Today I Learned It Was You

by Edward Riche

  “Half a dat is people driving around in circles looking for a parking spot,” said Wally.

  “Around 10 percent of traffic,” said Planning Durnford, “at any time, is searching for a parking spot.”

  “What a horrible thought,” said Alessandra.

  “And while the roads” — Matt saw Wally was distracted and repeated himself — “while the roads, Wally, are at capacity, public transit is not. People won’t use transit because they should but because it makes life easier.”

  “Having more cars than parking spaces isn’t making my life easier.” Wally sounded smug, as if he knew, really knew, that he was winning the argument. “Your Worship.”

  “So can we please,” said Matt, “have the proposal redrafted? Make two separate applications — one for the office building and another for the parking garage.”

  The trio of staff attending the meeting nodded in such a way as to show their displeasure at having more to do.

  “You votin’ for or against the garage, Your Worship?” asked Wally.

  “I haven’t made up my mind but I think I’m leaning toward Councillor Cappello’s view.”

  Wally looked surprised.

  “You stipulate parking minimums in a town, Wally. Whether we like it or not this is becoming more and more a city, and I think that means moving to stipulated parking maximums.”

  “Wha?”

  “We put conditions on new development, saying they can only have a maximum number of parking spaces.”

  Wally stared at Matt for a moment and then shook his head, pitying Matt’s lack of understanding.

  “Next,” said Matt.

  Councillor Mercer stood.

  “I know you haven’t had much time to look at the documents I’ve tabled but I thought, why make such good news wait?”

  The chamber filled with the sound of those within shuffling through papers.

  “We have a sponsor for the park at Kavanagh Court. Jerome Bridger of Botwood Beverages has agreed to . . .”

  Scanning the papers in his hands, Matt saw who this was. So did Wally, who exclaimed “Jerry Juice!”

  “The same,” said Councillor Mercer. “Mr. Bridger will pay the shot, naming privileges on the park, of course, and the Jerjuice logo on some of the interpretation stations and any signage.”

  “Jerjuice?” Alessandra was not putting it together. “Is? Forgive my ignorance. It is . . . ?”

  “It’s a sports drink,” Wally enthused.

  “I don’t think,” Matt said, “that he is allowed to call Jerjuice a ‘sports drink’ anymore.”

  “Newfoundland berries all the same,” said Mercer.

  “Entrepreneur,” said Wally. “Great Newfoundland entrepreneur.”

  “Not allowed?” wondered Alessandra, still surveying the document.

  “The juices are caffeinated and sweetened so . . .” said Matt.

  “Delicious juice,” said Wally. “Youngsters loves it.”

  “A great Newfoundland product and brand,” said Matt, “no doubt about it. A rare and welcome success.”

  “And the park at Kavanagh Court will be” — Alessandra checked the document — “Bridger Park?”

  “Jerjuice Park, I believe,” said Mercer.

  Matt watched Alessandra cover her face with her hands.

  “These are our times,” said Matt, speaking only to Alessandra.

  “What is the logo?” asked Alessandra.

  “It’s like a big blueberry,” said Mercer. “It should have been included in the proposal I s’pose. Big Blueberry head. Like Jerry’s face, only on a blueberry.”

  “Das it,” said Wally.

  “Interpretation and signage?” asked Alessandra.

  “You know,” said Mercer, “signs explaining what the various plants in the park are, Play Safe, Pick Up after Your Pooch, that sort of thing.”

  “I’m against interpretation,” said Alessandra. “It limits experience.”

  “Wha?” said Wally.

  “I’m not getting into it,” Alessandra said as she stood, gathered up her papers from her desk, and left the room.

  Twenty-Nine

  Natalie had lived alone so long it felt strange to have a man in the house. A gentleman caller. Lloyd was a gentleman too, well-spoken, worldly. He wasn’t what she would call handsome; there was something worn about him and he’d lost his hair. She preferred a man with a full head of hair. Much preferred hair.

