Architects Are Here

by Michael Winter

  Dont I know it, he said.

  And then he thought about it. We both knelt at the grille and were impressed. You want to return to something in the past, he said.

  It’s not Zac’s car, I said. It’s a genuine LAPD ghost car.

  It’s Zac’s car. With an oil leak.

  I knew the oil leak wasnt from worn piston rings. I was keeping that from Alice Stebbins. Usually I’m a very honest person, but when car sales are involved, I chisel. It was just a clogged crankcase ventilation system. The PCV valve. It would cost thirty-two dollars to fix.

  Alice Stebbins came out and so too did her mother.

  My husband, the mother said, he loved this car. He took such care of it. He made sure of all the inspections and he changed the oil regularly and he waxed it every Saturday afternoon before the ballgame.

  Alice was jangling the keys. She was carrying a portable radio with a cigarette lighter adaptor cable. She said, You have to kiss me. You have to hug me and give me a nice kiss.

  You got it, David said. And kissed her. She looked like she had a sweet mouth.

  She’s all yours, she said.

  Mrs Stebbins: Honor rotated the tires and he never drove it hard and he was careful even when he shut the doors.

  Honor? Men are named Honor?

  David got in and slammed shut the door. He rolled down the window and then started it up, the powerful low rumble of a V8. The mother leaned in through the open window and told David her husband treated the car like a member of the family.

  Well all that, David said, is about to change.

  WE TOOK IT for a test drive along Dupont and under the railroad overpass. It had one of those stock-car rear-view mirrors where you can see everything coming behind you. My god the suspension was rock-hard. But the power was strong, and in a parking lot David tried some sharp cornering and the steering was fine.

  This car grew up in Los Angeles, David said.

  Toronto is a lot like Los Angeles.

  This car is the opposite of a time machine, he said. It’s a wayback machine.

  David had once spent a month driving through Byelorussia in a Belaz truck. That’s what we want, he said, a Belaz truck. You could fix it with a hammer and a wrench.

  We drove back to Alice Stebbins and signed the paperwork and I handed her a cheque for fifteen hundred dollars. I know people in garages and so Dave went home while I got Carl Thoms in Unit 6 to sign the emissions certificate. Carl stared at the Matador from fifty feet, whistled, and handed me my cleared inspection. I flipped the registration for sixty dollars and filled the tank until the pump clicked off the trigger on the nozzle. I took her in for an oil change and filter. I serviced the charcoal fuel vapour canister myself. I know what to spend on a car to get your money’s worth. I checked the tire pressure and was astonished to see the gauge pop up to eighty pounds. We were riding on four bombs. I let out, in total, a hundred and eighty pounds of air. And I drove away on suspension smooth as cream.

  I PACKED UP Toby and my father’s wrench and the gold. I wedged Toby onto the shelf below the rear windshield. He looked insane. The gold I kept between my thighs. I couldnt think of a better place. I dropped off my last disc to Tessa. I said I was heading home for a little vacation. I told her about the fire.

  That was your place. My god Gabe my god youre all right.

  The whole apartment, Tessa. The works. A raccoon family was burnt due to a leak and a love letter. The CUBA SÍ billboard fell on our bed.

  Tessa stood up and hugged me. For the second time in as many visits, Tessa Walcott had reached out to be affectionate. It was erratic and quick and she felt nice. It was good to be held and to bury my nose in her ear.

  You need a place to crash.

  I found a goose in the bathtub.

  A live goose.

  I mean it was in the bathroom.

  That’s not a good omen.

  What isnt.

  A bird in the home. It’s supposed to be bad luck.

  It’s the second bird that’s been in the house. There was a pigeon.

  You are probably asking yourself if I have ever thought of Tessa Walcott. Guyanese by birth, raised in England, living here in Toronto. She’s twenty-eight, a narrow frame and she wears coffee-coloured pants with an overcoat and rubber boots, her hair clipped short, gold earrings. Married, no children. Here are the reasons I have not:

  (1) She has flirted with me in only very small pulses.

