“On the other hand, maybe they’d tip more, the worse you look. Horses, they froth and sweat. Clyde, there’s no way he’d do that. Froth at the mouth.”
“No, that’s true. He’d pace himself. He’s smart that way.”
“How much, I wonder, you could charge for the rickshaw ride?”
Now and then they’d get talking so fast, there was barely time for them to think. Their coffee sometimes just sat there and got lukewarm and they had to go back to the counter, spill out a bit and top up.
“Downtown? Charge twenty dollars bare minimum. Couldn’t do it for less.”
“That’s not bad money. Half an hour for that?”
“Imagine the upkeep on the horse. Feedbags. Twenty minutes, the harbour run. Charge more for the hill. Thirty, forty dollars for that, depending on the load.”
“The hill? Signal Hill? No way, no one could get one of those rickshaws up there.”
“You don’t think?”
“He’s got no muscles. You seen him with that shirt off?”
“Thin. Weasel-thin.”
“He’s skin and bone for the most part.”
“Sinewy though.”
“Secret wells of strength, sometimes, with sinewy.”
“How high up, you figure, would Clyde have to go? If he could, say.”
“The very top, for forty dollars. He’d have to go all the way.”
“All the way up for the view, the breathtaking view.”
“That’s what they calls it. No tourist would be satisfied with less. There’d be hell to pay, if he only got partway up.”
“Not sure why they call it breathtaking.”
“Me neither. Every day it’s the same up there, more or less.”
The coffee shop was bordered on one side by a firehall, and on the other side by a row of houses made of wood. You could have been anywhere in the whole country, if you didn’t look too far around. There was no obvious view of the ocean or the harbour, but there was a gull walking in the parking lot, stalking about like a courtesan. The gull looked real well fed, cocky, with a yellow beak and glinty eyes. He was there half the time, and half the time he was somewhere else.
“Cold up there at the top.”
“Real cold. All you see is the ocean.”
“Unless there’s fog. Then there’s nothing.”
“Half the time it rains.”
“But they don’t know that, the tourists down in the harbour with the maps and the kids all crying, they don’t know it’s cold up there, do they?”
“No. That’s right. They’d jump right in the rickshaw.”
“Happy as clams.”
“Clyde pulls the rickshaw straight up the hill.”
“With his sinewy strength, his untapped wells of power.”
“Forty dollars, thank you, ma’am, sir.”
“More tips too, he talks the whole way.”
“No way Clyde could do that. One or the other, not both. It’s a long way up.”
“I walked it once. Well, half-way.”
For a minute, the two of them didn’t say anything. They looked out the window of the coffee shop, and you could see that in their distant gaze, they were imagining Clyde Grandy. They were thinking about the skinny body he had, how he usually didn’t talk a lot even when he wasn’t pulling a rickshaw. With their coffee spoons, they idly stirred in more sugar, pouring it liberally from the container. It was getting warm. They loosened their scarfs and opened up the top buttons of their coats. Some of the wet dirt from their boots was now smeared on the tile floor, but that was expected. A boy with a mop and a bucket came around every hour or two.
“I wonder, rickshaws, they have brakes?”
“You just hold on to the bar. Real tight.”
“You don’t let go.”
“That’s it, that’s the braking system. All models the same, last time I looked.”
“Then Clyde’d need insurance, right?”
“Insurance? There you go, I hadn’t thought of that.”
“Me neither. Till now.”
“My guess is, though, that insurance is not real cheap.
Knowing those bastards.”
“Ups the cost for the businessman.”
“Bloodsuckers, parasites.”
“What if Clyde’s up there, and those little muscles of his give out? His sinews snap.”
“Oh my oh my, spare me that.”
“Down comes the rickshaw from the the hill.”
“Trouble for the customers.”
“Real trouble.”
“Full speed, I can see it, the rickshaw in the air from the cliff, or down the road backwards, hits the rail by the water and up she goes high, high in the air.”
“Trouble for Clyde.”
“Trouble for us, we’re the backers.”
“That’s why insurance.”
“I got it. We put life jackets on the passengers, first off, then if they end up in the water, they float. They can be seen, they can be rescued.”
“You mean, before they get in the rickshaw, we make them put on life jackets?”
“That’s right.”
“How’d they feel about that, I wonder.”
“Not too good. That’s my guess, but tourists like that sort of thing. Adventure travel. I read about it.”
“I got it. Make the rickshaw look like a dory. Natural then, life jackets.”
“Now there’s a good idea.”
“Jack up the price, we do that. Fifty dollars.”
“You’d have to. All the kit, everything they’d need for the harbour crash.”
One thing about the coffee shop was that sometimes there’d be a long line-up, like when they came in, and then, for no reason, there’d be a lull. That was the time to head back up for seconds. The two friends spotted their chance and jumped up and then they came back and sat down. By then, they had their coats off, draped over the chairs, so they didn’t lose their place. Mornings, they nearly owned that table.
“Bad for business, crashes.”
“Clyde, you know, I just don’t know about Clyde.”
“He did okay after all, the housepainting.”
