Thought You Were Dead

by Nick Craine

  “I need a book of baby names.”

  “What?” He was aghast. Not that, surely not. Naturally the virile Vaughan would be a walking talking sperm bank, up to his eyebrows in reproductive equity, family jewels clanking wealthily every time he moved his perfect thighs.

  “Calm down Chel, it’s for the cat.”

  “Ah.”

  “Which I didn’t want, by the way. I have a cat, Pinky, remember.”

  “The Roomba’s lady love. I thought she was a goner.”

  “But the cat came back, yes, and now her nose is really out of joint.”

  “She’ll get over it. He’ll be her partner in crime, her best boy. Soon she’ll be washing his pretty face for him and wondering where he was all her life.”

  “Since you like him so much, and since you were the one who rescued him from the pound, why don’t you keep him?”

  “I already have pets.”

  “Chel, flies aren’t pets.”

  “I know that, sheesh. They’re food.”

  “Oh, God.”

  “For my spiders, those friendly arachnids on the porch. They bring me my slippers every evening when I come home from work.”

  “Work, ha! And spiders aren’t pets, either. Likewise mice, cockroaches, and whatever other abhorrent creatures-in-residence you’re subsidising at Vermin U.”

  Chellis smiled, glimmering beneath that carapace of crabbiness was a half-decent sense of humour. “Marry me. I’ll save you from your snotty existence.”

  “Sorry, I’m taken. Funny you didn’t pop the question when you could have.”

  “My popper wasn’t working at the time. Besides . . . I was busy.”

  “I know. Research.”

  “You would have turned me down.”

  “You’re right about that.”

  “Can I help you?”

  This query, directed pointedly at Chellis, issued from a pimply youth who’d slithered up beside them, drawn by the glow of invective. Or possibly he sensed a plug in the flow of book product out of the store caused by these conversing customers.

  “I wish,” muttered Elaine, moving off.

  “Why, yes you may, if you think you can.” Chellis offered the clerk this gentle grammatical corrective without apparent effect. “I’m looking for, gee, I’ve forgotten the title, but I think the author’s name is Tolstoy. Yes, I’m pretty sure that’s right.”

  “Canadian?”

  “I believe so.” In his heart of hearts, all that bygone socialism.

  “I’ll check the computer.”

  “Thanks.”

  “No problem.”

  Chellis sighed. He could either grab the kid by the throat and squeeze a good old-fashioned you’re welcome out of him, an expressive spurt as antique as Hopalong Cassidy Toothpaste, or he could go and bug Elaine some more. He opted for the latter and found her in the mystery section.

  “Call him Noir.”

  “Who?”

  “Your new black cat.”

  “You can’t name him, he’s not yours.”

  “Okay, okay, I’ll take him.”

  “Can’t, you had your chance. Besides, Vaughan likes him.”

  “Vaughan likes him?”

  “Do I hear an echo? As a matter of fact, Vaughan adores him.”

  “Vaughan adores him? I did something nice for Vaughan?”

  “’Fraid so.” Elaine was flipping through one of Mrs. Havlock’s paperbacks from the Marcel Lazar series. “This is you, you know.”

  “Who, Lazar? Don’t be ridiculous, he’s a drunk.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Get lost, Laney. A couple of drinks a day.”

  “Before breakfast?”

  “Whenever, don’t be picky, it’s good for my health. I don’t look anything like the way Mrs. H describes Lazar.”

  “True, she has made him a lot more handsome than you. Taller, smarter, way sexier. Why is your bottom lip trembling like that?”

  “Keats was five foot two, Pope was four foot six.”

  “The Pope?”

  “I’m a veritable giant among men, with a giant’s male accoutrements. But look, even you must know that these detective types are pure formula. Male and female fantasies. Lone wolves, shit-kickers, slightly disreputable truth-seekers, tall, dark and available. They’re never married, are they?”

  “You’re not.”

  “That’s beside the point.”

  “She’s using you.”

  “Yup, it’s called being an employee, which you don’t happen to know much about. She’s allowed to because she pays me. Very well I might add.”

  “Don’t get all huffy, only wanted to warn you.”

  “And you don’t of course? Use your old pal, that is.”

