Hard Winter Rain

by Michael Blair

  She laid her forehead against the cool, hard surface and closed her eyes. The big house thrummed around her, the sound of its emptiness amplified by the stiff membrane of glass, as if conducted directly into her brain through the bones of her skull. Behind closed lids, her eyes burned with incipient tears. A pressure built within her chest, expanded, forcing a silent sob from her throat. Christ, she was so fucking tired of it all she could scream. Tired of this ridiculous house and the ridiculous life she lived in it. Tired of silly neighbours and their silly dogs and sillier children. Tired of always waiting for Patrick to come home and tired of always waiting for him to leave when he was home.

  On a sudden impulse, she opened her mouth and screamed against the glass. It was a muted, restrained scream, however. Taking a breath, she opened her throat and tried again, but succeeded only in bringing on a coughing fit, forehead jouncing painfully against the glass with each spasm.

  “You are hokay, Miss Victoria?”

  Victoria straightened with a start. Consuela, their middle-aged, part-time housekeeper, stood at the top of the steps to the sunken living room.

  “Yes, Connie. I’m okay.” Victoria’s hands and forehead had left oily smudges on the glass of the window. She wiped at them with the sleeve of her blouse.

  Consuela’s expression was stern. “Nothing is wrong?”

  “No.” Victoria picked up her wineglass from the coffee table, but it was empty. “I was just being silly.”

  “I stay if you want.” But she was already wearing her old navy peacoat and carrying a purse that looked large enough to hold a week’s groceries.

  “No, no,” Victoria said. “Go home. I’m fine, really. Just tired. I’ll see you on Wednesday.”

  After Consuela had left, Victoria climbed the steps to the kitchen. She poured another glass of white wine from a bottle in the terra cotta cooler on the counter. Picking up the cordless phone, she carried it and the wineglass upstairs to her bathroom and set them on the rim of the big square tub. She started the water, adjusted the temperature, and poured in four caps of bubble bath. While the bath filled, she undressed and stood in front of the floor-to-ceiling mirror on the dressing room door. A little doughy, she thought critically, twisting to look over her shoulder, and her butt was beginning to pucker a little. God, she was only thirty-five. What would it look like when she was fifty? Turning to face the mirror again, she hefted her breasts in her palms. Although they probably wouldn’t pass the pencil test, they didn’t sag too badly. She’d certainly seen worse at the health club. Much worse. She’d seen better too, though. Much better.

  She stepped into the tub and slowly lowered herself into the foaming water. Settling back, she let the heat soak into her. She’d told Consuela there was nothing wrong, that she was just tired, and maybe that was all it was. After all, she hadn’t slept very well last night, after the argument with Patrick. She knew there was more to it than that, though. Fear clawed at the back of her throat. Damn Patrick. How could he have been so inconsiderate and insensitive? Didn’t he care? Didn’t he understand?

  No, he probably didn’t understand, she thought. Sometimes she felt that the only person in the world who really understood her was Kit Parsons. Kit wouldn’t run out on her, abandon her like everyone else had. Would she?

  Oh, stop feeling so goddamned sorry for yourself, Victoria thought angrily. Most people would think she had it made. A house in the British Properties, a closet full of clothes, a BMW convertible, and a husband who at least said he loved her. She was healthy—physically, anyway—reasonably attractive, and still relatively young. What more could she ask? Happiness? A highly overrated commodity, in her experience.

  She reached for the wineglass, but it was empty. She should have brought the bottle.

  The mixture of heat and alcohol had made her light-headed and loose-jointed, so when the telephone rang she almost dropped it into the water as she fumbled to answer it.

  “Hiya, kid.”

  “Hello, Kit,” Victoria replied, instantly recognizing Katherine “Kit” Parsons’ scratchy voice, ravaged by the almost two packs of cigarettes she smoked every day.

  “Whatcha up to?”

  “Nothing much,” Victoria said. “Taking a bubble bath and getting stewed on white wine. Patrick’s taking the five o’clock ferry to Nanaimo.”

  “It’s not healthy to drink alone,” Kit rasped. “Want some company? I haven’t had a bath today.”

