Technology, I’d discovered, was a trap. Willson Quayle and Rainy Day Toys looked like a way out. Or perhaps, I said to myself, just another way of sinking deeper into the quicksand.
This wasn’t getting me anywhere, I decided, and dropped my heels from the window ledge with a thud. Bodger’s head popped up.
“Sorry,” I said to him. “Time to get to work.”
Reeny called after lunch. “Tom, do you think I could borrow your car for a couple of hours this afternoon?”
“Sure,” I said. “The keys are in the little drawer inside the top of the writing desk in the front hall. Do you have a lot of stuff to pick up?”
“No, I just have some errands to run.”
“Why don’t you take the Porsche then? It could use the exercise.”
“I don’t mind,” she said with a smile in her voice, “if you don’t.”
“The keys are in the same place. Registration and insurance cards too.”
“Uh, where’s the car?”
“Right.” I told her how to find the lock-up I rented at the Granville Island boat works. “Have fun.”
“Is this part of your evil plan to make me fall in love with it so I’ll have to buy it despite your rule against selling used cars to friends?”
“You got it.”
Bobbi came into my office as I hung up.
“What’s the matter with you?” she asked. “That wasn’t Quayle, was it?”
“No, it was Reeny.”
“Ah,” she said knowingly. “Well, you could do worse.” At least she didn’t remind me that I had done worse, much worse. “C’mon, enough moping. We do have other clients, you know.”
Reeny wasn’t there when I got home at five-thirty, depressed and discouraged at having still not heard from Willson Quayle. I could have used cheering up, but she was presumably still out running her errands and perhaps falling in love with the Porsche. Would I sell it to her? I asked myself. If she asked me nicely, of course I would. Who was I kidding?
The light on the phone was blinking, so without any great enthusiasm I retrieved my messages. There was one from my sister, asking me to call, and one from my former spouse, ordering me to call. I answered neither of them, instead got a beer out of the fridge and took it and a mop and pail of water up to the roof. Pete the Pesky Pooping Pelican protested profusely as I chased him off the railing with the mop. He — I had no idea if Pete was a he or a she pelican — landed on Daniel’s roof. Oh-oh, I thought. I was sure to hear about that.
I was mopping up pelican poop when Reeny yahooed at me from the quay. A minute or two later, she joined me on the roof, bearing another beer and a glass of white wine. It must have been from her own stash; I didn’t usually keep the stuff around. She was wearing the faded denim miniskirt and a shirt knotted beneath her breasts, showing her flat, muscular midriff.
“How was your day?” I asked, accepting the beer.
“It was okay. I like that car.”
“Make me an offer,” I said.
“You’re too easy.” She sipped her wine. “How ’bout you? Did you hear from our friend?”
“Nope.”
“I ran into him today when I dropped by the studio to pick up some script changes. I hope you don’t mind, but I asked him why he hadn’t called you. He was evasive at first, almost as if he didn’t know what I was talking about. Then he got huffy and said he would get back to you as soon as he had something to tell you. He asked me out again too. Maybe if I said I’d go out with him again, he’d stop screwing you around.”
“I don’t need the work that much,” I said.
“You want me to talk to the producers?”
“Let me think about it.”
“No problem. By the way, do you have any plans for dinner?”
“I was waiting till you got back.”
“How’d you like to grab a burger or something and a movie?”
“That sounds good. A real movie, or a video?”
“A real movie.”
“I can’t remember the last time I saw a movie in a movie theatre. A grown-up movie, that is.”
“I wouldn’t expect too much,” she said. “It’s a preview of a sci-fi flick made by the same people who produce Star Crossed and directed by Kenny Shapiro — Mr. See-em-sweat. I can guarantee there will be a lot more skin than you’ll ever see in Star Crossed, even the Euro version.”
“Let’s go,” I said enthusiastically. I reined myself in. “Um, are you in it?”
“Nuh-uh. Some friends, though.”
