Overexposed

by Michael Blair

  “Take yer hand offa me,” the man said. I dropped my hand. He reached into his suit coat and took out a folded document. “Read it and weep,” he said, thrusting it at me.

  I took the document, unfolded the single legal-sized sheet of paper, and held it to the light. I read it quickly, then handed it to Reeny. Her face fell as she read it. It was a typewritten contract of sale between Christopher Hastings and one Carl Yeager, dated the last day of August and witnessed and stamped by a notary public named Roland Smithers, transferring ownership of Pendragon to Yeager for the sum of $1 and consideration.

  The man, whom I presumed to be Carl Yeager, snatched the contract from Reeny’s hand, refolded it, and shoved it into his suit coat. “Now,” he growled, “you gonna git offa my boat or am I gonna hafta throw ya off?”

  “Carl,” the woman said. “Maybe we could give these folks a little time to get their stuff together.”

  “Jackie, they’re trespassin’,” Carl Yeager said.

  “We’re not trespassing,” I said. “Miss Lindsey has lived on this boat for years. It’s her home.”

  “You dint know the boat was sold, did you, honey?” Jackie said.

  Reeny shook her head. “No,” she said. Her voice was thick and her cheeks were streaked with tears.

  “Carl,” Jackie said. “We can wait a day or two, can’t we?”

  “Well,” Yeager said uncertainly. Carl may have been the tough guy in the family, I thought, but Jackie wore the pants.

  “I don’t need a day or two,” Reeny said, voice as hard and brittle as glass. “I can be packed in ten minutes. Then you’re welcome to her, dirty dishes, shipworms, and all. I won’t spend another minute on this boat.”

  “Hey,” Yeager said. “I dint — ” But Reeny had fled below. Yeager looked at me. “Ah, what’re shipworms?” he asked.

  It took Reeny a little longer than ten minutes to pack, but not much longer. Everything she took with her fit into two big suitcases, an overnight bag, a large backpack, and a green plastic garbage bag. There were also two cardboard liquor boxes of wine.

  “You sure this is ev’rythin’?” Jackie Yeager asked as Reeny set the green plastic garbage bag onto the dock beside the rest.

  “Yes,” Reeny said.

  “’Cause soon as we can git ’er checked out, we’re plannin’ on takin’ her through the Panama Canal and into the Gulf. We got a charter company outa Galveston.”

  “That’s fine,” Reeny said dully. “I hope you make it.”

  “Well, if there’s anythin’ else you need, we’ll be here ’bout a week.”

  I helped Reeny lug her belongings to the parking lot, where we loaded them into the Jeep Liberty I’d bought the year before to replace the Land Rover.

  “This is a cute car,” Reeny said. “Did you sell the Porsche already?”

  “Not yet,” I said. I wasn’t sure I liked the idea of driving a cute car.

  “My house is rented till the end of October,” she said. “Why don’t you just drop me at the Bayshore?” The Bayshore was one of the hotels on Coal Harbour, not far from the marina. “I can stay there for a couple of days until I can find something less expensive.”

  “Um, you can stay with me,” I said.

  She smiled ruefully. “That’s very kind of you,” she said. “But I don’t want to put you out. A hotel will be fine.”

  “You won’t be putting me out,” I said.

  She looked at me for a few seconds, her eyes steady, then said, “I’m sorry, Tom. Look, I know we just talked about spending a month or more together on Pendragon, and sharing a bed, but that was — well, you’re going to have to be patient with me. This has knocked me for a loop and I’m a bit fragile right now. You understand, don’t you?”

  “Yes, of course I understand,” I said. “But I’ve got plenty of room and I’ll charge you room and board, if that will make you feel better.”

  She smiled weakly. “You’re sure?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, all right.”

  While Reeny had been packing, I had asked Carl Yeager how he had come to buy Pendragon for a dollar.

  “An’ consideration,” he’d replied. “Hastings owed me some money.”

  “How much?” I asked.

  “I don’t see as that’s any o’ your business.”

  “Where were you when you bought the boat?”

  “Not far.”

  “Here, in Vancouver?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Do you know where Hastings is now?” I asked.

  “Nope.”

  “But on August thirty-first, he was here, in Vancouver?”