  Victoria laughed. She was tempted, but said, “I don’t know, Kit. I’m really very tired. I think I’ll just watch a little TV and go to bed early.”

  “Have you eaten? I could pick up a pizza or something. A video, too. We’ll just veg out. I’m not going to take no for an answer.”

  “Kit, please. Not tonight. I wouldn’t be very good company.”

  “All right,” Kit said, voice flat with disappointment. “But call me if you change your mind.”

  “Yes, of course,” Victoria said guiltily and pressed the disconnect button.

  As soon as she had disconnected she regretted not letting Kit come over. She could have used the company. Reaching out with her foot, she toed the faucet on. Hot water roared into the tub. Despite the rising heat of the bath, the familiar icy emptiness gnawed at her insides and the cold black tendrils of dread that always lurked just beyond the threshold of her awareness slithered into her mind. The flesh of her face grew stiff and numb. The numbness spread, invading her chest. Her heart pounded. She took an unsteady breath, and as she lifted leaden arms to pull herself out of the bath she saw the faint white lines across her wrists and recalled from years earlier the red blossoming into the bath water, frothing pink where the water from the faucet foamed, and her aunt Jane’s screams...

  Victoria rinsed off with the hand shower, towelled herself dry, and, wrapped in a thick terry bathrobe, went downstairs to the kitchen. She opened the refrigerator. The dinner Consuela had prepared needed only to be heated in the microwave, but even that seemed like too much trouble. She closed the door and poured more wine into her glass. Her head buzzed and she knew she would have a headache soon.

  She keyed Kit’s number into the phone, but stabbed the disconnect button before the call was completed. It would not be a good idea, she knew, considering her mood and the amount of wine she’d drunk, to be alone with Kit tonight. In the four months Victoria had known her, Kit had never made any overt moves, but neither had she hidden her feelings, apparently satisfied to let things develop on their own. Victoria wasn’t at all certain how she felt about the situation. Not that it was a line she hadn’t crossed occasionally before, but she wasn’t sure it was a line she wanted to cross with Kit. Not now, anyway.

  The doorbell rang, playing the opening bars of Beethoven’s Für Elise, which she had once loved but now loathed, thanks to that doorbell. Half hoping Kit had decided not to take no for an answer after all, Victoria went to the door.

  It was raining again at five-thirty when Shoe nosed the Mercedes up against the door of the garage in the lane behind the peeling, wood-frame house on West 3rd between Balsam and Larch in Kitsilano. Retrieving his purchases from the back seat, he locked the car and pushed his way through the wet, unkempt jungle of the yard to the front of the house to check the mail. Rainwater dripped off the dark green leaves of the huge old magnolia that loomed over the front walk.

  January Jack Pine sat on the porch, out of the rain, leaning on a canvas duffle bag, smoking a roll-your-own, and reading a tattered copy of The Portable James Joyce by the yellow light of the coach lamps on either side of the front door. He stood as Shoe climbed the steps. He wore a long Australian stockman’s coat fastened to the chin, but no hat or gloves. Shredding the cigarette, he brushed the remains off his palm into the front yard.

  “You still got that spare bed?” he asked as Shoe peered into the empty mailbox. Shoe’s spare bed was a folding cot with a foam rubber mattress that he had used with a sleeping bag when he’d first moved into the house a year and a half ago.


  “What’s the problem this time?” Shoe asked as he unlocked the door. Last winter Jack had stayed for a week when the water lines to his houseboat had frozen and burst, but it hadn’t been that cold yet this winter.

  “Some damn kid rammed my house with a speedboat,” Jack said. “Put a hole the size o’ yer head in one o’ the pontoons. Damn near capsized, right there at the dock. Bernie Simpson, the salvage guy, he raised her up and patched the pontoon, but it’ll take a while for things t’ dry out.”

  Jack lugged his duffle inside, depositing it with a thud at the foot of the stairs. He took off his coat and hung it on the coat tree in the vestibule. Under the coat he wore a red plaid lumberjack shirt over a black denim Levis shirt. His jeans were worn but freshly laundered and his creased boots were polished.