  When Natalie’s divorce from Derek was final, a year ago, she resolved to make new male friends. She would not become one of those bitter, man-hating, middle-aged exes. And her brief dalliance with the same sex and life in Vancouver was a disaster she wanted to never again recall. Actually, thinking about it, her divorce from Derek was finalized more than two years ago. Almost three. Derek’s hair was extravagant, thicker than even her own.

  “It’s an Australian shiraz,” she said, handing Lloyd a glass of wine.

  “Lovely,” he said.

  “I guess you know all about Californian wine, having lived there.”

  “Not really,” he said. “My brother is the wine snob. He could tell you all about it — grape varieties, different vineyards, the role of microbiology in terroir — bore you to tears. For me it comes down to red or white.”

  “My brother Andrew too, he’s a tremendous wine snob. Has, like, this enormous temperature-controlled cellar under his house in Rosedale. He doesn’t drink them as far I can tell. Looks at the labels and shows them off. You don’t mind lentil walnut loaf?”

  “Sounds perfectly delicious.”

  “If I’d known you were coming I would have made maybe a mushroom risotto. That’s something meat eaters like too.”

  “And a nice old bottle of Barbaresco,” said Lloyd.

  “That’s a sort of wine?”

  “Yes. From northern Italy.”

  “I’ve felt so much better since I went completely vegan,” Natalie said. “And not only physically — it has really cleared my head.”

  “Then it’s a good thing I’m eating it because my head desperately needs clearing.”

  “I’m sure that’s not true. You seem . . . I don’t know . . . you’re so quick, Lloyd. You know what to say right away.”

  “I work with words . . . or used to . . . so it appears that I’m sharper than I am. There’s a trick to it,” Lloyd said, rising from the couch. What was he doing, Natalie wondered. He went to the mantelpiece and picked up the picture of her and her family, that one in Georgian Bay. “These your kin?”

  “All but my oldest brother Walter. He was overseas. We . . . the family kept offices in London. The family business.”

  “It’s like . . . would you call this a lodge?”

  “Cottage.”

  “It’s . . . the deck alone . . . the woodwork is exquisite.”

  “We called it ‘the cottage.’ The original my grandfather built on the lake was much smaller. Rustic.”

  “My family had a cabin out Gander Bay way. Nothing more than a shack. Called it ‘the shack.’ We used to go up there trouting, my brother, my father, and I. I don’t even know what became of the place.”

  “You should go again sometime, see how it matches up with your memories.”

  “Yes. Yes, I should. You ever go back to Georgian Bay?” Lloyd said, waving the photo.

  “Rarely. I’d have to co-ordinate it with my siblings. It’s too complicated. I’m the baby of the family and you know how that goes, my brothers and sisters never take me seriously. And they are all, you know, Toronto establishment types. ”

  Lloyd nodded.

  “Go ahead make your Trustafarian comment,” she said.

  “What? No.”

  “I can’t ever say this because it always comes off all wrong, but . . . well . . . there is a terrible price for be
ing born into wealth.”

  “I don’t doubt it. I was never in so much trouble as when I was flush.”

  “It’s difficult to find your path in life when you don’t have to work. Do you get along with your brother?” she asked, wanting to talk about something other than her own family.

  “I do.”

  The timer on the stove sounded.

  “Why don’t you sit down,” she said.

  Thirty

  The lentil dish was flavourful but in want of moisture, sauce. Lloyd wished there was something less cloying than the Australian wine with which to wash it down. A whiskey to go with his after-supper coffee would be nice but he couldn’t ask. The coffee, from a stovetop espresso maker, was pleasing. Natalie came from the kitchen with her cup, some sort of herbal tea that smelled like soap and latex.

  Lloyd was seated, as before the meal, on the far end of the couch, pitched up against the arm. Before dinner Natalie sat on a chair opposite, pulled into the middle of the room to be closer. Now she sat on the couch, next to Lloyd.

  “I feel good about what happened today, with Harry,” she said, trying, he saw, to look into his eyes.

