The Only Café

by Linden MacIntyre

  “Right where we’re sitting now,” Angus said. “I drove right by him.”

  “He was here all afternoon?”

  “I seem to recall it was near three when I headed for town. It was after five when I got back. I’m sure I had a sgleo on at the time, though, so I can’t be precise with time.”

  “What’s a sklow?”

  “A glow.”

  “I see.”

  “Let’s go down.”

  They parked and walked along the wharf. Angus showed him where he’d put the little trailer he’d lived in for a year, even through the winter.

  “I was some glad to see that spring in 2007. A few days there I thought I was going to blow away. But the thing was easy enough to heat. And people would check in on me. Make sure I had food. Your dad’s boat was tied up there. Near the end of the wharf. The fishing boats would be behind it, or over there along the floating dock.”

  “But you say they were all out that morning, the fishing boats.”

  “Yes. It was near the end of lobster season.”

  “And the noise woke you, I guess.”

  They stopped. Cyril was trying to imagine.

  “Well, yes. I’m pretty sensitive to sounds like that. Explosions. Helicopters. They get me every time. Anyway, that morning I thought I was back in Kandahar. Was almost glad to look out and see smoke over the wharf. Then thought, holy Jesus.”

  “What did you see?”

  “Just smoke, really. Some flames. The cab was gone totally. The hull was already filling up with water. The ropes were keeping her from sinking altogether.”

  Cyril paced.

  “Look at this,” said Angus, pointing with his toe. The timbers supporting the wharf were charred. Cyril felt a first wave of grief, was suddenly afraid to speak. Angus placed a hand on his shoulder, squeezed.

  “I know,” he said. “I know.” Then he walked away, seemed to be inspecting one of three fishing boats.

  In a while, he came back: “I want to show you something else if you’re up for it. What have you got on your feet?”

  Cyril lifted a foot.

  “Good,” said Angus. “Good, sturdy boots.”

  The wharf was in the lee of a long, bald hill that was fringed with tamarack and wild rose bushes, a few stunted spruce trees. It took them half an hour to climb a rough pathway up the side of the hill.

  The sky was hanging low with dark, glowering cloud. “I wouldn’t be surprised if we get an early snowfall,” said Angus. “It isn’t uncommon to get snow for Hallowe’en.”

  Cyril barely heard him as he struggled to keep up. Gloria or no Gloria, he thought, I have to get back into running. Here I am, struggling to keep up with this old man, a smoker.

  “Okay,” said Angus. “Here we are.”

  They were nowhere, from Cyril’s point of view. Halfway up a hillside.

  “Come,” said Angus, and he followed him off the path through a clutching bramble. “If you have your eyes open you can find blueberries in here in late August, which was what I was looking for when I came up here two years ago.”

  He stopped and pointed toward a bush. Cyril could see a rusted object near it, half-buried in leaves and deadfall.

  “Go look.”

  Cyril hesitated. He knew what he was looking at—a squat propane tank, the kind you see on barbecues, recreation vehicles and boats. He approached it cautiously, leaned over, and pulled it up from the debris and carried it back to where Angus stood.

  He dropped it on the ground. It rolled and when it came to rest he could see the faded lettering. Miriam.

  “Who have you told?” Cyril asked.

  “Nobody,” Angus said. “I didn’t think that anyone was interested until you showed up.”

  He called Hughes. Hughes answered. Hughes always answered, first ring as a rule.

  “Have you heard from Nader? I need to get in touch with him.”

  “Take a number.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “What did you find out in the east?”

  “I’ll tell you when I’m back. What about Nader?”

  “Nader seems to have disappeared.”

  37.

  He thought of trying Megan but he didn’t have her phone number. His departure from the coffee shop had been, to say the least, abrupt. After failing to catch up to Gloria he’d returned to the coffee shop only to find that Megan, too, had disappeared.

  He texted Leo: I need a number for Megan Spencer asap. It’s life and death important.

  He sat back and waited, cellphone in his hand. He entered Megan’s name in the search box, just in case. Nothing. Then the phone rang.

  It was Leo. “What’s up?”

  “You wouldn’t happen to have a number for Megan?” he asked, struggling to be casual. “I need to get in touch.”

  “You dog,” he said. “After me just reassuring Gloria.”

  “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “Whoa, whoa, whoa,” Leo said. “Don’t go getting shitty with me. I didn’t ask to be sucked into your personal drama.”

  “Wait. Wait. Wait. I’m sorry. I need to get in touch with Megan to get in touch with my friend Nader. The guy who came with me to your place, the night of the party. He and Megan have been seeing one another. It’s a long shot but she might know how to reach him.”

  “You can’t?”

  “I don’t have time to explain. Do you have a number for her?’

  “Hang on.”

  Leo returned, recited an email address and a cellphone number. “Look. Before you go, about Gloria.”

  “What about her.”

  “You should call her.”

  “I should call her? Leo, there’s some other guy. I’m cool with that. But don’t go jumping to conclusions about Megan.”

  “Another guy? No way. I asked her flat out, Cyril. Her life is all lawyering, man. ‘All work, no play’ was how she put it. And I could tell she’s hurting, man. The way she tried to sound okay about the woman that she saw you with.”

