I Was There the Night He Died (13 page)

“Uh huh, uh huh, right, right.” The woman, the one asking all the questions, marches off with Laura, clipboard in hand, to have another look at something in one of the bedrooms, the man staying behind with me in the living room. Laura made coffee and brought donuts and the husband and I sit on either end of the sofa while the adults go about their mysterious adult business. If only the man would ask me about the house, we'd have something to talk about, even if I really don't have any answers.

Instead, grinning, “Records, eh?” he says, gesturing with his coffee cup at my eBay purchase, five records received in the morning mail, leaning against the living room wall. “Haven't seen any of those in a while.”

He's younger than me, but not by much, likely first-time house-hunting, the calloused, scaly hand I'd shaken half an hour earlier testament to a good-paying factory job. For now, at least.

“I can't really afford it, but there were a couple of things I couldn't pass up. And once you get your credit card out … ” And once you already owe the credit card company fifteen thousand dollars plus interest, what's $150 more?

“Where's your record player? Didn't know they still made ‘em.”

“I don't have one.” The man looks confused. “Not here, I mean. I have one at home. Two, actually.” The man looks alarmed. “Home in Toronto, I mean.”

“Oh, right.” The man looks relieved, then embarrassed. “You're here because of your … your family business.”

Laura must have filled them in, probably didn't spare them a single familial tragedy, hoping, no doubt, that their heartstrings will get tangled up with their purse strings. I just nod into my empty coffee cup a couple of times. The man does the same.

Looking up, “But now you've got to take your albums all the way home with you,” he says. “Too bad you couldn't have bought them when you were there.”

“I couldn't take the risk of someone else getting them.”

The man grins. “Good ones?”

“Real good ones.”

Which they are; but, except for Willie P. Bennett's
Tryin' to Start Out Clean
, a copy of which I already own, nothing so special I couldn't have waited to buy once I'm back in Toronto. Buying records, particularly rare, expensive records on eBay, is something I haven't done since Sara died. I bought these five last week after talking with Samantha in the park. Drinking wine and talking with Samantha in the park. The internet equivalent of drunk dialing, I suppose.

I hear “perfect for a nursery” and “but the sun in the morning” and Laura and the woman are back. The man sets his cup on the coffee table and stands up. I follow suit, stretch, and manage to spot Samantha's dad wobbling down the middle of the street at 10:30 in the morning, a red-nosed, gargantuan baby in a flapping-open grey overcoat just learning to get from here to there without tipping. From what I've observed over the last few weeks from the snooping perch of my parents' front window, he's either up-and-out-of-the-house-at-seven-
am
sober or scarcely-vertical plastered, his obviously senior position at his law firm meaning that the underlings who occasionally come by with papers for him to sign when he's too tanked to make it into the office are occupationally compelled to ignore the stumbling elephant in the room. Laura's the certified real estate agent, but I know a deal-breaker when I see one, so announce a little too enthusiastically, “You haven't seen the shed yet.”

Which does cause everyone to turn and look at me, but which also keeps everyone from looking out the front window. I'm talking (“There's room enough for a lawnmower
and
a snow blower if you didn't want to keep them in the garage, which you could also do”) while simultaneously watching Samantha's dad almost make it inside his house before stopping short and swaying in place, as if teetering in the bitter breeze. C'mon, just a little further, keep moving, keep moving …

“Well, great, that's good to know, Sam, thanks,” Laura says, clapping and clasping her hands and pulling the attention back to her. “And do you two have any other questions?” The man and the woman look at each other, Laura looks at me like she hopes whatever's suddenly taken possession of me can somehow be suppressed for at least a few more minutes, I look out the window trying not to seem like I'm looking out the window, Samantha's dad now stationary, but with his nose in the air like a scent-smitten hound. Until Samantha's brother bursts through the door and nearly bumps him off the step, eyes down and knapsack slung over his shoulder and both thumbs busy texting. Samantha's dad looks more bewildered than upset, like he can't quite believe his son didn't see him when passing less than a foot from his face.

“No, I think we're good,” the woman says, smiling and nodding at the man who takes his cue and does the same.

“Well, okay, then,” Laura says, sticking out her hand. “It's been great meeting you both, and you've got my card and number if there's anything else you need from our end.” Handshakes, smiles, and thank yous, and we just make it, Samantha's father closes his door behind him and we're all a happy neighbourhood again.

Laura and I walk the man and the woman to their car and wave them off, and if they do notice Samantha's father looking out of his front window at Samantha's brother, all they would see is a father watching his son walk to school, the latter perhaps paying a little too much attention to the text he's reading and not enough to where he's going.

 

* * *

 

You don't need Darwin to know
that human beings are foremost fornicators. Just observe a married man suffer a room full of attractive women, his wedding ring suddenly a cramping, unnatural appendage. And fucking
really
is
like riding a bicycle, all you need to do is climb right back on and pump away and enjoy the ride. As odd as it is being with a woman again, it's odder still being with a woman who isn't yours. Your woman with her singular smells and preferred positions and inimitable loving ways.

“Making yourself at home, I see,” Rachel says, padding into her apartment's small kitchen, back in her jeans and sweater, a white towel wrapped around her head, barefoot and shower-fresh. I stay where I am, kneeling in the adjacent living room in front of the black plastic CD tree next to the small bookshelf that, though white and made of thin plywood, looks as if it was purchased from the same store, the kind of place that sells not only cheap furniture for lonely single professionals, but scented candles and potpourri bowls and just about everything else no one really needs. Instead of books, one of the shelves is covered with neat piles of Keep-CCI-Open petitions, safe-copy Xeroxes of the real thing.

“Just checking to see if your musical taste has evolved over the last twenty-five years.”

