When he showed up to join me a good half hour later he had zero interest in getting down to work. All he wanted to do was talk. Or grill I should say. He did a rerun of every question they’d asked me downstairs, the identical questions that Rossi had plied me with. There wasn’t much opening for originality in the situation.
“So you don’t know if they’re going to split it all up or sell it en masse?”
“Like I told you, I couldn’t make out what they were saying. Believe me, nobody wishes more than me that I could have.”
“Or where it’s going to go? A private buyer? To a museum someplace? You didn’t pick that up either?” I thought I’d made myself pretty clear downstairs, but then I’d had a few days to absorb the whole mess. To Morrie it was still raw. He needed to hear me repeat it, to have all the facts pinned down. His second profession had turned him into a details kind of guy.
“Nope. They were too far off to listen in on, and it was noisy.”
He stood up and made his way around the perimeter of the room, bumping into the planks that we’d laid out so carefully on sawhorses, knocking some of them to the floor. His shoulders were jerking up and down, like his nerves up there had short-circuited. Even after that time I’d caught him flat-footed at the museum he wasn’t half this discombobulated.
“But you could see them, couldn’t you?” he asked me. “Did you notice if they showed a particular interest in any one thing? If they lingered in front of something or other for longer?”
I brought up the instant replay of the visit in my mind. The video was jumpy, like from a handheld, thanks to those kids bouncing off the walls, but I could still make out the action. “Well, the furs I guess. They unlocked the cabinets and gave them a good once-over. Laid them out on the counter and ran their hands all over them. Rubbed them against their faces. That kind of thing.”
“Idiots. They think they’ll get something for them? I can tell you my friend, they’re in for a rude awakening. You can hardly give them away.”
It was his usual furrier rant. But once he got it out of his system he seemed to calm down. He quit pacing and his shoulders clicked back into their sockets. He stooped down to rescue the tipped-over planks and set them back where they belonged. With the room restored to order, he sat down beside me.
“So that’s it then, the furs.”
“Yeah, that’s it,” I said, relieved to see the old unruffled Morrie back. “Except for the canoe.”
“The canoe? What about it?” He shot back up to his feet, all his senses on high alert.
“You talked about lingering. Well, they lingered in front of the canoe. For a good while now that I think of it. I remember them squatting down in front of it as if they were eyeballing a putt. Got right up close. Lots of laughing too. Who knows, maybe they were planning a fishing trip. That would solve all my problems, wouldn’t it? They’d take out that canoe and sink straight to the bottom in under five seconds.”
“You wish. It just needs some upkeep.”
“Get serious. You know how old that thing is.”
“I am aware thank you. But those canoes were built to last. It’s not like they could trade one in at the lot if something went haywire while they were out in the bush between Nowhere and Been-there. And as well-preserved as yours is, a little TLC would have it floating like a dream. Not like the crap you buy today.” He took a spiteful kick at our project that tipped it onto its side. I felt sorry for our canoe as I used all my muscle to right it on its work stand. It couldn’t help it if it was a prefab, not the genuine article. But I knew what Morrie was getting at. The museum canoe had the sweat of actual voyageurs soaked into its ribs, the blood of New World beavers staining its gunwales. For all the deluxe staining treatments and artificial roughing up he’d done on the kit canoe, it would never be anything more than a B-actor pimped out for a role.
That was it for the day’s conversation. Morrie made getting-down-to-work motions and I followed along. We put in a good few hours and then I helped him tidy things up and got ready to go. He walked me down to see me out as usual. Just before he closed the front door behind me he left me with this. “Ben, it would be very useful if you could find out exactly when it’s all going to happen.”
Useful? What the hell was he getting at?
11
Morrie’s cryptic prodding to get me on the when case did me a good turn. It gave me a kick in the butt, pushing me to start thinking outside my self-pity box. The guy got me cranked up. I damn well deserved to know when. Christ, wasn’t it my life the bigwigs were screwing around with?
So now the only question was how to wring the information out of them. A full frontal attack on head office? Bold, but too risky. A move like that might just drive them to slap a padlock on the museum’s front door even sooner than they’d planned, fumigating their resident shit-disturber right out of the joint. No. Cagey was the way to play this, go at it more out of left field, get someone else to do the Mata-Hari-ing on my behalf. And I had the perfect candidate.
Life among purses had become a bit of a yawnfest for Mum, ever since she’d had a brush with glam at her counter, thanks to none other than Céline Dion. Now Céline, Quebec’s homegrown little cabbage, didn’t just walk in off the street. Uh-uh. That’s not how superstars operate, Mum explained to us after the fact, now that she was our household expert on the shopping habits of the rich and famous. What Céline had done, or one of her flunkies to be precise, was to book the entire store to stay open after hours for the exclusive use of her extended family. Considering Céline is the youngest of fourteen children, and that she was backed up by the full chorus line of nephews, nieces, cousins, husbands, wives, aunts, uncles, and hangers-on (that would be your nannies, your protection, your drivers, and your bag-toters), well you can do the calculations if you can count that high. Let’s just guesstimate that the full Dion clan out-populated PEI. It paid for the Bay to stay open overnight when these folks had cash enough in their pockets to unswamp medicare.