  (2) In three years, I have spent more than an hour with her on only two occasions.

  (3) Her husband. I like him.

  (4) Her husband. He big and strong.

  (5) In Wyoming, I do not like to fantasize about women I know well.

  I told Tessa I was at the Days Inn. I told her I couldnt do the work any longer. I said that it was a lark and now that my life was being shifted on me I had to stand my ground and solve the things that were within my range. I couldnt just be taking photographs of vehicles. Youre leaving us, she said. And she gave me a look that said she loved me. Those are the best looks, when people you know slightly give themselves over to you with a look. We’re all in it together, that look said.

  Tessa: Nothing is going to happen between us.

  I thought she meant us, but she meant her and Raoul, her husband.

  We went for one last afternoon beer. That is the big difference between cities and the wild, I said. You have to make your own happenings in the wild, Tessa. You have to act if you want one moment to stand out from another.

  My husband, Tessa said. Raoul doesnt want to do anything that will keep the peace. He wants to be who he is unbudging.

  You want to feel good, I said.

  Then choose to leave him, Tessa said. Leave when I’ve done no wrong and leave not when I’m feeling jealous. Have a good footing.

  But you have felt jealous.

  We were at his friends, Tessa said. Playing charades, and I saw Raoul carrying this woman, his friend’s wife. Put me down, she said. Then I heard her say, Put me down because Tessa won’t like it.

  I knew what that meant. I used to be in a relationship like that. It’s hard on the valves in the heart.

  He started serenading her, Tessa said. Two inches from her face. So I said to Raoul, Do you want to sleep with her? He looked at this thought and said to me:Tessa, pay attention.

  I closed my eyes and tried to become Tessa. I said, So you walked away.

  Tessa: I was upset.

  I understand.

  We were playing charades, she said, and Raoul crept around a doorway and pointed at me. Who is that, he said. Meaning Tessa. His fat cruel finger. No one says anything. He’s drunk. She’s jealous, he says. And they all share a look. He’s right, she is jealous, and there’s no recourse. But it made her feel small and frail.

  Between you and me, I said, what you said is kind of sexy.

  Tessa: I’m not up to being big enough. I had a bath last night, she said. And as I thought about it all two strands of hair floated together and made a Q. I thought, questions.

  Me:The guy you dont officially trust.

  It’s as if Raoul leaves it all out there but when you stare hard you realize there’s nothing of himself there at all.

  The devil, I said, is a lived life.

  Is there anyone out there who, if she called tonight and said come meet me, I’m in love with you, would you go?

  I was ambushed with the face of Nell. And then I pushed her away to see if there was room for another soul, as Nell had abandoned me. When Tessa was that close, she reminded me of Maggie Pettipaw.

  Come on, Tessa said. I have to pick my husband up at his ballgame.

  I’ll drive you.

  We stepped outside of ourselves, Tessa and I, and looked at each other out on the street. There was a long mirror in a framing store and we saw that we werent right for each other. It was hilarious to see we cared for each other and that was as far as it could go. We were both in a plight, different ones, and we saw each other’s humanity, though
neither could fully save the other.

  We drove the Matador along Parliament. The night was bright and warm. Then I parked on a side street and we walked to a green ball field lit with powerful tall lights. There was a soccer match at halftime. Raoul was playing. Tessa was supposed to walk over and stick her finger in his ribs. Instead we watched the players resting. Her husband was sitting on the sidelines, his diabetic kit out. Raoul was pricking the tip of a finger.

  He has a photo of me, Tessa said, in his wallet. When I was seven. He gets in trouble when he tells people that’s my wife.

  I touched Tessa’s shoulder once at that Havelock motor race and when she leaned over to listen she saw it was me. She’d forgotten and thought it was Raoul. Thing is, I would not touch her where I had if I was Raoul, but she accepted it as normal for Raoul.

  THIRTEEN

  DAVID’S HOUSE was on Grace. In the window a fan, he waved his hand at the screen. I walked in and looked up the white staircase, the plaster walls a little bashed, from the corners of moved furniture.

  The car looks good from above, he said.

