by Shari Lapena
She went downstairs, banging the laundry hamper against the wall and singing loudly as she went. Once she’d got the laundry going, she sat down at the computer. She was well into her research when the phone rang. She ran upstairs to the kitchen.
It was Ellen. “Hi, Audrey.”
“Hi,” Audrey said automatically, hardly registering the voice on the line because she’d pulled up some truly disturbing stuff on the Internet.
“You want to go out for lunch today?”
Suddenly Audrey remembered who she was talking to, remembered that Ellen had been the source of the pills under Dylan’s mattress. “Sure,” she said tartly. “That’s a great idea.”
• • •
HAROLD WAS STUDYING his spider, his back to the neglected files on his desk.
He was growing quite attached to his spider. He’d been telling everyone in the lunchroom about it. Harold had noticed early on that the web wasn’t catching any flies. He’d wondered how long a spider could go without food. Harold had taken to looking around his office and the lunchroom for dead flies to put in his spider’s web, but the pickings were slim. Then he’d remembered the light fixtures! All he’d had to do was bring a screw driver from home and stand on a chair and open them up. There were all kinds of bug corpses in there. His spider would grow fat.
Now Harold was carefully dropping into the web a couple of dead flies he’d just recovered from the overhead light in the front lobby, unfazed by the dubious looks the receptionist had given him.
“Hey, Harold,” Tom said.
The only thing more interesting to Harold than the spider right now was his best friend Tom. He sat up and exclaimed, “Tom! I’m so glad you’re here! I’ll just get the door.”
He got up hastily and closed the door to his office—he certainly didn’t want anyone overhearing them. He already had the Harold Walker Action Plan.
“How are you, Harold?”
“Fine. I’m fine,” Harold said. “Well, you know, I’m okay.”
After that, there didn’t seem to be much to say. “Come take a look at this,” Harold said, a little desperately—he didn’t want Tom to leave—and indicated the spider weaving its web. Together they watched the spider work. At least Harold assumed Tom was there beside him, watching the spider. They were men, and having something else to focus on made talking easier.
“You know,” Harold said after a while, “Audrey’s pretty freaked out.”
“I bet,” Tom said, right beside him.
“We had quite a scare last night.”
“Right,” Tom said.
“Do you have any idea who that was?” Harold asked.
“Just some kid, hanging around. Trying to get a rise out of you. He’s harmless.”
“Oh. That’s good.” After a while Harold ventured, “Any idea how I can get rid of him?”
“I wish I could help you, Harold, but I really don’t know what to suggest. I’m pretty new here myself. Nobody here seems to answer to anybody.”
Crestfallen, Harold changed the subject. “Any word on your test results yet?”
“No—still waiting.”
They watched as the spider deftly traversed its web to investigate the newly arrived fly corpses.
“Tom,” Harold said, and he didn’t know where he found the courage, but it needed to be said, “We’re still friends, right?”
“Sure.”
“Why did we stop getting together, anyway?”
“Oh, you know, things get in the way.”
“What things?”
“Maybe you’d better talk to Audrey.”
Harold thought Tom meant it was because, being men, they’d left all the social arrangements to the women, so Harold said, “I wish we’d made more of an effort, though.”
• • •
“YOU LOOK LIKE hell,” Ellen said in a kindly way, sitting down across from Audrey in a booth at Il Fornello on the Danforth. She was late, but within reasonably acceptable limits, so by tacit agreement neither one of them mentioned it.
“Would you like to know why?” Audrey said.
“Of course.”
Ellen, in contrast, looked great, and Audrey wondered if Ellen had had work done that she hadn’t told her about. Botox, maybe. Audrey wouldn’t put it past her.
“Last time we talked, I told you that I’d found those pills in Dylan’s room. Remember?”
Ellen nodded, her face taking on a pall of sympathy. Oh, save it, Audrey thought. “Guess where those pills came from?” Audrey whispered conspiratorially, deliberately drawing her in. Ellen clearly had no idea. “Your bedroom!” she announced, no trace of a whisper.
Ellen paled. She didn’t even try to deny it. Audrey acted as if she had, though. “Don’t try to deny it—Dylan told me everything!” She leaned forward over the table between them and practically hissed, “Dylan got them from Terry, who stole them out of your dresser drawer.”
Ellen started to cry. Big tears welled up and ran down her cheeks, taking her mascara with them. She looked down and fumbled in her purse for a Kleenex.
Relentless, Audrey said, “And you sat in my kitchen and pretended you hardly even knew what ecstasy was! How could you?”
“Oh, get off your high horse would you!” Ellen snapped back. Now Audrey was taken by surprise.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“You’re so perfect! The perfect housewife with the perfect marriage and the perfect kids. You have no idea!”
Audrey had never considered that she might be the object of—was that envy? Was that possible? Her family—perfect! What an idea! She spent all her time just trying to keep their heads above water. She was astonished that someone might see them that way.
“You don’t know what it’s like—being divorced, the kids blaming you all the time—dating. It’s hell.”
Audrey’s sympathy was aroused. After all, Ellen was her best friend, she was genuinely upset, and really, when you looked at it that way, Audrey supposed she could afford to be a little generous.