  “I didn’t know what to expect . . . but still, I didn’t expect that,” said Lloyd.

  “The problem now is going to be keeping well-wishers or the curious away. They would only alert the authorities that Harry has returned to the park. Would it be ethical of us to tell people he wasn’t there?”

  “Tell them how?”

  “Post something on Facebook. Say he’d . . . I don’t know . . . migrated! You know, down the Southern Shore or something. Are there rules about being truthful on Facebook, I mean laws?”

  “I’ve no idea about Facebook. And the Southern Shore is up not down. Labrador is down.”

  Natalie looked confused. “How can that be?”

  “It’s to do with sailing,” said Lloyd, wishing he’d not brought it up — or down. “And if Harry ever did go up the Shore he’d be found in someone’s freezer, without tags.”

  “I’m proud of you, Lloyd, proud that you are such a good friend to Harry, that you care so much.”

  “It nothing more than —”

  She was kissing him. She had flung her arms around his neck and pushed her lips to his. Her tongue was in his mouth and he reflexively met it with his own. He pulled her tight and she hoisted a leg, awkwardly, across his lap, kneeing, with a bass thud, the arm of the couch. Now her hands, both big mitts, were over his ears and he felt, briefly, like he was at the bottom of a swimming pool. He brought his hand up to search for her breast, finding it heavier, more substantial, than expected. She was almost a giant.

  “Oh, Lloyd.”

  He shimmied toward the centre of the couch to give her the room to get on top of him but she was heading in the same direction in order to lie down on her back.

  “Oh, Lloyd, sorry, watch out.”

  He pulled back to make space. Natalie let herself drop backwards, swinging her arms up to put them behind her head, and in doing so caught his chin with her elbow. Lloyd’s teeth came together with enough vigour to dislodge a sheet of something in his sinuses.

  “Sorry,” she said.

  “Let’s go to your bed, Natalie.”

  “Okay. Yes.”

  “I’m . . . out of practice,” he said.

  “I’ve never had much,” she said.

  “You were married.”

  “Even so.”

  “Like riding a bike,” he said.

  “Feels like being on a bike?” she said.

  “I meant you never forget how,” he said.

  “I broke my arm learning to ride a bike,” she said.

  Lloyd took her hand and pulled her up.

  “Lloyd, there is one thing I can’t . . . it’s not that . . . but there is one thing I can’t do, in bed, where I’m so strictly vegan, the animal protein, you understand . . .”

  Thirty-One

  She was relieved Lloyd was taking charge. She’d made the first move believing she wanted to be the assertive one, the guide, but now, she thought, that leading role would be in some other aspect of their evolving relationship.

  He was too old for her. How old was he? Was Lloyd fifty? She wasn’t yet thirty-five. She could not do this.

  They were scarcely across the threshold of her bedroom when he was out of his shirt. She thought that in every other instance of lovemaking, hitherto in her life, the man had taken off her shirt first and left the undoing of his buttons until she was standing naked before him.

  Was it because he was bald she’d imagined him hairless? In the faint light she saw his wide chest was covered in a pelt. There was something of the beast about him, of a boar or a bear. Her flush was becoming febrile. She felt something purr. No longer the gentleman, Lloyd put her roughly on the bed. He pounced on and pinned her. No, it was wolf! Her fingers splayed as wide as they could and she could still not measure his back. He seemed bigger now, out of his clothes, and heavy. He was too old for her, but Natalie liked a big man.

  Thirty-Two

  Soon after puberty, in a single moment of a junior high school history class, seeing and appreciating, for the first time, Carolyn Bungay’s voluptuousness, exactly as Gavrilo Princip put a bullet in Archduke Franz Ferdinard of Austria, Lloyd’s sexual urges emerged in full. All the lights came on at once, an entire arena was illuminated by the wattage. Now, all these years later, they’d barely dimmed. He’d assumed, wished even, they would fade with age but it hadn’t happened, even with the cobalt glow of mortality staining his horizon. The faintest touch and Lloyd was on bust.