  “Yup.”

  As we drove toward Granville Island I asked myself if I should tell Reeny that less than ten days earlier Hastings had been, and possibly still was, in Vancouver. Reeny answered for me.

  “I heard you talking to Mr. Yeager,” she said. “Did you ask him about Chris?”

  I told her what Yeager had told me. She was silent and pensive until we arrived at Sea Village. I parked in the unofficial loading zone at the top of the ramp leading down to the docks. The yellow skeletal structure of the old freight crane loomed over us. I went down the ramp and fetched the community wheelbarrow residents of Sea Village use to cart groceries and whatnot up and down the ramp.

  “You’re sure about this?” she asked as we unloaded her stuff from the Liberty into the wheelbarrow.

  “If it doesn’t work out,” I said, “there’s a hotel right next door.” I gestured toward the Granville Island Hotel.

  It took two trips to transfer her suitcases and bags and boxes onto the dock and thence my house. Then it took three trips to get everything up the stairs and into the spare room. I gave Reeny Hilly’s keys so she could come and go as she pleased. It was almost eleven by the time she was settled in.

  “Do you really think those people are going to sail Pendragon through the Panama Canal into the Gulf of Mexico?” she asked me.

  “Don’t you?” I asked.

  “There’s something fishy about them.”

  “They do seem a little rough around the edges,” I said. I stood in the bedroom doorway. “Are you going to be okay?”

  “Sure. I’m angry at having my home sold out from under me, of course. I don’t blame Chris for selling Pendragon — she is his boat, after all — but he could have given me some warning, at least. You probably don’t want to hear this,” she added, “but I’m also hurt that he didn’t get in touch with me. Did Mr. Yeager think he was still in Vancouver?”

  “I don’t know where Mr. Yeager thought he was,” I said.

  Reeny cocked an eyebrow and smiled wryly. “If you don’t mind, I’ll say goodnight now,” she said.

  “Sure,” I replied. “Will I see you in the morning?”

  “I don’t have any scenes tomorrow,” she said.

  I took that to mean she didn’t have to work. I remembered that the police were coming to look through the house for clues to the dead man’s identity. I told her to expect company.

  “No problem,” she said. “Not much here,” she added with a gesture toward her suitcases, “but my dirty laundry.”

  I went downstairs, locked up, drank a glass of water, then trudged back upstairs. The door to the spare bedroom was still open, but the bathroom door was closed and I could hear the shower running. For rare occasions such as these I kept a spare toothbrush in the downstairs bathroom, so I trudged back down the stairs, brushed and flossed, then climbed up the stairs once again. In my cold and empty bed I indulged myself in a few seconds of hopeless fantasy, then drifted into that strange and fantastical realm immediately preceding sleep, where reality and dream converge. There, Linda, my former spouse, dwelled with Carl Yeager in the bilge of my house, which bore a remarkable resemblance to our first apartment in Burnaby, and Barry the Bike Nazi pedalled Pendragon through the streets of Granville Island, throwing Bibles at gigantic ready-mix trucks. Christopher Hastings knocked on the door of my bedroom, interrupting m
y homework.

  “Tom, are you awake?” he whispered fiercely. “It’s time to go to school.”

  “No, it’s not.”

  The knocking became more insistent, the voice louder. “Tom, wake up.”

  “Go ’way, it’s Saturday.”

  The door opened. My mother came into my room, but she spoke with Reeny’s voice and she was wearing Reeny’s face. “Tom, please,” she whispered. “I think there’s someone on the deck.”

  “What?” I sat up. The clock radio beside my bed read 4:12 a.m., too early to go to school.

  “I heard something on the deck,” she said. “It sounded like footsteps.” It was Reeny now, not my mother. And I was no longer asleep.

  I started to get out of bed, then reversed the decision. “I haven’t got anything on,” I told her.

  “Oh, sorry,” Reeny said. She left the room, half closing the door behind her.

  I pulled on jeans and joined her in the hall, which was illuminated only by the night light Hilly had asked me to install. Reeny was wearing a long dark T-shirt and in the subdued light looked like a disembodied ghost: no body, just straw-coloured hair loose and wild, face pale and tight, arms folded across her invisible mid-section, and long legs bare and white.