  “A woman?”

  “In some coffee shop.”

  “That was Megan and it was business.”

  “Holding hands?”

  “Hardly holding hands. Megan is a toucher. What can I say? But this is stupid.”

  “You got to call her. If it matters to you, you got to make the first move.”

  “I’m calling for two reasons,” he said, when Megan answered. “First, to apologize for running out on you—I can explain. But I really, really have to find Nader. He seems to have disappeared. Have you spoken to him lately?”

  Silence.

  “Megan, this is important.”

  “Why are you asking me?”

  “When did you last hear from him?”

  “I hear your bosses killed the homegrown jihadi story.”

  “Where did you hear that?”

  “Is it true?”

  “Megan, a story can’t be killed. Postponed, suppressed, ignored, yes. That’s exactly why I need to get hold of Nader.”

  “When did you last talk to him?”

  “I haven’t seen him or heard from him since the meeting you’ve obviously heard about. And you could only have heard about that from Nader.”

  Silence.

  “So help me here.”

  “I’m afraid I can’t.”

  “You can’t? You won’t.”

  “Both.”

  “What the fuck…”

  “Cyril, I’ll say this much, even though I know I shouldn’t say anything. It’s beginning to look like Nader is becoming part of our story. So if you find him, you should strongly suggest that he check in. People here are anxious to talk to him. Okay? Now I gotta go.”

  “Megan, what are you talking about?”

  “Get him to call me.”

  “Get him to call you?”

  But the line was dead.

  It was a long shot but he found a number for the Only Café.

  “Is Ari there?”

&nbs
p; “Who’s calling?”

  “Cyril Cormier. He knows me.”

  There was a long pause. “No, he isn’t right now.”

  “Let me give you a number. Ask him to call me, please.”

  He stood in his bedroom window and stared out at the massive maple in the backyard. A survivor, he thought. He knew there was a time when the maples and the elm trees were as ubiquitous as poplars in the city and the countryside. No more. What’s the secret of survival? According to Angus Beaton, it’s all about determination, will and discipline. At least for humans. But it must be more than that. Avoiding the consequences of decisions and actions by other people—the will or whims or mental health of people with more wealth, more power, people who need the security of having more.

  Maybe not so much determination as luck, being in the right place at the right time. When you’re on the sunny side of power, you win. Otherwise you lose. Tree, mountain, river, conscious organism—you get in someone’s way and suddenly you’re gone.

  His phone rang.

  “You were trying to reach me?”

  He recognized the voice but hesitated.

  “Sorry, I should have said, it’s Ari. How are you?”

  “Great. Thanks for calling. Look, this is going to sound strange. I’ve been away and I was wondering if you’ve seen my friend Nader lately. I introduced you…”

  “Yes.”

  “He seems to have dropped out of sight and some people are getting worried.”

  Long silence. Cyril waited.

  “I’m not sure I…”

  “It was a long shot calling you, but he mentioned that he might drop in again to the bar, someday after prayers, continue the conversation. He found it interesting.”

  “Well, he hasn’t been here. I could ask around.”

  “Don’t go to any trouble. By the way, I was planning to drop by one day soon myself. I’ve just come back from the East Coast. I went to see where my father died.”

  Silence.

  “I thought maybe seeing the place, maybe talking to some people even though I never really…”

  “And did it help?”

  “Well, yes, actually.”

  “Sure, come on by.”

  “When would work for you?”

  “I’m flexible.”

  “Tomorrow evening?”

  “Why not.”

  That night Aggie blurted, during their nightcap, that Gloria had called when he’d been out of town.

  “Gloria called? Here? And you didn’t tell me?”

  “She didn’t call for you. The world does not revolve around you exclusively.”

  Gloria had called her to apologize for the books left on the doorstep, Aggie told him. She was sorry that she hadn’t tried harder to be Aggie’s friend. She could have used a mother substitute in the city. She knew that now. Aggie said she had been very touched by the phone call and had admitted she’d never given Gloria much encouragement, hadn’t really given her an opening for friendship. The call had ended warmly. The possibility of lunch had been raised.

  She must have known I wasn’t here, Cyril thought.

  “I think I’ll strengthen this,” said Cyril, holding up his glass.

  “Oh, what the hell,” Aggie said and slid her own glass across the table.

  Later. “I didn’t plan to bring it up,” Aggie said. “But I’ve been thinking. All the mysteries. It’s why you had to go down east. All the unanswered questions because of people’s little secrets. I’m fed up with secrets. I get really angry thinking about your father and all the secrecy. Was it really necessary?”

  “I guess we’d have to know what he went through during the war.”

  “I knew more than he realized but I never questioned him. I always thought the day would come when he’d tell me more.”

  “You knew what? How?”

  “I’m not half as stupid as people think,” she said.

  “Nobody thinks…”

  “It’s always a big mistake to think someone is stupid just because they don’t say much. Of course, some people are thick as milkshakes. Be that as it may. But I always knew more than they gave me credit for. Father Aboud would hint at things and I read up on it and put two and two together. And eventually I realized maybe there are things that I didn’t want to know for sure. Sometimes we’re better off in the dark.”

