The Dells (21 page)

“Scads of room,” Rachel said.

“If you don't want to drive, we'll leave your car here,” Hal said.

“Stay here tonight,” Shoe said. “I'll sleep in the spare room upstairs. You and Maureen can have your old room.” The basement bedroom had a queen-sized bed, while the spare upstairs bedroom had two singles.

“I don't want to stay here tonight,” Hal said. He took Maureen's arm again. “C'mon.”

“I don't think you should drive either,” Maureen said, resisting.

“I don't care what you think,” her husband said.

“Hal, you're hurting me.”

He released her. “Fine, suit yourself. I'm going home.”

“Hal,” Shoe said, looking at the empty beer bottles beside Hal's overturned chair. “You've had at least six
beers. You're in no condition to drive.”

“I'm not drunk.”

“I didn't say you were, but your blood alcohol is probably over the limit. It would be irresponsible of you to drive and irresponsible of us to let you.”

“You self-righteous prick,” Hal snarled. “You holier-than-thou bastard. You sanctimonious — ”

“Okay, you've made your point,” Shoe said.

“Hal,” Maureen said. “What the hell is wrong with you? Stop behaving like an ass.”

Hal thrust his hand into his pocket and took out his keys. “Fine. Here. Take my keys.” He flung his keys at Shoe. Shoe let them sail into the dark of the lower lawn; they'd be easy to find in the morning. Hal stamped into the house, slamming the door behind him.

Maureen slumped into her chair. “I don't know what's wrong with him. He won't tell me and whenever I try to talk to him about it, he flies off the handle and tells me it's me. I'm spending too much money, I'm never home, I don't dress my age, I'm too sexually demanding, or I'm not interested in sex at all. I don't know how much longer I can take it.
Fuck
!” she added angrily.

“Honey,” Patty said, putting her hand on Maureen's arm. “My advice, for what it's worth, is to just say to hell with him and find a twenty-year-old who lives to give you orgasms.”

“Hear! Hear!” Harvey Wiseman said.

Rachel threw a half-eaten dinner roll at him.

All that remained of the cheesecake was crumbs. Patty Dutton said good night and left. Rachel looked at Maureen, who stretched and yawned and said, “I guess I'll turn in.” She stood and looked down at Shoe. “Would you mind checking on Hal? To be honest, I don't think I can face him.” Shoe and Maureen said good night to Rachel and Harvey Wiseman and went into the house. Inside, Maureen said, “It's all right. I'll check on him. Rachel just wanted a chance to be alone with Doc.”

“I saw the look she gave you,” he said. “I think I'll check on him anyway.”

Hal was nowhere to be found. He wasn't in the spare upstairs bedroom, nor was he on the sofa in the living room, or in the basement recreation room, or in the basement bedroom.

“Perhaps he took a cab home,” Shoe said.

“Hal spend fifty dollars on a cab? Not likely. Damn, I'll bet he took my car.” They went out the front door
and checked the street. Maureen's car wasn't where she'd parked it. “I forgot he had a spare set of keys for my car. I thought he gave up his own keys a little too easily.”

“I'm sure he'll be all right,” Shoe said.

“He won't be after I get through with him,” Maureen said grimly. Inside again, she said, “I don't know what to do, Shoe. I want to understand, to help him through whatever he's going through, but he won't let me.”

“If it's financial,” Shoe said, “I might be able to help.”

“That's kind of you,” she said. “But I don't think that's it. Hal's always been careful with money. No, I think it's me. I'm sure he thinks I'm having an affair. God knows with who.” She smiled weakly. “Hell, maybe I should take Patty's advice. Things haven't been, well, very active in the sex department lately.” Her smile wavered and she looked sidelong at him. “What do you think?”

“I'm not qualified to comment,” he said uncomfortably. His experience with long-term relationships was essentially non-existent; he'd never had one. Since Sara died, the longest he'd been in a relationship was less than a year. He'd been with Muriel Yee almost as long as he'd been with any woman, although he'd known her for fifteen years. It was a stable and satisfying relationship, for both of them, he hoped, but where it was headed was anyone's guess. I couldn't imagine what it was like to live with someone for twenty-five years, let alone nearly sixty, as in the case of his parents.

