Architects Are Here

by Michael Winter

  David wanted Nell to know that he was flying there now. She’d want to know.

  My hand gripped the receiver hard. Nell isnt here. You fucker, I thought. You red-arsed fucker.

  If you see her.

  I NOTICED NELL had left her newest diary in her green purse hooked on the doorknob to her study. If she doesnt show up, I said to myself, I’m going to have to look through it. For her own good. But here I am, ordering the notes this way to give them some cohesion and I’ve injected a narrative where no narrative exists, but I’ve imagined no emotion or detail. I’ve knitted them together using my Wyoming, which is the dream life that cannot be mentioned in the born world. It is a world of the head, a land of web and light, imagined things. Occasionally I’d sort the chaos of life out loud, as I’m doing here, until Nell told me to shut up with my Wyoming. That’s how it got called Wyoming—because I often began with a question, Why, and then an answer, Oh.

  Nell:You and your Wyoming.

  I could not sleep on that final morning, waiting to hear Nell return. I’d shut my eyes and then realize I was forcing them shut. My ears were perked. Then I heard an asthmatic sound and I tensed my ears to locate the sound and it was coming from the living room. I’d heard it all night but was too tired to move. Nell. And then, during that morning’s small hours, I tried to turn it into a radio or a telephone line or the little bubbles underneath a glass drying on the counter, and it sounded right until I knew it was too loud. I walked out to the living room and he was sitting there on the back of the couch, in profile. Mr Pigeon. I leaned over him and he batted his wings. I opened the window wide and he knew his way out. I thought, if a pigeon can creep through a one-inch gap, what sorts of animals can creep through us. There’s no logic to this thought, just the wild associative leaps one makes when one is in Wyoming.

  I waited for ten oclock and then I phoned IKW. She wasnt at work, Massimo said. At least he hadnt seen her. I thanked him for that weekend. He said, You guys. You guys should have a kid.

  I MADE COFFEE and then walked down to the library. I spend one morning a week on the second floor of the public library. I associate green carpet with study, that’s why golf courses seem like a good place to read a book. I link to the internet and discover all sorts of world activity. I choose a monitor that faces the wall, so I can discreetly look up sites like a Japanese artist who, naked except for a pair of white sandals, slowly climbs onto a plexiglas cabinet. Under the cabinet a naked man is stretched out as if waiting for an operation. There is a trap door at his face and this is open. She crouches and defecates on his face. You can see her sphincter muscles contract and the blat of urine and feces. He looks like he’s in a coma.

  Then I searched for the Corner Brook paper online. I used to deliver this paper and now you could read it, if you wanted, anywhere in the world. I found a photo of Arthur Twombly’s accident. It was a plain white Audi sedan, demolished on the driver’s side, not a bad shot. A policeman stood in the foreground and I knew him, it was Randy Jacobs. I thought of David, on his way back there now, an executive first-class seat reclined, orange earplugs in, his own personal DVD player scrolling through graphs of force, williams percentages and Wilders DMI. A glass of champagne on a blue tablecloth. A pulse of anger at his temple. Getting to the bottom of the Hurleys. The newspaper said Arthur Twombly was in critical condition.

  An old superstition kicked in and I waited for the third bad thing.

  I realized the truth as I walked back home, a truth about the Japanese artist: I dont know which person is the artist. I also know that the world that I visit at the library will soon become the dominant world, it is the world David and Nell participate in, and it’s a world I wish would only exist for half the year, or maybe a season, or on three of the seven continents, but it will come and supplant all other worlds.

  I CALLED THE POLICE and felt that I’d done all one man could do. And in that I relinquished some of the burden of worry. Or it was more like putting my concerns aside for a time. I knew worry was there, panting in the corner. I went across the street to the coffee shop and had a coffee in the window. I took in the building I lived in and the CUBA SÍ billboard that stands on the roof. I say “took” because I like to think of it as a degree, this looking, that I’ve earned it with my study. The only degree I have is in economic geography, which has allowed me to paint crosswalks and inspect natural-gas storage facilities. Cuba sí. We were scouting flights to Cuba, because of this billboard. Someone had secured our roof rental, the permit for air rights, followed the approved building standards and stress tests, hoisted up lengths of steel, erected a billboard tower (we saw them and heard them, it took three days) and then pasted this aqua-dune advertisement. It must cover eighty square feet (the scale is hard to gauge, even from the roof). Now it was dictating what we do with seven days of our winter. Such influence!

