The Borrowman Cell

by Ingrid Betz

  It was ten to seven when he turned the key in his front door and stepped into the hall, bearing a paper bag from the liquor commission; one he’d been lucky enough to find open late.

  “Darlene?”

  He shrugged off his blazer and hung it in the closet, careful to remove the envelope first. Out of habit he glanced in the hall mirror and smoothed his thinning hair forward over his forehead in the way he knew Darlene found attractive.

  “You home, Darla?” he called, using his pet name for her as he started along the gleaming hall floor to the kitchen. The house answered with that peculiar silence reserved for human absence and he felt the level of his excitement drop.

  Darlene was not in the kitchen and he doubted if she’d been home since morning. The counters were spotless. There was no evidence to suggest that she’d eaten supper; certainly she hadn’t left anything for him. Although these days he knew better than to expect it.

  Maybe he could take her out for dinner when she got in. They’d go somewhere special, since he was wearing a dress shirt and tie, and that’s when he’d show her the cheque. He put the wine he’d bought in the fridge—they could drink it later to celebrate—and opened a beer and a bag of chips to tide him over. Wandering into the living room, he remembered the Blue Jays were playing Boston tonight and switched on the Sports channel.

  Darlene let herself into the house shortly after two a.m. Her hair was down around her shoulders, her high-heeled shoes dangled from one hand, and she’d done up the buttons of her blouse the wrong way. Light spilled from the living room and she caught the rise and fall of men’s voices. Tiptoeing to the open door, she peered inside. Peter lay sprawled on the sofa. Flickering across the television screen was an old Columbo.

  Peter’s head was tipped back against the cushions and he was snoring with his mouth open. Chip crumbs dotted his shirt-front and the fingers of one hand clutched loosely at an envelope. Beside him on the end table stood a couple of beer cans. Making rings on the polished surface, because typically he hadn’t bothered to use a coaster even though they were stacked in full sight.

  With a hiss of fury, Darlene plucked the envelope out of his hand, pushed it under the cans to soak up the moisture, and switched off the lamp and the television.

  16.

  THE VIOLINS GRATED ON HER NERVES. She should never have agreed to come; Francine had caught her in a moment of weakness. Wolf had brought a CD of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons as a housewarming gift for his hosts and the rollicking gallop of horses being ridden to the hunt filled the room. Verena stole a glance at her watch and wondered how soon she could make her excuses and leave.

  “Great to be able to listen to Vivaldi with nobody complaining,” Wolf was saying. “That’s the drawback of sharing a flat with two other guys.”

  “Tell me about it,” said Alain, drawing on his pipe. His own university days were not so far in the past.

  “Plus there’s the old geezer who lives downstairs. Always pounding on the ceiling with his cane. One night he actually called the police.”

  “Because of Vivaldi?”

  Wolf laughed. “Actually that time we were playing Gord Downey. The room was vibrating at a fair clip.” He was seated on the geometrically-patterned rug, propped against the arm of Verena’s easy chair with his legs stretched out in front of him. She couldn’t see his face, only the top of his dirty-blond head and his hands with their blunt-tipped fingers folded over his flat midriff. On the sofa opposite, Alain blew out a thin stream of tobacco smoke. The aroma made her homesick for Borrowman, who sometimes smoked a pipe on evenings when Elaine hounded him about his cigarettes.

  “You graduate when?” said Alain.

  “Next May. That’s when I find myself a hundred-K a year job and move into a place of my own. Preferably one of those downtown loft apartments.” Wolf chuckled. “I hear they attract birds.”

  “You have anybody particular in mind?”

  Wolf shifted position and Verena moved her leg to avoid having his shoulder touch her knee. A trapped feeling was building inside her. Tiredness, a headache —all the excuses she could think of sounded lame. Francine would only fuss and insist she take an ibuprofen.

