It began to rain, a fine spray. I liked the sensation on my face. It was cooling, cleansing, as earlier that day something else had felt cleansing. What was it? Ah, yes, the notion of white tablecloths. Yes, there had been a purpose to that too—to get me out of the house, to get me to a certain restaurant at a certain time so that I might encounter Raissa. It had been a moment of clairvoyance. I had had them before, even as a child. That time my father broke his leg. The night a neighbour killed his wife. Or when my aunt Tullie called from California to surprise me on my ninth birthday, and I’d picked up the phone and said, “Aunt Tullie, where’s my present?” By the end even my mother was a believer. She asked me once, “What’s going to happen to me?”
“Nothing,” I said. And I was right, you see. Nothing did.
When I had these moments, it wasn’t at all like in the movies, where one appears to fall into a trance, sweat on the brow, murderous headaches, Vaseline on the lens, ce genre de connerie. Actually, it’s quite a banal event; it’s the sensation that’s interesting. You see what’s going to happen and it feels, in your body, as if you’re remembering something. And not something very important either, more like where you left a book or an old telephone number.
It’s also true that I never count the times I’m wrong. Those I write off as … Well, let me put it this way: you can’t go looking for these things; they have to come in through the side door. When you go looking—when, as my gambling friends say, you chase the pooch—that’s when you get things wrong. Wishful thinking has its own feel; you can mistake it for the real thing. No, it’s got to just happen, which I know is uncharacteristic language for an academic, but there it is. Why, only the other day I’d had the impression of Emma’s thoughts moving through my house like a group of frumpy women. It was as if they were on some sort of outing, a museum tour perhaps, these drab figures in shapeless coats going through my kitchen, picking up things, examining spice jars, commenting on cutlery, even on my French saucers (they were intrigued by them). They were telling me something, I knew that, but I couldn’t decipher it. I tried too hard, I think, I was too obvious in my applications. Finally I knew that I had to glance away, just like that, I had to look away and concentrate on something else; and then, when I’d all but forgotten, when I had released my grip, I would suddenly understand, as if it had been whispered into my ear, what the grey women were saying.
Which brings me, involuntarily, back to that time when Emma moved out, the day of the clinking hangers. My goodness, not that again, I can hear you saying, and you’re right. But bear with me. One final revelation. The truth is, I’ve never told anyone this, except Emma once, but by then her trajectory out of my life had acquired such momentum I’m not sure it even registered.
In those last two or three weeks she had arrived at some kind of resolution, that resolution being, forgive the jargon, that happiness is essentially one’s own job, so to speak; and so the adolescent gloom which had hung over the house, rather like that of a teenager who has been denied permission for a weekend sleepover, lifted and there was again a freshness, a lightness to our life. And it was in the midst of this sunshine that she announced on that Sunday morning (why always on a Sunday?) that she was moving out. I always describe it as a shock, a surprise, which on a conscious level it was. But a few nights before—and a few nights before that—I had awoken at precisely four o’clock in the morning. Standing in front of the toilet, trying to pee, I had experienced a kind of horror, a premonition that something terrible was going to happen. I recall staring into the mirror and wondering, what is it? What is it? I thought perhaps I was going to be fired from my job or perish in a car accident. It never crossed my mind, never, not once, that it was about Emma, that she was going to leave me. One spends one’s life preparing for tragedies that never happen; the real shockers, I now understand, the real knifings, always come at close range.
But you see, I knew something, as I did with the grey ladies in my kitchen, because when she finally made the quivering announcement that Sunday morning, I can’t live here any more, I had a feeling, not of shock or surprise, but rather as if I were again remembering something. Suddenly I saw precisely what they had been pointing to, those night shivers at four in the morning. The roads were clear, so to speak, and the caraan got through.
Soon enough I was standing opposite the Village Health Spa. It glowed among the freshly budding trees like a sunken ship, its cabin still alight.
“Ah yes,” I said in tones of bemused statesmanship, for I was again addressing the same audience that a drunk sometimes imagines is tailing him about town (how odd they have so little else to do). I stepped lightly off the sidewalk and crossed over to the other side of the street. (This provoked a small gasp of disapproval from the gallery. I could hear them stirring in their seats.)
Now look here, I protested, not a trace of a stagger, pas même un soupçon. I thrust my hands into my pockets. Trust me, my posture said, just a bit of fun and I’m off.
I mounted the curb and paused for a second, amused, open-minded, even a bit mischievous, as if I had just stumbled upon a student prank. A good sport. I had the sensation of pouting my lips as a Frenchman might seconds before he disagrees, or as you might prepare to kiss a dog. Rocking ever so slightly on the balls of my feet, I again heard the warning rumble of the cheap theatrical, Julius Caesar waving away the too insistent petitioner, but they were one and the same now, the stuffy spectators, the grumbling aluminum siding; they were emissaries from a more tentative world.