  I took the stairs and checked for messages, then climbed the ladder to the roof. I ducked under the Cuba billboard and put one foot on the lip of my building and stared deep into the city, at the top of the building that houses the offices of IKW. It’s just beside the Canada Life building, the one with the lights that ascend and descend depending on the temperature. I began my Wyoming. How I’m easy to like and Nell both admires and resents that. Her self-worth rests mainly on the respect of her incredible head. But Wyoming is halted by the shape and sturdiness of the IKW building. It looks made of soapstone. The power of strong buildings like that makes you realize how a place like London England will never lose it. Teach durability and thoroughness, and might will maintain itself, especially in a world where all the best talent is devoted to making arms and entertainment.

  FOR THE REST OF THE DAY I stared at the phone. First it was an hour and then three hours and then I left a note and went to a movie but even during the movie I was worried and could not escape into the white face of the film. I called from the cinema and there was no answer.

  I tried David in Corner Brook, even though I knew why she had left. I knew she wasnt hurt in a hospital, for I had called the hospitals. But David wasnt in Corner Brook. He was still in Toronto.

  Me:What happened to flying.

  I wouldnt give up my pebble, he said. They said the pebble was unusual and could not be brought aboard. I was at the departures gate, you know where the last thing you read is a sign that dares you not to say anything that could be construed as violent.

  You lost your temper.

  I probably said something sarcastic about blowing up the plane and now I’m grounded.

  What do you mean youre grounded.

  I’ve got a no-fly caution in my profile.

  Youre banned from airports.

  I’ve been with security all day. I’m allowed in airports I just can’t get through departures. It’s like I’m allowed to read the preface to a book on airports.

  You fly forty times a year.

  I flew. I’m unemployed now, Gabe.

  So what now.

  He wanted to see me in the morning. So I tried to summon up the good side of me, the unhurt side that could help him now that his father was dying. I felt like perhaps I should have known about David and Nell, and that he was doing his best under the circumstances. He was greedy but then men can be greedy. I didnt want to let David Twombly know what Nell had told me. I wasnt ready yet to receive the emotions I was bound to go through with him. And I was anxious that night and in the morning too until I heard him come through the door. He was beside himself with anger. I could see he had a right to talk to me about it, about the injustice being done to him. I had my own fierce feelings about his role in Nell’s life and yet I wasnt mad at Nell, I was worried for her. I wanted her to be alive. I had called the hospitals and begun a file with the police. This was the start of the changing of my life, where I no longer felt in control—that big machinery was grinding around me and I had looked up to see myself in the bottom of an elevated cone erected at dawn, with wet cement peering over the lip of the cone, churning like ice cream,
a threatening ice cream.

  He wanted some breakfast. I melted a chunk of butter and stirred up six eggs while he looked through the books on the kitchen table. I like to leave books in every room. David doesnt have books. He reads things from his pebble. He was proud that he had a friend who had written books, was perplexed about why I never tried to write something popular. How Canadian books are so literary and, in his mind, boring.

  I made the eggs loose and scrambled, the way my father would make them on mornings when we were up early to hunt or fish. I shrugged off the animosity and decided to postpone the anger I had towards David. I would get him through this rough spot with his father. I hunted for my slippers then realized they’d be where I left them. Nell had this thing. She’d wear my slippers in the morning and then sling them off, perhaps violently, when she left for work. I’ve found them behind books on a bookshelf, and I enjoyed the little hunt I had to do to find them. But here they were in their little compartment in the shoe rack. That made me sad, that she hadnt even worn my slippers.

  I served up the eggs and tore the bread in half. We would eat like Europeans. David was drumming his thumbs on the table, waiting.