Reeny changed and we took the Aquabus across False Creek. The burger was good and the movie was funny, although not intentionally so. It almost, but not quite, made Star Crossed look like an Emmy Award contender. And, as Reeny had promised, there was indeed plenty of nudity, most of it totally and egregiously gratuitous. The heroine, played by a dauntingly muscular former professional wrestler, seemed eager to shed her clothes every chance she got. Likewise many of the other female characters. The human ones, leastways. No one could fault them for being so willing to disrobe, though; every scene looked as though it had been shot in a sauna. Mr. Seeem-sweat took his art seriously. It must have been hell, however, on the actors in the spacesuit costumes and scaly alien makeup.
We left the theatre arm in arm and giggling, recounting some of the more ludicrous scenes, but as we began the short walk back toward the Aquabus dock at the foot of Hornby Street, Reeny released my arm and lapsed into silence. As we stood on the dock watching the late evening boat traffic in False Creek, I asked her if there was something bothering her.
“I talked to Carl Yeager and his wife today,” she said without looking at me.
“What about?” I asked. As if I didn’t know. Another promising evening ruined by the ghost of Christopher Hastings.
“What do you think?” she replied. “Chris, of course. I asked them if they’d spoken to him since he’d sold them Pendragon.”
“Yeager told me they hadn’t,” I said.
“That’s what he told me too.
“You don’t believe him?”
“I don’t know,” she said, voice flat and dull.
I wanted to tell her to forget about Hastings, that he obviously didn’t give a damn about her, but I didn’t want to seem self-serving.
“I asked him where he’d last seen Chris, but he wouldn’t tell me that either,” she said. “When I asked him why he wouldn’t tell me, he just yelled at me and ordered me off the boat. He really is a nasty little piece of work. His wife isn’t much better.” The ferry burbled and bobbed up to the dock. About twenty feet long, the tubby little people ferries that plied False Creek resembled brightly painted seagoing cabooses, except that they were rounded at both ends. As the driver leapt onto the dock and held the boat while the passengers boarded, Reeny turned to me and said, “You don’t need this, do you?”
“Don’t need what?” I asked. We climbed aboard and ducked into the aft compartment behind the cupola-like wheelhouse. The driver, a plump, sunburned young man with tiger-striped hair and earrings, jumped aboard. I flashed my pass and Reeny handed him her fare.
“Me laying my problems on you,” she said.
“What’re friends for?” I said, sitting next to her on the bench at the stern. With a low growl and a stink of exhaust, the ferry set off across the inlet.
“I should just say the hell with him.”
I kept my mouth shut, but it required Herculean restraint.
We disembarked at the Public Market and walked along Johnston toward Sea Village. It was almost ten and the well-lit cobbled streets were quiet, although far from deserted; there was always something going on. Reeny took my arm, leaned against my shoulder. She was wearing shoes with low heels and our shoulders were about even. As we were passing the Emily Carr Institute, Barry Chisholm wheeled his bike out of the shadows and into our path.
I wasn’t in the mood to deal with Barry, so I ignored him, steering Reeny around him and his bike. But Barry wasn’t going to
let us off that easily.
“You aren’t even going to thank me?” he said.
“For what?” I asked.
“For paying for your pants, even though it wasn’t my fault they got torn.”
“You didn’t,” I said.
“Didn’t what?”
“Pay for my pants. Not by half. But thanks anyway, Barry.”
Barry leaned over his bike and peered at Reeny. “I know you,” he said.
“Do you?” she said pleasantly. “How nice.”
“I signed a petition to have your show taken off the television.”
Reeny laughed. “You’re the one.”
“There was more than one,” Barry said. “And I saw you this morning too, running half-naked near the Kids Market. You should be ashamed, displaying yourself like that, especially around children.”
“You look pretty good in those shorts yourself, Barry,” she said, referring to Barry’s skin-tight Lycra cycling shorts, which left no doubt as to his masculinity, physiologically speaking anyway.