Playfully now (how sober I felt, how lucid), I peeked in the front window. A man in an appalling shirt sat behind the reception desk. With his salt-and-pepper hair he could have been a lawyer, but there was something of the gutter to him, something that implied a capacity for quick violence. And that shirt, green with red melons on it, the kind of thing a pimp might wear. I tapped at the window. He turned and, squinting in my direction, rose athletically and disappeared from view. A few seconds later I heard the front door open.
“Can I help you?” he asked.
“I wanted to see if you’re open.”
“Yeah, well, that’s what the front door is for.”
He went back inside and I followed him.
“I’m looking for someone,” I said.
He nodded. Not an especially friendly nod. He appeared to be feeling along the inside of his teeth for a gap in which to rest the tip of his tongue.
“Does Passion still work here?”
He nodded. “She’s busy.”
“Busy for the night or busy for now?”
“Don’t know.”
“Should I wait?”
“That’s up to you, sir.”
Sir. There was something especially uninviting about the way he said it, as if an attack dog had been force-fed a few tricks of civilization, a ritual he was compelled to go through before being permitted his natural savagery. It struck me he’d learned it from the police, that tone of theirs when, looking about the inside of your car with a flashlight, they suddenly request you to step out. “Would you mind stepping out of the car, sir?” I wondered if he’d been in prison and looked down at his forearms for tattoos. But they were concealed by the sleeves of his dreadful shirt.
“Waiting will be fine,” I said.
“That’ll be thirty-five dollars then.”
“For how long?”
“Half-hour.”
“Do you want it now?”
“Yep.”
“Not after?”
“House rules. Customers pay up front.”
“I wonder why that is.”
No response. Then, “So, what do you want to do here?” he asked.
I reached for my wallet. “Would cash be all right?”
“No, I want it in fucking cherries,” he said.
I was taken aback by the sheer venom in his voice. But I was also just drunk enough to presume a certain customer impunity and said with some dignity, “One forgets sometimes that there are those people i
n the world who mistake politeness for weakness.”
He hadn’t the foggiest notion what I was talking about and it occurred to me that maybe he could smell the alcohol on me. In which case I could see very swiftly the portrait forming in his head, that of a rather sad-sack middle-aged man who, after a few bottles of wine, has screwed up the courage to buy what he could never have otherwise. Foolish as it sounds, it pricked my vanity that he might think that of me. Why would I care? I don’t know. Only the other day I found myself bragging to an undergraduate about a book I’d published in my early twenties, the aftermath of which left me scratching my head with consternation. A certain hot shame dogged my footsteps for the next few hours. Why had I bothered? Surely by this point in my life I should have, I don’t know, outgrown all that. Or at least the need for it. What was worse was that midway through my transparent crowing I had sensed that the undergraduate knew exactly what I was doing and his co-operative nods and little gasps of pretend surprise were entirely for my benefit, as if somehow he were looking after me.
Still, it annoyed me. I placed forty dollars on the counter. He put the bills thoughtfully in his shirt pocket.
“Casual accounting system you have here,” I said. “Tell me, what percentage do the girls get?”
He gave his head a small shake, as if he were clearing it, which gave me to understand that it wasn’t the question that confused him but rather the notion that it might be any of my business.
“Uh?” he said, widening his eyes, as if he had perhaps misheard me and was giving me the benefit of the doubt.
I repeated the question, my tone implying, I know you’re a moron, so I’ll go slowly. “How much do the girls get to keep of this?”
“All of it,” he said.
“Oh,” I said quite cheerfully, “that’s nice. Can I have my change, please?”
“Sorry?”
“Five dollars. You owe me five dollars.”
“Don’t have it right now. You’ll have to wait.”
“What for?”
“I’ll get it from another customer.”
I looked around the deserted room. “No, I think I’d like my change now, please.”
“I can’t give it to you.”
“Then I’ll have to cancel the transaction.”
He made no attempt to return the money, and in the tense silence I could see he was used to moments like this. And the thought crossed my mind, a man like this has punched people in the face before. And been punched. It’s no big deal. I could feel my heart starting to pound. He went into the back and returned a few moments later with a five-dollar bill.
“That’s very kind of you,” I said with the fake friendliness one feels toward someone who has unnerved you. “Didn’t mean to put you out.”
“No problem,” he said. It sounded as if he were warming up. Perhaps I’d misjudged him. Long hours, difficult clientele. Yes, I could see now how one might become a trifle brusque.
“And what’s your name?” I said.
He paused for a second and you could see him pick it out of the air. “Donny,” he said.
“A bit slow this time of year, isn’t it … Donny?” I remarked. “It must be the rain. Canadians don’t mind being cold, but they hate getting wet.”
I repeated this little morsel of drivel as if I were saying it for the first time. It was in fact the hundredth time I’d remounted it, this rain-or-shine device to thaw unpleasant taxi drivers. But it failed to charm tonight. Donny was one of those creatures who feel no compulsion to smile at the jokes of others, a quality of coldness that chills me to this day.