  January Jack Pine was a full-blooded Squamish Indian, or so he said. He looked the part, with strong, hawkish features, sharp dark eyes, and thick greying hair worn in two long braids. His grandfather’s father, he claimed, had been born in 1859, the year the English first came to the tidal basin that is now False Creek, in a village by a fish corral on the big sandbar that was to become Granville Island, the former industrial area that had been converted in the seventies by the federal government into a popular shopping, cultural, and tourist centre. Of indeterminate age, between sixty and seventy-five, Jack made a modest living as a poet, painter, and part-time actor. He could have lived on the Squamish reserve on the North Shore, but he didn’t. With the connivance of some of the residents of Sea Village, a community of a dozen or so floating homes moored along the seawall between the Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design and the refurbished Granville Island Hotel, Jack had obtained a slip in the marina adjacent to Sea Village where he moored his makeshift houseboat, an old Airstream trailer body mounted on pontoons.

  “When you gonna get some furniture?” Jack asked, the worn heels of his boots clicking hollowly on the bare hardwood floors. Since moving into the house, the only major purchases Shoe had made had been a bedroom suite and a kitchen set, both from IKEA.

  “It’d just be in the way,” Shoe said, gesturing toward the painting supplies piled by the entrance to the living room.

  Until a year and a half ago Shoe had lived on an old converted logging tug in the False Creek Harbour Authority marina between Granville Island and the Burrard Street Bridge. The Princess Pete had been cramped and dark and worm-eaten, but she’d suited him. One evening, though, while he’d been at the launderette, some fool had flipped a cigarette or a lit match into a box of oily rags, setting fire to the dock and burning the Pete and two commercial fishing boats to the waterline. Shoe had lost everything but his car and his laundry. The house on 3rd was too big for him and suffered from years of neglect, but it was structurally sound and conveniently located within easy walking distance of Granville Island, as well as the Safeway and other amenities on 4th.

  Jack hefted his duffle and went upstairs. Shoe hung his soggy coat and hat on the coat tree. The light on the answering machine on the table in the hall was blinking. He pressed “Play.”

  “Um, Joe?” Muriel Yee said, her voice soft and tentative. “I’ll never get used to your answering machine.” Shoe’s answering machine picked up on the fourth ring, then just beeped. “Anyway, I’m still at the office. Would you mind picking me up here? We can grab something to eat before the concert. I know I promised you a home-cooked meal, but Bill’s been like a bear with a bellyache all day. Damn Patrick. He couldn’t have picked a worse time to quit. See you. Thanks. Bye.”

  Shoe made sure there were towels, toilet paper, and soap in the main upstairs bathroom. Then, leaving Jack to his own devices, he took his purchases into the master bedroom. He showered, shaved, and dressed. At 6:15, he went out to the car. The temperature had dropped a couple more degrees. It was snowing in earnest now, big heavy flakes materializing out of the darkness above the streetlights and plummeting earth-ward. He scooped the stuff off the windshield with his hands, got into the car, and drove downtown.

  William Hammond was not in a good mood, but even when he was in the best of moods, Charles Merigold could usually be counted on to piss him off somehow. “Charlie,” Hammond said, because he knew how much Merigold hated being called Charlie, “I’m seventy-five years old, for crissake, and not getting any goddamned younger. Will you get to the bloody point? And speak English. I’m not a fucking MBA.”

  Charles Merigold’s blandly handsome face reddened. He disliked profanity even more than he disliked being called Charlie.

  “I think we should pass,” he said stiffly.

  “From what I can see here,” Hammond said, tapping the laser-printed graphs and tables spread out across his broad, black marble desk, “it’s a nice solid little business. Doing better than a lot of my other holdings.”

  “Yes, sir,” Merigold agreed. “However, in the last year their operating costs have gone up almost ten percent while their revenues have increased by only three percent. Unless they bring operating costs into line, profitability will continue to be negatively impacted.”

  Hammond sighed. Profitability will be negatively impacted. Goddamned bean counters, he thought sourly. When the hell had they taken over? He knew the answer, though. It had happened the day computers had got cheap enough that any idiot could have one on his desk. A pox on the inventor of the microchip, he grumbled to himself.