The shop was filled up with old retired men, those who had nothing to do. Most of the men had wives at home, the two of them guessed. Wives, girlfriends, why that’d be nice. It wasn’t always best to be single. Both of them had been through lonely times themselves, hard private times recently, but it was the very last thing they’d ever talk about, their own troubles.
“He still write those stories?”
“Little ones.”
“That’s what he does?”
“That’s what I heard, they’re not real books. He doesn’t have the staying power, I heard, for real long books. Right now anyway.”
“There’s money in that?”
“Clyde’s never got a penny.”
“That’s not his thing, money.”
“I’ve seen that. He’s a scrounger.”
“He reads all the time.”
“Clyde’s hopeless, that’s the truth.”
“Well, that’s why we’re here now, to try and figure out something more for Clyde.”
“We are?”
“Well, that’s one reason. The other’s for coffee.”
“Rickshaws, now, getting back to those, they’re a scarce commodity, I’d say.”
“Well, you’re right there.”
“How many you seen, lifetime?”
“Three, four.”
“That’s what I mean, they’re scarce.”
“Well then, I say this: let’s not get our hopes up on rickshaws for Clyde.”
“You mean let’s be more practical?”
“That’s right. Hard-nosed. Work on something else.”
Now and then the double door to the bakery in the back opened. Then a wave of doughnut vapour and cookie and sugar wafted over them. They could almost drink it in, it was so thick. It made everybody there feel good.
“Practical. W
ell, forget rickshaws then.”
“You know, I don’t really care about Clyde. I don’t see why you care so much about Clyde, that’s all you talk about. Clyde, Clyde, Clyde.”
“I don’t care about Clyde. But I do care about someone else.”
“Oh?”
“Meta Maud.”
“His sister? His twin sister?”
“I can’t help it. She’s the one for me.”
“That may be, but you’re not the one for her, the last time I looked.”
“The other day, she smiled atme.Never have I seen such beauty.”
“Oh for the love of God.”
“She is the prettiest girl this island has ever seen.”
“Smart too, you’re going to say.”
“Everybody knows that.”
“A lot better looking than Clyde.”
“So’s a Pekinese dog, better looking than Clyde.”
“Funny thing, the two of them, Meta Maud and Clyde, twins and all. You figure it out.”
“Meta Maud, she’s got the jump, the brains, the looks. She’s the package. I don’t know what happened to Clyde. The other day, what’d she say to me? She said I was the very best. Those were the words she uttered, guaranteed. You are the best, that’s what she said. First though she said, you can stop the banging now.”
“The banging? What are trying to tell me?”
“The exact words. Meta Maud Grandy.”
“She said to you, stop the banging? You and Meta Maud? Banging?”
“Well no, just me. She said, stop the banging in the pipes, in the radiator. So right off I bled the air off in a cup and the banging stopped, and then she said, you are the best. Also she said, find some more work for Clyde, please you got contacts.”
“You have contacts?”
“Well, sort of. There’s you.”
Clyde Grandy had just walked up Long’s Hill and, for a breather, he stopped and looked through the window of the coffeeshop at the top. At first, he couldn’t see much because of the reflection of the sky in the plate glass. Then, just inside, two feet away, there were the two friends his sister had. The ones who set him up, housepainting. They waved at him. It wasn’t the kind of wave that said come on inside and join us, Clyde. It was just hello. They sat there, those two, over coffee like they had nothing to do.
What kind of life was that? All they ever did was hash over this and that, non-stop. And they were all over Meta Maud too, whenever they saw her, like she was made of honey or molasses.
Clyde Grandy cupped his hands around his eyes and got even closer to the window.
Go ahead, look like a fool, he said to himself.
Madeleine. It tripped off his tongue, the name did, but she wasn’t there, she wasn’t out front serving. She must be in the back. The big doughnut machine would be humming away, and she’d have the hairnet on, with the trickles of sweat, the see-through gloves.
“What’s Clyde doing out there?”
“Spying, it looks like.”
“Casing the place?”
“The usual nothing is my guess.”
Then the doors to the back, to where they made the doughnuts, swung open and out came Maddy into the store, with a tray piled high with honey-dips. Clyde’s chest went thump like a kick and he jumped back from the window.
“Jeez, look at him hop.”
“Stung by a bee?”
“Buckled his knees, whatever it was.”
“Look at him out there.”
“That boy needs something in his life.”
“Tell me. Loose ends, that’s him.”
Madeleine bent down, and put the tray where it should be, and then she stood up and looked around. She saw the usual types, but hey, there’s that boy again outside. The good-looking one with the scruffy jacket. She was getting sick of the others with the cars and the clothes, the Mall, the way they bellowed out down there on George Street, drunk by ten.
“I need a quick break,” she said to the boss.
“Okay, Maddy.”
That was the way he was, the boss, he was kind enough. She didn’t even take the apron off when out she went into the street, but she did peel off the hairnet.
Inside the store, the two friends tried to read her lips, what she said to Clyde Grandy. Oh how they tried, but they were not trained in that skill, so it was hopeless. Who knows what it was.