With an affronted harrumph, Barry threw a leg over his bike and pedalled away, peremptorily shrilling his whistle at the pedestrians on the street. An elderly man walking a fat basset hound angrily raised his cane as Barry went by. He should have jammed it through Barry’s spokes.
“A friend of yours?” Reeny said.
“Not hardly,” I replied.
Reeny held my arm as we crossed the parking lot to the boardwalk running along the top of the embankment in front of Sea Village. When we reached the ramp Reeny suddenly shuddered, although it was not cold.
“Someone just walked over my grave,” she said. We descended the ramp to the main dock. “You’ve been awfully quiet since we got off the ferry,” Reeny said as I opened the gate. “You think I should just say to hell with Chris, don’t you?”
“Now that you mention it,” I replied, getting out my keys.
“Maybe I will,” Reeny said as we went inside. I closed the door. “I’m gonna make some tea,” she said. “Would you like some?”
“Sure,” I said, and followed her into the kitchen.
“I forgot. I have a present for you.” She nodded toward the kitchen table as she filled the kettle at the sink.
On the table was a Virgin action figure. Except this one wasn’t wearing the black vinyl Barbarella cheerleader costume, nor any of the other outfits I’d seen. It was wearing a short transparent negligee over a lacy black bra and tiny thong-like panties.
“Good grief,” I said, picking it up. “They don’t sell it in this getup, do they?”
“God, no.”
“Where’d it come from?” I asked, turning it over in my hands.
“I found it in my dressing room at the studio. Someone’s idea of a joke, I guess.”
Upon closer examination I saw that the negligee and underwear had been clumsily hand-stitched from bits of lacy material by someone with a lot more enthusiasm than skill.
“Don’t you find it a little disturbing?” I said.
“It is weird,” she agreed. “But then the film industry does tend to attract the weirder types. I brought it home before the crew started abusing it. You can add it to the collection at work.”
The miniature handmade lingerie did not fit very well. As I put the figure down, the little bra slipped, exposing the jutting rubbery bosom. “She certainly is a remarkable physical specimen,” I said. “Did you have to pose for the casting?”
“Haw.”
I carefully adjusted the costume to cover the figure’s breasts, which were tipped with tiny, remarkably lifelike red nipples.
“Is the rest of her anatomically correct too?”
Reeny laughed. “I dunno. Go ahead, undress her, if you’re curious.”
“I’d rather undress the real thing,” my mouth said before my brain could stop it.
Reeny gaped at me.
“Oh, Christ,” I groaned, feeling the heat rising in my face like a rash. “I can’t believe I actually said that. I’m really sorry, Reeny. I — ”
“It’s all right, Tom,” she said with a smile. “Forget it. Blame it on the movie.”
chapter seven
I didn’t sleep well that night, lay awake for a long time, restless and twitchy, before falling into a fitful sleep, from which I roused at every little thump and gurgle and slosh. I got up at seven feeling leaden and grouchy. When I got downstairs, feeling not much better for a shower, there was a note on the kitchen table, scribbled on a piece of junk mail scrap: “Coffee’s set, just start the machine. Have a nice day. See you later. R.”
Well, at least she was still speaking to me, after a fashion. The night before, following my idiotic gaffe, she’d told me she had an early call and had taken her tea up to her room. I’d stayed up for an hour or so, alternately obsessing about Reeny and Chris Hastings and wondering if we were going to hear from Willson Quayle ever again. Then I’d taken myself to bed, where I’d continued to fret, to the detriment of my sleep.
As I was finishing my second cup of coffee and cleaning up my breakfast dishes, there was a knock at the door. It was Constable Mabel Firth.
“We’re putting these up all round the area,” she told me, handing me a sheet of paper. It was a laser-printed flyer with a computer-enhanced photograph of the dead man I’d found on the roof deck, eyes open, looking more alive than dead but zombie-like, and captioned, “Do you know this man?” in bold, black letters. Below the caption was information about where and when he’d last been seen, a description of his clothing, and a contact number for the Coroner’s Liaison Office. “We’re also running it in the Province and the Sun and putting it on our missing persons website.”