  Why not write a good old-fashioned mystery, David said. He wasnt the only one. Everyone who loves you will get a narrowing of the eyes and a pursing of the lips. They are trying their best not to tell you what to do. They want to see you on American talk shows. To shut him up I said okay I’ll write a mystery. I’ll write about a Canadian who tries to become the president of the United States—for that was David’s private wish. He was, by birth, an American. He was born on a US army base.

  He was hauling the scrambled eggs into his mouth now, dousing them with hot sauce. He didnt know I was in the room any more, he was eating privately, like a rich man. Maybe they were all rich. Both he and Nell had made, for a time, a shitload of money. David ate his eggs and asked for more coffee and then we took the ladder up to the roof where we stood straight and saluted the Cuban beach above us and then just stared out over the top of the city.

  Hey you can see IKW from here, he said. And he looked further, as though he might discover the rim of Newfoundland sitting out there two thousand miles away.

  There’s trouble, he said, in Corner Brook. It has to do with Nell’s son. With his adopted family. There was a threat.

  So youve talked to Nell, I said.

  She called me a few days ago, he said.

  Okay, I said. I understood this. Nell called you.

  I’ve got to see my father, he said.

  Me:They hit him really hard.

  They nailed him in a van. A moose bar, Gabe, it had a moose bar. And he’s strung up to all these machines.

  It looks like they might have been over the limit.

  They were given breathalyzers.

  I mean the speed limit, from the damage to his car.

  Do you remember Maggie Pettipaw? She’s a nurse now. I was talking to her at the hospital, she’s on that ward.

  Maggie Pettipaw, I said. She was very kind to me in biology.

  She’s on the ward and she was almost married to Gerard Hurley.

  It’s a small town.

  She said Gerard is capable of that. She wouldnt put it past him.

  And with that he looked over the vast new city of Toronto, the roofs of all the buildings. He looked like a conqueror. Or someone about to conquer.

  Have you ever met him, I said.

  Who.

  Your half-brother.

  I didnt know for years. It was never talked about. I heard the rumours but what Dad had told me was the boy was Joe Hurley’s.

  So when Nell left Santa Fe and came here.

  I was curious.

  Your dad told you and you felt kind towards her.

  Well and she’s sexy.

  He was toying with me. He did not know what I knew. That’s a real twisted—

  Men are beasts, Gabe.

  Me: Nell’s disappeared.

  This was my way to get David to mention the affair. I’d meant to talk about his father, but it was hard to separate it from his situation with Nell. I looked straight at him and his eyes were honest and clear. What an asshole. He was dealing with me in the same manner as he dealt with troubles in business: He was just a heavy in an environment that needed charming, physical men to act as their receivers and their protectors.

  I told him we’d had a fight. That she had mentioned her son. I did not explain that she had confessed her affair.

  He reached into his pocket and tossed me his pebble.

  Call the police, he said. Ask them for an update on Nell.

  What do I do to start this thing.

  Oh yeah, he said. Pass it back.

  The warmth of his hand turned it on. It was powered by solar and thermal heat. He thought of the police and handed it back. A staff sergeant from 44 Division on Dovercourt. You could see that building too from the roof. There was no update on Nell.

  David: Have you called the hospitals.

  I’ve spoken to every hospital in Toronto. It seemed like, in the background of every conversation I had, there were men restraining patients.

  Hospitals are full of police officers.

  I didnt know what to ask. I said, Hello. And this woman said: Emerge. She said, Name please. I said, My name? The patient’s name, sir. So I gave her Nell Tarkington. And she said, There’s no one under that name, sir.

  David:Was she implying that Nell could be using a pseudonym.

  That never occurred to me.

  Did you try Toronto General.

  I called every Emerg, Dave. And every one had a background struggle of calm prevailing. No one had a Nell Tarkington.

  Nell grew up straight, David said. The coffee and eggs had made him arrive at a thought confirmed.

  She’s allowed me to be wild, I said. I’m her little acre of wild pollinate-the-wind garden.

  Youre wild because your parents were restrained.

  We were deciding on children, I said.

  So she told me.

  I listened to this.

  We’re colleagues, David said. We yabber.