She handed Ellen a Kleenex packet from her own handbag. “I’m sorry,” Audrey said.
“Me too.”
“It’s such a shock. I had no idea you did drugs.”
“I don’t! Not really. I only tried it once. I was seeing this man, and— anyway, long story short, he turned out to be an absolute jerk, and I wanted to get rid of them, but I was afraid to flush them down the toilet because you know everything goes into the drinking water supply that way, and I haven’t had time to go to the hazardous waste depot—”
“What do you mean, it goes into the drinking water supply?”
“Everything you flush goes into the water supply,” Ellen assured her. “Didn’t you know?”
Audrey could hardly imagine it—this was horrifying.
“It’s all treated, but still.”
Just like that, they were friends again.
“Being married isn’t everything it’s cracked up to be,” Audrey said, once their food arrived—two plates of spicy agnolotti. Now it was Audrey’s turn to make a play for sympathy. “For instance, a couple of days ago I had to pick Harold up from the police station.”
Ellen’s eyebrows shot up, and Audrey told her all about it.
“You have to get him to see somebody,” Ellen said.
“He’s seeing a philosopher.”
“A philosopher? What the hell good is that going to do?”
“I don’t know,” Audrey said, discouraged. “And anyway, you haven’t heard everything yet.” Then she spilled out all her troubles— including the poltergeist but not the paternity test—while Ellen looked more and more appalled.
“Maybe you need one of those exorcists to come to your house,” Ellen blurted out.
At this, Audrey waved their server over and ordered them each another glass of wine.
After lunch, Audrey said goodbye to Ellen and went out and bought a Ouija board. She’d been reading up on Ouija boards on the Internet. Seeing things
fly across the room had made her a believer. Also, the Internet had assured her she wasn’t a victim of hallucination.
She couldn’t count on Harold getting the upper hand here. Harold seemed to be utterly without resources as far as dealing with the dead went, even given his unusual—and entirely surprising—past. She’d had absolutely no idea. That Harold should have such a dark secret! You think you know somebody.
She felt so foolish buying the Ouija board that she felt compelled to explain to the completely uninterested sales clerk—speaking very carefully, because she’d had a couple of glasses of wine at lunch—that it was a gift for her nephews. Audrey was optimistic enough to think that if she could actually communicate with these spirits through the Ouija board, perhaps she could reason with them and get them to leave.
Also, she wouldn’t mind talking to Harold’s mother about a few things.
Later in the afternoon, Audrey was sitting on the floor in the living room reading the instructions that came with the Ouija board, when Harold called from the office. He told her he’d been talking to Tom.
Audrey felt her eyes go wide. “You’ve been talking to Tom?” Her voice had a strangled, high-pitched quality. “About what?”
“Nothing, really. He says he’s waiting for some test results.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Harold had gradually begun to take a greater role in rehabilitating his credit history. Partly, this was because of Audrey’s insistence, but once he started, he found it interesting. He found himself living vicariously through the person who had stolen his identity. Harold would sit at his desk in his office, or at the kitchen table at home, and study the records of transactions made in his name, and imagine for a moment that he himself had bought these things, had done these things. He was curious—curious!—about what his doppelganger had done with the huge chunk of cash he’d raised on the house, for there was no record of what had been done with that money. Here Harold’s inexperienced imagination tugged at the leash. He actually imagined himself in Paris with the Folies Bergère (drinking champagne out of a dancing girl’s shoe) and gambling with movie stars at the Bellagio in Vegas—as he fed his own legitimate and far more pedestrian bills through the shredder.
Harold had also begun to notice other things that he would normally ignore. For example, today, after his chat with Tom over the spider, he’d discovered, with the help of a fitness magazine someone had left in the lunchroom, that if he ate one hundred fewer calories a day, he would lose just over ten pounds in one year. That was without exercise!
If he added exercise—say, a walk around the block after dinner, rain or shine—that might be another hundred calories a day, for another ten pounds in a year. It was astonishing to him that such a small change could have such a significant result over time. But perhaps he was fooling himself. Perhaps he’d really miss those hundred calories. But perhaps not. Maybe if he switched some of his foods to the low fat variety, he wouldn’t even notice.
On reflection, however, he decided that a walk every day would not be such a small thing. It would be a change in his routine. It would take energy that he might not have. It would take resolve in bad weather. He decided to forget the walk.
The hundred calories though—he thought he could do that!
When he got home from work, he asked Audrey if she could take one hundred calories off his diet every day, and could she do it in such a way that he didn’t even notice?
Audrey looked at him. She was wondering whether Tom was going to tell Harold about their affair; she was worried about who her kid’s father was; she was freaked out about dead people smashing her good china—and he wanted to know if she could shave a hundred calories a day off his diet in such a way that he didn’t even notice!
“Sure,” she said, tossing a head of cauliflower onto the chopping board and slamming the refrigerator door. “I can do that for you.” She washed and then started to vigorously chop the cauliflower into little pieces and dropped them into the pot of boiling water. “We can start tonight. No glass of milk before bed.” This was almost a little cruel.
Harold balked. “But—”
“But what?”
