The Empty Room

by Lauren B. Davis

  The woman glanced over her shoulder and glared at Colleen with one heavily made-up bright green eye (contact lenses, no doubt). “Excuse me,” she said, and then turned back to the window. “Jesus. Really.”

  Colleen thought it would almost be fair justice if she vomited right into that rat’s nest of bottle blond.

  At Bloor Station she had to transfer to the westbound trains and over to St. George Station. If it had been a nice day, if she weren’t so hungover (yes, might as well just admit that), and if she weren’t so late, she might walk over to the Geography Department where she worked, but today there wasn’t much choice. When the doors opened, she exited the train, edged her way past the hundreds of people waiting to get in and inched down more stairs to the east—west train platform. It was chockablock, bodies pressing, people being pushed to the edge. Colleen could not help but think of Nazi cattle cars. She checked her watch. It was just gone nine. She was officially late, but then again, maybe so were all these other people and surely there must have been a problem on the line. That’s what she’d tell them at work. Perhaps there was a jumper. No, that was an awful thing to say, but on the other hand, there might have been a jumper.

  She snorted. The Hepburn insouciance didn’t seem to be working.

  She pressed ahead, shoulder to shoulder with the others. A train came, regurgitating an astonishing number of riders, all of whom pushed to get up the stairs, while behind her more people tried to get down. Colleen’s breathing became shallow and her palms sweaty. Her stomach growled. She’d have to pick up something to eat. It would help settle her tummy. She could hardly breathe with all these bodies around her. Somehow she managed to get near the front now, too near in fact. She hated being this close to the edge. All it would take was some maniac at the back of the crowd to push forward and they’d all topple into the path of the oncoming train. Saliva rushed into her mouth. She was sure she’d vomit. She was thirteen again and about to humiliate herself utterly, irrevocably. Everyone was surely looking at her; they could see she was sick and hungover—

  “Are you okay?” asked a woman about her age.

  “I’m fine. Stomach flu maybe.”

  The woman held out a bottle of water. “Would you like this?”

  The bottle was half empty. “No, thanks.”

  The sound of the approaching train deafened her. She felt as though it might jump the track, mangle all of them on the platform. She must get out of here. She swivelled and met a wall of faces, some irritated, some bored and bland as paste.

  “Excuse me,” she said, “excuse me …” and tried to elbow through, but no one moved.

  Then the train was in front of her and the door opened and people pushed past her. All right, she had to get to work. Soldier on. She lifted her head, took a gulp of air into her lungs and lunged forward. There was a seat, oh God, a seat on the other side of the aisle. She snagged it, plopped down and wiped the damp from her upper lip. The woman with the water bottle stood nearby. She smiled and Colleen smiled back. The man in the seat next to her moved his leg away, as if afraid she might be contagious. She must look horrible. If she could just sit here for a moment with her eyes closed and breathe, she’d be all right. She’d be all right.

  People stood next to her so closely, so packed in; a woman’s handbag dangled next to Colleen’s ear. She put her hand up so it didn’t smack her and the woman tugged the bag away and glared at Colleen as though she were about to snatch it. Nobody wants your bag, thought Colleen; everyone can see it’s a knock-off.

  Colleen’s stomach was settling at last, and she was quite sure now that she would neither vomit nor pass out. At Bay Street Station many people got out, but only a few got on. There was a little breathing room at last. 9:10. Well, it couldn’t be helped. She’d stay later tonight, that’s what she’d do. She’d walk right into David’s office and say there had been a problem on the line and she was very sorry, and she’d be happy to stay late tonight to make it up. He wouldn’t mind that, surely.

  The man next to her wore headphones. Given the audible thumping bass and squealing voices, the volume must be up to maximum. He looked like a Bay Street guy, but one never knew what sort of lives people really lived. She’d worked at a brokerage on Bay Street for a while between jobs at the university. It had been the early ’80s when everyone was rich and fat and lunches consisted of three or four martinis. She remembered Bruce, a trader, who had crawled out of the elevator on all fours one afternoon around three o’clock. She’d felt nothing but contempt for him. After all, he was responsible for other people’s money, and look at the state of him. The other traders had thought it hilarious, but then, they were three sheets to the wind themselves. How could anyone get to that point? Even then she’d had her standards, which was why things hadn’t worked out for her in the stock market world. She was probably the only secretary not sleeping with someone. Well, there was that one time, but that didn’t count; Isaac had been too drunk to get it up and she’d sent him home to his live-in girlfriend. But she’d loved to go out after work with the boys. Loved to show them some of the bars they didn’t know—the soul bars, the jazz bars way off the Bay Street beat. She could drink them under the table, too, and did on many a night.