  “Wouldn’t dream of it, although . . . I do have a favour to ask, almost forgot.” Elaine slotted the book back with its brethren on the shelf, and began to dig in her massive handbag, home of wrenches, springs, hockey tape, unidentifiable whatsits, and several semi-invented gizmos. “Here,” she pulled out a plain white bar of soap and handed it to Chellis. “Be a sweetheart and test this for me, will you?”

  Chellis weighed the bar in his hand. It was suspiciously light. He sniffed it. “Smells like that cereal you concocted once. Otiose, stick to your ribs, and that was no lie. Any side effects?”

  “Such as?”

  “Skin hanging off in strips. Death.”

  “Chel, it’s only soap.”

  “Ours is a risk-averse culture.”

  “Well, take a chance, live a little . . . wash your hands, have a shower.” A tiny alarm sounded from within the depths of her handbag. “Oops, gotta go. Meeting Vaughan for coffee.”

  “Swell, you talked me into it, I’m busy, but I can spare an hour or two – ”

  Elaine was gone, the fata morgana of the mall.

  “Hey, sorry.” It was the spotty clerk. “Our copy sold out when the author’s book was on Oprah. I could try to reorder it.”

  “That’s all right. Too expensive anyway.”

  “Yah, really.”

  “Say, would you like to try this?” Chellis offered him the bar of soap, passing it on with relief to the next sucker in this experimental relay. “I understand it’s excellent for certain, er, skin conditions.”

  “Sure, hey why not. Thanks, eh.”

  “No problem.”

  6

  RIP

  EYES CLOSED, but not in slumber, Chellis was perusing a brief, back page newspaper article recently composed and published (about a second ago) in his very own head: While attending a slow-food luncheon at the home of Ms. Maureen Hunt, a Mr. Chellis Beith of Burke Street, Farclas, was unexpectedly eaten by an orc. At the time of the occurrence the victim was said to be feeling no pain. The orc, dressed in the latest couture corpse-wear, including a designer Ulcers-R-Us T-shirt, requested a Rolaid from the hostess before beating a hasty retreat. “Poor Chellis,” a shocked Ms. Hunt sympathized. “He didn’t get a chance to try my homemade pita made from wheat grown in my own backyard and ground by my very own unhurried hands.” A brisk service will be held for Mr. Beith downtown at The Age Spot. Donations to the Bev Retirement Fund gratefully received, although not by her.

  No wonder Hunt was putting on pounds these days. He never ate at home, and Chellis had discovered why. His first mistake had been accepting Moe’s invitation to lunch, instead of inviting her out to eat. She could have picked censoriously at her fast food while he picked her brain, and the drinks bill wouldn’t have mounted stupendously if he were paying. At her place, during the pre-luncheon period, which was comparable in length to the Precambrian, Chellis had slowly, slowwwly but surely gotten plastered. Not only had he dislocated his head (lost it!) knocking back tumblers of grappa, but he had the queasy impression that somewhere along the line, assured of the health benefits of the Mediterranean diet, he’d knocked back a bottle of extra virgin olive oil as well. Lunch, when it had finally arrived, resembled molten Shrek on a plate. Offering it a pension see
med more appropriate than saying grace. At least the meal had been colour-coordinated with Moe’s necrological chatter. He’d had no idea that she was such a ghoul. This cold, bubbly internal spring of hers might even be the secret source of her terminal good cheer. Mrs. Havlock was a bit this way, too, for there was nothing like the subject of death to bring colour to her cheek and a sparkle to her eye.

  Presently he was a captive of his front porch easy chair and as motionless as an expelled orc pellet, hair of the dog resting loyally on the floor beside him. This geriatric piece of furniture was bulky with cellulite and had Jiffy Peanut Butter lids for feet, but ever-welcoming arms. As long as he could remember it had functioned as the household grandma surrogate, a place for either he or Rennie to retreat to for consolation, bottle in hand, as often as the punishing vicissitudes of life demanded. To be nine years old, home sick from school (exams and overdue assignments, very sick-making), and sucking back a Carling’s Black Label on the front porch, had been a great consolation indeed. Chellis got achey-hearted recalling it, his youthful, boozy Black Label days enthroned in this seat of anti-authority. He’d spent many contented, wastrel hours here simply watching the foremothers of his current arachnid clan – the original slow-foodies – as they fastidiously assembled fly wraps. The only multi-tasking he did involved harkening to Elaine’s rowdy relations next door as they pounded on walls, slammed doors, threw sharp objects at one another and bellowed abuse. How he missed them, the Borrings, a family name that occasioned one too many jests for their liking. They had certainly never lived up – or down – to it. His lively ex-neighbours had been an extended family of sorts (they threw sharp objects and bellowed at him too), extended a safe enough distance anyway. At the first opportunity and never mind her feminist sentiments, Elaine had handily dropped her surname into a white trash receptacle. If Vaughan were a real gentleman, he would have exchanged names along with the marital vows. Elaine Champion. Vaughan Borring. Too right.