  “I’m sure I heard someone walking around up there,” she said in a low, urgent voice.

  I listened, but didn’t hear anything except the faint gurgle of water against the hull and the distant, muted roar of the sleeping city.

  “Wait here,” I said and started up the narrow stairs that led to the roof deck.

  Reeny clutched my arm. “What if there’s someone up there?”

  “Then I’ll most likely frighten him away,” I said, “when I bang on the door and shout, ‘Hey, who’s out there?’ Don’t worry. I’m sure there’s no one there.”

  “Then why are you going to check?”

  I went up the stairs, banged on the inside of the door that opened onto the roof deck, and shouted, “Is there anybody out there?” Absurdly, the vocal introduction of the similarly titled Pink Floyd song from The Wall echoed in my head.

  There was no answer, of course. Nor was there the sound of footfalls or flapping wings as whoever or whatever might have been out there fled. I opened the door and stepped cautiously out onto the deck. As I did so, it occurred to me that I hadn’t been on the deck since the day I’d found the dead man. A quick circuit confirmed that the deck was indeed deserted, except for my pathetic collection of unhappy potted plants.

  I heard a soft sound behind me. I turned, heart rattling, and was face to face with Reeny. I almost fainted. At least I didn’t scream.

  “Jesus,” I said.

  “Sorry,” she said.

  Then I stepped in something warm and wet and slimy that squished between my bare toes.

  “Aw, shit,” I said.

  Pelican shit, to be exact. Since I’d got rid of my big plastic owl because Hilly had said it made her pet ferret Beatrix nervous, Pete the Pelican, who loitered around Sea Village begging handouts from the tourists, had been making regular pit stops on my roof. It was probably Pete stomping around that Reeny had heard.

  “I guess you’re right,” Reeny said apologetically. “Or maybe it was the ghost of the man who died up here.”

  chapter six

  Iwoke at six o’clock to the smell of coffee. Despite the early morning excitement, I hadn’t had any trouble getting back to sleep. I got up, remembering at the last minute to put pants on before going down the hall to the bathroom, and by 6:20, shaved, showered, and shampooed, I joined Reeny in the kitchen.

  “Morning,” she said cheerfully. She was wearing high-tech running shoes, Lycra jogging shorts, and a cut-off T-shirt over a sports bra. Her straw-coloured hair was cinched back in a short ponytail.

  “Yeah,” I said, heading straight to the coffee machine and pouring a cup.

  “Oh-oh,” she said. “Not a morning person, huh? Should I leave you alone?”

  “Uh, no,” I replied. I took a slug of coffee and my heart started beating again. “It’s just I’m not very good at communicating intelligently till I’ve had my first cup of coffee.”

  “I’ll remember that.”

  “It’s good, by the way. Thanks.”

  “Would you like some breakfast? I’m a fruit and yogurt gal myself, but I’ll fix you something, if you like. Earn my keep.”

  “I usually just have cereal. Are you going for a run?” I shook my head. Of course she was; she wasn’t dressed for a ball. “Duh! See, I told you I’m not very good till after my first cup of coffee.” I drank some more.

  “I’m sorry about being such a ninny last night,” she said.

  “Don’t worry about it,” I said. “Go for your run. I’ll handle my own breakfast.”

  She was gone almost an hour. When she finally returned, she looked as though she’d been dragged up and down False Creek a couple of times behind a high-speed motor boat. Her shorts and top were thoroughly soaked. The flesh of her chest and arms and legs was pink and glistened with perspiration. Her hair was wet and in wild disarray. She was breathing deeply, but not hard. An artery pulsed in her throat.

  “Did you fall into the harbour?” I asked her.

  “I look it, don’t I? Phew, I stink. Don’t get too close.”

  “I think you smell terrific,” I said.

  She looked at me as though I’d lost my mind. “Well, thanks,” she said. “I think.” She went upstairs to shower.

  The police came at eight: Sergeant Gregory Matthias, accompanied by two uniformed officers, Constable Mabel Firth, who gave me a knowing look when I introduced Reeny, and her partner, Baz Tucker. I gave them free rein of the house. I wasn’t too offended when they all donned latex gloves.