  Then, there was that night when Brian, her boss, made a pass and she called him a sleaze and he got mad and she could see then she wasn’t cut out for Bay Street. She flushed to think of that now. He was a sleaze. Colleen had met his wife, for God’s sake, and yet he thought nothing of telling her about how this girl or that girl was going down on him behind his desk and not to put any calls through to his office. And those girls who thought those guys would leave their wives because they did things the missus wouldn’t. What fools. She knew better. After all, her father had always, in the end, come home to her mother, hadn’t he? For what that was worth.

  YOU’RE A SMART GIRL

  His name was Thomas—he was never called Tom—and he drove a silver Bentley, although Colleen had no idea how he paid for it, since he did little more than hang around the office, drinking scotch with Brian, or holding court at Three Small Rooms in the Windsor Arms Hotel with the rest of the glitterati. He was an investor, he said, and had persuaded her boss, Brian Stack, to put a good deal of money into some film deal, something starring Donald Sutherland. Thomas was an Englishman who wore his thinning hair in a greying ponytail, and lifted weights so his biceps bulged rock hard under his crisp white shirt.

  One day Brian suggested Colleen join him for lunch with Thomas at Winston’s, a nearby power-lunch spot. Very art nouveau—all red velvet chairs and Tiffany lamps—a diner over which the owner, Joe Arena, presided like a Mafia don.

  She wore a black pencil skirt, a cobalt blue blouse and very high black heels. Thomas looked her up and down as she approached the table and patted the banquette next to him. “Sit here, baby.” When the waiter appeared, he ordered sixteen-year-old Lagavulin for the three of them. “And make it a Winston’s,” he said, meaning the obscenely generous pours that had helped cement the restaurant’s popularity.

  “Ice?” the waiter asked, looking at her but not the men.

  “And ruin a good scotch?” she said. “I think not.”

  “Exactly so,” said Thomas.

  The drinks arrived.

  “What do you think?” Thomas asked as she sipped the dark liquid.

  “Wonderful,” she sighed, and it was.

  “What do you taste?”

  She considered. Brian, his newly installed hair plugs as evident as cornrows, looked on with amusement, but also with something like proprietary pride. She understood she was expected to be more than purely decorative. For that he could have brought any one of the several secretaries with whom he was having sex. She sipped again, flared her nostrils and breathed. It was like inhaling the Highlands, all moody and alive with dark magic that coursed down her throat and into her veins.

  “Richness. Peat. Smoke.” She closed her eyes and rolled her tongue, then chuckled. “Fruitcake … s
omething else, seaweed. Sweet seaweed.” She opened her eyes to find Thomas smiling at her. “You should drink this late at night,” she said.

  “While reading poetry, don’t you think?” He winked. “We should try that sometime.”

  He called her later that week and said he was going out to dinner with his friend, Mohammed, who was the Saudi protocol adviser to the Ontario government. She should come. It would be fun. Mohammed was a wonderful guy. She and Jake had had a terrible fight involving one of his many girl “friends.” She thought it would serve him right if she had a few friends of her own.

  “Why not,” she said.

  Mohammed’s apartment was a surprise—sleekly modern, with expensive carpets, but filled with all sorts of trinkets including a number of glow-in-the-dark necklaces Mohammed said were terribly popular among the Bedouin. “I bring them back by the boatload,” he said. They went to dinner, the three of them, at a Middle-Eastern restaurant Mohammed had purchased up the street from his apartment so he could cook baklava whenever he wished without messing up his own kitchen. He ordered for them, wonderful dishes of red lentil soup with cardamom, spiced chicken and rice, cauliflower with cilantro, and for dessert, baklava he assured them he had made himself. She was surprised when he ordered wine with the meal, since clearly he was Muslim.

  “We are not in Saudi now,” he said, catching the expression on her face. “To be a chameleon is a harmless yet most useful talent, no?”