Anyway, according to Mum, it was somebody or other’s birthday in the family and they were all on the hunt for gifts. That’s what kicked off the whole outing. Now deep-pocket types like that, they don’t automatically think gloves or scarf like us earthlings. They might want to offer, say, a six-burner stove or a full dining room set with a sparkler stuck on top. Which is why every department in the store was staffed with its A-1 sales force ready to rake in the bucks. That included Mum, naturally. For her this was not the ideal shift. She was the very definition of a morning person, but the time-and-a-half they dangled in front of her was too tempting to pass up.
By eleven-thirty on Céline Night Mum was longing for her bed, but it was just at that low ebb that the chanteuse herself stopped by at Mum’s station. Her sudden appearance lit a fire under her and flicked her back to morning mode. The singer had her oldest son tagging along, a very well-mannered boy according to Mum who’d witnessed enough of the opposite in the store to put you off reproducing for good. Turned out Céline was a bit of a purse junkie, and after the two of them had an intense cocktail bag consultation, the diva dropped four thousand bucks in Mum’s department without batting an eye. The two of them hit it off so well that Mum ended up squiring Céline all around the store for what was left of her inbred shopping blitz.
Around three a.m., a moving van pulled up at the loading dock to collect all the purchases. At the same time a line of stretch SUVs with tinted windows lined up at an anonymous service door on Aylmer to likewise siphon up the super-shoppers, but not before Céline had left Mum with an autographed CD and a bottle of her namesake eau de toilette. It could have been a reality TV show.
Mum had never kvetched much about the humdrummery of sales clerking before Céline showed up and left a trail of fairy dust on the Bay’s linoleum, but now she was finding her days ultra blah. A little cloak and dagger work on my behalf would make for a nice break in her routine. Besides, she thought that the organization had royally fucked me over (my translation) by i
nforming me I’d be pink-slipped when the museum closed, rather than offering me a placement in some other department. Now which one of these reasons motivated her to go undercover on my behalf, I couldn’t really tell you. I just moved on, leaving it all in her capable hands.
“See you later alligators. I’m out of here.” Morrie kissed his wife on the tip of her nose, picked up his briefcase, and headed off. Every now and again I sat and visited with Lena on those evenings when Morrie had to be out “on business.” I tried not to obsess too much about whether that made me some kind of accessory, but in the end I figured probably not since he never actually revealed to me the identity of the bird he was out to pluck, kept me safely in the dark on all his illegalisms. But as an enabler I was guilty as self-charged.
So why did I do it? Well, I fell into it, you might say. The first time it happened it was totally accidental. Morrie took advantage of one of my impromptu evening visits to slip out on a job he already had lined up. With me on the spot he wouldn’t have to worry about leaving Lena home alone, which is what he’d been planning on doing. It affected his concentration, he explained to me later, and of course in his particular line of work staying sharp was a primo consideration. He always dosed her with an extra pain pill before he headed off, just in case, but even so, he couldn’t completely settle down to business wondering if all was well on the home front.
This I only learned after the fact. That first time I played lifeguard for Lena I didn’t have a clue what he’d really gone off to do. He said he had an appointment with a client. Fine. To me that meant he was still selling off the dregs of his own stuff. You could have blown me over when he admitted that he’d been out burgling. I thought that the museum heist, which left him black, blue, and busted by yours truly had hammered home the lesson that he wasn’t cut out for larceny. Apparently not.
I guess I could have said no the next time, but the guy’s bank account was clearly running on fumes and what he was asking of me wasn’t much. I really didn’t mind passing a few hours with Lena while Morrie was away. She was terrific company, a born yakker. I know, I know, my life was warped. What normal guy in his twenties prefers to spend his time chatting up a senior citizen to doing almost anything else? Well, I guess I wasn’t a normal guy in his twenties. That, I believe, if you’ve been paying any attention at all, I’ve already proved.
“Are you feeling okay, Lena? Do you need anything?” It must have been around my fifth time on night detail and she wasn’t her usual peppery self once Morrie left. I hoped she wasn’t coming down with something. I had no way of getting in touch with him if there ever was an emergency. He didn’t have a cell. Cell phones cost, as he reminded me, and what was the point anyway? It’s not like Lena was capable of punching the numbers with her frozen fish-stick fingers. No wonder he held his breath every time he left her.
Not that I could give her much hands-on help if she had a health issue while I was at her bedside. We fur trader types had only rough and ready first-aid skills, enough to deal with rheumatism aches and frostbite, a sprained ankle from portaging maybe. If Lena needed a poultice, I was her man. But at anything higher level I was toast.
“Can I tilt your bed up a bit? Give you a better view?”
“I’m fine dear, thank you. Just a little preoccupied. That’s all.”
“Would you like me to put on the TV or some music to take your mind off whatever it is?”
“Absolutely not. Those toys I reserve for when I have no company. I’d much rather talk to you.”
“That’s what I’m here for.” I waited to let her call the conversational shots since none of my feeble efforts so far had managed to get her engine running. “Ladies first.”
“So polite you are.”
“We aim to please.”