  “Just so long as she can heat a pizza and likes Vivaldi,” said Wolf. Alain laughed and blew a smoke ring. “That’s what I figured.” The two men knew each other well; they played tennis together every Thursday on the university courts. Autumn changed to winter in Vivaldi’s year and the violins stabbed at Verena’s ears, sharp as icicles. Francine was in the kitchen, filling bowls with nuts and chips.

  “Doing anything tonight?” she had asked Verena as they rolled up the exercise mats after this morning’s session at the studio. Classes finished at one on Saturdays.

  “Not really.”

  Normally if she wasn’t out of town, she spent Saturday evenings with the Borrowmans. She looked forward to seeing the boys, who treated her with an amiable disrespect that made her feel she was one of them. Even Elaine’s tart tongue helped fill the hunger that sometimes overcame her for family. But there’d been no invitation forthcoming since before the shooting incident. Borrowman didn’t look well; dark shadows circled his eyes and he’d lost more weight. Part of it, she suspected, was due to worry about the latest report from St. Denis. According to the realtor, the man who’d negotiated the purchase of the mine was somebody named Li Chen, and Borrowman was almost certain it was the same Li Chen who’d been in charge of bear-bile operations in Chengdu.

  “Brutal beyond belief,” said Borrowman mournfully. He’d passed the information on to her at Tim Horton’s, where he politely offered to buy her lunch with coffee, and she as politely declined.

  “I could take care of him for you with the Henry.”

  Borrowman hadn’t replied; he didn’t have to, his hurt-dog eyes spoke for him.

  She’d tried to refuse Francine’s invitation as well. Saying no was always safer than saying yes; practise had allowed it to become second nature to her.

  “But cherie, of course you must come! Alain insists it’s time we showed off the townhouse. Plus I’ve got this fabulous new vegetarian lasagna recipe I’m dying to make.” She watched Verena complete her usual tour of the big bright exercise room. “What did they leave behind this time? The old dears.”

  Verena held up her finds. “Two cellphones, a pair of bifocals, and one pink sock.”

  She deposited them in a basket near the door marked LOST & FOUND and considered the lasagna. The alternative was a fried egg sandwich in the company of the tiger barb. She could go to a movie, only her experience at Say Cheese’s had somewhat blunted her desire to be out in public.

  “Two nights ago I found teeth, if you can believe it,” said Francine.

  “Seriously?”

  “Mrs. Deleary left her partial plate in the Boston fern. She called an hour later, mortified.”

  The two women giggled. Verena felt at ease with Francine LeClair in a way that she never did with Elaine Borrowman. They’d met when she answered an ad for a part-time fitness instructor. She had just obtained her license. It was the year when she was beginning to go on trips for the Cell, and she needed a job with flexible hours. The two women hit it off together immediately.

  Born in Montréal, Francine had moved to Ontario because she found the nationalist mood in Québec too confining. Actually, she confided in the little office where she conducted the interview, it was to get away from a man. A handsome, well-to-do man with three children and, needless to say, a wife. The cure had worked, she assured Verena with her gamine smile. At a francophone gathering two months after her arrival in London, she’d met Alain LeClair, who was handsome, kind, not so well-off but more importantly, not married. He taught at the Marie Curie French immersion school and it was a coup de foudre for them both. Love at first sight. As open as she was about her own situation, Francine never pried into Verena’s, and it seemed not to b
other her that Verena volunteered so little about herself.

  “So you’ll come tonight? Around six-thirty? It’ll give you a chance to wear something pretty.”

  Francine’s remark should have warned her that she would not be the only guest, but it hadn’t. Alain, who opened the door when she rang the bell, said only how nice she looked with her hair done up in a French pleat, so that when Verena walked into the living room and saw Wolf Dietrich bent over the CD player, she felt a sense of frozen shock.

  “I understand the two of you already know each other,” said Alain by way of introduction. “From Dancefit?”

  Verena nodded without smiling. Wolf, straightening up to face her, grinned. Emblazoned across the front of his T-shirt were the words, “Make love, not war.” She felt a warmth in her face and looked away. After a few minutes, under the pretext of helping with supper, she went to find Francine in the kitchen.