  Throughout the meal he told funny stories about the excesses of the Saudi royal family, such as having to ask the London department store, Harrods, to close down because one of the Saudi princes wished to buy everything in all the windows, right now, and pay for it with stacks of cash he kept in the boot of his Rolls-Royce.

  “And did they do it?” she asked, laughing, unable to imagine that much money.

  Mohammed, his black eyes flashing with good humour, said, “Of course, my dear. That’s what money is for.”

  It was a pleasant evening, but when Thomas said he had to call it a night and Mohammed suggested she might, perhaps, like to stay for a drink, she declined. While he was an interesting and clearly powerful man, he was also at least forty-five, and besides, although the evening had been amusing, there was Jake, wasn’t there?

  Mohammed, ever the perfect gentleman, hailed a taxi for her and kissed her hand, telling her how charming she was.

  The next day, Thomas arrived and asked Brian if he could take her out for lunch.

  “Don’t you think you should ask me?” she said, a trifle miffed.

  He took her not to Winston’s but to a restaurant near the office, and when they were settled with a glass of wine he said, “You made a good impression on Mohammed last night.”

  “He’s a nice man,” she said, noncommittally.

  “We have a proposal for you.”

  She perked up at that. Working for Brian was fine, but she was always on the lookout for a new opportunity, something with better pay, which seemed assured given Mohammed’s stories and his restaurant and his apartment. Travel, perhaps? Something for the government?

  “I’m listening.” She sipped her wine. It tasted of violets.

  “Perhaps once, twice a month, certain dignitaries from Saudi come to Toronto, or Montreal, or New York. Often, they travel with their wives, and it is important the wives are treated with the utmost respect but that their seclusion is maintained. They wear the abaya, the black cloak, and must be segregated from men who are not family members, but they are women”—he smiled in a condescending way—“and like all women, they love to shop. You would be entrusted to make the appropriate arrangements and to accompany them, acting as a liaison and ensuring all is as it should be.”

  Babysit a bunch of segregated women? That wasn’t something she wanted to do, even if getting a glimpse into the world of a harem would be fascinating. It seemed odd that Thomas, film-producing Thomas, would be involved in this sort of thing. Something shadowy was taking shape, something about where Thomas’s money actually came from.

  “I’m flattered, but I don’t think it’s really for me.”

  “That’s not all, of course. In the evenings, once the women are safely in their beds for the night, you would have the opportunity to entertain the gentlemen. They are well-educated, well-travelled, sophisticated men who, of course, would like to experience the world in ways that would not be appropriate for their wives.” He sipped his wine. He licked his lips. “Mohammed took quite a shine to you. Well done.”

  Colleen took a large drink from her wine, which now tasted not so much of violets but of vinegar. “I don’t think I understand you.”

  “Of course you do. You’re a smart girl.” He reached over and took her hand. “You would be extremely well compensated for very little work. These are generous people; they like to give gifts.”

  “Gifts?”

  “Indeed. Cars. Jewellery. Property. Works of art.”

  She pulled her hand away and put down her glass. Her cheeks flamed. “You’re out of your mind, and I don’t know why you’d think I’d get involved in something like this. You’re nothing but a pimp.”

  She picked up her purse and went to stand up, but Thomas grabbed her by the wrist and pulled her down again.

  “Who the fuck do you think you are?” he said.

  His fingers bit into her arm, and later, when she was safely home with a large glass of scotch that might not be as good as his fancy single-malt but suited her just fine, she would find five distinct bruises there.

  “Let go of me!”

  “Oh, don’t kid yourself. I know exactly who you are, Colleen.”

  She pulled her arm away and stomped back to the office, full of righteous fury. She stormed into Brian’s office and told her what had happened, demanding he do something, take action, get rid of that guy.

  Brian folded his hands and said, “I don’t know what you’re getting so bent out of shape for. Sounds like a compliment to me. And nobody made you go out with Thomas’s friend.”

  “Are you kidding me?”

  “Thomas is a valued client. Perhaps you’d better get back to work.” By way of dismissal, Brian picked up the phone and began punching buttons.

  A week later, Brian asked her out for a drink after work and she thought perhaps it was his way of apologizing. They sat next to each other in a black leather booth at the back of Trader Joe’s. Halfway through his second martini Brian leaned over and tried to kiss her. She pushed him back.

  “Brian, for Christ’s sake. You’re acting like a sleaze. I know your wife!”