  “Frankly,” Merigold went on, “I don’t know what Patrick and Sandra St. Johns were thinking when they put this deal together.”

  “You wouldn’t,” Hammond said.

  “Pardon me?”

  “Forget it,” Hammond said. He leaned wearily back in his chair. Patrick, he thought, wherever the hell you are, I hope you’re having as lousy a time as I am right now. “Is there anything else?” he asked.

  “One more item,” Merigold replied. “It concerns Irene Oswald.”

  “She that tall woman in personnel that looks a like camel?” Merigold nodded. “What’s her problem, besides being terminally homely?”

  “Ms. Oswald alleges that her supervisor, um, sexually harassed her. He evidently propositioned her, and when she refused him he gave her a poor evaluation when she came up for promotion.”

  Hammond closed his eyes. What had he done to deserve this? he groaned inwardly. Christ, maybe he should have handed the reins over to Patrick after all, let him take the company public, and retired. But even as the thought formed in his mind, he knew he couldn’t have done it. Notwithstanding Patrick’s argument that not only would going public provide capital for investment, it would also make anyone who got in on the ground floor very rich, there was no goddamned way Hammond was going to let a bunch of investment bankers and mutual fund managers, not to mention the fucking securities commissions, tell him how to run the business he’d spent his whole life building. Besides, he was already rich. So would Patrick have been if he’d been patient, if he’d given Hammond a little more time. He just wasn’t ready to let go. Not yet.

  “Sir?”

  Hammond opened his eyes. Merigold was still there, as bland and obsequious as ever. “What?” Hammond snapped.

  Merigold blinked. “I’m sorry. If you’d rather, the Oswald situation can wait.”

  “No, I’ll take care of it now. Who’s her supervisor?”

  “His name is Arthur Somes.”

  “And did he make a pass at her?”

  “Apparently he’s propositioned a number of women in his office. Ms. Oswald is the only one who’s complained.”

  “And this Oswald, she’s good at her job?”

  “According to her co-workers, she’s competent and conscientious. They like her.”

  “Who’s next in line for the supervisor’s job?”

  “I suppose she is.”

  “Then find some excuse to let him go and give her the job.” Merigold nodded. “But make sure she understands it was her complaint that cost him his job. Now, get out. And send Muriel in.”

  At 6:40, Shoe parked in his res
erved space in the underground garage of the headquarters of Hammond Industries, next to the empty space that still bore Patrick O’Neill’s nameplate affixed to the concrete wall. The Hammond Building occupied the same block in the heart of the Vancouver business district as had the original headquarters of H&L Enterprises. That dowdy old structure had been torn down in the eighties to make way for this glittery new edifice.

  When Shoe had first washed ashore in Vancouver in the early seventies, he had taken what work he could find—barroom bouncer, professional wrestler, deckhand on a salmon boat, landscape gardener—before landing a job with a private security firm as a night security guard in the old H&L Building. It hadn’t been the most promising of careers, but it had vaguely resembled police work. It had also afforded him plenty of time to read and, on his days off, to “mess about with boats,” as Ratty in Wind in the Willows put it.

  It was also how he’d met William Hammond, then co-owner with his father-in-law, Raymond Arthur Lindell, of H&L Enterprises, at the time the twelfth largest privately held corporation in Canada. After Shoe had been fired by the security firm for running personal errands for Hammond, Hammond had hired him as his chauffeur and general dogsbody—his “dofer,” as Hammond had put it. Twenty-five years later Hammond Industries, as the company had been renamed after Raymond Lindell’s death, had become the eighth largest privately held corporation in the country, and Shoe still worked for William Hammond, although his personnel file now described him as “Senior Analyst, Corporate Development.” He was taking a couple of weeks off, though, to look after some long overdue personal business.

  When he pushed through the glass doors into the executive reception area on the twenty-third floor, Muriel Yee smiled at him from behind her desk. Muriel was slim and long-legged, with delicate features, a flawless ivory complexion, and glossy jet hair. She was forty-one, but didn’t look a day over thirty. Shoe thought she was the most exquisitely beautiful woman he’d ever known.