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  Francine paused in the act of tossing a salad and looked at her. She had a perfect oval face, framed by dark hair attractively cut in a boyish style and streaked with magenta highlights. “Would you have come, if I had? I know you don’t have much use for men, cherie. But I thought with Wolf it would be different. He’s your age and you share European backgrounds.” She tasted a leaf of arugula and nodded judiciously. “It was Alain who invited him, actually. I’m sure if you got to know him a little better…”

  “I don’t want to know him better.”

  “Mais pour quoi pas? He’s a perfectly agreeable young man.” Francine’s hazel eyes, flecked with amber, fixed on hers. “Ve-re-na,” she implored, her agreeable French accent emphasizing the last syllable. “You cannot go through life like this. Saying no to men. To living. Forgive me,” she added when Verena was silent. “I do not mean to bully you.”

  “No.” Verena realized she was standing with her hands clenched and her back pressed against the wall. She pushed herself upright, made an effort to relax, and smiled. “No, you’re right. It’s fine. Shall I put these on the table?” she said, reaching for a basket of rolls.

  “Please. And then you can tell the men to come and sit down.”

  She hadn’t had to speak much during supper. The other three carried on a sprightly conversation, most of which simply washed over her. The jokes, the laughter, the talk about university politics and world affairs—none of that interested her. Afterward she’d helped clear the table, while Alain and Wolf returned to the living room and put Vivaldi on the MP3 player. She’d lingered in the kitchen as long as she could, until Francine, well-meaning, had shooed her out.

  “Go, join the others,” she’d said, taking a couple of brightly-painted pottery bowls out of the cupboard. “You’re missing all that heavenly music. I’ll be there in a minute.”

  The violins moved on to spring, while the men dissected the Tennis Open currently being played in Toronto. Verena stole another glance at her watch and this time Alain noticed. He was a square-shouldered, deep-voiced man with a receding hairline, a thick coffee-brown moustache and kind dark eyes that missed little. “You surely don’t have to go home yet, do you?” he said.

  “No, no,” she assured him. She forced herself to sit still.

  He leaned forward to refill her wine glass. “Unless you’d prefer something else? Juice or mineral water. Say the word. A good host doesn’t let his guests drive home tipsy.”

  Wolf glanced over his shoulder. His ponytail brushed her knee. “You’re driving tonight? Not walking?”

  She gave him her blank cat’s stare. It was the first remark he’d addressed directly to her all evening.

  “What’s this about Verena going home?” Francine’s green and gold caftan swirled around her slender sandal-shod feet. She set the bowls down on the coffee table and glanced from one man to the other. “Don’t tell me you two have been talking tennis this whole time? The poor girl must be bored to death.”

  “She hasn’t complained. Besides, fair’s fair,” said Alain comfortably. He winked at Wolf. “How often do we men have to listen to talk about which exercise takes weight off hips the fastest?”

  “That’s different.” Francine settled herself beside her husband. Her low-cut neckline framed the soft ivory curve of her breasts as she leaned forward to pick up her wineglass. “Fitness is our métier.” She regarded Verena with affection over the rim of the glass. “You should wear blue more often. It becomes you.”

  She couldn’t think of anything to say. She was wearing a skirt and crocheted top that had belonged to her mother; they were some of the few things she’d saved. Wolf was making her nervous. She half-expected him to follow Francine’s lead with some outrageous bit of flattery, but he didn’t. He seemed not to be interested in her at all, unlike that night at Say Cheese’s. Instead of being relieved, she felt oddly slighted. She watched him get to his feet and cross the room to study a painting that enjoyed pride of place above a gas fireplace on the end wall.

  “I like this,” he announced. For once he wasn’t wearing jeans, but chino slacks. He plunged his hands into his pockets, straining the fabric over his muscular buttocks. “I’ve been trying to figure it out all evening. One of those paintings that seems straightforward at first, but then you realize it isn’t.”