  When Sok Hoon left he repainted and he did the painting himself, the walls a pastry colour, with cream trim. The walls were edible. No doors, just arced openings, Spanish. No books, he’d packed and sold his books after Sok Hoon left him. The one bookcase I saw was used for objects. David still read, he just read off the screen on his little pebble, he bought books online and read them on the pebble. I walked into the kitchen and admired his open cupboard with the little tins of condiments he liked to collect from various parts of the world. When he travelled he came home with something preserved or a jar of small fish that had an ornate label, a bear made of treacle or olives wrapped in a red painted ribbon in the claws of a golden eagle. David came downstairs with his luggage, sat it down, then opened the silver fridge and offered me a peach on a saucer. He had washed the peach. He said, what’s that.

  I was handling the bar of gold. I told him the story.

  Pass that here, he said.

  He weighed it while I ate the peach. He looked like a man who had heard about gold but never seen it. I guess, beyond wedding rings, most of us have never seen it.

  Do you know Gabe, if they put all the gold ever dug out of the earth together in one big square, it would fill a tennis court. That’s all there is.

  He was wearing those cavalry pants again. I sat in the only chair in the kitchen and David decided to sit a few feet away from me on a plush cushion. He kept the gold. The furnishings were new and expensive, but poorly made. The couch, with winged angles, stained to mahogany, was broken in the centre, the back held up by a stack of technology magazines. There was something Savannah Georgia about it all.

  Well, he said. Are we ready to hit the road?

  What’s that, I said.

  There was a small case in his luggage.

  That, he said, is for hunting Hurley.

  I finished the peach and I put the stone in David’s hand because I couldnt find the garbage. Then I looked at the case. It looked like it could hold a rabbit. Taped to the case was a photo of Sok Hoon wearing a wig that made her look like a transsexual. She was reading a paper and you could almost read the column. It was like an intimate kidnapper’s portrait.

  I opened the case. A futuristic pistol.

  Dave, I said.

  That’s registered, he said. It’s all legal. Well legal if we were in the States.

  I lifted it up and it was heavy. I used to box and when the trainer taped your hands for a fight, this is how the gun felt. Like you wanted to hit something. I suddenly understood the term pistol-whipped.

  Dave I’m not driving with this in the car.

  Forget it’s in the car.

  I’m not into murdering anything.

  Stun, Gabe. It’s a stun gun.

  This thing can scramble brains.

  I’ll show you the papers.

  Dave this is staying home.

  He brightened. Compromise, he said. I like you. Youve got a big-game rifle. Maybe we’ll see a moose.

  My rifle’s in Corner Brook.

  Well that’s when I’ll need it.

  SO HE LEFT THE TASER on the promise that we could ride around Corner Brook with my rifle, a promise I had no intention of keeping. We drove back over to my place because David wanted to see the damage. He noticed Toby right off, how ugly he was. He’ll guard the car, I said and David said what he’ll do is guard your gold.

  The sidewalk was still cordoned off around the building. Dave whistled and shoved his hands in his back pockets. He was not into physical gestures, or mannerisms. He found hand movements a sign of male weakness. His father used them and he did not want to replicate his father.

  He said, Is that your computer?

  He was pointing at my melted laptop sitting on the wet sidewalk along with all the furniture from the two apartments. It had been tagged, photographed and listed for insurance purposes and was now set for removal to Michigan in a convoy of twenty-one yellow trucks that motored down there every day with Ontario waste. The melted computer was standing there like it was a normal place to conduct business, but the stacks of burnt pre-cargo were a line of homeless people maintaining their dignity when no dignity was present.

  It’s slightly damaged, I said.

  They ship these to China, he said. You drive up to a farmhouse in Hunan province and you’ll smell the reek of burning plastic. There’s a man standing over a wok frying up the chip board, melting the lead off the chips. There’s a woman hoisting a hammer to blow out the monitor glass on a television to get at that nest of copper wire. Down by the river is a hill of copper wire on fire.