“That a fact?”
“That is indeed a fact.”
“So you want to go back or wait up here?” he asked, his interest in me at an end.
I thought for a second while his tongue again sought its niche.
“I’ll wait in the back, Donny.”
He led me down the hall, past a closed grey door where I heard muffled voices, a woman’s laugh. It was Passion. He stopped in front of the second room.
“Knock yourself out,” he said.
I wondered if I was supposed to tip him.
C H A P T E R 12
I closed the door behind me and sat down on the massage table. You could touch the wall on either side. Not enough room to swing a cat, but then again, why would one? The walls were a rich olive colour, surprisingly tasteful. A pair of pale cloth slippers peeked from beneath the table. The usual small nightstand in the corner, with its usual accoutrements, a box of Kleenex, baby oil, a candle, a clock radio, a box of surgical gloves for those clients in need of proctology. I peered into the wastepaper basket. It was filled nearly to the brim with squashed-up balls of tissue and from it, wafting upwards, came that slightly salty whiff one gets sometimes from certain trees in early spring, the smell of semen. How disgusting, I thought, how truly repellent in their details are the sexual habits of others.
I heard a door close. A man’s chesty, self-assured laugh; the contentment of the freshly ejaculated. Cigar smoke, the voice retreating down the hall, then halting. Donny telling Passion she had a customer. The man’s voice started back in, the tone different now, a winding-it-up voice. Donny must have given him “the look,” let him know his time was up. Sir.
I was also aware that I had now come too far to turn back. There was no way out of the building except through the front foyer. No rear exit. A lapse in fire regulations perhaps; Donny would be on it first light for sure. I stood up quickly and faced the wall, my back to the door, pretending to examine a calendar for German chocolates. I stayed like that for I don’t know how long, a minute maybe. She must have been washing her hands. Then very faintly there came a tapping of small knuckles on the door, and it opened.
“Good evening,” Passion said brightly.
I turned around. The smile fell from her face.
“Hello, Passion.”
“Oh, it’s you,” she said. Only a quick downward glance revealed the slightest uneasiness. In an instant she returned her eyes to mine like matching gun barrels. “I haven’t seen you for a while.”
“That’s right,” I said with pleasant surprise, as if I’d just noticed. I wasn’t entirely sure how long to let these theatrics go on, but I was curiously aware that it required a certain effort on my part to remember that it was not I who had been in the wrong. It is a great skill of the psychopathic, I reflected, to make the offended party feel culpable.
“It has been a while,” I said. Here I frowned and looked off toward the top corner of the room, calculating, it seemed, the months since our last encounter. I sat back down on the table. “How’s school? You were studying to be a customs agent, as I recall.”
“Oh that,” she said. “I don’t do that any more. Couldn’t find the time.”
“You’re pretty busy now, are you?”
“Busy enough. And you? You still teaching?”
“Yes. Still teaching. Not much new to report there, I’m afraid.”
She changed gears. “Okay, I’ll give you a couple of minutes to get ready and then I’ll come back. You like the oil, right?” This in the tones of a busy travel agent.
“Come to think of it, I do have something to report, Passion.”
She stopped in the doorway.
“But you probably already know what that is,” I continued. She said nothing.
“What it is I have to report,” I prodded her gently.
“No. What would that be?”
“Why, that would be you, Passion.”
Careful pause. Always a chance one misunderstood. “Come again,” she said with a trace of amused confusion. Brow furrowed. “I’m going to report you.”
“I’m not following.”
“I’m going to report you to the police.”
Like a sign on a roadside inn, which, after years of hanging by a single rivet, has picked that very second to crash to the ground, her bemused disguise fell the rest of the way off.
“Fuck off.”
&
nbsp; “Okay. I’ll do that,” I said briskly. “So you just hang about here for, I don’t know, ten or fifteen minutes, and watch what happens.” I stood up.
“Just a minute. Just a minute,” she said. She stood in the doorway with her hands up. “What do you want?”
“I want my things returned.”
“I don’t have them.”
“Where are they?”
“At a friend’s. I don’t even know if he’s still got them.”
How banal. And how obvious. I felt a wash of shame roll over me. My vanity, my stupid, craven, naive vanity. Of course it wasn’t the first time she’d been to a client’s house. This was a well-lubricated scam.
“Well, you better get on the phone.” She seemed not to hear me. I raised my voice. “I said you better get on the phone—”
She shushed me.
“Is that your boyfriend out there?” I asked, referring to the thug in the blazing shirt.
“Don’t get him back here,” she said in a tone that alerted me.
“Okay then, we’ll leave Donny out of it. Let me put it this way: I want my things back by noon tomorrow or I’m calling the police and they’ll come here and they’ll haul you—and Donny—away. Do you understand?”
She didn’t answer.
“Do you understand?”
“Keep your voice down, I’m warning you.”
I had the sudden, alarming sensation that I was out of my depth.
Sparrow Nights (v5) (epub) Page 13