  “So fill me in. Like, something specific that the priest told you.”

  “The one thing that I took to heart was that a day would come when Pierre was going to need me. When ‘his burden got too heavy for him alone,’ was how Father put it. Old age wasn’t going to be easy for us, he said. Little did he know.”

  She looked away, toward the clock. “My, my. Look at the time. Okay, I’ll have one more and you can tell me about the trip. The old house must have been a treat.”

  “It’s derelict,” he said, pouring. “I couldn’t even get the door open. I stayed with someone I met, someone who remembered Dad. But what about…”

  “I suppose there are a few there who would remember from the good days. It was a lovely house once. And all the work that went into building it. It’s a shame, but isn’t that the way with all the things we do?”

  “Yes.”

  “Life seems short when you’re getting near the end of it.” She gazed toward the ceiling, the kitchen light reflected a sparkle just below her left eye. She rubbed at it and then she took his hand.

  “Mom, you’re hardly near the end of anything, you’re only, what…”

  She smiled, squeezed his hand. “Talking about secrets,” she said. “I suppose it’s time I told you mine.”

  “Oho,” he laughed. “You have secrets?”

  “Strictly speaking,” she told him, “your mother is a bastard.”

  He leaned back in his chair.

  “I know what you’re thinking, but don’t you dare say it. I might not be the biological daughter of Pius Lynch but by God…and I’m going to have another one, so.” She drained her glass, tapped it on the table. He got up to pour.

  “Lighter this time,” she instructed. “And anyway, to hell with Pius Lynch and to hell with tomorrow.”

  Such a simple story to have burdened so many lives. But in her time a scandal too sensitive for acknowledgement above the threshold of a whisper. Her mother’s unexpected and unwanted pregnancy. The only alternatives to shame an orphanage or exile. She lived as her mother’s sister until she was seven when Pius Lynch, who had been her mother’s husband for five years then, finally adopted her, gave her his name.

  “He was a good father,” she said. “He wasn’t a nice father, but not many were in those days. Being a nice father is something new, at least the way I see it.”

  When she was fourteen her mother sent her back to live with her grandparents in Mabou Coal Mines. There was a convent school nearby and it had a comprehensive program for training secretaries and stenographers. Shorthand, typing, bookkeeping. It was what girls did in those days. Girls came from all over to be educated there by nuns. Most got good jobs afterwards. Aggie got a job in the town of New Waterford, at the high school, moved back in with her mom and Pius Lynch.

  “I couldn’t wait to get out of New Waterford. Coal. My God. It darkens people in more ways than one. My grandparents never forgave my mother. The nuns knew. Everybody knew. And Pius Lynch, in his own good way, never let me forget that I owed him. Big time. The day Pierre said we were moving to Toronto was the best day of my life.

  “It’s queer, isn’t it, the way everything works out.”

  She was finished talking about it. Without her secret she now seemed not so much relieved as empty.

  He was wakened by the telephone. He fumbled, finally picked up. “Yeah.”

  “Nicholson here.”

  He sat up, checked the bedside clock. It was ten in the morning.

  “Ronny Nicholson. Is this a bad time?”

  “No, no.”

  “After we talked I checked around and I came up with the first name f
or that witness. Angus. Angus Beaton. And I gather he isn’t dead after all. Sad case just the same, PTSD I understand. I doubt if he’d remember anything useful. Our people found him unreliable five years ago.”

  “Actually, I’ve been down there already. I talked to him.”

  Silence. Then: “You don’t waste any time. How did you find him?”

  “I just asked around.”

  “Yes. But how was he? Mentally wise?”

  “In good shape. We had a good talk.”

  “I see.”

  Cyril was wide awake now, brain in gear. “He was quite helpful. He told me basically what he told your people. Including the description of the possible other witness.”

  There was a long pause, the sound of paper rustling.

  “I wouldn’t know about that. It wasn’t my file. But I never heard of another witness.”

  “A stranger who was there the day before the accident, who seemed to be waiting for my dad.”

  Silence.

  “He was around most of the Monday afternoon. Just watching and waiting. Later, his car was seen parked down by the wharf.”

  “So, what did he look like, this guy?”

  “Beaton only saw him from behind. But he described him as a fat man. ‘Broad as he is long,’ was how Beaton put it.”

  Nicholson laughed. “That could be a lot of people. Doesn’t give us much to work with.”

  “I agree,” Cyril said. “Oh yes, and Beaton also found the propane cylinder, the one that we thought blew the boat up.”

  “Shit. Couldn’t have been much left of that.”

  “It was intact. Actually, it still had propane in it. I could tell when I picked it up. What do you think?”

  He’d made up the last part. He waited. Nicholson sighed deeply, cleared his throat.

  “Like I said, it was someone else’s file. I’ll ask around. I’ll call again if I hear anything. But Cyril…”

  “Yes.”

  “You should be careful with this stuff. From here on in, let’s just keep this between ourselves. Okay?”

  “That’s probably wise.”

  “Oh, and by the way. Your friend, Nader Hashem…”

  “What about him?”

  “I don’t suppose you have a number or a way to get in touch?”