory.”

  “You’ve already got your book to write.”

  “You can bet your boots I’m not about to abandon it,” Annie said. “The world may not think it’s dying for a biography of Edward Everett Horton, but the man makes a great story.”

  “And you’ll tell it with keen insight and a lot of laughs.”

  “Meanwhile,” Annie said, “I’m going to work part-time as a member of Kathleen’s group.”

  “Garden goddess Kathleen?”

  “She asked me yesterday, am I interested? She’s shy one person to dig and plant and weed. Pruning I’m not ready for yet. Exacting art, I’m told.”

  Annie went over to the counter and opened a green cloth bag. “Get a look at this cunning little device. Secateurs we call it in horticulture.”

  Annie held up a tool not unlike an extra-large and especially vicious pair of scissors. The thing’s handles were separated by a spring, and it had two very sharp blades. The blades passed one another to make the cuts, presumably of plant stems and tree branches.

  “Every pruner’s go-to weapon,” Annie said.

  “Not to doubt the breadth of your talents, sweetie pie,” I said, “but what qualifies you to garden professionally?”

  “I hate hydrangeas.”

  “That’s all it takes?”

  “Gets you off on the right foot with Kathleen,” Annie said. “The client begs, she still won’t plant hydrangeas. Kathleen says I also need a love of gardens, a little muscle, willingness to follow directions.”

  “The last may be troublesome,” I said sotto voce.

  “I heard that,” Annie said.