“I'm pretty sure I hid all of the Duran Duran CDs when I knew you were coming over. Find something you like and put it on, okay? I'm going to start dinner.”

Sara cooked and I did the dishes, but Sundays I was mostly on my own, Sara lengthwise on the couch with a paperback novel and dinner not even a consideration until the last page was turned, usually no earlier than seven or eight
pm
. We didn't go to church and there were no big family dinners to attend and we weren't the sort of couple to meet friends for brunch, but Sundays were Sundays because Sara was not to be bothered until she was finished reading her Sabbath day paperback.

“How does a pork chop and a salad sound?” Rachel says.

“Actually, I don't eat pork.”

“Okay.” Rachel opens up the refrigerator, looks inside. “How about if I throw together a chicken stir fry?”

“I don't actually eat chicken, either.”

Rachel lets the fridge door close on its own. “What do you eat then? Actually.”

I stand up from my snooping stoop. “Look, don't worry about it, okay? I didn't expect dinner to be a part of the deal anyway.”

“And what deal is that specifically?”

What deal indeed. “I just meant that we're just—”

“Just what? Just fuck buddies?”

“No. That's not what I said.”

“It's not what you said, but it's obviously what you meant. Which is fine. It's completely fine. I'd just like it if we were both on the same page, is all.”

“Look, I … I just don't eat meat, okay?”

Rachel lets her eyes linger on me for a long moment before re-opening the fridge door. “What about vegetables? Do you actually eat vegetables?”

“I have been known to eat some of those occasionally.”

She starts pulling carrots and celery and red and green peppers out of the fridge. “One chicken stir-fry minus the chicken coming up.”

“That sounds great. Can I do anything to help?”

“Why don't you carry on with what you were doing?”

“You got it.”

I kneel back down and study every CD spine from top to bottom, then start all over again; if only there
were
some Duran Duran. What's musically worthless might at least be good for some nostalgic groans, a little Auld Lang Syne self-aimed laughter. What we have instead is plenty of Blue Rodeo and Tragically Hip and Dave Matthews and, for those more introspective moments, Sarah McLachlan and Tori Amos and Alanis Morissette. If you can't love, you should at least be able to hate, but all I feel is boredom. I'm almost ready to suggest we turn on the dishwasher and listen to that instead when I spot Tom Waits'
Rain Dogs
. I slip it into the CD player and head to the kitchen.

“Can I at least set the table?” I say.

“Sure. The plates are right to your left, second cupboard.”

“Got it.”

“Before you do that, though, would you do me a favour?'

“Shoot.”

“Put another CD on, would you? It doesn't matter what, just as long as it's not this. One of the teachers at school made me borrow it from her and I've been avoiding bringing it back for months now because I don't know what to say. I don't want to hurt her feelings, but, I mean, is this guy for real or what? Didn't anyone ever suggest to him that a singing lesson or two might be a good idea if you're going to be a singer? Hello?”

 

* * *

 

First I hear it, although what
it
is isn't clear. I go to the living room window and slap my way through the sheers and see that it's just the fat man from before on his tiny mini-bike chugging around the block, the sound of a tired tug boat panting its way to shore. Except that he doesn't disappear around the corner but turns back at street's end, all the better for his almost identically blue snowsuit-outfitted fat girlfriend or wife to capture on video the heroic putt-putt up and down the street. He waves at her on the way by and she pivots right around so as not to miss an instant of his virtually seat-swallowing ass travelling the other way. I wish there was someone here to witness what I'm seeing, and then there is, there's Samantha standing on her front step, jacket undone and running shoes unlaced. I haven't seen her since she ran away from me at the mall. I step out onto my front step.

“The call of the wild,” I shout.

In spite of herself, she smiles—sort of. Doesn't answer, however. I know I've got my work cut out for me.

Seeing that the woman working the digital camera is also listening to an iPod, I feel it's safe to ask, “How long do you think before it shows up on YouTube?”

Samantha folds her arms across her chest, but I don't think it's because she's cold. She's not going anywhere, though. Not yet. I'd better work fast.

“I've got something for you,” I say.

“What?”

“I want to give it to you.”

“That's kind of usually what happens when you've got something for someone, isn't it?”

“I mean I don't want to ruin the surprise.”

“I hate surprises.”

“Everyone likes surprises.”

“I'm not everyone.”

“Just come over. It'll only take a minute.”

She looks at her running shoes. I want to tell her to do up her laces or she'll trip, but I don't want to sound like my father. Without looking up, “How do I know you're not going to cut me up into fifty pieces and stick them in your freezer?” she says.

“I'm a vegetarian, remember? Besides, my parents' freezer is full of about two hundred pounds of frozen cow parts. I simply don't have any room for any Homo sapiens at the moment.”

This time she does smile, if begrudgingly. “I've got to get something inside. I'll be over in a minute.”

While Samantha retrieves the something that I know is her pot, I've got to make good on my promise of a gift. She doesn't have a record player, so nothing in this morning's eBay delivery will suffice. My mother's Swiffer Duster? A sample of her choice from Mum's miniature spoon collection? One of Dad's several screwdriver sets? When she simultaneously knocks and enters, I spot my salvation just in time. “There she is,” I say, picking up and holding out to her what every eighteen-year-old girl simply can't get by without.

“Thanks.”

“You're welcome.”

We both stare at what she's holding.

“Don't think I'm not grateful,” she says.

“But?”

“But what is it?”

“It's a paper shredder,” I say.

“Oh.”

“You know. For shredding paper.”

“Okay.”

We both stare at the paper shredder.

“It's so people don't get a hold of your mail or anything with your personal information on it. Apparently, identity theft is a growing problem among the elderly.”

“The elderly.”

“Or the young. The young too. It's never too soon to start safe-guarding against identity theft.”

“Well, thanks.”