She didn’t open up right away. Instead she took her time looking me up and down. It made me sit up straighter. I could feel that I was being measured somehow and I didn’t want to come up short.
“Benjamin,” she said eventually. “May I ask a small favour of you?”
“Sure, name it.”
“I’ve had such a craving lately.”
“Well if it’s in your fridge, I’d be glad to bring it over. What’re you in the mood for? Some fruit? If it’s ice cream you want we can split, as long as it’s not peppermint.”
“No, not an itch for something to eat. It’s something else.”
“What then, a little spin on the dance floor?” Usually it cracked her up when I bopped her handicaps on the kisser, but today there was no lightness in her.
“What I want …” she started but then sputtered out. She took a minute to firm herself up and then gave it a second go. “What I want,” she spilled out in a rush, “is to go into my house. The rest of it I mean. It’s been ages since I had the chance to see all my lovely things and I miss them. It would give me such pleasure to pass my eyes over them one more time.” This was definitely not in the nature of a small favour. Small favours meant a sip of juice or a pillow plump. This was a huge favour, a massive favour, bigger even than the ultimate dreaded favour, her needing to use the bedpan on my watch. This was a can-of-worms favour to end all favours.
“I don’t think that’s such a good idea.”
“Why ever not?”
“Well, I don’t think I could move you, for one.”
“I weigh nothing, dear boy. With your strong rowing arms you could easily lift me into the wheelchair.”
“But I might hurt you. I don’t know the right way to carry you.”
“I can tell you how. You could manage. I bend at most of the usual places. I guarantee I won’t break.”
What a dope I was resorting to a logistical argument. It had no wiggle room in it. If I could move her then I could move her. I had to change tactics.
“But I have a feeling Morrie wouldn’t like it.”
“I don’t know about that. But in any event Morrie wouldn’t have to know. It would just be between us. Our little secret. You could have me safely tucked back in bed before he comes home from work.” She was trying to paint her request as a fun little escapade, an after-dark sneak-out to La Ronde when the parents are asleep. But I wasn’t buying. This extra level of anxiety I so didn’t need. Even if I enjoyed them for the most part, I’d be a liar if I said these evenings with Lena didn’t have a certain bass thump of tension running under them, never knowing if the next sound you’d hear would be Morrie’s key in the lock or the phone ringing from a bail bondsman. Besides which, I wasn’t comfortable with the idea of lying to Morrie. So I’m sexist. Sue me. The fact that I’d been lying to Lena all this time, or at least keeping secrets from her, which I suppose amounted to the same thing, didn’t give me the least ethical twinge. After everything real and surreal that Morrie and I had lived through together, I guess you could say we had a bond that trumped all that equal opportunity stuff.
“To tell you the truth, I feel not right going behind his back in his own home.”
“But it’s my home too.”
Wasn’t she ever going to drift off? Had she switched meds or something? Usually her chemical cocktail started to fog up her concentration before an hour was up but we were way past that and she was still fast awake. I didn’t know how much longer I could stall waiting for her pills to kick in with the mallet.
“You don’t think you could just put it to Morrie tomorrow? He’d probably cave if you pressed it. I’ve never seen him say no to you.”
“I’ve asked him over and over lately. He doesn’t think it’s a good idea. He worries that in balance it would make me feel worse rather than better to revisit everything I’m missing. And without his cooperation I’m stranded.”
“Maybe he’s got a point. Better to leave the past in the past.”
“My past is all I have left at this point. My body’s been giving me signals me that there’s not much future out there for me. Please Benjamin. You wouldn’t deny me this one thing I ask of you, would you?”
Reader, I gav
e in to her. You’d have to have a heart made out of stone to hold out on someone staring their own mortality in the face and all they want before meeting their maker is a stinkin’ ride in a wheelchair around their own house.
“You promise you won’t tell Morrie?” I said. “No matter what?”
“I won’t if you won’t.”
“Then we have a deal.”
I’m not as stupid as I look. I knew this wasn’t a deal to bet the farm on. Once Lena took in that all her furniture was MIA, she’d forget she ever promised to keep our outing under wraps. She’d nab Morrie the second he came in the door and bash him with her discovery.
But I’d given her my word. Even if it meant that after today my precious little sanctuary would roll up the welcome mat. And I had it coming I guess. Wasn’t I breaking one of the bedrock rules Morrie set out for me right at the start, never, under any circumstances, let Lena know anything about the emptied-out house. The best I’d be able to offer in my defence would be that at least I’d stayed mum about the thefts (bedrock rule number two). But that wouldn’t matter. Spilling half the beans had the same effect as spilling them all. It meant that their lives and mine would never rub against each other again.
I edged the wheelchair up against the bed and locked the wheels the way Lena told me to do. Picking her up was a bit of a feat. I’d never realized always seeing her in bed just how little her limbs obeyed her. She couldn’t contribute anything to the effort. When I finally managed to cup her awkwardly in my arms, she scuffed up against me like a bundle of kindling. My balance wasn’t all it could have been, and I practically dropped her sideways into the wheelchair, but she was a trooper. Didn’t complain, didn’t cry out.
My True and Complete Adventures as a Wannabe Voyageur Page 11