  After the kids next door had flown from the nest – and outside of Elaine, their flight paths took them directly to employment/incarceration in a) Wal-Mart b) a Ford Automotive Plant and c) the Kingston Pen – the parents had sold up, bought an RV with the funds, and rattled off to live in some outlaw, drifter colony in Nevada called Slab City. The house sale had been accomplished with the assistance of Hunt Realty, a perfidy compounded when the very same and only realtor in the company lured a couple of over-achievers into the neighbourhood, a nice-nice young couple who worked all day and renovated most of the night. Any ruckus Chellis now heard from that direction was utterly drained of passion and drama. Painting their perfectly fine red front door a cowardly neutral colour (Clotted Cream? Xenophobic White?) and then hanging a flowery twig wreath on it, was about as violent as things got. The cops no longer came screeching up to that door, although by rights they should, for to be hammering nails into a wall with the objective of displaying a Thomas Kinkaid painting was a much greater offence than knocking a few heads into it. Chellis realized that trouble lay ahead the day he spotted the couple in their driveway, measuring it with a ruler and staring worriedly at the encroaching crabgrass. His crabgrass. Soon enough they’d be rapping his knuckles with that ruler and hauling him to court for attempting to make a land grab.

  He did truly miss the Borrings, Frank and Mary and brood, and he especially missed the slightly tubby and bespectacled and determined child they had somehow conceived. (Exceedingly attractive came later, and how had she managed that? Sheer willpower.) Elaine had been so different from the rest of them – reserved, studious, proper – that the usual corny family jokes circulated: the mix-up at the hospital, the cuckoo in the nest, the postman/milkman service with a smile. Although Chellis did sometimes more seriously speculate about her origins. It wouldn’t have surprised him in the least to discover that she too was a foundling, a lost sister perhaps that fate, with Dickensian plot-engineering, had landed in the house beside his. (O Fate! Listen up, and land her there again! Rout the gentrifying invaders! Be tasteful though, eh.)

  Chellis fondly recollected the countless summer afternoons that he and Elaine had sat together companionably on this porch, he reading Mad magazine, or Archie comics, or P. G. Wodehouse, and she reading Popular Mechanics, Richie Rich comics, or Virginia Woolf. A room of one’s own? She’d occupied one from birth, if only in her head. Rennie had been amused by Elaine, calling her Little Miss Einstein and Professor Borring. Elaine, for her part, had never been much amused in return. Not because of the teasing, which she was inured to, but because Rennie’s temperament irritated her. She had enough to contend with in her own boisterous and lax household without having to humour a mother who steadily slipped through her definition of what a mother should be like a ghost walking through walls.

  Rennie, slight of frame, fine-featured, pale complexion, hair dyed black, fingernails painted a glossy white (perlaceous!), leaning against the porch railing, smoke in hand, staring out far beyond the crabgrass, tardier then in its world takeover. A birthday party raging inside, Chellis’s tenth maybe, kids roaring through the house, jumping on the couch, the beds, and Elaine in the bathroom fixing the toilet that had been running non-stop for days. Or hunkered down in a corner building a Frank Gehry gas station with the Meccano set she’d given him, or playing pin the tail on the donkey all by herself, and not even cheating, and still winning. Or in the kitchen washing a week’s worth of dishes so they would have something to put the cake and ice cream on other than their grubby hands and laps. Elaine scrubbing and scrubbing, a self-appointed Cinderella, and Rennie smiling faintly, mysteriously, vanishes.