  Francine laughed and turned eagerly to Alain. “You hear that? I’m not the only one.”

  Alain rolled his eyes. “Stop encouraging her,” he said to Wolf with mock severity. “Here I’ve been trying to tell her it’s all in her head.”

  “No, really…”

  They bantered back and forth while Verena stared at the painting. She’d never gotten the point of art, Salem notwithstanding, and she hadn’t really looked at it before. She saw a tree standing in a field of wheat, silhouetted against the approaching night. Apples gleamed red among the leaves, a white-ringed moon drifted overhead. On the horizon a swell of green suggested a forest, or a fortress. Or possibly an army on the march?

  “You’re not sure what you’re seeing. So you never get tired of looking at it,” Francine was saying. “You’ll laugh, but that painting is the first thing I bought after we moved in together. I saw it in the window of that little gallery on Richmond…”

  “Forest City Artworks. Can you believe it? With money meant for furniture.” Alain slipped his arm around her shoulders. “We were sleeping on the floor at the time.”

  “Some of the best nights we’ve ever spent.” Francine leaned over and dropped a kiss on his lips. “Don’t try and deny it,” she teased.

  Alain laughed. “I’d be crazy to.”

  “If I’d waited, the painting might have been gone. This way we were able to decorate the room around it. It only makes sense.” She turned her animated face. “Don’t you agree, Verena?”

  Verena thought of her print of the ice cliff, which had nothing to do with art or decorating. “I don’t know about such things,” she said.

  She glanced around her, registering cream-coloured walls and Ikea furniture. Green and yellow rugs lay scattered on the floor, cushions of the same shade were heaped on the sofa. The room made her think of sunlight falling on leaves, although this was not an impression she would have been able to put into words.

  Alain knocked the ash from his pipe. “Stop badgering the girl,” he said kindly. “Not everybody is into interior decorating.”

  “I’m sure Verena’s apartment is very nice,” said Francine staunchly, who hadn’t seen it.

  “Very cozy.”

  Everybody looked at Verena. She felt backed into a corner. “It’s just a room and a kitchen,” she muttered.

  She didn’t fit in with these people, and she didn’t want to be here. Almost from the moment she’d arrived, she’d felt the urge to be gone, and now it became too strong to ignore. She waited until the others had started talking again. Abruptly, she stood up and smoothed down her skirt. “It’s been a pleasur
e. Francine, Alain. But I really must go now. Thank you.”

  “So soon?” Alain led the chorus. “Stay a bit longer. We can’t persuade you?”

  She picked up her bag. “I … I have things to do in the morning.” Target practise, she thought, still forbidden by Borrowman. She hadn’t been out with the rifle since the accident, and she was aware of a craving like hunger to feel the Henry’s stock pressing against her cheek, and her finger squeezing, slowly, slowly, the trigger.

  “Of course.” Francine, characteristically didn’t try to pressure her. In the front hall she gave her a hug. “I’m so glad you came.” She took Alain’s hand. “We both are.”

  Wolf joined them at the door. “If you don’t mind, I’ll say goodnight as well. I promised a friend I’d help him move tomorrow.” He thanked his hosts for giving a starving student a good meal. “Great lasagna, not to mention the Riesling. Verena?” His voice stopped her halfway down the steps. “Any chance you could give me a lift?”

  “A lift?”

  “Just off Western Road. It wouldn’t take you more than five minutes out of your way,” he said easily. “Save me having to wait for a bus and transfer.”

  Too bad he’d seen where she lived; there was no fobbing him off with a lie. She glanced at Francine and Alain. They stood smiling in the warm glow of the light from the hall, he with his arm around her, one hand resting just below her right breast, she leaning her cheek against his shoulder. Later they’d go to bed together and make love; the idea filled Verena with resentment and a kind of disgust.

  “Go ahead. Take pity on him, why not?” urged Francine.

  It struck Verena that she’d been set up. Bitch, she thought, with a ferocity that startled her. “I never give lifts to men,” she muttered.