“Maybe you could talk to him,” Maureen said. “It might only make matters worse,” Shoe said. “As you may have noticed, we don't get along very well.”

“When I met him,” Maureen said, “it was months before I knew he even had a brother or a sister. He never talked about either of you. It was only when I asked him point-blank if he had any siblings that he said he did, but
that you weren't very close. I couldn't really understand that. My family was so close it was stifling. What is it? Was he jealous of you because when you and Rae came along he was no longer the centre of attention?”

“I doubt it's that simple,” Shoe said.

“No, I suppose not,” Maureen said. “I've never thought of Hal as a particularly complicated person. His life always seemed to revolve around work, his power tools, and me. Not necessarily in that order. I usually came before his power tools. Now he doesn't seem to give a damn about anything, work, his power tools, or me. He's changed so much lately, become so moody and remote. It's like living with a totally different person. And not a very nice one.”

“How are things at work?”

“It's hard to say. He seldom talks about work anymore, in any meaningful way, and I've been so busy with school — I'm taking business management and landscape design courses — that I haven't really been paying very much attention to him. Maybe that's all it is, he's feeling neglected. Hal isn't as self-sufficient as you or Rachel.”

Shoe wasn't sure he was as self-sufficient as everyone seemed to think.

He said goodnight and went downstairs. It was just past eleven o'clock, eight in Vancouver. He thought about calling Muriel, but the bedroom did not have a telephone and he did not own a cellphone. There was only one telephone in the house, and that was the old black rotary-dial wall phone in the kitchen that must have been almost as old as the house itself. Change was not something his parents embraced. As near as Shoe could tell, with very few exceptions, everything in the house was exactly as it had been when he'd moved out thirty years ago. One of the exceptions was the television in the living room. It was relatively new, purchased, he supposed, when his parents began to find it difficult to manage the
stairs to the basement recreation room, where the television had been from the day his father had bought their first one, years after everyone else on the block had one.

Being in his parents' house was like being caught in a time warp. The place was drenched in the past. Lying on his back on the bed with his hands behind his head, staring at the ceiling, the years seemed to melt away and he felt sixteen again, could almost remember what it was like to look into the future with wonder and awe and fear at what it might hold. For the life of him, though, he could not remember what he'd thought his future might have held, what he'd expected of life at sixteen, or wanted from it. Perhaps he'd learned early that the only thing one could reasonably and reliably expect from life was the unexpected.

He turned off the light and went to sleep.

“You okay there?” the barman asked, gesturing toward Hal's half-empty glass of beer.

“I'm fine,” Hal said. The barman turned away, but not before Hal saw his scowl of displeasure. He couldn't blame the barman for being unhappy. He was still working on his first beer, but he'd gone through two bowls of nuts. “Sorry,” he muttered, but the barman wasn't listening.

God, this was an awful place, Hal thought morosely. A cinder block had more character. In fact, the walls were just that, cinder block painted a dull, medium brown, a colour his father called “shit brindle.” The only decorations that weren't ads for beer or liquor, or government-issue posters proclaiming the province-wide ban on smoking in public places, were a few stark, black-andwhite, mass-produced photographs of early-twentiethcentury city scenes, maybe Toronto, maybe New York or Chicago. The beer was watery, the barman was surly, and the waitresses were thick and coarse. But the clientele
didn't come for the ambience. Or to watch sports or music videos on the big projection TV screen. They came to drink and be with other drinkers. Although he was drinking more than usual lately, Hal didn't really consider himself much of a drinker. He certainly wasn't in the same league as most of his present company.

He looked at his watch. It was past eleven. He wanted a cigarette. He drained his beer glass instead, and signalled the barman for refill. The barman drew him another draft and placed it in front of him without a word. Hal smiled his thanks, but the barman walked away without acknowledging him.
I guess he doesn't like me
, Hal mused sourly. He looked at himself in the mirror behind the bar and didn't particularly like what he saw either, an overweight middle-aged man with lank hair and bags under his eyes and sallow skin. He liked what he saw even less when Dougie Hallam walked through the front door.