  An hour later they were finished, their search turning up nothing more exciting than an extended family of dust bunnies, a Coldplay CD of Hilly’s that had gone missing, a couple of mismatched socks, and an assortment of small change. Sergeant Matthias thanked me for my co-operation, then he and the others left, the dead man’s identity still a mystery.

  The police had been careful and conscientious and had tried their best to put everything back the way they found it, but when they were done the house had acquired a sort of vaguely disturbed look, as if nothing was quite right. It wasn’t obvious, a stranger wouldn’t notice — indeed, Reeny didn’t — but chairs and tables were slightly out of place, pictures differently askew, knick-knacks and miscellaneous dust collectors rearranged, piles of magazines and newspapers too neatly stacked, drawers too completely closed. It was a shock to realize the degree to which the physical order — or disorder — of my surroundings defined my sense of self. I made a conscious effort not to go around adjusting things, but it wasn’t easy.

  While the police had been conducting their search, I’d called Bobbi at the studio and asked her if she’d heard anything from Willson Quayle. “No,” she’d said. “I think we’ve been had,” she’d added. “I figure all they wanted was another proposal that they could wave in the face of their original supplier. ‘See, you better get off your asses or we’ll give our business to these guys.’ We should send them a fucking bill for the time we wasted writing the proposal.”

  “I’m sorry, Tom,” Reeny said when I told her. “I feel terrible about this. I really do. If you want, I can have a word with the producers. Maybe they can get to the bottom of what’s going on. Rainy Day Toys is a reputable company. I’m sure the board of directors wouldn’t approve of Quayle’s deception, if that’s what it is.”

  “I’ll give him till the end of the day,” I said, although I was less than optimistic. “In the meantime, will you be all right on your own?”

  “Of course,” she said with a smile. “I’ve got a couple of scripts to read and some lines to study. Don’t worry about me, I’ll be fine.” She kissed me quickly on the side of my mouth. “Thanks for your concern, though.”

  “The world is just crawling with scumbags,” Bobbi said when I told
her about Hastings selling Pendragon out from under Reeny. “Speaking of which,” she added, holding out a sheet of paper, “here’s the invoice for the proposal. I’ve included Glenda’s charges.”

  “Let’s hold off on that for now, okay?”

  Bobbi shrugged. “You’re the boss.” She dropped the invoice on my desk and stalked out of my office.

  I sighed and swivelled my fancy ergonomic chair around to face the window. It was open to let in some air, and Bodger was sprawled on the sill. I wasn’t worried he’d fall off. It would teach him a lesson. Besides, in the years he’d cadged free room and board from us, he never had. Some claw marks on the woodwork, however, attested to a close call or two, so I was careful not to startle him when I put my heels up. He momentarily opened one slitted yellow eye and twitched a tattered ear, but otherwise ignored me.

  I should take Bobbi’s advice, I told myself, and just write Willson Quayle and Rainy Day Toys off to experience, but there was some serious money involved, and writing off serious money wasn’t something that came easily to me; I hadn’t had much practice. Most of the jobs we took on were relatively small, a couple of thousand bucks here, a few thousand bucks there, some smaller, some — not many — larger. We were never going to get rich, but it all added up and we weren’t doing too badly, all things considered. Maybe my retirement fund wasn’t growing as fast or as steadily as I’d have liked, but it was growing. I figured I’d have to eat cat food only once or twice a week. After all, I didn’t want to be too much of a burden on Hilly.

  But the neighbourhood around the studio was in transition and rents were going up all the time. Some of our equipment was getting pretty old too. The Hasselblad I’d bought fifth- or sixth-hand to replace the third- or fourth-hand one Carla Bergman had stolen was almost as old as Bobbi. Traditional photographic equipment didn’t become obsolete very fast, but more and more of our clients were demanding digital images for their websites, print-on-demand publishing systems, and digital printers. We’d gone into hock a year and a half earlier for a digital set-up, a digital back for the bellows camera, a fully loaded state-of-the-art (then) Macintosh computer, and all the necessary software. It was pretty much paid off, but before long we were going to have to lay out more money for the upgrades we needed to stay current. A professional-level hand-held digital camera for fieldwork, on a par with the Hasselblad or the Nikon, was beyond our means right now, although in a pinch we could get by with a high-end consumer camera.