“Still no idea who he was?” I said.
She shook her head. “We’ve canvassed everyone in the area who might’ve seen him,” she said. “No luck. It’s like he just materialized on your roof deck.” She shrugged. “No big surprise, really. It’s not like he was carrying a severed head under his arm, eh? He was just another middle-aged tourist, maybe slightly better dressed than most. No one remembers him.”
“Or will admit it,” I said. “There’s nothing you aren’t telling me, is there?”
Her eyes narrowed. “Such as?”
“I dunno, that he’s an international terrorist or an escaped serial killer or a plague carrier. Do they know what he died of?”
“If they do, they haven’t told me,” Mabel said. “Look, don’t let your imagination run wild. He was about your parents’ age, wasn’t he? For all you know, he was an old friend of theirs who dropped by to wish you a happy birthday. Have you spoken to them?”
I shook my head. “They’re incommunicado,” I said. “On a cruise up the Alaskan coast. I’ll speak to them the first chance I get. My sister didn’t know him, though, and I don’t remember him wishing me a happy birthday.”
“You probably don’t remember almost falling overboard, either,” Mabel said.
“Eh? Um, no, I don’t.”
“S’all right. I was just kidding.”
We chatted for a minute longer, then she left me a handful of copies of the flyer, which I dumped on top of the writing desk in the hall, next to the Virgin action figure Reeny had rescued from the film studio, not sure what else I was supposed to do with them.
As I was leaving for work, I met Maggie Urquhart, my next-door neighbour, and Harvey, Maggie’s monstrous Harlequin Great Dane. Harvey seemed pleased to see me, placing his grapefruit-sized paws on my shoulders and slobbering on my face.
“Down, Harvey,” commanded Maggie, tugging uselessly on his leash. “Harvey! Down!”
With a grunt, Harvey dropped his front paws to the dock, which I could swear rocked under the impact. On his hind legs, Harvey was taller than I was. On all fours, his head was almost level with Maggie’s shoulder. He was more than double her weight. How she controlled him was beyond me.
“I apologize for Harvey’s behaviour,” Maggie said, as I wiped my face on the sleeve of my shirt. �
�Bad Harvey,” she admonished, shaking a stern finger at him. He hung his head and managed to look abashed.
Maggie was in her fifties, slim and compact, with a fine, flawless complexion that belied her years, and cropped ash blond hair. She’d been a professor of anthropology at UBC, but had recently taken early retirement, having written a couple of bestselling books about contemporary urban spiritualism or some such thing that had made her moderately wealthy. My daughter adored her.
“How’s Hilly?” Maggie asked.
“She’s fine,” I replied. “She may be coming to live with me for a year,” I added.
“Oh, that’s wonderful,” Maggie said enthusiastically. She cocked her head. “Isn’t it?”
“Sure,” I said. “It’s great.”
“Mabel Firth came by,” Maggie said. “With posters of the man who died on your deck. It gave me a very eerie feeling, seeing him like that, so alive-looking, and yet not.” Harvey did a little dance of impatience. “I’ve got to find Harvey some grass,” she said. She was carrying a wadded up plastic supermarket bag.
We walked along the dock toward the security gate, Harvey prancing before us. When I walked him, which I did occasionally, he towed me helplessly along behind him. However, when Maggie or Hilly walked him he did not pull, maintaining just a slight tension on the lead.
“Have the police spoken to your friend George?” I asked her.
“They have,” she said. “He told them he may have seen the dead man at your party, but he doesn’t remember speaking to him. I think George is a little miffed with me. I’m afraid I didn’t pay much attention to him that night. I got to talking to your friend Kevin about writing a feature for the Sun and lost all track of time. And George.”
“How did you meet him?” I asked.
“George? He introduced himself at my book-signing last month.”
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