  Is Nell aware that you know about your half-brother.

  We’ve talked about it.

  DAVID SAW HIMSELF OUT and I watched him, from the roof, walk down my street looking determined, hunched a little, big and yet not that threatening. Maybe threat was a power that had to be consciously turned on.

  NINE

  THE DOORBELL WOKE ME EARLY. I bent over to discover the clothes that I’d shrugged off onto the floor. They were clothes that had done me well the day before, so why abandon them. I took the stairs down and there was a man in a thick grey shirt with a military patch sewn on the arm. We’ve had a report of a gas leak, he said.

  I dont smell gas.

  Our instruments indicate missing gas.

  The man was absorbed by a handheld chip device with a probe antenna. A bead was pulsing. I could sense a bank of propane, feel the nuzzle of it. The smell registered as a softness.

  It’s nothing much theyre just switching off the gas and they’d prefer the building—he looked at the corners of the ceiling—empty for the morning. We’ll relight your pilot lights. I mean absence isnt something, you know what I mean?

  Could this happen on another day. My wife has left me.

  He checked his chip device and said, We have to empty the building.

  MY JAW ACHED SO I sprayed my back teeth with medicinal cannabis. It was the tooth I’d cracked at David Twombly’s party, and so I associate the pain with meeting Nell—I’m realizing that now.

  I grabbed my coat and my Auto Trader camera and a lozenge for my throat. I made sure the freezer was locked and I put Toby on the shelf above the books. I patted his head, as if I may never see him again. I didnt even brush my teeth. Outside the light felt different. It was warm. They were digging a hole and laughing. There was a big white truck and hired police. A man with a cement cutter—a white metal box the size of an ice-cream vend
ing machine with a revolving thirty-inch blade at the front and wheelbarrow handles. I tried to look greatly inconvenienced. There was a hose to wet the blade as it zipped through the sidewalk. It was just him and the machine with a hose connected to a generator and a water pump in the back of a green cube van. The man with the probe rang the next doorbell.

  Youre just cutting through the cement here.

  I’m a cutter.

  The blade zipped at the cement in a brittle, angry way. There were splinters of concrete and sparks and I noticed the unconcern at the twist of unpainted pipes that led to the natural gas. A leak and my god but hey theyre pros.

  It was early and I had three cars to photograph. I had a life and then I had voluntary employment. It’ll take your mind off Nell, of course it will. So I walked to the first client. I do not show up in a car. Long ago I realized this can give off the wrong odour—you never know the reason for the car sale until you arrive. It would be like inviting someone to your home in order for them to sign over their mortgage, realizing they are doing it to finance the medical bills of an ill child. So I arrived on foot, after taking the subway. I like this, and I enjoy mapping the city, discovering how it is bulking out at varying edges. That degree I did in economic geography. We know that the spilling lip of a city is governed by many trickling advances and interests that affect votes on re-zoning. They are extending the Toronto subway system to the northeast.

  My advice to you? If you have money for real estate get a list of the ravines and a chart of the subway stops and overlay them on a map of the city. Find a neighbourhood near to these and when mortgage rates dip near prime, you will make money.

  A client to Auto Trader can supply their own photo, but often people who want to unload a used car fast dont have the means. And who has a recent picture of their car? I approach the photo-taking as an artist, as a trapping of the car. The man I learned from was that way, Lars Pony, and I do it partly in homage to the retiring Mr Pony’s taste. Everything can be done with taste. I like to place a vehicle so the hood is acknowledging the sun. If a car has to go down, let it be sold facing the sun, like a bull. I bank the light off the front window, I catch a ten percent angle on the flank of the car facing the camera. I crouch sometimes, other times I’m on tiptoe. I try to work for the client, to eke out some enticing quality from the car and when they see this effort they are more inclined to open up and tell me a small story from their lives. This I use in the column. I shoot in colour, I shoot digital, I frame it so there is space for Tessa to drag in a yellow price window and overlay a startling zigzag frame. The frame is meant to make the vehicle look like it’s alive, that it’s gone to bed early after doing its homework and is ready for a long day in the field.