  If, say, Vaughan also vanished – poof! – and Chellis made a face at the neighbours and frightened them away – boo! – and Laney moved back next door – yes! – then their houses could get married. Not in the Montague and Capulet sense, but a union more architectural in design. This would leave the individuals within the wedded structures at liberty to stretch themselves existentially. They would not have to be fused like Siamese twins by the royal and marital pronoun – we did this, we did that, we went shopping, we bought a bra, we went we we we all the way home. How did Philip Larkin, that cheeriest of Twentieth Century poets, put it? “He married a woman to stop her getting away/ Now she’s there all day.” Dead on, Phil.

  Well, a plague on the house next door, Chellis thought, athough please not on his. His had enough problems. In fact his house already resembled a plague site. If he were capable of movement, he might even do a little housework as certainly he had been meaning to do for about a year now. Housework itself was made for procrastinators, a deluxe, four star excuse-hotel that he rarely checked into. Was it even possible to feel like a non-virtuous and guilty slacker whilst down on one’s knees plucking specks of grit off the heated slate tiles with a pair of tweezers? Not that he had tiles of any description. He’d have to go next door for that, tweezers generously extended.

  Gingerly, he inclined his head to take in his immediate surroundings. He spotted an unfamiliar leaf collection in the corner and grime thick as ultrasuede on the floor. He noticed that an enterprising squirrel had stuffed a slit in the cushion of the other chair, a lame and faded wicker rocker, full of pine cones. (Brilliant, thinks squirrel. No one’s ever gonna find this.) The loafer’s classic empties and pop cans, several toppled over, were much on display, as well as a plant pot studded with cigarette butts. The neglected resident of the pot was so desiccated that it was unrecognizable as a former respirating and chlorophyll-producing member of the upper world.

  Chellis spied (with his little eye) a shoal of unread newspapers beside his empty recycling box (not entirely empty, as something furred and foul was growing on its blue bottom). Do people actually clean their porches, he rebelliously began to wonder. Wasn’t that Mother Nature’s job? Surely he hadn’t been abandoned by her, too? He scooped up one of the newspapers, intending to toss it in the Blue Box, when a two-paragraph article on an extreme corner of the front page caught his eye. Big enough news sti
ll for the front page, but shrinking quickly and about to sink out of view in the obscure depths of the paper, therein destined to stand briefly in the shadow of Goliath car, computer, and cell phone ads before being wiped out completely.

  “Huh,” he said, feeling no compunction to say anything more intelligent, seeing as he was expressing mild surprise only to himself. Having plunged on past the headline, Slain Man Identified, he was informed that the body discovered in Claymore had been that of one Jude Thomas. Hey Jude! The name didn’t ring a bell even though the piece described the victim as a freelance reviewer, copy-editor, and most recently, part-time production assistant at the prestigious Culloden Press in Toronto, one of Mrs. Havlock’s publishers. In other words, the poor bugger had been a literary limpet clinging tenaciously to the skirts of the publishing world, and it was mostly skirts. Who would want to kill a lowly book reviewer? Only about a thousand people Chellis could think of offhand. The police were in for some excruciating interviews. Cop: “I understand, sir, that you’re a writer.” Suspect: “Indeed, I am, and my talent was evident from my earliest years. . . .” Or a copy-editor? Obviously it had been some escalating dispute over commas, or the vicious culmination in an argument involving the use of the word “career” instead of “careen.” Or a production assistant? Book not ready for the author’s much-anticipated launch? Case closed and sealed tight as an uncut folio.

  Lord, Chellis sighed, what a world, and how difficult it was to remain in it, even for the meek and mild. Especially for the meek and mild. He was practically crowbait himself, having barely survived Moe’s lunch and the suffocating amount of information on matters posthumous that she had heaped on him. Morbidology, she could open her own university department. Death Studies. No doubt such already existed, considering the number of journals, indexes, newsletters, books, and periodicals that were devoted entirely to the learned exhumation of the permanently inert. Even for the necrologically curious hobbyist extensive resources were available, whatever lugubrious subject might tickle one’s fancy: funerary art, memorial photography, body snatching, cemetery tourism, burial customs, postmortem misadventures of the famous (Laurence Sterne, Gram Parsons, Alistair Cooke). The U.S. even boasted a National Museum of Funeral History. Rest in Peace? Fat chance.