“I’d notice that though,” Harold said, a little plaintively. “I like my glass of milk before bed.”
“Fine,” Audrey snapped, exasperated. “I’ll think of something else.”
• • •
LATER THAT NIGHT after supper, the boys went downstairs to watch TV and Harold returned to his newspaper in the living room while Audrey cleaned up the kitchen and wondered if there was anything handy in the kitchen cupboards that she could use to sabotage the TV. She was just rinsing out the J-Cloth and hanging it over the faucet when she heard a knock at the front door. Not Mrs. Kushner, this time; the knock had too much authority behind it.
Audrey hurried to the door. Standing on the porch was a dark-skinned young man in a tatty ski jacket, open over a cheap polyester shirt and dress pants. He wore running shoes, which looked terrible with the cheap dress pants. He obviously had no one to take care of him properly, and for a moment Audrey’s sympathy was aroused. She would never let one of her sons go out dressed like that.
“Is Harold Walker at home?” the young man asked, his entire manner expressing a brazen confidence his dress wouldn’t lead her to expect. Audrey’s sympathy vaporized; there was something vaguely threatening about him.
“Who’s asking?” Harold hollered from the living room.
Audrey noticed with distaste the stale smell of cigarettes on the young man’s breath as he leaned forward, raised his voice, and said, “Harold Walker?”
“Who the hell are you?” Harold said, getting up out of his chair and coming over to the door.
“I’m your friendly neighbourhood process server. Here.” He tried to hand Harold a large manila envelope which Harold instinctively refused to touch. The younger man held it out briefly and when Harold wouldn’t take it, let it drop to the floor with a smack and said, “Have a good evening.”
Speechlessly, Harold and Audrey watched him go down their front walk and climb into an old, beat-up car and peel off down the street. One of his rear lights was out.
Harold looked in alarm at the manila envelope on the floor as if he thought it might jump up and bite him in the groin.
“Open it,” Audrey said, her voice tense.
But Harold didn’t move, and finally Audrey bent down and retrieved the envelope. She ripped it open and pulled out the contents. Heads together, they read:
ONTARIO
SUPERIOR COURT OF JUSTICE
• • •
BETWEEN:
ERASMO BEILFUSS
Plaintiff
and
JOHN WALKER AND HAROLD WALKER
Defendants
STATEMENT OF CLAIM
Harold bellowed, “John, get your ass up here!”
Grabbing the pages from Audrey and skimming for the gist of it, Harold soon grasped three salient facts: he was being sued by the taxi driver John had rear-ended; he was being sued for a million dollars (general pecuniary and non-pecuniary damages in the amount of $900,000.00, and special damages in the amount of $100,000.00); and he had to defend the lawsuit within twenty days—or judgment might be given against him. Harold felt an awful sickness beginning in the pit of his stomach, somewhere up under his lungs.
John arrived in the living room, immediately looking like he wanted to turn tail and run.
“You’ll never guess,” Harold said, looking at him, “what I have here.”
John glanced nervously at his mother, but she looked like a scared rabbit who wanted to bolt too. Apprehensively, he looked back at his dad.
“We’re being sued,” Harold said, “for a million dollars.” He glared at John, waiting for a reaction. When he didn’t get one, he shouted, “By that goddamned taxi driver!”
John felt like he was going to be sick. This was serious, adult, life-altering stuff, and he was nowhere near ready.
Harold bega
n to read out loud: “As to the Defendant operator, John Walker, he failed to keep the Walker vehicle under proper control; he failed to exercise due care and skill in the management of the Defendant’s vehicle; he failed to anticipate the demands of the roadway; his faculties of perception, control and/or self-command were adversely affected by the consumption of alcohol, drugs (prescription or otherwise), stress and/or fatigue; he was an incompetent driver lacking in skill; he had the opportunity to avoid the accident but failed to do so; he failed to take reasonable care in the circumstances; he was untrained in the proper use of a motor vehicle; he unreasonably placed the Plaintiff in a situation of danger; he allowed himself to be distracted by reason of his use of audio devices in the Walker vehicle, his use of mobile communication devices in the Walker vehicle, his use of tobacco in the Walker vehicle, his adjustment of various instruments in the Walker vehicle, his preoccupation with personal issues unrelated to the safe operation of the Walker vehicle; he failed to make use of available prescription eyewear; he failed to obey the provisions of the Highway Traffic Act; and he failed to warn the Plaintiff of the impending collision, which in fact occurred.”
By now Harold’s voice, ringing with disbelief, had climbed higher and higher until it was up somewhere around the ceiling, and his words rained down on all of them without mercy.
“As to the Defendant owner, Harold Walker, he permitted the Defendant operator to operate the Walker vehicle when he knew or ought to have known that the Defendant operator was an incompetent driver lacking in reasonable skill and self-command—”
“I don’t believe this!” Harold raged in an aside.
“—he failed to ensure that the brakes, signals, steering mechanisms and/or other equipment on the Walker vehicle were in proper working order; he negligently entrusted the vehicle to the Defendant operator when he knew or ought to have known that the Defendant operator had an extensive record of driving convictions—”