  Natalie had seemed reticent as they stood by the bed but was now meeting his every thrust with drenched abandon. Noises, gurgles, growls were coming from her; she was clawing at him and now clicking like . . . like what? It was like a cat stalking a bird! Jaysus, she was snarling and, pulling herself up by his shoulders, making to bite his face.

  He knew this, he knew she was mad — all the signs were there. What was he doing? She howled and snapped again, never ceasing her pelvic reaching. He withdrew, took her by the calves and flipped her over on to her belly; he grabbed her hips and hauled her up to where he could take her from behind. There was something, marks, not symbols or text but a picture or even a map, running between the deep twinned dimples that marked the line where her backside began to bloom. It was a tattoo. Natalie was shaking and quaking at his pounding and Lloyd couldn’t make it out. Was it a caterpillar? It was ribbed, laddered, darker at one end, pointed at the other? Was it a feather? Yes, it was feather. It was a tattoo of an eagle feather.

  Thirty-Three

  It was “Eugene”; Eugene, smiling at Inspector Gary Mackenzie, now of the Royal Newfoundland Constabulary, Eugene standing and waiting for Gary next to the shelves of canned vegetables. Peas and carrots. Corn on the cob in tins, something Gary had never seen before moving to Newfoundland. Eugene no-last-name-given, his “liaison” from the Canadian Security Intelligence Service during the G20 operation in Toronto was waiting, unannounced, for Gary, in an aisle of the Sobeys supermarket on Ropewalk Lane.

  Eugene looked into Gary’s cart at 1% milk, three lamb chops, a mesh bag of onions, a red pepper, and some forlorn lettuce.

  “Eating healthy, Inspector Mackenzie.”

  “This is not a coincidence.”

  “I’m here about your letter. No one wants to talk about this stuff on the phone.”

  “Really?”

  “Calls are secure but there would be a record of the call itself.”

  “Of course.”

  “Keep shopping,” Eugene instructed. He was nondescript, wore a navy blue windbreaker, tan slacks, Clark slip-ons with thick soles. Thinning hair, in an unfortunate cut, same British brown of his shoes, livid bags under eyes set too far apart, half an inch under six feet. Not unfuckable but forgettable.

/>   “I’m sorry, you know,” Gary said, pushing his cart on.

  “About choosing to move to Newfoundland? You should be sorry. Back-of-beyond. Don’t know why you insisted. These problems, the security breaches, it’s almost inevitable in a place like this. People have nothing to talk about so they find stuff.”

  “No, not about that, about . . . about, back at the G20, not identifying any of the anarchist leadership, just nabbing the small fry.”

  Eugene waved off Gary’s concern.

  “Anarchist leadership . . . it’s fluid, right? It’s a grey area. Otherwise the staging was a complete success. Much was learned. Systems were tested and, for the most part, responded well. And a lot of valuable relationships were established. Despite some uniforms cracking heads, in the context of policing and crowd management in Toronto, it was a positive outcome. People got what they paid for.”

  Gary thought he had heard something like a suspect’s rehearsed alibi in Eugene’s words.

  “I’m glad. I never really knew . . . the larger picture,” Gary said.

  “You want ketchup?” Eugene was holding up a large soft plastic bottle of the store brand.

  “I’m good.”

  “Ever eat ketchup sandwiches when you were a kid?”

  “Yes.”

  “Me too. Loved them.” Eugene put the bottle back, precisely from where he’d taken it. “So, you wanna move house?”

  “I understand if it’s a problem.”

  “I didn’t fly down here to Newfie to refuse the request.”

  “What are my options?”

  “We have only one.”

  “It is?”

  “Ever heard of the company Dalton Monitor?”

  “No.”

  “They ran a lot of the G20 operation. Consulting. They know all about your work.”

  “Consulting?”

  “The details are boring. It was a private-public partnership. Dalton Monitor has a corporate campus in Embustero, Arizona. Do you know Arizona at all?”