  “Leave my wife out of it,” he said as he slid out of the booth. “And if you want to play the good little girl, you might stop going out for drinks with married men. Remember that at your next job.”

  And so she was fired. The next day, officially so. She’d never been fired before. She wanted to believe it was simply a matter of badly behaved men, but a bony little finger of doubt kept tapping her on the proverbial shoulder. Perhaps she did give off the wrong signals, but she didn’t mean to. She liked the teasing and the play and the attention. They were colleagues. It was networking. She never intended it would lead to anything. People got the wrong impression. She didn’t mean anything. It was just drinks, after all.

  A LUVERLY BUNCH OF COCONUTS

  The subway arrived at the St. George stop. Hers. She zipped into the coffee shop on the corner and bought a breakfast sandwich with cheese and bacon, which she ate as she walked the long blocks to her office. It wouldn’t do to let anyone know she had stopped to get food, late as she was. Cheese and bacon, she thought as she chewed, pulling a bit of paper wrapper from between her teeth. Not exactly the fare they once served at Winston’s.

  The grease and carbohydrates soaked up some of the acid in her belly, and by the time she reached the building in which the Geography Department was housed, she felt half human again. She stopped at the elevator, which was notoriously slow. All three cars were at the top floor, so she headed for the
stairwell. She popped a mint in her mouth as she climbed. Four sets of stairs, and frankly, by the time she reached the top she was a bit shaky again.

  When she first came to work at the university, she was only eighteen, and she’d planned to work during the day and take classes at night so she could get her degree in English Literature with a minor in Comparative Religion, since her parents hadn’t put any money aside for her education. She took courses in the short story, Canadian literature, Shakespeare, John Donne, Victorian Realist Novels, world religions, Celtic saints. Each semester she swore she’d buckle down this time, do all the reading, never miss a lecture, write the papers, hand them in on time, but a few weeks in she found herself slipping, making excuses to miss one class and then another. She was so young then, younger than many of the students, in fact. There was always an invitation to a party, or to go out for drinks or a bite to eat. She’d get home late, have a glass of wine, start to read and fall asleep. She’d fall behind. Eventually she’d withdraw from class, vowing to do better next semester. She never got the degree.

  She worked over in the Transcripts Department for a year at first, and ran up and down the stairs like an athlete. She remembered some woman saying that must be how she stayed so slim. And really, she was still slender now, although things seemed to have shifted around a bit. Her waist, her tiny twenty-three-inch waist. That was gone. From the Transcripts Department to the English Department (where she’d been so sure she’d take courses and begin writing seriously, maybe even do an MA in Creative Writing), then off to Bay Street for that little interlude, followed by a wild foray into the music business, back to the university and the Medical Research Department, then to the Registrar’s Office, the History Department, the Faculty of Theology at St. Michael’s College, and now … here.

  She had met him at the university in 1978 when she was twenty and working in the English Department. Jake. Beautiful Jake, who boxed in the Golden Gloves, light heavyweight, and won a silver medal; Jake of the amber eyes and the café au lait skin. He smelled of cinnamon and his chest was hairless. He studied finance. For four years she and Jake tangled round each other. She was the only girl his boxing coach, the gnarled little French Canadian Michel Lucien, would let come to the matches, because she was a lady and never freaked out if Jake got hit, if the blood flowed. Jake moved into her apartment for a while, and then he went to New York to be a big-deal stockbroker and she was supposed to go with him and get married but she didn’t, not when she found out he’d been sleeping with that stewardess. Flight attendant. Whatever. Her name was Jane Smith. Jane Smith, for the love of God. How unoriginal. She’d told him if she ever caught him cheating, it was over, and so it had to be over, whether she liked it or not. You couldn’t make an ultimatum like that and not keep it; if you did, the rest of your life would be hell, wouldn’t it? And so she’d let him go and then things had gone bad for him—too much cocaine and booze—and he lost his job and came back to Toronto. He worked at a small brokerage now, but like her, he didn’t keep jobs more than a few years. They stayed in touch, couldn’t seem to break away completely. A now-and-again thing, always with the possibility that someday, somewhere … They talked, and sometimes he called and didn’t say anything, but she knew it was him. She knew he was probably high, or drunk. He came close to getting married once, but nothing worked out. Now there was nobody again, not for either of them, and well, you never knew, right?