The two of them talked for five minutes out there, and they both laughed a bit together at the end, and Maddy twirled strands of loose hair, blonde, with her fingertip.
“Oh, Meta Maud, Meta Maud,” the two friends said later to Clyde’s sister, “you’ll never guess.”
“Never guess what?”
“The doughnut girl, Maddy, she spoke to your brother.”
“She did? Well, maybe that’s just what he needs, he needs someone like that.”
“True, true,” the two of them said, “that’s what Clyde needs all right. That’s what Clyde needs. A girlfriend. Someone with sense.”
Then they left Meta Maud’s house and stepped out together into what was, by then, a darkening sky. Maybe it was even going to snow. They didn’t talk at all down Military Road. At last they seemed lost for words. They walked towards home. They kicked leaves. And what did they think of? That’s not too hard to guess. They must have thought, in secret to themselves: would it ever happen to me? Would someone like the doughnut girl ever talk to me? Surely it’s my time, they would have said. Curl your finger in my hair, strap me into a rickshaw, I don’t care how dangerous it is, take the brakes off, cast me into the harbour deep. Pull me out of deep water, lay me down at the bottom of that big high hill with all the love you got. Rescue me, rescue me from all this, this life of mine.
That’s what the two of them would have thought, almost for sure.
Everybody thinks that way, one time or another.
the
alchemists
IF I WERE rain, I’d gather over the harbour and look across the water at this our room and darken its windows slowly as in an overture, and then I’d scatter down obliquely and blur the outlines of the crumpled sheets and smother the sound of the phonograph spinning in the corner; I’d pour down in such a rush of testament force as to gut out candlelight and wash away the trace of everything we did, for deceit was then our sinuous way, forgetfulness befriended us, subterfuge inhabited every gesture, no touch or smile was pure, dark light passed through us as bent as in a prism, and no one knew that we were alchemists, that we’d been granted more than our share of time taken from that same rain now called upon, imaginary, sheets of it stinging down on days and nights when everything we did was wrong.
how
it was
for
them
WHEN SHE LOOKED back at the wedding, which happened thirty-seven years ago, Rowena remembered that it was mostly okay. For one thing, no one said anything mean to her, and Jimmy was kind the whole time. He wasn’t always like that, he could have got that glazed look on his face, moody. Even better, no one there saw that she was three months along, despite the fact that she was skinny as a rabbit. She had to work some to pull on that white dress. Then her mother said to her, “Don’t stand sideways. Say hello straight on, that’s the trick.” Rowena stood by the window and looked out at the hills, at the snow. The snow had fallen overnight and it looked soft, wet and heavy, like it would melt.
For their first anniversary, it was a ring that he gave to her. She remembered how they were at the restaurant down by the harbour. He reached into his pocket and took it out, a little gold circle with a diamond. There it was.
“Hey,” he said, “what’s this, look at this.”
There was no box around it, he had it held in his fingertips.
“Oh thanks,” she said, “thanks, sweetheart, but this is way too much for me.”
“No no,” he said, “this is for you, you’re the best.”
“But the first one’s paper,” she said, “the first anniversary, like you get a card, a p
arty hat, that’s all, nothing like this. Then, the second year it’s straw, then leather.”
“Paper?” he said, “That’s for them with no money. Hold it by the light, it’s real. Real diamonds. Take it in and check.”
Then they finished off the berry crumble.
Next year, he turned off the TV.
“Time for us,” he said, “time for us.”
So, up the hill where they lived, she put the baby to bed. Laid her down like a chalice and backed up tippy-toe. Colic. That’d be the last straw if she woke up now, twisted her little face and cried. It was all nerve wracking for her, nothing seemed simple. Maybe it wasn’t colic, maybe it was something worse.
The third year, they liked to dance, so it was natural to go with the leather pants they both got on Water Street. Those pants shone better under the lights, black ones, they rubbed like skin. Quite a problem in the ladies’ though, they turned out, what with all the tight peeling off and peeling down and the zipper that jammed up or down or, even worse, half-way one way or the other, going nowhere. That’s why they make blue jeans, they figured one night, when they got home laughing. It was better now, their life together, it was going in the opposite direction of most.
For their fourth year, he brought flowers home from the high meadow. Nothing special, they were low and white with shiny green leaves, and all he did was put them in a glass of water on the table. The flowers were so small, they had no real stems, they floated around in the glass like they were on the move. There was a smudge on the glass, little whorls, so she wiped them off like a criminal would do, if there was a crime of any kind, and moved them dead-centre.
The next year, he was out cutting wood when she heard a thump, and then he came through the kitchen door. He held one hand in the other hand and there was blood under the handkerchief.
“Damn,” he said.
“Quick, Jimmy,” she said, “let me see that, sit down. There’s a sharp piece of wood there, sticking right in.”
“Take it out,” he said.
She ran and got the pliers and grabbed the piece of wood and pulled it out, so fast her fingers got slippery with blood. It was an inch long, the piece of wood.
“Thanks, darling,” he said, “you’re the best.”
She washed off her hands in the sink.
How Loveta Got Her Baby Page 9