  Since his conversion from stocks to soft commodities David had become ethical to the third world. He looked like he was going to slip the laptop into the trunk of the Matador, but then he let it slide back onto its tower of garbage. His outrage had turned to resignation.

  David:What kind of eat would you like to bite?

  Let’s go to Franco’s.

  David asked if I’d detour down Churchill Street off Ossington.

  It reminds me of home, he said.

  It’s the only street in downtown Toronto that has a hill. And so we drove down it and he was right, for ten seconds it was just like being back in Newfoundland.

  The boy in Franco’s said no they have no roast chicken, but you can get some good chicken at Rabedairas at Dundas. They speak English too, I know because theyre my uncles.

  The boy tapped the end of a ballpoint pen on the counter.

  David:There’s more than his chicken in this town.

  And his family’s chickens.

  Chickens of his entire race.

  The Portuguese didnt invent chicken.

  David: What’s the difference, something invented something discovered.

  Me: It’s a processing thing.

  No, it’s not.

  Can you say something positive, Dave? Can you say, Interesting point?

  I thought that was obvious. Did I say it was stupid?

  Me: It’s part of the response. Interesting point, you say, a process.

  That’s condescending. You want me—

  I want you to be nice, if we’re driving three thousand miles let the miles be nice.

  I can be nice. Nice as roses.

  Good Italian chicken, the boy said.

  DAVID BOUGHT THE CHICKEN at the Pacific Mall up at Kennedy and Steeles. I’d been up here to photograph cars, but never in the mall. It’s all Chinese and wealthy. David said Sok Hoon used to come here. They’d have dates. It’s a good place to buy computers and chicken. In the chicken store he stared at all the varieties of milk and it reminded me of the year we lived together and went grocery shopping once a week, how he bought a fifty-pound bag of potatoes and it lasted us twelve days. Dave took three different milk products out of the fridge and started reading the ingredients. While he did this, a fan in the cooling system caught a blade against something metal, just touching as it whined
and it made all the milk seem possessed by a fast and threatening thing. Automobiles and accidents and high insurance.

  He bought chicken, milk and a travel pack of thread and needles. This is for your gold, he said. And he meant to be mysterious. As we walked back to the car we both admired a jet streak in the sky. It was such a straight white line. David had proposed to Sok Hoon in the Concorde as it hit Mach 2. Elton John was on the plane, just eight seats up. David decided to tell Elton John that he’d proposed, and Elton said, Congratulations.

  Hand me over Toby, he said.

  What are you going to do with him.

  I’m going to open him like a chicken.

  Get him yourself.

  He put the chicken and milk on the back seat and tugged Toby by his burnt tail. He flipped him over. Then pulled at a seam. He tore away at the belly.

  Hand me the gold, he said.

  I took the gold out of my pocket. The gold bar was about six inches long. He pushed the gold into Toby’s belly. Open up that packet and thread me a needle.

  It was a good idea. I chose a thread that was the colour of Toby’s skin. And David had him sewed up and propped back in the rear window. He looked unlikely to be of any value.

  Then we drove out to Highway 404 and David tore into the chicken and drank the milk from the spout.

  Me:Youre deep into breast meat.

  It came off with the wing.

  Some good hey.

  I couldnt have imagined you’d get this. A whole chicken for seven dollars. How much effort went into making it.

  Or discovering or inventing it.

  David: How many chickens do you think get demolished in Toronto in a day.

  There’s a Lorca poem about that.

  You know what’s really good? Is that we can be so silly in the midst of this major tragedy.

  And his face fell, the colours of plum and ash and the folds of skin around his nose. It was a waxy profile and the sides of his seat cushioned his temples. Even though his eyes were open they felt dead. David Twombly was looking straight ahead, the way a corpse stares out of a coffin.

  THREE

  ONE

  WE WERE DRIVING through the short, clogged collector lanes that fed into the big bend of the 401. Concrete sound barriers and the muted roofs of subdivisions. There were green highway signs alerting us to forthcoming cities, their population tallied in neat round numbers. Being numbered makes you feel like you belong, but also that youre part of a penal colony.