He had a woman on his arm, a big, soft-bodied blonde whose billowy breasts overflowed the bodice of her short, too-tight dress. Hallam was in full good-oldboy mode, backslapping and fanny patting as he and his companion made their way toward the bar. He seemed to know everyone, and everyone seemed to know him. Not everyone appeared happy about it, though. After Hallam clapped him on the shoulder, a thin-faced man with a droopy moustache under a huge hooked beak of a nose looked at his table mate and silently mouthed, “Asshole.” At another table, a man saluted Hallam's back with a raised middle finger. One of his companions grabbed his hand, and surreptitiously pointed out the video cameras positioned in all four corners of the bar. The man who'd given Hallam the finger looked sick as he got up and left, abandoning a full glass of beer. If he was smart, Hal thought, he'd never come back.

Hallam clamped a hand onto the shoulder of the
man on the stool next to Hal's. “Hey, partner, be a gent and let the lady have a seat.”

“Sure, Dougie, no problem,” the man said, wincing slightly.

Flexing his shoulder, he picked up his beer and relinquished his stool. The blonde eased onto the stool, her skirt riding high on heavy thighs. She smiled at Hal. It had been a while, he thought, since she'd visited a dentist.

“Syd,” Hallam said, snapping his fingers at the barman. “Give the lady a beer.”

“Sure thing, Dougie,” he said.

“Doll,” Hallam said to the woman, “Gimme a minute. I gotta have a word with my buddy here.”

“Whatever you say, Dougie.”

“Let's find us some privacy,” he said to Hal.

Hal picked up his beer and followed Dougie to a booth in the corner by the door to the kitchen and washrooms. The booth was occupied by a man and a woman, sitting side by side on the same bench. The man was nuzzling the woman's neck and fondling her breasts. She had one hand buried in his lap, the other around her drink. Hal thought she looked bored.

“How 'bout you two get a room,” Hallam said.

“How 'bout you mind — ” When the man looked around and saw Hallam, he quickly changed his tune. “Oh, hey, Dougie, sure,” he said, scrambling out of the booth. “C'mon, babe.” He unceremoniously yanked the woman out after him. She didn't spill a drop of her drink.

“So,” Hallam said, when they were seated. “You're a little out of your territory, aren't you, old son? To what do we owe the pleasure?”

“Just slumming,” Hal said.

A scowl briefly darkened Hallam's face, then he smiled and said, “You looking for some action?” He
leaned forward and lowered his voice. “Or are you here to take care o' business?”

“No, I … ” Hal paused as one of the waitresses placed a bottle of Molson Export in front of Hallam.
Christ
, Hal thought rhetorically,
how did I ever let myself get into this mess?
“About that,” he said. “I'm going to need some more time.”

Hallam picked up the bottle and half emptied it in three long swallows. He looked at Hal across the table as he took the bottle from his mouth. “You're not having second thoughts about our arrangement, are you? You know I'm always happy to help a pal out of a jam, but I'm a lot happier when I know there's something in it for me. I ain't no altruist.”

Hal was surprised Hallam even knew the word, let alone the concept. But, he reminded himself, Hallam wasn't quite as stupid as he liked to have people believe.

“You make it sound so simple,” Hal said.

“It ain't rocket science,” Hallam said. He leaned forward. “Look, don't make it more complicated than it needs to be. Just think of it as an investment or one of your insurance policies. Business as usual.”

“It may be business as usual for you, but not for me. Thing is, money is a bit tight right now.”

“Not my problem,” Hallam said dismissively. “I ain't running a charity. It was you who called me, remember.”

“Don't worry,” Hal said. “You'll get your money.”

“Oh, I ain't worried about
that
. I am concerned about when, though. Like I said, I'm not into altruism. Motivated self-interest is more my style. And money is a great motivator. You want me to be motivated, Hal. It's in your best interest too.”